A short piece set during the 5th season of Grey's Anatomy. The characters aren't mine, and no disrespect is meant by my brief borrowing of them. And, see? I put them back right where I found them.
Hospital Time
Time in hospitals is difficult to measure by standard means. Patients surrender their watches and other valuables at admitting; there are clocks in the room, but often placed high above the bed where it's easy for the doctors to find them but not so easy for sleepless patients. Some floors don't even have windows, meaning that patients and doctors alike loose even that most elemental sense of time's flow.
Not surprising then, that hospital time is measured in different rhythms than the ticking of the clock: sleeping and waking, inhale and exhale, systole and diastole.
After ten years of spending most of her waking moments (and to be honest, too many sleeping ones) in hospitals, Miranda Bailey preferred the rhythms of hospital time to the segmented seconds of real time.
But above all, she preferred the moments when time – hospital time and real time, both – stood still. Night shift on the surgical ward being one of them.
Tonight, Bailey was on call. She hadn't planned to be – the next day was going to be a big one – but Dr. Jamison had come down with the flu. The doctor had taken extra shifts when Tuck and Tucker were both sick, so when she'd called Bailey, scratchy-voiced and feverish, Miranda couldn't say no.
She knew she should sleep; years of experience told her that she could sleep as comfortably in the on-call room as she would in her own bed.
Which, as she strolled the halls, she found herself being grateful for. Because she had discovered, early on, that whether she was in the on-call room or her own bed, sleep wasn't in the cards for the night. And regardless of what the night held, and how tired she would be in the morning, at least Tucker would be spared the tossing and turning. Someone would get rest before taking on the baby. A baby who would look for Mama, and, not finding her, cry for a few minutes – so said Tucker – before sighing deeply and snuggling into his daddy for a ride to the kitchen and his breakfast.
Bailey was not unaware of her husband's resentment about the nights that she didn't sleep beside him. Not only nights spent in the on-call room, but nights where she lay sleepless beside him, counting his breaths, ever-aware of each heartbeat bringing her closer to dawn and another night without any rest. Usually, she'd rise in the wee hours and go to her study, opening the files she'd surreptitiously brought home for review. She'd study for a few hours, then tidy up, shower, prepare breakfast, and be ready to grab the baby so that Tucker could more easily prepare for his own day…but her husband was not fooled; knew that again, the pull of the hospital's rhythms had won out over the lure of his warm body and even breaths, and breakfast would be filled with tension between a hurt husband and a weary wife. She had no delusions that Tuck cried for Mama any morning that she didn't greet him in the crib; half the time Tucker had that duty anyway. But she felt badly that her husband felt so insecure about his importance to her life that he couldn't merely tell the truth: he looked for her. He missed her.
She knew she wouldn't have slept this night anyway.
Which is why, in the dark of the night, Miranda Bailey was walking the floor, checking on patience, pre-rounding on pre-rounds. The patients were all asleep; Bailey wouldn't lay money against the idea that the nurses may be, too.
All the patients except one.
"Mr. O'Malley. Tomorrow's a big day. You should be resting," she said, leaning against the door jam. Her voice was carefully pitched to not disturb the other patients, but in the silence, it carried.
"You're the one doing all the work," he says. "Shouldn't you be getting some sleep?"
She had no answer for that.
"You'll need your strength, afterwards," she said, lamely. She thought about what he'd asked of them; what he expected from her and Dr. Webber.
"Mr. O'Malley," she asked again, "are you sure?"
"Sure? About the surgery? It's my best shot, right?"
"About your request – that we take everything, no matter what."
"You mean, would I prefer that you open me up, take one look and close me up to die? You bet I'm sure. It's not fair, not giving me a chance," he said.
"It's not that simple," Bailey responded, moving into the room so that Harold could better hear her voice. "Your organs can't function if we take too much of them," she explained.
"There's a risk – a very large risk, Mr. O'Malley – that instead of giving you a chance to fight, we'll be just killing you outright."
O'Malley's already-pale complexion grew paler still, but he took a deep breath. "I'm an O'Malley man," he said. "We're fighters. You've never seen a fight like the fight I could give this disease, if I had the chance. But I need the chance."
Bailey thought about the x-rays she'd seen in the past week – pictures of the mass from different angles – and what they meant. Grey hadn't yet figured out that the only reason they were even attempting this surgery was to hold onto a very slim hope that somehow, the films had all been wrong – but Bailey and Webber know this as certainly as they know that the films aren't wrong. The only thing this surgery would give the family was a few extra days of hope.
But Grey would realize – and quickly – as soon as George's dad was open on the table.
"Harold," Bailey said, "have you talked to your son about this?"
Harold shook his head. "Georgie – sorry, George – he's a good kid. A good boy. Smart." He smiled in a way that Bailey recognized from her own husband's face. "But Georgie – he's not like me. He doesn't understand the O'Malley need for a fight. He doesn't understand why I have to fight. He'd try to talk me out of it, doc – and worse yet, he might succeed."
"You think your son doesn't understand the importance of a good fight?"
O'Malley shrugged. "You know my boy. Look at him and Dr. Torres. You can tell George cares about her. All she wants is that he try to fight for her. Just once. But he won't do that."
Bailey smiled. "Sir, I am staying far, far away from your son's love life. That group of interns," she couldn't help chuckling. "They spread their drama all over the hospital. In love, out of love, heartbroken, happy. I could spend my whole day just tracking who was with who and why it was a problem for another intern, if I wanted. But I think we're both better served with my being your doctor, instead."
O'Malley smiled back. "Kids today," he said. "But I still think he oughta fight for Callie."
Internally, Bailey nodded. She liked Dr. Torres, and as much as she was going to allow herself to have an opinion on such a thing, thought George and Callie might actually be good for each other. But George wouldn't be served by her saying that to his father.
"You say he's not a fighter," Bailey said, suddenly returning to an earlier subject. "Did O'Malley – I'm sorry – did George ever tell you about the time he was my doctor?"
Harold shook his head, eyebrows raising. He pointed to the chair next to the bed, and, smiling at the invitation, Bailey pulled it closer, and sat.
"Over a year ago, when I went into labor, I came here. To this hospital, where your son was doing his obstetrics rotation." She smiled at the embarrassed look on Mr. O'Malley's face.
"You say he's not a fighter," she repeated "and that face…that was exactly the face your son made right after my water broke all over his shoes." She sat there for a moment, seeing O'Malley's face in her mind's eye, and then she started to chuckle. Harold joined in, the laugh of a man who could imagine what his son must have felt at that moment.
"That look," Bailey continued, "that's why I told my gynecologist to keep Dr. O'Malley far away from my room." She took a deep breath, thinking about what came next.
"But then, things started to go wrong," she said. "Not with my labor – not at first – but my husband …he was in an accident on the way to the hospital. And suddenly, doctors were having whispered conferences in the hall, and telling me in soothing voices that everything would be fine." She took a deep breath, thinking about that day – about how it had all felt…knowing that she'd have to call Tucker before the day shift began, no matter the hour, just to hear his half-awake, all-annoyed voice answer the phone.
"I got scared," she continued. "I panicked. I announced that I was not having my baby that day – that I would go home, and that I would hold him in until another day – a better day.
"Normally, my doctor would have dismissed this as the ravings of a madwoman, knocked me out, dragged me off to the OR and gotten the baby out of me. But the OR was on lockdown – part of why I was so worried about Tucker. And that's when things started to go wrong."
O'Malley was listening intently – the same compassionate look in his eyes she had seen so many times from his son's. He had no idea what this had to do with him, but he would listen to Bailey until he did – or until he could figure out how to help her, whichever came first.
"Your son," she said, "he was the one - the one who finally figured out how to break through to me; who got in my face and told me that he expected more of me, and that whatever I might have thought about the situation, I – no we – were going to have this baby."
O'Malley laughed. "Atta boy, Georgie!" he exclaimed.
"And we did. He got on that table, and he coached me, held my hands, mopped by face, and convinced me that no matter what, he was there for me. My son was born healthy and whole. Birthed right into your son's hands.
"My baby is fourteen months old, now, Mr. O'Malley. Fourteen months, talking, and days away from walking. There are days when he drives me crazy, but if it weren't for your son, he wouldn't be here to do that.
"That's my point, sir. Your son…he might not the most well-trained doctor. He might not the most naturally gifted doctor…but he is the best doctor. Because he's a fighter. He fights every day for his patients – to ensure they get the best possible care. And he's there, no matter what, to hold their hands and to tell them that they aren't fighting their battles alone – because he is there to fight with them."
Bailey's voice cracked, and she stopped, forcing herself to take a deep breath and calm down. She didn't want to cry all over Harold O'Malley, although she was beginning to realize that he'd probably be able to take it.
"Afterwards, I realized that I wanted my son to be the kind of man who had the strength, compassion and courage to fight for himself, and for others. And that's why my son shares your son's name."
O'Malley's face lit up as he realized what Bailey was saying. "Thank you," he said.
Bailey smiled and nodded, reaching out to take O'Malley's hand.
"Don't thank me," she said. "Thank George. He's the reason I'm going to honor your request tomorrow, sir. I don't agree with it. I think it's a mistake – and what's more, it's probably a deadly one. But I know what an O'Malley man can do when he puts his mind to it, and if you tell me you're going to fight this, then I don't have the heart to stand in your way."
Harold squeezed Bailey's hand. "Thank you, Doc."
"But I'd feel a lot better about it if you'd tell your son."
Harold shook his head. "I'll tell him after it's all over. Not before."
"I'd really prefer – he asked me to be straight with him."
"He'll understand," said Harold, yawning. "He understands the value of a good fight."
Bailey smiled. "That he does, Harold," she said. "That he does."
Harold smiled back, as well. "You probably have other patients to look in on. But thank you, Doctor Bailey. I appreciated the talk."
"You're welcome, Mr. O'Malley. I'll see you tomorrow, OK?"
"It's already today," Harold said, pointing at the clock across from his bed. And so it was. 3:30 in the morning. The interns would be arriving within the hour, and the rhythms of the hospital would reassert themselves once again.
"You're right, sir," she said. "And in that case, I'll see you in a few hours. Get some sleep, if you can."
"I will if you will," he promised, and while Bailey smiled and nodded as she left the room, she knew that any chance of sleep that had been there before was now completely gone. She'd go to her locker, place a quick call to Tucker, after talking to him long enough to convince herself that he was alive and whole, she'd ask him to put the phone next to her sleeping son's face so she could hear him breathe, and then spend the next remaining hours walking the floor, counting her own breaths, and putting her heartbeats into prayers that Harold O'Malley was truly up for the fight.