Hello. I am president of the start-new-stories-at-inopportune-times club.Anyway, the idea hit me and I HAD to write or it would be buzzing around my head and I wouldn't be able to get anything done.
22nd November, 2006
7 A.M.
It's the hour between night and day, when the night shift ends, and weary nurses and doctors shuffle home, replaced by their awake counterparts. It's the hour when patients are handed over, responsibilities shifting from one set of shoulders to another.
It's the beginning of a new day.
DEREK
"That was a hell of a day." Richard yawns beside him, stretching as he tucks his scrub cap into his pocket. At the same time, he removes a thick gold band from his pocket, slides it onto a wrinkled finger. It fits perfectly oveover the strip of lighter skin on the fourth finger of his left hand. It should. It's sat there for years.
He grunts in agreement as he runs cool water over his hands and forearms. The scent of soap and antiseptic is sharp in his nostrils, but not sharper than he can feel Addison's eyes on his back. He tries not to watch her unpin her rings from her scrub top, slip them onto her hand.
"Heading home?" Richard asks cheerfully, swinging the door open with a foot. "You all need some sleep after being up all night. And thanks for coming in on short notice last night, Erica."
"Anytime, Richard. I have to be back at Seattle Pres by nine." Hahn says. "I think I'll just check on Preston before I leave. If he says something rude to me, I'll know he's all right."
Richard nods, looking at the two of them.
"Home." Addison says at the same time he does. He looks at her in surprise. He was pretty sure she had a surgery at ten today, and from experience he knows she will want to meet the patient at nine, before she's taken to pre-op. She'll spend ten minutes talking, a few more quizzing her resident, she'll take a moment to review the case notes. She'll check in with the scrub team. He expected her to stay at the hospital.
He was expecting a few uninterrupted hours of sleep at home, alone, which he deserves after operating on Burke and this woman within twenty four hours. So he can't feel her eyes boring into his back, the weight of her accusations. His marriage is as broken as the patient they just spent eight hours saving, but he has no idea how, or if, he can resuscitate it. If he even wants to.
Hahn and Richard leave, so it's just him and Addison there. She was asleep on the couch last night when their pagers went off in synchronised disharmony, he was tossing and turning on the bed, but by unspoken agreement they drove here in the same car.
He has a few patients in the ICU he wants to check on, he'll be done soon.
"Be at the car in ten." he says shortly, just before he leaves.
HAHN
Just the way to start a perfect day, she thinks to herself. She enjoys the rush of adrenalin that comes with the thrilling do-or-die situations like last night's hit and run victim, the satisfaction of saving them.
It took them eight hours of some of the most difficult surgery to do it, but she's gained nothing but respect for Preston's colleagues last night.
Especially Addison Shepherd. She tried valiantly to keep the woman's twenty-seven week old fetus in her shattered body, but in the end that proved futile. She ended up having to make a split second decision to deliver the baby, then another when she had to perform a hysterectomy to stop the bleeding when her attempts at embolisation failed.
She dealt with the rather nasty diaphragmatic tear, a punctured lung, Richard worked on her liver lacerations and actually managed to salvage most of it. Shepherd did a craniotomy, stopped the bleed, stabilised the vertebral fractures. All in all, it was a win.
She wanders down to the coffee cart to refuel for the day, where she literally bumps into Alex Karev. He's walking with his nose in a cardio text, sipping coffee, which spills all over her pristine white coat.
"Sorry!" he yelps, dropping the empty cup on her shoes. "Sorry, Dr. Hahn."
RICHARD
This is the kind of thing he's talking about. Level One trauma center stuff, headliner stuff.
He's feeling particularly cheerful as he walks to his the ICU; he wants to see their trauma patient settled in before he leaves.
He's taking the morning off, he's going home. Adele will make him breakfast, and then he intends to sleep like a rock until he has to be back here in the afternoon. He's reassigned his morning surgeries, and made sure Addison and Derek did too.
Adele made him promise he would do everything he could to keep the Shepherd's marriage off the rocks he privately thinks it's already broken on, but whatever makes her happy.
Happy wife, happy life.
Right?
ADDISON
He ignores her in elevators. He ignores her in the trailer. He ignored her on her birthday - and his - and in the OR and everywhere else and the less said about Christmas, the better.
She stumbles in her clogs a little; in the rush last night she didn't find her own personalised pair in the changing room, and ended up standing for hours in someone's pool of foot germs.
She's still in scrubs, but Preston won't mind. He's one of the only people here she counts as close to a friend, and she doesn't want to be standing by the car waiting for Derek. So she's spending the free ten minutes here, with Preston.
She actually can't wait to get to the trailer for once, where she fully intends to monopolise the shower until the hot water runs out. Derek can just go -
Her pager goes off.
Okay, to recap - this takes place between 2.26 and 2.27, so ...Burke has been shot and fixed by Derek.
Denny has received the ill-gotten heart.
Addison and Derek have had their massive bustup about the pregnant patient, where the whole hospital hears her shrieking. They know they're on their last legs, but they're stubborn.
Richard's niece has been diagnosed with cancer, the prom planning is on.
Please please please please please review and let me know if you want me to continue! This is a little out of my comfort zone of Addek angst -although there will be some here - and this story is mostly going to be short.