First, I need to explain this series of stories. I challenged myself to write a Grey's fic for every song from the musical Spring Awakening. I was going to compile them in one large, multi-chaptered series of vignettes, but I figured that it would be easier for people to find what they liked if I posted them individually. If you want to check out the others, see my author page.
Disclaimer: Grey's Anatomy is the property of Shonda Rhimes and ABC. This writing is for entertainment purposes only and is not for profit.
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On I go
To wonder and to learning
Name the stars and know their dark returning
She can resect a bowel with her eyes closed.
She could perform an appendectomy in her sleep.
She's an amazing general surgeon; one of the most talented of Seattle Grace, second to the Chief himself.
Everything general surgery comes easy to her. She's the incomparable Dr. Miranda Bailey.
And she's bored.
Well, maybe "bored" isn't exactly the right word. She still adores general surgery, still gets a huge rush of adrenaline at the though of being elbows-deep in someone's abdomen. It's what's defined who she's been for years now, since the beginning of her residency. She wouldn't trade that for anything in the world.
Still, a change of scenery would be nice. Maybe exploring neuro, plastics, or even cardio would make her love general surgery even more. Something related to that "absence makes the heart grow fonder" fluff.
To switch specialties, to flirt with other body systems, might prove to be a good learning experience. In fact, the past year has been one big learning experience for Dr. Miranda Bailey. She's gotten too many lessons to count, acquired new philosophies by the dozen.
Apparently, she learned how to rear five drooling, crying, baby interns and make them into the strong surgeons they are today. They're a hard group (what with cutting LVADS, drowning, dating attendings, failing exams, and orchestrating cover-ups) but also one of the most rewarding she's ever mentored. She was (and still is, to some extent) their Mama Bear.
Now, her babies are figuring out how to raise some infant interns of their own: her grandbabies.
She's learning how to balance the schedule-making and paper-working duties of the Chief Resident with the surgeries and practice of a surgical resident preparing for fellowship. She's dealt with ornery residents, a clinic, and a flood of almost biblical proportions and came out virtually unscathed. She must have done something right.
She's learning how to cope with the implications that being the Chief's golden child holds. The pressure is overwhelming sometimes, especially when he basically threw an inoperable tumor at her and said, "Have at it."
She learned how to keep rising above hatred with the "help" of a patient. Though, tattoo botching was an irresistible part of that whole debacle.
She somehow found a way to balance a pregnancy, and, soon after, a baby with work. She learned how to cope with that baby's life-threatening injury, an event that she considers the most terrifying of her life thus far.
She's working on being able to handle cases that involve children. She's figuring out how to not see little Tuck in their place.
She thought she'd discovered how to have a healthy marriage despite long and unpredictable hours at the hospital. She was wrong. Instead, she relearned how to sleep alone at night. She learned how to care for Tuck by herself.
She's slowly finding out how to take these shards of the bond between her and her husband. Through trial-and-error, she's trying to find a way to place them, piece by piece, into a fragile house of cards.
Learning isn't a new concept to Dr. Bailey. Exploring a new specialty is a good choice, and even if it isn't a good choice, it's the one she needs to make. She's going to do it; she's going to conquer new frontiers, to find a new horizon or two. She's going to become one of the best-versed and diverse surgeons there is. It's her only way to move forward for now.
Because the most important thing Miranda Bailey has realized?
She's learned that she still hasn't learned all there is to know.
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An afterthought: I know that this is probably the least appropriate place to give this shout-out, but I'm going to anyways. HERE WE GO, STEELERS, HERE WE GO.