Author's note: Yesss, the constantly-tirelessly-rewritten story is back! This must be its 10th reincarnation now... seriously. I swear this will be the last, and for good, okay? grins
Each chapter is meant to be read out as an episode, so it's lengthy. Accept it. And as with all Grey's episodes, they gotta have myoo-zik...
Songs: 1. Grace Kelly - Mika 2. People Watching - Jack Johnson
Chapter 1: First Day of the Rest of Our Lives
It's one of those days again. This kind of day which, from my experience, always begins with a mirror. In the bathroom. Standing in front of the mirror, still in your bedclothes and bed-hair, looking at the old you and thinking about how you would present the 'new' you.
Like what I am doing now.
George took a deep breath, but his eyes never left his own reflected ones. He stared at himself: the tousled hair, the white 'I LOVE YOU EVEN MORE' T-shirt he wore to bed last night (Callie had the 'I LOVE YOU' one), and a slight shadow on his chin. Wow, a six-o'clock. Cool.
Not.
He sighed to himself. "You're a mess, George."
"George? Honey?" The bathroom door opened and Callie poked her head in. "Are you done? I'm supposed to be at work in two hours and forty-three minutes."
He turned around. "Hey."
She arched an eyebrow. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, yeah I'm fine."
"Are you sure?"
"I am sure."
Callie smiled, but only slightly as she entered the bathroom and took his hand in hers. "You're nervous, aren't you?"
"Nervous?" George feigned ignorance. "Why should I be nervous?"
"Well, seeing as you're about to start work at Mercy West today, it's understandable to be nervous."
George looked down. "That obvious, huh?"
"Oh, George," she said with a laugh and squeezed his hand gently. "I'm your wife, silly pie. You can tell me things. Like you used to do with Izzie."
At the mention of her name, George stiffened. "You did not just say that."
"What? Izzie?"
"Why did you say that?"
"Well what's wrong with it?"
"What's wrong?" George almost shouted. He could feel his ears turning redder by the minute. "I was - was this close to forgetting her. Today is my new chapter, my day. I'm beginning a whole new phase of my life and I want to do it without being reminded by her!"
Callie fell silent. They both did. George pried his fingers away from his wife's and turned back to the mirror. He turned on the faucet and cupped some water onto his palms but before the water could fill up, Callie reached over and shut it off. George tried not to look at her.
"I appreciate you doing that," she said, her voice quivering.
"Doing what?"
"Trying to forget her. That's brave of you."
"Really?"
"Yeah. As brave as you deciding to do your internship again at Mercy. George, I'm so proud of you." Abruptly, she took his chin in her strong hands so that it faced her and planted a kiss on his lips. George responded, silently thanking her for having faith in him. Glad for the fact that someone actually didn't see him as failure. He wasn't a failure. He wasn't. When the kiss ended, he instantly wrapped his arms around her and held her close. A sob escaped from her lips, muffled against his neck.
"I love you so much," she croaked out.
"I love you too." He stroked her hair as tenderly as he could manage. "I want an apartment. An apartment just for us."
"An a-a-apartment? Only?" She looked up at him. "We're both doctors and all you ask for is an apartment?"
He had to grin. "What do you suggest then?"
She sighed and laid her head back on his shoulder. "I want a house. A proper house. Picket fence and driveway. The real deal."
7.30 a.m. and Dr. Franka Stoddart, attending ophthalmic surgeon, was already dressed in the green scrubs of attending surgeons and a lab coat and down by the Intern Rotation Board before she started her morning rounds. No one had ever seen her in anything other than scrubs and a ponytail in all her 6 years working there. The nurses had tried to persuade her to wear a skirt, for a change.
No matter, she knew she looked great anyway, even in green scrubs.
Dr. Sebastianne Ormaunt, or better known around the hospital as Sebs, arrived at the Board just minutes later with a polystyrene cup of coffee in her hand. Franka smelt the coffee and wrinkled her nose. "You're still polluting your digestive system with that?"
"What? Just because you have a strange grudge against coffee doesn't mean that I have to ."
Franka smiled, but not too kindly. "Not quite the doormat today, I see."
Sebs threw one hand into the air in frustration. "There is a huge difference between being nice and being a doormat, Frankie! I'm being nice."
The other attending merely shrugged. "Whatever."
One of the surgical residents (resplendent in lilac scrubs) caught up with Sebs and asked her if she could come around to Room so-and-so for a consult later in the morning. Now it was no secret that Sebs the attending Neurosurgeon had a hectic schedule and sometimes back-to-back craniotomies, and Franka waited for her response with an arched eyebrow, which Sebs was painfully aware of.
She eyed her fiercely before turning to the resident: "I'm sorry, but I'm stuffed, and – "
"But I really think the patient needs your consult," insisted the resident. "I'm sorry too but – this guy can't pronounce any word with an 'r' in it."
"That might be a speech problem."
"I got Psych. on the case but they said he wasn't mental. They asked me to try Neuro." He made a pleading face. "Please, Dr. Ormaunt? I'm counting on you."
The wide eyes and watery brown ones were working into her conscience. "Oh-ohkay then. I'll be there at 9.30 with, uh, my new interns and – just make sure that you're there to present the case, okay?"
The grinning resident thanked her profusely and left. Franka shook her head. Then, after a while, she smiled wryly and said in a low voice: "Doormat."
"Hey! You heard the guy."
"I can't believe you bowed to a resident. No self-respecting attending does that."
"He needed a Neuro consult and I just happen to be a neurosurgeon on-call. You have no conscience, Frankie. You're evil."
"Happily so," she replied.
"G'morning, ladies," chirped another colleague, this time the new attending plastic surgeon, Dr. James Baldacci. His eyes were fixed on a patient's file, which he promptly deposited at the nurses' station. The nurse on duty took it with averted eyes and squeaked, "Good morning, Dr. Baldacci." He smiled back. "Why good morning to you too."
Franka sniggered on purpose when he came to stand beside her. "Flattering the nurses so early in the morning, aren't we?"
"Since I'm already blessed with such good looks and charm, why not use it, eh Sebs?" he asked with a wink. Sebs smiled politely. "Ah, a fresh batch of interns for us to torture. Excellent," he added.
"And people say that I'm evil," muttered Franka to Sebs.
"Who's Dr. Evilscrubs again?" asked James nonchalantly, referring to Franka's nickname around the hospital. She shot him a glare with her icy blue eyes. "I am not evil. I'm strict. There's a difference in that. A huge difference."
"And there is a huge difference in doormat and nice too, while you're there," said Sebs.
Franka stared at her, hands stuffed into her lab coat. "I, am strict. You, are a doormat, isn't she, James?" she whirled around to face him. He took a long look at Sebs, who had widened her eyes at him. After a few seconds he laughed. "Sebs, you can't even stare me down."
Sebs's jaw dropped, and they laughed.
Dr. David Hart, neuro like Sebs, joined them at the Intern Rotation Board. He wore bright red horn-rimmed glasses and had been trying very hard to click with the other attending surgeons. That never always went well because he thought they were too cool to be true, and they thought that he was a geek. "Good morning fellas!" he said a little too enthusiastically.
Except for Sebs. "Now here's somebody that the hospital needs more of!" she exclaimed with a big and hearty smile for him. "And good morning to you too, David!"
"Hey, James. Way to go for the Yankees yesterday eh?" said David with an exaggerated wink. "Great game!"
"I don't follow baseball," replied James apologetically.
"Oh."
"What's all this noise in front of the Rotation Board?" said a clipped female voice. Immediately all four attending surgeons straightened up and stifled their laughs. Sebs still looked a little distressed, but Erica Hahn, formerly of Seattle Presbyterian and now Chief of Surgery in Mercy West, chose to ignore it. It was common knowledge that all surgeons disliked her. For one, she had adamantly stuck to wearing the bright red scrubs from her time in Seattle Presbyterian and not the traditional green ones. Pain in the eye. She stared pointedly at all of them with a scowl on her face. "Is there a problem with the Board?"
"No, no, not at all," said Sebs, a tad too sullen.
Hahn stared at Franka. She shook her head meekly.
"Actually there is," said James suddenly, and the other three glared at him. He pretended to not notice them and smiled instead. "I noticed that I've got six interns. The rest only has five each."
Hahn smiled back, a mirthless smile. "Wouldn't you like all the help that you can get?"
James tilted his head slightly, and daggers were thrown from each other's eyes. Franka looked away, exchanging a knowing grin with Sebs. Ever since Day 1, Hahn had laid down what she liked to call 'golden rules', which they had never liked, of course. No. 1 on this list was: The Chief of Surgery has the highest authority.
James had broken this clean and wide when he erased Hahn's heart transplant for a rhinoplasty a few months ago.
So he smiled another smile: this time a dry one. "Ah. How kind of you."
She scoffed. "I am the best thing that's ever happened to this hospital after all." She scanned through them again and nodded curtly. "Well then, good day." To the relief of all, she slithered away.
Franka shook her head. "And they call me Evilscrubs."
"Well, Evilscrubs, how would you like to have lunch with me later? Just you and me." said James unexpectedly. Three heads turned to stare at him, none more surprised than Franka. "Not again," she said softly.
"We'll be off," said Sebs and David, and casting glances at one another, they duly left Franka and James to themselves.
James shrugged. "Why not?"
"You know why." She tried her best not to be fooled by those warm, deep brown eyes and his just-rolled-out-of-bed hair, overall not helping her determination to not be hooked by his devilish good looks. And those arms…
"Hahn?" he offered with a laugh. "You're gonna let that woman get in between us? There's something here, Frankie, I can feel it. So can you." He leant closer to her and she backed away automatically, although against her will. "Please, James."
"Why?"
"We could lose our jobs."
"We're some of the best in our field. How is that an issue?"
"It's just – " she drew a deep breath. Her heart was beating fast, and the world was whittling down to just him and her. His hand rested on her waist and pulled her closer. Their noses almost touched. But he made no motion to kiss her, but the air between them was vibrating with the promise of it.
"It's not right," she finally breathed out. His face fell, but she resisted it. She pulled away from him and strode away as quickly and smartly as she could, trying her best not to look back at him.
The first impression that George had of his new workplace was that it was small. Small for a metropolitan hospital. It was nowhere as big as Seattle Grace. It lacked the ultra-cool, sharp glass-and-metal design that was prominent in the SGH facade. It smelt of disinfectant and lemon-scented floor cleaner.
George didn't know much about Mercy West other than it usually traded reroutes with Seattle Grace, but he only needed to step through the front doors, take a look at the line spilling out of the nearby emergency department and bedraggled-looking nurses at the nurses' station to know that he was in a poor poor hospital. He groaned. All the luck in the world had fallen nicely onto his lap. Yep, he couldn't ask for more than missing insurance cards and forgotten social security numbers…
And to make matters a lot more interesting (or possibly worse), the resident doctors wore lilac scrubs.
Izzie would have a ball.
He stiffened up at the thought of her name. Why Izzie? Again? He shook his head firmly. No, he was not about to let her name, of all things, ruin his day. He will not let it ruin his day. He will not let it ruin –
"Excuse me," said a nurse as she approached him. "The ER is just over there."
"Oh, uh, no, I don't need the, uh, ER," said George with a laugh. Then it hit him that he might have said his thoughts aloud and got in a lot of people's way and he stopped laughing. "I'm a new intern, actually. First day."
The nurse's expression immediately changed from a concerned smile to a roll of her eyes. "Then what the hell are you doing in the middle of the main lobby for God's sakes?" She jerked her head in a direction. "Come on I'll bring you to the interns' locker room."
"Thanks," he muttered back, following her down a corridor and past several rooms, all of which were crowded with patients. Wait a minute – patient(s)? George peered into one. "There are wards here?"
"It's a poor poor hospital," said the nurse flatly. "Feeling disappointed?"
"Just feeling surprised," he replied, readjusting the backpack on his shoulder. "I used to work – I mean, I'm used to rooms-only… whatever. I'm George, by the way," he held out his hand and tried to smile.
She eyed his hand. "I'm married."
He pretended to be surprised. "Oh. Well so am I."
"Here we are," she announced. "Have a nice day."
"So do you," he said back but she barely noticed. He shook his head to himself. Nurses these days. He entered the locker room, which was already packed with male interns changing into scrubs in the open, the female interns giggling or running through some medical facts in fear of questioning by the attendings.
He made a beeline for a board that read: 'INTERN ROTATION BOARD', which he should check every day to see which department and attending surgeon he was attached to for the day. He searched for his name and found it under 'Ophthalmology'. Double ugh… Having done that, he quickly chose a locker, not wanting to look the idiotic statue again and picked a pair of…triple ugh, lilac scrubs.
"Aren't they cute?" said a female voice. He turned to look at her just as he pulled the scrub top over his T-shirt. She had dark, smooth skin and big, soulful eyes, which magnified her small frame of a face. "Okay, okay, I know it's lilac and it's hideous on males, but I like it. Well kinda. They're comfortable anyway. Do you?"
George shook his head.
"Oh… I should have known; anyway I'm Meena, Meena Prakash."
George laughed nervously but took her offered hand. "Uh, nice to meet you."
"Yeah, nice to meet you too!" she chirped in reply, but the awkwardness was undeniable. George noticed that she was clutching a thick textbook in her hand. "You won't be needing that, trust me."
"Why not? What if we have to refer to a method for a surgery? Coming up with a diagnosis? What if - "
"Trust me on that, okay? You'll be so busy learning and relearning that you won't have time to get back to the textbook. And you won't be scrubbing in for any surgery till, like, your second week or something. The residents are too eager to impress their Chief while the attendings care too much about their reputation to let any of us kill anyone. Trust me on that."
"Oh really?" said Meena, her face falling but her eyes widening. "How would you know?"
George's smile faltered a bit. It would be just embarrassing to reveal to her, who clearly was a studious type of girl and who probably had never scored anything lower than a B- in all her tests in school, that he had underwent internship in another hospital and had failed it there, so in order to avoid supreme embarrassment he had to repeat it here. Instead, he said, "I have some friends who were interns."
"Oh really?" she asked again. "How is it like, being an intern? Stressful? Fun? Exciting? Disgusting?"
"It's... it's totally different from med school," answered George with a half-smile. "The things you learn there aren't the same as the real thing, you know. The facts can only help you so much. Being a doctor sounds easy, great even at first. But it has a lot of... emotional baggage," he paused there, trying to pin it down precisely. "You see patients die every day. Imagine listening to your patient's hopes, fears, as well as telling their family that you'll do everything you can in your power to save them, but at the end of the day they go into surgery and they don't make it out alive and you have to tell the same people you that the person they loved so much is dead. The feeling is... surreal. Med school doesn't prepare you for that. It's almost as if you're on the other side of the world."
"Wow," said Meena softly. "It sounds as if you've really done it."
George grinned widely and stuffed his coat into the locker. "Naaah."
"People! PEOPLE!" barked a gruff and clipped voice that belonged to a wiry man who had just entered the locker room. He was joined shortly by another woman who was dressed in bright red scrubs and wore a flowery scrub cap. His hair was metallic grey and cropped short and his forehead creased with lines. He was thin, pale but he had green eyes that were sharp and shrewd. The unmistakable authority in his voice brought the buzz of activity into a standstill. He waited for the room to fall absolutely silent before he cleared his throat and put on a pair of glasses. "I'm Dr. Rudy Greeley and I'm the Chief Resident of Mercy West Hospital." He cleared his throat loudly. "He must be having a sore throat," whispered Meena with a giggle. George could only smile weakly back at her.
"I'm the co-ordinator of the Mercy West Internship Program. Welcome to the hospital. If you have a problem with your colleagues or your work schedule, please come and see me without further ado. Now for a few short words I present Dr. Erica Hahn, Chief of Surgery. Take it away, Chief Hahn."
"Thank you, Dr. Greeley," said the woman who had entered the room with him. George recognized the name and the face at once. Dr. Erica Hahn from Seattle Presbyterian. It all came back to him: the Burke fiasco, his dad…
What was she doing here in Mercy West?
"I'm Dr. Hahn, as Dr. Greeley mentioned earlier, but I prefer to be called Chief Hahn. Now for a few words," she paused, biting her lower lip. "Nothing much I have to say, really, except to remind you that an internship is no walk in the park. You'll be dealing with severed limbs, dying people and obnoxious family members every day, in addition to picking up knowledge that you won't ever learn to do properly in medical school. I understand that there is no such thing as perfection," she looked beadily at the interns nearest to her. "But I expect it. That means: no mistakes, no complaints, and most importantly: no going against the Chief. I do not forgive easily, nor do I forget."
Her eyes fell on George and she smiled, but it didn't seem sincere, though it might have been. "Also, please extend a warm welcome to Dr. George O'Malley, who was previously an intern with Seattle Grace Hospital. He will be repeating his internship with Mercy West and we are pleased to have him here. You will help your fellow interns with their work, won't you, Dr. O'Malley, being so experienced and all?"
George could feel his face turning red, but he kept his cool and willed his face to stay the same shade as it was earlier. He should have seen this coming. "Of course, ma'am."
"Good. Well then, good luck and good day. Back to you Dr. Greeley." And with another curt nod, she left the locker room, wrists slung behind her.
Greeley coughed and cleared his throat as he looked at George as if he was looking at salmonella. "Okay, back to business. Every two weeks, you will have separate attendings to train under. Serious violation of hospital rules and medical ethics will only get you a one-way ticket out of the program. No suspension, no warning letters, nothing. Instant kickout. There is also to be no questioning of the attendings' and residents' judgment, as is there to be no extension of lunch breaks. Those are the basic rules. Because this is just the first day, I expect none to be broken. Is that clear?"
Murmurs bubbled all around the room as most interns struggled to get everything down in their log book.
"Try not break anything or kill anyone. Good day to you all." He nodded to himself and headed out. The interns quickly shouldered on their pristine white lab coats and wished each other luck as group by group, they filed out of the locker room to their respective wards.
" 'Try not to break anything or kill anyone'," mimicked Meena, which was eerily close to Greeley's sore voice. "What are we, murderers? Anyway, how come you didn't tell me you were an intern before?"
"It's a reeeally long story."
Before Meena could ask any further, they arrived at the lobby. Suddenly there was a mad dash for the elevators (only two in the whole hospital) , one of them nearly knocking George down. "Ow!" exclaimed Meena. "What is this, a night market in Agra?"
"What?"
"Nothing!"
The doors to the elevators shut, and George and Meena narrowly missed the first phase. "Let's take the stairs," said George, but she shook her head firmly. "No way am I climbing all the way up to the ophthalmic ward on the 5th floor. No way. No sirree…"
So they ended up late. Their attending surgeon was waiting for them at the nurses' station. Her chocolate brown hair was tied up in a hasty ponytail that served nothing to hamper her smart and professional image, despite the ponytail being rather unprofessional. Suddenly George was reminded of Meredith. Meredith, who looked good and clean in anything. He winced and quickly shoved the thought out of his head.
The other three interns in his group was already there as well. Their attending took a plastic tray of pagers and handed them out. "I'm Dr. Franka Stoddart," said Dr. Stoddart to the five interns who had gathered around her. "And don't forget to replace their batteries. The pagers, I mean. You forget about the batteries, you can forget about being a doctor."
The five interns murmured their assent and she proceeded to do a roll call. "Bennett, Haley?"
"Here!" a hand shot high up into the air and George saw that it belonged to a woman with the enthusiasm level of a chipmunk. Dr. Stoddart stared at her as if she was wearing a cheerleading outfit instead of white lab coat and pale lavender scrubs. Her hair was bleached to a very pale platinum-ish blonde and had pink streaks in it, all of which contrasted very heavily with her lab coat. But the attending said nothing and proceeded to the next name on the list.
"Montero, Thomas?"
"To-mahs," said Tomas Montero in a deep, growling type of voice that showed his nature as a resolutely silent hulk of a man. He had closely cropped black hair and long, sharp nose and towered above most interns. "Like, tall, dark and mysterious," whispered Meena to George. "My kind of guy, you know?"
"Your kind of guy?" George tried his best not to giggle.
"Myers, Carson? No laughing please."
"Present, ma'am," said a grinning, tanned blonde-haired guy who looked anything but a doctor. He looked fit for a billboard than a hospital. Meena rolled her eyes and echoed George's silent sentiment. "Don't you hate those Calvin Klein models? Think they're so perfect. And don't you think that he looks like a Calvin Klein? Like 'ugh'." Meena herself wasn't physically perfect. She was roughly about Bailey's height, thought George with a smile, and she was a little round at the sides. Okay to be honest, she was kind of chubby.
"O'Malley, George?"
"Here, Dr. Stoddart," answered George promptly.
"I'm last?" mouthed Meena, shocked.
"And Prakash, Meena."
"Alive and kicking," muttered the Indian girl, feeling somewhat dejected to be called last. George smiled wistfully at her. And suddenly, the whole weight of everything: his new life, his new career: a new second chance. He should seize it. He should welcome it. He was getting a chance to do it all over again. He made up his mind to not leave room for excuses. Back at SGH, he was a wimp. A wimp with rare flashes of brilliance.
At Mercy West, he would be the doctor who does his best, and not just try. He would be a better doctor, a better man, a better friend. A better husband.
"Okay then," said Dr. Stoddart, unclicking her pen and stuffing it into her lab coat pocket. "I don't mean to scare you on your first day, but you'll notice that the younger residents call me Dr. Evilscrubs." She smiled briefly as their faces went a shade paler. "Well then, let's get started, people."
Franka had trained interns on both phases in her career: when she had been a resident in Chicago and now attending at Seattle. Patience had never been her best attribute, but through the years she had developed a particular 'patient period' with them. And using that, she waited for Carson Myers to think of a diagnosis for her patient, a 15-year-old high school girl who took more interest in Haley Jarrett's interesting hairdo than her failing eyesight while her mother was clutching her cross pendant in fear. Franka stole a glance at the other four interns. They were all looking at him, waiting for an answer. Tomas Montero only had eyes for the bed sheets.
"Dr. Myers?" prompted Franka again.
He looked a little unsure of himself, so much so that she was worried. Apparently, the mother was also getting the same vibe. "Is it something terrible, Dr. Stewart?"
"No, Mrs. Thayes," said Franka promptly with a gracious smile. "And it's Dr. Stoddart."
"Sorry about that."
"Dr. Myers? A diagnosis please? Or a rough one?"
Carson looked at her, his mouth in a slight frown. "But without the tests?"
"Yes, Dr. Myers. We can't give correct diagnosis on an eye condition unless the correct tests are done. But we can, however, identify the possible problem that the patient is experiencing by analyzing the symptoms. Then from there we can run more specific tests in order to come up with specific information."
Carson inhaled and exhaled rapidly and turned to the teenager. "Miss, uh, Miss Thayes, can you tell us what problems you're having with your eyesight?"
The teenage girl crinkled her nose. "I already told you yesterday. I can't see anything without having fuzzy black rings around them. Oh, and it hurts like freaking hell too whenever I blink."
"Jane," said her mother in a gentle warning tone. "Watch your language."
"Dr. Myers, they're all written on the chart," said Franka quietly.
A hand shot up among her interns and it belonged to Meena, who had so far been proving herself to be the insufferable know-it-all. "Yes, Dr. Prakash?"
"Miss Thayes is suffering from primary congenital glaucoma. In an advanced stage. To really determine the condition of the glaucoma, a formal visual field test must be performed on Miss Thayes as well as a tonometry and screening laser ophthalmoscopy and later perform the necessary procedures, whether a laser trabulectomy or a surgical one. But the laser trabulectomy is only a temporary solution."
"Almost correct, Dr. Prakash, but there is also an option of treating glaucoma by using drugs. And surgical trabulectomy is also temporary. However," she turned back to Mrs. Thayes, "either way, laser or knife, it'll involve surgery. It saves a lot of hassle from having to coming back to the hospital at least twice every month for drug therapy."
"So what should we be worried about?" asked Mrs. Thayes, turning pale with fear. "Is there really need for a surgery? Is it risky? Is it painful? Will she go blind?"
"Don't fret about it, Mrs. Thayes," said Franka. "I have done numerous trabulectomies throughout my career and I am happy to report that no one that I have ever operated on for glaucoma have died. Your daughter is in good hands. However, I must remind you," here she stopped for effect, "there are risks in every surgery. Complications. I do not dare to claim that I am 100 perfect."
"See?" said Jane Thayes irritably as she sat up and drew her knees to her chin. "No one can be perfect, Mom."
"Oh just keep quiet you!" snapped Mrs. Thayes, her lips trembling. "You're going blind and in no position at all to throw jokes around like this! The Math Olympiad is just under a week!"
"I don't wanna go to that stupid Math Olympiad!"
"What are you talking about? We've been practising for three whole months and this is too good a chance to let up."
"I said I don't wanna go! I hate Math!"
"How can you hate Math when you're so good at it? You're only wasting the time, energy, and money I poured into finding you a great tutor and this is how you repay me?"
"You only hired him so that you could sleep with him!"
Franka exchanged glances with the interns, who looked quite ready to run out of the room, away from the ugly argument erupting between mother and daughter. She spoke up anyway. "Erm, Miss Thayes, I'm going to order a tonometry to measure your eyes' intraocular pressure and a simple visual field test for you to check if there's been any damage done to your nerve, okay?" she smiled reassuringly at Jane Thayes, who was scowling at the window. "Dr. Haley Bennett here," she looked at Haley and from the corner of her eyes she could see Meena's eyes bulging, "will be assisting me so if you need anything at all, you can talk to her, okay?"
"Whatever."
Mrs. Thayes shrugged apologetically. "I'm so sorry, Doctor... she's never been like that."
"Glaucoma can be scary, Mrs. Thayes. The least you can do is to not stress her out. Dr. Bennett," Franka held up the patient's file and let it drop into the excited intern's hands, "do the tonometry, get a Neuro consult to help you on the visual field test, and get some labs as well as a CT scan. Think you can do that?"
"I've been waiting an entire college to do this," she replied, grinning with glee. Franka led the other interns out of the room and out they went in a single file.
"What a suck-up," muttered Carson Myers to George, who was caught off guard. "Thinks she knows everything, doesn't she? Insufferable know-it-all. Everyone knows that you can't diagnose an eye problem properly without the tests."
"She is an attending surgeon," mumbled George back to him. "She knows what she's doing."
"I'm not talking about the attending, man, unless I want to get kicked out of the program. No, it's that Indian chick, what was her name, Mina? God, I thank my stars I didn't go to college with her."
"Something interesting back there, gentlemen?" said Franka suddenly without turning around.
"No, ma'am," both men said together. Meena gave them both an odd look, and George tried to act nonchalant.
Franka shot them a sharp glance and announced: "Next patient." before pushing open the door to another room, another sick bed, and another set of drama.
"What time is it?" whispered Meena to George.
"Nine thirty, why?"
She yawned. "Already I feel like going home."
"Dr. O'Malley," said their attending suddenly. George's reflexes jumped into action. He took the patient's chart and scanned through it. "Harry Patterson, 68," he announced, "admitted this morning for a bulbous growth just below the eye, possibly a stye."
Meena giggled, Carson snickered, Dr. Stoddart smiled and Harry Patterson burst into laughter.
"Excellent, Dr. O'Malley," she said, "what treatment do you recommend?"
George took a deep breath. Now was his chance to put his experience to good use. "Prescribed treatment: accelerate draining of the stye with a hot or warm compress or by pulling out the eyelash."
Mr. Patterson gave a jump and stared at George with impossibly wide eyes. "Eyelash? You kidding me or what?"
"I'm not kidding, Mr. Patterson," said George, smiling, "if there's a chance that your stye can drain out quicker then by all means you should do it. It hurts enough as it is, doesn't it?"
"I disagree," said Carson suddenly, and Franka stared at him. He looked back at her, as if challenging her to contradict him, and resumed speaking, "I personally think that it's better to pop it with a lance, you know," he smiled at Mr. Patterson, "like a needle. You see the stye is something like a pimple, so of course the faster it gets poked out the better. After popping the stye, the eye should be applied with Erythromycin to prevent other styes from spreading to the other areas in the eye. And of course, Amoxicillin should be prescribed as a medication to help fight the spread of styes." He smiled smugly back at Franka while Mr. Patterson could only stare at him.
She blinked back at him, her jaw open slightly before gathering her composure and asked Mr. Patterson, "Terry, does that sound scary to you or what?"
"You bet it does, Doctor. It hurts enough blinking, much less poking it. We're not gonna do that, are we?"
"I can use local anesthesia," said Carson with a frown.
"I'm allergic to anesthesia," replied Mr. Patterson with an apologetic smile.
Meena stifled a snort as Carson's face fell. Even on the rock solid Tomas Montero's face, a smile twitched. George grinned at her behind Carson's back.
"Don't worry about it, Dr. Myers," said Franka, still smiling, "For your effort, Mr. Patterson's case is yours. Treat the stye as Dr. O'Malley would."
"Er, excuse me, Doctor," said Mr. Patterson, throwing a nervous glance at Carson, then George. "aren't I better off with this Dr. O-something?"
"You won't die, Harry," she said to him reassuringly. "Not on my watch. Dr. Myers will help you with the warm compress and if the stye doesn't subside a bit by tomorrow morning then he'll administer the pop." She eyed Carson before she left the room with the remaining three interns. That should be an antibiotic in his anti-ego medication.
"It's all in the chart, Dr. Myers," said Franka to a disbelieving Carson as she handed Harry Patterson's file into his hands.
It happened to be lunch hour and George happened to walk past the surgery board and saw that Jane Thayes's trabulectomy was scheduled for the day, in ten minutes, in fact. Having never seen such a procedure before, he rushed into the gallery in time for the operation to begin. Dr. Franka Stoddart had just entered the room, just sterilised and seemed to be briefing the surgical team about the trabulectomy.
Then they laughed, and George wasn't sure it was a briefing or not.
He recognised a shock of blonde and pink hair among the interns and went to take the empty seat beside her. "Hi. I'm George. Is this seat taken?"
"Hmm?" she turned around to look at him dazedly. "Oh, right! You're George! Hi! I'm Haley. The chair is all yours!"
"Thanks. Nice to meet you."
"Nice to meet you too!"
They fell silent for a while and leaned forward when Dr. Stoddart took a scalpel and begin to cut a pocket under Jane Thayes's conjunctiva and Tenon's capsule. George swallowed. He had seen a few eye surgeries during his time in SGH, but he never failed to be amazed and grossed out by how the eye was kept open while the patient wasn't awake. It had to be painful to hold the eye muscles back apart for the three hours required for the operation.
"It sucks," said Haley suddenly, folding her arms. "It sucks being her doctor, administering tests on her and try to talk her out of grumpiness and then not being allowed into the OR. It – freaking – sucks."
"Whoa, someone's grumpy," said Carson Myers as he slid into the seat directly behind Haley. "I had a stye to put up with. It can't get any worse than that. I don't get in on any action, just a cranky old sexagenarian who's better off holding it out in a nursing home."
"Hey, that's just mean," said George, stifling a laugh.
"Has it started?" asked Meena, opening the door to the gallery and, upon seeing the operation underway, quickly dashed for the seat beside George. "Oh my God, it's started! Isn't it - "
"Ssssh!" said George, Haley and Carson simultaneously. Meena blushed and muttered an apology.
The door to the gallery opened once again and in came Tomas Montero. He took the seat next to Carson and they smiled tautly at each other.
"She has steady hands," commented Haley. "And I get nervous around, like, even a cadaver."
Carson snickered. "Then why are you, like, even here?"
"Hey!" whispered Meena fiercely, "some of us are trying to watch a live trabulectomy here, blockhead."
That set him off. "This is because of the whole stye thing, isn't it? You think - no, shut up - you think that I'm being self-righteous but the fact is that I was helping him, okay? Helping him to get that crap out of his eye and go home faster. But NO. We just had to do warm compress and I'm stuck doing it while the person who suggested it got a chalazic patient and a corneal ulcer. Oh, and did I mention that he used to be an intern too and, and that he failed his internship?"
George whipped his head around to face him. This was getting highly personal. "You touched a nerve, Myers."
"Oh yeah, O'Wimpy?"
"I've performed a heart surgery in an elevator with my thumb pressed against a patient's artery. I have held a live and kicking premature baby still trapped in its uterus. I have seen and done so many things and I'm just as good as the rest. But I didn't pass. I don't know why. I just didn't. Failure sucks but it sucks even more if you keep on bitching about it." He ignored the wide-eyed stares that Meena and Haley were giving him and turned his attention back to the trabulectomy at hand.
Franka, clutching no less than five patient's files, was so engrossed in the book she was barely managing to hold up properly with only one hand that when the elevator doors slid open with a tired 'ting', she walked into it without noticing who shared with her. Till the doors closed.
"Whatcha reading?"
Franka nearly dropped her files. "What the – oh. You."
James Baldacci grinned and nudged his chin at the stack of files she was carrying. "Need some help?"
She eyed him, very warily through her stern black-framed reading glasses, but to his surprise, she motioned to deposit the files in his arms, albeit rather aggressively. "Well you did say you wanted to help," muttered Franka, now free of files, returned to her book.
"What the hell are you reading? And may I know how you find the time to even get one of these?"
"It's a book, genius. How Doctors Think."
"How we think? Oh that's fancy."
"It actually makes for compelling reading. At least now I know what my patients expect of me. Then I can behave accordingly and suitably so that they may not feel unjustly apprehensive and doubtful of the integrity of medicine."
James sighed and grinned with glee. "That'll improve the fate of our lot, I'm sure." He shifted the files in his hands. Boy, those were heavy; how the heck did she manage to carry them around? She didn't reply, so he thought it would be worth it to risk it: "You know you will have to say yes to my lunch-date-request sooner or later."
She whipped around to glare at him. "What do you mean?"
He reached forward and pulled the lever, thus bringing the elevator to a halt. "You know what I mean."
"No, I don't. And if you'll excuse me I have a surgery to get to – "
"I'm hitting on you, Stoddart! Don't you get that?"
She removed her glasses and James wished that she hadn't because it only made her more beautiful and the situation more difficult. "What do you want me to do? Hit back and stand to lose my job as well as yours in the process?"
He drew in a sharp breath. The new Chief. Ah. "She didn't say anything about Rudy and Sebastianne."
"They've been together since the dawn of time and if she ever separated them you know the whole hospital will go on strike at once. But we – "
"We're different. Well you were going to say that, weren't you?" his mouth stiffened. "I don't know what your excuse is, but I like you. I like you a lot, and it's having less and less to do with you being the hottest surgeon in this hospital or the most criminally evil she-devil."
He could see the stony planes on her faces soften but he ploughed on. "Frankie – no, Dr. Stoddart – if you don't have the same feelings as I do, at least have the conscience to tell me. Why not now, in fact? Make it clear once and for all. Don't leave me hanging on a thread." He leveled his gaze with hers. "Do you or do you not have feelings for me?"
Franka could only stare at him, open-mouthed. For once, she was lost. Groping around for answers. Heck, she was a doctor. She shouldn't have to be in that kind of situation. She had been trained to think through her fingertips. But not her heart. She couldn't think through her heart. It was impossible.
"I don't know," was all she could say. And she truly didn't know.
James sighed and pulled the lever back down. She took the files back from him and, when the elevator came to stop, walked away without another word.
George dashed to the pathology department and joined the queue of residents and interns waiting to pick up labs. Unusual crowd for that time of the day. The attendant at the counter beckoned crisply at him and he told him the patient's ID as well as his own name.
"George? George O'Malley?"
He turned around at the sound of it and came face to face with a very familiar blonde…
"Sasha?"
"Georgie! Oh my God, it is you!" she jumped out of the line and threw her arms around him. "Omigod omigod omigod it's so good to see you!"
"Yeah it's good to see you too."
Sasha released him at once and frowned at him. "You're not still mad about McMalley, are you?"
He pretended to laugh. "Yeah, why should I remember the reason why my first girlfriend broke up with me?"
She rolled her eyes. "Susie Malkins was a cheerleader, anyway, in case you didn't notice. She only dated you because you were stupid enough to do her assignments for her. Poor Georgie, you were always getting bullied. What would've happened to you if I abandoned you in high school instead?"
George couldn't find a proper retort but smiled and shook his head. He and Sasha Bovalski had gone a long way back, even longer than he and Izzie. They'd been neighbours and had gone to every single school together until her family upped and moved to Massachusetts because she had been offered a place at Harvard. He could remember being so incredibly jealous, resentful but sad and unwilling at her farewell party six years ago.
"So, uh, what are you doing here?" Lame question, but he couldn't find anything else. It was hard to reconnect with someone who you'd lost in touch with after so many years.
"Residency, d-uh!" said Sasha, grinning, "My family decided to move back to Seattle. The East Coast was too dry."
He laughed, till she asked: "What about you? Hey – you went to med school the same time I did, didn't you? You should be doing your residency now then. Where did you disappear to during your internship?"
George tried to smile, but it was too hard. "I failed it."
She stopped smiling. "Failed? Failed what?"
"My internship. I did it in the other hospital, Seattle Grace. Yeah, the megalo-whatever hospital."
"I appealed to get in there three times – I heard it was the elite – but – " Sasha stopped abruptly, checking herself. "Well, er, that's okay, I guess. But – so you're an intern now? Who've you got today?"
"Dr. Franka… Stewart, I think her name was; you know, the head of – "
"Ophthalmic," finished Sasha. "And her name's Stoddart. She hates it if anyone gets it wrong. Yeah I was under Evilscrubs too. Sucks now, of course but when – "
"Wait a sec, what did you call her?"
She looked stunned. "Evilscrubs. Everyone calls her that and she loves it."
George's eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. "What?"
"Why are you sounding as if you've never worked in a hospital before? You know attendings and their eccentricities. I can tell you personally that the new trauma attending, Dr. Baldacci, snaps his fingers three times before going into surgery. And the head of Neuro., Sebs Ormaunt, is engaged to the Chief Resident – what? – oh come on, Georgie they've been engaged for 5 years and it can't be that hard to imagine Rudy Greeley going lovey dovey."
"I just – wow," said George, completely flabbergasted. "He seemed really fierce…"
"People just aren't what they are, huh?" she said with a shrug.
George was just about to reply when the attendant at the clinic called out his patient's ID. "So, uh, I'll see you around, ok?' he said to Sasha as he picked the file up from the counter.
"Yeah, sure! If you ever need me I'll be in Emergency trying to console weeping patients. People seem to think I serve both trauma and Psych. at the same time."
George laughed. "It was nice seeing you, just so you should know." He walked backwards away, still addressing her. "And I will get my revenge for McMalley!"
The cases had been handed out (six cases per intern so far), Jane Thayes's trabulectomy already performed (with her interns watching in the gallery), two LASIKs, one macular hole repair, no accidental deaths and just two more hours left till the shift ended. And Uriah Keele, 24, college student, had to ram his car into a divider and smash the entire left half of his face. Franka was paged immediately to TR 1, the eye being one of the components that had been... smashed. Franka examined the sunken in, bloody mess with her penlight and groaned. "Nice work, kiddo."
"Argh... argh... yoo... hurgghs..."
"Sssh, sssh, don't try to talk at all, Mr. Keele," said Franka. "Try to calm down."
"Caaungh... carhm daughn!"
Franka looked helplessly at the Resident running the Trauma Room, Dr. Sasha Bovalski, who was busy paging the necessary consults to help Uriah Keele. "Uh, Dr. Bovalski? We need plastics in here, I can't do much with a non-existent socket."
Sasha pocketed her pager and joined her on the other side of the moaning, fidgeting man. "Do you want to hear a list of your achievements, Mr. Keele? One, turned half of your face into pulp. Two, broke your right leg and fractured your collarbone. Three, never be able to see with both eyes again. Well done. Really well done." But Sasha meant anything but. "Push 200 g dm-3 of IV fluid and hold it till our consults get here," she ordered to the nurse and she nudged her head to a corner of the room.
"I can't help with the eye. Eyeball's mush and so is a thousand other periphery optic nerves."
"I know," she replied with a mischievous smile. "I got Dr. Hart from plastics to take a look at the patient. Wanna know who else I invited?"
Franka gave her a blank look.
Sasha dropped her jaw. "Don't tell me you need a clue. You know what a parasite I am."
"Do I?"
"Like, who's the hottest male doctor in the hospital?"
Franka scoffed. "James Baldacci is not hot."
"Is so! Anyway how do you know it was him?"
"I just – anyway he's not. Hot, I mean." Liar.
"Well he's eye candy to me. Live with it."
"You shallow – "
" 'Scuse me, Dr. Bovalski, but you called?" said (long-life) James Baldacci, the plastics attending surgeon as he opened the door and poked his head into TR 1. Sasha winked at Franka and immediately returned to the serious surgeon mode. "Yes, Dr. Baldacci, I paged you. We have a guy here who smashed half his face. Literally. Come and take a look."
He opened the door wider and entered the room, and shortly behind him was another man who Franka didn't recognise at all. He wasn't even dressed in scrubs, just a dark green shirt and jeans. But he was tall. And had an angled face. And had some facial hair. And had deep, intense grey eyes. Sasha's eyes widened a bit as she registered the new presence, but she immediately returned to her patient. Franka, however, frowned at him. "Only doctors are allowed in here, you know," she said to him.
"Yeah I know," the stranger replied and smiled at her.
"Then...? You're still here."
"So are you."
"I happen to be a doctor. A surgeon, in fact."
"Well, so am I. Just not of this hospital. I just happened to have the day off and decided to spend it by visiting Jim Baldacci, my former classmate in high school."
James laughed as he examined the damage area with the gentle but firm touch of his fingers. "Dr. Stoddart, meet Dr. Mark Sloan, currently a plastic surgeon at Seattle Grace Hospital. Mark, meet Dr. Franka Stoddart, Ophthalmic."
He looked amused. "The Franka Stoddart?"
She felt disgustingly flattered. "Oculoplastics?" Where else could he have possibly known her name? She had talked at one oculoplastics seminar last year since people seemed to regard her as one of the best oculoplastic surgeons in Seattle when really, she was just doing her job as an ophthalmic surgeon.
He smiled tautly. "No, just general plastics but I try to do a bit of eye-poking every now and then." He winked.
She laughed. Laughed at that crummy joke. She stopped herself at once.
"You have the most beautiful eyes," he said, out of the blue. "Very deep shade of blue, and I swear they sparkle." He grinned at her. "I have a serious weakness for brunettes with blue eyes – I like to think of it as a form of rebellion."
"Really? Why?"
"The stereotype is blonde and blue eyes, right? Blue-eyed brunettes prove that blondes aren't just the one who can pull off the blue, you know what I'm saying?" She could only stare at him back with a confused expression. He shook it off and laughed. "Never mind me, I'm blabbing again. You have beautiful eyes. Period."
"Period," she agreed, and they laughed again. He had a wonderfully deep and husky voice; plus he knew how to flatter a woman, and he was tall and he might just be great in bed… plus hey! he didn't work here. Which was good news. Was he married?
Judging by the worn fitting jeans and casually thrown on shirt, she guessed he wasn't. Married male surgeons always made a point to never wear jeans to the hospital, even on a casual visit.
"Urm, Dr. Bovalski? Am I still needed here?"
"Uh, no, I guess," said Sasha, looking at James for confirmation. "Is she?"
"I need to reconstuct the entire left portion of his face, which will require a skin graft, bone and muscle reconstruction and all sorts of hoopla," said James with a frown. "I'll need an X-ray of this guy. Put him under anesthesia also." He turned to look at Franka. "I don't think you can do much here with a non-existent socket."
"My thoughts exactly."
Sloan wrinkled his nose. "Messy. You can forget about him ever seeing again, that's for sure."
"That's my say, I'm afraid."
"We get our share of fools in Seattle Grace, you know," he said to her with a devastating smile. She tried to laugh, but he fixed his intense grey eyes on her and she looked away.
"Mark," said James, turning to him, "I'm so sorry, I got to operate on this guy..."
"I can clearly see that," said Sloan with a sigh. He glanced at Franka and smiled. "Here's an idea: why don't you go with me?"
"Excuse me?"
"He was going to show me how you Mercy people can have fun without the help of alcohol," said Mark, grinning. "At this dowdy place called Coffee Ritual. Do you actually know where it is?"
James tried to catch Franka's eye but she kept her eyes fixed on Uriah Keele's stats on the monitor. She didn't think she had the guts to look at either of them: Sloan with his intense grey eyes, James with his equally deep brown ones. And suddenly, Franka could smell it: competition. Who gets the girl. She couldn't believe her nose
"I've been there, Coffee Ritual, once or twice."
"She doesn't do coffee," said James abruptly. "She hates coffee, don't you, Franka? Unless you suddenly underwent a personality change at the words 'beautiful blue eyes'."
He did it. He just did it. He said those words. She couldn't believe he could come up with something like that. That was one of the things she hated about men. They could say things that really made your heart flutter, and the next moment say something that really, completely turned you off. Why did men have to do stupid things like that?
Revenge, then. Franka flashed her best smile at Sloan, who was also staring at James, and said sweetly, "I'm getting off in just under an hour, you know. So, I'll just go check on my outpatient and I'll meet you at the reception area, is that okay?"
"Darling," said Sloan with his own smile, "with you everything is okay." She laughed and edged narrowly past him on her way out of the Trauma Room, her legs brushing with his, then casting a sly look at him before exiting. Sloan shook his head and muttered to himself, "Hot damn," before patting James's shoulder and leaving the room as well.
Sasha raised her eyebrows in question but James watched his own friend go, and he wasn't smiling.
The day was done. At last. George had almost forgotten what it was like to be at work again, and it felt good to be back to running down the hallways of a hospital, fetching labs and running CT and MRI scans. Just like the old days.
Meena, know-it-all as she was, barely survived this first day and was panting when she reached the locker room. Even the enthusiastic and energetic Haley Jarrett had no spring in her step when she plodded in and dropped heavily onto the bench in between the lockers, putting one arm over her forehead as she rested her head. Carson sank onto the floor and emptied a bottle of water over his head. The only unaffected one was Tomas Montero, who changed out of his scrubs and left without another word. George said goodbye to the others and went home eagerly to the hotel room. Home. Hotel room. Hmm. They didn't belong in one sentence.
He was still thinking about it when he opened the door and found Callie already home, lying against the pillows on the bed and hugging one in her arms as she watched a soap opera that was running on TV. George could hear snatches of rapid Spanish. "Hey, I'm home."
"Hi, hon," replied Callie, and he joined her on the bed and dropped her a light kiss on her cheek. "How was your day? Mercy West any better than SGH?"
He laughed as he took the pillow out of Callie's arms and put it on the bed and rested his head on it. "Wanna guess who's the Chief of Surgery?"
"Who?"
"Erica Hahn. The Erica Hahn."
"The Erica Hahn from Seattle Presbyterian who was a consult on your dad's case?"
"The very one."
"Why Mercy West?
"Beats me," said George with a shrug. Callie turned off the television. She snuggled beside him and put her head in the crook of his neck. "I missed you."
"We should get an apartment."
"Mmm. Apartment first. I don't mind."
"We should just rent it. When we're ready to afford a big house, we'll buy that one."
"Yeah. Sounds good."
"Callie?" he pulled away from her a bit and they locked gazes. "Are you okay?"
She grinned and put her arms around his neck. "Oh, George, you won't believe what's happened to me. No, to us."
"What is it? A groundbreaking surgery? Becoming Chief of Surgery? A pay rise?"
"No, silly," she laughed shortly as she swatted his shoulder. "I'm pregnant."