The game. They say either a person has what it takes to play, or they don't. My mother was one of the greats. Me, on the other hand...I'm kinda screwed.
I rolled over in my bed and cracked my eyes open to stare at the clock.
"Damn it!" I nearly shouted before springing from my bed and into the joined bathroom. My sister and I were living in the house we grew up in and we're getting ready to sell it. I quickly put on my jeans and a top before rushing to her room. "Mer…" I dropped my sentence when I saw her not slept in bed. "Mer?" I started going through the house trying to find her when I saw her in the living room. Naked. "Mer, OH MY GOD!" Meredith was standing wrapped in a blanket over a naked man about to hit him with a pillow, which wasn't needed now. He grunted, waking up and lifting up her bra.
"This...is...?" he said before Meredith grabbed it from him and smiled at him.
"Humiliating on so many levels. You have to go." She told him.
"No kidding. I've now seen more of both of you than I ever wanted to see." I chimed in and she gave me a look.
"Why don't you just come back down here and you disappear so we can pick up where we left off?" he asked her.
"No, seriously. You have to go." She told him.
"We're late. Which isn't what you want to be on your first day of work, so mystery man needs to disappear while you shower and get ready." I told them.
"So, ah, you actually live here?" he asked her.
"No." She said and I shook my head before going to the kitchen and getting the coffee started. I made myself some toast. My toast was ready when my sister walked in hurried. I handed her her coffee mug and we walked out the door.
"Is the mystery guy gone?" I asked her when I didn't see his car.
"Yes, you can stop being so weird now." She told me in a mood.
"Oh come on." I said smiling at her. "Today is a good day."
We talked the rest of the way to Seattle Grace Hospital before being met by the Chief of Surgery, Dr. Richard Weber. Dr. Weber walked us to am OR and we all walked in and looked around.
"Each of you comes here hopeful. Wanting in on the game. A month ago you were in med school being taught by doctors. Today, you are the doctors. The seven years you spend here as a surgical resident will be the best and worst of your life. You will be pushed to the breaking point. Look around you. Say hello to your competition. Eight of you will switch to an easier specialty. Five of you will crack under the pressure. Two of you will be asked to leave. This is your starting line. This is your arena. How well you play? That's up to you."
Like I said. I'm screwed.
After the rest of the tour, we were taken to the locker room to change into our pale blue scrubs.
"Okay. Martin, Robinson, Bond, Parkins." A doctor called out. Meredith and I were waiting to be called with our group of fellow interns.
"Only six women out of twenty." Meredith commented.
"Yeah. I hear one of them's a model. Seriously, like that's going to help with the respect thing?" another intern said.
"Bottom of the food chain and a model?" I asked. "There is no respect." The doctor called more names and we listened before continuing to talk.
"You're Cristina, right?" Meredith asked her.
"Which resident you assigned to? I got Bailey." Cristina told us.
"The Nazi? Yeah, me too." Meredith said.
"And I make three." I told them.
"You got the Nazi? So did I. At least we'll be tortured together, right?" a guy asked us. "I'm George O'Malley, uh, we met at the mixer, you had a black dress with a slit up the side, strappy sandals..." The three of us exchanged looks. "Now you think I'm gay."
"Uh-huh." Cristina said walking away.
"No, I'm not gay, it's, ah, it's just that, you know, you were, I mean, you were very, unforgettable." George told Mer.
"Grey, O'Malley, Yang, Grey, Stevens."
"That's us." I said before we went to the doctor calling names.
"Bailey?" Cristina asked the doctor.
"End of the hall." He told us pointing to a short black woman with short hair.
"That's the Nazi?" Cristina asked in doubt as we made our way to her.
"I thought the Nazi would be a guy." George said.
"I thought the Nazi would be...the Nazi." Meredith said.
"Tall, blonde hair, blue eyes. That was the picture." I said.
"Maybe it's professional jealousy. Maybe she's brilliant, and they call her Nazi because they're jealous. Maybe she's nice." The blonde intern, Stevens, with us said
"Let me guess. You're the model." Cristina said. Stevens shot her a look before turning to Dr. Bailey and extending her hand.
"Hi, I'm Isabel Stevens, but everyone calls me Izzie." She said all perky. Dr. Bailey looked her up and down, but didn't respond or shake her hand.
Hour 1
"I have five rules. Memorize them. Rule number one, don't bother sucking up, I already hate you, that's not gonna change. Trauma protocol, phone lists, pagers." She said indicating the items on the counter next to her. "Nurses will page you, you answer every page at a run. A run, that's rule number two. Your first shift starts now and lasts forty-eight hours. You're interns, grunts, nobodies, bottom of the surgical food chain, you run labs, write orders, work every second night till you drop and don't complain!" she told us before opening the door to a room with a couple of bunk beds. "On call rooms. Attendings hog them, sleep when you can, where you can, which brings me to rule number three, if I'm sleeping, don't wake me, unless your patient is actually dying. Rule number four, the dying patient better not be dead when I get there, not only would you have killed someone, you would have also woke me for no good reason, we clear?" Meredith raised her hand. "Yes."
"You said five rules. That was only four." Mer told her right before Bailey's pager beeped.
"Rule number five. When I move, you move." She said running down the corridor with the five of us behind her. "Get out of my way!"
We met a helicopter on the roof of the building and moved quickly so we could the patient inside so we could do our jobs.
"What've we got?" Dr. Bailey asked.
"Katie Bryce, fifteen-year-old female, new onset seizures, intermittent for the past week, ID lost in route, started grand mal seizing as we descended." The Paramedic told us as we moved the patient to the gurney and inside the hospital.
"All right, get her on her side, Izzie, ten milligrams Diazepam, no, no, the white lead is on the right, righty whitey, smoke over fire, a large bore I.V. don't let the blood hemolysis, let's go!" Dr. Bailey instructed. Izzie injected her and she stopped seizing when a young, tall, black doctor walked in.
"So I heard we got a wet fish on dry land?" he asked Dr. Bailey.
"Absolutely Dr. Burke." Dr. Bailey told him.
"Dr. Bailey, I'm gonna shotgun her." He said before walking out.
"That means every test in the book, CT, CBC, chem. seven, tux screen, Cristina, you're on labs, George, patient workups, Katrina, you're in the pit, Meredith, get Katie for a CT, she's your responsibility now." Dr. Bailey told us.
"Wait, what about me?" Izzie asked her.
"You - honey, you get to do rectal exams." Dr. Bailey told her. We all set out to do the job she gave us. So, I spent the next
Hour 7
I was in the cafeteria getting lunch. I went to the table with the rest of the interns and dropped.
"Sutures are crappy." I said right before Meredith dropped next to me.
"Katie Bryce is a pain in the ass. If I hadn't taken the Hippocratic Oath, I'd Kevorkian her with my bare hands." She said. I looked up from my salad to see the other interns staring at us.
"What?" we asked them.
"Good afternoon interns." Dr. Burke said making us all look up at him. "It's posted, but I thought I'd share the good news personally. As you know, the honor of performing the first surgery is reserved for the intern that shows the most promise. As I'm running the OR today, I get to make that choice." We all stared up at him in hope before he clapped George on the back. "George O'Malley. You'll scrub in for an appendectomy this afternoon. Congratulations."
"Me?" George asked confused.
"Enjoy." Burke said before leaving.
"Did he say me?" George asked.
"I need to talk to you." Mer said grabbing my arm and pulling me into an on call room.
"Ok?" I asked her. "What's up?"
"He's here." She said and I gave her a confused look.
"He who?" I asked her.
"Derek." She said and I gave her another confused look. "The guy this morning. He's here."
"What? Why?" I asked her.
"He's the new Attending for Neuro." She told me and I tried not to laugh.
"The guy at the bar is our boss?" I asked her.
"Yea." She told me.
"What are you doing to do?" I asked.
"What can I do?" she asked me.
"Act like it never happened." I suggested.
"How am I supposed to do that?" she asked me.
"You are an intern. He is an attending." I reminded her. "You have to." I left the room and went back to the pit.
When the time came for the intern surgery every intern had gathered in the gallery to watch.
"He's going to faint. He's a fainter." One of the other interns said.
"Naaah, code brown. Right in his pants." Another said laughing.
"He's all about the flops, he's going to sweat himself unsterile." Another said.
"Ten bucks says he messes up the McBird." Another betted.
"Twenty says he cries." Cristina said.
"I'll put twenty on a total meltdown." I said.
"Fifty says he pulls the whole thing off." Mer said and everybody looked at her, silent. "That's one of us, down there. The first one of us. Where's your loyalty?"
"Seventy-five says he can't even ID the appendix." Cristina said after a pause.
"I'll take that action." Izzie said and others agree. They had the OR on speaker so we could hear what was being said and they could hear us.
"Okay, O'Malley, let's see what you can do." Burke told him.
"Here it comes." Mer said and we leaned forward to watch him.
"Scalpel." O'Malley ordered.
"Scalpel." The nurse repeated. O'Malley took the scalpel and we all cheered from the gallery until Burke motioned for us to shut up.
"That Burke, he's trouble." Cristina said making us all laugh as O'Malley got ready to cut.
"More pressure. Human flesh is a tough shell, dig in." Burke ordered.
"Pick-ups."
"Pick-ups."
"Clamp."
"Clamp." We watched as O'Malley worked.
"Met some bone. I'm there." He said.
"Damn, he got the peritoneum and he opened him up." One of the interns said.
"I told you, he's going to pull it off." Mer said.
"Don't count your chickens Mer." I warned her.
"Scalpel."
"Scalpel."
"Appendix is out." He said as he tossed it into a tray and we cheered.
"Not bad." Burke told him.
"Thank you." O'Malley said to him.
"Now all you have to do is invert the stump into the secum and simultaneously pull up on the purse-strings but be careful not to…" the strings ripped. "break them." Dr. Burke groaned. "He ripped the secum. Got a bleeder. You're filling with stool, what do you do now?"
"Uh...uh..." O'Malley said, trying to find the answer.
"Think. You start the suction, and you start digging for those purse-strings before she bleeds to death. Belky, give him a clamp." Burke ordered.
"BP's dropping."
"He's choking." Cristina said.
"Come on, George." Mer said, almost praying.
"Today. Pull your balls out of your back pocket, let's go. What are you waiting for, suction?" Burke asked before the beeping started.
"Getting too low folks... Dr. Burke..."
"Get out of the way. Pansy-ass idiot. Get him out of here. Suction. Clamp." Burke said pushing O'Malley away from the table.
"007." An intern said.
"Who'd have thought it be him." I said as we stared down at him.
"What's 007 mean?" Izzie asked.
"Licensed to kill." Mer told her.
Hour 19
Our group of interns were all sitting on spare beds along an empty corridor taking a break.
"007. They're calling me 007, aren't they?" George asked us.
"No one's calling you 007." Izzie, Mer and I said together.
"I was on the elevator and Murphy whispered 007." George told us.
"Oh, how many times do we have go through this, George, five, ten? Give me a number or else I'm going to hit you." Cristina told him.
"Murphy whispered 007 and everyone laughed." George went on.
"I'll hold him down for you." I told Cristina.
"He wasn't talking about you." Izzie said tossing me a look.
"You sure?" George asked her.
"Would we lie to you?" Mer asked him.
"Yes." George told her.
"007 is a state of mind." Cristina told him.
"So says the girl who finished top of her class at Stanford." George countered before our pagers beeped at us.
"Oh man. It's 911 for Katie Bryce. I gotta go." Mer said before taking off at a run.
"Maybe I should've gone into geriatrics. No one minds when you kill an old person." George complained.
"Surgery is hot, it's the Marines, it's the macho, it's hostile, it's hardcore. Geriatrics is for freaks who live with their mothers and never have sex." Cristina told him and he scoffed before looking at me.
"Who wants to be with a guy who takes care of the dying when you could be a surgery god?" I asked him.
"I've got to get my own place." He complained as we all left to do our jobs.
After a long night in the pit, I was completing my charting when I overheard a male intern talking to a nurse.
"4B's got post-op pneumonia. Let's start antibiotics." He told her.
"Are you sure that's the right diagnosis?" the nurse asked him.
"Well I don't know, I'm only an intern. Here's an idea, why don't you go spend four years in med school and let me know if it's the right diagnosis. She's short of breath, she's got fever, she's post-op. Start the antibiotics." He ordered before walking over to me at the counter. "God I hate nurses. I'm Alex. I'm with Jeremy, you're with the Nazi, right?"
"She may not have pneumonia, you know. She could be splinting, or have a PE." I told him.
"Like I said, I hate nurses." He told me.
"A nurse?" I laughed.
"Well, if the white cap fits." He told me.
"Let me look at you." I told him and he turned to me with a smirk on his face. "White doctor coat. Intern scrubs." I looked down at me. "White doctor coat. Intern scrubs. If I'm a nurse then what does that make you?"
"Did you just call me a nurse?" he asked angrily.
"If the white cap fits." I told him before walking to a patient's bed.
I walked up to Katie's room to see if I could find Mer when I saw her walking away from Bailey.
"You get a 911, you page me immediately, not in the five minutes it takes you to get to the emergency, immediately, you are on my team and if somebody dies it's my ass, you hear me, Grey?" Bailey asked her. I followed Mer down to the first floor and towards the door.
"Meredith?" Cristina called after her. She and I gave each other a look before following her downstairs and out the door where she stopped and threw up on the grass.
"If you tell anyone, ever..." Mer threatened as she re-entered the hospital.
"Yep, she's ok." I said before following her.
Hour 24
We were sitting in a conference room with all the other interns with no idea why we were here.
"What are you doing?" Mer asked Cristina.
"I'm suturing a banana, with the vain hope that it wakes up my brain." Cristina said making George laugh. "What're you smiling at, 007?" George immediately stopped laughing and stared at her. "I'm sorry, I get mean when I'm tired."
"You know what? I don't care. I comforted a family, and I get to hang out in the OR today. All is well." George told us.
"Does anybody know why we're here?" Cristina asked.
"Nope." I answered shortly before Dr. Shepard entered.
"Well good morning. I'm going to do something pretty rare for a surgeon, I'm going to ask interns for help. I've got this kid, Katie Bryce. Right now, she's a mystery. She doesn't respond to her meds. Labs are clean, scans are pure, but she's having seizures. Grand mal seizures with no visible cause. She's a ticking clock. She's going to die, if I don't make a diagnosis. Which is where you come in. I can't do it alone. I need your extra minds, extra eyes, I need you to play detective, I need you to find out why Katie is having seizures. I know you're tired, you're busy, you've got more work than you could possibly handle. I understand. So, I'm going to give you an incentive. Whoever finds the answer rides with me. Katie needs surgery. You get to do what no interns get to do. Scrub in to assist on an advanced procedure. Dr. Bailey's going to hand you Katie's chart. The clock is ticking fast, people. If we're going to save Katie's life, we have to do it soon." We all grabbed copies of the chart and started looking through it.
Afterwards, I was standing in the pit with the chart looking through it trying to figure out what was wrong with her.
"Look, give the antibiotics time to work." The intern from before told the nurse and I scoffed at him while shaking my head.
"The antibiotics should've worked by now." The nurse told him.
"She's old, she's freaking ancient. She's lucky she's still breathing. Now, I got a shot to scrub in downstairs and a patient who wasn't alive during the civil war. Don't page me again." he told her before walking off. I watched him go before going back to my work.
Later I was on my way to the elevator when I heard Cristina called to Dr. Sheppard.
"Oh, oh, Dr. Sheppard! Just one moment, um, uh, Katie competes in beauty pageants –" Cristina told him as she and Mer followed him towards the elevator.
"I know that, but we have to save her life anyway." He told them.
"Okay, she has no headaches, no neck pain, her CT's clean, there's no medical proof of an aneurysm –" Cristina continued.
"Right." He agreed.
"- but what if she has an aneurysm anyway?" she asked and I gave her a weird look.
"There are no indicators." He reminded her.
"Ah, but she twisted her ankle, a few weeks ago when she was practicing for the pageant –" Cristina said.
"Look, I appreciate you're trying to help, but –" he told her.
"This is not helping!" another doctor told them. The elevator had been trying to close, but they kept opening it.
"She fell. When she twisted her ankle, she fell." Mer told him.
"It was no big deal, not even a bump on the head, you know she got right back up, iced her ankle and everything was fine, it was a fall so minor her doctor didn't even think to mention it when I was taking her history, but she did fall." Cristina told him.
"Well, you know the chances that a minor fall could burst an aneurysm, one in a million! Literally." He told them. The elevator door finally closed and the two women next to me sighed and turned away. The elevator dinged and opened again and Dr. Sheppard stepped out. "Let's go."
"Where?" Cristina asked him.
"To find out if Katie's one in a million." I followed the three of them.
We were all waiting for the scan to come in.
"I'll be damned." Dr. Sheppard said as we stared at them.
"There it is." The tech said.
"It's minor, but it's there. It's a cerebachnoid haemorrhage. She's bleeding into her brain." He told us.
"She could've gone her entire life without it ever being a problem. One tap in the right spot – " Dr. Sheppard told us.
"And explode." I finished.
"Exactly. Now I have to fix it. You two did great work. Love to stay and kiss your asses, but I gotta tell Katie's parents she's having surgery." He said. "Katie Bryce's chart, please."
"Here you go." The nurse told him.
"Oh, and Dr. Sheppard, you said that you'd pick someone to scrub in if we helped." Cristina reminded him.
"Oh, yes, right. Um, I'm sorry I can't take you both, it's going to be a full house. Meredith, I'll see you in OR." He told my sister. I stared between the two of them, Mer looking flustered and Cristina looking expectant. "Good. Thank you." He said before walking away. Cristina looked from Dr. Sheppard before walking away clearly pissed.
"Cristina..." Mer called after her.
"What happened?" I asked her and he told me everything.
"Izzie!" I heard Cristina shout as Mer and I walked towards them.
"I'll tell him I changed my mind, you can –" Mer started telling her.
"No, no, don't do me any favors. It's fine." Cristina told her.
"Cristina, -" I tried.
"You know what, you did a cutthroat thing, deal with it." Cristina told Mer. "Don't come to me for absolution, you want to be a shark, be a shark."
"I'm not –" Mer tried saying.
"Oh yes you are." Cristina told her. "Only it makes you feel all bad in your warm gooey places. No, screw you. I don't get picked for surgeries because I slept with my boss, and I didn't get into med school because I have a famous mother. You know, some of us have to earn what we get." Mer turned and left.
"She tells you something in confidence you are supposed to keep it, Dr. Yang." I told her. "She earned this. She didn't get it because of our mother or because she slept with our boss. Get over yourself." I turned and went back to the pit.
I was standing in the pit when I overheard, when we all overheard, Dr. Webber talking to the Alex.
"She's still short of breath. Did you get an ABG or a chest film?" Dr. Webber asked him.
"Oh, yes sir, I did." Alex told him.
"And what did you see?" Dr. Webber asked him.
"Oh, well, I had a lot of patients last –" Alex tried telling him.
"Name the common causes of post-op fever." Dr. Webber ordered.
"Uh...yes, sir." Alex said before pulling out his notebook.
"From your head. Not from a book. Don't look it up, learn it, it should be in your head. Name the common causes of post-op fever." Dr. Webber ordered again.
"Uh...the common causes of post-op..." Alex said trying to remember.
"Can anybody name the common causes of post-op fever?" Dr. Webber asked loudly making everyone stop.
"Wind, water, wound, walking, wonder drugs." I said looking to them. "The five Ws. Most of the time it's wind, splinting or pneumonia. Pneumonia's easy to assume, especially if you're too busy to do the tests."
"What do you think's wrong with 4B?" he asked me.
"The fourth W, walking. I think she's a prime candidate for a pulmonary ambulus." I told him.
"How would you diagnose?" he asked.
"Spiral CT, VQ scan, provide O2, dose with Heparin, and consult for an IVC filter." I answered.
"Do exactly as she says, then tell your resident that I want you off this case." Dr. Webber told him before walking towards me. "I'd know you anywhere, you're the spitting image of your mother. Welcome to the gang." I nodded with a smile
I can't think of any one reason why I want to be a surgeon. But I can think of a thousand reasons why I should quit. They make it hard on purpose. There are lives in our hands. There comes a moment when it's more than just a game. And you either take that step forward, or turn around and walk away. I could quit. But here's the thing: I love the playing field.
Hour 48
"So. We made it through our first shift. We all did. The other interns are all good people, you'd like them. I think. I don't know. Maybe. Mer likes them. Oh, and I changed my mind. I'm going to talk to Mer about not selling the house. I want to keep it. If she doesn't want it then she can sell her half to me. We'll have to get a couple of roommates, but it's home, you know?" I asked my mother who was sitting across from me.
"Are you the doctor?" she asked me and my smile faded.
"No. I'm not your doctor. But I am a doctor." I told her.
"What's your name?" she asked me.
"It's me, mom. Cassandra." I said. "Cassy?"
"All right." She said before fidgeting with her watch. "I used to be a doctor, I think."
"You were a doctor, mom. You were one of the best surgeons in the world." I told her taking her hand in mine.