A/N - Quotes are from Grey's Anatomy
...
Following the other interns through the hospital doors, Emily did her best to get her name tag back into place. She had been only a moment late to the first day of her program, and already she'd gotten a scolding from their superior. "A second too late can lose a life," he'd said, and Emily had bowed her head to get the other interns to stop their stares.
Seattle Grace was already a hell hole.
"This is where you will spend the next seven years of your life," Webber spoke up, causing Emily's head to turn. She watched as he opened the door for them and she and the rest of the interns stepped into the surgical room. Eyes moving from the table to the tray with extra scalpels, Emily could feel her heart racing.
"Only a few of you will survive," the doctor spoke, "some switching to easier specialties, some quitting because they find the pressure too great, and others," he stressed, looking at a few of the interns, "will be asked to leave."
The Korean woman beside Emily gave a nudge to her elbow. "Think he's the Nazi?"
Emily hid her smile until the doctor looked away. They'd all heard the stories of the residents at the hospital, they had to. Before they walked through the doors of that hospital they needed to know what they were getting themselves into.
"Get to the lockers," Webber said strongly, leading the young adults out of the surgical room and gesturing down the hall. "Change into your scrubs and you'll all get your assignments." When he saw them pause at the end of the hall, his hands curled into fists. "Now!"
The ambassador's daughter's body jolted and she rushed along with the others into the locker room.
"E.P?"
Emily looked up and noticed the Korean woman gesturing to the locker that had been assigned to her. "Thanks," she breathed, quickly stripping off her shirt and throwing on the blue scrub shirt hanging in her locker. "What's your name?"
"Cristina," she rushed out, stripping herself of her clothes just like the rest of the interns. "You?"
"Emily."
A younger student popped his head around the corner where his locker was and raised his hand. "I'm George."
Emily's head turned, smiling to the other intern as she slipped her shoes off. "Hi," she laughed, making sure to pick her name tag off of her shirt and clip it onto her scrubs.
"Interns!"
Slipping on her left sneaker, Emily was the first to run out of the room and out into the hallway.
"Hendricks, Smith, West, Reid and Morgan," Webber called. "To Dr. Heigl on floor four."
Emily kept her pace slow as she reached the end of the hallway, her eyes along with ten others who were waiting for their assignments. Putting her hair up, she watched as a nurse raced alongside a gurney from the ER toward the surgical wing.
"Prentiss," Webber boomed, "O'Malley, Stevens, Grey, Yang and Karev. Bailey's station, now."
The group of six followed the surgeon's gesture down the hall and quickly made their way toward the station, Yang hitting Emily's arm as they went. "The Nazi," she rushed out, her hand reaching out to hit George as well. "Bailey's the Nazi."
George's shoulders stiffened. "I pictured the Nazi to be a man," he gulped. "A big man."
"I pictured an old delusional man," Cristina laughed.
A young woman who looked the most familiar to the ambassador's daughter took in a breath. "I pictured the Nazi to be...well, a Nazi."
Emily gently shook her head to all of the chatter going on around her as they came to the end of the hallway. Their boss turned around to face them. She was exactly what Emily had pictured.
Before the resident surgeon could open her mouth to give the first instructions, a tall blond from the group took a step forward and held out her hand. "Hi Dr. Bailey, my name is Isobel Stevens, but everyone calls me Izzie."
Baily found herself glaring up to the new intern. "I have five rules, memorize them. Rule one: I already don't like you so there's no reason to suck up to me. It won't do you any good." She turned and gestured to everything she'd laid out on the nurse's desk. "Trauma protocol, phone list, pagers."
Emily and Cristina were the first to grab pager's from the station.
"Nurses will page you. You answer every page at a run. A RUN. That's rule two."
Following Bailey down the hallway, the interns sped up their pace.
"Your first shift starts now and will last forty-eight hours-"
"Forty-eight hours?"
Emily's eyes flickered over to George when Bailey stopped to glare back at them.
"You're interns," the doctor said strongly, eyeing the Irish intern before turning to continue down the hallway. "You're grunts, nobodies, the bottom of the surgical food chain. You run labs, write orders, work every second night until you drop and you don't complain. Letting you know right now, I don't care if your shifts last forty-eight hours."
George peeked over to the women in his group, making sure they weren't judging him the same way his boss was.
Gesturing to a few rooms they passed, Bailey sighed. "The on-call rooms, all attendees hog them so sleep whenever you can. This brings me to rule three," she said, raising her clipboard so they could all see her. "If I am sleeping, you do not wake me up unless your patient is actually dying. Rule four: the dying patient better not be dead when I get there. Not only will you have killed someone but you would have woken me up for no reason. I'm already not on your side, you don't want to make it worse. We clear?"
Both Emily and the blond she had recognized rose their hands the moment Bailey's pager went off. "Both of you?"
"You said five rules."
Bailey glared.
Straightening her shoulders, Emily nodded along with her fellow intern. "You said there were five rules but you only told us four."
They watched as the doctor looked at her beeper once more. "Rule five: when I move, you move." She grabbed her chart and immediately bolted down the hall. "Out of my way!"
Emily was the second to last in the line as they ran after their boss, and her hand did its best to stick out and shake the blonde's. "Emily."
"Meredith," she smiled, holding the door open for the raven haired woman.
As they ran toward the parking lot to reach the ambulance, Emily felt herself stop, her chest aching. His dark hair, the chin that had laid on her shoulder as they fell asleep, his blue eyes that had been the first of its kind she'd ever seen.
"Emily?"
She gulped, a strand of her dark hair falling in front of her eyes. "Derek."