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Summary: A short one shot on how Richard felt when he became Chief.
Scrub room Musings- A Greys Anatomy one-shot.
Richard's POV:
The day they told me I would be chief, I was standing right in OR 1. The surgery was an appendectomy, so simple even an intern could do it. Our current Chief, Dr. John Woodlands, waltzed into my OR, fully scrubbed in.
"Anything you need, Chief?" I asked, since there was no other reason for him to be standing in front of me other than to be observing, which he could do from the gallery.
"Chief?" I queried again after he didn't answer for several minutes.
"No Richard," He told me, "That's your name now," He finished, patting me on the shoulder and leaving the OR.
I quickly finished off the procedure before the shock subsided and I dropped the surgical instruments. When I was scrubbing out, the reality finally hit me. I was going to be chief. Chief of Surgery at Seattle Grace Hospital. Chief Richard Webber. It had a nice ring to it. Chief. I wanted to tell somebody. Not just anybody. A certain somebody. Ellis. But she'd done a runner. She'd taken little Meredith and moved to Boston. She'd told me not to call. She'd told me not to run after her. Oh, how I wanted to. Words could not describe how much I wanted to get on a plane and run after her. How badly I wanted her. How badly I needed her. How badly I wanted to fall to my knees in front of her and beg for forgiveness.
But I knew what Ellis would do to me if I did so. Either she'd be happy I was there and gladly take me back, or, the most probable option, she'd take one look at me, turn on her heel and ignore me.
Now instead of rejoicing, I wanted to head across the street to Joe's and drown my sorrows. Then I remembered my promise to Adele`. And to Ollie. I couldn't drink. I'd been sober for six months and I intended to keep it that way.
At least with being chief hopefully meant more hours, so I could avoid being home with Adele` as much as humanely possible. She'd accused me of having an affair. I didn't answer her. I couldn't lie to her anymore. I was sick and tired of it. I was sick and tired of her. She was always on my case, urging me to talk! Maybe, just maybe, I wanted to talk. Just not to Adele`.
So I did as I always did and probably always would, went and told my patient's family the outcome of their surgery.