Chloe walked the short distance to her new apartment close to Barden University's East side campus. She took the stairs to her one bedroom apartment and unlocked the door. Her flat was still mostly undecorated and she had to side step around neatly labeled cardboard boxes that littered the hardwood floor.

She toed off her shoes and walked towards the lone couch in the center of her living room where she flopped down with a huge sigh. It had been a long day. Chloe dialed a familiar number, thankful that New York was an hour ahead, which meant that Aubrey would still be up.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Bree," she replied.

"Chloe! "How's Barden?"

"It's fine... I saw my new office down at Barden today. It's much bigger than I thought it would be."

"That's great Chlo. How's the hospital? Do you like it? Have you met any interesting people?" Aubrey's questions came at her a mile a minute.

Chloe smiled at her best friend's quick-fire way of getting to her point. "Barden is, well...it's definitely smaller than UCSF, but it's cosy, and it's… well it's different, Bree."

"I don't know how you tolerate it, Chloe. Isn't it too small for you? You should have moved to New York with me. The city is amazing."

"So, what are your colleagues like?" Aubrey transitioned smoothly, trying to lighten her tone after hearing an audible sigh from Chloe.

"Well, there's Cynthia Rose. She's the hospital's Chief-of-staff."

"Really, she?"

"Yeah, I think you'd like her Bree. She's really nice, but definitely a no-nonsense kind of woman."

"So what about the rest of your day? Did anything exciting happen?"

"Actually, yeah. There was a cardiac emergency when Dr. Rose was giving me a tour. They were short staffed, so I helped out, it was great to be able to help someone again. I think the guy's going to be okay, but the weird thing is that they couldn't figure out what caused the cardiac arrest. It looked like anaphylactic shock to me, and the cardiothoracic surgeon agreed, but the guy wasn't allergic to anything. Anyway, the surgeon seemed to be convinced that the guy was exposed to something at the biomedical company he works for. I don't know. It's possible. I wasn't really thinking about it at the time. I guess I was too busy being insulted to notice."

"He insulted you?" Aubrey asked, aghast.

"Not he, Bree, she. And sort of, I guess. It's sort of complicated. Apparently, she was really mad about the ER being short staffed. She yelled at Dr. Rose too and I guess I was collateral damage. She wasn't impressed by the pediatric cardiologist who apparently thought she was a heart surgeon."

"Aca-cuse me? Did you tell her that you worked in the Emergency Department before?" Aubrey asked indignantly.

"I didn't get a chance, Bree. You wouldn't believe this woman. She's arrogant and bossy and controlling, and from the way she chewed out Cynthia Rose, fearless...and brilliant, and absolutely beautiful."

"Well. Someone sounds like she has a major crush," Aubrey said in a teasing tone.

"Stop it, Bree! I just thought she was impressive, that's all." Chloe chewed her lip.

"Anyway, it looks like whether she likes it or not, we'll be working together. She does rounds in the ER a couple days a week and since I'll be a back-up doctor on call, thanks to the lack of personnel, we're bound to run into one another."

"Well, I'm sure she'll come around when she realizes what a charmer you are."

"Very funny Bree," Chloe whined. She was certain that she could hear her friend's smirk on the other end of the line.

"Well. I can't wait to see you again."

"Are you coming to visit for Thanksgiving? I miss my best friend." Chloe's tone softened.

"Of course I am, Chlo. Work has been busy at the firm, but I am definitely coming out to see you."

"Great. Well I better start unpacking some of these boxes. I'll talk to you tomorrow Bree."

"Alright Chlo. Take care of yourself."

Chloe hung up her cell phone and sighed. It had certainly been an interesting day. Glancing around her empty apartment, she made her way to the first box lying on the living room floor to start unpacking. A few hours later, she decided it was time to shower and retire for the evening. She changed, set her cell phone alarm and rummaged to find a blanket among her bedroom boxes, before collapsing onto her bed and falling asleep.

Not far away, Dr. Beca Mitchell sat in front of her laptop in the study of her downtown apartment. The room was dark except for the light from her monitor and that provided by a dim desk lamp. She pored over the figures from the latest series of tests.

Her proposal for the Board of Directors at Barden University, the consortium of labs, hospitals, med schools, and research institutes that was funding the project, would be due in another week, but she was confident. There was no doubt in her mind that she would receive the needed funding for her research to continue.

Experimentation had proven that the device she was developing was highly successful and within a few short years, the device would be ready for clinical trials and regulatory approval.

This project would potentially bring Beca and her father wealth and prestige beyond even the most egocentric surgeon's wildest dreams, but more importantly, it would provide a safer, more natural and permanent solution to many different heart conditions. It would catapult Beca to the forefront of her profession, but mostly, it would make the lives of so many patients better.

The data analysis was not what was concerning her this evening. What was instead on her mind were the events of that afternoon. Cynthia Rose deserved to be on the receiving end of her wrath, she decided. Not directly, of course, but as a representative of the hospital administration, she needed to hear about the awful truth, that the incompetence of the administration was causing major problems in the functioning of the hospital's most vital divisions.

She had a tremendous amount of respect for Dr. Rose, but if she just simply went about her work as though nothing was wrong despite all the unbelievable decisions of the administration, nothing would ever be done to fix the problems.

She had to admit however that her comments toward the new blue-eyed Pediatric cardiologist-what was her name again? Oh yes, Dr. Beale - were a bit excessive; the poor woman was just trying to help, but what could she have known about the ins and outs of the Emergency Department?

She did have the most incredibly piercing blue eyes though and a beautiful face.

Beca snapped herself out of her thoughts. What was she thinking? She had no time to creep on a new doctor. No distractions.

They were all just lucky that nothing catastrophic had resulted from her involvement. Barden University Hospital was the finest hospital in all of Louisiana. The fact that the ED in such a hospital would be so short staffed as to have an Intensivist and a Pediatric Cardiologist leading a team of interns, first year residents and nurses in treating a cardiac arrest patient, would have been laughable had it not been so damn irresponsible of hospital.

Ignoring the nagging thought in the back of her mind that the hospital was going to hell in a hand-basket and would no doubt take out many innocent victims along the way, she ran the regression lines on the data, ran the data against the control group, and determined a much better than adequate value of statistical difference. Satisfied, she documented and saved her results as further evidence of the viability of the project and the expected benefits of the experiments.

Pleased with herself, she leaned back in her chair and stretched out lazily. Her dad would be so happy to hear about the latest results. Perhaps the additional funds that would come from the hospital's generous benefactors after the introduction of the new device that would make all of them filthy rich could be used to hire actual doctors to staff the ER.

Then again, she sighed, probably not.