The Scientist – Chapter IV

Meredith opened up the door of the conference room. The place was bulging with interns, all tired and scared. Meredith almost had the patient die on her last night and the last thing she needed was to be in a room full of interns but she was summoned. And when you're summoned…

Finding Christina at the other end of the room she sat down next to her on the counter. She liked Christina, she reminded Meredith of herself, except a bit more bitter and blunt. But that's good. Bitter and blunt worked for Meredith. She looked down to see what Christina was occupied with.

"What are you doing?"

"Suturing a banana in the vain hope that it wakes up my brain." Meredith leaned over to see a neatly stitched banana that had been hidden by Christina's hunched back.

George let out a small giggle.

"What are you smiling at 007?" Christina glared at him.

George stopped and looked at her blankly.

"I'm sorry, I get mean when I'm tired."

"You know what? I don't care." George shifted in his chair. "I comforted a family and I got to hang out in the OR all day. All is well."

Izzie moved into the room and sat down in front of them.

"Anybody know why we're here?" Christina asked impatiently.

"Well good morning."

Meredith looked up to see the nice hair doctor walk into the room. Stoppard? No, Sheppard. That's right. She saw him give her a quick look as he entered the room and began to walk among the crowd of interns, hands in pockets.

"I'm going to do something pretty rare for a surgeon, I'm gonna ask interns for help. I've got this kid Katie Brice. Right now, she's a mystery. She doesn't respond to her meds, her labs are clean, her scans are pure, but she's having seizures, Gran-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 eyes, your extra minds. I need you to play detective, I need you to find out why Katie's 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, if we're going to save Katie's life we have to do it soon."

Meredith watched him leave the room as he was paged and got up to get a chart among the fray of interns.

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Leaving the ICU Meredith wandered the hall of the hospital, not really having anywhere to go but going somewhere anyway. She wanted to get that case. She had been Katie's doctor the whole time and to scrub in for an advanced surgery would really make up for the shit she had to deal with the past few days. She heard some footsteps behind her.

"Hey," Christina walked up to her. "I want in on Sheppard's surgery. You've been the intern on Katie since the start, you wanna work together? We find the answer we have a 50-50 chance of getting in."

Meredith looked over at her quizzically. "I don't see how that's profitable to me."

"Hey, I'm Christina Yang! I topped the class in Stanford, any input from me will be profitable."

Meredith smiled wryly at Christina then stopped. Looking up at her she thought for a second.

"Fine, but if I get the surgery you won't mope around saying it's unfair."

"Deal."

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"So she doesn't have anoxia, chronic renal failure or acidosis, it's not a tumour because her CT's clean. What the hell is it?"

Christina was sitting next to Meredith as they leant against the bookshelf in the storage room, charts and files scattered around them on the floor.

"What about infection?" Meredith looked up from the file.

"No, there's no white count, she has no ct lesions nothing in her spinal tab."

Meredith sighed and leaned back against the bookshelf, looking blankly in front of her.

"What do you think about Dr Sheppard?" The words foolishly slipped out of her mouth. Good job Meredith. She'd been thinking about him ever since he talked the patient's parents.

Christina looked over at her. "You mean Dr McDreamy."

Meredith laughed. Somehow, McDreamy summed the guy up in a nutshell.

"I don't know." Christina continued. "He seems nice. Actually he seems pretty damn nice since he's letting an intern crash his surgery. Why do you want to know?"

"Oh, it's nothing."

"Have you got the hots for McDreamy?" Christina looked at Meredith suspiciously.

"No! I don't. Really. I was just…curious."

"Yeah whatever, if you start getting favours for sleeping with your boss, I'll kill you."

Meredith smiled. "Yeah, well you know – with him, it would be worth it."

"Hell yeah." Christina laughed. "So, what about an aneurism?"

"No blood on the CT, no head trauma."

"Ok, there's no drug use, no pregnancy, no trauma. I give up."

Meredith stood up and placed a file back into the shelf. "What if no one picks up on anything?"

"You mean what if she dies?"

"Yeah."

Christina leaned back on the bookshelf and sighed. "This is going to sound really bad but I really wanted that surgery."

Meredith looked down at her hands ground. "She's just never going to get the chance to turn into a person. The sum total of her existence will be almost winning Miss Teen whatever." She looked up at Christina. "You know what her pageant talent is?"

"They have talent?"

"Rhythmic gymnastics."

Christina burst out in laughter. "Oh, god."

"What is rhythmic gymnastics?"

"I think it's something with a ball…"

Suddenly Meredith froze. She knew what was wrong with the girl.

"What?" Christina saw the expression on Meredith's face.

"Get up." Meredith ordered.

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Dr Sheppard waited for the elevator. He didn't know why he enlisted the help of the interns, it just seemed like a good idea at the time. No respectable surgeon would ever think of asking the interns for help, but here he was, as vulnerable as ever and it was only his second day here. Great job Derek. What was even stranger was the fact that he could not get Meredith Grey out of his mind. She's an intern, she's off limits, but for some reason he daydreamed about her and stopped dead when he saw her in the conference room. Thank god nobody noticed. But what the hell was he doing? He doesn't know this Meredith, he doesn't know anything about her, except that she's an intern and her last name is Grey. Yet still, there she was, hanging around his thoughts like something sticky that won't blow off.

Startled out of his thoughts by the ding of the elevator he walked into the crowded box.

"Dr Sheppard!" A voice called out behind him. Turning around he saw Yang and her. Of course it was her.

"Katie competes in beauty pageants." Yang stopped the door from closing.

"I know that but we have to save her life anyway."

"Ok, she has no headaches, no neck pains, her CT's clean. There's no proof of an aneurism, but what if she has an aneurism anyway?"

"There are no indicators."

"But she twisted her ankle a few weeks ago when she was practicing for the pageant…" Yang struggled to keep the elevator doors open.

"She fell, when she twisted her ankle." Meredith raised her voice and looked at Derek. "She fell."

"It was no big deal, not even a bump on the head," Christina frantically added "got right back up, iced her ankle and everything, she was fine. It was a fall so minor her doctor failed to mention it when I was taking her history but she did, she did fall."

Derek looked over at Meredith, standing still behind Yang as she continued to struggle with the elevator.

"Well you know what the chances are that a minor fall could burst an aneurism? 1 in a million, literally."

The doors closed. Derek stood behind them as the occupants of the elevator gave out a collective sigh of relief. But Derek didn't feel it. Suddenly he hit the door button, hoping it would still work. A person behind him let out a groan. The doors opened and Derek walked out towards Meredith and Yang as they looked back at him in surprise.

"Let's go."

"Where?" Christina piped up.

"To find out if Katie's 1 in a million."

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Meredith and Christina stared curiously into the gallery as Dr Sheppard signed Katie's file and waited for the echo to come up.

Suddenly Meredith saw Dr Sheppard's face drop as the images came up on the computer. "I'll be dammed."

"There it is." The assistant pointed to the image.

Sheppard leaned in. "It's minor but it's there. It's a subarachnoid haemorrhage." Meredith and Christina tried to squeeze in to see the image. "She's bleeding into brain."

Sheppard nodded his head then put his hand on the assistant's shoulder. "Can you print off this scans?"

"Sure."

"Right." Sheppard sighed and walked out of the room. Meredith and Christina dotingly followed. Sheppard turned around and watched them catch up to him as he walked down the hallway.

"That's really interesting. She could have gone through her whole life without if ever being a problem, one tap in the right spot – "

"And it exploded." Christina added.

"Exactly. Now I get to fix it. You two did great. Love to stay and kiss your arses but I've got to tell Katie's parents she's having surgery." He walked up to the nurse's station. "Katie Brice's chart please."

Meredith glanced over to Christina who was standing nervously by her.

"Ah, Dr Sheppard, you said you'd pick some one, to scrub in if we helped?"

Sheppard looked up from the chart and smiled. "Right. You've both done great work and I'd love to take you both in but Grey was her intern from the beginning so Grey?"

"Yes." Meredith noticed Christina shift uncomfortably next to her.

"I'll see you in the OR." With one last smile Sheppard turned around and walked away.

Meredith looked over at Christina. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, know what, it's fine. We had a deal. Just don't bend over for the soap."

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NB: This chapter was strange because I was stuck in the confines of the first episode and there was no chance of leeway, so a lot of it's from the original episode. Luckily the other chapters won't be like this at all so this is just a individual case.

Unfortunately I've been pulled along to going away for a couple of days so I won't be able to post, but trust me, I'd much rather be here writing. I'll probably jot down some notes but otherwise next chapter will come up on Sunday (American time – I have a world clock widget and I like it very much). But I tell you what, this was a freaking exhausting chapter to write because of the lack of leeway, but I hope it's interesting for you guys as it is me.

But to keep me going through the long and arduous task of driving with mother I need reviews! And the hope that when I come home there will be a mountain of dazzling critiques that I can wallow my pain away!! cough