Stiles was pretty unprepared to wake up when he heard his alarm going off. He was lying in bed, enjoying just the simple nature of being naked and not having to work. Reaching for the alarm, he didn't find the alarm on the bedside table like it normally was. With too much sleep in his eyes, he found the clock on the floor right next to bed and immediately slammed its alarm to the off position. Shimmying his way back on the bed comfortably, he felt a hand graze his bare hip, turning his lips to the sky with a smile as he heard the low grumble of Derek's grunt at being woken up.

"Derek, it's time for you to get up."

"Huh?" He stirred himself fully awake, pausing to kiss Stiles' shoulder. "What time is it?"

"It's five-twenty. I have pre-rounds and you have to leave before they see you."

"Oh, come on. You already told them about the first time."

"Telling them that I slept with a guy who turned out to be my boss is a lot different than telling my friends that I'm casually seeing my boss."

"Just let them see."

"No!"

He rolled on top of Stiles then, lightly pining him down and demanding that he forgot that his friends remotely cared who he was seeing, whatever the terms were. Laughing, Stiles kept deflecting Derek's request, the latter just attacked Stiles neck with kisses until they were both laughing together, finally at a place where they were happy with what was happening between them.

In the kitchen, Allison was staring at the coffee pot, waiting for its gift of caffeine that she so desperately craved. Quietly, Isaac made his way into the kitchen as well, wearing just a pair of plaid pajama pants that he had slept in. With a massive growl, Isaac leaned against the counter next to her. Over the past week, Allison and Isaac had officially made up for the Billie Wilds thing and the whole ordeal about him forgetting to change his pager and leaving her with all the work. Allison actually thought they were on their way to being at the same level of friendship as she was with the other interns, but she was still holding some reservations in the back of her mind about him.

"You get any sleep last night?"

Allison shook her head. "As if I could sleep through that. He could at least pad that headboard."

"Who do you think the guy is?"

"The guy? You think it was just one doing all that?"

"Coffee. I just need coffee." Isaac pleaded as he lightly smacked the coffee pot, his futile attempt to get it to make the brew faster than it could.

"I'm a little jealous. I can't remember the last time I had sex all night long." Allison admitted, tapping her fingers on the counter while she waited for the French blend to finish. "If any good comes from this, we know he'll be dragging all day long."

They heard the sound of Stiles' mystery man making his way down the stairs. Trying to be discreet, Allison and Isaac peeked as best they could out of the kitchen door when they saw a blur of motion as the guy raced out of the door. But not before they identified they guy as Derek Hale.

"Wow. I guess brain surgery isn't the only thing he's talented at."

Isaac looked back at Allison in horror. "They're doing it again? They can't. He's his boss!"

"He's all of our boss." She said with a heavy sigh, quickly grabbing they coffee now that it had finally finished and poured some into two thermoses for them. "We're going to be late." Her head raised as a thought entered her brain. "Now that I think about it, hasn't Stiles been scrubbing in on a lot of his surgeries lately?"

"Stiles is the by-product of two genius doctors," Isaac scoffed, quickly taking a sip of the fantastically warming feel of the coffee sliding down his throat. "He doesn't need to do that do get ahead. He wouldn't do that anyway."

"Why is he keeping it a secret from us if he's not feeling totally guilty about it?"

"Maybe it just happened. Again."

Stiles stormed through the kitchen then, cutting off their back and forth before it could turn into anything else. "Morning."

"Right, morning." Allison said, waiting by the door while Stiles poured himself the rest of the coffee. "Who's the guy? It was obvious you were having some pretty life-altering sex last night."

His back turned towards them meant that they didn't see the terrified look on Stiles' face when she spoke. "Uh, no one you guys know."

Rolling her eyes at the lie, Allison grabbed her jacket. "Let's go then. We're late."

Once they got to work and made their way out of Stiles' jeep, they were met by Scott, who was getting off of his motorcycle, parking right next to them.

"Jesus, Scott." Stiles laughed. "Wouldn't want to run into you in the middle of the night."

Noting how tired he looked, Scott smiled back. "Right back at you."

While they all made their way across the parking lot, Lydia came running up, completely decked out in athletic gear.

"Are you serious? You have time to run?" Allison snickered.

"I think I have the flu." Lydia nodded, falling into step with them.

"So you're trying to sweat it out?"

"Pretty much."

Soon they were all in the locker room, and the coffee wasn't helping Isaac or Allison with how badly they were drained and entirely unprepared for the work day.

"I need a kick-ass surgery to make it through this day." Isaac sighed.

"Ooh," Lydia cooed, wagging her eyebrows at him while she put her hair up in a ponytail. "Was someone really bad last night?"

Stiles tried to roll the comments off his back, even though they weren't directed at him. He was ready to do this thing with Derek but he wasn't exactly ready to announce it to all of his friends just yet. He was at his locker, standing next to Scott while he got ready while they rest of his friends did the same.

"That'd be Stiles." Allison said, rolling her eyes.

"Stiles," Lydia smiled. "Never would have pegged you to be such a bad boy."

Scott pulled on his white coat and locked eyes with his best friend. "Spill."

"Nothing to spill."

"Which means there's everything to spill."

Fed up with Stiles still not admitting the truth to them, Allison slammed her locker and made her way through the locker room.

"Congrats, but next time let me know when you're inviting company over so I can get some sleep at a hotel."

She exited the room, leaving Stiles dumbfounded and unable to find the right words to say. "Am I missing something here?"

"It was loud. Very loud."

Isaac slammed his own locker shut, leaving with a giggling Lydia as they left the locker room. Scott turned back toward Stiles and just scoffed.

"Do they know that the one keeping them up all night is McDreamy?"

Shaking his head, Stiles still couldn't hide the smallest of all smiles at the mention of Derek. "I hope not. I don't need my roommates thinking that he's' favoring me when I already have Ramsey riding my ass."

"I thought that was Derek."

"Shut up." Stiles shoved him, causing the other guy to laugh as they walked out of the locker room.

Walking down the hallway, Stiles and Scott hustled to keep up with their resident and friends as they made their way throughout the hospital. As they walked by an open room, they all saw Derek administering eye drops to his eyes, a sign for Allison and Isaac that there was no mistaking that he was the one that Stiles had kicked out of the house that morning.

"McCall, Martin, Lahey, go ahead and head down to the clinic." They departed pretty quickly, not quickly enough that Ramsey didn't have to bark a "Go!" for them to scamper away from her field of vision. Allison was quietly sipping on her coffee as Stiles exhibited a huge yawn, one the resident quickly noticed.

"Did we have a late night, Stilinski?"

"Not at all." Stiles said swiftly, which stirred a scoff from Allison as they went inside the room Derek was in.

"Good, because there's a consult in the pit, Girl with a fever and abdominal pain. After that, Madison in room 3311 needs her meds. Mr. Fuller's IV fell out. Post-ops need to be done in 1337, 3363, 3342, and 2381."

"All of that?" He sighed.

"I missed the part it's my problem. It's yours now. Go."

He ran off in a hustle, Allison continually sipping on her coffee and looking annoyed, something her resident quickly caught on to.

"What's wrong? You look more like me than your naturally bubbly self this morning.

"I'm fine." Allison lied, braving a smile for Ramsey.

Whether or not the resident believed her, it would have to wait. At that exact moment a couple came running up to them. A woman was leading her boyfriend over to them, his hands around his throat in anguish.

"Is everything alright?" Ramsey asked her.

"No. Nothing is alright because my boyfriend swallowed me keys."

Allison and Ramsey shared a glance of astonishment before the boyfriend coughed, attempting to talk.

"I didn't want her leave me."

Rolling her eyes, Ramsey gestured at her young intern. "Find the woman's keys."

x

Scott was going by admitting down on the lower floor of the hospital, trying to find a patient when he walked up on one that was bleeding. He was talking to the nurse about having an appointment while blood was dripping on the floor from his shoulder.

"Sir," Scott walked up to him. "Do you mind if I check out your shoulder? I think you're bleeding."

"Sure, but I already know that I'm bleeding." The dark-skinned man nodded.

Eyes widening, he looked from the patient to the nurse and then back again. "You have a gunshot wound." Glancing around, Scott's eyes fell on Lydia, who was roaming around feeling terrible because of her case of the flu. "Lydia, get a wheelchair, we have a gunshot wound."

She responded as he instructed, wheeling over the chair for the patient to sit in.

"I appreciate the fuss, but I'm fine."

"I'm sorry, Mr…"

"Silk. Owen Silk."

"Right, Mr. Silk, you have a gunshot wound. We have to get you down the pit right away."

"It's okay." Mr. Silk assured them as Scott walked beside him, Lydia pushing him in the wheelchair towards the pit. "I told the nurse right before you came up that I made an appointment. I scheduled this."

"You knew you were going to get shot?"

Lydia's question was one Scott felt the need to be answered as well, both of them looking to the patient for further understanding of what he meant.

"Of course. I got someone to shot me. On purpose, as a favor?"

"A favor?" Scott shook his head.

"Why?"

Owen Silk smiled as brightly as the sun in the early morning. "I love the scars."

A few minutes later, they were all in the pit and accurately assessing Mr. Silk's wounds.

"Like I was saying, this is my art. Scars are permanent, like tattoos."

"The bullet went all the way through." Lydia sighed. "Do you enjoy being so stupid?"

"Lydia." Scott chastised, but Owen waved them both off.

"It's fine, it is stupid. But it's my calling."

Suddenly feeling incredibly nauseous, Lydia must have gone completely pale, because Scott instantly put a hand on her shoulder. "Are you alright?"

"Nausea. And you touching me isn't helping."

He recoiled at her utterance as she left in a whirl, seeking a bathroom before she succumbed to the embarrassment of her flu symptoms in front of her patients.

"Sorry about that." Scott laughed lightly. "There's a flu going around the hospital."

"Irony." Mr. Silk shrugged. "Gotta love it."

Shaking his head, Scott went on with trying to help Owen and his out of this world commitment to the art of body harming.

x

"It's just a fever."

"She's been feeling this way ever since she got back from Cancun."

"I swear, I'm fine."

Stiles kept listening to the mother of his patient and his patient bickering about how exactly she had fell ill enough to need to be admitted into Seattle Grace Hospital.

"I understand that it might just be a fever," He wedged his own dialogue between them. "But they did call over a surgeon, so I have to do an exam."

"No, I don't want an examine."

"Emily, just do the damn examine. I don't want to be stuck in this…hospital all day."

Once the mother was gone and Emily submitted to the protocol of the examine, Stiles started to press on her abdominals. The lower he got toward her belly button, the more she seemed to wince and retract against his touch.

"Can you lift your shirt for me, Emily?

"What?" Panic was evident in her voice. "Why?"

"I just need to see your stomach for a sec."

Fear was instantly recognizable in her eyes as Stiles watched, his patient slowly lifting up her shirt to reveal four plump and pink scars on her stomach.

"You've had surgery." Stiles said, not believing his own eyes. "And recently. Emily, what did you have done?"

She turned away from him, unable to say the words out loud. Stiles just rolled down her shirt, covering her stomach once more, wondering how he was going to get Emily to tell her parents that she had had some type of surgery while she was vacationing in Mexico.

x

Isaac was treating a patient, his first really young patient, who's foot was twitching of its own accord. The little girl was only about two or three, and her parents were under a lot of distress about what could be possibly causing her leg to twitch so badly.

"You said it's been happening for about three months?"

"It was only a little bit at first." Mrs. Thames nodded. "We took Chevy to the county hospital and she got a CT scan there, which showed her-"

"Brain abnormality." Isaac had assumed as much, judging by the constant tremors that Chevy was experiencing. "You did a good thing by coming in, since it's gotten so much worse." He got close to the young girl, assuring her that everything was going to be alright as she tugged on his stethoscope and smiled up at him. He laughed and let her have it before looking back up at the patients. "I'm gonna bring in Dr. Hale, he's the head of neurosurgery."

"And he's good, this Dr. Hale?" Mr. Thames inquired.

"Oh, he goes all night." His mind cursed him as he took in the gravity of what he had just said. "In surgery. He's so good, he spends all night in surgery." He laughed nervously. "I'll, uh, I'll got get him."

He left the parents then, searching for Derek while he tried to get a handle on his animosity towards the attending, considering the fact that he was going to be on his service today. Not matter how badly he wished he wasn't going to be with the attending that was sleeping with Stiles, and trying to keep it a secret from everyone.

x

Having just brought Ramsey the films from her patient that had swallowed his girlfriend's keys, Allison waited for her resident to deduce the x-rays acutely.

"Is it safe to assume that she's leaving his sorry ass and therefore needs to keys to do so?"

Allison hide her laughter, but couldn't quite hide her smile. "He needs a bronchoscopy?"

"He does." Ramsey grabbed the films and handed them back to Allison. "I suggest you get started."

"Me? I mean, alone?"

"You've seen one, haven't you? Time to do one, Argent."

"Really? Thank you." Allison beamed. "I've been studying non-stop and working really hard and I thought no one would notice or say anything or give me a chance and-"

"Argent?"

"Yeah?"

"You can do your rambling on the way to prep your patient for his bronchoscopy."

"Right." The long brunette-haired intern. "Thanks again, Dr. Ramsey."

Ramsey swapped out her interns then, because as Allison was leaving, Stiles came sauntering up to her with a look of concern on his face.

"I got your page."

"Yeah, what's the situation with everything I gave you earlier?"

Mentally letting the obscenities flow forth, Stiles steeled himself and just gave his resident a curt nod. "I finished with the IV, the consult, the post-ops, and the meds. Everything is taken care of, just like you asked."

"What about the pit patient?"

"She had peritoneal signs and she's febrile."

During their trek across the skywalk, they ran into a very sickly Lydia, who looked like she was struggling just to stay upright. "Everything alright, Dr. Martin?"

Plastering the fakest smile she could, Lydia brightly grinned at her boss. "Fantastic. Heading back to the clinic now."

Falling victim to her flu once again, Lydia ran away from them once they turned down the stairs, fleeing from any further interactions with her equals or superiors. Ramsey decided to take down one intern at a time as she and Stiles went along with their journey descending down the stairs. Stiles, unable to take the silence anymore with the woman that had caught him post-sex with both of their boss, he grunted a shift in their dynamic.

"There's no way she didn't have a surgery done while she was supposedly in Cancun."

"You think she had an illegal surgery?"

"Why else would she have four laparoscopic scars on her abdomen and refuses to tell me how she acquired them?"

"What do the parents think?'

"They don't know."

"Alright, order a CT and we'll go from there."

He nodded. "Already did."

"Perfect, so while she's there, the nurses couldn't get a Foley on one of their patients. Probably needs a Coude cath if you can't work the normal one to your will. Post-op notes need to be done on all surgical floor patients that have had surgery with the last twenty-four hours. Make sure you get their x-rays and their EKG's. Hunt them down until you have all of that information before I see you again.

She was doing this on purpose, he knew that much. Ramsey piling on the workload on him was his punishment for the incident with having sex with Derek in his car. It was looming over his head and Ramsey was the one holding the strings that dangled it over his every move career wise. But Stiles had had enough. He was refusing to give in on the Derek front anymore. So, to keep from instigating with his other boss, he just agreed with her terms and said, "Right away, Dr. Ramsey." before he left in a whirl of determination.

x

Almost knocking her over, Peter had to steady himself to keep from running into a very pale Lydia as she roamed the halls.

"Whoa, what happened to you?"

"Flu." She said annoyed, as if he should have already known what was the matter with her. "And thanks for giving it to me. I feel as bad as I look."

"I'm fine." Peter disagreed. "I wasn't the one to give it to you."

"I haven't been anywhere else but here. And since we've been having sex…"

"The flu is circling around the hospital," He told her. "But about that other thing-"

"Not now, I've got to power through this sickness."

They kept walking around the bottom floor of the hospital, waiting for patients to be admitted. Lydia stopped at a pillar to catch her breath, wondering about whether or not she was going to throw up or not. Her stomach settling for a second, she pushed off of the structure and kept walking, Peter trailing behind.

"Seriously, Lydia, you should go home. I can take you to your place."

"We're totally not at the stage where you get to see my place." She scoffed. "You go home."

Almost running away from him, Peter had to resort to yelling "But I feel fine!" as she faded from distance, causing him to sigh, once again tricked into not talking about the fact that he was sleeping with an intern, yet again.

x

Standing in the scrub room watching Derek perform a surgery, Isaac halted on the action of barging in on his boss. He was still a little pissed off about the whole Stiles and Derek situation and how they were lying to everyone about it. It was recommendations from attendings like Derek that would make or break their careers in the surgical program. And Isaac didn't think it was remotely fair that Derek was taking advantage of Stiles like that.

A tech came into the scrub room then, smiling at Isaac as he handed him the scans from Chevy's CT that he had been waiting on before he notified Derek about the patient. He was just starting to look over them when Dr. Tyler, one of the anesthesiologists that regularly worked with Dr. Hale, walked by them, a certain smell invading the intern's nostrils and holding the rest of his olfactory senses hostage.

"Was that-"

"Scotch." The tech nodded. "I smelled it too. It's crazy that he's the best anesthesiologists we have, right? I wouldn't be too worried though, not until he can't do his Sudoku puzzles during surgery."

Shrugging and ultimately ending the conversation, the tech left Isaac alone in the scrub room wondering if he should say anything to anyone. He didn't have long to mull it over because Derek had asked someone else to close and he was exiting the OR, Isaac having to run to catch him.

"Dr. Hale."

"God, I need an expresso." Derek sighed, lazily looking over Isaac. "What is it?"

"Chevy Thames was admitted. She's the little girl with the brain abnormality. Her balance is off, and it looks like she has continuous seizure activity in her left foot."

He took the scans from him, taking in what they the CT results had found. "How old are these?"

"They're from their doctor back home." Isaac admitted. "Three months old."

"There's a pretty decent chance her brain looks completely different than it did back then," Derek sighed again. "I need new ones."

"Alright, I'll get them then."

"Great."

Mimicking Derek's last word, Isaac rolled his eyes as he went to do as he was told, not ready to be spending the entire day with the guy who had interrupted his sleep all night long last night.

Seeing Isaac and Derek walk separate ways from where he was sitting in one of the exam rooms, Stiles shook his head and focused his attention back on the readings from his patient's CTs. Luckily, he also saw Ramsey walking by and got her attention to come and look over the scans.

"What's the matter?"

"Emily Colbert's abdominal CTs."

Taking a second to look them over, Ramsey looked at her intern with questioning eyes. "Is this girl overweight?"

"Not at all." Stiles countered. "She's fairly average."

"Then tell me what you see here."

He sighed. "Her stomach's been stapled. The scans are comparable to that of gastric bypass patients."

"She definitely had the gastric bypass." Ramsey agreed. "But it wasn't one that she's going to be able to live with."

x

With Peter by his side, Scott found Owen to let him know where the stood with his gunshot wound and the consequences from the so-called art form.

"Mr. Silk, this is Dr. Hale." Scott said, introducing them.

"Owen, please." He said, wincing a little bit at the pain that was sure to be coursing through him at that moment. "What's up, Doc?"

"Aside from deciding on whether your actually stupid or you just allowed someone else to do something stupid, my schedule is light compared to what you're going to be dealing with." Peter smiled at him genuinely.

"Oh, come on. I'm sure I'll be fine."

Peter listened to his lungs, not liking what he was hearing as he went ahead and also listened to his heart briefly. "You're running a fever, Owen." He told him as he wrapped his stethoscope back around his neck. "Which is a result of the stress you've put your body through with the gunshot. The bullet ricocheting off your chest caused a hemoneumothorax and fractured a rib."

"Damn." Owen sighed. "That's bad?"

"It's bad, but manageable." Scott smiled down at him. "It means your collapsed lung is full of blood."

"And how are we going to manage that?"

"Dr. McCall here is going to brain the blood by inserting a chest tube and then we're going to work on reflating your lung."

"Sounds somewhat beautiful, almost artful." Owen's eyebrows bobbed in interest. "Is there any way that I can watch?"

x

Stiles lead Mrs. And Mr. Colbert back into Emily's room after giving them the results of the tests he had ran on what was causing their daughter's upset in immune system. They were both pretty upset with her, something she had anticipated, because she opened her mouth before they decided to start screaming at her.

"I know, I know. I should have told you about the surgery. I'm sorry." Emily said, pleading for forgiveness.

"There's a healthy way to go about weight loss, Em." Mr. Colbert told her. "A million different things to go through before you should have even considered something as drastic as bypass surgery. In Mexico, no less!"

"It doesn't work for me like it does for everyone else!" She yelled back. "I've tried and I've tried, but nothing was working so-"

"So you decided to take the easy way out, just like you do with everything else?" Her mother barked. "I'm so over this entire thing, Emily."

"I'm not like you, Mom. My body is different."

"Excuses."

"Alright, alright." Stiles interrupted, stepping in to diminish the attack he knew Emily was feeling at the moment. "I suggest we get back to helping your daughter. And Emily," he looked over her with saturating compassion. "The best the to do is reverse the surgery you had done, and your parents are on board with the reversal of the bypass."

"No!" The decibel of scream emitted from her throat startled Stiles in a way he wasn't expecting could be humanely possible. "No, I don't want to change the bypass."

"This is about your health, Emily." Stiles nodded. "The gastric bypass caused serious complications to your body."

"But I'd rather not have to worry about my weight anymore, so I can focus on school." She looked Stiles warmly in the eyes, begging for his help silently. "I'd rather be skinny."

"You're only seventeen, so it isn't up to you."

He wished he could do something to help her, but her parents were right. She wasn't legal, so the decision wasn't her own. And once she read that in Stiles' dark eyes, she knew that there was no hope over the control of her weight, and with her parents at the helm, maybe her life.

x

"It's called Rasmussen's encephalitis."

Derek, with some help from Isaac, was telling Chevy Thames' parents about the results of her MRI since the CT's weren't as clear as they had been hoping for. But the MRI had caught everything, and they finally knew know what was causing Chevy's tremors.

"What that translates to is that the part of her brain that you see here, the black part? All of that is dead tissue, or on its way to being dead. The scans three months ago didn't show any of this, which is why she's gotten so much worse since you went to the hospital last. If we don't do something soon, the disease is going to kill her."

"Jesus." Mr. Colbert said, covering his mouth in horror.

"What do we do then?" Mrs. Colbert said, her voice shaking with emotion at the thought of her two-year-old dying without treatment. "Can you fix it?"

"The only thing for us to do is take out the diseased portion of her brain and seal it off. Spinal fluid with fill the empty section of the brain cavity, compensating for the area the dead portions were occupying."

"Remove it, like, the entire disease? But isn't that-"

"Half her brain?" Derek nodded, answering Mr. Colbert's question. "Yes. I know it seems impossible, that there's no way she can lead a normal life with that kind of procedure, but her age is what makes this doable. The remaining neurons will make up for the loss of so much brain tissue. If you give the okay, we can start as soon as possible." Derek stood up from his chair, dismissing the scans and reaching out for Mrs. Colbert's shaking hand. "I know how this sounds, but the major thing you should take away from all of this is that we can save her. This operation can work and she'll be the exact same daughter you've always had."

They gave their consent for the surgery, much to the chagrin of the attending who was going to be performing such an extensive operation that he hadn't seen since his years as an intern. It was risky, but exciting. And his own intern looked less than anxious as he had been about the procedure they were going to perform.

"Dr. Lahey?"

"What?"

The dismissal tone in the younger man's voice caused his eyebrows to furrow and concave in on themselves. He wasn't acting like Derek was expecting any eager intern to the news of such a surgery, which was a little alarming.

"Didn't mean to bother you, but if you don't want to scrub in on the hemispherectomy, you don't have to." He shook his head. "So decide whether or not you want in."

"In. Definitely in." Isaac nodded.

"That's better." He made a mental note to figure out what exactly was Isaac's problem with him when the timing was a little bit better than it currently was. "Go ahead and start the work up. I'll see you in the OR."

Walking away, Derek left to prepare for the huge surgery, hoping that he could keep his promise to the parents and give them back the daughter they had always known without further complications.

Feeling a lot better about working with Derek now that he was getting a crazy cool surgery to scrub in on, Isaac felt like he was floating on air. He was walking across the skywalk when he noticed Scott leaning against the railing, munching on a cookie he had gotten by the food cart a few feet away.

"Guess who's scrubbing in on Hale's hemispherectomy?"

Scott's reaction of wide eyes and loose jaw weren't surprising to her fellow intern. "Seriously?"

"It's crazy." He nodded. "We're going to cut a girl's brain in half, and she's going to be fine." Dawning on him suddenly, he sighed. "Which is making it really hard to stay mad at him."

"Why are you mad a Derek?" Scott pondered aloud.

"Nothing, nothing important."

"Did you finally find out about him and Stiles?"

"What? You know!?"

Rolling his eyes at the high pitch of Isaac's voice, Scott just shook his head and started to make his way back over to the food cart at the end of the skywalk. "You should know by now that I can get anything out of Stiles."

Since she was waiting on her patient's food to digest before she performed her procedure on the guy that had downed his girlfriend's keys, Allison found them then, grabbing a slice of pound cake from the food cart, handing the guy some money while Isaac's stretched in surprise eyes glued onto her.

"He knows."

"About Sterek?"

"Sterek?" Isaac wasn't familiar with what Allison was saying.

"It's their ship name." She rolled her eyes. "I hate that I came up with such a ridiculous one, but it works."

"It's been going on for, like, ever." Scott continued. "It never stopped, really."

"You're joking." Allison gawked in disbelief.

"Why didn't you tell us?"

"Stiles works hard all day, especially lately. He's got to unwind somehow, and we shouldn't care how he decided to do so." He explained to his friends while they grabbed some coffee from the cart, paying them man quickly as they started to amble back down the skywalk. "Some people like to knock back a few. You've even taken to baking now that Isaac's taught you the basics. Others like to share an orgasm with a hot surgeon."

"Who's getting orgasms with surgeons?" Munching on saltines to help subside her flu influenced symptoms, Lydia marched up to them and got into step with them pretty quickly.

"Damn, Martin." Isaac laughed. "You look like you need to be taken care of. Peter's got to be around here somewhere."

"Why are we friends with you?" Lydia scoffed, eating more of her saltines instead of really investing in listening to Isaac's, though true, misguided implications.

"Speaking of drinking," Isaac decided to change the subject. "I think Derek's anesthesiologist…I smelt alcohol earlier. He wouldn't be bold enough to drink on the job, right?"

"Don't get involved, Lahey. Bad idea." Lydia told him. "I gotta go. The thought of alcohol has me…" Feeling insolvably queasy, Lydia grabbed her stomach. "Nauseous."

Laughing at her misfortunate, her friends just cackled and viewed the great spectacle that was Lydia Martin running for a bathroom yet again, while they dispersed and got back to the cases that were threatening to overtake their senses for the day.

x

Unaware that his friends new everything about his "secret" relationship with Derek, Stiles was in Emily's surgery with Dr. Ramsey. He was assisting the resident with the reversal of the Mexican gastric bypass she had gotten. Stiles was handling the bowel, making sure to handle it carefully.

"It's full of gunk," Ramsey told him as she went back to resecting the organ while he held onto it. "So be cautious."

"Right."

"What was she thinking? All of this for weight loss?"

Shaking his head, Stiles scoffed. "She's dying for her mother's praise. It's the reason she even thought about the surgery in the first place."

"A parent's praise isn't worth this damage. Here, resect that."

Once he was handed the bovie, Stiles quickly worked on obliging his resident's request. After only a few minutes, he was finished and handed the bowel back to Ramsey with professional ease.

"When you're done assisting, you have a stack of post-ops waiting for you."

There was no way he wasn't up to date on the latest torture she was having him take as a consequence for being caught with Derek at the party. So he just gave her an acknowledgement that he understood. "I'll get to them."

"You also need to pick up the extra work around the clinic since Lydia has the flu."

"Look, I'll jump through your hoops, alright. Just tell me how high to jump."

Everyone in the room, including Ramsey herself, glanced over him for a beat before anyone dared to even move. Not many people got to sass Dr. Helena Ramsey and lived to divvy out the bragging rights about having done so. In fact, no amount of people ever had the honor of surviving through her rage to accomplish such a feat.

Knowing that he had misspoke, Stiles sighed deeply into his mask and shook his head. "I'm sorry. That wasn't right."

"It's not the only thing that isn't right." The glare he received was off the charts with hostility. "Since it's already on the table, would you like to explain what your exact plans are about your act of misconduct?"

"I already told you, I'll take your hoops with stride, but what I do outside the walls of the hospital are my business." Getting very defensive about the fact that his boss could not only get him in trouble but also Derek, Stiles went on, deciding to not hold back his true feelings. "I made a decision and I understand that you can't respect me for what I choose to do, but I'll deal with the fallout."

"Well then, I'll have plenty of hoops for you to jump through."

"Everything you've asked me to do has been done, without question or complaint." His turned his head to lock eyes with his boss, truly feeling like he had every right to stand up for himself and what he believed could amount to something great. He wasn't letting anyone get in the way of that know that he knew what he wanted. And what he wanted was Derek. If and when there's something else you'd like to throw at me, Dr. Ramsey, I can take it. I'm here for it. You don't have to agree with what I'm doing, so don't be afraid to bring it on."

Emily's already sensitive bowel decided that Stiles wasn't having the best experience that day as a doctor, so it decided to choose that moment to burst on a massive level, toxic waste splattering all over Stiles' face and chest, still hitting flesh that was exposed despite having protective wear on.

"We can attempt to repair the organ," Ramsey said, glad that her mask was hiding her wicked Cheshire Cat grin. "Now that you've drained the organ."

"Now my day is complete."

x

"Thanks for this chance, Dr. Hale." Isaac said as he finished scrubbing in for Chevy Thames' hemispherectomy. He was trying to put his feelings about being lied to aside, considering that Stiles had lied to him and not Derek, and was truly appreciating the fact that he was given such an amazing gift of participating in this once-in-a-lifetime surgery. "I really do appreciate it."

"You've done the work. Rewards are earned here, Lahey." Derek smiled at him as a nurse came up to him, handing him an expresso shot, his eyes welling as he looked at her with admiration. "I love you. Honestly, I do."

On the way inside the OR, Isaac passed Dr. Tyler again, the anesthesiologist from before. He thought he smelt the liquor again, but he brushed it aside like his earlier problems with Derek. He didn't need to put his career in jeopardy based on an observation that he still wasn't sure was justified.

"Big day for you," Dr. Tyler said, his breath potent enough to be caught on fire. "Not every day we see a hemispherectomy."

"I'm sorry, Dr. Tyler," He was going to regret this, he just knew it. Isaac knew that much, even though it was the right thing to do. Doing the right thing was going to backfire on him. It always did. "Dr. Hale, he…" He glanced at Derek, who just looked on curiously at the exchange in front of him. "Dr. Tyler, have you been drinking?"

"Excuse me?"

"I smell it on you, your breath." Isaac nodded. "Scotch. I smell the scotch."

"Isaac-"

"There's a two-year-old girl on this table." He stopped the lecture he knew Derek was about to initiate to him. "We have responsibilities and if there's a chance…"

"I don't need some brand new doctor telling me what responsibilities we have." Dr. Tyler rebutted. "And I don't take too kindly to false accusations. I wouldn't be here if I didn't understand the risks and were fully prepared to do my job."

"You're out of line." Derek said, still unsure of which one was telling the truth. But, there was a code among doctors to not ask about stuff like that, so he had no choice but to kick Isaac out of the surgery. "Isaac, you can watch from the gallery."

The intern left in a fury of feelings, under the assumption that Derek just didn't take his word for it. Which was all the more frustrating because if he wanted to, Isaac had the power to out his relationship with Stiles and they'd have to take at least one of his claims seriously. But he couldn't do that to Stiles, especially after everything he had done to Allison. So he left without dispute. Derek, scrutinizing Dr. Tyler with his keen eyes, walked over to him closely so that no one could hear them.

"You better not be lying to me."

x

Allison was completely done with her patient and his girlfriend. She was finally working on removing the keys from his throat, and all Arta was doing was yelling at PK for his wrongdoings throughout the entirety of their tumultuous relationship.

"I should have walked away when your mother was the one behind those calls you had me convinced were coming from other women." Arta displayed their dirty laundry for Allison and the two people helping oversee the small procedure to see in all its flaming wreckage glory. "Or I should have walked away when you called my therapist pretending to be your therapist, just to see what I was saying about you." Arta cursed. "You have no respect for me! None at all for everything I've done for you. And that's why this, this, is the last thing I'm doing for you. After this, I'm finally walking away."

During the small operation, PK was struggling to breathe since Allison had the scope down his throat, trying to get a hold of the keys. He couldn't say anything back to what she was screaming at him, but Allison could.

"Alright, Arta, that's enough. I need him to hold still and I let you stay in here so you could help him stay calm."

"How can I help him after everything he's put me through. This is just the tip of the iceberg of the messes he's made me clean up, for years!"

He started to choke, really choke, as the keys dislodged themselves and moved further down his throat. Allison shifted the scope to keep the keys from falling any more.

"What? What just happened?"

"The keys fell. Now can you please be quiet so I can concentrate?"

Finding serene in the newfound quiet of the room, Allison finally got a hold of the keys. "There." She slowly, so she wouldn't further agitate PK's throat, pulled back on the scope until PK started coughing from the empty feeling in his throat now, Arta's keys out of her boyfriend as Allison threw them in some water to wash off.

"Great work, PK. You did great."

"You bastard." Arta swore. "You caused them to fall on purpose, didn't you!?"

"Can I offer some advice?" Allison grabbed the keys and held them up for Arta to see, perfectly shiny and void of boyfriend casing. "Do us all a favor, and walk away. For good."

"You'll never find the place where I left it." PK struggled to say, a mischievous glint to his eyes.

Arta took the keys and stormed off, a sigh escaping from Allison's lips as she finished her one case of the day, ready to move onto something else that actually resembled medicine.

x

Ramsey and Stiles were walking down the hall towards the interns' locker room, where Stiles was seeking refuge. His patient's insides were still in his hair, and he smelt like actual garbage.

"I've never needed a shower so bad." Stiles said aloud, not really to his resident but needing to mentioning it regardless.

"I need a shower." Ramsey stated. "You should go back at tell the parents what kind of daughter they have now."

"I can't shower?"

"That would be a hoop, wouldn't it?"

Nodding and scoffing at the same time, Stiles just agreed with her. "Yeah, I suppose it would be."

Enjoying the look of defeat on his face, Ramsey laughed a little bit. Something that already made Stiles think that Hell had frozen over. "You can shower first, then deliver the news."

Turning into the locker room, Stiles saw Ramsey continue down the hall as he walked in. He passed Allison as he went for something in his locker, seeing the scrunched up look on her face as he made his way over to the back of the room, where a few showers were located. He sat on the bench, kicking off his shoes, when he saw Lydia laying down on the opposite bench, succumbing to her flu once and for all.

"What is that smell?" Lydia huffed.

"Me." Stiles sighed. "Well, my patient's insides all over me."

"Karma." Allison smiled.

"What does karma have to do with anything?"

"Nothing." She told Stiles, Allison not wanting to get into it with Stiles about the Derek situation just yet. "It makes me strangely happy. You look like a CSI victim. I'm just saying, karma's a bitch."

Slicing the small silence between the three of them as Allison put up her hair, Ramsey barged into the room, finding them and looking like she needed something really important from her interns. Which was always, but it still piqued their interest.

"Hale, Nephew Hale, needs an intern. Who's free?"

Both Allison and Lydia stood up immediately, ready to be chosen while Stiles remained on the bench, not really worried about a surgery when he still smelt like one.

"I'm ready, Dr. Ramsey." Lydia sniffled.

"You need to rest on that flu out of you." Ramsey chuckled, glossing her eyes over until their fell on Stiles. "You up to it, Stilinski?"

Allison scoffed. "Naturally."

"What the hell is your problem?" Stiles called her out, tired of the way she had been acting ever since he had walked into the locker room.

"You are my problem." Not needing to keep any modesty anymore, Allison released the full force of her candor. "Because obviously, you can service Dr. McDreamy in ways the rest of us can't."

"Whoa, you didn't-"

"Yes, I sure did."

"Hey!" Ramsey shouted over the two of them, annoyed at the disturbance her interns were causing her to create. "Martin, hemispherectomy in OR 1. Go."

She left quickly with Allison following quickly after her, not wanting to be in the same room with Stiles for another second longer. He flopped his head back against the wall, knowing that his roommates, or at least one of them, knew about him and Derek.

"Apparently," Ramsey slithered over, joy in her eyes. "I'm not the only one with hoops."

x

Lydia was psyched to be in on Derek's surgery. She didn't care about the drama that the other interns were facing with Stiles and Derek seeing each other or casually having sex together or whatever the hell it was they were doing. She was sort of doing the same thing, even though no one knew it, so it wasn't her place to cast judgment.

"From the frontal lobectomy, I'm then going to see what, Dr. Martin?"

Even as Lydia answered his inquiry correctly, Derek noticed that Chevy was starting to blink herself awake. "We'll encounter the anterior cerebral artery."

"Uh, right, and we're going to…" There, he saw it again. He couldn't look up to see what Dr. Tyler was doing with the anesthesia, so he kept working as he piped up. "Tyler, her anesthesia looks like it's waning." Chevy continued to blink, her head turning to the left as the gas started to leave her system. "Jesus, she's waking up. Tyler? Dr. Tyler?"

Taking the initiative, Lydia let go of one of the instruments she was holding, giving it back to Derek as carefully as she could when it came to holding an instrument connected to the brain. "Dr. Tyler?" She walked over to where he was sitting, but he didn't notice her.

"Oh my God…he's asleep!"

"Tyler!" Derek yelled, elevating his voice dangerously loud. "Dr. Tyler!"

That finally ended the cat-nap slumber of the anesthesiologist, startled by the blundering noise of Derek's vehement screams. He looked over and saw that Chevy was waking up, sliding his chair over to his machine to get the gas under control.

"Oh, sorry. That's my fault. My bad, Hale."

It was quite clear to Derek what was going on. And he was too mad to care about any codes or whatever else was holding back the actions he wanted to perform. "Lahey was right, wasn't he?"

"Please." Tyler scoffed. "I just nodded off for a little bit."

"Right, whatever gets you're through the day, hmm?"

"It won't happen again. I swear."

"You're right about that. Leena," Derek looked over at one of his scrub nurses. "Page Dr. Luddington, take over until she gets here. Get out of here, Tyler. Pull yourself together on your way out."

Chevy's surgery went on without Dr. Tyler without a hitch, and Derek knew what he had to do once he told resident that was in on the surgery with him to close. He took off his mask, searching the gallery for Isaac when Lydia did the same.

"That was amazing." She said, her voice feeble with awe. "I felt sick all day long until this and…thank you for that." Lydia smiled.

"I was exhausted. Now I'm exhausted again. Back to coffee." He finally found Isaac standing by the door of the gallery, gesturing up to the room for him to meet him once the attending left the OR.

He found him just outside the scrub room, awaiting the reasoning for their impromptu rendezvous. Isaac just stared at him once Derek was there, not really knowing what to do with him calling him down here.

"Look, I'm sorry about earlier."

"It's fine."

"No, it's not." The attending disagreed, knowing that he was in the wrong this time. "There's a code among doctors, that we don't ask about things that's not related to medicine…"

"I understand, I was out of line."

He went to leave, but Derek's voice cut the action off. "You weren't, I was." Spinning on his heels, Isaac wasn't sure he heard him right. But Derek went on, not giving him the chance to question it. "It should have been me. It should have been the attending doing the cutting to take responsibility. You didn't' deserve to be thrown out of the OR today. You did the right thing, code or no code."

Extending out a hand, Derek waiting for Isaac to take it. With some initial hesitation, Isaac gave him a tiny grin and shook his hand accordingly. Isaac thought that they were on good terms again, but he saw this look in Derek's eyes that said he wasn't sure of the same sentiment.

"You saw me leaving the house this morning."

"That was you?" he feigned ignorance, but Derek didn't but that either.

"I'm not favoring him, if that's what you think." He said, fully aware that it was the infinite truth. "He's talented, he's a good doctor. But I'm not using him."

"He's just really…good, alright? Don't mess it up."

"Mmm." Derek smiled, satisfied with the conclusion of their conversation as they let go of each other's hands, looking down at the younger man with a sharp brow. "Come on, let's go give Chevy's parents the good news."

x

"What happened?"

Scott had no idea. Owen Silk's vitals were plummeting rapidly as Peter ran over. Everything was fine. They had extracted the bullet from his chest cavity and drained the blood from his lungs. Something else was wrong. Something that they hadn't caught in time. And Scott was terrified when he realized what it was.

"Multi-system organ failure, secondary to overwhelming sepsis." Scott breathed on in horror.

"Let's fix his BP, that should help his mental status." Peter told him.

"He's had all the pressors he can." Owen's machine's blared once again, Scott staring, not believing what the readings were telling him. "V-tach."

"Defib pads on him, now!" Peter ordered. "Someone give him 150 of amnioterone. Charge to 200."

He had everything right. Owen was fine the last time he checked on him. There was something he was missing. Scott pulled up on Owen's sheets, seeing a freshly inked tattoo on his leg, one that was swollen and totally infected. "Dr. Hale, it's sepsis from infection." Worry pounded against his temples. "I didn't know; he didn't complain about the pain at all."

"It's not your fault, McCall. Charge to 200! Clear."

But it was too late. Owen had mistaken his threshold for pain, and ultimately fell victim to his high pain tolerance. Peter shocked him again at 300, but they both knew what was going on. The flatline taunted both of them, as well as the nurses and other employees around them. Scott looked to Peter, hoping that he was going to say anything besides what he knew the next words out of his mouth we're going to be.

"Time of death, twenty-four-oh-nine."

x

After telling Emily that she was never going to have proper nutrition for the rest of her life, only for her to be glad that she'd stay skinny forever, Stiles finally made his way home. He hadn't waited on Derek since he was still dealing with a patient, but since his friends apparently knew about them, he'd already invited him back over.

When he got there, Allison was the only one home. She was putting the last efforts of icing on cake she had made to work out her frustrations, something Isaac had taught her how to do just a couple weeks ago.

"I figured you'd be upstairs asleep."

Allison just shook her head, taking on a little laugh as Stiles set his bag down on the kitchen floor. He went over to the fridge and pulled out a beer, swiftly popping the cap and taking a large sufficient gulp of the contents inside.

"If you wait to drink that, you can use milk to wash down a slice of cake, baked full of love." She thought on those words, knowing they weren't right and that they needed amending. "Actually, it was made full of anger and all-consuming fury, but it doesn't taste like rage."

Stiles just leaned on the counter, taking another small sip of his beer. "You know."

"I know."

"Alright. So do you want the long, drawn out version or the short version who's summary is that I started sleeping with a guy who turned out to be my boss?"

"Neither. I know you slept with Derek the first time. I'm just annoyed that you kept doing it and didn't tell us."

"Allison, can't you just let me explain myself and-"

"No, I can't!" Her elevation of volume elicited another swallow of alcohol for Stiles. "Your parents are phenomenal surgeons, you went to Dartmouth, you live in this huge house!" Heaving, Allison steadied herself so that her words wouldn't falter. "I got through medical school by posing in my underwear. When I enter the OR, people pray that I'm the nurse." She paused to scoff at the act that had happened to her more than once upon starting at Seattle Grace. "So no, there's not an explanation that I'll accept for the simple fact that you already have everyone's respect without even trying. And you're throwing it away for, what? Surgeries? Some vocal-chord-destroying sex? Honestly, Stiles, what are you even doing?" She stared at him, ignoring the fact the he was rolling his eyes as he came over to the counter and sat down next to where she was standing. That's when she realized it and slowly sat down herself. "Oh, God. You're falling for him."

"I am not."

"You so are." Allison sipped on the glass of milk she had poured herself before Stiles' arrival home. "You poor, boss-loving fool."

"It's just that…he's so perfectly…and I'm trying to…" Stiles was really sucking at explaining himself and he knew it. But he couldn't come out and say that there wasn't truth to Allison's declaration.

"You're all full of secret feelings. You're doomed." Allison slide over her milk and a piece of cake she had already prepared.

He started picking at it the cake, abandoning his beer to sip on the milk after he took a bite. After taking a second bite of the cake, Stiles lightly slammed down his fists on the counter, annoyed at Allison and her magical talk-about-your-feelings cake and how delicious it was. "I hate you." She laughed at him, throwing her head back at his faux admission. "And your cake."

"Don't blame the cake, the cake is good." She nodded, feeling like the storm between them had brewed and the worst of it was finally all over now that Allison knew Stiles was with Derek for more personal circumstances. "Uh, so, tell me; How hot is the sex?"

He almost choked on his cake. "Allison!"

"What?! You know I'm not getting any. Just give me a couple details to picture later."

"You're awful."

They laughed together, sharing a small hug before Stiles retreated upstairs. When he was fixing the bed for his impending sleep that was so desperately needed, Derek walked into his bedroom, dropping his stuff on the floor as he closed the door.

"Allison let me in."

"Yeah. We've been found out."

"I know. They saw me leave this morning."

Sighing at the hardships he faced that day, Stiles just looked at Derek longingly, wanting to jump his right then and there for the fact that they didn't have to hide anymore. It was definitely a reason to celebrate, but after the day he had had, he just wanted to lay down and rest.

"Do you mind if we just-"

"Sleep?" Derek begged, his tone full of hope.

"Yeah?"

"Only if you want to." Stiles could tell by the way Derek said it that he had had a tiring day as well, and needed the reprieve just as much as he did.

"Thank God."

Shedding their clothes, Stiles and Derek crawled into bed, cuddling up to one another eagerly. Derek sprawled out on the bed as Stiles laid his head on his bare chest and they both almost instantly fell asleep, their bodies falling into the deep rest they craved after the obstacles that had made up their work schedules.

x

She knew that they had made plans to meet in the on-call room, but Lydia wasn't there when Peter had, assumingly, checked to see where she was. She wanted more than anything to be with Peter behind closed doors and continue doing whatever it was that they were doing, but she was behind a different set of doors.

The woman's bathroom to be specific. And for once during the flu-induced day she had endured, it wasn't because she was throwing up. It was because she had a feeling later in the day that she should check something, something that had been nagging at her in the back of her mind all day. And after taking three tests, just to make sure it wasn't some sort of flu created hallucinations, she was sure.

Lydia was pregnant.