Chapter 6

Warning: This chapter contains serious bashing of the Grey's residents. However, I'm trying to look at this issue from the way any reasonable hospital would've looked at what happened during the first three seasons of Grey's. Because, let's face, even by the standards of hospitals on television, what happened to them, particularly in regard to Denny, should have happened exactly the way Jack says it should. It may not make us feel good, but it was wrong, and there should have been consequences.

Miranda Bailey was not yet in charge of running Seattle Grace, but she knew it better than just about anyone else, maybe even more than her mentor Dr. Weber. She knew more about the professional and personal lives of everybody in the surgical program.

And she knew that the last two weeks had thrown a lot of wildness into an already chaotic hospital. Somehow, she considered at least part of what was going on with the interns to be her fault. She knew that the residents she had been training were ostensibly supposed to be in charge of keeping a watch on them, but having spent a year dealing with them, she knew the last thing that most of them were capable of was teaching, must less guiding. Still, on her worse day, she couldn't imagine Karev or Yang deciding to operate on one of the other interns for practice. And yet, somehow, Jack Shephard had caught their interns performing an appendectomy.

Heads were going to roll, and considering that crap tended to roll in the same direction, she thought there was a strong possibility that Weber was going to get fired. Instead, three days ago, Richard had called a press conference with the announcement that the Reyes foundation was sponsoring a donation of ten million dollars to the hospital, mainly to the psychiatric and ER fund.

Now, she'd had occasion to work with Hugo rather closely in the past year. Despite his cheerful, stoner-like demeanor, she knew him to be a shrewd businessman who had trouble keeping a secret. Immediately after the press conference ended, she got a hold of him. Hugo had seemed a little distracted, considering the occasion, but as soon as he saw her, he was completely honest.

"Jack told them they were coming for Richard's job," he'd told her. "He said that there'd been a lot of screwy stuff happening the last few months, and that this last thing, whatever it is, was probably going to get him thrown out on his butt. He said that a move like this would probably keep the board at bay, at least for awhile."

Jack clearly was more loyal than she'd given him credit for being, and more savvy - had he told Hurley what had really happened, there was a very real possibility every local affiliate would be on them in minutes. "And you just gave the hospital the money?"

"Honestly, I was thinking doing something like this on a larger scale in a few months," he admitted, "but considering my relationship with the hospital, I figured this would work on a smaller scale."

Anyone else, she would have considered this bull. But she knew Hurley cared less about money than just about anybody she knew. "Well, I don't want to seem ungrateful, but you know as well as I do that money won't solve the problems."

"Oh, I totally know that," Hurley told her. "Which is why Jack said he was going to have a conversation with you about it in the next few days. Said it was like hospital stuff that I'm better off not knowing."

"If it's so urgent, why not tell me about it now?" Miranda asked.

Hurley looked at her like she'd grown a second head. "Cause tomorrow's visiting day."

Miranda didn't question that. One of the things she admired about Jack, especially considering how fragile her marriage seemed to be right now, was how loyal he was to the woman he loved. She did, however, have a different question. "What makes you so sure we can fix what's broken?"

"Because acting in a crisis is what Jack does best," Hurley told her. "And handling people at this hospital is what you do best."

Jack had told Miranda a couple of times that Hurley was far better a leader than he let other people believe. But he also had a great deal of skill at seeing other people's strengths. And like she said, he was incapable of telling a lie.

So, when Jack approached her the next day, and asked if she'd meet him for a cup of coffee at a small shop that most of the doctors at the hospital didn't frequent, she didn't have to think five seconds before saying yes.

"How are things going with Tucker?" Jack asked.

"Fine," Miranda said automatically.

"Miranda. I know how tough it is keeping the best marriage alive with this kind of job." Jack told her.

Miranda actually had the grace to look ashamed. "I feel sometimes like I'm walking a minefield. Even when I know I've stepped on a safe space, it still feels dangerous to move."

"I wish I could give some good advice on that end," Jack told her. "But it was the opposite with my marriage. I ignored the fault signs for so long that by the time I saw the danger, it was too late." Jack shrugged. "I guess you have to keep going the bets you can."

"I'm glad you asked, Jack," Miranda told him. "Almost nobody in the hospital except for Weber and Addison do."

"Not that they're role models for Spouse of the Year either."

"What I mean is, you didn't bring me to a coffee place where nobody in the hospital goes just to grill me on the State of my Union." There was Bailey. "Now what's really on your mind?"

Miranda always was direct. "Hurley gave you my message."

"Thank you for having the good sense not to tell him about - the incident," Miranda said cagily. "Last thing we need is another strike against the hospital."

"That's why I wanted to speak to you." Jack gathered his thought. "After what happened, I had a long conversation with Richard. He told me about the battle for his job that happened about a month before I joined the staff."

"It did get ugly," she admitted. "Every doctor and his brother showed up angling for Richard's job. I was kind of shocked that after all that fighting, he ended up changing his mind." A light bulb went off. "Is he thinking about retiring again?"

"Not voluntarily," Jack told her. "But given the chaos that's been going on the last couple of months, I kind of figured it was a matter of time before the board said: leave or get pushed."

'So you arranged this with Hurley," Miranda shook her head. "I wish I had friends like him."

"Technically, you do." Jack told him. "He's made it very clear in all the talks we have how impressed he was with you setting up the clinic. Trust me, if Hurley likes you, you've made a friend for life. Besides, he was talking about doing something like this for a few months. I just got him to pull the trigger a little faster."

Now Miranda was looking at him funny. "Does this mean you're now angling for chief of staff?"

Jack actually laughed at this. "You're the second person in a week to ask me that question. And I'm going to give you the same answer. I've had enough of leadership to last me a lifetime. The last thing I want is to make it a career."

Miranda seemed a little perplexed by this. "You do know, given everything you've done for the hospital in the past year, you'd probably just have to ask to get the job."

Jack looked at her. "I wasn't a very good leader after the plane crash. First of all, I didn't really want the job. I kind of backed into it, my decisions were questioned every step of the way, I was wrong more often than I was right - and as a result, a lot of good people died. And to tell you the truth, I probably shouldn't have been the leader of the group. There were other survivors who were at least as qualified as me, and almost certainly had a better temperament for it."

Miranda looked at him. "I find that hard to believe."

"The night the plane crashed, you know the first thing Hurley did. He found the container that had the airplane food, and gave it out to the survivor. He asked everybody what we should about the bodies of those who hadn't made it. When everybody started getting depressed by how bad things were going, he found a set of golf clubs, and created a makeshift course."

Miranda managed to contain her surprise. "You're joking?"

"I won the first ever Island Open. No surprise." Jack turned serious. "Hurley would've made a great leader. You can see that now. But it wasn't in his demeanor to lead. He was just good at helping people, and that's what he did. Hell, its what he does now."

Miranda shook her head. "Anyone else I know?"

"There was someone else who was even more qualified than I was. One of the things we recovered on the second day was the transceiver for the plane." Miranda looked a little blank. "Pilots use it to send out an emergency distress call. Sayid managed to fix it, then he led an expedition to higher ground with a few other people to say if they could get a reception." Jack was quiet for a moment. "I had to stay behind to treat the wounded. He led them back the next day, mainly because the signal was weak. Then he gave a speech of his own, in which he organized people into rationing food, water and electronics. A few days later, I had the same ideas. Guess why they listened to me and not him?"

"Because Sayid was Iraqi?"

"More like because he was from the Republican Guard. He'd left them more than a decade earlier, but that didn't count." Jack actually seemed a little pissed at this. "You'd think on a deserted island, prejudice would matter less than surviving. I guess people are alike everywhere."

"Color me shocked." Miranda hesitated. "Still, I gotta say, for someone who's saying he doesn't want to be a leader again, you're sure doing a lot of things that could be viewed that way."

"I know that it looks that way. But like I said, I don't want to run this hospital. However, as you can tell, I've gotten a lot better at recognizing leadership qualities in other people. Which means that I'm more than capable of knowing who the best person to do it is."

Now Jack paused. Miranda got the message. "Well, you're not the first person to tell me that I'd make a good chief. Weber said that I was his choice when the search committee started its work the first time, and he said something similar a few months ago. But I've only been an attending for a year. Even he used all the pull he had left, there's no way the board would go for it."

"Like I said, I don't want to Richard to retire. Yet." Now that he was here, Jack wasn't entirely sure how to get his message out. "What I want is for Richard to keep his job for at least the next three years. By that time, with his support - and mine, at least - I think you can have the job if you want it."

It was very rare that Miranda Bailey was left speechless. Most of the attendings respected her, but she knew that even Addison would throw her to wolves if she could get chief of staff. Now Jack seemed willing to hitch his star to hers. "What's the catch?" she asked.

"This is where it gets slippery," he admitted. "Granted, I've only been in that his hospital a year and a half, but as far as I can tell, you meet nearly every qualification that the board would need to give you the job. You are an excellent surgeon. You have the capability to organize and carry out radical and difficult procedures. You're very good at raising money and staff for outside projects. You have a great rapport with patients. And you are a great teacher. There's only one real area where you are going to have a problem."

"This has to do with Denny," Miranda told her.

"There's a very good chance it's going to come back and bite Seattle Grace in the ass." Jack then told Miranda about the conversation he'd had with Erica Hahn before she'd left.

For understandable reason, Miranda was reeling. "How bad do you think it'll get?"

"I probably talked her out of going to the disciplinary board. But considering how pissed she was - and let's be honest, she had every right to be - Erica might go through with it anyway. Even if she doesn't, there's a very good chance her patient - or, just as likely, his estate - will hit Seattle Grace with an eight-figure lawsuit."

Miranda put her head in her hands. "Did you tell Richard?"

"I didn't have to. Hahn knew about what happened to Duquette. She went to Richard with it before she resigned." Jack gave a deep sigh. "He'll probably know before we do. "

"Crap." Bailey knew that a lot of bad questions were probably headed her way.

Jack asked one of them. "Miranda, did you know that Stevens was in love with Duquette?"

"I knew something was going on between them. Denny was one of my favorite patients. I thought Stevens was just friends with him, and I was distracted by dealing with my son." Miranda raised her head from her hands. "I know that doesn't excuse it-"

"Excuse it? Miranda, I'm the last person who should give a lecture about having a patient fall in love with you, but at least I wasn't the primary caregiver. The minute you even suspected something, you should've hauled Stevens off." Jack took a breath. "But that part isn't your fault."

"What is?"

Jack told her. It didn't take long. Miranda had to think about it for a couple of minutes. "I thought you said I was a good teacher."

"And you are. Surgically. But ethically, this hospital has been operating in an area so murky that only the blind could call it clear." Jack told her. "Part of it was the fault of people like Derek and Mark. But that's the real problem with this hospital. And its because of things like that that Yang can lie about the consequences of Preston Burke's hands after surgery and our interns can decide to perform appendectomies on themselves."

"You're telling me there were no problems like that at St. Sebastian?"

"I'm not going to deny that. We had sloppy procedures there all the time. My father did a lot of them. " He swallowed at the memory. "Still doesn't make it right."

Miranda thought about this again. "Assuming I agree with you, what can we do to fix it?"

"There's a lot of dry rot here. But I want to at least try something. Maybe it won't work, and I'll have burnt a lot of bridges here. But if Seattle Grace is to have a future, we have to deal with the present and right now. And that means putting the fear of God into the second years just like I tried to do with our interns."

"They're surgeons, Jack. They think they are God." Miranda joked.

"I know." Jack wasn't smiling. "That's why this'll work."

Jack had never been big on the surprise attack. In retrospect, it was probably why the Others had run roughshod over him most of his time on the island.. But, if nothing else, he could see that it worked. And he'd been preparing for something like this for quite a few months.

So, the next day, he had the five residents in the program paged to the hospital board room. He knew that Weber had promised to reveal who would get the solo surgery today, and that all of them had no doubt figured they got it. He really hoped that this would be the least of the disappointments they got today.

They all managed to arrive within a minute of each other. All of them seemed to be pushing to get into the room first. As was her want, Yang managed to somehow get inside ahead of everybody else.

"Where is everybody?" she demanded. Typical.

"You're only going to being meeting with me today," Jack said slowly. "Trust me, you really don't want there to be an audience for this."

Anybody else in the hospital would have taken the note in Jack's voice, and would've known they were in deep shit. Only O'Malley seemed to realize that something was wrong. Meredith was puzzled. Yang and Karev were annoyed. Stevens seemed distracted, as if she'd been pulled away from something more important.

"If this is about what the interns did last week, we've already dealt with it," Karev said.

"Actually, Weber and I dealt with it. We shouldn't have had to. They were your responsibility. You should have at least been aware your interns had decided to play 'Operation' on themselves."

Meredith and George at least had the decency to look ashamed at this. If anything, Christina was looking even angrier. "We handled it. They've been punished."

"What are their names, Yang?" Jack's tone got a little sterner. "Please tell me you've at least bothered to learn the names of the people who look to you for guidance."

Karev shot Christina a 'look-who-pissed-off-teacher' glance. "Wipe that grin off your face, Karev. Believe or not, the intern's decisions to start cutting on themselves is actually the least of your problems right now."

He finally had all of their attention. "Dr. Weber is in a lot of trouble because of what happened last week. And if this were an isolated incident, my guess is he'd been inclined to just wipe it from the board." Jack finally stood up. "He's a good man. A forgiving man. And its probably going to cost him his job."

Now they all genuinely looked worried. Jack was pretty sure that, at least as far as Meredith and George went, the concern was for Richard and not for themselves. He'd been a good teacher to all of them, and had backed them in the past. "They're going to fire him?" Meredith asked.

"Not now. More likely, he'll probably have to retire sooner than he wants. The sad thing is, if he were as ruthless as his fellow attendings, he could probably save himself. You know why he won't?"

None of them seemed to have put it together yet. Jack wasn't going to give them the chance to stall. "Because he's convinced himself that you're worth the effort. He believes that the five of you are the future of Seattle Grace. And if you are, we are all well and truly screwed."

Now Yang and Karev were starting to get angry. "Where- where do you get off on this?" Karev demanded. "You've only been here a year. You don't know half of what's going on."

Karev had just thrown a fat pitch right down the middle. And like A-Rod, he was going to take it downtown.

"Really?" Jack said. "Then let's pretend the boards are tomorrow, and review." He looked dead at Meredith. "Dr. Grey, I believe the night before your residency began, you had a one-night stand with the neurosurgeon who turned out to be one of your attendings?"

Meredith, to her credit, didn't flinch. "I didn't know who he was at the time."

"And yet when you found out, you started an affair with him. One that has been going on and off and on and off for two years."

"Who I sleep with is none of your business."

"No, but the fact that you've turned your specialty into neuro, the fact that you've been part of numerous surgeries of his, is exactly the kind of ethical behavior that the AMA frowns upon." Jack had actually been fairly pissed about this for awhile. "Isn't there any other neurosurgeon in this hospital you could be studying under? Or were just hoping that Weber would keep looking the other way until you became an attending?"

"Weber understands the situation," Meredith was still trying to defend herself..

"And maybe that'll work. As long as he's still on staff. But fine, we'll put a pin in that for now." He focused his glare on Christina. "You knew who your attending was when you slept with him. It's going to be a lot harder to excuse that one."

Yang didn't flinch either. "Burke went to Bailey with that. He was totally above board."

"Oh, that's a problem. It's not the problem." Jack paused. "When Burke got shot, he experienced tremors in his hand afterwards. Now, that could have been handled easily. But for two months, you acted as his hands in every surgery he scrubbed in on. "

"We didn't lose a patient on any of those surgeries."

The gall of this woman. "Yes, but it led to Richard offering him the position of chief of staff. I am pretty sure that constitutes fraud."

Yang at least had the sense to drop her eyes. "I told everybody what happened."

"When you couldn't hide it any longer. Tell me, Yang. Did you do it because it was the right thing for Burke? Or because you were afraid of how it might fall back on you? It couldn't have been because you were ashamed, because I was in the room, when you tried to argued that you deserved better treatment from us because of your work as - if I may quote you - as 'Burke's hand'?" Jack still couldn't believe she'd said that. "You sure you're not a guy, because that took quite a set."

For the first time since he'd known her, Christina Yang was completely at a loss. Rather than give her a chance to recover, he looked at Karev. "I've never been exactly thrilled at the way you stick your little meat thermometer in just about everything in this hospital with two legs, but hell, Sloan's been doing it for just as long, so I can't prosecute you for that. What is a problem is that last, while a patient was recovering from a severe trauma that took off most of her face, you began a relationship with her."

Karev was getting indignant. "It was never sexual, and she went back to her husband."

"Yes, but four months after that, she returned to Seattle, moved in with you, said she was pregnant - which turned out to be a lie - and attempted suicide. None of which, by the way, you felt required to report to your attending."

This was borderline unethical, but it was also the only area where Jack felt something like a hypocrite. After all, he'd carried on the exact same behavior with Sarah over a period of six months before they'd gotten married. Had Karev known that, he could have easily called bullshit. The fact that he remained quiet was a sign that the young doctor really was traumatized.

"But really, all of these ethical slips and sexual affairs, are frankly irrelevant, because even if I were set all of them aside, none of you should be here dealing with them."

Now he looked at Stevens, who had to know this was coming. For some reason, though, her eyes were focused on another corner of the room, almost as if she wasn't paying any attention at all.

"Thirteen months ago, the five of you conspired to defraud the UNOS system in order to get a heart for Denny Duquette." Stevens winced a little, but continued to look elsewhere. "This fraud, resulted in the death of a patient, and has since forced the man who would have received his heart to keep waiting for another year. That's the main reason Hahn resigned, in case any of you cared."

If he didn't have Stevens attention, he sure as hell had everybody else's. "All of you should've lost your jobs, your licenses to practice medicine, and depending on how far certain people would press it, facing prison time. Remind me again. How did Weber punish you?'

There was a long, awkward silence. Jack made no attempt to fill it. He wanted them to tell him. Finally George, the only one he hadn't castigated yet, spoke up. "He had us throw a prom for his niece."

Jack just let it sink in. "Richard is a good man. And he knew that if any of this got out, Seattle Grace would have probably had to close its doors. That's the real reason he let you skate. I don't know why he decided to give you a second chance, Stevens. Particularly considering that you received nearly nine million dollars from Duquette's estate less than a month after he died."

Stevens finally spoke up for the first time since she had entered the room. "I didn't keep the money."

"Yes, you used it to finance a free clinic. Maybe you thought you were doing a good thing, but if an outsider were to look at it, there's an excellent chance that they might see it as a quid pro quo. Seattle Grace gets a hefty cash donation, you get your job back, and all's right with the world." Jack fixed her with a look. "Can you imagine what's going to happen if a decent civil attorney were get a look at this?"

From the look on Izzie's face, it was clear the idea had never even occurred to her. These were people who'd had four years of college before medical school. They were either incredibly naive or just too focused to even consider the alternative. Jack didn't know which possibility was more frightening.

"I've tried to maintain a neutral opinion of all of you. I know how hard it is to be a resident. But if we dropped to twelfth place two months ago, I have to consider the possibility that it's at least partially on the five of you. And if what happened last week is a reflection of your teaching abilities, Seattle Grace is royally screwed."

Most of them at least had the good sense to look a little ashamed at this. Except Yang, of course. "You weren't here. You're not in charge of us. What are you going to do about it?"

For the last year, Jack had been trying really hard to get a handle on his self-righteous attitude towards, well, basically everybody. He'd forgotten that, particularly among other surgeons, he was a novice at it. He did, however, have an ace up his sleeve.

"None of you are curious why I'm tearing you new assholes instead of Bailey or Weber?" he asked slowly.

George got it first. "Um, Christina."

"Yesterday afternoon, with Weber's permission and Miranda's blessing, I have become your advisory resident. The solo surgery has been postponed until further notice. The five of you are under probation for as long as it takes for you to become decent physicians."

"We're in the middle of our second years," Karev didn't know when to shut up some times.

"Yes, surgical residents. Though I'm sure you've convinced yourself otherwise, the two are not one and the same." Jack looked at them. "Most of you have the bedside manners of Gila monsters, unless of course, you decide to sleep with your patients. You're lousy at filing your paperwork, you leave trauma patients as soon you decide its not a major case, and we've already discussed how woefully inadequate you are as teachers. However, you are competent surgeons, decent at clinical work, and as far as I can tell, you have reached the absolute limits of your natural abilities."

Jack had managed a true accomplishment. He had gotten the surgical residents to shut up.

"For the next month, you're going to devote yourselves to becoming healers. You're going to be doing clinical work, as many shifts in the ER as I can arrange, and if your interns have a problem, they go to you first, second and always." Now he looked Christina dead in the face. "That means more than giving them numbers. When I think you've learned a modicum of what takes to be a doctor - not a surgeon, a doctor - then you'll get back in the OR. Of course, if your interns pester you to attend a surgery, you will be more willing to let them."

"Oh, one more thing. Then I will shut up. Some of you will no doubt be tempted to run to attendings you have become -" he paused deliberately "close to, and tell them to go over my head. Before you that, please remember Weber and Bailey have signed off on this, and that should they try to go over their heads, remind them that they are in, ethically questionable positions. I don't want to damage the careers of my fellow attendings - you've done a fine job of that on your own - so you might want to consider what's best for the hospital. For once."

Jack knew that there's was a very good chance he was exceeding his authority - this may have been a lot further than even Bailey had been willing to go. Besides that, he liked Derek and Addison. They were probably going to see this as making a power play of his own But this was about more than bruised egos and damaged relationships. Seattle Grace was in trouble. Now he knew damn well, he couldn't fix a lot of the problems with the hospital, but somebody had to do something to hold in check these residents. And since no one seemed willing to do anything, he had to try. After all, he was still regarded by quite a few people as an outsider. Besides, people respected Miranda Bailey, and they still called her 'the Nazi'.

As it was, the residents remained absolutely frozen for a few seconds. "What are you still doing here?" he demanded. "I did my homework. You each have an average of two days of charts to get finished up with. You'd better hurry, if any of you want to have a chance at actually seeing patients this week."

The five of them left the room without so much as a word. He had a feeling that was just for his benefit, and they'd start bitching about it the minute they got out of earshot. Jack didn't care.

He was back in a leadership position, albeit a modified one, and this was the first decision in awhile he'd felt confident about making