Thank you all so much for reviewing the last chapter!
23rd November
3:10 P.M
OLIVIA
"Okay, Olivia, can you give us your account of what happened the night of the twenty-second?"
"I...I don't really recall all of it." she swallows dryly. Her palms are slippery with sweat, and she drags them across her thighs.
"Try." the blonde woman says firmly, her eyes following her trembling hands.
"I...uh, I was on the night shift in the surgical ICU and ...and around one a.m we learned that they had a trauma case in the OR and we should prep for all possibilities. They got out of surgery at around eight, which is when the patient -" she takes a pause to breathe, willing her voice to stop shaking. "Was brought down to the ICU. She was stable-ish, vitals were okay, but Dr. Weber ordered us to monitor her closely."
"Define stable-ish?" the man asks, looking curious. "I must say, this whole medical thing is all above my head."
"She...she was still under but she was intubated and we started ventilating her, so her oxygen saturation was good, and her pH and everything else was starting to go back to normal." she answers. "But about ten minutes later, she started to crash, so my supervisor paged the surgeons on the case -"
"Who all were paged?"
"Dr. Shepherd, Dr. Shepherd, Dr. Weber and that blonde lady from Seattle Pres who's taking over from Dr. Burke, I don't remember her name -"
"You took orders from a surgeon you don't know?" the woman scoffs.
"Dr. Weber was the lead surgeon, he gave me my orders."
"Did you follow them?"
"Of course I did, I was watching Mrs. Garvey like a hawk -"
"And yet Mrs. Garvey will be having her funeral in two hours." the woman sighs. "What happened after that?"
"Well, the blonde doctor showed up first but like I said we barely knew her and my supervisor didn't know her at all -"
"So what, you stood around waiting?"
"We did not." she snaps, feeling her cheeks burn. "She was hypotensive, so we pushed fluids and by then Dr. Shepherd showed up and we know her, so when she asked me to check the patient's glucose, I did. It was dangerously low, so she asked me to give the patient D50, which I did, but it didn't work, she had a seizure. Dr. Derek Shepherd was there by then and he ordered lorazepam, which was able to stop the seizure, but she later went into cardiac arrest. Dr. Addison Shepherd and the new lady tried to resuscitate her, standard ACLS protocol, but her heart did not restart, and they pronounced her dead after forty minutes of trying."
"And did you agree with the treatment? Was there anything more that could have been done?" the man asks, licking a drop of coffee from the corner of his mouth. His tongue leaves a damp trail of spit on his skin, and she stares at it, glistening in the light. It looks just like the mark on Melanie's cheek when they pulled out the ET tube, and she had wiped it off gently. She remembers feeling slightly guilty, but doesn't remember why.
"No." she answers firmly. "They did everything that could be done."
"Everything? Perfectly on time?"
"Ye-" she begins. And then she stops. She remembers Melanie's husband in the doorway, his hulking, weeping shuddering bulk, the sound of his despair wrenching at all of their hearts. "There was a slight..disagreement...between Dr. Addison Shepherd and the new doctor. About which drug to use."
"Oh." the woman says, looking interested. "Explain."
"Well, Dr. Shepherd thought glucagon would be useful - it makes more glucose available for your cells to use - but the blonde doctor said that the dextrose would be faster and that they should continue with that."
"So who won?" the man asks.
"At first Dr. Gayle disagreed about the glucagon too-"
"Who?"
"Dr. Gayle, he's an internal medicine resident. He disagreed with Dr. Shepherd initially, but the patient began having convulsions again, and he changed his mind. Shepherd ordered the glucagon, and I administered it."
"Well, did it work?"
"No, she went into asystole. Dr. Gayle started compressions, then the blonde lady took over, then Addison Shepherd, but she was getting hard to ventilate, and after forty minutes -"
"They decided that she was dead, yes." the woman says impatiently. "Do you think the time wasted arguing about the...the glucagon, is that it? Do you think that time would have been vital in saving Melanie's life?"
"I...glucagon takes a while to start having an effect." she says nervously. "I don't know what difference two minutes could have made."
"But you're saying it could have?"
"I'm not saying it absolutely wouldn't have." she says after a few moments of deliberation.
"Thank you, Ms. Jankovic." the man grins disconcertingly. His cheek is still wet. "That's all."
4:30 P.M
DEREK
"Okay." Callie mutters. "There... we go. It's on."
They all lean towards the laptop, peering closely at the fuzzy image.
"I still can't believe you managed to get them to release the tapes." Callie marvels, tweaking the video forward a little.
"I know the guy who in charge of them, I operated on his son last year." Addison says. "Esophageal atresia."
"I can't believe we're doing this." Karev mutters, glancing at the closed conference room door. "If we get caught, we're dead."
"I thought you had bigger balls then that." Addison teases.
"I can't get fired." Karev whimpers. "I have two hundred grand in student loans, bills, rent...I'm a freaking intern. Everyone thinks I may have cut an LVAD wire. I'll never get another job."
"You'll never get another job because you're an insufferable douchebag." Addison says languidly. "And you don't bathe."
"Let's just watch the tape." he says before Alex can retort.
They stare in silence at three minutes of ... nothing. The corridor is silent at the beginning of the time frame they've narrowed down, which is between the time Addison would have left her office sans bag and the time the next person enters it.
Which isn't very specific at all, he realises, when he sees one of Addison's fellows duck into the room with a pile of folders, which he leaves without.
"That's Barton, with the pre - ops for that day." Addison explains. "I asked him to leave them on my desk for me to read when I got back."
"Anyone else who would have had reason to be there?" he asks, forwarding to the point where they can see the next person opening the door.
"She's a NICU nurse, with discharge papers for the babies who were supposed to go home that day."
They sit through a drug rep, who never makes it through the door because a passing nurse shoos him out, a resident leaving her a stack of research articles she asked for, and Barton again, taking back the pre-op reports since her surgeries had been canceled.
The sky outside the windows has darkened by now, and they can see the lights coming on in the hallway. They see doctors streaming into their own offices, chatting in the hallway, leaving for the night. The janitor comes by with his mop, swabbing his way out of sight.
"Wait." Addison digs her nails into his arm. "I don't know that guy."
Its a dark haired man, in light blue scrubs and a white coat. He walks down the corridor fast, head down, and they only see the top of his head and his sneakers as he slides into her office. He leaves seconds later, as empty handed as he was when he came.
"Who else wears those scrubs?" Callie ponders. "The surgical interns and residents..."
"The fleas." Alex adds, referring to the trainee internal medicine staff. "I think the perfusionists and surgical techs, too."
RICHARD
"Larry -"
"Not now." Jennings says tersely, shouldering his way past him. He sucks into the restroom after Larry, trying not to be offended that it's slightly nicer than the ones on the main floor.
"Larry. They requested Hahn to come in for questioning."
"I know." Larry snaps, leaning over the counter. "Shit, you think I run this place half-asleep? Of course I know."
"Well, what are you doing about it?" he asks tersely. "She could bring this whole place down."
"Maybe you should have thought if that before that goddamn bitch intern cut the whatever wire."
"Are you suggesting that was my fault? I accept responsibility for the medical training of our interns, Jennings, their moral compasses are not my concern."
"You hired her." Larry snarls. "You tried to cover up her mistake. Do you know what's going to happen, now? Erica will blab, and we'll be investigated. We will lose our status as a transplant center. We will lose the millions of dollars that brings in, which means we'll have to start cutting staff. That means we'll end up closing the ER, and we'll lose our status as a level one trauma centre. That brings doen our rankings as a teaching hospital, and before you know it we're some hick hospital doing hernia repairs and taking out tonsils."
"That's the least of our worries." he reminds him. "The lawsuit -"
Larry laughs hollowly, shaking his head. "Of course. We'll lose the Shepherds, which leaves our rankings in the toilet."
He feels suddenly cold, staring at Larry's drained reflection in the mirror. "What do you -"
"You don't think Garvey will let this go, do you? I mean, he wants blood. Someone's going down for this."
"You would throw your own surgeons under the bus?" he demands. "When did you turn into such a -"
"The hospital is withdrawing support for the doctors implicated in the death of Melanie Garvey." Larry says heavily. "That's why I'm here. I'm supposed to fix my tie so I can go out and say that to a bunch of cameras Garvey has sitting outside. Haven't you seen the news, Weber?"
"No, I've been working my ass off trying to save the people who have stood by you." he fumes. "Laura from legal says she thinks she knows what happened, she's found some sort of...connection -"
"Richard, if they sue the hospital, we're sunk." Lary hisses fiercely. "We can't afford that kind of payout, not if we settle and especially not if this goes to court -"
"So you hang them out to dry?" he yells. "This is their careers we're talking about, Jennings. Their reputations -"
"Addison Shepherd fucked up her reputation the minute she gave that woman whatever -"
"She didn't." he yells back. "You really think she injected it herself in a busy OR? That was Alex Karev. Addison never suggested checking the blood glucose in the OR - that was Derek, because he was suspicious about the amount of edema he was seeing. The vials were in Addison's bag, sure, but there were none of her prints, just an unidentified partial. I trained that woman myself -"
"This isn't solely my decision, Richard. The board thinks we need to start damage control."
5:00 P.M
CALLIE
"It could be that dude Maxwell." Alex suggests. "The perfusion guy - he has hair that color."
"Maxwell's taller." she and Addison say in unison. Derek stares at them.
"What? Women notice these things." Addison says, patting Derek's hand.
She still feels a little bad for having interrupted what should have been a private moment for them, but she couldn't stand to be alone, and they are the only ones in her predicament.
"This guy is heavier." she points out. "And look, he's got a little bald spot beginning. Right there."
"Maxwell has nice hair." Addison agrees. "Not as nice as yours, honey." she adds to a bemused Derek.
"Ooh, I hope it has your hair." she says to Derek. He stares at her like he thinks she's totally loopy. He probably does think that.
"It...you're knocked up?" Karev splutters. "Whoa. I mean, uh, congratulations."
"Thank you." Derek beams.
"Or it could be Brooker?" Addison suggests.
"Brooker has a ponytail."
"Keiser?" Derek asks. "The tech?"
"He was definitely off that day, I remember because Bailey was complaining his substitute was slow prepping the equipment she needed." Karev supplies. "She was on a total rampage."
They stare in defeat at the screen. Addison offers coffee. Derek snaps that she shouldn't have any. She retorts that she isn't a rat. Alex scratches his head.
Her phone buzzes with a text. It's Bailey, asking where the hell she is. She tells her, and asks why she wants to know, but Bailey doesn't reply. Typical.
5:15 P.M
RICHARD
"Don't do this." he warns. "You can still back out, Larry."
"It's for the best." Larry says uncomfortably, eyeing the clutch of reporters outside the door of office of the Chief of Surgery. "Thanks for letting me use this office."
"I didn't say you could."
"I never asked." Larry replies.
The reporters are Melanie's friends, colleagues, acquaintances. They are furious, maybe rightly so. He tastes bile at the back of his throat as he thinks about what will happen next.
"Chief." Bailey yells, elbowing her way through the gaggle. "Outta my way! Chief!"
"What is it." Larry gripes.
"I resign." she says. "If you throw those doctors under the bus, I resign."
"Go ahead." Larry says.
"This is my letter of notice." Bailey spits, tossing a folder on his desk. "You'll also find letters from Jim Nelson, Jeff Russell, Janine Swender, O'Malley, Lee from ortho...let's see, Rafei from plastics, Brodsky from uro and ... oh yes. Preston Burke."
DEREK
"Gayle." Addison says suddenly. The rest of them stare at her over their mugs.
"What?" he asks. She's worrying him now, oddly floaty, drifting in and out of the conversation. She's been like this since that man assaulted her, and he checks her pupils discreetly.
"Gayle." she says, setting down her tea. "Derek, remember Samuel Gayle?"
"Yeah." Karev says slowly. "He started out with us, but he was under a different resident, not Bailey. I think he -"
"Flamed out." Addison says. "He was good, but... I don't know. He started fumbling, messing up. Twice I had to pull him up for dosage errors, and his basic skills were sloppy."
"Nelson reported him for prepping the wrong patient." he remembers now. "Took him to Richard."
"He looks just like that." Addison points to the image still frozen on the screen. "I'd know him anywhere."
"What do you mean? You threw him off your service in like three seconds." Alex snorts. "It's why I was so pissed I had to work with you for all eternity."
"Gee, thanks." Addison replies sarcastically. "He was... flirty. I remember that. He was actually rather inappropriate, with the nurses...with me. I asked him to apologise and leave. Gracefully."
"When was this?" he asks, feeling oddly irritated. Before, she would have told him about something like this, or at least mentioned it in passing. He's not a stranger to the fact that his wife is simply someone who attracts attention - he even used to tease her about it, and the few times it did get out of hand she diplomatically managed it on her own, without having him go all Cro-Magnon, as she called it.
"Months ago." Addison frowns. "Just after I signed my contract, I think."
Well. He wasn't paying enough attention back then to notice what would have been happening.
"Yep, definitely him." Callie says. "I'd know those awful sneakers anywhere."
"Why would he be in your office?" Karev asks. "Who's his resident now?"
"I don't know." Addison mutters. "I ... requested not to work with him again. Richard arranged it, actually."
If she didn't want to work with him...it must have been serious. Addison is the consummate professional - if she can work alongside her husband's mistress and her sneering friends, she isn't going to let a out-of-line junior get to her.
It must have been serious.
"You never told me." he says.
"I...did." Addison replies, confused. "I think...I know I did. We had lunch together, once, because we had a complicated surgery right after and I needed to know he was up to date on it. He started following me around after that, asking me to have lunch, or coffee... the last straw was when he barged into the on call room while I was asleep and just sat down on the bed. It was weird but not something I could call out as harassment, but when I mentioned to my charge nurse, the rest all came out saying he was inappropriate and lewd. I talked to Richard, and we agreed he shouldn't be on my service anymore."
"You turfed him to Neuro." Alex recalls. "That annoyed Grey."
He can feel Addison's eyes on him, but his mind is racing too fast to meet her gaze. "I sent him with Nelson." he admits, shame flooding his face. He foisted the kid on Jim, never even wondered what could have made Addison mad enough to cut his rotation short and throw him off her service. She's berated interns before, but she prefers to keep them close until she can straighten them out. Like she's doing with Alex.
When Gayle turned up one morning, he recalls he yelled down the hall for Jim because he had a surgery and he had told Meredith to scrub in. He thinks Nelson complained several times, about trivial but irritating errors the intern had made.
And then he heard that Jim had reported him for what could have been a catastrophe - he prepped the wrong patient - but he never followed up on what happened. Addison would have wanted the reason she fired Gayle kept quiet - that kind of thing always gets twisted unrecognisably in the hospital grapevine. And Richard isn't really great about telling him anything these days.
"The Chief said he could reapply for an internship in medicine at Seattle Grace." Karev tells them. "He had a great record in med school even if he was a dumbass pervert, so he got in."
5:45 P.M
BAILEY
"How did you -" the Chief gaoes, the folder of resignation letters dangling loosely from his fingers.
"Loyalty isn't all as dead as you'd think it is." she says pointedly, glaring at Jennings. "When people heard what you were planning to do to them, everyone wanted in on the plan."
"What did you do, march down the hall beating a drum?" Larry growls.
"Actually, sir, I walked into the cafeteria and handed out paper and pens." she replies. "They wrote these on the spot. Except for Dr. Burke, who is unable to write. His hand keeps shaking, a fact worsened because his surgeon is busy being stabbed in the back."
"Jesus." Jennings moans, sinking into the Chief's chair. "Richard, can you hold them off? I need to call a meeting of the board and -"
"Dr. Weber?" Patricia asks, peeping through the door, jostled by the newspeople. "There are some -"
A man forces his way in, patting his jacket smooth as he catches his breath. "Who's Weber?"
"Me." the Chief says. "This isn't really the time, Mr. -"
"I'm with the Seattle police department, I'm in charge of the investigation of Melanie Garvey's death. Detective Young." he holds out his hand. "I need to know if you fingerprint your employees."
RICHARD
"It's part of the background check." he explains. "We investigate whatever turns up."
"Don't imagine much ever does." the detective muses. "Bunch of doctors...not exactly overrun with convicts, are you?"
"No."
"We got a pretty good partial off the vials, after the guys in our lab used some fancy new machine of theirs." Young continues. "So good I left your Dr. Hahn before I could interrogate her. This is a good solid lead, doc."
"Don't call me doc."
"But when we ran it through our database, nothing turned up, not anywhere in the country." Young blithers on. "So I thought, hey, maybe the docs have their own little database and that could help us narrow things down."
"How intelligent."
"And there you go." Young crows. "Print matches to a Dr. Gayle. You know a Dr. Gayle, doc?"
This...is more dramatic than I ever intended. Bollywood movie -dramatic. Anyway, I hope you like it.
Please please please please please review and let me know what you think!