Sorry, I didn't get around to update yesterday, but here it is now...
Chapter 43 Walk The Line
Pediatrics was one of Meredith's least favorite specialties but as she wasn't supposed to be in the hospital at all it was better than doing sutures in the pit. She didn't like to look at sick children and she didn't like to deal with most of the attending of the department. Dr. Miller was an accomplished surgeon in his late 50s, a know it all, a cocky person with a terrible sense for fashion. He had changed his workplace three times in the past two years and there was constant rumor about the circumstances of these changes. She knew that he had done his residency at Seattle Grace around the same time as her mother did hers. They had butted heads before when Meredith had witnessed how he dropped a retractor in the OR and she could feel that he clearly did not like her. She sensed that it was not a good day to be working under his service.
He led her into the room of a ten year old girl. "This is Melissa Hunt. She had an appendectomy at Seattle Pres two weeks ago and is complaining about constant abdominal pain ever since. They told her she was fine, but her mom disagrees and brought her here. I need you to take her for a CT and run all necessary tests. You are in charge of this patient. Page one of the nurses if you are finished so we can schedule the surgery."
"What if she needs surgery immediately?" Meredith wondered looking at Dr. Miller.
"Oh, it's just healing pain, I'm sure. I'll be at lunch in an hour, so you better be quick." He smiled and left the room.
"This is all Derek's fault. If it wasn't for him, I'd have ignored her. I wouldn't have went to that stupid dinner at their house, I wouldn't have felt bad and I would have just ignored her. Lexie and I wouldn't have bounded and I wouldn't feel like this right now. I wouldn't feel so bad right now and I wouldn't have gotten this flu from sitting in the rain with Cristina." Meredith ranted to Alex while waiting for the results of the blood test.
"Crap! Crap! Crap!" Meredith said looking at the results of the test. "Look at this Alex."
"That kid needs surgery." Alex said. "Have you paged Dr. Miller?"
"Yeah, Dr. Miller left me in charge of the patient and left to have lunch, dinner or whatever. He doesn't answer his page. What am I supposed to do?" Meredith wondered.
"Page him again."
"I told the mom I paged him 10 minutes ago and she keeps insisting that Melissa needs surgery. She's a nurse, she knows he needs surgery immediately and I can't get a hold of the attending." Meredith told Alex who was studying the chart for a third time.
"I'll page him, I've been on his service before." Alex said. He knew Dr. Miller was difficult to work with, but he had managed to be stay at the better side of him, but he didn't answer his page either. Five minutes later Meredith came back after talking to Melissa's mom. "Still no news?" she wondered looking at Alex.
"No" he said. "We have to get her to the OR! Her vitals don't look good."
"Page them, I'll get Bailey. We need to get him to surgery, I'll talk to the mom." Meredith told Alex.
"We are going to be in trouble for this" Alex reminded her.
"I know, but we are going to be in a lot more trouble if the girl dies and her stats are not likely to get better. If anything happens to her, that's on me right now. So I'm going to make the call to get her into the OR." Meredith insisted and hurried to the patient's room.
"Melissa needs surgery, this sort of abdominal pain is not normal." Melissa's mother told Meredith when she walked in.
"I know and if I could perform this surgery on my own, I would. Sorry, Miss Hunt. I tried to get a hold of Dr. Miller, but he doesn't respond to his pages. I'm trying to get another surgeon who is authorized to perform this surgery." Meredith explained the situation. "Dr. Bailey is going to perform the surgery on your daughter and we get her to the OR now."
The surgery went well and they found the source of the pain. A sponge. They had left a sponge in there! Dr. Bailey was about to close the patient when Dr. Miller came in yelling "What do you think you are doing here?"
"Saving the patient's live." Dr. Bailey said and Meredith added "You didn't respond to your page. I paged you multiple times. You didn't answer."
Dr. Miller was in a rage "This is unbelievable. You can't take over surgeries like this, I'm going to report this to the Chief. You cannot page me if I'm having dinner at the bellavita. Have you ever tasted their tiramisu?"
Dr. Bailey remained calm, but interrupted his rant asking "Do you know the five rules for interns Dr. Miller?" Dr. Miller looked puzzled.
"Tell me rule number 2, Dr. Grey" Bailey told Meredith in a more friendly tone.
"Answer every page at a run." Meredith smirked.
"Did you, Dr. Miller?" Dr. Bailey wondered.
"No I'm an attending. I had lunch. I'm going to have you suspended, Dr. Karev and Ms Grey fired. Just because she's Ellis Grey's daughter doesn't mean you can run around the hospital and book ORs and schedule surgeries as you please" Dr. Miller yelled and Bailey and her former interns exchanged puzzled looks.
Derek found Meredith vomiting into one of the bushes in front of the hospital. "Are you okay, Meredith?"
"No Derek, I'm not okay. Susan is dead, Thatcher blames me, Bailey and I saved a little girl and Dr. Miller wants to get us suspended for it. And my father told me to stay away from Susan's funeral." Meredith said nervously.
"Why?" Derek wondered and hugged his wife.
"Little girl in peds, Miller told me to examine her, run the tests, when the results came back it was clear that she needed surgery immediately, her stats were through the roof, so I paged Miller for like 20 minutes. He didn't answer so Alex and I paged Bailey and scrubbed in with her. We were almost finished when he walked in and was mad." Meredith explained.
"It's going to be fine, Richard will understand." He told her.
"God, I hate this day. Why is family so messy?" Meredith asked Derek and put her head on his chest for comfort.
His eyes started to sparkle when he began to talk about his family. "because the payoff is so great, you might not have experienced this because you never had a family, but it's great. They are the people you can still go to if you are in deep shit trouble or pain, they catch you and I want you to have that. To have someone you can go to, I want to be that person to you and I want you to have that when I'm gone, I don't ever want you to be alone. I want you to have a family because you are amazing and you deserve a family. People you can count on no matter what. My sisters and I give each other crap all the time, but we are there for each other if it matters."
"We'd make beautiful babies." Meredith giggled. "They'd have Alzheimer, but they'd be pretty"
"Want to start now." Derek asked flirtatiously.
"Derek, we are at work and we talked about this and hospitals are the place to have a child, not to conceive it." Meredith told him and gave him a little stare.
"We could find an empty on call room and practice for a while." He begged.
"I don't think we need to practice. You know what you are doing." Meredith laughed.
"I know, but it's fun - this practicing." He whispered into her ear.
"You are unbelievable and I have to go. Chief's office." Meredith insisted after she looked at her pager.
When Meredith entered the Chief's office Karev, Bailey, Dr. Miller and Chief Webber were already waiting for her. "Dr. Grey, Dr. Miller has just consulted me and said you took one of his patients to the OR without consulting him, can you explain this to me?"
Meredith knew she had to be confident, so she elaborated her professional opinion I did, but I would have consulted him if he would have answered my page."
"The kid didn't need surgery immediately." Dr. Miller insisted
"3 surgeons disagreed. I consulted Dr. Karev and Dr. Bailey. They saw the charts and the girl. They agreed. Melissa needed surgery immediately." Meredith insisted and explained all the details.
Richard nodded and asked Dr. Miller to leave the room. "Alright, Dr. Miller, you can go now, I'm going to take care of the situation. Dr. Bailey, Dr. Karev, please wait in front of my office for a few minutes."
"Meredith, I'm going to pretend to yell at you now, so look scared and offended." Webber told her and started to yell
"You did what any sane person would do, there are going to be no consequences because I had a look at the charts and I agree with the decision you made. He left you in charge, it was your call, you did nothing wrong. You are not going to be on his service any more, but I think you can live with that and we have a new pediatrics attending coming here in a few weeks, so it's not too bad. Same goes for Dr. Karev." Meredith put on the most terrified and angry face she could think off and mumbled "Thank you, Chief." before she exited his office.
"Are you off the hook?" Derek asked when a smiling Meredith came through his office door.
"I am, how do you know?" Meredith wondered as she sat down next to him.
"You are smiling." Derek said and replicated her smile-
"and, Derek, I do have a family. Izzie, Alex, Cristina and you, you are my family. And Lexie isn't too bad either. A year ago I had my mom, and now you are here and it's amazing." Meredith told him. "We give each other crap, but we are there for each other when it matters."
"Any word about who is going to be Chief?"
"No, it hasn't been decided yet. You'll just have to wait." Derek told her "But patience has never been your strong side"
"Hence the marriage hours after we met" Meredith laughed.
"Want to scrub in on a craniotomy?" Derek asked casually.
"No, Bailey asked me to scrub in with her." Meredith declined his offer.
"You blow me off for Bailey." He said and pretended to be disappointed.
"I don't, she asked me first and she saved that little girl today and we want to talk about Dr. Miller. See you at home." Meredith got up, waved goodbye and exited the room.
After her surgery with Bailey Meredith and Cristina met in the deserted hallway to talk. It had been a while since they got to do it. "George screamed Izzie's name during sex."Meredith blurred out as she arrived.
"He screamed Izzie while doing Callie, man" Cristina repeated.
"That's what Callie told me." Meredith nodded.
"Is she going to leave him?" Cristina wondered. "Man, we Seattle Grace residents have some track record when it comes to marital drama."
"I don't know, she was angry, destroying cement bones with a hammer." Meredith explained. "Really scary"
"George is an idiot." Cristina concluded.
"He is" Meredith agreed. She immediately remembered the conversation in the car on the way to the wedding. Callie had been determined to make things work, but it seemed like there was a connection between Izzie and George that their marriage couldn't overcome.
"I miss having sex" Cristina said as she grabbed another granola bar.
"Well, I have great sex." Meredith said with a big smile on her face.
"Don't brag, Meredith, don't brag"
"It's really good."Meredith kept smiling.
"Meredith, if you don't want me to explore how this fork looks in your neck, you better shut up right now." Cristina threatened looking in Meredith's eyes.
"Alright, I'm going to head home before that happens. Have fun." Meredith told Cristina before she left the hospital.
