ix. landslide

(song by fleetwood mac)

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When you're an intern working 48 hours shifts every second day, it's easy to find yourself developing bad habits. Poor sleeping schedules, unhealthy eating, no exercising... But those were all things Nina didn't have a problem with; she slept when she could at the hospital, she practiced yoga in between surgeries and went for jogs whenever she could, she even cooked her own meals – not that she was a super good cook but things were eatable and healthy –; her real problem was her social life, or lack thereof.

It wasn't like she didn't go out with friends, now that she was back in with the interns they went out after almost every shift. However when it came to people who didn't have to spend as much time inside SGMW as she did… She couldn't keep up. Her friends, who were also mostly interns or doctors themselves, understood completely that life gets busy sometimes but her family was a completely different story.

"Mom, I told you." Nina sighed into her phone as she walked out of the intern's locker room followed by Sarah and Miles. "I can't leave, I'm in the middle of my internship, I can't ask for time off now."

"Two days, Kahlani, that's all I'm asking for." Her mother stressed it.

"I'm sorry, ok?" She started to explain but her mother cut her off.

"Are you?" Her voice became a little louder, which was very unusual for her. "Because I don't know if I believe that… I mean, you were never very good at keeping contact or telling me what's going on in your life… But you call me in February, telling me you've been living in Washington since October!?" She closed her eyes; she knew her mother would bring it up again. "And you expect me not to even wanna see you?"

"Mom…" The three stopped walking when they saw Leo coming in their direction with the coffee they've asked for.

"No, Kahlani. I am your mother; I need to know that you're safe, healthy..."

"Mom, I'm fine." She interrupted before her mother could continue to guilt-trip her. "I promise I'll visit as soon as I can, but I can't right now. Maybe in July, after I take the intern exam, ok?"

"Kahlani." Her mother sighed.

"I have to go now, I've gotta work. Talk to you later, bye." She rushed into the goodbye before her mother could say anything else and hung up the phone.

Her mother had been trying to get her to go home for a few days ever since Nina told her she had moved to Seattle, something she only got the courage to do a couple of days ago. She understood that her mother was worried and just wanted to see her and make sure that nothing was wrong but on the other hand, she knew her mother would have a lot of questions and you can't hang up on someone in real life.

"Your mom wants you to go home?" Leo asked, catching the end of the conversation, with a laugh.

"Yeah." She rolled her eyes while taking her Mocha Latte from his hands. "My stepdad has this new store or studio opening or something, they're throwing him a party and she wants me go."

"Oh, that's sweet! Why don't you?" Sarah frowned. "You could ask for two days off, it's not a big deal."

"No, no, you don't get it." Nina laughed bitterly. "My stepdad is like... A businessman." She tried to find the right words to explain. "He owns a bunch of clothing stores, fast food franchises... A couple of years ago, he invested on a movie production company." She rolled her eyes. "Why would she throw him a party for opening a new store? It's just an excuse for me to go home, so she can grill me about why I left Chicago... And I'm just not ready to talk about it with her."

"Ah." The three nodded in understand.

"Why did you leave Chicago?" Miles asked.

"Seriously?" Nina squinted. "I'm not ready to talk about it with my mom, you think I'm gonna tell you?" She teased him and the others laughed.

"I bet Karev knows." Leo said in a sing-song voice.

"Aw." Nina gushed in a fake-sweet voice. "Are you jealous that I have other friends?" She pinched Leo's cheeks for good measure and he swatted her hands away with a roll of his eyes.

The interns gathered to watch Derek's big speech which was actually kind of lukewarm and disappointing but Nina didn't want to admit it because that was her mentor and she wanted to be supportive. Well, he probably wasn't her mentor anymore. As the new Interim Chief of Surgery, she imagined Derek wouldn't have much time to perform surgeries, let alone teach an almost-clueless intern while he was at it. Damn, her day was starting off rough.

"Hey." Nina smiled small as she walked up to Alex after her intern friends left to go look for their residents. "My mentor is the Chief. I'm out of a mentor." She complained. "Is that selfish to say?"

"A little." Alex shrugged one shoulder as he took her coffee from her hands and took a gulp out of it.

"Can I be with you today?" She asked after snatching her coffee back.

"You don't want that." He scoffed and she raised her eyebrows. "I'm on Peds."

"Oh." She winced. "Never mind then… I'm just gonna go to the pit." She shrugged and he laughed.

"You know, that's not how being an intern works. Your resident is supposed to tell you what to do, you don't get to decide." He pointed out with a shake of his head.

"Yeah but my resident could not care less." She reminded him. "I think Yang likes better when I'm not around her actually. I usually just stick to Shepherd but…" She shrugged again, gesturing with her hands to the stairs where Derek had walked up a few minutes ago.

"I think she likes you more than you think. She gives you free realm, she never did that with her other interns." He commented as the two started to leave the hall.

"Haven't you noticed?" Nina grinned cheekily. "I'm not like any other intern." She laughed at the look on his face before saying bye and going down to the pit, another day of suturing ahead of her.

Working on the Emergency Room truly wasn't as bad as everyone liked to make it seem, it was just… A little boring. While interns are eager little creatures, always trying to get themselves into surgeries; the pit wasn't the best place for that. Sure, every once in a while a surgical patient would come in but usually it was just someone who did something dumb and now needed a couple of stitches to fix it.

Nina's current patient however, Nate Ortiz, was an aspiring boxer that had severely miscalculated the force of his training opponent's punch and ended up with facial lacerations, a dislocated shoulder and possible bone fracture on his leg from taking a weird fall. He was definitely surgical and in desperate need of an ortho consult.

"Dr. Torres." Nina greeted the attending when she found her by a nurse's station with Mark and, surprisingly, Miles.

"Hey, what's up?" Callie responded with a smile.

"I have a patient, down in the pit, who needs an ortho consult, he's got a dislocated shoulder but I think there might be some bone fracture on his leg."

"Oh, ok. Let's go." She nodded for Nina to follow her.

"I…" The intern hesitated. "Uh, I would also like to request not to be on his service." Nina said quietly.

"Ugh, why? Is he an ass?" Callie groaned, imagining that would be the reason the intern would reject a possible surgery.

"No." Nina shook her head. "He's a nice guy… Funny…" She explained, painfully aware that she was gonna have to give a real reason.

"Why are you getting rid of him then?" Miles asked. "He's surgical." He widened his eyes as if to tell her to stop being dumb.

"Uh, no reason." She mumbled. "He's ortho. I'm trying to find a Neuro case."

"Yeah, I don't buy that." Mark interjected as he leaned over the nurse station.

"It's nothing, ok?" Nina rolled her eyes at the two's questions.

"Oh, now you got all of us invested." Callie scoffed. "What's wrong with this guy?"

"Ugh." She groaned, shaking her head and looking around for an escape route.

"Come on White, kill the suspense and just tell us why you're trying to get rid of him." Mark complained.

"Ok, you wanna know?" She rolled her eyes. "The patient is the hottest man I've ever seen in my entire life, and he's nice and funny and keeps flirting with me." She spoke quickly, making the three stare at her with increasingly desires to laugh. "Which isn't a good thing! Because I have sworn off men but when he flirts with me I wanna have sex with him. And I can't." She sighed at the end of the sentence before turning to Callie. "If I walk into that room again and he flirts with me one more time… I'm gonna jump his bones." The three laughed out loud then, not being to control it anymore.

"…He's that hot?" Callie raised an eyebrow.

"So pretty it makes me wanna cry."

"Ok, nobody is that good looking." Mark scoffed.

"He's probably not…" Miles said, teasing his friend. "She hasn't had any in a while."

"Miles!" Nina complained loudly. "Don't talk about my sex life with our bosses!" She whispered to him as if Mark and Callie couldn't hear it.

"How long is a while?" Mark smirked as he raised his eyes at the interns.

"Please." Nina begged Callie to let her off the hook and away from the comfortable situation.

"Why don't you go look for Arizona?" Callie suggested, smirk still in place but feeling bad for the intern. "I think she had something of a mystery today."

"Peds?" Nina scrunched up her nose but, after receiving a glare from the attending, changed her mind instantly. "Peds! Love me some Peds!" She squealed before walking away.

For a few seconds, while she looked for Arizona, she wondered if anyone would notice if she just went home; that's how much she didn't want to work on Peds. But alas, the undying thirst for surgery was something very hard to keep down and the intern found herself sticking with Alex as he checked on his patient in the I.C.U. Brad Walker was a teenager who came in with complaints of abdominal pain; Alex and Arizona had performed an exploratory laparoscopy prior to Nina joining them, to see what was wrong but he became unstable during surgery and they had to place a central line, but it kinked, so they had to put in a chest tube.

"Do you really think Shepherd's gonna cut all of us?" Reed suddenly entered the room, interrupting as Alex and Nina changed Brad's bandages.

"What?" Alex frowned.

"The Mercy Westers. Do you think we're all gone?" She questioned him again, to Nina's annoyance because she still had not forgotten that lie / gossip the resident had told Derek some weeks ago. "I mean, just tell me if you think I need to start looking for a job." Nina smirked to herself as she kept quiet; pleased to hear her concern.

"Is there a reason our son is in I.C.U.?" An older couple walked into the room, clearly the teenager's parents.

"Did you figure out what's wrong?" The woman, probably his mother, asked.

"Uh, not exactly." Alex stopped his work to look up at the parents.

"Why does he have a tube in his chest?" The woman questioned as she looked over the unconscious boy. "You said you were doing abdominal surgery."

"Brad became briefly unstable in surgery, so we had to put in a central line." Alex started explaining to the parents. "Well, it's got a little kink, so his lung, it started…"

"Alex!" Nina called out for the resident when she noticed the blood in his chest tube.

"Hang on." The father interrupted. "Are you saying you cut into our son for nothing and caused more damage?"

"Wait. What?" Alex frowned at the man's words.

"Blood." Nina called his attention louder, Reed joining her as she noticed it too.

"Blood. There is a lot of blood in the chest tube." Reed said to him, standing by his side.

"What? Oh, my god." Alex spoke softly. "Get-get a chest tray and some gloves." He said to the intern and she turned to start doing so.

"He's already put out 700 CC's of blood." Nina informed the resident as nurses started coming into the room.

"What's going on?" The kid's father demanded to know, noticing how intense it suddenly got.

"Sir, you need to leave right now." Nina spoke to the worried father.

"Like hell we're leaving. Somebody tell us what's going on." He complained loudly, still looking to Alex in anger.

"He's crashing." Alex announced to the room. "Page cardio and Robbins."

"We can't wait for Cardio." Nina turned to her friend, worried that it would take too long for someone else to get there.

"Crap!" Alex shook his head as he was gowned by the nurses. "I need to open him up." He said what the intern had already been thinking. "Scalpel."

Helping Alex crack a teenager's chest in the I.C.U., under the fearful stare of the kid's parents, with that much tension in the air… It was intensely awakening, if Nina had to choose the words to describe. For a few seconds, she felt like everything had faded away; the sound of the nurses and Reed speaking, the beeping from the machines, the yells from the parents… Nothing mattered, aside from Alex with his hand inside the boy's chest as he tried to find the source of the bleeding.

"Let me in." Teddy walked up to the bed. "What happened?"

"He put out more than 2 liters of blood in the last five minutes, but I think I found the source, 'cause the bleeding started to calm down." Alex explained it all in one breath.

"All right. Jump on. We're moving to the O.R." Teddy commanded before turning to Nina. "Page Cristina Yang."

Scrubbing into Brad's ruptured aortic arch dissection repair with Alex and Teddy was incredible, the highlight of a weird day for the intern. It almost made her rethink her dislike for Peds. But it also kind of brought something new to Nina's perspective: Alex Karev was a badass. She had worked with the resident before, she knew he was capable and skilled from the moment she met him on her first day at SGMW; he was the only one who took initiative and followed her advice on starting a crike on the burn victim, Cathy Becker.

"Man, that was really cool." She gushed in a breath to Alex at the end of the day, finding him coming out of the resident's lounge.

"What? Me yelling at his dad?" Alex scoffed with a smile and Nina laughed.

"Well, that too but I meant the surgery and you! You-you were amazing! The way you just put your hand inside his chest… I… Wow." She told him, grinning as they walked together.

"Look at that… You almost sound like you liked working in Peds." He smirked at her.

"I wouldn't go that far." She giggled before turning to him fully. "But you. Seriously… You were great today." She smiled at him, her voice coming out as sincere as she felt. "I think Peds is really for you."

"Yeah." He smiled with a shrug as he looked up at her. "I think so too."

They got into the elevator together and pressed for the down floor before Alex asked if she wanted to get some drinks, which she agreed but as they walked across the street she remembered she had promised to meet the other interns at Joe's bar and they'd probably be waiting for her.

"It's cool, I'll head home then." Alex said to her.

"No, come on. You can join us."

"I'd rather not." He shook his head, laughing under his breath and she rolled her eyes.

"Ok." She sighed before grinning. "The sooner you get home, the sooner you get to the gift I got you."

"What? You got me a gift?"

"Yep." She giggled. "Meredith helped me; it's in your room."

"You talked to Mer?" He asked with raised eyebrows, Nina rolled her eyes at the question.

"Didn't I say that she was gonna end up liking me?" The two laughed. "Seriously, go home and enjoy my present."

"Fine." He laughed. "See you tomorrow."

Nina never really considered herself to be someone who was afraid of things; she thought she was the exact opposite actually. Fear, to her, was just that tiny and annoying flutter in her stomach before she had to make a decision. She could usually ignore it and go with what she wanted but ever since her relationship with Jake ended, she had become more reserved and hesitant. Hence why she couldn't even remember the last time she had sex; it's literally been that long.

The thought of going back out there, dating again, meeting new people, having sex… It would mean that it was really over, and she hadn't been ready for that before now. But today, treating that boxer in the E.R. who couldn't stop staring at her and giving her compliments… She felt ready or at least halfway there.

"So." Miles came over to their table with their beers. "Nate Ortiz, the boxer, gave me this." He said before taking a piece of paper from his pocket and handing it to Nina.

"What is it?" Sarah asked before craning her neck to take a look at the digits written on paper, Nate Ortiz's phone number. "Oooh."

"What?" Leo asked confused from the other side of the table.

"He asked me to give Nina his number." Miles explained with a grin.

"Are you gonna call?" Sarah asked eagerly.

"No." Nina rolled her eyes before tossing the piece of paper back in Miles' direction.

"Why not?" Leo frowned. "You said it yourself, it's been five months." The three snickered and she huffed at the teasing.

"I'm just not ready to date men right now…" She explained the best she could, as she still hadn't told the interns about Jake and their marriage.

"Date men…?" Leo repeated with a frown.

"Oh." Miles grinned wider after gasping slightly. "You're into women too!"

"Occasionally." Nina shrugged to the two boy's delight.

"Well… Are you ready to date women?" Sarah asked as she looked at her friend.

"Maybe… I guess. I don't know."

That was the only thing she had to say before her three friends became determined to find a woman in the bar for her to go home with that day. Nina found it a little annoying at first, before she started laughing at her friend's critiques of the women around and ultimately becoming invested when they pointed out a pretty brunette sitting at the bar and nursing a shot of whisky.

Maybe she was already buzzed, maybe it really had been too long, but Nina found herself approaching the bar and striking up a small conversation with the woman. Her name was Stella, she was 22 and worked in a chocolate store nearby; she had gotten out of work and stopped for a drink before going home. It was nice, Nina thought, the chase; before she found herself kissing a strange woman in a bar filled with her work colleagues to her friend's loud enthusiasm.