i. no tears left to cry

(song by ariana grande)

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There is a moment in everyone's life when they find themselves staring straight into their turning points. In movies, it usually happens when you walk into your partner cheating on you or when someone dies; but it doesn't always have to be that extreme. The turning point is different for everyone but what comes after it, that's pretty much the same: change. Kahlani's turning point had come a few months ago and, like the stubborn rebel she had always been, she tried to ignore it. But you can't ignore a turning point, no matter how hard you try, because it feeds on your negligence and disregard until you find yourself at your breaking point. She could still remember the night she came close to breaking and that was the night that gave her the strength to change. Now change... Change is a bitch, change hurts, change obliterates but you do it anyway because you want to believe that it will be worth it on the long run; you want to believe that happiness or hope or fulfillment, whatever it is, is just around the corner.

But Kahlani White, or Nina as she preferred to be called, wasn't the kind of girl to believe in all that gibberish; oh no. She believed in going after what you want, building your own destiny and not taking crap from anybody. Now that, that was the reason she found herself in Seattle of all places. A rainy city she had never set foot in before, ready to start her first day as a surgical intern in a hospital that had just gone through a merger. Ok, so that might not have been the best idea she had ever had but she was sticking with it because Seattle Grace, now Seattle Grace Mercy West, had a very well-known residency program and Seattle is... Let's just say, Seattle is very far from Chicago while still being far enough from Los Angeles, making it the perfect place to live for now.

Nina had a fairly normal morning; she woke up at five am, meditated a little, went for a jog and had breakfast but, unlike the last couple of days, today she had work. She had only been living in Seattle for the last two days, which she had used to start unpacking but as she left the studio apartment she was now renting she was glad she didn't have a lot of things because they wouldn't fit into the shitty place her intern salary could afford anyway.

Being an intern wasn't anything new to Nina; she had been one for almost four months now and she had even started to feel a little over-confident in her skills back in Chicago but, as she walked to her new workplace, she couldn't help but feel somewhat nervous. It was a new hospital after all, filled with new people who wouldn't trust her as far as they could throw her because she was the new girl. Nobody ever trusts the new girl. But she was too type A not to believe she could show them.

"Chief Webber?" She politely asked after knocking on the door, as she walked into the Chief of Surgery's office; being told to do so by his secretary.

"Yes?" The older man looked up.

"I'm Kahlani White, sir." She introduced herself, walking closer to his desk as he got up. "I'm the new transfer intern." She offered her hand with a smile.

"Of course, Dr. White, we talked on the phone." He shook her hand with a smile of his own. "Please sit down." He gestured to the chair in front of his desk.

"Thank you, sir." She sat down, mentally preparing to grovel a little. "And thank you again for this opportunity, your hospital has one of the best surgical residency programs in the country! I'm incredibly grateful to be a part of it."

"And we are lucky to have you." He smiled at her words. "Dr. Hyams put in a very good word for you; she complimented you so much that I still don't understand why she ever let you go." He joked and Nina laughed politely.

"I'll always hold Dr. Hyams very deeply to my heart, she taught me so much but I needed a change of scenery..." She explained with a small, calculated smile. "Turns out, I like rainy better than windy."

After her talk with the Chief of Surgery, Nina left for the intern locker room where she could change into her scrubs and start looking for her resident for the week. There were only a few other interns inside as she walked in and they didn't stare much as she found herself an empty cubby and started changing.

"Hi." One of the interns approached her after she had finished pulling on the light blue scrubs. "You're new?"

"Yeah." She smiled. "Nina White." She offered her hand. "Transfer."

"Leo Madsen." He introduced himself while shaking her hand and pointed to someone behind her. "That's Sarah Hatcher." She looked behind her to find a brunette who nodded at her with a small smile.

"Where are you coming from?" Sarah asked.

"Chicago, Northwestern Memorial."

"Oh, great program! Why'd you move?" Leo asked and she looked up at him with a funny face. "None of my business!" He laughed, putting his hands up. "I got it."

"Let's just say I didn't like the East Coast much." She shrugged with a small smile.

"Who's your resident this week?" Leo asked.

"Dr. Yang." She answered, quickly noticing the two other interns wincing. "That bad?"

"Yep." Sarah laughed under her breath. "And on your first week..." She placed her hand on Nina's shoulder as she walked past. "Wouldn't wanna be ya."

"Can you point him out for me though?" She asked them as the three walked out of the locker room.

"Sure." He nodded. "But Yang is a woman, just so you know."

As they walked the hallway, Sarah pointed out a woman of medium height and black curly hair who had her back turned to them as she seemed to write on a chart at the nurse station. Nina smiled at the two interns as she nodded to thank them and took a deep breath as she approached the resident.

"Dr. Yang?"

"Yes?" The resident acknowledged her as she turned around to see her.

"I'm Nina White, I'm a transfer intern, and I was assigned to work with you this week." She tried to sound assertive.

"You're the new intern from Northwestern." Yang nodded in understanding and then seemed to give her an once-over from head to toe. "You're not another model, are you?" She asked with a frown.

"Uh... No." Nina frowned.

"Good." She rolled her eyes and turned around again. "Five rules." She started to speak again as she handed a chart to a nurse. "One, don't bother sucking up because I already hate you and that's not gonna change." She looked back at her with a smirk then back to the nurse station to grab something. "Trauma protocol, phone lists, pagers." She pointed and Nina quickly grabbed a pager for herself. "Nurses will page you, you answer every page at a run, understand? Don't be lazy, that's rule number two." She started walking away and Nina followed her closely. "You're an intern, a nobody, the bottom of the surgical food chain, you run labs, write orders, work every second night till you drop and don't complain!" She looked back at her sternly and she quickly nodded. "On call rooms." She opened the door to an on call room to show her. "Sleep when you can, try not to have sex with colleagues." Nina frowned at this. "Trust me, never ends well." The resident rolled her eyes and continued walking. "Rule three, don't wake me up unless the patient is dying; if they're breathing you better not bother me. But if you do bother me, that patient better not be dead when I get there; that's four." She stopped walking in front a patient's room. "Rule number five is that when I move, you move." Weirdly enough, the resident simply stood still then.

"Uh... Aren't we moving?" Nina asked.

"When I stop, you stop too." She entered the patient's room and Nina followed.

"Hey." The patient greeted Dr. Yang. "How are the Mercy Westers?"

"I hate them." Yang responded as she plopped down on a chair, Nina following into the room not knowing what to do.

"Who's this?" The patient pointed to Nina.

"My new model intern, Northwestern." The resident answered, making Nina frown. "Northwestern, meet Dr. Meredith Grey."

"Oh, if you're giving me a nickname I'd rather be called Chicago." Nina scoffed as she nodded in acknowledgment to Dr. Grey.

"You think you can choose your own nickname?" Meredith asked with a smirk.

"Well, since you're discussing it in front of me..." She shrugged her shoulders.

"Why don't you go get me a chocolate bar, huh, Chicago?" Yang commented with a roll of her eyes.

Lunchtime couldn't have come sooner. After running around all morning doing whatever it was Dr. Yang commanded, like getting her coffee and chocolate or running labs, Nina felt annoyed like never before. She quickly grabbed something to eat and scanned the cafeteria for somewhere to sit, finding Leo sitting with a guy she didn't know.

"Yang is the worst." She complained as soon as she sat down. "She keeps calling me Model or Chicago, I'm pretty sure she already forgot my name and she met me today." She rolled her eyes as she continued her rant. "I don't know why she doesn't like me, people usually like me, I'm very likeable."

"It's not you." Leo laughed at her rant. "That's just Dr. Yang." He shrugged.

"Plus the merger is just bringing out the best in everyone." The guy sitting next to Leo added with sarcasm. "Miles Woodley." He introduced himself.

"Nina White." She tried to give him a smile but she was frowning too much. "Are all the residents here like that?"

"Well... No one is as bad as Yang, to be honest." Miles told her.

"Maybe Karev." Leo added. "He's an ass."

"Yeah." Miles shrugged. "But there are a lot of new people too after the merger... We don't know them well enough yet."

"Don't even get me started on the merger." Nina heard a female voice say from behind her before Sarah sat down next to her. "Dr. Reed is a major bitch."

"Wow, you two are not having a good day." Leo laughed at the two female interns.

It was already night when Nina found herself sitting next to Sarah as they both waited for Leo to finish donating blood, having done the same just minutes ago. The day had been quite slow, Nina realized as she sat there; all she did was scut work all day, she didn't even get to see the pit once.

"Look." Sarah elbowed her and she looked up from watching the blood leave Leo's arm. "They're being paged." She pointed to the two residents who had just run out of the room.

"911." Nina whispered before looking at Sarah.

"ER." Sarah whispered back.

Both interns got up at the same time and bolted from the room where the blood drive was taking place. As they walked to the ER, trying not to run, Nina couldn't help but feel excited; she missed this feeling, the running through the hallway because there might be surgical patients' feeling.

"What do you think it is?" Sarah asked with a small grin.

"Three residents paged... Really bad MVC?" Nina tried.

As they walked into the ER, they gasped as they looked around. It was packed with people already and more were being brought in, everyone was everywhere, trying to help wherever they could.

"Mass casualty." Nina whispered right before locating Dr. Yang going to meet the ambulances and following her. "Dr. Yang, I'm here. Can I help?"

"Uh, you're an intern; you can help by not getting in the way."

Nina stood back at the dismissal, instead watching as the patients came out of the ambulances; a man with an axe still stuck on his upper body was carried out of the ambulance, then a teenager who seemed to have most of his body burned and an older man who was barely awake. Dr. Yang and a few other doctors Nina wasn't familiar with followed with the last patient.

"Roy Mackinaw, 56 year old firefighter. Fell three stories from a ladder, looks like a hip and femur fracture, maybe radius too." The tall dark-haired doctor explained as the pixie-looking one joined them.

"Get him 10 of morphine and get him admitted." The ginger doctor said and Nina jumped up at the opportunity.

"I can do that!" She said and Dr. Yang rolled her eyes but conceded.

"Abdominal scans show a liver lac and possible kidney hematoma." Dr. Adamson told Yang after she rolled their patient into the ER again.

"I'm gonna check on an OR. Page me when he's stable." Dr. Hunt told them before leaving.

Dr. Yang started checking on the patient, listening to his heartbeat as Nina took a quick look around; Sarah was writing on some chart with Leo beside her paying attention to a doctor speaking to a patient. Things seemed hectic; there was some kind of tension in the air that she couldn't quite put her finger on.

"Coags are stable, good. OR is ready." Dr. Hunt came over again. "Yang, you're with me. Torres, Adamson will call you when we're ready for the femur."

Nina looked up then, hoping but knowing that Yang wouldn't let her scrub in anyway; the woman did not seem to enjoy her presence. She started to help the three female doctors prep the firefighter for the OR as he kept mumbling painfully about the victim he let escape through his fingers, Nina looked on in pity thinking it was clearly not his fault. He seemed to become more and more agitated by the second as they started to wheel him out of the pit.

"V-Tach. No pulse." Torres called when the patient started coding.

"Start C.P.R. Bag him. Push one of epi." Hunt came running over.

"Charging to 200." Adamson said as she turned around to start prepping the paddles.

Just then, Nina in a sudden move thumped the patient's chest with all her might as she watched the monitor start beeping normally again, under the surprised stare of Dr. Yang.

"Or that works, too." Hunt said in a slow confused voice and nodded at her.

"Thanks. Had it." Adamson said as she put down the paddles.

"STOP!" Yang yelled at the little kid who had just picked up said paddles, who then started crying.

Yang had told her to stay in the pit, out of people's way while the firefighter was wheeled into surgery so that's what she did. She watched as the woman stopped breathing, the nurses rushing over and a tall male doctor with an open laceration on his face came over to help. She watched as he tried and failed to intubate her and then Adamson came over to try and fail too, nurses were rushing to the woman's bedside and she couldn't keep out of the way any longer.

"She needs a crike." She told them as she walked closer, the doctors looking at her in doubt.

"Move!" Another doctor showed up. "She's right." He nodded at the intern's idea.

"She's got no landmarks. I was hoping that... What are you...? Karev. You're going in blind?" Adamson said, shocked at the new doctor's approach.

The doctor ignored her and taking a deep breath and mumbling something, made the cut and performed the crike. Dr. Adamson then finishing with the ampu bag. She seemed fine at first and Nina stayed beside her along with Dr. Karev as they watched her to make sure she'd get better, but only a few minutes passed before she started to sink. She had a pulmonary edema, her B.P. was dropping, they had to move her into a private room. More doctors came over as they tried to do everything to help, everything they could to save her but... Everything was failing. She started coding and then she started bleeding out and then... It was over.

As Nina sat waiting in the hall, in front of the conference room where she and all the others sitting alongside her had been questioned, she couldn't help but think that maybe this was a warning. Maybe this day from hell, where nobody knew what really happened was a sign; a sign that she shouldn't have come here in the first place. She sighed and rubbed her forehead, she couldn't afford to start believing signs at this point in life.

The door opened again and Adamson came out crying, Kepner immediately got up to talk to her; they seemed to be friends from what Nina had observed all night. As they talked to each other quietly, the door opened again and the Chief asked to speak to Kepner. As the rest of them sat there, it became clear Kepner was the one getting fired.

"Shit." Nina mumbled.

As Nina joined Yang's side in the hall, after everything she still had at least another 24 hours of work ahead of her; they watched the firefighters show their support for Roy, who had just come out of surgery.

"Hey, is she gone? Did she leave?" Yang asks Adamson in reference to Kepner, who they all now knew was the one at fault tonight.

"You know what?" Adamson seemed to lose her patience. "She was good. She was a better doctor than I am." She snapped. "Just... Please shut up."

Adamson walked away from Yang to stand with Avery, Karev coming over and apologizing for hitting him earlier that night. Charles and Lexie soon joining them as they begin discussing April Kepner again; Nina could only feel annoyed at all their judgmental comments.

"What? You didn't make any mistakes today?" Yang interrupted them. "You've been distracted for the entire week." She said to Karev. "And who knows what you screwed up?" She turned to Avery. "But our patients didn't die and that's why we didn't get caught." She breathed loudly. "It could've happened to any of us."

That was the first time all day that Nina felt she could respect Cristina Yang and that maybe, just maybe, coming to Seattle wasn't such a bad idea.