At the sound of Dr. Pierce's voice, Santana's head snaps up. She stands ramrod straight on the doorway, wearing her usual pressed lab coat and skirt ensemble. There's a tone of urgency in her voice, and yet, not a hair is out of place. It's a demeanor that Santana has yet to master, in spite of years of practicing a poker face when speaking to the families of her patients. She always seems like look flustered, and she wonders if that's just par for the course, when your career path involves too often telling parents that you can't save their children.
"About Maria Martinez." Dr. Pierce continues, and though Santana should have known immediately, for some reason, she thought they'd be having a different type of conversation.
"Right. Of course." Santana mumbles, closing the file she was reading.
"Her body is rejecting the graft. I need to redo it."
"What?" Santana stood up, kicking her desk chair back. "I though you know on a skin graft after thirty-six hours. It's been nineteen days."
"I'm sorry my graft didn't follow your textbook." Dr. Pierce rolls her eyes. "I know what a transplant rejection looks like. I've done it once or twice."
"So what, you need to do another surgery? You want me to tell her parents that their seventeen week old has to have a surgery to fix a mistake made in the first one."
"Let's get one thing straight, Dr. Lopez. There was no mistake. Bodies reject foreign objects. If you gave her a liver transplant and it failed, you wouldn't be blaming Dr. Hummel. So unless you want to go to her parents next month, and tell them their daughter is dying of an infection, and then face the malpractice lawsuits that follow, I'd suggest we follow my course of action."
"Show me, and show me how you're going to fix my patient."
"Our patient." Brittany corrects, clicking her tongue on the roof of her mouth. "And as I need peds in the OR with me, I need you to clear your schedule tomorrow morning."
Santana is pissed. She's pissed at Dr. Pierce, and that cool demeanor of hers. She's pissed at her shitty skin graft. She's pissed at the universe for every kid that has to suffer through repeated surgical procedures. She's just pissed, and she wishes that she could really lash out the way that she used to.
Dr. Pierce shows Santana the signs of rejection in Maria Martinez's small body. Santana should have seen them herself, she knows, but she was sort of focused on avoiding the other ten-thousand compilations both Maria and Lucia could have, following their separation surgery. Dr. Pierce was in charge of the grafts, after all, and she caught the problem, so no harm, no foul.
Santana calls Bruna and Fernando to come into her office. Dr. Pierce is there, and Santana thinks that she's now spent enough time with her for a lifetime. She can't remember why she'd spent so much time thinking about her. The woman drives her nuts, absolutely mad, to the point where she feels like she's going to tear her hair out, or punch a wall.
She doesn't sleep. She doesn't even bother to try. Instead, she lays in a bed in an on call room, reading article after article about children and grafting. If she's going to be in the OR for this, she'll damn well know her stuff. She won't let Dr. Pierce correct her, or reprimand her for her lack of knowledge. Number three plastic surgeon in the country be damned. That's a low bar Dr. Pierce had to reach.
"Good morning, Dr. Lopez." Dr. Pierce nods at the scrub sink. Even in blue surgical scrubs, she still looks neat. Santana thinks it's possible that she irons her scrub caps. She probably has neat handwriting. Fucking plastics.
"Dr. Pierce." She murmurs in reply.
Operating with Dr. Pierce is unlike working with anyone else. It was different, in a room full of doctors, but now, it's just the two of them, a scrub nurse, and some anesthesiologist that Santana has never met. Dr. Pierce's operating room, her calls. That includes the music, and in the entire time Santana Lopez has been a surgeon, she's certain she's never operated to a mix of Britney Spears and Ke$ha. Seems like an odd mix, especially for someone like Dr. Pierce. She'd have assumed she'd listen to something more…professional. Beethoven maybe. But not that.
"You're left-handed." She notes, about an hour in. The first words spoken between them since they began.
"Yeah, so?"
"Just making conversation." Dr. Pierce shakes her head, then immediately goes back to her work. "I'll refrain in the future."
It's a sore spot with her, her handedness. A sore spot resulting from her struggle to mostly teach herself to work with wrong handed surgical tools, from having to learn to mirror, rather than copy with every procedure she'd been taught. It's not Dr. Pierce's fault, but still, she hates when attention is drawn to it. She hates when attention is drawn to a lot of things.
"It could be worse." Another forty-five minutes pass before Santana speaks.
"What could be?" Dr. Pierce glances up from the tiny, impossibly straight sutures that she works on.
"Maria. It could have been her liver, or her one kidney, that was being rejected."
"You seem to underestimate the importance of skin."
"I'm not looking to pick a fight with you." Santana scoffs.
"Aren't you always though? Since I met you, you seem unwilling to have a discussion that doesn't turn into an argument. Not an hour ago, you snapped at me because I said you were left handed. I'm almost forty years old, I don't get involved in hospital drama. You don't like me, fine. You think plastics sucks, fine. You'll be done with me and this case soon enough. All I want to do is take care of my patients, and get home to my son. I don't need anyone preventing that."
Flustered, Santana works through the rest of the surgery in silence. Dr. Pierce doesn't even look at her, as she pulls off her scrub cap and they go together to talk to the parents. She doesn't even look at her, as they part ways again, Dr. Pierce toward her office, and Santana, toward the showers.
She's tired to the her bones, and she aches everywhere. She shouldn't feel like this, she's done procedures on her own, far longer than this six hour one she'd just assisted. But the long, sleepless night before hits her unexpectedly. Santana doesn't even wait until she's completely through the door before she pulls her bra through the sleeve of her scrub top. She needs to release herself from the construction, and when she finally steps into the shower, she leans her head back against the wall, sighing as the water hits her where she's so always tender, sighing, because it has already been a long fucking day.