Like every year, April brings a new crop of interns. Santana usually doesn't mind them. She likes that they're eager to learn, even though they mostly fumble at the beginning. This year, it's different though. This year, they seem to be worse than ever.

Noah Puckerman makes her crazy. In her entire career, she's never considered throwing someone off her service. But him, she cringes every time she gets stuck with him. He's Dr. Rose's intern, that means she has to see his smug face and his mohawked head more than usual.

Puckerman wants to be a plastic surgeon. All the things that Dr. Pierce is, Noah Puckerman is not. It's a surprising admission—even in Santana's head—but working on Maria Martinez's case has made her respect Dr. Pierce more than she thought possible. Seeing that little boy has made her respect her too. Maybe not her field, but her, as a doctor, at least. But Puckerman, he proves her point.

When he thinks Santana can't hear him, he talks about blowing up titties. He makes lewd gestures. He's obsessed with the female form, and the alteration of it. He's also an idiot. She has no idea how he got accepted into this program. She has no idea how he even got through medical school. Constantly, she has to explain simple procedures to him. She doesn't care that it's his first year, he should have learned the difference between Muscular Dystrophy and Spinal Muscular Atrophy in his first year of medical school.

Rose, for her part, keeps Puckerman mostly away from her. Marley Rose is a good doctor. Santana's not sure what she did to get stuck with him for the next two years, but she buys her coffee regularly, in a small attempt to make up for it.

He's there a month, before Santana throws him out of her operating room. She's removing a small cyst from the intestine of a four year old boy. Puckerman makes a joke about removing the birthmark from his chest while she's at it.

"Chicks won't dig that when he's older." He snickers. Santana sees red.

"Dr. Puckerman, out." She sets her scalpel down, and she looks him straight in the eye.

"Aw, c'mon bro, I'm just joking."

"I'm not your bro, Puckerman. I'm your superior, and you'll address me as such. This is my OR, and mypatient, who's having a serious medical procedure. Go see Dr. Rose, and tell her that I said if you want to be in plastics so badly, you could go down there. I'm done."

Santana is only out of surgery for an hour, before she hears a sharp rap on her office door. She doesn't even have time to get up to see who it is, before the door opens. Standing there, still entirely put together, even as red tinges her cheeks, is Dr. Pierce.

"Dr. Lopez, a word?

"Let me guess." Santana closes the screen of her laptop, and crosses her arms over her chest, rolling her eyes, while Dr. Pierce closes the door behind her.

"Oh, you don't have to guess. Just go ahead and tell me why you had your resident sent her intern down to me? The intern who's on your service for the next four days."

"He wants to be in plastics, and he's clearly unteachable anywhere else, so what's the point?"

"Don't give me that crap. It's your damn job to teach him, not to send him down to disrupt me right in the middle of a consult. You're lucky I'm in your office right now, and not Dr. Corcoran's. And—"

"You—"

"I'm not finished." Dr. Pierce snaps. "Did you really think it was a good idea to send someone to me because they were making fun of he physical appearance of a child? Really, Dr. Lopez?"

"It had nothing to do with—"

"I don't care if you think it had nothing to do with that." She balls her fists at her side. "My department isn't your garbage dump. Write him up, make him do charts all damn day, but don't think you're going to make him my problem every time he pisses you off. He might want to be in plastics, but it's our job to give him a full surgical education. Tell me, if he wanted to be in cardio, would you have sent him to Dr. Jones? Or, better yet, would you have sent him up to Chief Sylvester if ortho was his thing? No, you wouldn't have, because you know its disrespectful, and you'd only pull this crap with me and my department."

In a huff, Dr. Pierce turns away from Santana's desk. Stunned over the confrontation—and, frankly, seeing Dr. Pierce more than just in passing for the first time in over a month—it takes her a moment to register what just happened. Her hand is on the door handle, before Santana opens her mouth, and in a brief moment of remorse, she takes a breath.

"Dr. Pierce."

"What?" She turns around, her ears and neck entirely flushed, every ounce of composure that Santana has seen since the moment she met the woman, completely gone. "You want to kick me down a little more? I getit, you hate plastics. Plastic surgery is the worst specialty in the world. But you know what? I'm not plastic surgery. I'm a person, with feelings, and I'm so damn tired of my every interaction with you being like this. I'm so damn tired of my son asking when he's going to play with Dr. Santana again, and having to pretend that you're not absolutely awful to me."

"I…" Santana is shocked when she watches Dr. Pierce quickly wipe beneath her eyes, before she stiffens her spine and lifts her chin again. "I was going to say that I'm sorry."

"Yeah." Dr. Pierce pushes the handle on the door down, and opens it up. "Me too."