Santana is at the tail end of a week of overnights, when Shelby finds her in her office. She's working her way through her charts, when she looks up and sees her there. It's unlike Shelby Corcoran to look so distraught, but she does, and Santana immediately jumps to her feet.
"I'm fine." Shelby holds up her hand, before Santana can get any closer. "My mother died, I have to go to Ohio, but I'm fine."
"Shelby, I'm so—"
"Yeah, me too, thanks. But I don't need you to be sorry, I need you to cover the department and my surgeries for me while I'm gone."
"Totally, yeah." She nods vigorously. "For however long you need."
"I'll be back Monday. Tuesday, max. I've got two appendectomies, an extended aortic resection with Washington, and a nasal bridge perforation repair with Pierce."
"Okay, I'm on it." Santana mentally checks off the tasks, barely registering that one is with Dr. Pierce. "I'm gonna crash in an on call room for a few hours, and then I'm good to go."
"Thank you. And Santana?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm trusting you, so do me a favor. Don't run my department into the ground."
Appendectomies are cake. Santana can do them in her sleep, and the first two days of covering for Shelby go off without a hitch. Day three is a little more complicated. Marley Rose pukes in her office, when she comes to tell her she's not feeling well, and she sends her home, so as not to infect everyone on the unit. As a result, Santana ends up handing half of her rounds off to Unique, and taking the other half for herself. On top of all that, she's got Dr. Pierce's surgery scheduled for the afternoon, and she spends every spare minute between patients and vomiting residents skimming the file, trying to be at least moderately prepared to assist. Obviously, if Shelby had initially planned to do it herself, rather than hand it off to a resident or an intern, it's important. Shelby has trusted her, and she doesn't want to let her down.
In the two times Santana had been in surgery with Dr. Pierce, she had been so focused on her disdain that she didn't noticed her scrub caps. This time though, as they're scrubbing in side by side, she sees what she's wearing, and she chuckles a little to herself. Wearing that, it seems like Dr. Pierce belongs more in herdepartment than plastics, and something about that is comforting.
"Are you laughing at Oscar the Grouch?" Dr. Pierce cocks her head to the side, a half smile playing on her lips. "Because I could do the same about Wonder Woman."
"I just think you're the first surgeon I've ever encountered outside of Peds with a cartoon scrub cap. What would your patients think?"
"What they don't know won't hurt them." She winks, sliding her hands into her gloves. "Liam likes picking them out for me. And then I have him with me while I'm in the OR, so it's a win-win."
"Three years old, and already picking out scrub caps, color me impressed."
"Not even three. Not for two more weeks."
"Happy early birthday to him then." Santana takes her turn getting into her gloves, and follows Brittany through the door to the operating room. "So any plans for the big zero-three."
"Nothing really. We haven't really made any friends here yet, and I'm working the day after, so it'll just be us and my parents."
The sight of the patient in front of them shocks Santana, and she takes a step back. Even after she'd taken a quick glance at the patient's file, Santana didn't realize exactly what they were doing, and it turns her stomach a little, seeing the teenage girl on the table, bruised around her eyes, and swollen on her cheeks.
"Did you do this?" Santana looks at Dr. Pierce, absolutely aghast.
"No." She shakes her head, an answer, and also a dismissal of the judgmental notion. "As a rule, I don't perform elective cosmetic surgery on children."
"I didn't mean—"
"This isn't the first time I've had to fix it through."
The easy banter they'd had in the scrub room is gone, and it's replaced not with disdain, but with a sort of awkwardness. Santana can tell that Dr. Pierce isn't holding the assumption against her, but still, it makes room for some of that old awkwardness to creep back in. This right here, this teenage girl with a botched nose job, is exactly why she hates plastics. This teenage girl is what tears at her heart and makes her chest ache.
"I just don't get it." Dr. Pierce muses, looking over her magnifier.
"Get what?"
"Why? Why would a perfectly healthy sixteen year old want to change her body? And better question, why would her parents allow it?"
"You always looked like this, didn't you?" Santana's tone is flat, and Wes, the same scrub nurse who'd been in the operating room the last time she and Dr. Pierce worked together stiffens visibly. "Never had an awkward stage in high school?"
A bitter laugh escapes Dr. Pierce's throat, and she shakes her head a little, "I was a walking awkward stage, pretty much my whole life. Thin and gangly, flat chested, glasses, braces. I couldn't even walk down a hallway properly. I kept my head in a book all through high school. I graduated when I was sixteen. I just wanted to get out. It didn't change in college. By the time I was twenty, I was in medical school, and it wasn't until after I'd taken my first set of boards that I blossomed, so to speak."
"And you never wanted to change how you looked?"
"No. I didn't. I just figured I'd prove that I was smarter, stronger, and that would be enough. Let me tell you, I went to my twenty-year high school reunion last year, and it absolutely was."
"And you don't think any of that has to do with how you look right now?"
"I like to think my Harvard degrees and double board certifications speak for themselves."
"Trust me, Brittany, I'd like to think the same thing. But people are shallow."
"I thought you were against plastic surgery."
"Oh, I am." Santana rolls her eyes. "I'm just saying that it's unfair to this kid to think she's wrong in wantingit."
"You're certainly full of contractions, aren't you?"
Santana doesn't speak for the rest of the surgery. She feels for the kid on the table. She's been the kid on the table, and she hates it. She appreciates Dr. Pierce's capable hands, fixing the mess that some other surgeon made of her face, but her stomach is still unsettled, and she can't wait to get out of there.
She's tired, she knows that's a part of it, but still, she can't scrub out fast enough. She goes with Dr. Pierce to talk to her parents, to let them know the surgery was successful, that blood won't pour out of their daughter's nose anymore, and that the scarring will be minimal. But then, after they part ways in the elevator, she shuts herself up in her office. She's not sure she's been home since Shelby left, and leaning her head back against her chair, she closes her eyes. She shuts out the thoughts of the surgery they just did, of her own surgery so many years earlier. She shuts out the thoughts, and she figures she'll just sleep for ten minutes, until someone undoubtedly comes to wake her up.