Three days pass, before Santana sees Dr. Pierce again. The night of Amy Shapiro's corrective surgery—Santana reminds herself of her name over and over, her obsessive nature taking over as she sits in her office afterwards—Shelby comes back. Seeing just how many hours Santana has logged, she immediately sends her home, and demands she doesn't even think about the hospital until Thursday. Santana gives her no argument.
When she comes back, Santana feels like she has a mountain of work to catch up on. Despite the fact that she doesn't work every day, it really is rare that so much time passes without her at least checking in. She's not exaggerating when she says that she's married to her work.
She's just walking the parents of a nine-year-old patient with a tumor on his adrenal gland out of her office, when she notices Dr. Pierce loitering at the nurses station. Amy Shapiro, the girl with the botched nose job, had been discharged while Santana was off, and as far as she knows, there are no other plastics patients on the floor at the moment. She looks Dr. Pierce over, grey skirt hitting above the knee, glasses tucked into the pocket of her white coat, hair pulled back in a tight bun. Her usual collected stance.
Dr. Pierce catches Santana staring. She doesn't make a thing of it, even as heat creeps up the back of Santana's neck, and she wipes her palms on her own skirt. She just finishes her conversation with the nurse, then slowly approaches Santana.
"Dr. Lopez, I was hoping for a word with you?"
"A consult?"
"No. Just a conversation."
With a nod, Santana leads Dr. Pierce into her office. Her palms are still sweaty, and she's not sure why. They had sort of moved past the awkwardness between them, and they're just colleagues. But still, that last surgery opened a lot up, and so, Santana wipes her hands on her skirt again, before she sits at her desk and folds them in her lap.
"I just wanted to see if there was something I said that offended you the other day." Dr. Pierce waits a beat after sitting down across from Santana before she speaks. "Contrary to our rocky start, I think we work well together, and I don't want to compromise that."
"No." Santana picks at her cuticles, before she looks up into those sharp blue eyes across from her. "It's fine, it's my own hang up."
"If plastics cases bother you like this, I'll make sure I get someone else when I need a peds consult."
"Why did you choose plastics?" She changes the conversation abruptly, and Dr. Pierce looks taken aback. "Sorry, it's not my business. You don't have to answer that."
"Nancy."
"Nancy?"
"Yes. She was from California. When I was seven, my second grade teacher got us involved with a pen pals project. You know, how everyone did that back in the '80s? Well, I got Nancy, and I took it very seriously. We continued to write back and forth for years afterwards. When I was ten, she sent a picture of herself. I'd never seen someone with a cleft lip and palate until then, and even now, doing what I do, I can say hers was particularly bad."
"So you decided to become a plastic surgeon?"
"Well not at ten." Dr. Pierce laughs a little, but a strange look crosses her face. "My mom told me what it was, and I started reading about it then though. Even though we were across the country from each other, she was my friend, and I was curious. Also, more than a little nerdy."
"What happened to her?"
"We grew up, we started writing less and less, and eventually, it just stopped completely. But by the time I started applying for college, I'd read, I'm not even kidding, thousands of articles on anatomy and reconstructive surgery. One book at the library opened the door to all these interesting things, and I couldn't get enough. I still have all my pen pal letters though, and that first picture of Nancy, smiling with her front two teeth missing."
"But why not something else?" Santana wonders aloud, then snaps her mouth shut. "Sorry, I just mean, it's not the only field where you could help people."
"I get this all the time. Because if everyone who wanted to do good did something other than plastics, then you'd have a whole lot of nose jobs and boob jobs, and not a whole lot of help for people who need plastics. Yesterday, I built a new cheek for a woman who'd had skin cancer so bad that most of her face to be removed. Last week, I reattached a twenty-one year old boy's ear. I've done about a hundred times the number of reconstructions as I have elective surgeries."
"A hundred times?" Santana's jaw drops, and Dr. Pierce nods.
"I worked at a surgical clinic in Beattyville, Kentucky for five years after I finished my internship, and before I went back to Brigham. I still laugh sometimes at the red tape in these big hospitals hospitals. In Kentucky, I was twenty-three, doing major surgeries without a scrub nurse half the time. In this other world, a resident needs like fourteen signatures to remove a mole."
"That's pretty impressive." She speaks the truth, and Dr. Pierce smiles a little. "The solo surgeries, not all the paperwork we have to do."
"It's my dream, this job. But I have hang ups too. I have a hard time seeing beautiful, healthy people change their appearance, when I see every day people who will never look quote-unquote normal. And to love a little person like that on top of it, it does make my job difficult sometimes."
"You're not who I thought you were." Santana marvels. "I mean, I recognized that before now, but it just seems like the more I get to know you…"
"Never judge a book by its cover, right?"
"That is what they say." She sits back in her chair. "So since I answered your question, why peds?"
"I figured I'd go into neuro, because my father hates it, and I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of going into cardio. But it turns out, neuro is boring, and I really liked working with Shelby. If you told me ten years ago that I'd be doing what I'm doing, I'd have laughed in your face and told you that I didn't even like kids."
"But you're glad you chose it?"
"I am. I love my job, and the kids have grown on me too."
"They're pretty cool people." Dr. Pierce smiles, and starts to stand up. "So we're good?"
"Yeah. We're good. Thanks for…you know, coming to talk to me." Santana nods, then, just as Dr. Pierce opens the door, she stops her. "Brittany?"
"Yeah?"
"To answer your other question, from the OR the other day, about the parents. Sometimes a little girl isn't what her father hoped she'd be, so he'll be willing to change what he can. And sometimes, the mother doesn't know how to do anything but say yes to him."