SKYLAR KEPNER FELT curiosity nipping at her brain as she looked around the enormous hospital in front of her. She roamed the halls with excitement, anxiousness, and a sense of pride—prideful that she was able to pass her MCAT and was one step closer to accomplishing her dream to become a surgeon.

Her specialty? She didn't know.

Eventually, she fell into the group with 19, mostly male, interns. They all gathered around Richard Webber, the chief of surgery. To Skylar, it was an honor to even be able to see him in person, much less have him give them a tour of the hospital they were going to start their dream jobs in. Chief Webber was gruff, authoritative, and some would say poetic given the speech that he was about to give. You knew Richard was the man in charge without even having to ask.

"A month ago you were in med school being taught by doctors. Now…" He pushed open doors that lead into an operating room. The room was almost gleaming. It was sterile as well. All the interns gathered around the bed in the center, walking around the room to see where they would spend most of their time—they hoped.

"You are the doctors. The seven years you spend as a surgical resident will be the best and worst of your life. You will be pushed to your breaking point. Look around you. Say hello to your competition."

Skylar took the Chief's advice and looked at the faces surrounding her. Some seemed scared, some excited and another few matched her expression of determination with just a hint of nervousness in their eyes. She recognized some that she couldn't put the face to a name and others were being looked at for the first time. She caught the eye of some people, but no one that memorable, unless you counted the girl that came late and snuck in without the Chief noticing.

Skylar hoped that she could make some friends or even just minor acquaintances. Her residency would go by a lot faster and easier if she had some people to talk to. Without her noticing, another intern, George O'Malley stared at her, hoping—with all his life—that they were assigned the same resident to work under.

"Eight of you will switch to an easier specialty," Chief Webber continued. "Five of you will crack under the pressure. Two of you will be asked to leave. This is the starting line. This is your arena. How well you play, it's up to you."

All of the interns shifted from one leg to the other, a bit freaked out by the end of the speech. Skylar swallowed, nervous. She was going to have a hell of a hard time, she could already tell.

But this was her arena. And she was going to show everyone just what she was made of.


All of the interns made their way to the locker room, claiming a locker as theirs for the rest of the year, and stuffing their bags in so the door would at least close. Most of them were tying their scrub pants tighter and tying the laces of their shoes, finishing up getting ready for the long day ahead.

"Martin! Robinson! Bond! Hawkins!" A senior resident called out, wanting his interns at that moment.

The named interns hurried out of the room to join their resident. In one corner, guys clustered around a blonde woman, making Skylar roll her eyes at how horny men can be sometimes—they couldn't even turn it off in a place of work, never mind a hospital.

"Only six women. Out of 20," the blonde woman that came late said. She was sitting down behind Skylar as Skylar finished tightening her scrub pants. She was talking to an Asian woman who was standing next to her.

"Yeah," the woman said. "And I heard one of them's a model. Seriously. That's going to help with the respect thing." Skylar guessed that the blonde she saw earlier was the model, she had the body and face for it.

"I bet it helped pay off loans, though," Skylar butted in.

"You're Cristina and Skylar, right?" They both nodded. "I'm Meredith. Which resident are you assigned to?"

"I got Bailey," they both answered in unison.

"The Nazi?" Meredith asked as she smirked slightly. When Skylar heard the nickname that people refer to Bailey as it only made Skylar's stomach twist more. "Me too.

A man with shaggy brown hair approached the three women, stumbling a bit as he rounded the bench. "You got the Nazi? So did I," he started, his eyes mostly fixed on Skylar. "Hey, at least we'll be tortured together, right?" There was a beat as the women said nothing. It's not that Skylar didn't want to talk to him, she just didn't know how to respond, so she just nodded. "I'm George? O'Malley?" His eyes shifted to Meredith, remembering her from the mixer they had the night before for staff to meet the new interns and vice versa. "We met at the mixer? You had on a black dress, slit up the side, strappy sandals and…" Skylar furrowed her brows slightly as he spoke, trying to hide a smile while the other two women shared a look. "Now you think I'm gay. I'm not gay. It's just I'm a guy and you looked really…you were…very…unforgettable."

"O'Malley! Yang! Kepner! Grey! Stevens!"

Hearing their names, the three women left to find their resident. Skylar just shook her head with a pitying smile on her face as she looked at George.

"And I'm totally forgettable," George muttered to himself, regretting his choice of words.

Out in the hallway, as George caught up to them, Meredith—the blonde—Cristina, and Skylar all walked down the hallway, eyeing their resident. Miranda Bailey was not who they expected her to be. She was a short, African-American woman. In Skylar's mind, if she saw a woman like this just out on the street, she would think that she was cute.

"That's the Nazi?" Cristina said, just as shocked as everyone else.

"I thought the Nazi would be a guy," George muttered, saying what everyone was thinking.

"Of course not. They'd never give a man that nickname, they'd probably praise him for being intense and strict," Skylar replied, earning a nod from Cristina. As she looked at her new resident, she was hopeful that she would be a good teacher despite her frightening reputation.

"I thought the Nazi would be…a Nazi," Meredith said.

Skylar felt another presence next to her. She looked to see a tall blond woman who she could only assume was Stevens. Skylar was pretty sure that she was the model, but decided not to comment on it out of respect.

"Maybe it's professional jealousy. Maybe she's brilliant and everyone calls her a Nazi because they're jealous. Maybe she's nice," Stevens said, unusually optimistic for this early in the morning.

"Let me guess, you're the model?" Cristina inquired, to which Stevens gave her an aggravated look in response.

"Hi," I'm Isobel Stevens, but everyone calls me Izzie." As the group approached their new resident, the blond tried introducing herself, extending her hand. Izzie was all smiles and friendliness and Bailey was not. Skylar couldn't see this going well at all. In her experience, residents didn't tend to like overeager interns. Of course, Bailey didn't end up being an exception.

Dr. Bailey stared at the girl in front of her with a blank look, not returning her handshake. She looked at the rest of her group as if judging their potential.

"I have five rules, memorize them. Rule number one, don't bother sucking up. I already hate you, that's not going to change." Skylar felt like those words weren't true. She tried to figure out if her superior meant that or not.

"Trauma protocol, phone lists, pagers," she explained, pointing to their new equipment. Skylar, along with the four other interns quickly grabbed their own and followed Dr. Bailey down the hall, clipping their pager to their scrubs' waistband. "Nurses will page you. You answer every page at a run. A run. That's rule number two." Dr. Bailey takes off, walking at a high speed. The interns had to jog slightly to keep up. It amazed Skylar that this short woman could walk faster than they could with her short legs.

They ended up on a catwalk overlooking the hospital, the interns still following their boss.

"Your first shift starts now and lasts 48 hours—"

"48 hours?" George quietly said, his brain not comprehending that they could last that long while saving people.

Bailey either didn't hear him or chose to ignore him, Skylar guessed it was the latter. "You're interns. Grunts, nobodies, the bottom of the surgical food chain. You run labs, write orders, work every second night until you drop and you don't complain, I don't care if your shift lasts 48 days."

They had now arrived at an on-call room on the OR floor. "On-call rooms—the attendings hog them. Sleep when you can, where you can. Which brings me to Rule number three: if I'm sleeping, don't wake me unless your patient is actually dying. Rule number four: the dying patient better not be dead when I get there. Not only will you have killed someone but you would've woken me for no good reason. We clear?" They stopped halfway through the on-call room. Bailey was inside looking at them, the five interns looking at her from the hallway.

Meredith raised her hand as Bailey's pager sounded. "You said five rules?" Asked the blonde. "That was only four."

Bailey, reading her pager, just remembered rule number five, but she was not going to let her interns know that she forgot it. "Rule number five: when I move, you move," she said, running through the group and down the hallway, her interns following. "Get out of my way!" She yelled at the nurses that were walking down the hallway.

Their 48-hour shift had officially begun.


On the rooftop of Seattle Grave, a medical helicopter landed on the helipad. A small town doctor got out along with EMTs who were unloading Katie Bryce, who was currently having a violent seizure.

Bailey and her interns ran out of the hospital to meet the EMTs.

"What've we got?" Bailey asked

"Katie Bryce," a paramedic informed the group as they rushed her inside the hospital and to a room. "15-year-old female, new onset seizures, intermittent for the past week, ID lost en route, started grand mal seizing as we descended."

"Let's get her inside," Bailey instructed, telling the EMTs that they got it from there.


The interns in the room transferred Katie from the gurney to the bed. She began to seize again after they turned her on her side.

"Get her on her side. Izzy, 10 milligrams diazepam, IM." The blonde intern looked completely lost as she struggled to get the medicine put in right. Bailey looked over her interns, examining their work, then she saw Meredith messing something up, so she called out to her, "No, no! The white lead is on the right, righty whitey, smoke over fire!" Meredith fixed her mistake as Izzie prepped a syringe. Skylar laid out the tools to start the IV. "Hey! A large bore IV. Don't let the blood haemolyse. Let's go, 10 milligrams diazepam IM." Bailey instructed Izzie once again. Izzie just stood there, a bit nervous. Skylar had to admit that this was a bit intense for their first patient ever, but since Izzie wasn't doing anything, Skylar gently pushed her to the side and quickly injected the medicine herself, causing Katie to stop seizing and fall asleep

Preston Burke entered the room. Skylar was almost in awe when she saw him but then remembered what she had heard about him; that he was an arrogant show dog who loved to put on a show. He was wearing dark blue scrubs, as all the attendings do.

"Heard we had a wet fish on dry land," Burke said as he walked in, grabbing the chart from Bailey.

"Absolutely, Dr. Burke," Bailey nodded.

Dr. Burke skimmed over the chart, deciding what needed to be done. "Dr. Bailey, let's shotgun her." He then strode out of the room once again, leaving as quickly as he came.

"That means every test in the book, CT, CBC, chem seven, and a tox screen," Bailey informed the interns, getting into her teacher mode. "Cristina, you're on labs. George, patient workups. Meredith, get Katie for a CT. She's your responsibility now. Skylar, you're with me,"

"Wait, what about me?" Izzie asked.

Bailey eyed her for a moment. She smiled like she was happy on the inside but didn't want to show it. "You? Honey, you get to do rectal exams."


Skylar felt exhausted and energized at the same time. When the day began she was terrified of all the 'what ifs' but as the day went on, she grew to like her resident even more as she worked under her.

Now, it was lunchtime, and Skylar sat down between George and Cristina, quickly unwrapping her sandwich and taking a bite. She has been hungry since breakfast time, she only had an apple and that was not enough to replenish her, with as much as she eats day to day.

George noticed Izzie staring at her tray of food, a revolted look on her face. "This shift is a marathon, not a spring. Eat," George said. He motioned toward Skylar with his elbow as if to show the blonde an example. Izzie followed his movement to see her coworker devouring her turkey and cheese sandwich.

"I can't," she stated, tearing her slightly disgusted but mostly impressed gaze away from Skylar. George sighed, just repeating that she should eat before continuing his meal. "You try eating after performing 17 rectal exams! The Nazi hates me!"

George snorted, shaking his head. "The Nazi is a resident. I have attending's hating me!"

"Nobody is hating anybody! Residents and attendings are supposed to be hard on us. It's a part of the job description," Skylar said through her mouthful of food.

George frowned, opening his mouth to state that Bailey doesn't seem to not not like Skylar, but Cristina butted into their conversation. "You know Meredith is inbred?" She gossiped. Skylar looked at her, but then just turned back to her sandwich, not caring all that much about gossip. She still felt slightly hungry and sadly looked at Izzie's tray, eyeing her French fries. Izzie smiled at her and slid them over, watching as Skylar's entire being brightened at the offering.

"Like it's uncommon around here to be a doctor's kid," George started, watching with slight awe as Skylar started to eat the fries at an ungodly speed.

Cristina shook her head, leaning forward as if this was some big secret that she was about to tell. "No, I mean totally inbred. Her mother is Ellis Grey."

Skylar slightly choked on her fries, eyes widening at the information. "Ellis Grey? Like, the Ellis Grey?"

Izzie looked at Yang with wide eyes, smacking her arm. "Shut up! The Ellis Grey?" Cristina nodded and smugly smiled, leaning back in her chair.

"Who's Ellis Grey?" George spoke up, his voice confused. Izzie and Cristina laughed as Skylar looked at him with pitying eyes.

"Oh, Georgie…"

"Ellis Grey? The Grey Method? Where did you go to med school? Mexico?" Cristina slightly made fun of him.

"Grey's one of the first big chick surgeons. She practically invented the abdominal retractor," Izzie explained to him.

"The woman's a living legend. A genius. She won the Harper Avery. Twice," Cristina informed.

"So I didn't know one thing," George pouted, his day coming back to him. He remembered how he couldn't find a vein in his patient so he claimed that the man became a pin cushion.

"Talk about parental pressure," Izzie murmured.

"I'd kill for Ellis Grey as a mother," Cristina announced, then immediately took back her statement as she said, "I'd kill to be Ellis Grey. All I need is one good case and—"

She was interrupted as the topic of the conversation, Meredith, slammed her tray on the table plopping into a seat. "Katie Bryce is a pain in the ass. If I hadn't taken the Hippocratic oath, I'd Kevorkian her with my bare hands!" The four looked at her, and Meredith just stared back, not knowing they were talking about her. "What?"

Skylar shook her head as she started drinking out of her water bottle. "Did you know that Dr. Kevorkian got away with over 130 murders, which at the time were just considered physician assisted suicides?" Skylar said, her eidetic memory supplying her with information at the wrong time. "They called him the angel of death, and he believed that dying wasn't a crime. Of course, it's not, but killing someone definitely is."

All of the interns stared at her, not blinking.

Their conversation was cut short by one of the attendings, Dr. Burke. He spoke loudly, looking around with a smug smile, that made Skylar think he knew something about every single person in the room.

"Good morning interns. It's posted, but I thought I'd share the good news personally. As you know, the honor of performing the first surgery is reserved for the intern that shows the most promise. As I'm running the OR today, I get to make that choice." He spoke calmly and clearly with a certain arrogance that bothered Skylar. The interns all sat up in their seats, buzzing with slight excitement. None of them had met the man, but Skylar had hoped maybe he had read her files and realized what she was capable of. They all anxiously waited to hear who he picked. "George O'Malley! You'll scrub in for an appendectomy this afternoon. Congratulations."

"Me?" George questioned after choking on his food. He looked up at Burke with wide, panicked eyes. Burke just smiled down at him.

"Enjoy." Burke patted him on the back before smugly walking away.

The room was silent, and Skylar leaned forward and handed George his bottle of juice with a concerned yet understanding look. The man looked between everyone at the table, his voice an octave higher. "Congrats, Georgie," she said with a slight smile, encouragingly rubbing his shoulder.

"Did he say me?"


About an hour later, Skylar, Meredith, Cristina, and Izzie were sitting in the observation gallery above an OR. The OR held a patient who was draped and under anesthesia so the surgeons could operate.

Scrubbed and Sterile, George stood frozen. Around him, an amused surgical staff prepared the instruments and gauze and sutures needed for this operation.

"Open, identify, ligate, remove, irrigate, close. Open, identify, ligate, remove, irrigate, close. Open, identify, ligate…" George kept repeating, hoping he didn't miss a step during the observation. He looked up at the gallery and caught Skylar's eye. She gave him her best motivational smile, hoping it somehow calmed him down. He was practically shaking with nerves. It somewhat did the trick for him.

All of the surgical interns gathered in the theater, peering down through the glass window into George's OR.

"He's gonna faint. He's a fainter," one intern said.

"No. Code Brown. Right in his pants," another one said.

"He's all about the flop sweat. He's gonna sweat himself unsterile."

"Ten bucks says he messed up the McBurney."

"Fifteen says he cries," Cristina said, wanting to get on the betting.

"I'll put twenty down on a total meltdown."

"50 bucks says he pulls the whole thing off," Skylar said, which surprised everyone. She didn't even take her eyes off the OR as she explained, "That's one of us down there. The first one. Where's your loyalty?"

There was a beat of silence as everyone was frozen. Then, "75 says he can't even ID the appendix," Cristina said.

"I'll take that action," Izzie jumped in, as Skylar and Meredith both shook their heads. Everyone started to wave money around and shouted out bets. Skylar was just happy that George couldn't hear any of them.


"O'Malley, let's see what you can do," Burke said as he entered the room, prepped and ready to go. The nurses all moved into action, removing the blanket from over the patient's abdomen and setting up the instruments how they like them.

The interns were all silent. Leaning into the glass, waiting. Most were waiting for George to mess up, others, like Skylar and Meredith, were waiting for him to complete the surgery.

Down on the floor, George held out his hand. He took a deep breath in and out, before saying, "Scalpel."

The interns in the back of the gallery all hollered. George's surgery had officially begun.

"That Burke," Cristina started in a low tone. "He's trouble."

In the OR, George operated—nervous but steady.

"More pressure," Burke advised as George struggled to open up the body. "Human flesh is a tough shell. Dig."

It took about two minutes but George had gotten through the first step of his mantra—open the body, and place the clamps so he could see the appendix.

"Damn! He got the peritoneum open. I'm out," an intern said, pissed that George hadn't messed up yet.

"It's like Skylar said…he's gonna pull it off," Meredith smiled, looking at Skylar who had a smile on her face.

In the OR, George took out the appendix and put it on the tray. He was insanely proud of himself.

"Appendix is out," he communicated.

"Not bad," Burke complimented, as much as Burke does.

"Thank you, sir," George still took it, it was still something.

"Now all you have to do is invert the stump into the cecum and simultaneously pull up on the purse strings. But be careful that you don't—" He was interrupted by George tugging on the purse strings and breaking them off in his hand. "—Break them. Nice. You ripped the cecum. You've got a bleeder and you're filling with stool. What do you do now?"

"Umm…" George stood, frozen. He wasn't expecting this to happen, he thought appendectomies were simple procedures. Skylar looked down at him with a sad look, already knowing that he froze and wasn't going to be able to come back from this.

"Think. You suction and you start digging for those purse strings before she bleeds to death. Give him a clamp." The last part was directed to the scrub nurse who held out a clamp for George to take but he didn't take it. He stood there, still frozen.

"BP's dropping," the anesthesiologist said, torturing George more.

"He's choking," Cristina said, looking at George's frozen figure.

"Come on, George…" Skylar muttered, mostly to herself.

Multiple monitors began to sound out.

"Pull your balls out of your back pocket, O'Malley!" Burke yelled at him, wanting him to move, but mostly to put the other interns in line. Torture one, the rest fall in line, that's what he said to Dr. Bailey earlier when she berated him for choosing George.

"Getting too low folks," the anesthesiologist said, serious now. "Dr. Burke."

"Get out of the way," the doctor said to George. When George didn't move, Burke shoved him aside and took over. "Pansy ass idiot."

In the gallery, Meredith, Izzie, Skylar, and a few other interns winced at Burke's mutters. But there were cackles of glee from others. One of the interns, Alex Karev, shook his head.

"He's 007," Alex said, smiling and munching on his chips from the cafeteria.

"007! Yes!"

"A total 007!"

Money was passed around to the person who won the bet. The four girls sat quietly. Skylar slightly regretted not standing up for George. She was never the confrontational type, and she didn't think that would change anytime soon, but George was her friend, and she did regret it, a lot.

"What's 007 mean?" Izzie asked, never hearing it before, and she couldn't remember it from school either.

"Licensed to kill," Meredith bluntly explained.

Skylar stared down at the OR. George looked small and humiliated as Burke finished his case.


Bailey's interns all lay on beds in the tunnel after George's botched surgery. That's why the interns were gathered in the tunnels, trying to comfort him. Cristina was reading a journal, Izzie was doing yoga stretches, and Meredith and Skylar were both lying on hospital beds while George rolled around in a wheelchair.

"They're calling me 007, aren't they?" He spoke out, his voice pained. Skylar, Izzie, and Meredith all objected.

"George, no way! You aren't a 007 and nobody is calling you one," Skylar spoke out, her voice soft and slightly cheery. But George could tell she was struggling to tell him the lie from the strain in her voice.

"I was on the elevator and Murphy whispered '007,'" he argued, looking toward the girl. Skylar opened her mouth to argue, but Cristina beat her to it.

"Oh, how many times do we have to go through this, George? Five, ten? Give me a number or else I'm going to hit you," Cristina threatened. Skylar sighed and fell deeper into the bed. She was too tired to try and fix the situation at hand, and she felt sleep creeping up on her.

"He wasn't talking about you," Skylar reassured, her eyes closed. George looked at her, slightly happy that she wasn't teasing him about messing up the surgery.

"You sure?" He asked, just because he needed the validation.

"Would we lie to you?" Meredith asked. George let out a small noise and quickly nodded.

"Yes!" After a moment, he backtracked. "Okay, yes to you three. Skylar wouldn't. At least not convincingly."

Skylar just huffed, melting into the bed more. "I'm too tired to retaliate," she muttered. Meredith chuckled and Cristina cracked a smile.

"007 is a state of mind," Cristina said, not bothering to look up from her book.

George scoffed, looking over at the woman with slight disdain. "Says the girl who graduated top of her class at Stanford."

Meredith's pager suddenly went off, causing Skylar to jump a bit where she lay since Meredith was right next to her head. She read it with slightly wide eyes. "991 for Katie Bruce. Oh man, I gotta go."

Once the blonde disappeared, Cristina spoke up, "I didn't peg Red as the sleeping on the job type," she stated. George and Izzie gave her confused looks. She groaned and motioned to the redhead that was in a light sleep.

"Kepner! She has red hair, therefore, Red."


Since Bailey didn't have any patients that needed to be monitored, she sent Skylar down to post-op to monitor patients there. As she filled out a chart for a patient at the nurse's station, she overheard a conversation between an intern and a nurse.

"4B's got post-op pneumonia. Let's start antibiotics," a male intern stated to a nurse, handing her a few papers. Skylar continued to scribble notes in her chart as she listened in.

"Are you sure that's the right diagnosis?" The nurse nicely asked. Skylar looked up when she heard an aggravated sigh. She furrowed her brows as she watched the man practically belittle the nurse and explain the patient's symptoms. After ordering the nurse to start antibiotics, he made his way toward Skylar.

His eyes danced over her form, and he tilted his head. Something shone in his eyes, and Skylar could tell it probably wasn't good for her. "God, I hate nurses," he stated, leaning against the desk as he faced her. "I'm Alex. I'm with Jeremy. You're with the Nazi, right?"

Skylar looked from his face to his body quickly before going back to her charts. "Yeah, I'm with Dr. Bailey." She looked toward the nurse he had just belittled and ordered around like a child, then back to the chart.

"She may not have pneumonia, you know," she softly said, looking up at him. He looked at her with a dumbfounded expression. "Your patient, I mean. She could be splinting or even have PE. And the nurse has been here longer so maybe she has experience with these sorts of things and you should double check. Just to be sure."

Alex looked her over once more and scoffed, rolling his eyes. "Like I said, I hate nurses." Skylar's frown deepened, looking back at the chart. She quickly built up some confidence to stand up for herself and confront someone, something she rarely ever does.

"Education is great and should be well regarded. But so is experience, and we, as interns, don't have any," she pointed out. She smiled at him, not a large or highly bright one though. She patted his chest, nodding as she walked past him. "Nice meeting you, Alex."

Alex turned and watched the girl walk away, running his tongue over his lips. He looked toward George, who was sitting at the nurse's station. He nodded in the direction that Skylar went. "She seeing anybody?"

George's nose scrunched up in disgust. "I—I don't know. Why?"

Alex smirked, letting out a whistle. "She's really hot. Also sweet. A little too sweet and innocent. Couldn't be like that in be—"

George interrupted him, his face burning with embarrassment. "I'm friends with her, so don't talk about her like that. I mean, we're kinda friends. I mean, we only met today but we're pretty close I—I mean—"

"Dude," Alex stated, looking at the other man with confusion and annoyance. George shook his head, opening his mouth to argue, to stand up for Skylar Kepner, who didn't deserve to be spoken about like some random and unimportant girl a player like Alex Karev could just throw away, but Alex interrupted him again.

"Dude, seriously, just stop talking."


Finally free of her duties, Skylar wandered the hospital looking for something to do or someone to help. So far, she'd taken some blood to the lab, popped a strange-looking cyst on an old woman's back, and brought a ten-year-old down to get an x-ray. Overall, it was nothing too exciting.

"We need some help in here!" A nurse shouted from a room that Skylar recognized as Katie Bryce's room, Meredith's patient.

She immediately took action and ran into the room without knowing what she was getting herself into. This was her time to shine, this was why she became a surgeon, for moments like this and the thrill of saving someone's life.

"What's going on?" She asked the nurses.

"She's having multiple grand mal seizures. How do you want to proceed?" A nurse asked, waiting for her order.

Skylar thought for at least half a second, thinking back to what she learned in med school about people who are having seizures. "Give her two milligrams of diazepam, and someone page Dr. Bailey and Dr. Shepherd." They waited for the medicine to work but saw no change in Katie's heartbeat. "Alright, um, give her four milligrams of prazepam." Skylar's voice may have been calm for the situation but she was internally freaking out.

"The prazepam's not working."

"Okay, six milligrams phenobarbital, and page Bailey and Shepherd again, please!"

"Pheno's in."

The good news was that Katie stopped seizing, but the bad news was that her heart stopped and she began to flatline.

"She's coding!" A nurse shouted

Skylar immediately grabbed the defibrillator paddles from the code team and took charge. "Charge to 200."

"Charged. Clear."

"Still v-fib," another nurse said.

"Alright, charge to 300." She shocked Katie again but still, nothing changed. C'mon, Katie, she thought, it's my first day, please don't die on my first day.

"No change."

"Okay, then charge to 360!"

The nurse that was charging the paddles didn't move, causing the intern to send her a harsh glare. "At 60 seconds, you're supposed to—"

"Charge again." The nurse just stood there. "I said charge again, or her death is on you!" Skylar snapped, not leaving any room for backtalk. "Clear!"

After a brief moment of internal anxiety, the heart monitor began to beep.

"I see sinus rhythm," the same nurse said. "Blood pressure's coming up."

"Page Bailey and Shepherd again, please," Skylar said, this time with a calmer and kinder voice. She couldn't believe that she had just done that—on her first day, no less. Just as she finished talking, Derek and Meredith came rushing through the doors.

"What the hell happened?" He asked, nearly yelling.

"She had a seizure and—" Skylar began before Derek cut her off.

"A seizure?" He repeated, turning to Meredith. "You were supposed to be monitoring her!"

"I've been monitoring her all day," she gently told him, not wanting to get in trouble with her superior. But it was slightly awkward considering what happened between them before the day started. "When I checked on her she was fine, but—"

"I got it. Just go," he snapped. Meredith looked slightly discouraged and hurt, but she left nonetheless. When she left the room, Shepherd turned to Skylar and asked in a completely different voice, "Kepner, what happened?"

"I was just in the hallway when a nurse called for help, so I rushed in. She was seizing and flatlined for 43 seconds, but I was able to get her heart restarted. I ordered diazepam and prazepam, and when those didn't work, I ordered phenobarbital. Her seizing stopped, but she flatlined. I shocked her four times. I also paged both you and Dr. Bailey as soon as I got in," Skylar calmly explained. The adrenaline from the situation was wearing off and she could start to feel her tiredness from before creeping up on her.

"Good work," he praised her. "Really good work, Kepner. Dr. Bailey will definitely hear about this."

"Oh, uh thanks," she said, still not completely comprehending what had happened.

Derek smiled at her after checking Katie's vitals. "You saved her life, you know."

"Yeah," Skylar breathed out, the anxiety leaving her body. "Yeah, I know."


Halfway through their shift, all of the surgical interns were paged to a conference room. They had no idea what this was about, but they were excited nonetheless.

"What are you two doing?" Meredith asked as she walked up to Cristina and Skylar, somewhat confused.

"I'm suturing a banana, with the vain hope that it wakes up my brain," Cristina answered, focused on the banana and not looking up at Meredith. "Red seems to be trying to do the same with her article." George giggled at Cristina.

"What are you smiling at, 007?" She flatly said, making George frown slightly.

"Cristina…" Skylar said as a warning, standing up for her friend. Her motherly side was starting to come out more as she hung out with Cristina.

"I'm sorry, I get mean when I'm tired," Cristina half-heartedly apologized, still in the same monotone voice.

"You know what? I don't care," George said, leaning back in his seat. "I comforted a family and got to hang out in the OR today. All is well."

As Derek entered the room, Meredith stiffened. Skylar slightly noticed this out of the corner of her eye. She doesn't know why Meredith is so tense around Dr. Shepherd, but she just puts it down to how he treated her earlier after she saved Katie.

"I'm gonna do something pretty rare for a surgeon. I'm going to ask interns for help," Dr. Shepherd started. All of the interns processed this, becoming intrigued by the second. "I've got a kid named Katie Bryce. Right now, she's a mystery. She doesn't respond to meds, her scans are pure, her labs are clean. But she's having seizures. Grand mal seizures with no visible cause. She's a ticking clock—Katie's going to die if I can't make a diagnosis. Which is where you come in. I can't do this alone. I need extra eyes, extra minds. I need you to play detective. I need you to find out why Katie is seizing."

All of the interns stared at him, a bit less than enthused now. They have way too much work already, which is why Derek says, "You're tired. You're busy. You already have more work than you can handle. I've been there. So I'm offering an incentive. Whoever finds the answer rides with me. If Katie needs surgery, you'll do what no intern ever gets to do—scrub in to assist on an advanced procedure." Now he had their attention. Skylar sat up straighter, she's been interested in neuro ever since med school, and this was her chance to learn from one of the best neurosurgeons in the country.

"Dr. Bailey's going to hand out copies of Katie's chart. The clock is ticking fast, people. If we're gonna save Katie's life, we have to do it soon." With that, he left the room as Bailey put out copies of Katie's chart on the table in the middle of the room. All the interns gathered around and pushed so they could get their chart the fastest and have their chance at scrubbing in. Skylar hoped that she could do this, and if she wanted this spot, she had to say to herself that she knew she could do this.


Skylar, Meredith, and Cristina had teamed up to work on this case. Skylar thought it was a bit weird since only one of them would get the spot in the surgery, but after hearing that Meredith didn't want in on it because of Shepherd, she questioned if what she saw in the conference room was just because of how he treated her.

They were sitting on the floor of the library, in between two shelves of books.

"So she doesn't have anoxia, chronic renal failure or acidosis. It can't be a tumor. No evidence on the CT," Skylar mumbled to herself as Cristina questioned Meredith.

"You're seriously not gonna tell me why you won't work with Shepherd?" As much as Cristina hated to admit it, she kind of loved gossip and rumors. Skylar hated all that stuff, maybe she was just enraged because of how much gossip there was about her in school.

"No," Meredith bluntly answered, then turned to Skylar. "What about infection?"

"No white count, no CT lesions, no fevers, nothing in the spinal tap…" Skylar trailed off. Her mind was elsewhere, trying to figure out what Meredith had against Shepherd. She was just worried about her maybe-friend. Then, she suddenly put all of it together; the flustered looks, the fidgety behavior, and how uncomfortable Meredith was around him gave it up. She'd slept with him. Respecting the girl's privacy, she'd decided not to comment on it.

"Just tell me," Cristina encouraged.

Meredith sighed, giving in to Cristina. "You can't comment, make a face or react in any way."

"They had sex," the redhead said, earning a surprised look from Meredith. "What? You're not exactly the best at hiding it. Besides, I know things like this, trust me," she jokingly said.

As the other two interns continued to chat about Shepherd, Skylar closed her eyes, going through the conversations that she had with Meredith about Katie and what happened when she had to revive her.

"Wait, wait, just be quiet for a second," she instructed. The two other interns looked at her, confused. Skylar's eyes snapped open just a few seconds later, and she smiled brightly. "That's it! How didn't I think of it sooner?"

"What, what is it?" Meredith asked.

"Mer, you said she did rhythmic gymnastics!" She excitedly answered, jumping in her place. By the look of the blonde's eyes, Skylar knew she'd gotten it. As they grabbed their new friend's arms, they ran to tell Dr. Shepherd what they had found. Katie Bryce had twisted her ankle and fell, she hit her head and got a microscopic brain bleed.


After telling Derek what they had found, he'd picked Meredith to scrub in. Meredith and Cristina both knew that Skylar deserved to scrub in, but Meredith couldn't tell Derek that she didn't want to scrub in. Cristina was furious that Meredith had been picked. She'd called her a shark and said she was getting special treatment because they had sex. Which, to be fair, Skylar thought as well, although it wasn't Meredith's fault, and she wasn't one to hold a grudge.

The surgery was over now. Dr. Shepherd saved Katie, and she should wake up soon. Meredith, Skylar, and George sat on a bench, right outside the hospital.

"I wish I wanted to be a chef. Or a ski instructor, or a kindergarten teacher," Meredith suddenly said.

"You know, I would have been a really good postal worker. I'm dependable," George said, talking off of Meredith's statement.

"I could have been a dog trainer. I love dogs. Why did I have to love surgery more?" Skylar added on.

"You know, my parents tell everyone they meet that their son's a surgeon, as if it's some big accomplishment. Like a superhero or something." Skylar smiled at George's story, happy that he had a good family life. She, herself, had a mixed life growing up. "If they could see me now…" he trailed off.

"When I told my mother I wanted to go to medical school, she tried to talk me out of it. Said I didn't have what it takes to be a surgeon, that I'd never make it. So, the way I see it, superhero sounds pretty damn good," Meredith shared.

"My mom's a teacher, and my dad's a farmer. When I told them I wanted to go to med school, they started crying. My sister's also a surgeon. I think they thought they were losing us, or something," Skylar said, reminiscing. She didn't have a great relationship with her parents but she still looked up to them, they raised her and taught her almost everything she knows about life.

"We're gonna survive this, right?" George asked. His only reply was silence. "Right?"

Skylar just put her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. "It's been a long 48 hours."


It was finally the end of her first shift. She just survived 48 hours of running around this hospital, filling out charts, running labs, and taking the vitals of patients. The interns around her in the locker room were all groaning and complaining about needing sleep, but Skylar just stayed quiet.

George leaned against the locker beside hers as she pulled out her bag and jacket. She looked over at him and gave him a soft smile, wanting nothing but to sleep. "Hey."

He smiled, grabbing her bag for her while she put on her jacket. "So, how'd it go? You still want to be a surgeon?" He joked. Skylar's face lit up as she faced him, nodding quickly. She had turned into her not-tired, excitable self in less than a second when he asked the question.

"Today…today was amazing," she breathed out. George looked at her in slight disbelief.

"Skylar, you missed out on a major surgery," he slowly said.

Her face fell some, but she shrugged. "That happens. It'll happen to everyone for the rest of our career. I proved to Dr. Shepherd that I could handle a coding patient. And he liked the way I wrote charts. I helped save a life today, Georgie," she said, taking her bag back from him.

George looked at her for a moment, letting his eyes dance across her face. He finally let out a small laugh and shook his head, stepping aside slightly so she could walk out of the locker room first. "You did, Skylar. You did."

And with that, Skylar and George walked out of the hospital. Their first shift was officially over.

The first 48 hours of the rest of her life had just ended. And she couldn't be happier.


Words: 7657

A/N
I hope you all liked this first chapter. It would be wonderful if you could recommend how to bring Skylar to life more. I definitely don't want to make her boring to the readers.

If you could leave a comment that would be great, it makes me feel more motivated to write and gives me something to work for so I don't let anyone down by not updating.

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