Derek has three patients, but doesn't have the chance to operate on any of them.
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A/N: (Reply to reviews) I'm aware that I often neglect Meredith here (this is a Derek-centric story) but there is some Meredith-Baby stuff in the next chapter. :)
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"So, tell me, who says you can't be a good father and husband, huh?" Kate pondered aloud, a little worried about him and the people he was surrounding himself with.
She was making him stay behind with her. Again. As if he was a child being requested to be held back by a teacher but more because she had noticed him slack all day with tears in his eyes than because he hadn't bothered to finish his sheet on adding fractions, nor writing the descriptive passage on the classroom yet.
He shook his head. "No one."
"I know it's your patients that say you can't be a doctor. That guy who did that an awful, awful thing. Patients probably find it easier to blame the obvious thing which is, apparently, wrong with you for their family's death than anything else. It's easier to assume incompetency caused death, rather than having to believe the fact that a loved one went through those ER doors with no hope of ever making their way out again."
He swallowed, a little surprised by the depth of her insights. "Yeah."
"But there are only two people who can truly say whether or not you are a good father and a good husband. Your kids and your wife. You know no one else should have any kind of footing in that conversation. So, tell me, who says this to you? Is it your kids? Is it your wife? Or is it someone else who has no business in your life?"
"My son..." He swallowed. "He shouted at me. Once. Just after I was discharged, for the first time, he didn't really the grasp the concept very well. I understood his conclusion. I mean, one day I was just doing whatever I did every day. Running up and down the stairs, chasing them so they would get ready on time. Making and serving pancakes. Taking them to nursery. You know, fatherly things. Next thing they know, I've poofed into thin air. Then they see me, unmoving from a hospital bed with bandages around my head, arm and both legs. Then I'm fine, or at least a little better, only for Meredith, then me, to have to make some kind of attempt at explaining that not all pains heal like when their friend from day-care broke her arm. I suppose she went cast with sling, just a cast, brace, freedom and fully healed. My line doesn't go like that. There is no 'freedom and fully healed' and I think they're still expecting that, despite the fact we've clarified multiple times that it is not going to be like that."
"And the husband part of it?"
"Before my- I- well, I'm not quite sure what to call it. I suppose you'd call it a mental breakdown, but that just sounds a little…" He trailed off.
She frowned at his hesitation, not finding another word to restart his sentence with. "A little?"
"I don't know." He confessed, unsure why he had even made an attempt to understand that week.
"So before your not-really-but-almost-mental-breakdown, what happened?" She asked.
"I was a bad husband. A shit husband. The angry, aggressive kind of husband. Just for a week. But still…" His words disappeared to a simple exhale, breath the closest sound he made to a latter half of the sentence.
"But that doesn't count, does it?" She questioned rhetorically. "Me and my partner. We agreed that it was unfair to hold anything like that against each other. If you weren't in the right state of mind for yourself, there's no way you could have treated others right. That's what you agreed with her, right? That's what we all do. Or at least hope to do."
"Yeah. We- we don't talk about that time. Or at least, in that kinda sense." He replied. "A lot of people have...problems with me now."
"A lot of people?"
"Well...there's this neurosurgeon. He's friends with Mer, hates me. He's convinced that I've ruined her."
"So, how long have you and Dr Grey been married?"
He looked up at the man. "Uh, it's a slightly complicated question. And answer."
"Why?"
"First time, one of Mer's friends- well, there was a possibility she was going to die. Cancer. So we gave her and her boyfriend our wedding setup and the church so they could be married…you know, just incase. Second time, we were too busy so we ended up doing a kind of verbal marriage. Then we finally got real-married for legal reasons."
"Next of kin?" He presumed.
Derek shook his head. "Adoption."
"Oh. So is this her first actual child?"
Derek tried not to scoff. Zola was their 'actual child'. She wasn't loved any different than Bailey and, once Meredith had their third, they wouldn't differ Zola with them either. "This is our second biological child."
"Always thought when I found the right person, I would want kids." He sighed.
"Mer was the same before she met me."
He looked back round at him, this indescribable look on his face. He was almost…smug. "And you are the right one for her, are you?"
His eyebrows creased at the way that question was posed. In fact, he was pretty sure they creased at the fact that that question was being posed at all. Why would he ask that? "I like to think so."
"Mmm, everyone does. Next thing, they're fighting over custody."
"I don't think anything could possibly happen that is worse than this and it didn't split us up."
He shrugged. "Well, you're not over uh- that-" He gestured to his chair. He was allowed to sit in it in the OR, providing he wasn't actually near the patient. "-yet, are you? There's still time. Maybe don't speak too soon."
"If you don't mind, I'm gonna go. I'm sure you can manage the rest of the surgery without me having to correct your potentially life-ending mistakes."
"Excuse me?" He asked, eyebrows raising.
"That first surgery I watched you do. You nearly killed the patient. You would have if I wasn't there. So, for the love of God, don't do it again."
"Dr Shepherd." He called, anger in his tone.
"I saved that life and I wasn't even touching the scalpel. So before you call me useless again, think about that." He rebutted. He couldn't remember the last time his ego took him over like that. It was that 'drowning in testosterone' phrase. The battle of two egotistical men.
"I do not think you're useless Dr Shepherd."
"So what adjective would you describe me with?"
He swallowed before returning to his patient. Derek didn't bother waiting for another second and left the OR. At least the man had learnt 'if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it', even if it was just in the presence of the man he was discriminating against.
"Right." She nodded. "Does he have any potential compared to you? You know: husband, father of her kids, soulmate, love of her life?"
"Oscar has one simple advantage to me. He can walk, and stand, and run, and well, you know...he can do things. He can go upstairs. He could take his kids swimming. He could run a bike down the street so his kids wouldn't need stabilisers. He could take his kids to nursery by himself. He's normal."
"You mean because you are disabled and he isn't? That's what makes him the 'superior man'? That's why you think he has a chance with your wife of- what, five years? The one you have almost three kids with? Seriously, Derek?"
He sighed. She was great at the caring side of a mother-hen, but also the berating side. "Do you want to be a mom?" He asked abruptly. She had mentioned it in passing, but they hadn't actually discussed it.
She took a second to absorb that question. "Yeah. Yeah, I think I do. We were...we were thinking about it, talking about it before everything happened and Jules- well, we just didn't know what we were going to do. Was I taking time off of work? Was Jules going to instead? Half and half? Both of us? Did we even want to go through all the...stress of going through the system? Or finding a surrogate? How do you find one that you know isn't going to run away with your baby at the end?" She swallowed. There were so many things that she had to consider, that other people did. Would they even be deemed a stable, secure family if she was told she wouldn't walk again? "You know about our problems, Zola- she was adopted right?"
Derek swallowed. Perhaps he should have been more thoughtful about the question. If someone asked Meredith if she wanted to be a mother in the middle of the storm of their attempts, it wouldn't be pleasant for her either. "Can you not carry?" He asked tentatively.
"Oh- no, I can. I mean, I guess I could. I'm not aware of anything like that but I've never done testing. I presume my SCI wouldn't- screw with that. It's AIS D and low. I guess I'd need a c-section though which...wouldn't be nice."
"Considered a donor?"
"I don't need to give birth to a baby for it to be mine. I mean, being okay with adoption and having...complicated families comes with the territory."
"The SCI territory or the police territory?"
Her mouth dropped at that. "Oh my god."
"What?" He asked, alarmed. It wasn't the kind that someone said after a bad event. It was more like he had just said something shocking. But he hadn't. He'd asked a simple question.
"You don't know."
He was so, so lost. He felt like an idiot now. "What don't I know?"
"Who is Jules?"
"Uh- your husband?" He guessed. She suppressed a giggle. "Your boyfriend?" He presumed, getting seriously worried about why she found it so entertaining.
"Oh, Derek. You poor soul."
"What? You know it's technically discrimination to make fun of a man in a wheelchair, right?"
"That card?" She asked, still beaming as she gestured to her own chair. "That card doesn't exist here, idiot!"
"Okay-" He retorted. "-well, neither does the secrecy card! Come on, spill it, Kate!"
"Let's just say...if you and Meredith broke up and were both single, it would be the latter I would go after in a bar." She stated as she smirked, suppressing laughter as she watched him have a whole freaking spiritual awakening right in front of her.
He swallowed as he was hit hard with the realization like a smack in the face.
"Derek, you do know I'm a lesbian, right?"
"I know that."
"You did not know that! You wouldn't be making that face of you knew that!" She accused through her own light but constant giggles, seeing his suppressed laughter.
He didn't feel like he had a friend like that since Mark died. One that he could just laugh and laugh with for hours upon hours. It was nice.
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"Hey." Derek greeted, pulling open the door of the CT scanner's room.
"Oh- hi, Dr Shepherd."
"If you want to get changed out of that gown, I'll go and quickly look over your scans, then we can talk about them, okay?"
"Okay." He breathed. It wasn't okay. It was anything but okay.
Having a scan in what he could only describe as a massive, claustrophobic donut of plastic was bad enough. That, added to the fact that he required said CT scan because there was a tumour engulfing has of his brain made it anything but okay. Plus, the other overwhelming fact that the neurosurgeon who had just greeted him was the man he almost killed seven months prior.
He wasn't sure which bit was worse; every factor was horrendous.
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"Hello." The man greeted as he entered the room, now in an informal kind of green cotton shirt, it's top button free and sleeves rolled up, and black pants. He was obviously a lot happier that way. Derek got that; he was the same. No one liked a hospital gown.
"Take a seat," He instructed, gesturing to the seat opposite him. It was an odd place to sit as a surgeon. It wasn't often that he sat behind a desk. There was a computer to one side, a box of tissues beside the keyboard and a few leaflets on the edge of the desk. He didn't do this kind of thing often but then again; he didn't offer to treat the man who almost killed him often either. He was sifting through some paper when he paused abruptly, eyeing the man. "Actually-"
"Huh?" Jason paused, not sitting down as he originally instructed him to.
"Could you just walk over here?" He requested, turning to face the space besides his desk.
He did so, feeling extremely awkward as the man intently watched his walking.
"Your gait – the way you're walking – is a little off." He observed.
He nodded as he returned to his seat, only able to presume he was supposed to be sitting down as he made no instruction to the contrary. "Oh...I know. My leg goes a little numb sometimes, makes it difficult to…" Walk was the last word of that sentence. But difficulty in walking sounded insignificant when the man in front of him could barely walk a dozen steps with intensive assistance. "It's just difficult." He said with as much finality as he could. That was very little.
Derek watched as he folded the weaker leg over his other one, fingers tapping against the thigh as he searched for a way to describe it further.
"Does your oncologist know?" He asked, eyes creasing with concern. He could guess what he was doing, but he didn't need an explanation. In fact, presuming it was neuropathic pain he was experiencing, he most definitely didn't need an explanation.
"Yeah." He answered after a second, a little hesitant of the information he was divulging. "He gave me a stick...a walking stick. I uh- I normally use it but today, it just felt a little…"
Silence engulfed the room. He couldn't say it. He couldn't say anything.
"Insensitive?" Derek suggested after a while.
He nodded slowly to the word that was lingering in his own mind too. "Mmm."
"It's alright Jason, really."
"It's not though, is it? I mean, I can't walk properly because I have a brain tumour that I should have had looked at months before…well, before I made it so impossible for you to walk too. I mean, I can still at least walk around the hospital unassisted."
"My pain doesn't invalidate yours. If you need a walking stick, then you need a walking stick. Imagine if I said that because there are people in this world that broke more vertebrae or ones higher up or that have a higher ASIA score than me, I'm not going to let myself use the things I need."
He swallowed. He wasn't sure what some of those things meant but he was pretty sure he caught onto what he meant. "But in my head, I can't imagine that you were the one that did those things to that person."
"Your tumour did those things. Your tumour impacted your vision. It made your hands numb and tingly. It gave you a headache that made it hard to focus on the road. And when I remove it, those things will be gone. The thing that did all these things you keep saying you did, will be gone. You'll just be Jason again."
He didn't smile as Derek had hoped at his speech. "When you remove it?" He repeated. He didn't really hear anything else in that paragraph of speech.
They had discussed the idea. Heavily. Him and his sister had told him that he both had a tumour and that it was inoperable. He was given maybe another year, at an absolute push, and that appeared to be that. But apparently, now, it wasn't.
No one seemed to be any better than the Shepherd siblings and even if he could find someone who was and willing to remove it, he certainly couldn't afford to fly around the world to find said person anyway, even if it was for his life. Money didn't just appear out of thin air because he needed it to live.
"If you'll let me." He confirmed with a nod.
"But your sister- actually, your sister and you both said you couldn't. That the chance of the surgery going okay was like a billion to one and I'd be better off with palliative care, right? And that if you gave me the time I had left and then tried or even like half of that time, it would be literally, physically impossible. That's what you said."
"Jason-" He sighed. "-your tumour is inoperable."
"But you just sai-"
"I'm the one whose saying 'but', okay?"
"Okay…"
"Your tumour is inoperable but, providing you want me to, I'll remove it." He offered, finally getting a chance to speak.
His eyebrows creased down so far that they almost touched his eyelashes. "You want to remove an inoperable tumour?"
"Yes." He nodded slowly, eyes dropping to observe the scan once more.
The response didn't relax him in any way, panic still radiating through him. "But I'd die...right? Isn't that what inoperable means?"
"Well, the reasons why we deem a tumour inoperable is complicated so in essence, it's a tumour that is impossible to realistically remove." He defined, although he was sure that it was the contradictions that came out of his mouth that was confusing him, not the definition of the word.
"So you want to operate on a tumour that's impossible to operate on?" He questioned. "Do you do that a lot?"
"Yes, actually. Although I do know how contradictory it sounds."
"Oh." He breathed. "So...those articles weren't kidding about you being good."
"I can't guarantee you anything." He warned. He needed to be careful with the man. There was a high possibility he could open him up to find the tumour was much, much more extensive than he adjudged from the scans. He could get half way through the surgery to find the next stage truly was impossible and have to leave his skull flap open while he searched for a solution to fix the calculation. He could fail to cut out the tumour carefully and just have to prey that the man had no major deficits. In fact, he could fail to cut out the tumour carefully and kill the man right there and then in the OR.
"You mean I might die?" He asked, reading his doctor's mind.
"Yes." He agreed, giving him a second to absorb that piece of information. "But I've removed inoperable tumours before with perfect success. I've even removed two inoperable diffuse astrocytomas – which is what you've got."
"And no one else will do it?" He asked, faltering a little as he realized the words came out just a little wrong. He could only presume that if he wouldn't do it, no one else in the world would. But he couldn't be the only one that removed inoperable tumours – now that he knew that word was a partial lie – could he? "I mean- I know you're good. I know you're really good cause I searched you up after I- uh, hit you…and found a bunch of complicated medical articles that took me a while to work out was actually in English. But you know, it's not like I'm some random patient. I almost killed you Dr Shepherd, and now you want to save my life."
"Jason," He sighed, hands folding over the table as he sat forward to be a little closer to him. "You've got a bomb in your head. And that's terrifying. And I'm so sorry that that had to happen to you, but no one wants to go near a bomb."
He swallowed. "So you're expo?"
"Expo?" He repeated.
"The bomb squad. Those people who go near bombs to diffuse them or whatever. Stop them blowing up and killing everyone."
"I- yeah. I'm expo. Probably the only member of this expo squad…on the planet." Derek confessed.
"Right." He sighed. "When...when are we expoing?"
"It will be a while, I'm afraid. I'm going to book frequent scans for close monitoring. The treatment should shrink it and we'll keep doing that for as long as possible. Then...then I'll operate."
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Derek had a free schedule in terms of planned surgeries. He had been kicked off his last case by his own patient and dumped the woman on his sister. She would be thankful to him though, he was sure. 'Dumped' wasn't really the right word. Perhaps, gift would have suited the sentence better. An anaplastic oligodendroglia didn't turn up at the hospital as often as the regular orders to remove a glioblastoma multiform or a melanoma.
He wouldn't say that those surgeries weren't hard or interesting to remove, just a little to common for her to be removing every single day. He, on the other hand, was still glad to receive any surgery coming his way. That was the one good part of missing so many months of surgery: holding a scalpel made him smile, never mind slicing into a brain.
"What you doing now?" Derek inquired as he paused by his sister, joining her at staring at the OR board. It had been such a long time since he had to stare at that board, search for his name and patient and check all the details were right. And he just lost another one of those, although he knew the board was still going to read 'Shepherd', just the other one, not him. He already knew what she was doing. An awake craniotomy, as he had planned for the woman.
"Scheduled surgery." She replied, tapping on one of the rows of the whiteboard with the whiteboard pen she was previously flicking between her hands every couple of seconds.
Patient: Elizabeth White.
Attending: A.F Shepherd.
D.C Shepherd, not A.F Shepherd. The only difference between those abbreviations were the first two letters.
"Mmm, lemme guess. Forty-three-year-old female. Brown hair. Five foot, six. Potential risk of DVTs because of medical history. Chronic high blood pressure to consider in surgery too. Two kids. Divorced." He listed off, grinning a little at her reaction. "She's got a grade three anaplastic oligodendroglia which can be removed fairly easily, considering its category of tumour and the fact that she has been treated with chemo up to this point. It's just a shame her oncologist never gave her the chance to learn how to pronounce the word though. You should probably question who ever that was, by the way."
"Did you trade your soul with the devil for some kind of third eye or something? Do I need to call an exorcist? I mean, first Jason's tumour and now…"
"Was I right?" He questioned, toying with her. He already knew the answer. In fact, he knew an awful lot more about the patient than she did, he could only presume.
"Yes, you were right!"
He smirked at her face, not able to resist the chance to mess with her, even if she knew he had found out that information from somewhere, not made the world's creepiest guesses. "She's my patient. Or- she was."
"Why isn't she anymore?" She questioned at the amendment.
"Because she determined that if I don't have working legs, then I don't have working arms either." He answered, almost automatically. Robotically. He had found this way of avoiding things to be extremely helpful since the crash. It was that, or showing emotion. And no one wanted him to do the latter.
Her eyebrows creased as her brain scavenged to try and find some way to absorb what he had just said. That was bullcrap. Total, utter bullcrap to say that he was incapable of operating.
She was aware that the world contained these people. They were always uninformed, but so sure that what they were saying was right. They could barely even carry a conversation about it if they made an attempt to discuss it because Amelia always had statistics and facts to exchange while these people always just had their opinion.
She knew it had got bad before. Really bad. When a patient physically assaulted him in the hope it would provide evidence for his opinion that paralyzed people can't and shouldn't be allowed to even be in the medical profession, never mind perform any kind of surgery.
Cases like this one where a patient would simply present their grievances to him – an explanation was never given but that was okay; it wasn't ever required – also turned up often.
Then, at the bottom of the list, just simply staring. She knew before that the whole world seemed to have this overwhelming fascination with people's injuries and illnesses when it meant they needed some kind of physical thing to assist them. And that intrigue only grew ten times stronger when the item that assisted said person was a wheelchair.
"So you do it." She instructed.
"What?" He questioned.
"I'll find a trauma to work on, conveniently get pulled away so you have to do it." She suggested, showing the first smile since his confession at the idea.
He shook his head, expression blank. "I don't need you to give me your cases because you feel sorry for me."
"She's your case, not mine. That's what you literally just said." She tried to offer back. It was odd. Normally they would be competing over surgeries, not trying to get one off on each other.
"She was my case. Now she's yours." He put simply, hoping she would leave the topic alone. She wasn't the first woman she had met with that opinion and she certainly wouldn't be the last. There was no need to dwell on it for so long.
"So you don't want to do it?" She asked a little tentatively.
"No. If she doesn't want me, I won't don't it." He clarified.
"You sure you're okay with that?" She inquired, a little worried about how quickly he declined her offer.
"Fine." He nodded, just before his pager went off. He looked at it for a second before putting it back down.
"Patient?"
"Mmm."
"Well, I suppose I've got to go talk to this patient of yours."
"Just don't hit the motor cortex while you're in there, god knows what she'll try and sue you for." He quipped as he pulled himself backwards into the elevator, mouthing 'good luck' just before the doors of the lift closed.
She rolled her eyes at her brother's comment (it wasn't really a joke) before heading to her patient's room. She paused outside for a second to remind herself that she was a patient who deserved care despite her views, thanks to the oath she took, before entering.
"Hi. I was told that you requested a change of surgeon due to...your views. I'm uh- the replacement neurosurgeon." She greeted before passing a clip board to the woman. "This is a consent form. I'll be doing it at the same time, same surgery. Just a different surgeon."
She took the board. "Okay. Thanks. I just felt a little..."
"Uncomfortable?" Amelia recommended, uncomfortable herself at the fact she had to say that.
"This still says Dr Shepherd is doing my surgery." Mrs White stated, eyebrows creasing as she read and re-read the consent form for her surgery.
"There are two Shepherds here, I'm the other one." Amelia clarified, settling her chart by the end of the bed.
"Married?"
She shook her head once. "He's my brother."
"Oh- right." Elizabeth breathed. She had no idea why in the world the woman didn't seem overly concerned when she suggested them being married, but suddenly found herself sighing worriedly at the idea of the man's sister operating on her. Then again, she was one of those people. She wouldn't ever understand much of what she was saying.
Amelia sighed. "Do you feel awkward now?"
"Just...like seriously, how is he a surgeon?"
"Because you don't need to stand to do neurosurgery. And that's the only thing he can't do."
"But I- I watched him. And he moved his legs. So it must be something else wrong with him. You know, other than paralysis." She elaborated, confused. "One of my friend's sons has this disease thing where he like faints all the time so he's in a wheelchair. And then there's those muscle things where you can feel and move, but you just can't like- walk. That would be arms and legs, wouldn't it? If he's got either of those things, then I don't want him doing my surgery."
"My brother was in a car accident. And the guy that hit into his car had a brain tumour. Still has, in fact, a brain tumour. He isn't irresponsible, that could have happened to anyone. Could have happened to me or to you. He was partially paralyzed from the waist down. Which means his legs are useless when it comes to walking. But that also means the rest of him, his brain and his arms - the things you need for neurosurgery - are completely fine. Nothing wrong with them at all. Not even a little problem. Nothing. So no, he wouldn't have fainted in your brain and he would have not screwed up your surgery because of his injuries either."
"Right..." She replied, eyebrows still raised from her surgeon's blocky paragraph. She signed the form. "Tell him I'm sorry...would you?"
She took it with an awkward kind of smile before heading towards the door. "See you in an hour."
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"Tell me about you." Oscar instructed, sitting beside Meredith in the cafeteria after spotting her alone. The real reason was simply because Derek had been pulled away to a surgery, his half-eaten lunch still sat beside her. She admittedly, had stolen half of it, knowing he wouldn't come back for quite a while seeing as the average craniotomy took an absolute minimum of two hours and by then, his food would almost frozen cold.
"We did this before." She reminded him. "Remember, the coffee mistake that ended up with you ending up getting me orange juice and-"
"That wasn't a real conversation though, was it?" He inquired rhetorically, cutting her off.
"Well, it's nice to know that our conversations mean so little to you." She returned sarcastically.
"No." He shook his head. "I mean, that wasn't a real conversation, was it? That was us rushing to get to know each other because we were only on a half an hour lunch time break."
"We were supposed to be on a half an hour break, we doubled that." She corrected, ripping a hole out of her apple.
"So?" He shrugged. "I like talking to you."
She stopped chewing. "Have you tried talking to anyone else in this hospital? Anyone at all?" She inquired, smiling a little as he faltered.
"Yeah. I know-" He hesitated, searching for a name. "-uh, Amelia."
"Right, you know the name of the head of your own department, impressive." She remarked sarcastically.
"I know she's your sister-in-law. And I know that she lives with you."
"Now it sounds like you are just stalking me, not her." She returned.
"She…she's been chief of surgery for like a year. She used to live in LA. And I- yeah, I don't know anything else."
"Mmm. I can tell." She murmured, taking another sip of the water besides her plate. "Who else have you talked to then?"
"Robbins. She's dating Torres, right? And they have a daughter." He listed off. "And Torres, she dated a dude before her so she's like…uh- Bisexual, right?"
"I'm impressed." She remarked.
He frowned. "What?"
"You stalk someone other than me."
He smirked. "You really think you're so special that I would only stalk you, Grey? I mean you're great and all… but, you're not that great."
"Mmm. Real flattering." She sighed.
"Yeah. You don't need to tell me." He returned sarcastically too.
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"Shepherd?" The irksome voice called out. It wasn't the tone itself that was annoying. It was the fact he recognized who it belonged to, and he hated that man.
"Yes, Dr Shelby." He sighed, stopping and turning around to face him.
He gave a quick smile, as if it would convince him to say yes to the inquiry he was about to pose. "Could you do me a favour?"
He resisted the urge to sigh again. "Depends what it is."
"There's this girl in paeds. Jay Stone, thirteen-year-old with a tumour that causes generalized onset tonic-clonic seizures." He started as he walked slowly. Derek followed just behind him, presuming he had somewhere he needed to go. He felt a little patronized by the man's speed. It wasn't like he could run down the halls to a trauma anymore but he certainly could move faster than the snail the man presumed him to be akin to.
"Interesting." He murmured. It wasn't very often that he had seen a tumour-patient suffer those kinds of seizures. Generally, seizures caused by tumours were either simple partial or complex partial, barely ever tonic-clonic.
"Anyway, she flew from Australia for me to remove it for her but I've got another surgery so I can't see her today. Room 3651, could you-" He gestured generally away down the hallway, not specifically to her room, hoping he could fill in the rest of the sentence for him.
"You want me to go instead?" He inquired, presuming that he wasn't requesting him to do her surgery but hoping anyway. A man can dream, he supposed. Out of any person in the hospital, he was most definitely the least likely one to be offering him a surgery.
"Read her chart, talk her through the procedure, answer questions, you know- all that stuff." Oscar requested, dispersing any hope.
"You don't think she wants to see the man who is going to be chopping into her brain?" He questioned. Given the opportunity, she would have much rather talked to the person about to perform his surgery than someone else. They would read the scans the same, or in a similar enough way, but it wasn't the same. He knew that. And he sure hoped that that Oscar did too.
"She'll be fine. You can explain things well." He shrugged before pausing his walking abruptly as he reached a door. He ignored Derek's knee hitting against the back of his leg as he stopped so suddenly, either supposing it wasn't his fault or, more likely for this specific man, simply building a silent anger in the back of his mind.
"Okay?" He inquired, wondering why they had stopped. He hadn't really paid much attention to where they were going, too focused on absorbing the information he was being given about the girl.
"Stairs." He stated as he pulled the door open to the stairwell. "Anyway, I think you got the ist of the case, right?" He asked, moving on from his previous word a little too quickly.
"Or we could just take the elev…" He trailed off as the man disappeared behind the stairwell door. "Or not then." He sighed before performing a one-eighty and heading to the elevator – the place he was planning to suggest.