"I HAVEN'T BEEN in the O.R. in two days. I'm getting some O.R. time," Cristina complained to Izzie as they all put their trauma gowns on. They were told an ambulance was going to be there in a few minutes and they had to take care of the patient. "We haven't had a decent resident this week."
"Oh, the last two weren't that bad," Skylar tried to lighten the mood.
"It doesn't matter which resident we get. They suck," Alex chimed into the conversation.
George agreed, "They all sucked."
"Yeah." They all walked through the door leading into the pit. Meredith was a few feet behind them still putting on her gown. She still wasn't feeling normal and had that uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach telling her that she would die today.
"I miss Dr. Bailey."
"Yeah, me too," Skylar agreed with George. The mood was a little down, everybody missed their resident even though they might not always show it, like Alex and Cristina.
As they waited in the ambulance bay, Alex asked Izzie, "So you wanna do charts later?"
"Never gonna happen," the blonde replied. "Alex, I gave you your chance, you had your chance and you slept with someone else." The other interns chuckled. "I forgave you in the spirit of being a bigger person, of rising above. But these legs are closed to you now. The panties are staying on. So you and me, never gonna happen."
"Can we get back to the point?" Cristina asked.
"You had a point?" George asked, confused.
"Yeah, which surgeon are we going to have to suck up to today?"
"That would be me," an all too familiar voice spoke up. They all turned around, startled, to find their beloved resident Dr. Bailey standing in front of them.
"Dr. Bailey?"
"I've been gone two weeks. Two weeks! And you ran off two residents! I've got people phoning me at home, screaming, telling me my interns are Rosemary's babies," Bailey told her interns. The six of them looked slightly offended by that. "Nobody wants you! Do you think I have time for this?" She continued. "I am pregnant! I'm supposed to be on bed rest. I'm supposed to be growing a human being. I'm supposed to be calm! Do I look calm to you? Did I raise you fools to be pariahs?"
George suddenly pushed past Izzie and Meredith and walked straight up to Bailey. The pregnant resident stared at him, confused. Suddenly, he wrapped her into a tight hug. "You're back!"
"I'm not back." She looked slightly uncomfortable.
"You're not?" His voice fell a little.
She hit his back. "Get off me." The intern finally broke off the hug and turned around to face the others. He smiled at them, happy that he had hugged Bailey. When Bailey heard an ambulance approaching, she ordered, "Uh, Yang, Karev, Grey, Kepner, stay here and wait for the incoming case. O'Malley, page Addison Shepherd." George nodded and moved back into the hospital. "Stevens, get a wheelchair."
"A wheelchair?"
"A wheelchair."
"What do you want me to tell Dr. Montgomery-Shepherd?" George asked as he came rushing back to Bailey, who ignored him since she was too busy with her four other interns. They hadn't moved an inch and were staring at Bailey.
"What did I say?" She asked, causing them to turn around and move toward the incoming ambulance.
"Dr. Bailey?" George got her attention again.
"What?" She turned around to face him.
"What do you want me to tell Dr. Montgomery-Shepherd when she answers her page?"
Suddenly, a splash was heard. "Tell her my contractions are ten minutes apart and my water just broke all over your shoes."
Cristina and Alex quickly opened the back doors of the ambulance while Skylar and Meredith stood behind them. They were greeted by a lady screaming very loudly and powerfully, her clothes and face were covered with spattered blood. A paramedic helped the lady out of the ambulance and Meredith took her to the hospital in hopes to calm her down and treat her if she was injured.
The three remaining interns locked eyes with a young paramedic whose eyes were wide and staring nervously back at them.
"Woah," Skylar gasped as she saw the paramedic's hand inside a large chest wound of the patient. Cristina and Alex were fighting over who got the case before she could even react. Skylar could basically hear the thuds of the dramatic music that would be playing if her life was a TV show.
In the trauma room, Skylar and Meredith checked the patient's vitals to see how he was doing before they determined a course of action.
"How's his respiratory effort?" Burke asked as he entered the room with Cristina. The brunette had already gotten him up to speed on the patient.
"Absent breath sounds on the right side, air bubbling on the side of the wound..." Meredith informed, using her stethoscope to try and hear his breath.
"He's shocky and getting a little cyanotic," Skylar added.
The patient, James, mumbled, blood coming out of his mouth with every word. "My wife..." Skylar looked out of the window to find the woman still screaming at the top of her lungs with no indication that she was going to stop.
"Let's get him intubated and place an occlusive dressing over the wound," Burke said before putting on gloves and turning to the paramedic. "And who are you?"
"Hannah. Hannah Davies," she answered.
"Hannah, why do you have your hand inside my patient?"
"I'd like to say for the record that I told her not to," another paramedic prefaced.
"I tried to tamponade the wound with gauze and pressure, but the only thing that would stop the bleeding was my hand. Every time I tried to move it he starts bleeding out," Hannah explained. The interns were working around her and the wife's screams could still be heard in the background. "Can I take my hand out now?"
"You don't stick your hand inside of a patient when you don't know how he was injured!" The other paramedic reprimanded. "You don't stick your hand inside of a patient at all."
"Yeah, I know that now!"
"Sir, you need to leave," Skylar ordered, noticing how Hannah tensed and moved her hand slightly when he yelled.
"Out of the room," Burke nodded.
The paramedic scoffed. "She gets to stay?"
"She has her hand inside of the patient," Burke explained, clearly annoyed.
"Nice. Thanks," Hannah turned to him.
"Don't get happy. You have your finger on a major bleeder, Mr. Carlson is running out of time. The only thing you have won is an all expense paid trip to the O.R." The girl's face fell slightly. "Dr. Grey, prepare to transport him to the O.R, and let's make this happen fast, people."
"What do you want us to do, Dr. Burke?" Skylar asked, gesturing to her and Cristina as she took off her gloves.
Burke gave Cristina a knowing look. "I want you to make that woman out there stop screaming and tell us what happened."
"Oh, I can't go to the O.R?" Cristina asked, shocked.
"No. You have a thing to do," Burke passive-aggressively said as he walked away, leaving Meredith and Skylar bewildered.
"What was that about?"
"If I'd known you were gonna get the good case, I would've let you stay in bed."
Alex and Izzie stood in front of the screaming woman and looked at each other. Izzie had her hands plugging her ears but her screams were still getting through. "She's been going at least 15, 20 minutes. This must be like some kind of record," Alex said.
"Look at her. She's not even turning red," Izzie added.
Skylar and Cristina walked up to them, the latter was a bit angry that Meredith would be scrubbing into the surgery instead of her. "Good for her. Burke says shut her up," Skylar said, a bit annoyed at the noise.
"We've got an incoming trauma," Olivia informed, walking up to them. "M.V.C. with a 30-minute extrication time, and severe intrusion damage to the car. Definite head injury. Stable citals on everything else. Five minutes out."
The four interns glance at each other. "Dibs!" Skylar shouted as she rushed out of the E.R, already snapping on a pair of gloves.
"I got it," Cristina said anyway.
"I called it first." Cristina and Skylar both moved toward the double doors.
"I thought Burke said for you to shut her up!" Alex called after the two.
"No, Burke told us to tell you to shut her up," Cristina said.
"He's my patient, Cristina, get your own," Skylar said as she held the end of the stethoscope to the patient's chest.
"I had one. Meredith took him," Cristina complained as she examined and wrote things down in the patient's chart. All they knew about him was that his name was Tucker Jones and he was in his mid-30s.
"She also took mine. You are not taking him," She responded.
"Is my wife here?" The man asked, his voice shaky and groggy. "Is—is she here?"
"Was she in your car with you?" Skylar queried.
"She should be here. She's—she's supposed to be here..."
"We'll find her, Mr. Jones," Skylar assured.
The door pushed open and Derek entered the room, putting on gloves. He had been called for a consult. "Okay, Kepner, what do we got?"
"Tucker Jones, age 35. He's got a chest contusion and head CT shows a left side depressed skull fracture and a temporal epidural hematoma," Skylar informed. "GCS 14 in the field, now down to 12. His motor exams are intact."
"Okay, let's get him on a gram of Dilantin and 70 grams of mannitol," Derek instructed before turning to Tucker. "Mr. Jones, I'm gonna need to do an examination of you, okay?"
A phone started ringing in the room. It was Tucker's phone ringing from the bag of his personal items. He recognized the ringtone. "Uh, my phone. An-answer. It's my wife," he croaked. "Y-you need to an-answer it."
"Okay, we're going to answer it," Derek reassured him. "Dr. Yang, answer his phone." The brunette was mumbling under her breath as she made her way toward the bag of Tucker's items in the corner of the room.
"Mr. Jones, can you squeeze my fingers for me, please?" The neurosurgeon asked but he didn't get a response from the patient. "Mr. Jones? Hey, I need you to squeeze my fingers."
Suddenly, the heart monitor started beeping rapidly, and Tucker started seizing. "He's seizing," Skylar noted, turning the patient on his side.
"Alright. Let's get him to the O.R," Derek instructed. The intern and nurses immediately prepared the patient for transport.
When Cristina had answered Tucker's phone, it was George on the other side, calling on behalf of Bailey. They had figured out that Tucker was Bailey's husband, who was trying to get to the hospital for the birth of his son but ended up getting into an accident. It put Derek under a lot of pressure. If something went wrong with Tucker, he wouldn't have only had a guilty conscience he would probably be chewed out by Bailey. And no one wanted to be yelled at by Dr. Bailey.
"So, Kepner, since we are becoming friends, in spirit of that we should get to know each other more," Derek muttered from underneath his mask.
Skylar, who stood next to him, cocked a brow at him before concentrating on their patient again. "So, what? We're gonna do an ice breaker with Dr. Bailey's husband's head open right in front of you?"
Derek glanced at her. "Bad idea?"
"Very."
The O.R. had an extra layer of tension and it was quieter than other surgeries as everyone inside knew the identity of the man on the table. Cristina stood far from the table, observing since Derek had chosen Skylar to scrub in.
"How many siblings to you have?" Derek questioned, wanting to get to know Skylar more. She was starting to become his protégé at this point.
"We're really doing this, huh?" She replied.
"Yes. Answer the question."
"I have four. All sisters."
"How crazy is that? I also have four sisters," Derek said, swapping out an instrument with another one.
Skylar shook her head. "You know, this ice breaker thing. It's kind of weird in this moment." Derek looked at her. "We can just know each other professionally. Not personally."
"Where's the fun in that, though?"
Skylar was just about to respond with a sarcastic quip but before she could, several pagers rang throughout the O.R. Derek instructed Cristina to check them, and the intern hastily moved to the side of the room. Skylar noticed the puzzled look from her friend as she placed down the pager, heading for the phone on the wall.
"How's he doing?" Skylar asked.
"Oh, it's touch and go," Derek replied. "I've located the clot. I'm just trying to find the source of the bleeding." He lifted his head to another intern in the room. "Go and find Addison. Tell her that he's in worse shape than I thought." Cristina walked over to the operating table. The unsure look on her face made Skylar frown. "What'd they want?" Derek asked.
"They want us to evacuate," the intern answered, receiving puzzling and questioning looks from everyone else in the O.R.
"Evacuate?" Derek asked. "Did they say why?"
"Uh, no," Cristina replied in an uncertain tone. "But your pager said Code Black?" Derek looked up from Tucker's brain, startled. Skylar's eyes widened. Code Black. Before she started at Seattle Grace, she memorized all their color codes. Code was a bomb threat. An uneasy feeling lingered in her heart as the whispers in the O.R. grew.
"You're sure they said that?" Derek asked, and Cristina nodded.
He lowered his head back to the patient in front of him with a crease on his forehead. "Could be a drill. Even if it's not a drill, I can't evacuate. I've got an open brain on the table," Skylar heard Derek mumbling to himself.
"Are you panicking?" She whispered, but the attending didn't answer.
"I'm not leaving Bailey's husband on the table with his skull flap open." Derek raised his voice to a normal volume. "So if anybody wants to go, they should go. Anybody want to evacuate?" Everybody remained in their places without moving. "Going once, going twice, three times." A few nurses shook their heads, and he turned to Cristina again. "You're sure they said 'Code Black'?"
"Yes," Cristina confirmed with a firm nod.
Derek nodded and turned to the intern next to him. "Are you good here?" He queried.
"Never better," Skylar breathed. This day just got a whole lot more interesting.
Derek had spent another hour operating on Tucker's brain with the help of Skylar and another nurse before they were interrupted by the O.R. door getting pushed open again. A man in black clothing stood there. Skylar noticed how good-looking he was, but shook the thought away. It was okay noticing people's attractiveness if she was in a relationship, she just couldn't and wouldn't act on it.
"Dr. Shepherd, there's an explosive device in the O.R. next door," the man spoke. "I need you to evacuate now."
"Yeah, and I've got a guy whose brain is exposed on this table. I'm not going to walk away and leave him to die," Derek retorted before he lifted his head to the O.R. team. "The rest of you can go." The majority of the O.R. team left, leaving Derek, Skylar, and two nurses. The man at the door looked unpleased, but the attending didn't care.
"You close him up. You do whatever you have to do," the man instructed. "The Chief of Surgery has authorized me to tell you that you cannot stay here."
"The Chief of Surgery doesn't scare me. Dr. Bailey scares me," Derek replied. "I'm not going to be the one to let her husband die. And that's what would happen if I put his skull flap on in this condition. Bomb or no bomb," he peered at the man. "Now, get out of my O.R."
The man heavily exhaled before closing the door and going away. "Harsh," Skylar spoke up.
"Kepner, you should evacuate," Derek advised.
"Um, no. I'm not?"
"Yes, you are. Code Black is a—"
"A bomb threat. I'm aware," Skylar interrupted. "But all due respect, Dr. Shepherd, you don't have three hands, do you?"
Derek thought for a moment before giving in. "Fine," he sighed. The O.R. was quiet for a moment before he spoke again. "You know what? If we make it out alive, we should be on a first-name basis."
Skylar chuckled, finding his suddenness rather amusing. "You make it sound like the bomb is the worst thing that could happen to us."
"You don't think so?"
Skylar shook her head. "Dr. Bailey will stab us if you don't save her husband," she replied. Bokhee, who was still in the O.R, nodded in agreement. "Just imagine...a very hormonal Dr. Bailey...chasing us with a scalpel..."
"Yeah, okay, you're right. That's worse," Derek took a deep breath. "Alright, then, let's save Mr. Jones' life."
The O.R. was quieter than it would have been if it were a normal day. It was almost silent. Almost. As time passed, the surgeons and nurses in the room grew more and more anxious. The knowledge of an unsteady bomb not far away from them wasn't doing any of them any good either.
"He's got a second bleed under the skull base..." Derek spoke to himself, repeating his words for the third time in that hour. "If I do what the textbooks say, he could lose the power of speech, herniate through the first craniotomy and die. And, if I do what I wanna do—"
"It's the same outcome," Skylar interjected. "Sorry."
"I've been repeating myself, haven't I?" He asked just as the O.R. doors swung open. Skylar curiously glanced at Cristina when she entered the room, putting a mask over her mouth a nose. "How's it going out there, Yang?" Derek asked.
"Everything's fine," Cristina replied. However, Skylar seemed to notice something off with the way she spoke.
"How's the girl with the bomb?"
"How's he doing?" Cristina hurriedly changed the subject as though it was taboo to speak about.
"He's almost there. I need suction. Irrigate," Derek requested and Skylar immediately followed his order. "That's great," he turned to Cristina once again. "You didn't answer my question, Yang."
"Sir?"
"How is the girl with the bomb?"
Skylar looked at Cristina, who stared back at her, her face uncertain and conflicted. "It's Meredith," the brunette finally blurted out. Skylar's eyes widened momentarily as her breath caught in her throat. Derek turned his head to the intern, startled. "The girl with the bomb is Meredith." Goosebumps rose on the back of Skylar's neck as she took in the information. How long had Cristina known? She wondered how long they had been hidden in the dark.
All of a sudden, Tucker's heart monitor began to flatline.
"Damn it. We're losing him. Push on of epi," Derek ordered.
Cristina rushed over to give them an extra hand, checking on Tucker's pulse from his wrist. "Thready pulse," she notified.
"Epi in!"
The monitor continued to flatline for a few seconds before Derek jumped into action again. "Nothing. Okay, get me a wet lap," he requested. "We're gonna roll him on three. Okay, let me know when everyone's ready." Everyone immediately started positioning the patient to flip him. "Let's go. We gotta go. Come on! Let's go!"
They rolled Tucker onto his side but his condition was still not improving. Skylar was performing manual CPR on him, her own heart rate spiking under the intensity of it all. "Wide complex bradycardia," she informed when she saw the display on the monitor changing.
"Push one more of epi and one more of atropine," Derek ordered. "Come on, come on, come on. You can't do this, Tucker. You cannot quit on me, Tucker. Come on, don't quit!"
As Tucker's condition didn't show improvement, the nurses were starting to lose hope in the situation. Cristina stood over the man, Derek was panicking, and Skylar was still performing CPR without missing a beat. The adrenaline was getting to her.
"Punch him. Now."
Skylar glanced up at Derek, whose face was drained of color. She wasted no time, stopping her CPR. She listened to the monitor flatline as she raised her fist and struck Tucker on the left side of his chest. Everyone exhaled in relief as the monitor started beeping. Derek instantly went back to work on Tucker's brain.
"The girl with the bomb is Meredith..." Derek mumbled. Skylar and Cristina shared an alarming look.
"Shepherd?" Skylar knew they had no time to lose. "Dr. Shepherd."
"The girl with the bomb..."
"Derek!" She bellowed. The attending looked at her, his eyes flooded with concern and distress. "Save the life you know you can save," she spoke. "Everyone will be fine. Nobody is dying."
He slowly nodded. "Nobody is dying..." he repeated her words. "Okay...okay...suction."
Everyone in the room let out a relieved sigh. Tucker was not dying today. Bailey would not be killing anyone today. Cristina had gone out to update Webber about their situation, but Skylar wondered if she would be with Meredith.
"You should get out of here," Derek told Skylar. "I only need to close up. I can do it alone."
"Why are you so eager to get rid of me?" She queried.
"Because there's a bomb next to this O.R." He furrowed his brows, sending her a look as though he was stating the obvious. "You're not scared, are you?"
Skylar chuckled. "Reverse psychology won't work on me, but nice try."
"Skylar," his voice was much more serious this time. "Just go. We'll be fine. Nobody is dying, right?"
"Alright. Alright." She placed the tools in her hands aside and walked toward the O.R. door. She ripped the gloves off her hands before tossing them into the bin beside her. When she held onto the door handle, there was a lingering hesitation deep within her. "If the bomb goes off and I die, I'm haunting you."
Derek merely rolled his eyes. "You have my permission. Go."
Skylar swung open the door and looked down the hallway only to see the back of the bomb squad guy. He was walking very slowly and looked to be holding something but she couldn't see it since he was turned away from her. He was also far away so he didn't notice her. She thought back to Meredith and how the blonde said that she had a feeling. She couldn't help but think that Meredith was psychic or something.
As she started walking away, she felt a strong heat against her back and the corridor had suddenly gone bright. One second she was walking away from the O.R, the next second, she was being blown off her feet. Her stomach collided with the floor but her hands stopped her from smacking her face against it.
Glass shards flew in all directions. The smell of smoke filled her nose as she shakily got up, her ears still ringing, and she was trying to blink away the dryness of her eyes.
The hallway had been silent one minute ago, and now it was blown to pieces. Pieces of the wall, as well as loose chunks of concrete, were scattered all across the floor as the gray fumes rose into the air. The windows were all blown off, the blinds semi-detached from the frame.
And the bomb squad guy was gone.
"Meredith..." she called out, seeing the woman lying on the floor. Skylar crouched down and shook her before wincing in pain. Something in her arm was definitely broken.
All that happened after was a blur. She vaguely remembered someone helping her out of the hallway and into the locker room Skylar's mind seemed to be brought back after someone touched her left shoulder. She lightly cried out in pain and the person apologized over and over again.
"Sorry," he said. It was George. He was holding her back up so she didn't fall off the bench he placed her on. "I was so worried about you," he muttered. She could see the redness of his eyes and the stains that the tears left on his cheeks.
"You were crying?" She softly asked. Her voice was hoarse like she had inhaled some smoke. He nodded. When he heard that Shepherd's team was still in the O.R, his mind immediately went to Skylar and how he could have lost her. He needed to express his feelings before something happened to both of them.
"I love you," he suddenly blurted out. Skylar slightly jumped, not expecting him to say something. She took a breath of air and got ready to say something but before she could George spoke up again. "You don't have to say it just because I said it. I don't want you to say it just because I said it. But, I do. I do love you, Sky."
They both smiled at each other, George's smile bigger than Skylar's. It didn't matter to him because she almost got blown up and the aftermath was still raining down on her. Skylar tried to think of something to say. She wasn't sure if she was in love with him or not. "I don't know what love feels like," she went for. "I mean, I've never even said 'I love you' to my parents, so—"
"You don't have to say it. Take your time. I want you to say it when you actually mean it," he reassured her. She winced once again and he realized that he was stroking her left arm and that was what was hurting. "We should get your shoulder checked out."
"Yeah, probably," she agreed. When George made to stand up, Skylar held his hand making him stop. "Please don't leave me."
"I won't," he promised. "I won't ever leave you."
Words: 4558
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