Derek and Bailey operate together.
"So, how was the threesome?"
Derek choked on his cereal. "What?" He coughed.
"With Addie. Didn't you relive the good old times while she was still here?" Amelia elaborated.
"Okay. Seriously! Who the hell came up with that rumour?"
"You've never done it? You. Addie. Mer. I heard you had. Multiple times."
She didn't get a verbal response. Just an empty cereal box thrown at her with an awful lot of vigour. Then a shared chuckle.
"Sats are dropping." A scrub nurse called as she looked to the monitor. "92, 88."
"Shepherd, you sorting that out?" Bailey questioned, pulling her instruments out of the man's abdomen for a second. She knew it wasn't her that was causing the drop in his pulse ox and increase in heart rate, the cavity she was working on wasn't filling with blood.
"82." A different nurse announced as it dropped further. His fingers continued to shift despite the fact his eyes shot up to observe the cardiac monitor. He was operating without looking and somehow – he wasn't even sure he knew how – he didn't screw it up. It couldn't have been for more than two seconds. But in surgery, two seconds might as well be the two hours.
"Dere-" She started as he made no response to her first inquiry, worried as she watched the numbers on the screen grow further and further away from where they were suppose to be. The man was hypotensive and tachycardic, the perfect evidence to prove to anyone who couldn't tell that the man was losing blood. And quick.
Car accidents were the leading cause of most life-ending and life-altering injuries. That never changed. Car vs car, bike vs car, pedestrian vs car and any variation on that. Car accident were everywhere. But he never really felt them before. He felt sympathy and sorrow for them – a lot of the time their injuries were so severe that they would require simultaneous general and neurosurgery to fix the problem and even then that isn't the end. That isn't the end of anything at all. It was the beginning of the pain, if anything. It was for him.
"Done." He cut her off before she even got a chance to warn him again. It took him six, maybe seven seconds between the call about his falling numbers on the cardiac monitor and his fix of the bleed.
He heard an intern gasp behind him. "Jesus Christ."
"What?" He inquired as he turned to look behind him to one of the scrubbed-in interns observing the surgery.
"Pulse ox is coming back up, he's fine. What's the problem over there Shepherd?" Bailey asked worried, although she didn't pull her needle driver out of the man nor look up to the person she was talking too.
"No problems, we're safe." He dismissed, still not shifting his focus from the woman observing behind his back. "Why the exclamation?"
He turned back to the patient, continuing with the surgery as he awaited her answer. She didn't say anything for a second before saying through an awful lot of hesitation, "It's just- I mean, how did you do that?"
"Stop the bleeder?" He questioned, confused by the vagueness of the question.
"Yeah."
"You know how to stop a bleeder, don't you?" He asked. He didn't ask it in a rude or accusative way. He was just now worried that the teaching side of the neuro department had fallen apart without him at the question. It sounded a little morbid, but after his reminder of how quickly someone could disappear from their job – and their life entirely – he wanted to be prepared. He wanted interns with a passion for neuro who he could train to replace himself.
"Of course. But how do you do it that quickly. Like- your sister can't do it in double that time and she's head of the department." He reasoned.
He faltered for a second. Comparisons to his own sister were…awkward. He wasn't sure whether he liked or more or less when it was in his favor, seeing as that meant someone view his little sister as less than he knew she really was.
He didn't think it was a fair comparison really. She was younger than him, by quite a few years in fact, but neither of them had run a straight line through their careers.
Derek took a regrettably significant amount of time off after the plane crash and shooting as well as after when Meredith drowned and when Bailey was born. Then, of course, the fact he had a series of small holes in his years at med school. For physio after his motorcycle accident. For Amy when she…well, died. For his sisters, requiring him as their father figure because it as the closest they were going to get. They were only a couple days or hours, but most of his friends' biggest consumption of their time was studying. He did that too, and the rest of it. Carolyn never dreamed of dating anyone else. Derek was glad, despite the fact it meant he had rather a lot of responsibility, even as a child. He didn't want anyone to replace his dad anyway. Then, or now. But it did take such a large chunk of his childhood that he had deserved.
Amelia had those holes too. As far as he knew, she was fairly consistent through her intern and resident years. It was before that time that was the problem. High school, creeping into med school, maybe. She never really talked about dates. She turned up to school hung over, sometimes even a little high. She normally wasn't stupid enough to bring neither booze nor drugs onto the school premises, but it didn't really help. That was if she turned up at all.
Once, she called him in the middle of maths. It was embarrassing enough to have a teacher poke their head round the door and request him, never mind when he found out the reason why. She was drunk and high at a party and she needed him to go and get her because she had spent all her money on vodka and the bus driver she had pleaded with had to physically force her out of the bus. He left that lesson to get her and got two weeks detention in favor of not getting a call home.
He wasn't sure he could really count those years – if he was honest, for either of them – because they were so damn messed up. That meant those years between them wasn't quite accurate, seeing as either of them quite got to actually live all the years they had actually had on the planet.
"Some are easier than others. Depends on what?"
"Location?" A man suggested.
"How bad the bleed is – volume?" A different woman said.
"Right, but that looked bad."
"The reason he resolved that bleed so quickly is because Dr Shepherd is an incredible surgeon, simple. I presume he uses no special technique – if he did, he should probably share it so the rest of the world could get just a little closer to catching up to him – and he is simply quick and proficient. Maybe don't make such inappropriate exclamations in the middle of a surgery and you might learn some more." Bailey interrupted.
"Right. Sorry Dr Bailey." She apologized.
Derek smirked through his mask, looking up to the fellow attending. He could tell she was smiling too. Although, whether that was from what had just happened or the fact that she had just finished with the prolene and fixed the patient's liver, he had no idea.
No complications seemed to have arised and the man was now stable, being carted off to the ICU. Derek watched him from the scrub room as they pulled the still-unconscious man out of the OR room carefully.
Hands still rubbing together vigorously in an attempt to get rid of any pathogen that may have spread through micro-holes in his gloves, he looked up to find Bailey staring at him, hands twisting in the same motion round each other as if she was in some kind of repetitive daze.
"Hey, Bailey? You okay?"
"Long surgery? I can reheat your tea if you want, we ate a while ago." Ben called through from the kitchen as his wife stepped in. He didn't look to check it was her. If he did, he would realize why greeting her like that wasn't how he was suppose to be doing that.
She slid of her coat, dropped her bag, kicked off her shoes and collapsed onto the sofa.
"Miranda?" Ben called from behind her before the sound of footsteps told her he was moving. "You okay?"
She opened her eyes to find a blurred husband, crouched in front of the sofa.
"Woah, hey, what's wrong? What happened?" He asked, concern filing his eyes at the fact his wife was crying.
"I don't think he's going to make it." She choked out at a whisper.
"Who?" He asked back, making sure to keep his voice soft.
"He- he didn't deserve this. He was fine yesterday. He was happy. Now he's in a coma. Probably paraplegic. Probably has brain damage. Probably not going to wake up anyway."
Ben didn't need to know who this person was or what had happened to them for him to stand up from the floor and place himself right besides his wife to be a, literal, shoulder to cry on.
He gave her a few minutes of sobbing.
"Can you talk about what happened?" He whispered, a hand brushing her back.
"He's a freaking neurosurgeon and his brain was hemorrhaging. Meredith is a general surgeon and his- I- I had to- I had to put my hands...my own hands inside of him."
That filled in who blank of 'who?'. He didn't let his mouth drop open at that. He wouldn't call them friends and they were nowhere as close as him and his wife but he still couldn't say that didn't hurt: first when he made the connection, then considering the things his wife said about him. Derek Shepherd, in a coma with a broken back and potential brain damage, on life support. "Derek is strong. He'll fight for his kids, I know he will."
More tears spilled out at that name. "God, I'm sorry. I don't mean to be crying everywhere."
"Hey, hey, it's okay. You cry wherever you want. Everywhere you want."
He suddenly found his hand being grasped tightly. "I love you. You know I love you. So much."
He smiled lightly. "I know. I'll always know. Don't ever feel bad about not telling me often enough. I know."
"Huh?" She asked, blinding heavily twice as she pulled herself back into the world of the scrub room.
"You were really staring at me." He elaborated, not sure she had even heard him ask whether or not she was okay or not.
"Oh, right." She agreed.
"What's wrong?"
She frowned as if it was the most stupid question she had heard all week, never mind all day. "Nothing is wrong."
"Bailey. There is something wrong." He insisted.
She looked at him for another moment but this time with intent. She was deep, deep in focused thought this time. He was sure she was thinking last time her eyes settled on him so intensely, but not like this. She swallowed. "You are operating."
"Right now, I'm scrubbing out. But yes, I was operating."
She took another breath before explaining, "A couple of months ago, I was holding a scalpel, thinking about the fact that I was about to slice into your abdomen. And, of course, that freaked me out. But it wasn't just me. I wasn't the only person cutting into you. And that freaked me out even more. I could do my best surgery ever. I could do everything right. And you still could have died. And I'm not saying I could have done any one else's job better in that OR. Those aren't my specialties. But...I had to operate on one of the people I dislike least in this world – which is my way of saying we're friends – and that was one of the most horrifying things I'd ever experienced. So it freaked me out."
He swallowed too. That was…not what he was expecting to hear. "And you're freaked out now?" He managed. That was easier than properly replying to the paragraph of words she had just shoved his way, he'd have to repick all of that later.
"No." She shook her head. "No, I'm not freaked out now."
"So, what's wrong?" He asked again, hoping this would be the last time.
"You're operating on other people and you're – somewhat – okay." She elaborated further. "What I mean is even if...if you made it off that table, I doubted you'd ever be fine, never mind good ever again."
"How is he?" Callie inquired, pausing at the door of the scrub room. She wasn't sure why it knocked the breath out of her to see him like that. She knew what condition he was in already.
"It's not looking good, Amelia just left. She didn't rule out no deficits or state any but I think the surgery went…okay."
Callie nodded. "Can someone get me some plaster, gauze. Uhh- quite a lot of it. And I'm ex-fixing the left leg at least so I need…I need a lot of ex-fix metalwork, a full leg kit…" She requested, surprisingly timidly.
She swallowed, unmoving until she watched the nurse put up the scans on the side of the room. That prompted her to move and she did so, re-analyzing each break. She had already studied them, but the last thing she wanted to do was make a mistake with her placement of the ex-fix. She wouldn't be surprised if she found it harder to focus than she normally did. No one could be surprised at that.
"What are they like? I mean- I know you said his spine was...what are they like?"
"Probably best you see for yourself." She offered, taking a step back from the scans but not turning to check Bailey was walking over. She knew she would.
"Oh…oh god. That's- he- his leg is in pieces. Callie, he-"
"This is the spinal x-ray you got too." A nurse offered, hanging up another scan on the light box.
Bailey couldn't speak as her eyes turned to that one. The words she would say spun round in her head, but no faltering mess fell from her mouth like it did before. She swallowed. Her mind calmed; or at least told her thoughts to slow down for just one sentence. "He's never going to walk again, is he?"
"I'm not saying that." Callie responded, head shooting down to the woman. "I am not going to say that. He needs hope, okay? He needs hope if he's going to get through any of this."
"Okay- When are you going in, after me? You'll have to go in posteri-"
"I'm not."
"You're not operating on that?" She inquired, eyes shooting around to her this time.
"Amelia said he's too unstable. I'm only here to cast and ex-fix as it is. I'm revising to internal fixation and doing the fusion later."
"But- in the ER, we tested reflexes and I know you said he's probably in shock but-" She swallowed, not bearing for the words to drop from her mouth. "Callie, you're the one that said him not having surgery would mean he wouldn't be able to...to walk. You can't paralyze him. You can't. Callie, please-"
"I can if it means he'll live." She sighed, walking away from the scans as she finished analyzing them and thanking the scrub nurse as she placed her requested supplies down. "You think he'll withstand another surgery? Another two, even. I'm going to have to fuse both, that's an absolute minimum of six hours."
"I," She faltered, eyes brushing over the man. His head was now wrapped from Amelia's surgery and a tube had been shoved his throat – which would not be removed after the surgery was finished, as it normally was. "His body has been through a lot. I hate to think about how many bags we've had to hang and how many times he..." She trailed off. She wasn't even sure what she was going to say. Flatlined? Went into v-fib or v-tach? Had his abdominal cavity abruptly flood with blood at an insistant bleeder?
"So? You agree, right? He can't survive this. Cause Bailey, if you don't, we can override Amelia and do this surgery so he has a ch-"
"No." She interrupted. "He...he needs to live. Even if that does mean he never walks again."
"I saw your initial scans. Obviously, I saw the parts that caused you general-cardial problems, but I did see your legs and your pelvis. Your head and spine. And I just…" She gave up, sighing. "You're operating when a couple months ago, I thought you were going to die on my own table. And…I couldn't be happier for you."
"Now I understand the staring." He murmured, a smile settling on his face as he made an attempt to lighten the mood between them.
She copied the smile.
"And I am just okay, Bailey. There's no need for the somewhat." He dismissed, correcting her latter half of her first sentence.
Her eyebrows creased at that. She wasn't so sure about that statement. "Sure, Shepherd. I believe that."
"Why wouldn't I be okay?" He asked, intrigued to hear her reasoning on the way he felt himself.
Her lips joined and pushed against each other a little to form a sympathetic, thinking kind of face before saying rather quietly, "I'm taller than you Derek."
That wasn't really why she didn't think he was okay but her fact was caused by the thing that she was pretty sure made him not-okay.
"You're not taller than me, I just…" He trailed off as he repositioned himself. Back straight to his rest, he sat up as straight as possible, even raising his head a little. "Oh. My. God." He murmured as he looked up to her. Up.
"You're in denial. If you think you're taller than me, you're in denial."
"Bailey, you've grown." He insisted desperately. "You must have grown."
"Females stop growing by around fifteen. Do I like fifteen to you?" She asked earnestly and humorlessly.
"Yes." He smirked. "Very young indeed."
"See." She said gesturing through the OR and scrub room window, ignoring his jokes. A simple, indistinct reflection shot back at them in the glass she was referring to and Bailey was most definitely taller than him. "You are now…short. Like me. But even shorter."
She patted him on the head a couple times, knowing how much it would annoy him. That was the point.
"Oh god." He sighed. "At least I have an excuse." He reasoned.
"I have an excuse. It runs in the family." She retorted.
"Genetics is no excuse in comparison to my severed neurons Bailey, you're going to have to come up with a better reason than that." He dismissed.
"Sure…or we could just go and update this poor man's mother that he's going to be okay."
He nodded. That was a smart idea. "Well, tallest first." He said as moved from the side of the sink to the door, pulling it open with one hand before dragging himself back with the other.
"It's ladies first." She corrected.
"You know I don't like sayings anymore." He said. That was an understatement. He didn't not like sayings. He hated them. Deeply. He didn't want to just not say them. They were built into his and everyone else around him's vocabulary. It was a perfect example of the Baader-Meinhof effect. He never noticed that before. And now, they were everywhere. Literally everywhere. Then again, why would he have noticed that before?
"Yeah, whatever you say." She dismissed, eyes falling from his face to his legs. "Now are you just going to sit there or are you actually going to get up and do something?"
"Wow, Bailey." He sighed, shaking his head at the woman before muttering, "Just wow."
"What did I say?" She asked, perfectly aware of what she had said. He was smiling though, she knew he found her joke entertaining before she had even got half way through her sentence.
"I can't stand your jokes anymore. Honestly."
"Just roll with them Derek. Please." She pleaded, not letting herself crack a smile quite yet.
"You, Miranda Bailey, are a despicable human being."
"I know. It's why you love me."
"Why are trees green?" Zola asked, pointing up to the tree line. Neither Bailey nor Meredith had come out the front door yet to meet them on the porch. He could argue that it was backwards for him to be the first one out of the house, considering the fact that everything was about ten times harder for him to do than Meredith but she was the one who sped up the time he took to get ready by chucking clothes at him every morning and leaving water and his meds by the side of the bed every morning. She was the one who had to get the kids up and get them changed and convinced them that mint toothpaste was not in fact the worst taste on the planet. He just cooked the breakfast, packed their bags and made sure Meredith had left things like her keys and phone in a place where she could easily find them. There wasn't really much else he could really do.
He wished he could do more for her. He wished that he could do more for himself so she wouldn't have to do so much for him.
He grinned at her question. He loved that Zola was so inquisitive of the world around her. "Chlorophyll."
"Cowofill?" She repeated.
"Yeah. It's a green pigment."
"Pigment?" She repeated. "Like pigs? Like oink oinks?"
"No, not like oink oinks." He said with a shake of his head. "Basically, it's green because it contains lots of little green things inside of it – green pigments inside of it."
"But if I cut leaf in half, there's nothing green inside." She pointed out as she ran out to the lawn and picked up a leaf before ripping it into two pieces. He followed her down the porch to the field of grass but paused before he actually reached the greenery. She frowned at the halves in her hand before dropping them to the floor and sighing. "Just dead leaf."
"Because they are very, very, very, very, very small." He explained.
"Very, very, very, very, very, very small?" She asked, raising her eyebrows.
"Yeah."
"Smaller than a tennis ball?"
"Yep."
"Small than," She hesitated, trying to think of another example. "brick? Buildy brick?"
"Yep." He nodded, knowing she meant a toy building brick, not the heavy, large slabs that constructed the house besides them.
"Smaller than hair!" She exclaimed.
He could tell she was proud of her answer by the massive grin that spread her face and he didn't really want to ruin her smile. "Just a little smaller than hair. Just by a teensy, weensy bit."
"Teensy weensy?" She repeated, wanting reassurance that he was telling the truth. She liked being right and if she couldn't, she at least liked being close to what the true answer was. Her father couldn't go into the true depth of the things she asked. She didn't even know what a cell was, never mind that it contained sub-cellular structures – such as chloroplasts in the case of plant cells. She wanted a world full of knowledge at age six, and he couldn't help but smile again at that.
"Oh." She sighed before looking up at the door as it slammed shut, a panicked Meredith locking the door with one hand and holding onto her son's hand with the other. His clothes looked a little skew whiffed. He was wearing a button-down blue shirt and he couldn't help but wonder if every single button had been displaced by one as he examined the boy from afar.
He almost tripped over his own feet as Meredith set off at a speed much too quick for his tiny legs to the car. She slowed instantly, the extra seconds giving her time to compose herself a little more before she unlocked the car. Derek handed her the two lunch boxes he had packed that were sat on his lap and she gave a quick smile before gesturing to her kids to hurry up and enter the car.
He lifted Bailey to his seat and buckled him in, Meredith doing the same on the other side for Zola.
"We're not going to be late." He reassured her before closing Bailey's door.
"I'm not worried about being late, I'm worried about the news!" She exclaimed as she joined him on his side of the car.
He pulled open the door, questioning. "News?"
"Building collapse. Fourteen people."
"Fatalities?"
"None when I last checked." She answered with the best smile she could, having to raise her voice a little as she walked away from him to open the boot for his chair.
"Good…kind of." His answer was a little hesitant. It wasn't good at all. No trauma like that could be good. But at least no one had died yet, that was one positive he could cling to.
He closed his door as she slid into hers besides him, no need to keep his open to hear her anymore.
"Tell me more about the trees!" Zola demanded as the engine jumped to life.
"Trees?"
"She wanted to know why trees were green. I said it was because of chlorophyll."
"She's 6! Why are you talking to her about chlorophyll?" Meredith exclaimed, car's wheels battling against the mess of gravel as their house disappeared into the distance.
"I like the cowofill though Mama. It make trees green. And it pigment. But nothing to do with pigs…for some reason."
"Right. And when are you starting the 8th grade Zozo?"
"I'm not that old!" She squealed in horror.
It was standard protocol for a surgeon to place their pager on a table in the corner of the theatre – or for a scrub nurse to take their pager and place it there themselves. It meant the nurse who was managing the whole operation could simply check it whenever it buzzed. Leaving it at the surgeons side would cause an awkward intervention of trying to read a page without getting the patient's blood everywhere and un-sterilizing their hands. So that was the nurse's job.
"Dr Bailey, you are being paged. 9-1-1 to OR 5." A scrub nurse announced as she picked up the small black box and read the message illuminated on the side of it.
"Anyone know who is in OR 5?" Bailey asked as she pulled her hands out of the cavity.
"Shelby, a craniotomy for a firefighter, I think." Derek answered. He was in CT before him and Derek had provided an extra set of eyes on the woman's scans while he waited for the scanner to clear for his own patient.
"No one in general?" She asked, surprised.
The firefighter was receiving no other scan, just a cranial CT. That didn't rule out the possibility that he needed surgery anywhere other than on her brain, but it made it an awfully lot more unlikely. "Not that I know of."
"Maybe they only just realised the patient needed abdominal surgery." She pondered got a second. "He's stable on my end, page if anything changes. I'll be back as soon as possible. Holtz, you're in charge."
"Me?" The intern asked, outraged.
"Today is all hands on deck." She said with a slight shrug as she ripped off her trauma gown and peeled off her gloves by the door.
"Right." He nodded. "Do I need to do anything?"
"Just page me if anything changes."
"Okay then..." He murmured, exchanging a nervous look with one of his fellow interns, Murray, across the room before glancing to Derek. He sure hoped she would turn up at any changed. As much as he respected Derek, both interns supposed he would be useless in terms of helping them. Of course, they didn't say anything. Especially infront of Miranda Bailey.
"Hey. What we doing?" Holtz asked, joining two of his fellow interns at the ICU nurses' station.
"Watching Dr Grey attempt to feed Mr Shepherd."
"I'm pretty sure we're supposed to be calling him Dr Shepherd still, by the way." He pointed out, glancing into the room before looking away again. She was sat by his bed with a bowl of something green and, although the back of his bed was lifted higher, he was still as weak and reliant on the support of pillows as he was every other day. He hadn't ever seen him sit up by himself. Normally, the curtain was closed, so they were clearly taking the chance to watch the exhibition.
"Yeah because he can totally be a doctor like that." Dr Troy returned. She had a sharp tongue when it came to patient's illnesses and injuries, when she wasn't in their presence.
"He's not going to be that bad forever." Murray pointed out.
"He's so incapacitated he can't eat by himself. You think he's going to go from that back to a surgeon. Have you read his chart? Have you talked to him? Sometimes, he just blanks out. I mean, ask him about neuro, he may still know the answer but you can literally time how long it takes him to tell you the answer. He's slow Murray. Stupid slow."
"He's got a TBI Imogen, processing problems are common. He'll be fine soon enough. And he could probably eat by himself, he just has a broken arm-"
"One broken arm. You can eat cucumber with one hand."
Holtz sighed as he glanced back to him. He was still accepting food from her, but he chewed and processed each piece for a good few seconds before Meredith shoved the fork in his face again. He wasn't like his female colleague. He felt sympathy, not whatever she felt. "God, imagine that."
"Imagine what?" She asked.
"One day, you're working for the president of the United States on one of the most forward-thinking, advanced neuro ideas on the planet. You get to work with other people who are at the top of the game. He probably has like- government secrets too. And then you go for a drive, and wake up in hospital after a coma, as a brain-damaged paraplegic who needs round-the-clock care just to fufil basic human needs."
"Their son is like four or something, isn't he? Do you think that's why she's still with him? She just tells herself her husband is her toddler so she can be okay with spoon feeding him? You think she says 'here comes the airplane' when she does that? Congratulates him for swallowing a vegetable? Uses kiddy soap when she cleans him, same with brushing his teeth? Rewards him with stickers when he actually manages to complete a physio exercise. Cause, she's literally got three kids now. I mean, can someone volunteer as my medical proxy now? If I'm ever stupid enough to get myself hit by a semi-truck and I end up half as bad as him, for the love of god, just shoot me up with morphine before I wake up. Pull out my tube. Whatever. I mean it. Seriously. I mean, broken spine and life in a wheelchair? Shoot me then and there. Brain damage? Let me just walk myself into the road or fall down five flights of stairs because I don't know which way is up and which way is left. Especially before my brothers see me. Invalids ruin families and relationships and finances and I really don't want to be one. Not sure why he would either. He's got two kids. Their childhoods are gone. And Dr Grey. Her career is gone now too. Professional carer, seems like a pretty grim life after being a surgeon, don't you think? I mean, she has to chose that or dumping him in some care facility and judging by the fact that she's so clingy that she can barely leave his bedside, I'd go with the former. One second, she's in the OR, sewing up a hole in some dudes duodenum or something, the next she's in here with her vegetable of a husband-"
"He isn't a vegetable."
"Fine. He's not in a PVS. Might as well be though, that's my point. At least then she wouldn't have to sit there with him. He wouldn't know if he was lonely. Maybe he wants to be lonely now. I would. I wouldn't want people wasting away for me. That's why one of you guys need to just pull the pl-"
"Imgoen Troy."
She swallowed, and turned around to see her attending stood there. "Dr Bailey, I-"
"Go to the intern's locker room. Now."
"What, I am-" She tried, looking between Holtz and Murray.
"Clear out your locker. Hand your badge in at reception. If you can manage to find a reference from any surgeon here after I tell them what you just said about a fellow surgeon, then you're very welcome to use one for your next job interview. If not, we're always in need of janitors."
"What- no, no, no- I didn't- no, Dr Bailey I didn't mean to-"
"You didn't mean to what? Purposefully ignore Dr Shepherd's doctorate. Call him incapacitated? An invalid? A child? A vegetable? These words just what- slipped out of your mouth without you wanting them to? Was someone holding a gun to your head to force you too? I don't see anyone holding a gun around here, do you Dr Holtz?" Bailey questioned, her voice bordering on a shout. She didn't particularly want Derek to be able to hear w hat she was saying through the glass, but she couldn't talk to her at a normal amplitude. Not after what she had said. Holtz said something rather questionable too, hence the call of his name, but nothing overly offensive.
"No, ma'am- miss- Dr- Bailey I...No, I don't."
"Okay then. So, Miss Troy, you've got a locker to clean out and I've got a chief to inform about your break of the Hippocratic Oath. Do no harm, remember that one? Do you think if he could hear you saying these things, it would cause him harm? Do you think he knows that his life is never going to be the same? That his wife's life is never going to be the same? His kids? I like to think you know the answer but honestly Imogen, I'm not even sure you do. In fact, feel free to go and tell him about how much you hate the idea of being in a car accident too. I'm sure he'd love that. I'm sure he'd love to discuss how much he loves having a TBI or thinking about how in the world his life is going to continue when he is forced to use a wheelchair! You'd have so much in common!"
"Please, I didn't-"
"Locker Imogen! Now!"
The room remained quiet for a while, the only thing intruding the silence, other than the beeps of the cardiac monitor and hiss of the ventilator, was Derek as he requested different instruments from the scrub nurse. Until he heard the nervous skitter of the intern's feet.
"Uhhh, Dr Shepherd..." Holtz started, worried.
His head shot up to look at the shaking-voiced man. It was always difficult to see someone's expression in the OR. Eyes and eyebrows were the only thing that could shift for expression and his were most certainly showing fear.
"What's hap-" He started, just as the cardiac monitor burst into a frenzy of noise. "Blood is filling the abdominal cavity, right?" He guessed as his eyes skimmed through the monitor, looking at the shift in his heart rate, pulse ox and blood pressure.
"Yeah, how do I- how can-" He faltered, looking between the instrument tray besides, him and the surgeon at the head of the table.
"Lap pads and suction." He answered, putting his own instruments down. The man was neurologically stable, his own surgery could wait for just a second. He turned to a scrub nurse, saying, "Someone page for a general surgeon."
"Okay..." The man murmured as he threw a couple lap pads into the cavity, pressing them inside in a hope to absorb as much blood as possible. He lifted one, enveloped by dark crimson before shoving another one in, eyebrows raised at the sheer quantity. A woman joined him, picking up the suction tube.
"You need to locate the source of the bleeding." He instructed, still not resuming his own surgery.
He looked back up to his superior. "How do I do that?"
"Well where is the blood coming from? Which quadrant?"
"I- I don't know. I can't see. There's too much blood. Upper-right maybe. Or maybe the left or-" He faltered. Derek could see his hands visibly shaking from where he sat. And he wasn't really sat that nearby to the man.
"How much?" He asked.
"I don't know, a lot?" He guessed. He wasn't expecting him to give a quantity in any real unit. That would be an extremely unrealistic goal. But he was hoping for something at least a little better then a question back.
"And what do you do when you have a lot of haemorrhaging? How are you going to replace that blood?
"Transfusion!"
"Page again." Derek instructed, eyes shooting to her nurse.
Her hand scrambled to the pager at what she could only describe as his shout, placing it back down quickly as if she was trying to inform him she had completed the job he had requested her to do.
"You got this Holtz, okay?"
"No- no, I don't."
"You can do this."
He sighed out a heavy exhale before nodding. Although, it only took a few more seconds before he gave up again. "I can't find it."
"No one answering their page?"
"It's a busy day, multiple casualties, I can only assume they're all in surgery."
"Right..." He trailed off, giving up on any other words he was planning to say as his brain got drowned by thought.
"Bailey can't come back. Her patient is too unstable." One nurse said regretfully as she removed the OR phone from her ear. "I paged 9-1-1 to the on call general surgeon."
He let a sold minute pass. They were going to need another unit of blood soon and there was only one bag hanging on the IV pole.
"Should I go and find a surgeon, ask in the ORs just incase."
"No, no, it's fine." He dismissed, prying his eyes away from the clock. His patient didn't have that kind of time.
"But Dr Hol-"
"Who can lift the heaviest dumbbell?" He asked, cutting the woman off.
"What?" One person in scrubs eventually inquired back, resuming the scene. Before that, the silence and the fact every single person was stationary made the room akin to a paused scene.
"You heard me." He insisted, head turning around the room.
There were four nurses and three interns. None of them said anything nor moved. His question was too vague.
"Okay then, who has been to the gym in the last two days?" He asked, looking around the room.
One man raised his hand. Considering the other interns for a second, he was definitely the one who had the most prominent biceps.
"Murray, I'm going to request something odd," He warned, pausing for a second to make sure he had time to register and acknowledge the first half of his sentence. "but it's going to save this patients life, okay?"
"Okay..." He agreed with strong hesitation.
"I'm going to stand now." He stated. He practically heard the eyebrow raise of his colleges at that statement. "And I'm not very good at standing so...are you ready for this?"