CHAPTER 1

SEATTLE GRACE

One Month Later

Addison Montgomery was beginning to think that she'd made a huge mistake staying at the hospital that both her ex-husband and the man she'd ruined her marriage for were now attendings.

It wasn't just the fact that she'd been passed over for the chief of staff position- then again, considering that Richard Weber had decided to stay on pretty much negated that slight. It wasn't that Alex Karev had decided, after their little tumble in the sheets, that he had no desire to be yet another intern having an affair with his attending- which was a surprisingly mature decision coming from him. Hell, it wasn't even that her husband, having literally moved across the country to get away from her, now didn't seem even interested in carrying on the relationship that had broken up their marriage the second time.

It was all of these, and none of these. Her life seemed to be stuck in neutral for the last few months. She seemed to be in the pattern of going from one man to the next. God help her, she had considering going into private practice in LA because she had kissed a man she hardly knew in an elevator. All she seemed to do was run away- she had run away from Derek, she'd run away from Mark, it was time to stop running, and try staying in place for awhile.

She knew that the hospital had been in a state of transition recently. Finals had just taken place for the first years. Weber had announced Callie as chief resident instead of Miranda, Burke had left Christina at the altar, and had left the hospital a day later for parts unknown, and the new crop of interns had just shown up at the hospital. She wasn't the only one whose life was in flux at the moment.

She needed to find a way to get back to balance. Be the doctor who was one of the best neonatal surgeons in the country. And that started with taking a break from men in general, and two attendings in particular.

Addison was still considering all this when she was paged by Weber. She had an idea what it was about. Given the level of turnover that last couple of weeks, the Chief had been trying rather frantically to fill the vacancies. She'd heard from a couple of nurses that there had been more than a few people coming for interviews, and Richard did have something of a flair for the dramatic.

When she got to the conference room, all of the attendings were there along with Callie. She admired her boss' restraint; his habit of handling his last couple of hires had been for them to show up at the hospital floor.

"Everyone, I realize all of you have busy schedules, so I'll make this as brief as possible." Weber began slowly. "As you are all aware, we've been experienced a fair amount of turnover what with Dr. Burke resigning and Dr. Matheson retiring from the head of spinal surgeries. Considering the amount of prestige both brought to their fields, neither will be easy to replace."

"Especially Matheson, I think he was operating before they had X-rays," Derek said under his breath.

"Nevertheless, we move forward. So, it gives me a great deal of pleasure to welcome to Seattle Grace our new head of cardiothoracic surgery, Dr. Erica Hahn," The blonde, thirtyish doctor emerged. The reception sounded enthusiastic, but Addison knew that there was still some half-heartedness to it. Some people still blamed her for what had happened with Burke for some reason.

"And joining us from Los Angeles, as the new chief spinal surgeon, Jack Shephard."

Several thoughts crossed Addison's mind as the new head of spinal surgery came out. The first was, even though she'd never seen the man before, he still looked vaguely familiar. The second was, why did Richard hire another Shepherd for this hospital wasn't one enough. The third was, he's easy on the eyes.

The last was: Not again.

If you were a resident at one of the top five hospitals in America, one thing you absolutely did not have was any spare time at all. If you weren't trying to get into every surgery possible, picking up scut work in the ER, working on every trauma cases or trying to study for upcoming exams, you were at home crashing for the few vital hours of sleep they need to survive. Watching TV, reading the paper, going online for anything other than medical journals was pretty much out of the question.

So none of the residents of Seattle Grace knew much about current events. They had been vaguely aware of the most recent election cycle but would be hard pressed to remember which way Washington had gone. They had no idea what team had won the World Series. And they had no idea that Oceanic 815 had crashed, much less the story of the survivors emerging from the Pacific the week of New Year's Day.

That did not mean, however, that they hadn't heard of Dr. Jack Shephard.

"Guy's a rock star," Alex was saying as they gathered for their customary lunch around 'Coma Guy'. "AMA has him ranked as the sixth best spinal surgeon in the country."

"Three years ago, a woman came into St. Sebastian's Emergency Room from a major bender," Christina Yang was telling them. "Her L4 vertebrae was nearly smashed. She had no chance of ever walking again. 12 hours under his knife, she's walking again two months later."

Meredith Grey looked at her best friend. "It's a little scary that you have all this memorized." she told her.

"Yeah, I thought you were strictly cardio, Yang."

Christina looked at Alex with disdain- or maybe it was just her normal sour demeanor. "I'm interested in any procedure that creates a medical miracle. Besides, I like knowing who's going to be bossing us around."

"I just don't understand why they hired another doctor named Shephard." George spoke up. "I mean, I know he spells it differently, but there's going to be a hell of a mess when it comes to figuring out who's scrubbing in where."

"Are you saying that the RN's here are illiterate?"

George flushed a little at that. It was a surprisingly snide thing to say, but considering that he was considering the possibility that he had cheated on his wife, he was having trouble keeping himself balanced.

"It's Shephard with an A. Can't you keep track of anything, George?"

Meredith paused for a moment. "Shephard. Like Dr. Christian Shephard?"

"Friend of the family, Meredith?" George was eager to change the subject away from him.

"My mom talked about him more than once. Said that he was one of the best surgeons she'd ever worked with. She was a little surprised that his son went into the same field."

"And I guess that someone like you would know all about family pressure."

The look on the face of everybody jumping in unison was, frankly, one of the funniest things Jack had seen in a long time. He'd wanted to get to know the residents that he was going to be working closely with over the next several months, and Miranda had been more than willing to tell them that they had been known to occasionally grab lunch in the long-term care ward. She'd even offered to show him where it was, just to see the looks on their faces when they were caught doing something that was, frankly, one of the tackier things for doctors to do. But Jack already had received a warm welcome from most of the attendings; now he wanted to see what the rank and file thought of him.

"I've been out of circulation for awhile," Jack said slowly, "but I'm not going to lie and tell you I've never heard of Ellis Grey. While I never met the woman personally, my father did on more than one occasion." He paused. "The words he used to describe her would've made a gang-banger blush. "

Meredith winced a little at this. Her mother had never been one to mince words herself.

"I don't think anybody in this hospital should be judged on who their parents are." He picked his next words very carefully. "Any more than they should based on who they've slept with."

All of them looked very uncomfortable, except for Yang, who didn't seem to give a damn. "Why exactly are you here, Dr. Shephard? This patient doesn't have a spinal injury."

"No, but it is procedure to a neuro check every day. And since none of you can be bothered to get your heads out of your chicken salad, pardon me."

Once again, it was clear Jack had the measure of the so-called doctors; everybody jumped their feet in order to support their resident. Because Izzie, who had been remarkably quiet during the entire discussion about him, was closest to the patient's head, she began doing the vitals first. Within a minute they had a complete report.

" You are aware that patients in comas have some situational awareness? You think that Lloyd Simmons isn't going to be royally pissed about hearing all the details of your surgeries and your love lives, all done in front of somebody who isn't able to answer back?"

"He's been in a coma for the last six months. There's been no neural or physical activity in all time," Alex told them.

"Which you would know because you've been providing him with the most detailed treatment available. I look forward to reading the charts you've prepared for him over that time."

"Rounds are in thirty minutes, Dr. Shephard."

"Dr. Torres said that I could scrub in on a bone graft!"

"Well, maybe you should've considered all that before you decide to invite Mr. Simmons to lunch and not give him anything but his IV." Shephard told them. "And for future reference, there's a perfectly good cafeteria on the third floor. I suggest you eat there from now on. I catch any of you eating in front of another coma patient, you will spend the remainder of the day giving me the most complete report possible."

Reluctantly, all of them got out of their as rapidly as they could. However, when George passed by, Jack spoke up: "Mr. O'Malley, I believe you're still an intern."

"Yes, sir."

"Obviously, I can't bring down the hammer the same way that I can everyone else in the room." Jack said slowly. "Stay behind."

The other doctors exchanged a mutual oh shit look before they headed out.

"Admittedly, I'm still playing catch up, but I believe you failed your first year exam." Jack told him.

There was no point in trying to hide it. "That's right."

"So, now you're stuck back at square one while all of your friends have gone up a peg." Jack paused. "That must truly suck for you."

George was puzzled at this, and it took a moment to realize why. With all the shit that had been flying around, personal mess included, no one with the possible exception of Lexie Grey had offered him the slightest amount of sympathy for his situation. Not even Izzie. That was the way it worked in surgical medicine; those who couldn't move forward got left behind.

"I've been having a rough few months," he admitted.

"So Dr. Bailey tells me. Your father died three months ago in this very hospital. I'm truly sorry for your loss."

"Why? You didn't know him." George told him.

"My father's dead, too. About a year ago."

George tried not to wince at his harshness. The last thing he needed on top of everything else was to piss off the newest attending. "Sorry, I didn't know, sir."

Jack tried not to show how relieved he was to hear that; it was another sign that nobody in Seattle Grace knew who he really was. " I never got along very well with my father. He was a sonofabitch, and honestly, I was never sure if he ever even respected me as a doctor. From what the other attendings tell me, your father did."

George considered this. "He did. More than I ever knew."

Jack didn't know why he was opening up like this to a complete stranger, much less someone who he was going to have to give a lot of orders to in the weeks and months ahead. Maybe it was because he felt that he had to talk to someone about what he was feeling, even if he had to sandwich inside a lie. "Had you given any thought to your specialty over the last year?" Better to change the subject to something safer.

Considering all the shit that he had gone through over the last year- hell, the shit that he had gone through over the last month- George was a little surprised to realize that he had never even considered the subject seriously. All of his fellow residents had more or less settled on specialties by now, but he'd been so busy bouncing from problem to problem that what should've been the most obvious choice had been regulated to the backburner. "I was thinking of going into trauma surgery, but I guess I've been waiting for the right option to hit me."

"Well, that may be the one good thing of having to repeat your first year," Jack told him. "You have more time to think about it. Make certain the choice you make is the right one."

"I honestly never thought of it that way, sir."

"Well, while you're thinking it over, you can start by scrubbing in on some exploratory surgery this afternoon."

George looked up at this. "You're serious?"

"It's my first surgery at Seattle Grace. And I can't think of anyone better to observe than someone who's seen the more of this hospital than any other intern here." Jack smiled. "Don't get me wrong. You're going to being doing most of the scut work before the OR clears in two hours, but I have a feeling that you are more than up to the challenge."

For the first time in nearly a week, George wasn't thinking about the mess he was in with Callie and Izzie. "I'll get right on it, sir."

"And remember, Dr. O'Malley, it's Shephard with an 'A'"

LOS ANGELES

"Wasn't easy finding this kid, even with the information you were able to give me." Tom Frainey told his client. "New York's a big city after all. He's living with his maternal grandmother. Her name is Starletta Johnson. Kid's going to school under than name."

Frainey handed one of the pictures he had. "Kid's getting big," Hurley said to himself.

"Excuse me, Mr. Reyes?"

"Nothing. You haven't made contact with him yet, have you?"

"Per your instructions, my people have only been tailing him." The private investigator paused. "I've been doing this a long time, and I don't even know if I should mention it to you, but there something weird about this boy."

"What do you mean?"

"My people are nearly as good at this as I am. They know how to tail somebody without being seen. But this eleven-year old kid, it's like he knew we were there. Most of the time they were more than a quarter mile away, but he kept looking right at us. One of my guys begged off, even with the money you were paying us."

"Walt always was kind of special," Hurley looked around. "Keep an eye on him for now. In a few days, I'm going fly out and talk with him myself."

"Mr. Reyes, I normally don't ask these kind of questions, but considering the effort it took to find him, I'm a little curious. Why do you want to find this kid so badly?"

"He was a friend," Hurley shifted his eyes a little. "And I owe him $94, 000."

Frainey decided he would've been better off not asking any more question. "As to the rest of our business, we still haven't had much luck locating the boy's father."

Hurley was surprised. "He's not living with his son?"

"Doesn't look that way. A month of searching doesn't seem to have done us any good: there's no sign that he's used any credit cards, and he doesn't seem to be staying in his old apartment any more."

Now Hurley was a little confused. He had every reason in the world to hate Michael , but he figured considering everything that he had done to get his son off the island, he would be living with him somewhere. Unless: "Have you checked the morgues?"

"Three separate occasions, along with a lot of hospitals. We've also looked under John Does fitting his description. But we haven't found anything yet." Frainey looked at him. "Sir, I realize that you've sunk a lot of money into this, and I realize that, for clear reasons, you can't just go to the police."

Hurley had the grace to look the way he always did when he was caught in a lie. "So you knew?"

"I'd checked the manifest of Oceanic 815 the first week. Both their names were on it. But I figured it was your business as to why you wanted to track down your friends. "

Now Hurley got serious. "Only one of them is my friend, dude. And anyway, I really can't tell you why I need to find him."

"It's none of my business as long as you keep paying me. But, Mr. Reyes, if he's not with his son, then he literally could be anywhere, and if he's not using his real name-" The P.I. sighed. "It may be a lot more than my people can handle."

Hurley thought this over. "How much for another month?"

The P.I. named a figure.

"If you don't have any leads by then, I'll let it go, but I really need to find Michael." Hurley normally cheerful visage grew grim. "You're better off not knowing why."