A/N: Finally managed to update this story. My apologies for everyone who waited on it. Hope you all like what I did with it, and don't forget to review!

STILL DON'T OWN ANYTHING

Harry suppressed a yawn as he walked through the ER doors of the hospital, lamenting the fact that he was spending more and more time here than he was at home. But then again, he could lose himself and his problems in trying to save people from their medical ones. Tonight was not a good night, it never was. He hated this time of year, and May. Both times had too many deaths lingering in them.

As he walked in he could hear the residents squabble over who'd get to do the appendectomy. It was all about the race, he privately smiled. He had to admit that it made for some funny scenes between the residents. And it seemed that they had got their heads out of their asses just a bit. He stood behind the residents as Miranda Bailey took them to task. Dr. O'Malley was the one on call, so he should be the one to get to treat the patient. He frowned as he looked closer to the woman, she seemed tired.

As the residents were diverting again, he saw her put her hand on her brow. He walked up and put a hand on her shoulder.

"Everything alright, Miranda?" he asked, concerned about the small tornado that ruled the hospital with a no-nonsense attitude. He liked her, more than he did a lot of people over the years.

Bailey looked up at him. "Fine," she spoke, though not in her 'back-the-hell-off' tone she normally used.

Harry kept staring at her. "Go home," he spoke up. "Go, kiss your kid and sleep next to your husband. I'll take your shift."

"But, as a att-"

"Yes, as an attending I can fully do the task of a resident. Don't worry, I keep the flock of vultures in line," he winked at her.

Bailey didn't even try to put up a token protest as she smiled and squeezed his arm gratefully. She put on her coat and walked out of the hall.

"O'Malley," he called to the newest resident and waited for the young man to turn. "I will take over Dr. Bailey's shift this night, so you will be reporting directly to me, just like you normally would do with her. Understand?"

"Yes, dr. Potter. It seems like a classic appendectomy, but I'll test her and get the ultrasound," he answered and without waiting for approval turned back to his patient.

"You do that," Harry mumbled.

He quickly divested himself of his everyday clothes and dressed in the dark blue scrubs. He leaned his head against his locker and pushed back the tide of grief. He didn't want to become overcome with emotions while trying to juggle the residents in their supposed positions. He quickly rose up when he heard the door open behind him. He turned around to see Mark standing there and took the lip from his water bottle.

"Hey," he greeted the man.

"Derek said something," the man began.

"What?"

"He told me to keep little Sloan out of little Grey," Mark timed it perfectly as Harry had just taken a big sip of water, that now promptly decided to take the route through his lungs.

Coughing and choking, Harry bent over trying to catch his breath. As he straightened up again, he saw Mark looking at him with a big smirk.

"You are a cruel, cruel man Sloan," Harry groaned.

"Well, the problem is that I know seem to bump into little Grey everywhere," Sloan continued. "And I get these thoughts."

"No," Harry hastily interjected him. "NO! I can do without any visualization of it, thank you."

Mark laughed at the frantic hand-waving Harry showcased.

"And in any case, I think it was more of a Grey told Derek to tell you sort of thing. It is her sister," Harry mock-glared at him. "And you do have reputation."

Mark was silent. "Point taken, but still … thoughts."

"NO!" Harry pointed his finger at the other man in an effort to stop him and quickly walked out of the lounge to check up on some patients. He was followed out by Mark's laughing.

As he walked back out into the pit, he saw Mark, Derek and Owen with a patient and his daughter. He leaned against the nurse's desk as he observed them. From what he could tell, the man had forgotten to take his medication for his night terrors this night and jumped out of a window. He was a single dad and the daughter had to call the ambulance. He winced mentally, he always detested cases where the kids had to act more responsible than they should at that age.

Hunt walked out of the trauma room and stood next to Harry. "I thought you had two days off."

"Couldn't sleep. And I felt like climbing the walls, came her to check on one of my post-ops that bothered me and decided to take over for Bailey. She looked frustrated and tired."

Hunt nodded and leaned on the desk next to him. "I kissed Christina," it blurted out of his mouth before he could stop.

Harry turned to him, one of his eyebrows raised in a way that reminded even himself of another certain dark-haired wizard who had the habit of doing so. "Christina?"

"Yang," Hunt clarified.

"I know who you meant, Owen," Harry snapped. "It was more an utterance of shock."

"I just," Hunt tried to explain. "She's single malt scotch. She's complicated and driven and blunt and beautiful and-"

"You're falling for her," Owen turned to Harry at his flat tone of voice.

"Maybe," Owen confessed.

Harry sighed. "I don't know if you're looking for permission or approval or anything. You can't help who you're love, you're not supposed to. But my former opinion still stands, Owen. You need to tell them. And if you're not ready for that, need to get some semblance of normal before that; you need to tell her about them. It isn't fair to her, you know it isn't, if you'd bring this further."

"That is none of your business," Owen snapped. "You don't get to come on your high horse telling me what to do. Hell, what do you have in your life?"

Though Harry didn't move an inch, including his facial expressions, it felt like Owen had put a baseball bat to his gut. His eyes cooled to an icy emerald gaze.

"I don't know what's going one with you, Owen," he spoke monotonously. "But you're getting more and more erratic. There is something wrong, and you don't have to tell me. Just figure it out, already! Or it might come to the costs of a patient, and then I'll have no choice but to report you to Webber."

Not looking back at the Trauma surgeon, he walked sedately towards the bed where George O'Malley was with his prospective appy surgery. As he walked through the main hall of the ER, he was surprised at the lack of surgical interns. Where the hell were they? Normally they were lurking like the scavengers they were. Now, it seemed like they were effectively being eradicated.

"Where are the interns?" he asked out loud, as he walked up beside O'Malley.

"I don't know, sir," George answered him. "It's been a quiet night, with not too many complicated post-op patients."

"Hmm," Harry decided not to comment further, not bothering to put more energy in the mystery of the missing interns. "You have the results yet?"

"Yes," George focused as he outlined the results of the test.

"So, what's next?" Harry asked the man.

"I've already asked to OR floor to put an OR on stand bye, until you give the final okay. We bring him upstairs, prep him and get it out."

"Very good, O'Malley," Harry complimented. "Make the call, page two of your interns and I'll bring the man upstairs with one of the nurses. Make sure you get the two who deserve it the most, O'Malley. We'll be teaching them properly, tonight."

"Yes, sir."

Sometime later, harry was standing over the man, now lying opened up on the table. He sighed peacefully as he saw the swollen and inflamed appendix. "You know, a lot of surgeons don't appreciate the cleanliness that is an appendectomy."

O'Malley looked up at him, standing on the other side of the body. "You didn't have a lot of appy's, sir?"

Harry snorted as he started to pack the inside of the wound around the organ. "I was a general surgeon for the British Forces for five years, O'Malley. No, I didn't get a lot of appy's."

He pointed out what he was doing to the interns, who were watching on the screen and over his shoulder.

"What was it like? Working in Afghanistan?" George asked the man, the mystery.

It was silent for a moment. "It's different out there. Not only the surgeries, there's a lot of penetrative wounds, as you can imagine. And always the terrifying waits after the surgeries, waiting to see if the wounds would get infected. These guys, they got wounded, and their wounds were packed in the field. Sand everywhere, not to mention all the particles in the air, the gun powder, the dirt. Post-op infections are a huge concern out there."

Harry looked up to see that he had the attention of the entire OR. "But life itself is different there. You are treated as some kind of hero, as a doctor. Because these men know, every time they go out there, they could come back in dire need of one of us. But on the other hand, you're one of the guys. A good friend of mine is still out there, she's a brilliant cardio surgeon. And she beats half of the guys when they're playing football or basketball. It's scary, chaotic," he paused for a second as he started to clamp of some of the arteries. "But you get used to the chaos, the clutter. Just like you did here I imagine."

O'Malley nodded as he automatically took a clamp from Potter so he could tie off the artery. "I remember my first shift as an intern. It lasts 48 hours. At hour three I was feeling like I was drowning."

"Good O'Malley, now what sutures would you use?" George looked at the situation and replied.

"Go for it," dr. Potter said. George continued working as Potter continued.

"But, the chaos becomes routine, until you feel quite lost when it is quiet. It's not for everyone, I mean, you have to go out there and be a medic for the platoons as well. Some units are wiped out, simply because the medic on the unit died and there was nobody to stop the bleeding from the bullet wounds."

"And now, you are in the jungle that is Seattle grace?" George offered with a small awkward laugh.

Harry laughed warmly at him. "Yes, and sometimes I ask myself what the hell I was thinking when I moved here."

Not long after, Harry and George closed up their patient.

"Excellent work, dr. O'Malley," Harry complimented the resident. He had an inkling that he was looking at an excellent trauma surgeon. He had this quietness about him that seemed to be undefeatable. No matter what happened, Harry could see George O'Malley keeping his cool, jus quietly going about his business.

Harry turned to the interns. "What did this teach you?"

The interns looked at each other unsure of what to say. George looked up. "Well, what is it that you guys observed that dr. Potter did that you had not noticed before?"

"Your approach?" one of them offered hesitantly. At Harry's ever raised eyebrow he elaborated.

"You seem to have a different approach. I think a lot of the surgeons look at the appendix first, then at other possible damages surrounding it. But it looked like you were doing the opposite, sir."

"Very good, and why would that be?"

"Personal preference?" the other asked.

"Yes, I suppose so. But it is a preference with a reasoning behind it."

The interns didn't know it, so O'Malley cut in. "Surrounding damages can vastly escalate in serious complications. By making sure there are none, you were containing the operating site. So you would not have to extensively operate after removing the appendix."

"Correct, dr. O'Malley," Harry nodded. "Take him to Recovery and then make up the charts. I guess the guys family is out there by now, I'll inform them."

Harry stood in the OR, watching the resident and his interns take the guy out to sleep of the anesthesia. He slowly made his way out of the OR, looking for family in the waiting room. As he informed them, the relief palpable in the air surrounding them, his eyes were drawn towards the thin figure of Lexie Grey running as fast as she could towards him.

"Would you excuse me?" he turned to the family. "Dr. O'Malley will come out once you will be able to sit with him."

Making his way to the stressing figure of the youngest Grey, he saw her eyes were filled with panic.

"Grey?" he stopped her.

"Where is dr. Bailey? I've been looking everywhere for her and the chief," the girl was frantic. "Dr. Grey and Yang need them, now!"

"I'm filling in Dr. Bailey's shift, so you'll have to do with me," Harry responded. "The chief is, I believe, in his office."

"Please come with me," Lexie pleaded with him.

Harry tasked the nearest nurse to page Dr. Webber and send him down after them. He sped through the hallways on Lexie Grey's heels. Whatever had happened must have been serious. As they came to the sublevels, Harry's brows furrowed. What the hell was happening down here?

Finally they came to a room, where Harry knew where some dummies to practice sutures. As he opened the door, he saw Grey and Yang over a body that looked suspiciously like an unconscious Harris, whose stomach had been opened. As he looked around the room he saw a group of interns in it, all looking terrified and guilty.

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" the expletive slipped from his mouth in a harsher mixture of accents than he normally spoke in. "Are you telling me that these ruddy arses of dunderheads decided it was a complete logical and sane plan to cut out their own bloody appendix, without supervision?"

"Unfortunately," Yang replied as she was frantically moving her hands around the abdomen. Harry could see that they needed to be guided, they were very close to doing this all by themselves. He quickly donned his mouth mask and stepped up to Yang's shoulder.

"Okay, Grey and Yang talk me through it," he said in a calming tone. "Assess the situation, contain the operating site, fix the problem."

Slowly he saw the two friends working together, with only small questions towards him that they already knew the answer to. He was standing guard to make sure nothing went wrong. In the corner of his eye he saw one intern trying to sneak out the door.

"Don't you fucking dare, princess!" he snarled at the lanky boy. "You staying right here in this room. You wanted to see a surgery? Than bloody observe the surgery!"

The intern froze in his step and reluctantly turned back around to face an unconscious Sadie.

"What kind of anesthesia did you use?" he demanded from an intern close by.

"Just a local one," she stammered. "Sa- uhm she wanted to see it as well."

"Oh, yeah! Let's have a surgery where you actually have to get in the abdomen under a local anesthesia. That is just brilliant thinking. Really!" He snarled, not believing the stupidity of these people or the lack of respect for life.

He was proud of the two residents though. The two woman worked well together, and seemed to know exactly what was going on. The door opened again and Harry looked up to see Webber standing there. His eyes met the chief's and he saw the questions in them. He nodded towards the two residents.

"They have it well in hand, I'm just here for supervising reasons. You go up, we'll follow as soon as possible," Harry tried to reassure the chief. He realized this must be a blow for the man to have happened in his hospital. The man nodded, though, and left the room once more.

Harry was quietly observing the two residents as they finished the procedure. As Meredith Grey cut off the last suture, Harry clapped at them.

"And that, my dear doctors, is how you fly solo."

Both women were obviously smiling behind their masks.

"Get her situated up into a room, then come see the chief and me," Harry directed the two as he stepped closer so he could see their eyes up close. "You did good today, both of you."

Then he turned to the interns. "None of you will leave the premises, or so help me, I make sure you will not be able to get into a surgical program anywhere within the western world."

With those words, he walked out of the room and made his way up to Webber's office. As he opened the door he saw the man in question with his head in his hands, leaning with his elbows on his desk.

"How could this have happened?" the man asked.

"I don't know," Harry replied. "A lot of stupidity was definitely involved. We need to find out whose bloody bright idea this was. You cannot leave this go unpunished. Someone needs to be cut from the program for this, Webber. If it gets out, that they were allowed to keep practicing medicine after such a stunt? The hospital will lose all its credibility, and you know it."

Richard Webber rubbed his face slowly. "Yes, I do know that. But I need to know what the hell happened that this was considered an option."

Harry looked at the man, and couldn't help but feel sympathetic. "You and I will talk with Yang and Grey, then I'll suss out the interns to see if I can get to the bottom of this."

The man looked up. "Thank you, dr. Potter."

Harry opened the door and smiled warmly. "Call me Harry."

"Then Richard it is," the man replied, stepping through the door.

Harry was standing next to the chief as he commended the two residents on their action. "In the past, you would have tried to cover it up. But you did exactly what you were supposed to. You stepped in, assessed and send for help. I'm proud on how you both handled yourselves out there."

Harry stepped up. "Though there is still the situation in which we have to assess what the hell has been the build-up to this point."

Once more was he interrupted by Lexie Grey who came down the stairs storming towards them.

"Sir, it wasn't their fault. Dr. Yang and Grey had nothing to do with it. Instead, dr. Yang tried to make us stop!" Lexie ranted, trying to help them.

Harry and Richard exchanged glances before making clear to the two of them that they better step into the conference room. Harry leaned against the wall, as the chief made Meredith and Christina sit at the table. Harry was quiet as he took them to task, hard. Meredith was silent, as Christina was reamed out.

"You are out of the race for the solo surgery, dr. Yang. I cannot trust you, as it seems."

"Richard," Harry spoke up softly in an effort to stop the man for a second. He turned to the women. "What exactly did you two know?"

"Nothing!" Meredith exclaimed.

"Dr. Yang?" Harry looked at the Asian gifted surgeon.

"Sutures, I knew they were doing sutures. I told Lexie Grey to stop with them or the next time I would take it to the chief here," the woman looked at the table.

"Nothing more extensive than that?" Harry demanded of her.

"No, sir," she replied.

Harry looked at the chief, and had his answer. "This is the reason why we have supervision chains in a hospital. Attendings look over residents who look over interns. Meaning that this, what you knew dr. Yang, should have been reported to one of us immediately."

"We understand that you called in help as soon as you realized how deeply the interns had managed to dig themselves, but we should have been made aware sooner," Richard Webber sounded more reasonable this time. "But the repercussion still stands dr. Yang."

The women were dismissed and Richard leaned back into his chair. "I feel old," he commented idly.

Harry laughed at that. "You are not the only one."

The two were silent until Harry snorted and the burst out laughing. "They thought it a good idea to cut out on of their appendices? What the hell?"

Richard couldn't help but join in as the absurdness of the situation dawned on him. It took some time for them to quiet down.

"If I may, I like to gather the residents of all the interns involved tomorrow. I get this was an idea of the interns, but it is likely that it was bred out of desperation to do something and learn something," Harry suggested to the man. "And that lack of learning is on the residents."

Webber sighed and nodded his consent. They all needed a kick in the ass to get themselves in gear.

Harry slowly made his way across the surgical wing, trying to spot the moment his life became such a chaotic cluster of holding the ropes desperately trying not to let any of them fall out of his hands. He still couldn't believe what the interns tried to pull. Did they think they could get away with it? He shook his head. Well he did accomplished what he set out to do; all day Teddy hadn't been on his mind.

He came across the general waiting area of the surgical floor to see Mark sitting there with a little girl sleeping on him. He sat down on the other side of him.

"She stayed awake every night to make sure her dad got back in bed," Mark whispered. "Turns out epilepsy caused his night terrors. Derek is operating on him right now. She drank coffee like OJ and was afraid she caused it because of the stress of being a single dad for a teenage girl. The kid was all alone in it, her dad had no idea. It crushed him when he realized what happened."

Harry sighed and turned to face Mark. "She was scared to lose her dad as well. She lost her mom, that causes kids to grow up quicker, too quick some say. So, she decided that this was something that made her dad stay with her, and she did anything to keep it that way. But you're right, it isn't right. Kids shouldn't feel responsible for adults. Yet it happens."

"Yes it does," Mark agreed.

In that moment Harry understood a little piece of what made him Mark Sloan. A guy whose parents weren't there for him, shouldering being alone at too early an age. He recognized Mark for what he was in this moment; a kindred spirit.

"Your parents leave you alone?" he asked lightly.

"I used to turn up all the lights and the tv, so the house wasn't so quiet," Mark reminisced. "Derek's mom forced him to take me home with him when she saw how tired I was."

Harry nodded and turned his face forward again, not seeing anything in front of him. "I lived with my aunt and uncle since I was one. They used to lock me up when they left with my cousin, or even if my cousin was there so they didn't have to bother with me. Being alone makes you old."

He felt Mark nod beside him. Harry knew they needed a subject change. 'So want to hear about the illegal appendectomy the interns performed in the basement on one of their own?"

Mark turned and looked at Harry incredulous. Harry chuckled tiredly and started to tell the tale.

The next morning saw Harry facing the group of residents after a morning meeting with the chief. "Last night something shocking happened and came to light. Your surgical interns have decided they would no longer accept the crumbles of knowledge you throw their way. So, they started to practice procedures by themselves. It started small, sutures and IV-lines. But last night, they decided to try and epidural on one of their own, followed by the appendectomy on Sadie Harris."

Harry was silent and let his cold glare be felt by the surgical residents. "This stops now! From this day, you will start teaching your interns what they need. No degrading, no ignoring, nothing. All of you had interns involved, their almost fatal blunders are on all of you! If Sadie Harris had died last night, it would have been on all of you! So this is the last chance; GET YOUR ASS IN GEAR! This is a teaching hospital, that means you do your job, or you're out!"

The residents would deny later that they all took a step back at the furious glare that judged them and found them wanting.

"Now, I suggest you straighten out your interns," Harry's last words were a soft spoken order that had the residents scrambling.

Harry waited outside the room of Sadie Harris as the residents forced their interns to present the case and then reamed them out. All the interns were on probation for the rest of their internship.

"Personally, you all lost my respect," Karev spoke up to them.

He then heard an intern mumble something and picked up the word 'LVAD-wire'. Harry decided this was the moment to step in, before things got ugly. As it were, when he stepped into the room Karev had the intern by the lapels.

"Karev, unhand him!" he barked out. Alex stepped back reluctantly, and Harry caught the smug look of the intern. Harry's fury boiled. "And you! All of you! You better listen extremely careful to what I'm about to say. This will be the last time we speak of this, or you will find out what exactly I define as an 'excessively difficult hospital life'. Yes, dr. Steven cut an LVAD-wire during her surgical internship. But, do you know why she did that? She did that because the man in question was the man she loved, her fiancé. The man was waiting for a heart, and when he finally got one it turned out it was no good. She cut the LVAD-wire to save the life of the man she loved!"

His rage was tangible in the air, and the interns were all pressed against the wall.

"It may have been an impulsive and irrational act in the moment of desperation. The intention however, was to save a life! It is by no means comparable to the abominable stunt you lot pulled. Why did you do it? Why did you decided to cut open a perfectly healthy body? I tell you why, because you lot are worse than toddlers who didn't get the toy they wanted. Your residents don't teach you? Why the hell do you think they have superiors? Us attendings are just there for making sure there are cool surgeries you can compete for?"

"You could have come to us, or gone to the chief. That is why we are the attendings, not you! But you didn't, you decided like a group of pubescent misfits and miscreants to act on your own outside the realm of rules! If it were up to me, the one who put you lot up to this, the one with the idea would get cut from the program. And all of you would have been downgraded to another year of interns in this program. Unfortunately, it isn't up to me. Fortunately, I suppose for you. Because I have to reiterate dr. Karev's words. You have lost all possibilities of gaining even an ounce of respect from me."

"I cannot find any respect for the doctor or the human being behind it who seemed to lack any respect for human life. You decided to cut without any medical reason behind it. You decided to almost sacrifice a life, because you wanted to hold a scalpel. That shows not just a lack of respect, but a sincere indifference for life. I do not ever want a doctor standing at a bedside under my supervision with such indifference."

"So, do not dare to compare your stunt with the former actions of dr. Stevens. Because she handled out of desperation for life, a respect and love for a life, not indifference."

With those words he turned to Sadie Harris. "And you, you showed disrespect to your own body. You decided to let yourself be cut open, with risk of dying as there is with every procedure, just for a cheap thrill. You will not be on my service Dr. Harris, not during your internship."

He left the room in dead silence. The interns looking at each other in honesty for the first time as dr. Potter's biting words finally made clear what they should have known all along; they really fucked up big time.