I'm sorry it took so long to update. This chapter was surprisingly hard to get started. The lack of reviews really didn't help though. I'm hoping to have the next update sometime in the next week, but we'll see how that works out.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or quotes from Grey's Anatomy. Nor do I own the lyrics to Taylor Swift's song Change.

Chapter 9: Change

You can walk away and say we don't need this,
But there's something in your eyes says we can beat this.

The intern's first shift was already a third of the way over and Hannah, Erin and Mel were sitting for a quick dinner. They already felt more bitter about medicine than when they had walked in this morning.

"I got onto Dr. Karev's service this morning," Erin said. "There's the sweetest little baby that someone just left at the front desk this morning. I don't understand how you can shelter a baby for 9 months and then just abandon it."

"At least she left it somewhere safe," Hannah remarked. "How is it doing?"

"Not too bad. I just feel bad that it's going to end up in foster care." Erin replied.

Mel was distracted but mummered, "It's a baby. It'll get adopted and won't know the difference." Hannah just stared at her seemingly insulted, but not saying why. "My patient has a leaking valve, but we can't do surgery because she's pregnant. It'll probably kill her before we can fix it, so I have to go discharge her after confirming she doesn't want the abortion."

"Why did we want to be surgeons again?" Hannah recovered.

"I have no idea," Erin answered. "Did Clark ever find you?" she asked Mel.

"Yes, but this is neither the time nor the place to talk about it." Mel responded. "I have to get going. I'll talk to you all later."

"Ok," Erin said. "How is your shift going?"

"I'm in the ER today. It's been fairly uneventful. I think I diagnosed two fractures and a standard flu. Nothing surgical," Hannah complained. At that her pager went off, "Maybe this will be something interesting. See you later."

"Of course," Erin said, finishing the last of her sandwich before heading back up to the NICU.

Mel had already arrived in her patient's room. "Mrs. Corizone," she said as she gently knocked on the door. "I've come to finish talking about your treatment options."

"Is there anything you can do other than what we discussed before," Maria inquired.

"I'm afraid not. I can't tell you to undergo any procedure that you are not comfortable with, so all I can do is emphasize that under normal circumstances, had we known about your valve, we as your doctors would have advised you to have it repaired before becoming pregnant." Melanie answered.

"It's done now. To have an abortion would be a sin. I am too devout of a Catholic to believe otherwise," the patient asserted. "You wouldn't understand."

"I'm actually a Catholic too, but I believe that God would understand and forgive you," Melanie pleaded. She knew that she was getting close to crossing the line.

"It's a sin of selfishness to put myself before my child," Maria responded. "God may forgive, but I wouldn't forgive myself. Regardless, I have faith."

"Faith?" Melanie asked.

"Si, faith. I believe that God will allow me to live long enough to deliver a healthy baby. Then I can have the operation and live long enough to raise that child into a mature, responsible adult," she replied. Melanie saw a look in the patient's eyes that eluded her. It reminded her of her own mother's eyes, years ago when Melanie had lain in a similar hospital bed. However, Melanie recognized it as a look that would never enter her own eyes.

"I hope you're right Mrs. Corizone. I just don't have blind faith like that," she responded.

Maria just smiled, "I'm not blind with faith. I know exactly what this could do to me. I'm just refusing to give that option any foothold in my mind. I'll see you in a few months and you'll see that I'm right."

"If you're sure," Melanie sighed. "I just need you to sign some paper work before we let you go home." She took out the paperwork and laid it on the table. "Just here and here," she indicated. "I'm going to get Dr. Yang and she'll give the final sign off and you can get back to your own bed tonight." Melanie took the stack and went to find Christina. Luckily she wasn't too far away. "Dr. Yang, you were right."

"Of course I was. I'm always right, you should learn that now," she smirked. Chris looked at Mel and saw the look of an intern making their first revelation.

"Are you sure there's nothing we can do?" Melanie queried.

"We can't save them all, Mel. That's something else you should learn now." Christina replied. "Let's get her on her way and I'll let you scrub in on my surgery in an hour."

Melanie felt like she was being treated like a child with a new toy being dangled in front of her in hopes of forgetting about a bump. But it was still a surgery and she'd be the first in her class to get to scrub in. "She already signed her portion." The two walked back towards the patient and made their final discharge. Before Maria left the hospital they had already moved on to a single bypass surgery on a 64 year old male.

The rest of her shift, Melanie spent doing random post and pre-op assignments and sleeping in the on-call room. The other intern's shifts were similar. Erin stayed on her original infant. Being the person she was she had secretly named it Olivia. She knew it was wrong to get so close to a patient, but it had had no one else in the world to stand up for it. Little Olivia had no one person who was willing to advocate for one treatment over another. Erin just placed herself in that position easily. Hannah on the other hand never got a surgical case. She spent her time between pages studying. Hopefully tomorrow, she could impress one of the attendings and get a good case. Clark had ended up being the neuro lackey and ran labs. He had one patient who needed a CT but the case ended up being non surgical and transferred to a neurologist. By hour 36 they were all ready for a quick drink and a few hours in their own bed.

Please leave a review for inspiration and as always thank you for reading, Jen 3