A/N: Sorry for the formatting issue from when this was first published. Don't know what went wrong but it should be all good now!
The attitude of interns in the gallery is disgusting. How could they be taking bets on how George is going to fail when it could have just as easily been one of them standing down there sweating through their scrubs? I'm listening to them argue over whether he'll cry or poop his pants and I snap, "Fifty says he pulls the whole thing off." They stare at me like I'm insane but I know that I'm not. Sure the Chief told us we were each other's competition but we should also be our biggest supporters. We are all going through the same thing and like hell if I'll turn against another intern. We need all the allies we can get here. I berate everyone in the gallery, "That's one of us, down there. The first one of us. Where's your loyalty?"
Cristina ignores me and says, "Seventy-five says he can't even ID the appendix."
I laugh as Izzie joins the bets with, "I'll take that action."
We might all be cynical but at least they can make me smile. I lean forward to watch as Burke enters the OR. I find it a little strange that the head of cardio is supervising an appendectomy, but I ignore that thought. Watching George start the procedure I wonder how Derek felt in his first surgery. I should ask him about it when I finally get home. Then I wonder how I will feel in my first surgery. I have no idea when it will be, but I do know that it's approaching. I hope there's nobody in the gallery taking bets on me the first time I hold a scalpel over someone.
"Here it comes." I say. The gallery cheers when George is handed a scalpel. Burke doesn't look pleased.
Cristina says, "That Burke is trouble," and I bet people have said the same exact thing about Derek, a thought which makes me laugh. He probably seems imposing in the OR but I know Derek and he's basically an overgrown five-year-old with hair products, I hope all surgeons are the same way. Scary in the hospital but great outside. If everyone is as intense as they seem the next year might just kill me and every other intern. My mouth hangs open as I watch George. He's actually performing surgery. It's incredible.
Well, it's incredible until everything goes wrong. I root for him but George's luck seems to be as bad as mine and he earns the notorious nickname 007. He's licensed to kill. But the entire gallery is filled with interns on our first day as surgeons. We're doctors but none of us know what we're doing. Each and every one of us has a license to kill.
After George finishes surgery the four of us head down to the basement. Izzie found a hall with unused gurneys earlier in the day when she was looking for a place to hide from rectal exams. The four of us, Bailey's interns, have seemed to become a united front. So far I'm enjoying these friendships. At the same time though, I've been in the hospital for nineteen hours and I already feel like dying. By the end of this shift I might need to be admitted into the hospital myself. Izzie is sitting cross legged doing stretches, Cristina is reading from some medical book she brought with her for her down time, I'm rereading the hospital procedural pamphlets, and George is wheeling himself back and forth in a wheelchair fretting over his nickname.
Izzie and I both assure him, "No one's calling you 007." Despite the fact that everyone is. We just don't want him to feel bad. George keeps going on about being called 007 and the three of us try to convince him otherwise.
Cristina tells him, "007 is a state of mind." but George doesn't find comfort from this statement since Cristina was the top of her class at Stanford and his, in her own words, a double doctor.
I would love to stay with them and complain but the beeping of my pager distracts me. 911 KB 4023. It's a 911 page for Katie's room. I take off running towards her. While I hate this girl, I don't actually want her to die.
Swinging into Katie's room I find her sitting up in bed reading a trashy magazine, "Took you long enough," She says to me.
"You're okay? The nurse paged me 911." I'm breathless, I had to sprint up five flights of stairs to get her from the basement.
In her constantly annoying voice Katie tells me, "I had to go all Exorcist to get her to even pick up the phone."
"Wait. There's nothing wrong with you?" I ask as I pick up her chart.
"I'm bored."
I'm going to kill her, "You little…" My first day as a doctor and I'm going to murder my patient, "I'm not a cruise director." I wonder if Derek will visit me in prison.
"You don't have to wig out," While I'm there I figure I might as well take her vitals, "The pageant's supposed to be on cable, but this crappy hospital doesn't get the channel. If that cow Kylie Wood is gonna walk off with my crown, I have to see it. Can you call someone?" Maybe I should call psych or something, I joke to myself.
"Okay. This is an actual hospital. There are sick people here. Go to sleep, and stop wasting my time."
She complains as I leave the room, "But I can't sleep. My head's all full."
"That's called thinking. Go with it." It's probably the first time that girl has ever had a thought in her head.
As I leave the room I page Derek two words. Kill me.
Before today I knew about how crazy hospital hours are. I knew this all my life with my mom always being gone and then once I married Derek with his absurd schedule. Despite this, I wasn't ready for today. I am exhausted in every meaning of the word and the night on the couch did not do me any good.
In an attempt to stay awake I head down to the emergency room. The pit is mostly empty but I instantly zone in on Alex Karev pissing off a nurse. He's making assumptions. It's that whole hoof beats zebras and horses metaphor about waiting to see results and not jumping to conclusions. Apparently he never learned this lesson, though.
When he walks up to me I tell him this, "She may not have pneumonia, you know. She could be splinting, or have a PE."
He sighs, "Like I said, I hate nurses."
I have had enough today. I snap at him, "What did you just say? Did you just call me a nurse?"
Karev says, "Well, if the white cap fits…"
The only thing that stops me from wringing his neck is my pager beeping. 911 KB 4023. Damnit, Katie. I start walking to her room.
I know as soon as I got onto the fourth floor I should have ran. There's a crowd of nurses in Katie's room and that would only happen if the emergency was real. I was paged 911 for a seizing patient and I walked. I am a terrible doctor. I start running to her room.
"What took you so long?" A nurse asks me. Well you see I'm a terrible doctor.
Another nurse tells me what is happening, "She's having multiple grand mal seizures," I'm a terrible doctor, "Now how do you want to proceed?" An absolutely terrible doctor, "Dr. Grey? Are you listening to me?" You shouldn't even call me Dr. Grey because I'm such a terrible doctor," She's got Diazepam, 2mg Diazepam," This girl is going to die because I'm a terrible doctor, "I just gave her a second ago," My mother would be ashamed of me, Derek is going to be ashamed of me, I'm ashamed of me, "Dr. Grey, you need to tell us what you want to do. Dr. Grey!" Everything seems to be moving in fast forward and slow motion at the same time.
I watch Katie seize and then I try to snap out of it, "Okay, she's full on Prazepam?"
A nurse tells me, "She's had 4mg."
I'm not a real doctor have they called real doctors, "Did you page Dr. Bailey and Dr. Shepherd?"
Another nurse tells me, "The Prazepam's not working."
And it goes on. Does she have this? Yes? No? Give her more? Have you paged him? Page him? Page him again!
"What do you want to do?" I want to go back to this morning and lay in my husband's arms and stay there forever, "Dr. Grey, you need to tell us what you want to do!" I want to go back in time and stop myself from ever becoming a doctor.
And then her heart stops. And I think mine does too. I'm holding the defibrillators my brain isn't working I tell them to charge I don't know what's happening I don't know what's happening. We charge then clear then defib then nothing then charge. Again and again. And then there's sinus rhythm. And then her blood pressure is going up. Then she's alive. Then Derek is here.
He runs in, "What the hell happened?"
I'm out of breath my brain isn't working and I think my heart is about to stop, "She had a seizure, and-"
"A seizure?"
"Her heart stopped." My heart stopped too.
Derek snaps at me, "You were supposed to be monitoring her."
I try to explain, "I checked on her and she-"
"I got it. Just - just - go." He dismisses me and I leave, I can't stay in there, "Someone give me her chart, please?" I can't remember the last time he was angry at me like this. I deserve it I deserve it I deserve it. She almost died he should be mad at me. I should quit.
In a daze I slowly walk out of the room and down the hallway. Bailey is walking towards me. She berates me, "You get a 911, you page me immediately, not in the five minutes it takes you to get to the emergency, immediately, you are on my team and if somebody dies it's my ass, can you hear me Grey?" No, I can't. And I walk away from Bailey. I keep walking. Cristina calls after me. I keep walking. I walk out the doors and into the pouring rain. Then, before I know what is happening, I throw up. I nearly killed a person. So I throw up.
I warn Cristina, "If you tell anyone, ever…" I'm about to reenter the hospital when I decide against it, "I'm just gonna sit out here for a bit, you go ahead."
"In the rain?" Cristina asks.
"In the rain." I say as I lean against the building and slowly slide to the ground.
I don't know how long I sit outside. It could be an hour it could be five minutes. Either way it feels like an eternity. I watch the rain and I think about quitting. I know I can't. I know I won't. I don't want to quit. But I still consider it. I'm so lost in my head that I don't realize someone else came outside until strong arms are being wrapped around me and I'm pulled tightly against Derek's chest. My hands find his shirt and grab it in fists. I tuck my head against the crook of his neck and I cry. He rubs small, slow circles on my back and whispers soothing words into my hair, periodically pressing soft kisses to the top of my head, my temple, and forehead. I don't pick up on what he says but I hear love, mistake, okay, alive, better, repeated again and again. I cling to Derek like he's a lifeline and he lets me. I'm hurting so much, teeming with so much guilt and anxiety, that I don't care that anybody from the hospital could see the two of us. I don't care that we started today wanting to be a secret. All I care about is being held by my husband which makes it all a little better. The sun is starting to rise when we finally break apart. I wipe at the tears that have dried my cheeks and while I'm no longer pressed against him, he keeps an arm securely across my shoulders.
"I'm sorry," I say, the first words I say to him since Katie seized.
"It's okay." He whispers, pressing another kiss to my temple.
I choke out, "It's not. She almost died because of me," Tears threaten to fall again.
He smiles, a sad sort of an I-love-you smile, "Did I ever tell you about my first night as an intern?" He asks me. The two of us had met about three months into his internship so he was far enough along that he could fake confidence to the med student he was trying to impress. I shake my head no. "Well my first patient was this really awful guy. He was old and smelly and just an absolute jerk. I was stuck with him for four hours, non-stop, because my resident hated me or something and he didn't let me leave his side until we were called up for an MRI, and I did a terrible job monitoring this guy. I missed all the warning signs for a heart attack and then as I'm preparing him for the MRI he lets out a string of profanities, telling me I'm the worst person ever and he hopes he dies, and I sarcastically said the same thing as I entered the scanning room. As soon as I left the room poor guy had a grand-mal heart attack and died in the machine. My resident put me on scut for the next two weeks. I wasn't allowed inside an OR until a month until my internship because I was so awful to this guy."
"Really?" I ask him, shocked.
"Really, really." He replies, "So being late for a 911 and having the patient survive isn't the end of the world, especially on your first day." I fling my arms around his torso and bury my head in his chest. I really love him.
"Thank you," I whisper.
He presses another kiss to the top of my head, "Just doing my job," he replies.