Part 21- At the Hospital

Joy bowed her face over the sink as she scrubbed in for Sami Brady's surgery. She didn't want to give the rest of the surgical team a chance to see that her face was almost as red as her hair. She didn't need them to take one look at her and realize she'd been making out with Will Horton.

Making out wasn't quite the right term. But the feather light kiss had promised so much more, and her mind wanted nothing but to imagine what that "more" might be like.

She forced herself to concentrate on soap and water. Scrubbing in was something that she always used to focus herself. It symbolized the moment she changed from someone whose needs and wants were catered to by others to someone whose every thought and movement affected the very life of someone else. All of her life was geared toward making her as perfect as possible in these moments.

Like many of the students, interns, and residents employed at University Hospital, Joy lived in a large apartment complex across the park from the hospital. The concierges there placed her mail on the table inside her apartment; arranged for any repairs; and ran any errands she asked them to run. The dry cleaners in the basement had a sign on its door advising young doctors that it used environmentally friendly, non-hazardous cleaning products like they would want their patients to use. The grocery store next door would deliver items to her refrigerator on a schedule, and was open 24 hours so she could order a prepared meal whenever her shift ended.

So all in all, there were dozens—if not hundreds—of people kept busy making sure that Joy and the other young doctors never had to lift a finger when they weren't working.

Craig loved it. Sometimes he even crashed at Joy's apartment when he could only leave work for a few hours.

Nancy hated it. She always said that it was the job of a wife or a mother, not a building management company, to take care of a young doctor being asked to work for days at a stretch. Joy had a mother, so what was the problem? Every time Nancy saw Joy, she asked whether Joy wasn't ready to come back home—just for a few years, until her career was more established. "I see you less than I see Chloe, and Chloe lives in Vienna!" was something Joy heard on a regular basis.

Sometimes Joy was tempted to go home and let Nancy take care of her; sometimes she even did visit for a day or two. But she was determined that she was going to receive no special treatment from the Chief of Staff, and it was easier to keep that up if she didn't live with the Chief of Staff.

Besides, it would be a lot easier to spend some of her rare free time with Will if he didn't have to risk running into her father the boss.

She swallowed a giggle as she forced Will from her mind once and for all and got into surgery mode.

The room had grown very quiet. Dr. Karlin hated unnecessary noise, and you could always hear a pin drop in the operating theater when he was in charge. Some of the other surgeons liked to play music or allowed a little non-work conversation, but anyone who suggested background music to Dr. Karlin would probably get stabbed with a scalpel. And Dr. Karlin knew his way around a scalpel.

Joy sometimes thought that when she was in charge, she would play recordings of her sister's performances in Vienna. She had grown used to ignoring Chloe's singing at a young age, and now tuning it out helped her concentrate. At school, Joy had often studied for exams while Tartuffe or La Boheme blared in her headphones.

But she could focus in silence, too. She might not be the best daughter or sister or friend, and she would probably make a royal mess of this thing with Will before long, but she was a brilliant surgeon. Excellent. She had studied this procedure over and over. She knew everything about the patient's medical history. She could predict the rest of the team's movements as surely as she could predict her own. Every tool she touched would be an extension of her own hand.

She saw her confidence reflected in the rest of the team as they began their work.

The operating room was silent, but the waiting room was not.

Lucas knew that the noise would have bothered him, once upon a time. It used to be that when he was worried about someone he cared about, he thought that the rest of the world should stop and worry, too. There would be no shouting, no flirting, and certainly no giggling. (Allie and Ciara hadn't stopped giggling since Ciara, Bo, and Hope had appeared soon after the operation began.)

Now, Lucas didn't mind so much. He definitely didn't mind that Allie was giggling. He loved to see her lighthearted rather than burdened by the world. And he couldn't fault her for her seeming lack of anxiety. Allie had been through a great deal, but she was so young; maybe the rapid changes in her life these past few months had left her believing that things could always work out the way she wanted them to. He wasn't going to burst that bubble of incurable optimism until he had to.

An hour passed.

Eventually, Bo suggested that Ciara and Allie go visit Claire, who was not set to be released until the next day. The two of them happily agreed.

Another hour passed.

Other family members drifted in and out, too. Max and Morgan stopped by to wish them well, but left when their younger son became bored and cranky. Kate and Philip were both loath to be separated from their cell phones for too long. Belle and Shawn were splitting their time between the waiting room and Claire's room. Julie was busy talking to out of town family members about the latest crisis. Every so often, someone would slip out to the back parking lot to make sure Johnny was still there, with instructions to drag him inside if it started to look like he might freeze to death.

Another hour passed.

The biggest uproar came when Abby ran into the room calling for Billie.

"Chelsea's in labor," Abby announced without preamble. There was a chorus of horrified murmurs. Everyone knew it was much too early for Chelsea to be in labor, and everyone knew about Chelsea's history of miscarriages.

"Dr. Baker said this wouldn't happen again!"

Abby shook her head and blinked back tears. "Nick's with her, but…"

Billie left with Abby, and Bo and Hope followed soon after.

Will vanished just as he thought the procedure must be wrapping up so he could thank (and interrogate) the surgical team as soon as possible.

By the time Sami was wheeled into recovery, Lucas was alone in the waiting room. When a nurse offered to take him to sit beside Sami, he followed her obediently.

At the main entrance, John and Marlena outwardly remarked that the hospital never seemed to change while inwardly hoping against hope that they'd come to reunite with Sami rather than to bury her.

In the chapel, Bo and Hope and Shawn and Belle thanked God for Claire's recovery and prayed for Sami, Chelsea, and Chelsea's baby. Belle managed to suppress the urge to ask God to ruin Philip's date with Abby as long as he was focusing on her family anyway.

In the maternity ward, Abby talked meaninglessly about what she was going to wear when she and Philip went out to dinner in a vain attempt to distract Chelsea from the fact that her contractions were not slowing down.

Outside Chelsea's door, Dr. Baker solemnly told Nick that they were going to have to deliver the baby today, and that a premature baby might still live a long, healthy life.

In a back hallway, Will pulled Joy into a second kiss only to be interrupted by the voice of the Chief of Staff. "When I told you to fix her bedside manner," said Craig, "this is not what I meant!"

In the frigid air of the secluded overflow parking lot, Johnny paced anxiously back and forth while he wondered if anyone in the history of the world had ever been as alone as he was now.

Upstairs, in neurosurgery, Allie and Ciara dumped a collection of magazines on Claire's bed and began to sort through them with her.

And in recovery, Sami's eyes fluttered open. A heart monitor showed her pulse quickening as she saw Lucas for the first time in thirteen years.

TBC