Previously: Chief Webber has thrown a roadblock in Mari's career. Mari finds an unexpected connection, and confidence boost, in diagnosing a patient with Derek Shepherd.
Some quotes in the beginning from 1x01 A Hard Day's Night.
chapter eight: stayed
"What if no one comes up with anything?"
"You mean, if she dies?"
"Yeah." Meredith softly thumps her head back against the library shelf. They're sheltered in the stacks, pouring over Katie's file and flipping through diagnostic textbooks.
Cristina pauses. "This is gonna sound really bad, but…I really wanted that surgery."
Meredith hides her smile. It doesn't sound bad, to her. She gets it. She's there too, plus she also hates that maybe no one will be able to figure this out.
"She's just never going to get the chance to turn into a person," Meredith muses. "The sum total of her existence will be almost winning Miss Teen whatever. You know what her pageant talent is?"
"They have talent?" Cristina asks, completely deadpan. They both laugh. What are the chances that they can both say something insensitive and not judge the other for it? That she found someone else older than the 25-year-olds fresh out of med school with little life experience. Another woman, driven towards surgery. Driven about surgery.
The first thing her and Cristina had said to each other, when they looked around, was about how few women were in the surgical internship. Six out of twenty, and one of them rumored to be an underwear model.
'Seriously, like that's going to help with the respect thing?'
Meredith smirks. "Rhythmic gymnastics," she shares.
She doesn't even know what that is. Is it like normal gymnastics? Dancing, and twirling, and jumping off a high beam, and…
What if it is like regular gymnastics?
What if Katie fell?
"Hey," Bailey snaps. "No running in the halls! Patients see doctors running and they think something's wrong."
Meredith and Cristina slam into the desk, breathing heavily. Meredith will probably never take the stairs again, and just wait for the elevator.
Cristina sputters, "you said we're supposed to take everything at a run."
Bailey gives her a look. It's the Nazi at work. "Have I paged you?" she enunciates. "Has anyone paged you? No? Then no running."
Cristina crinkles her nose. "Oh, so this is a community pool now?" she mutters under her breath.
Meredith straightens her spine, tries to settle her nerves before she says. "we think we know what's wrong with Katie Bryce."
Cristina gives her a side glance; surprised Meredith is saying 'we'. She only ran with Meredith because she wants to see if Meredith is right too.
Bailey lifts her brows at her, giving a slow perusal. She keeps them in suspense before saying, "I'm sure Dr. Shepherd thinks he knows too. He's already in surgery."
The wind knock out of her sails. "With Katie Bryce?" Overlapping, Cristina demands, "who figured it out?"
Bailey snorts, turning away. "Not one of mine."
Cristina and her both watch her walk away before they turn to each other.
They both take off for the OR board.
"See who it is?" Cristina asks, eyes roving over the people in the OR below them.
"How will we be able to tell?" she mutters back. "I don't know who anyone is and they're in surgical masks."
She can't believe someone else had the same idea, only they got there first, and they get to scrub in.
Cristina cares less about that, since she didn't come up with anything. She just wants to know which intern got the leg up.
They watch the surgery, waiting for the moment Dr. Shepherd motions someone to his side, to come closer.
Cristina hits her arm, her eyes glued below.
Meredith's jaw tightens. She can't describe the feeling that goes through her. Doesn't want to.
"It's my sister," she says tonelessly.
Cristina frowns. Meredith told her her sister wasn't in the surgical program, so Cristina hadn't given her another thought.
"I didn't know your sister was competition."
Meredith laughs humorlessly.
Of course she is.
Mari Grey
She can't believe she followed him into the OR. After he closes, after the OR empties, and they're last to scrub out, they steal glances at each other, and his eyes smile for him, but he doesn't say anything.
No teasing. No that was amazing, or how was that, or are you impressed?
She is, and he doesn't press the advantage. He doesn't come out of the OR like he's won something.
Not the high, for me.
She doesn't hear her mother's voice, warning her to be cautious. She just hears his, asking for this, for her to see him. No expectations. Completely at ease.
Derek Shepherd is different, very different, to what she's used to.
And Mari pauses in that doorway, close enough to touch him as he holds the door for her, lifting her green-grey gaze to arresting blue eyes.
He isn't wearing the cologne from the bar, doesn't smell like rain either, from their kiss. She wants to tuck herself into his neck, find his real scent under the soap. She wants to hear his heartbeat.
He smiles. "How do you feel?"
What she feels, is want.
What she says, as she dances backwards, with a curling grin, is:
"Motivated."
George, the intern that she rattled, has his forehead pressed to the glass of a vending machine, in the basement of the hospital.
"How did the surgery go?" she offers as a passing greeting, not letting her instinct for 'obviously not well' seep through, lest the sympathy wound his ego. His forlorn shoulders twitch.
Lifelessly he mutters, "I ripped the cecum."
Ouch.
"Pull the purse strings too tight?"
He lifts his head off the glass, puppy dog eyes looking over at her, with a visible red mark on his forehead from leaning on the glass too hard. "Yeah."
Mari looks him over, through the floppy hair falling in his eyes that he self-consciously, by habit, finger combs. He doesn't seem to blame her, for setting off his nerves before the surgery. Not the type to lash out and make excuses then.
"Is the patient alive?"
He nods.
Then it's not so bad.
"Good," she encourages, looking at the positive.
The fact that he made that particular mistake is damning enough. Brand-new interns were more likely to be too delicate, too shy, instead of too rough. She looks at his hands. Wide, and stumpy, and not elegant. A workman's hands. She knows how they're going to insult him.
Mari looks over the vending machines next to him. America is far behind Japan in terms of quality fare for vending machines, but she's willing to try one of the spring waters.
"Did your attending guide you through it or did he push you out of the way?" she asks as she's pulling out her folded money.
He winces. "Uh, he – I froze, so he…took over." And not kindly, by his expression. He exhales, muttering "that actually wasn't the worst part of my day."
She raises her brows, curious eyes on him as she presses the button, and hears the clunk as her prize being released.
"I told a wife her husband would be fine. And he didn't make it," he whispers.
"And that's...worse?" she wonders, watching him closely. "Than being humiliated in front of your peers?" she picks that word over embarrassed, digs it in a little deeper to see his reaction. "Knowing they won't let it go? That it might follow you your entire intern year?"
His brows furrow. "Yeah…?" Like he wouldn't think to put those two experiences in a different order.
Mari's mouth quirks. She looks down at his badge so she can get his full name. "If your drive can match your heart, you'll be a phenomenal doctor, Dr. O'Malley."
He jerks, blinking so quickly it's like she's reached over and shocked him. Literally shocked him.
He whispers, "what?" instinctively, like he doesn't believe her, flustered and shaking his hair into his eyes.
Though he quietly finds both Grey sisters attractive, he wouldn't even think of having a crush on Mari.
Meredith is…demur, when she smiles. Her laugh is sweet and giggly, and surprising, the rare times he's heard it, because her throaty voice is kind of unintentionally sultry.
Meredith slides her eyes away, when he stumbles over his words, like she's letting him compose himself, breathe through the nerves, and then she turns back to him, smiling like she understands his social anxiety, and doesn't think less of him for it.
It makes him want to learn more about her, get closer to her.
Already he knows that Meredith's mother tried to talk her out of medical school. Said she wouldn't make it.
They're both under parental expectations, even if George's case is coming from parents that are prouder than they should be, and Meredith has a mother who should be easier on her.
Mari...doesn't look away when he stutters, when he fumbles. She looks at you like she's completely unself-conscious, taking more in. Her accent also has this lift that's completely different than Meredith's, that he doesn't recognize. It's nearly musical, and sophisticated, and makes everything sound amused, like she might be secretly laughing at you.
"Uh, thank you?" George breathes. He can't help but talk about what happened with his patient's wife, because that was the first time he had to tell a patient that their loved one died, and it was after he promised they would 'sail through', and he just wants to get it out.
"I made a promise I shouldn't have," he berates himself, remembering Burke's words.
"Hmm. So, you and everyone else on this planet?"
George startles a little.
Mari just raises her brows, patiently watching him while drinking her water. Both of them leaning their backs against the vending machine.
"Burke made it seem like…" he starts, but stops, not wanting her to think he's pathetic if he admits he thought he made a mistake that was so dumb, that everyone else knew not to do it, that it was a sign he wasn't going to make it through the program.
He swallows. "It's your first day too, right? How has yours been?"
Mari fiddles with the plastic cap for a moment, flicking it into the air and catching it. Her head tilts, her words coming out light and airy. "Well, the Chief of Surgery pulled me from medicine because he wanted my last name in surgery. My new attending took offense and shut me out of his service while embarrassing me in front of my would-be peers by calling me fickle and undeserving."
George goggles. If that had happened to him he'd want the earth to swallow him. "Wow. Are you okay?"
Mari widens her eyes, turning towards him slowly and theatrically. "I'm plotting my revenge."
Then she smiles, like it's no big deal, tightening her water bottle closed and straightening from the vending machine. George unconsciously straightens too. "Actually, that's why I'm down here. Once I was motivated to not hightail it to greener pastures, I decided I needed to work on a game plan."
"Oh. Do you...need help?"
The room is locked.
Fortunately, you don't stick it out for years with House and not learn how to pick locks.
"You carry a lock picking set on you?" George squeaks.
Mari keeps her ear near the doorknob, listening for the satisfying click.
"You don't?" she asks, like he's the strange one.
George literally scrambles after her.
Mari hums a tune as she strolls through the stacks, searching for the boxes for the pictures that used to hang up on the walls or the display cases. She's walked the breath of this hospital and has seen no sign of her mother. Not even a plague to the woman who started at this hospital, won her Harper Avery as a resident, and went on to become internationally renowned.
That seems a bit strange.
Or deliberate.
They have pictures, and plagues, and commemorative memorability for others, and those people are not on the same level of Ellis Grey.
"So, what are you searching for, exactly?" George wonders, still twitchy at the basement level trespassing.
A few things, she thinks, but she wants to indulge her curiosity first.
"I'm looking for staff photos from 1975 through 1978," she elaborates. "Internship and residency of the surgical program. If there are any pictures of my mother winning the Harper Avery in '78, that would be great too."
"Oh," George moves closer, looking at the box labels now that he knows what to search for. "How is this going to help you?"
"You never know," she muses, darting past.
Aha! She thinks, when she finds the right boxes.
She clicks through photo frames until she finds one of 1975, where there's only one woman in the picture. Blonde, and statuesque, and daring, and pushed on the outskirts. Mari stares, realizes her mother is the same age as her. She's never seen a picture of her from this period of her life.
She feels strangely discombobulated.
"Do you think this is Chief Webber?" she turns the frame to George. He squints too, looking up from his own cardboard box.
"May…be?"
"They should have printed the names underneath," she murmurs. Still, "he looks a bit too handsome to be Chief Webber, would you agree?"
George chokes, or maybe coughs on loose dust.
Mari waits for his verdict without looking up from the photo, willing it to give up its secrets.
"I don't – I mean, I'm not gay."
Mari blinks, confused at the vehemence.
She peeks at his flushed face, and sees she's touched the edge of a social landmine. The only thing for it is to pretend she doesn't see it.
"I'm making no inferences on your sexuality, George. If I said a woman in a photo was attractive, would you make any on mine?"
George presses his lips tight. "No, but that's…" then he frowns. "The woman in the photo is your mother. And you look like her."
Mari laughs. George looks startled. She meant in general.
"Then I'll be sure not to compliment her looks, lest I be accused of vanity."
He rolls his eyes, scooting closer as she hands the picture off. He looks between her and Ellis Grey.
"You look more like your mother than Meredith does."
Mari gives no reaction. It was Meredith's intention, with her purposeful slouch, shabby dress, and unattended hair. Meredith had mom's figure, and her cat eyes, and her low voice. Once he sees Meredith look cool and dispassionate, he might change his mind.
"I look more like my Mom too, I think." George offers. "More than my brothers anyway. I have two of them. It must be nice, you and Meredith going into medicine together. I don't have anything in common like that, with my family…"
Mari hums along. She isn't surprised he comes from a working-class family, that he's the youngest of his siblings, or a first-generation doctor.
At first glance, she wouldn't think George O'Malley had the temperament for a surgeon, but she's not going to discount him yet. Some things you can learn, and she thinks George's defects are because he's inexperienced, not incapable. She meant it. His heart is soft, but it's his drive that can make him.
Through boxes and dust, and finally something truly interesting, Mari makes two discoveries. It is Chief Webber and 1978, the year her mother left, is the only year Chief Webber and Ellis Grey do not stand next to each other.
Mari doesn't call Wilson, or House, or Cuddy. She doesn't want them to know she's fumbling, doesn't want them to offer for her to return to Princeton Plainsboro, or to not offer it. She's not sure if Seattle is going to work out, but leaving after only being in town a week?
She thought about applying to the other hospitals in Seattle, but that feels like slinking away to lick her wounds.
After the OR with Derek, she's scraped her approach. Decided not to spend another day waiting, or demurring, for someone to tell her what to do.
She's considering lawyers.
One in particular, though she's not sure if he'll call her back.
Her mother had dated a lawyer too, for a bit. Non-exclusively, but from what she knows Alan Shore is one of the canniest lawyers in Boston, and he once promised to take her to the World Series if the Red Sox ever got in.
Given that they broke their curse and won last year, she thinks she could call him to remind him of it and ask if he'll look over her contract for her. Assuming he cares about a broken promise made to a girl, made on a whim that wasn't supposed to happen, more than ten years ago.
Maybe she could ask the nurses who the ambulance chasers were, who had a good record against Seattle Grace.
Or call up the lawyer to her mother's estate?
Her phone rings.
It's 8:00 in Seattle and 11:00 in New York City.
Harvey skips straight past a hello.
"Donna said you needed me."
"I believe I said if Harvey has any time, ask him to call me."
Harvey huffs. "Really. Because she told me, Mari sounds like she has an asshole problem that needs a Harvey Specter-style solution."
Mari bites her lip. "Donna is very wise," she says sagely.
"Yeah," he sounds more exasperated than fond at this point, and she wonders if he really didn't want to make this call, but Donna said something that goaded him into it. "So, what's wrong? Everything...okay over there, in Seattle?"
Mari sighs in his ear, so quietly, the only sign that she's dispirited.
What a tangled thing Seattle is.
It was one thing, having a relationship when she was in Princeton and he in New York. Seattle would have been near-impossible.
Once he knew she was considering it, that it was about her sister, and her mother, and to do it she was committing at least a few years, he pulled back and...far away.
'I'm not going to stand in your way Mari. I'm not going to let our relationship stop you from - being there, with your family.'
She's relieved that he's called her back, but better sense says it's too soon still, to play at friends, to ask for advice late at night.
She can hear the wind across the phone line, knows he's looking over the bright city.
She pictures him as a silhouette to avoid thinking of him more familiarly. Nothing of a loosened tie, undone cuffs and slowly rolling up his sleeves. She doesn't think of the look on his face, or the fact that he might have went out there to prepare himself to call her. She knows he only goes to his balcony to think.
"I was listening to your dad earlier," she says.
"Oh? Which one?" but his voice says, I know you're stalling.
"Time Out. The first press."
He hums, "bad day, huh?"
Mari's lips curl, holding her bemusement as a secret. "If I tell you, it was Blue's Walk instead?" she wonders.
He's quiet for a moment, but he doesn't back down from the answer. The proof that he knows things about her still. "Then I'd say, you're in a more contemplative mood."
I've kissed someone, since you, she thinks.
She's sure he's kissed someone since her too.
"What are you listening to now?"
Mari's nose wrinkles is slight embarrassment, but tells him anyway.
"Helen Reddy."
He chuckles. "You own a Helen Reddy album?" he asks, sounding more himself.
"It's my mother's," she admits. "I find I am woman very inspirational."
"Must have been some kick in the teeth."
Mari blows out a defeated breath. Maybe so, with the music choice, with picking something of her mother's. She personally prefers the jazz, the orchestras, but she was seeking familiar.
She tells him most of it. The parts of Dr. Bearden and Chief Webber and the advice of one of the hospital's attorneys.
Harvey listens without saying a word until she tells him about the attorney meeting, then, "do you have a fax machine?"
"It's not connected yet," she winces, knowing she's unprepared. "And it's buried in with a few dozen boxes."
"Why didn't you send your contract to Donna right after that meeting, Mari?" he demands.
Mari flops down on the couch, kicking a pillow at her feet when it gets in the way. "Harvey," she says, exasperated, hearing his frustration, his defense. "You're trying to make junior partner. I'm not going to assume you even have time."
"Mari," he returns, only softening on her name, and then back being Harvey Specter Esq. "This is easy. They're obviously out of bounds and think they can embarrass you into walking away. Let me hear the contract so I know what to cite when I put the fear of a million-dollar lawsuit on their heads, and you'll be able to pick whatever position you want."
When she doesn't respond, he demands again, low and with heat "find it and read it to me."
She refuses to think about that tone, and any and every memory that wants to draw up.
"Oh, and how does that work, since you aren't licensed to practice law in the state of Washington?"
"I don't need one. All I need is one phone call."
Mari's covers her eyes with her hand. Competent arrogance is expected. Far be it from her to call his a flaw.
"I can fax it in the morning?" She offers.
"Mari. Read me the goddamn contract."
Every hospital had different power structures, but the world still worked in Venn diagrams.
Mari's white board is in the living room, a circle map created to represent Seattle Grace. She's piecing together which departments have the most independence based off of the quality of original research that comes out of Seattle, matching it all to the directory she absconded with.
Surgery. Immunology. Infectious Disease. Psychiatry. Pediatrics. OBGYN. Oncology. ER. Pathology. Phlebotomy. On and on.
She's not sure she should go back to Immunology, right away.
Dr. Bearden doesn't seem the type to give in gracefully, admit his bad judgment.
She also doesn't want to spend weeks, or months, with a stalled career because he'll put her on grunt work.
So, assuming she will be gainfully employed soon…
Immunology hates her. Surgery pretends to want her. And what she needs is so much more data.
Patricia, Chief Webber's secretary, raises her eyebrows when Mari shows up again, her expression still bland.
"He's in surgery," she says, her standard response, like a living automatic voicemail message.
Mari bats that away, like she wasn't even going to try that route. She pulls out a framed picture of Richard Webber and Ellis Grey at the 1978 Harper Avery Award dinner that used to be part of a display case with Seattle Grace's achievements and has since been boxed away in the basement.
"Oh, I'm just dropping off something I think the Chief misplaced."
Patricia looks down at the picture, and her lips curl into an amused smirk.
"Anything else?"
Mari beams, trying to look as sweet as possible. "Patricia, do you have any friends in accounting?"
Accounting and billing is in the basement too. The lack of natural light and fresh air, the hum of dusty computers, and clacking keyboards, squeaky chairs, and buzzing florescent lights would drive her mad.
Maybe even literally.
She looks over the half cubicles and has absolutely no idea why anyone would take this job.
"Always nice to have visitors," Ted smiles weakly, like he's out of practice.
Poor man.
"Hello Ted," she greets with a friendly grin. "Patricia Stonewell sent me. She said you know the hospital numbers forward and backwards."
He blinks owlishly. "I suppose?"
She plops down in the seat across from him, pulling out the files she's compiled. "Tell me how much time you have please, so I know what to prioritize."
"Uh…I mean, I'm not doing anything?" he trails off in question.
Mari looks up from her paperwork, a slow smile spreading across her face that shows her canines.
"I'm so glad to hear that, Ted."
Ted Buckland is amazing. So is Patricia.
Both are on her Christmas list, and since Ted has a picture of his barbershop quartet behind him, she has a few ideas to work with.
She asks him which departments didn't reach their hiring needs. Which have the real budgets. What they spend their money on.
She finds out how long Webber has been Chief, and in the most analytical sense, what he's made of it.
The last Chief, Farr, came from trauma. He revamped the ORs and bought up newer diagnostic equipment. Before that, Houlihan was from Peds. She created the children's wing, brought in the most donor funding Seattle Grace has ever seen, and spent an exorbitant amount of the war chest in free or discounted surgeries for under privileged families of Washington, Idaho, and Oregon.
Houlihan was the Chief when Ted started and made him think hospital accounting could be a noble profession. He says without saying, that for a time, they tried to keep the charity up for the publicity but have since overcorrected with higher fees and stilted wages.
When he glances at the files on his desk, it's like all vitality has been sucked from his soul, and he makes a joke that his job now is fraud and taking dollars from people who have pennies.
This is why he patiently answers all of her questions. Why there are things on his desk to fiddle with, a huge fantasy book dog-eared, and an open game of solitaire on his computer.
Webber's been Chief for five years. Funds for non-surgery have never been lower. There are no more lectures, no more sponsored conferences.
Seattle used to have a better infectious disease and immunology standing, now they have a bitter one.
And the threads come together.
Mari sighs. Ted matches it, like it's a reflex.
She really wanted immunology, for multiple reasons, but she's going to skate around that fight, instead of throwing herself in the middle of it.
She presses ignore on her buzzing cell phone, again, ignoring Legal.
They can sweat until she figures out what she wants to ask for.
Ted watches her ignore them again, and whispers quietly, "you're my hero."
Mari is lost in contemplation and thinks she's hearing things.
"Ted," she wonders. "Where would you go, if you stayed at this hospital and you were in your residency?"
"Beats me," he shrugs.
Mari tilts her head. Right, that's like him asking her about the accounting positions. "Ok, what if you wanted independence, to learn the most skills, and be able to revenge yourself on Chief Webber, and possibly the entire surgical department?"
Excluding Neuro, she thinks unconsciously, and shakes her head at herself, because she knows her nature, so the real answer is especially Neuro.
Ted thinks about it, before an unholy gleam comes to his eye, an excitement he thought died under a mountain of paperwork, at the idea of anything being shaken up in this hospital and made interesting.
"The ER."
Notes: And we have Ex-boyfriend #1: Harvey Specter, from Suits.
Also, Mari creates a friendship with George but a ride-or-die homie with Ted (inspired by, well, Ted, from Scrubs). Mari is an investigator who makes friends. That is her power.