SHE | alex karev

chapter fifty two

"You're not coming to work?" Billie asked.

"No, I'm gonna hang with Rebecca, watch some movies. So, if you could cover for me..." Alex said, walking over to the counter and pouring some orange juice into a cup. He looked up at Rebecca, who sat, motionless. "Hey, take a bite."

"Yeah," Billie said, reluctantly. "I'll cover for you." As Alex was about to head over to the table again, she stopped him and lowered her voice. "Alex, she's not looking very good."

"She's fine." He shrugged, then walked past her towards Rebecca. Billie shook her head.

☆

Already in the hospital, changed into her scrubs and after having received word of a major trauma having come in, Billie towed her interns over to the trauma gown rack. Everyone fetched one for themselves just as Cristina ran over to them, intending to do the same thing.

Bailey walked towards them, followed by Hahn and Mark. "What do we have?"

"I don't know," Billie replied.

Mark smiled at her. "Hey, Bil."

"Hi. Can you tie this for me?" she replied, turning the other way for him to help her knot the string of the trauma gown.

"Black, didn't you volunteer to cover Karev's post-ops?" Bailey asked.

"I got two of my interns on it."

Everyone was putting the trauma gowns when Callie walked in, already wearing her own. She faltered a little on her confident stride when she saw both Mark and Erica, which Billie noticed and squinted her eyes at, but she dismissed it.

The doctors immediately followed the ortho surgeon in question towards the ER, Billie making sure to keep her interns on tow. However, when they arrived at the exam room where the patient was, they all froze.

"Oh, my," Erica said.

"Jesus." Robbie took her hand to her mouth in horror.

"Wow," Billie whispered to herself at the sight of the kid, who couldn't be much younger than herself, trapped inside a big mold of cement.

One of the firefighters looked up. "So how you wanna handle this?"

☆

Bailey, Billie, her interns and the remaining firefighter were now alone in the exam room. The rest of the doctors had been instructed to come up with a plan in order to save the kid, whose name was Andrew and whose eyes were filled with unshed tears.

"So, what do you want to do first?" the firefighter asked.

"I don't know," Bailey whispered, examining the hardened vat of cement.

"Okay, well," he continued. "What do you want us to do first?"

"I don't know," she repeated.

"Alright, look. We blasted him out of the job site, but we figured, don't blast him too close. This is a lot of concrete, so if you're planning on treating him, we need to get started. So-" he said, "-what do you want to do?"

"I don't know!" Bailey screamed for the third time.

However, this prompted the wake of Andrew's tears. Billie was the first to notice, so she nudged Bailey with her elbow to make sure she knew.

"I'm sorry," she whispered to the young boy. "Okay, I- I know I'm not doing my best to instill a sense of confidence in my abilities. It's just that... you are trapped in what I'm guessing is several tons of cement."