You Promised | Mark Sloan ✓

45┃seemingly inoperable

"Awesome in a bad way," Callie noted.

"It's eaten five levels of his spine..." Norah furrowed her brows, "Awesome in a brilliant way."

"What-" Callie shook her head at the resident, who was still admiring the scans. "Wait, you're not seriously considering trying to take it out?" she asked Derek.

"Of course he is!" Cristina proclaimed as he clapped the neurosurgeon on the shoulder, "He's Shepherd."

Arizona walked into the room next with her eyebrows furrowed in concern. "It's a bad case of telephone, right? Isaac's got a bone spur or a herniated disk, not a..." the Pediatrics attending trailed off when Norah passed the scans over to her. "He diagnosed an osteosarcoma case for me a month ago. I thought it was a shadow, but it turned out to be the tiniest little lesion on an X-ray."

"That says more about you than it does him," Mark pointed out.

"I'm sorry-do you even know who Isaac is?" Arizona smiled at him weakly.

"He doesn't," Norah replied instead before walking over to her boyfriend. She snatched over his coffee and took big mouthfuls of it, returning it to him with only less than one-eighth of it left. "Payback feels good," she smirked.

"Hm, I have other ways to taste my coffee," Mark mumbled back before lowering his head to catch her lips, tasting the caffeine from her tongue.

"Oi-no PDA in the CT room, thank you very much," Cristina cleared her throat loudly at the pair while Derek pried them away from each other.

Lexie peeked her head in when she saw the many surgeons clustered in the room. "Hey, what's everyone-oh, a spinal tumor?"

She took a look at the scans with her eyes narrowed, recalling a similar case she came across. "I read about a case at Mayo where the surgery took seventeen hours," she shared, "The head surgeon had four rotating assistants, one of whom just administered fluids."

"Okay, you know what? Don't try and Lexipedia your way on this," Cristina snarled at the younger resident, "This is my tumor."

"Uh, no, that's not your spine," Norah stated with a tone of sarcasm before turning to the intern. "Lexie, what happened to the patient at Mayo?"

"He died," Lexie informed grimly, "That's why it only took seventeen hours."

Owen passed by the room and reversed his steps when he saw the gathering. "Hey, I just heard Isaac has an inoperable tumor?"

"It's Isaac's tumor?" Lexie exclaimed, her eyes wide.

"Okay, yeah, yeah, boo-hoo, okay?" Cristina snapped at them, "Who says it's inoperable?"

"Cristina," Derek called as he pointed at the new scans that had just come up on the computer screen.

Everyone in the room leaned their heads towards the screen, and everyone was talking and commenting at once. Norah felt a rush of adrenaline getting up her head as she observed the scans in silence.

"Oh, come on. It's all the way up to T2."
"You need three or four assistants..."
"See, this is why I got into plastics."
"Oh, that's gotta be..."

"Seemingly inoperable tumor, Derek," Norah whispered. Derek turned his head to the knowing smirk on her face before letting out a long sigh.

❦ ❦ ❦

"MICROSURGERY IS ABOUT precision," the neurosurgeon told the group of residents; Norah perked up a bit at the word.

"The microscope changes your perspective radically. The hand-eye coordination required can be learned, but right now, I need naturals. Each one of you will get a chance to guide this pen through the hole in the cup. The person who makes a mark closest to the president's nose and doesn't hit the side of the cup gets to scrub in."