No Time | Grey's Anatomy // Book 1 // COMPLETED |

7 | Flying Solo

As I sat in the gallery with Meredith, Alex, and Reed, the four of us stared down intently into the operating room below, watching as Cristina performed her valve surgery. There were conversations going on around me, but I was only half-listening. I much preferred to pay attention to the interesting surgery happening right in front of myself.

Well, that was until a particular conversation took an intriguing turn and I couldn't help but tune in fully. 

"I told Torres she had to let you scrub if she was cutting," Alex told Reed, the two of them perched in the front row while Meredith and I sat farther back. 

"Cool," Reed responded, seemingly not too excited about possibly scrubbing in on a surgery. I just leaned back in my chair and watched the disaster unfold. Reed, with her short hair and bright eyes was clearly too beautiful to need to stoop so low, and hopefully, she was smart enough as well. 

Alex smirked as he leaned closer and lowered his voice. "Book an on-call room."

"What . . . what happened to drinks first?" she questioned, clearly taken by surprise. 

"Ah, it's kind of a waste of time, right? Cut to the chase."

Reed chuckled nervously as Meredith sat forward and interjected herself into the conversation. "Hey, Reed. Do you know Izzie Stevens?"

"Grey." Alex groaned, warning her.

Reed turned around and nodded, her demeanour suddenly changing into the snarky, know-it-all facade that I had come to expect from her. "Yes. I met her before she got fired."

"You know she's Alex's wife," Meredith told her simply. "And she's not here right now, but they're still married."

Alex crossed his arms. "Meredith, shut up!"

"No," Meredith argued. "Some people think you're divorced, and you're not."

Rolling her eyes, Reed spun around in her seat one last time. "Uh, how about you just shut up long enough to watch your friend tank her valve."

Looking down into the OR, Meredith and I watched as everyone around the operating table began scrambling. A loud beeping could be heard even from where we were, and as bad quickly progressed to worse, I found myself on the edge of my seat. 

Cristina, wide-eyed and panicked, struggled through bit by bit while Altman sat in the corner, calmly reading a magazine. "Well, how come Altman's not doing anything?" Reed asked.

As an overwhelmingly sickening feeling came over me, I stood from my seat and turned for the exit. "I can't watch her fail," I explained as I excused myself. 

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Yawning, I covered my mouth, trying to hide my exhaustion as I stared down into the OR. I was in the gallery once again, but his time, it was packed with residents, attendings, and interns, all gathered to observe Bailey perform some type of new chemo. 

"I've removed the tumor and placed the catheters." Bailey's voice travelled from the OR, through the intercom, and into the gallery for everyone to hear. "Now I'm going to flood the abdomen with heated chemo. It allows a greater concentration of drugs to be delivered directly to the affected area and the heat helps target the cancer cells while leaving the normal cells virtually unaffected. Okay, start perfusion. Okay, we'll place him in trendelenburg. Then reverse trendelenburg as we agitate the abdomen to make sure that the chemo really washes everywhere."

Locking eyes with Bailey, Callie sighed and slouched back in her chair. "Okay, she saw me. Now I can go." 

"She's just getting started," Cristina said. She was one of the only people in attendance who actually had the energy and will to be there. 

Callie, however, was dead set on leaving. "Yeah, I have a headache. I need coffee." She reached for her coat. 

Arizona, Callie's girlfriend, leaned forward from the row behind her and whispered, "I have a cure for a headache that doesn't involve coffee."

Callie smiled and nodded and in the blink of an eye, the two women were out of their seats and rushing out into the hallway. With two seats now opened up, Altman took her chance to grab one, and before long, the other chair was filled as well.