Today was the big day, the game had officially begun. A month ago, I was sitting in med school being taught by doctors. But now? I am the freaking doctor. These several years I spend here are going to change my life, according to Dr. Webber anyway. I walked around the OR with the other interns admiring everything that was surrounding me. Being completely honest, it doesn't look like much competition to me. A tall, skinny blonde girl looks me up and down. That didn't matter to me though, this was finally my time to shine and show off all of my hard work. When she turns away, I roll my eyes at her back. Who does she even think she is?
"Only six women out of twenty," a pretty dirty blonde lady says to me while I put my scrub top on in the locker room.
"Yeah. I hear one of them's a model too. Seriously, like that's going to help with the whole respect thing?" says another really pretty Korean woman with dark hair who took the locker next to mine.
"Well, isn't that just great news. More men who think they can boss us around all the damn time," I scoff.
"You're Rachel Lopez right?" the dirty blonde says while pointing at me.
"Yep," I nod.
"Okay, and you're Cristina Yang I'm guessing right?" she says while staring at the Korean woman.
"Mhm," she mumbles.
"Okay, I'm Meredith Grey, nice to meet you guys," she says while smiling. Grey? As in Ellis Grey? That's highly doubtful, but it's weird she took the time to learn our full names.
I think she's just a little too perky for my personal liking. I don't know who she is, and I frankly don't care to get to know her either. I'm not here for anybody else, I'm here for me. People don't get to the top by having friends. I put my heels on, spray some cheap Bath and Body Works perfume on my wrists, and a little bit of pink lip gloss. I never leave anywhere without those things, especially my heels. As someone who is 5'1 I try to be at least 5'3 in my heels at all times. Even at work.
"Which resident are you guys assigned to? I got Bailey," Cristina asks us.
"Yeah me too," Meredith says.
"Oh, the Nazi I think? Don't worry, I'm pretty sure it's just some stupid nickname to try and intimidate us." I scoff.
"We all have the Nazi?" a male interjects. Not too bad looking, nothing special either. Scruffy brown hair, wide eyes, and kind of dorky. We all just nod at him. "That's good, at least we'll be tortured together right?" he asks. We all just stare at him, we clearly couldn't care less about what he had to say but he just kept talking. "I'm George O'Malley," he looks over towards Meredith, "We met at the mixer, you had a black dress with a slit up the side, strappy sandals..." Meredith and Cristina just glance at each other while I stand there with my arms crossed.
"Great, now you guys think I'm gay," George mumbles.
"Nobody thinks you are gay George, that's your name right? We really just want you to shut up. And by the way," I say walking towards him, "I think I see some drool right there," I whisper in his ear and poke his chin. He wipes his chin with his arm. I giggle and start to walk away.
While I'm walking away he yells at me, "I'm not gay Rachel!"
As soon as I'm about to walk out the door, a short black lady stops me dead in my tracks. She pulls out a piece of paper and reads off names. "Grey, Lopez, O'Malley, Stevens, and Yang."
"That's the Nazi?" Cristina asks.
"No way," I whisper.
"I totally thought the Nazi would be a guy," George admits. Honestly, I can't tell if he's just sexist or stupid. Probably both.
"I thought the Nazi would be... Well, a Nazi" Meredith tells us.
We all follow Dr. Bailey out of the room and down the hallway.
"Hi, I'm Isobel Stevens, but everyone calls me Izzie," the blonde from before says while extending her hand out to Bailey. Cristina and I roll our eyes. I like Cristina so far, we have the same attitude.
"Let me guess, you're the model?" I ask. She just rolls her eyes at me and walks away. I take that as a yes.
Then Bailey goes on about five rules she has for us. Don't suck up to her, answer pagers, blah blah blah. Does she seriously think I care? "Also, you said five rules, that was only four," I inform her while crossing my arms.
"Rule number five. When I move, you move," she exclaims rushing down the hallway. While Bailey was assigning our duties for today, I got stuck on patient workups, so lame. Even lamer? I had to work with George O'Malley, the guy who was literally drooling over Meredith earlier.
We stand in the room while George just finishes checking a man's heartbeat. "Everything sounds good," he informs the family.
"He'll be fine? You'll be fine," A woman says while breathing a sigh of relief. I'm assuming she's the wife.
"You'll have surgery tomorrow with Dr. Burke, I hear he's good, and after that, you can have all of the bacon-flavored soy product you can eat," I say while chuckling a little bit.
"Mmm, kill me now", the patient says which makes George and I giggle a little bit.
"I wish I could but I'm a healer," George says while we leave the room.
"I hate to say this but your people skills are amazing. You're really good at cheering the patients up" I tell him.
"No, that was nothing, you're great too though," he says while blushing. We walk to the cafeteria together to find Izzie staring at her food with a look of disgust on her face. I can't even blame her, rectal exams all day would be a huge pain in the ass.
"You should eat something," George says, trying to help. I can already tell you everything about these interns. Meredith is fine, she's kind of selfish but doesn't even realize. Cristina is sarcastic and snarky, but I love it. Izzie is a nice person, only to people she likes. Her and George have a good bond already. Finally, George. There's just something about him, he genuinely is kind inside and out. He's someone I'm going to keep around, I just know he would make a good friend.
"You try eating after performing seventeen rectal exams," she scoffs, pushing her food towards the middle of the table, away from her.
"Then don't," I tell her, grabbing her salad and water. I glare at her "food". How is she going to fuel herself off of this? Leaves and water? There's not even sugar or carbohydrates on this plate. How does she expect to work a 48 hour shift with a tree as food? I shove the food back to her and pull out a protein bar I got from a vending machine earlier and start eating that.
Cristina sits down and tells us, "Did you know Meredith is inbred?" None of us look surprised, it's not uncommon to be related to a doctor in a hospital. "Like royally inbred, her mother is Ellis Grey." I almost spit out my water due to shock.
"There's no way, nuh uh, she hasn't shown off any skill. Ellis would have been tearing the hospital down by now," I tell Cristina.
"Who's Ellis Grey?" George asks. At first I thought he was kidding but after a moment of silence, he still looked super confused.
"She invented the Grey method, where did you go to school..."
"Mexico?"
"Mexico?" Cristina and I say at the same time. We both laugh for a while but she kicks me under the table lightly to stop when she sees that Meredith is walking over to us.
"Katie Bryce is a pain in the ass. If I hadn't taken the Hippocratic oath, I'd Kevorkian her with my bare hands," Meredith is fuming. After nobody says anything she asks us, "What?"
I smirk, "So, you're mot-" I try to say, but Dr. Burke comes over to our table before I could finish my sentence.
"Good afternoon interns. It's posted, but I thought I'd share the good news personally. As you know, the honor of performing the first surgery is reserved for the intern that shows the most promise. As I'm running the OR today, I get to make that choice. George O'Malley. You'll scrub in for an appendectomy this afternoon. Congratulations," and he walks away. I smile at George and silently clap for him. What did Burke see in him but not in me? We worked on the same case all day! Of course I'm happy for George, but this isn't fair to me.
I stand up and follow Burke into the empty hallway. "What did you see in him today that you didn't see in me? We worked on the same case together for god's sake, sure he might be a people person but I'm the better-" and he cut me off there.
"That's exactly what the problem is Rachel, you're extremely talented, but your attitude sets you back. O'Malley? He's a good doctor and has an amazing attitude. I'm sorry," Burke says while giving me a quick pat on the shoulder. I huff and walk back into the cafeteria. He wants less attitude? Not gonna happen. I bring the fire to everything I do, I don't keep it lukewarm.
It's time for George's surgery, an appendectomy. One of the easiest procedures in the book. An appendectomy is one of the first things you learn in medical school. He looks up at us and I wink at him. I can practically see him blushing under his mask while he gives us a small thumbs up.
"He's going to faint," a random intern declares.
"Twenty says he cries," Cristina offered.
"Fifty says he pulls the whole thing off," I declare. Meredith nods her head in agreement.
"I agree, that's one of us down there. The first one of us to be exact. Where's your loyalty?" she asks before moving to the back row. I glare at her and nod my head out of respect. She's right, if I was George I would want everyone to have some faith in me.
We're sitting there watching and he did it! He successfully removed the appendix. All that's left to do is to invert the stump into the cecum and simultaneously pull up on the purse-strings. I knew this procedure like the back of my hand. As long as he didn't rip the strings he would be okay. While I'm watching, I hear the monitor beeping like crazy. He ripped it, no way, that's such a stupid mistake. George froze in fear. After Burke had to step in, they still ended up losing the patient. I saw the defeat in George's eyes and it was terrible. I hated seeing him upset like that. I barely know George but my gut is telling me he's a really good person, so I can't help but feel bad for him. Especially knowing everyone doubted him in the first place.
"007,' another intern says. I recognize him from the night of the mixer. Alex Karev. He sleeps around this whole hospital, I was dumb enough to go to his hotel room after that night. He was good at what he was doing, really good even, but had a terrible, arrogant attitude "What does 007 mean?" Izzie asked while looking up from her book.
"License to kill," Meredith and I answered at the same time.
Cristina, Meredith, George, Izzie, and I sat on some extra hospital beds that weren't being used in the empty hallway. This was our little getaway here, unless we got paged of course.
"They're calling me 007 aren't they?" George asked, looking very disappointed in himself.
"No they aren't," Izzie lied. Honestly, everyone has been calling him 007 besides for me, Izzie, and Meredith.
"I was on the elevator and Murphy whispered 007," George whispered to us, embarrassed.
"Okay listen to me O'Malley, suck it up. Be lucky you even got the procedure in the first place. We all wanted it but we all know those patients die anyway, that's the point of the first operation. It's just a learning experience. 007 is just a state of mind. Get it through your head, you are no 007 you hear me?" I ask. He just nods, so I walk away.
While I'm walking away I hear him ask, "So nobody is calling me 007 right?" I almost turn around to yell at him again, but I stop myself. I walk to the lobby while I see a nurse and Alex Karev yelling at each other over a diagnosis..
"Well I don't know, I'm only an intern here. Here's an idea, why don't you go spend four years in med school and let me know if it's the right diagnosis lady. She's short of breath, she's got fever, she's post-op. Start the antibiotics," he tells her while walking over to me. He mumbles under his breath, "God, I hate nurses."
"It might not be pneumonia you know. She can be splinting or have a PE," I try to help him.
"Like I said, I hate nurses," Alex says while turning around. I stop him by grabbing the back of his jacket and make him turn around to face me.
"What did you just call me? I'm no nurse, I busted my ass to get here. Even if I was a nurse, you should still respect them since they do everything around here, you jerk. I don't know who you even think you are but you didn't seem to care if I was a nurse the night of the mixer right? That's right, call me a nurse again, I will go all Lima Heights Adjacent up in this hospital!" I yell walking away. I made a scene, not exactly what I wanted for my first day but it's okay. I let go of his jacket and storm out of the room. As soon as I'm leaving, George is entering.
"Are you okay Rachel?" He asks.
"Not now O'Malley," I storm off while shoving him out of my way lightly.
I sat on one of the empty beds in the empty hallway. Everyone who was here earlier is now gone. I wasn't really upset, Alex got what he deserved, but I made a scene on my first day. Second day would have even been fine, just not my first. There are barely any women in this program and I want that to change for the future. We aren't just emotional crybabies, even though I didn't help prove that point today.
"Can I sit there?" I hear someone ask me. It's George. I nod and he sits down next to me. "You know, I would've been a really good postal worker. I would say that I'm dependable and loyal. You know, my parents tell everyone they meet that their son's a surgeon. As if it's a big accomplishment. Like I'm a superhero or something. If only they could see the mess I made now. I promised a wife her husband would be okay today. I promised. That's rule number one, never make promises. He didn't even make it Rachel. I had to tell a wife she was a widow today. You think your ready for that conversation but you aren't, you never are truly ready," He says sadly.
"George honey don't be so hard on yourself. It's your first day, mistakes will happen. Even every day from here on out there will be mistakes. You can't run or hide from them, but rather embrace them. Learn from them," I advise him.
"Thanks Rachel," George thanks me.
"Anytime," I nod and we both walk outside. We meet Izzie, Meredith, and Cristina in the parking lot and walk to our cars. We head separate ways and I can't help but smile to myself. I turn around to look at the hospital and my smile gets bigger. For my first day, it really wasn't all that terrible. The game has officially begun.
A/N!! Welcome to my new story! I lost motivation for my Alex Karev story, I'm in the middle of writing the next chapter for that. This story will be George O'Malley based and it will also follow the Grey's Anatomy plot more. Rachel and George are going to build a friendship, but Rachel needs to let her walls down. On that note, who else would you like to see Rachel form friendships with? Let me know in the comments, comments are motivation!
Hi everyone! I'm back and it's now 2022, specifically March 2022. While I'm going back and editing these old chapters, I'm officially starting new ones! Please be patient as these are a work in progress. (2954)