Chapter Thirty-Nine: Let the Truth Sting
"Hey." Meredith smiled at Cristina as she and I joined her at the nurse's station.
"Hey." Cristina replied. I frowned at I looked over at her, finding her looking at the flowers on the counter, playing with the petals.
"Are you okay?" I asked her.
"I don't know." Cristina sighed. "I think it's all just hitting me, you know, stupid Burke dumping me and then stupid mama coming to reclaim her... magic necklace."
"Do you want to talk about it?" Meredith offered.
"No, not really, not.... yet." Cristina shook her head.
"Okay. Well, if there's anything I can do-" Meredith began to tell her.
"You know, I just wish I had a good, bloody surgery." Cristina cut her off. "You know, bloody surgeries make me feel better. One, Two, Three, Four... follow me."
"What was that about?" I raised a brow at Meredith as Cristina hurried off with her interns.
"I don't know." She shook her head. "But I needed to ask you, will you switch services with me today? I saw that you're in the ER."
"Who are you with?" I asked.
"Sloan." She informed me, causing to frown instantly. "I know that you're not his biggest fan, but he has a surgery today. I figured that would make you consider."
"I can't work with him." I shook my head.
"I thought you two were getting along better now?" She frowned at me. "I thought you were on your way to becoming friends?"
"We were, until Sloan started being Sloan." I told her.
"Something happened." She narrowed her eyes at me. "What was it? What did he do?"
"And there is the subject that I will not broach. I'll take Sloan." I told her before I began to walk away.
"I'm gonna figure it out!" She called after me.
"Yeah, sure." I rolled my eyes, silently hoping that she wouldn't.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Oh, Joanne, this is why you and I need to get sick, the doctors. One's more handsome than the next." A red haired older woman said as I followed Mark into his patient's room, finding two woman standing next to their friends hospital bed. I had to suppress an eye roll as I glanced behind me, making sure my interns were all following me in, Webber coming in behind them.
"Oh, and here comes the handsomest one of them all." The woman in the bed grinned at Webber. "Hi, Dr. Webber."
"Connie." Webber nodded to the blonde haired patient.
"He took my appendix out three years ago. Barely left a scar." Connie informed her friends. "How's Adele?"
"Um, oh, she's good, good." Weber nodded. "Uh, marriage is hard. Uh, but we're dating again. Uh, and she agreed to date me tonight. But, um, more-more importantly, how-how are you doing?"
"Oh, I just had a little bump on my tongue removed is all." Connie waved it off. "Couple of taste buds. Turns out it was a little touch of cancer. So I'm here to have the rest out. I mean, you know, the cancer, not the taste buds. I don't know exactly how bad it is because Dr. Sloan over there has been awfully quiet."
"'Cause you don't let him get a word in edgewise is why." The brunette woman, Joanne, told her friend.
"Uh, how is she, Dr. Sloan?" Webber asked.
"Well, we just got back the pathology report." Mark told him. "Connie, unfortunately, the cancer is a bit more widespread than we'd hoped. It's over sixty percent of your tongue."
"Well, what-what does she do, chemo?" Joanna asked.
"I think the, uh, best bet is a microvascular free flap." Mark suggested before he looked at me. "Dr. Watley?"
"He'll remove the cancerous part of the tongue, and then reconstruct it with a strip of flesh from your legs." I explained. "Bumpus?"
"Uh, the extra flesh will provide the bulk your tongue needs to breathe properly, chew, swallow." Bumpus added on, seeming nervous under my watchful eye.
"And talk?" Connie looked around at all of us, noticing that Bumpus hadn't said that. "Dr. Sloan... I'll be able to talk, won't I?"
"You will be able to talk, Connie." Mark assured her. "I just don't know how well you'll be understood."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Hey, we just heard." Meredith and I stopped in the doorway of really old guy's room to find Izzie and her interns looking him over, seeing as how he'd woken up.
"Welcome back." I smiled at the old man.
"Is it true?" Alex asked as he came up behind us. "Really old guy woke up?"
"He has a name." Izzie reminded him.
"This time tomorrow, you can call me really dead guy." The old man told us.
"Guys, I don't think Mr. Yost knows who you are." Izzie shook her head as she began to look at his ears.
"Sure I do. That's Meredith. She and the brain doctor are always running hot and cold." Mr. Yost nodded at Meredith before he looked at Alex. "And you're, uh, Alex. You still got a thing for that old patient of yours?"
"Wow," I whispered under my breath before his gave shifted onto me.
"And you're Bethany. You're the one that flipped out about getting kissed by that other doctor." My eyes widened at his words and I could see the others looking at me with looks of surprise, not knowing who he was talking about. "I was semi comatose, blondie. I could still hear you guys."
"Get a CY, a CBC, and chemistries." Izzie instructed her interns. "Your kidneys may be working again, which may be why you woke up. That's good news."
"Oh, it just means now I got two things to do today, take a pee and die." Mr. Yost rolled his eyes.
"Nobody's dying." Izzie shook her head.
"Goodbye." I excused myself before I slipped out of the room, heading down the hall.
"Hey, Beth!" I couldn't help but groan as Alex followed after me.
"I'm not going to talk to you, Alex." I shook my head.
"So, you're messing around on Lucas, didn't know you had it in you." He smirked at me. At his words I stopped walking, turning to glare at him, my eyes narrowed into slits.
"I am not cheating on Lucas. I don't cheat. Not on people that I love." I told him.
"Really? Then what did really old guy hear?" He raised a brow at me.
"I don't know." I shook my head, thinking back to my argument with Mark on my first day back from break, how he had dragged me into really old guy's room to talk about what had happened, how we had kissed. "Maybe he heard someone else talk about it and thought it was me? I just- I don't know."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"The graft's a perfect fit." Mark said during Connie's surgery as I stood beside him and Webber, watching closely as they operated on Connie's tongue.
"Yeah. It's got good vascularization." Webber pointed out.
"And at this rate, you may actually get to go on that date with Adele." Mark glanced up at Webber.
"Yeah, I better." Webber nodded. "Can't very well have her take me back if I cancel our first date."
"Where you taking her?" I asked.
"Oh, there's a nice little Chinese restaurant we like to go to." Webber said. I glanced up to see that Webber and Mark had both paused, glancing up at one another.
"What happens next?" I asked, not familiar with the procedure they were doing on the tongue, having decided to go with a muscular nerve transplant instead of the flap.
"Um..." Webber trailed off. "Dr. Sloan, I don't-"
"I know." Mark cut him off.
"Is everything okay?" I glanced between the two surgeons.
"Um... we're not sure." Mark admitted as they moved the microscope over Connie's face to get a better look at her tongue.
"What does that mean?" Maituz asked from where he was standing by the wall with the rest of my interns.
"It means we've never done this before." Mark told them.
"What about if we coapt the lingual nerve underneath here?" Webber suggested as he and Mark continued to look over what they were doing.
"No, we'd end up losing the vascular supply." Mark shook his head. "The graft might not work at all."
"She like to talk, Sloan." Webber reminded him. "She likes to talk a lot."
"We need an extra set of hands." Mark said. "Someone who knows nerves."
"Harper, get Dr. Shepherd." I ordered my intern, sending her hurrying out of the OR.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Harper, you're on post op." I told my intern as Alex made his way over to me, an annoyed look on his face. "Well, don't you look chipper."
"Are you coming or not?" He rolled his eyes as he led the way down the hall. I only rolled my eyes as I followed behind him, turning the corner to find Meredith and Cristina both heading down the hall together.
"Yeah, well, you owe me sex details." Cristina told Meredith.
"Are we doing this or not?" Alex asked the two as he led the way into really old guy's room, finding Izzie inside, sitting at the end of the bed with a troubled expression. None of us said a word as we all circled around the end of the bed, George coming in behind us.
"What are we supposed to say? We didn't even know the guy." Cristina pointed out as we all stood together in front of the empty bed, really old guy having passed away earlier this evening, right after discharging himself.
"We ate lunch in here for a year." Izzie reminded all of us. "The least we can do is say a few kind words about him."
"He..." George began when no one else did, seeming to struggle to find words that would satisfy Izzie. "He didn't snore too loud...ly."
"He, um..." Meredith went next. "Never complained. And he always took his meds."
"He always... remembered our names." I thought on my feet as my turn came around. "Even when we really didn't want him to."
"Hardly ever farted." Alex added.
"Alex." I shot him a hard look.
"Fine. Uh, he had twelve surgeries this year, and he-he lived through them." Alex shook his head. "That's- That's impressive."
"Thank you, Alex." Izzie nodded to him before we all looked to Cristina, waiting for her to say something. "Cristina?"
"Uh, I got to practice stuff on him- central lines and IVs- it was good practice." Cristina said before she glanced at me. "And he gave us our first bit of interesting gossip on Watley."
"Hey!" I sent her a sharp look.
"Couldn't agree more." Alex grinned.
"Um... Charlie, the truth is... you were a bastard." Izzie took her turn, ignoring the rest of us as she spoke to the bed. "You were. You were mean and stubborn and just... a bastard. But you were a bastard who knew what you wanted. And you stuck to your guns and proved that if you want something badly enough, if you're... determined enough and patient enough, eventually it will happen. It will. And that gives me hope, so... thanks for that. Bye-bye, Charlie."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Lucas?" I called though the apartment when I got home that night, tossing my bag onto the table by the door. I glanced at the clock on the stove, seeing that it was a little after eleven, meaning that Joel was asleep for the night.
"Yeah?" I glanced towards our bedroom door to see Lucas coming out of the room, dressed in a pair of sweatpants and a tee shirt, his hair messed up. I didn't say anything for a minute, I just looked at him, as though I were trying memorize the sight of him in front of me. And, in a way, I felt like that was exactly what I was doing as my stomach seemed to be twisted in knots, dreading what I knew that I needed to do. "Beth, are you okay? Did something happen at work?"
"Uh, yeah." I gave a small nod, finding myself struggling to form the right words, to tell him what I wanted- no, what I needed to tell him.
"What is it?" He asked, his brows furrowing together, confusion clouding his dark eyes.
"I kissed someone."