"God, you look like someone ran over your dog."
I pluck the top half of the banana George holds in his right hand. A silent sigh slips from his lips, but he remains silent.
"How would you feel if strangers gawked at you like that lonely panda at the zoo?" With a scoff, Meredith rolls her eyes.
"Right, right, I heard." I gently nod my head. "Shepherd's back with his wife."
"And I don't care." She yells at a few onlookers.
Izzie flashes a discrete glance in my direction, and Cristina scratches the back of her neck. I lift up with a patient file hidden behind my back.
"Hopefully, this cheers you up."
After bombing our way through rounds with Bailey and the others, she lets us go without any assignments.
Just what we want.
"What is going on?" Meredith mutters as we stalk down the staircase.
"We found a case." Izzie gushes gleefully.
Cristina clarifies logically. "Well, borrowed from psych."
"So you stole it."
"Did you not hear what we said? We borrowed it."
"Okay, this thing is totally unprecedented."
"The prelims are insane."
"And we found it!"
"Stole it." She reemphasizes.
"Okay, fine. Found, stole, hijacked, whatever." Cristina brushes her off. "Meredith, behind this door is the coolest medical mystery I have ever seen."
The four of us stop in front of the patient's door, my back turned to it.
"Now, we're giving you a choice: you can walk away from this, guilt-free. . .or you can risk your entire medical career and go in." A sly grin crosses my features. "Which will it be?"
A moment of brief silence. . .
"Hell, yeah."
My knuckles knock against the door. "Morning, Mr. Herman."
"Oh, no. Please, call me Shane." The blond-haired man sits up on the edge of his hospital bed. "I gotta hit the can. . .again. Seems like I gotta go every thirty seconds these days." He throws the robe over his shoulders.
"Just a guy. What's so special?"
"Wait for it."
"I sure am glad to be off that psych floor." A hand pressed against his back, he pushes himself off the bed before hobbling over to the bathroom. "I'm not nuts. Just pregnant."
The other hand rests atop his round belly, and he steps into the bathroom.
"Oh my. . ."
"I know."
After gathering a few preliminary observations and thoughts, the four of us walk through the halls while looking through the chart.
"Hi. Hello. Hey. Hi, Meredith."
We look up abruptly, welcomed by the face of Dr. Shepherd. Izzie closes up the binder instantly before hiding it behind her back.
"Maybe we could, you know, talk."
"How about no?"
I smile sarcastically towards him and pull the others away from him. Frozen in his spot, the attending watches us leave.
"Hey, Izzie! Izzie!"
Alex's voice echoes from the other end of the hallway. In order to avoid him, we quicken our pace to turn the corner.
"Hey, dollface!"
She passes me the file, staying behind reluctantly. But the young intern manages to catch up with us inside Shane's room.
"That is my patient!" One of the doctors from psych barges in.
"Yeah, well, he's ours now." Cristina storms over to the door. "And if you wanna fight me for it, I guarantee you, I'll win."
Of course, she backs off at the sight of Bailey.
A stern look appears on her face. "What is going on here?"
"Dr. Bailey, just one moment." She lifts up Shane's shirt to reveal his abdomen. "Please look at his abdomen. It's a male hysterical pregnancy."
"It's a psych case." The psych doctor smacks Shane's belly. "And it's mine."
"It's not hysterical. I am pregnant." The pregnant male growls.
"See? Psych."
"I clearly feel a mass with deep palpation. Surgical."
While the two argue over the genre of the case, my gaze shifts to a pregnancy test sitting atop of Shane's cup of. . .bodily fluid.
"Positive pregnancy test." I lift up the device, halting any sort of conversation.
Bailey grabs the file once and for all. "Well, he's definitely a surgical patient now." She confirms.
A few C.T. scans and blood tests deduce the mass in his stomach is not a fetus but, in fact, a teratoma growing inside.
We gather in the gallery with some other doctors of different wards to watch Dr. Burke's surgery in progress. From the corner of my eye, I notice the all-too-familiar neurosurgeon standing at the doorway.
"God, why does he have to show up and gawk at Mer like a piece of meat?"
"Leven. . .I don't think he's staring at Meredith."
My eyes latch onto Dr. Shepherd's the second I turn my head. His expression is. . .somberful. Possibly a bit of longingness, too.
"Look at that." Cristina diverts our attention to the overhead television monitor. "A perfectly exposed, partially-numb beating heart. It's a beautiful thing."
"Code red!"
Right at the second, the patient's heart ignites into flames. An alarm blares through the OR as the surgeons proceed with fire protocol. We leave the room right after the incident, choosing to sit on the steps leading up to the gallery.
"Talk about heartburn."
"She was on fire."
"I have never seen anything like that." Izzie chews on the tip of her thumb. "What was that?"
Cristina downs the rest of her coffee. "It was a freak accident."
"The Bovie must have sparked from the increased oxygen." I shrug my shoulders.
"But she was on fire."
"Alright, you already said that."
"I know. But she was."
Meredith and I meet up afterwards, walking into Shane's room. But we're both shocked to see just how many of the hospital staff are crammed within the limited space.
"What is going on here?" Meredith questions loudly, clearly agitated by the lack of respect and privacy for the patient.
"Everybody who isn't part of this case needs to leave." I glare at every one of them. "Now."
The intern steps in front of Shane's bed. "Mr. Herman is a patient — a surgical patient who's sick and embarrassed and tired of being stared at."
"Out through the door, people." I yell over the crowd of whispers.
"Haven't you all had enough after pointing and staring at me?" She points towards herself. "And for your information, I am not sad or pathetic or heartbroken. And I haven't gone mental."
"Leave Mr. Herman alone until you can show some human decency towards him."
I close the door behind me. The two of us stand guard as the others disperse throughout the rest of the hospital.
"Is there a reason you keep stealing glances in my direction, Dr. Shepherd?" I shout towards him, mocking the same depressing facial expression gracing his features.
Shane's operation ends successfully with the removal of the teratoma. And thanks to Cristina and Izzie's ticket sales, the medical practitioners in the gallery take plenty of pictures.
"Huh. You know, this reminds me exactly of the end of your first shift."
Meredith steps through the sliding doors, where I stand with two piping hot cups of coffee in front of my vehicle.
"Yeah, well, we could make a routine out of this." I pass her one of the beverages. "Whenever one of us — or the both of us — have a shitty shift, we celebrate with coffee."
She lifts her cup in a drink. "I can drink to that." And she gulps half of it in one sip.
"How much money do you think they made?"
"I could care less. They exploited a patient for personal gain."
"You think they made over $500?"
"Easily."