If I Lay Here {Book 1} - Grey's Anatomy AU

The Name of the Game

Season 2, Episode 22: The Name of the Game
Overall Episode Number: 31
Created by: Shonda Rhimes

/ / /

A good basketball game can have us all on the edge of our seats. Games are all about the glory, the pain and the play-by-play. And then there are the more solitary games. The games we each play all by ourselves. The social games, the mind games, we use them to pass the time. To make life more interesting. To distract us from what's really going on. There are those of us who love to play games. Any game. And there are those of us who love to play... a little too much.

- Meredith Grey

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Bailey is standing in front of the O.R. board when Derek and Mackenzie walk up to her.

"Uh, Dr. Bailey! You have an extra intern?" Derek asked.

"I'm available," Bailey replied nonchalantly.

Mackenzie raised a questioning eyebrow. Why did Dr. Bailey tell Derek that she was available when Mackenzie's mother had explicitly asked for an intern?

Derek must've thought along the same lines as his daughter because he shook his head at the resident. "No, no, no, no. I said intern."

"Shepherd, look at the board," Bailey told him.

Derek looked at the O.R. board. "Okay. What am I looking at?"

Bailey gave the neurosurgeon 'the Bailey look.' "My name isn't up there. It wasn't up there yesterday and it won't be tomorrow."

"What'd you do – piss off the Chief?" Derek asked.

"Yeah. I pissed off the Chief. I went and had a baby. I gave birth. I created a human life. I'm a surgeon. We don't do that. He's mommy tracking me."

Derek had to bite back a smile, knowing that his former Chief of Surgery in New York had done the exact same thing to him after Mackenzie was born. "He's just going easy on you."

Bailey shook her head. "No, I change diapers, I clean spit up, I sing the ABC's. I'm covered in mommy. But that does not mean I will be mommy tracked."

The neurosurgeon knew that feeling all too well. For the first few weeks after returning from maternity leave, Derek had been taken off the O.R. board. While he had been initially upset about it, he understood why his Chief of Surgery had followed through this specific course of action. Derek just had a baby, and he needed to get back into the groove of things after not being able to operate for a few months. While Derek wholeheartedly understood where Bailey was coming from, he was more than certain that the resident was not as understanding because Richard had taken her off the O.R. board.

"Dr. Bailey, I think you're freaking out," Mackenzie said softly. She wasn't looking to upset the resident, but was trying to offer some form of assistance for the surgeon.

Derek was pulled out of his thoughts when his daughter began talking. "I agree with Mackenzie, Dr. Bailey. You're freaking out."

Bailey shook her head. "I just need a surgery. I need a surgery, now. So for today, I'm your intern. I have not begun to freak out."

Derek – knowing that he couldn't win in an argument against Bailey – caved in. "All right. Come on."

Mackenzie bid her mother and Bailey goodbye before walking down a different corridor of the hospital.

Where was she going? It's anybody's guess.

/ / /

"Let me tell you something. The minute I tell what I'm about to tell you, this officially becomes your problem. Not mine." George told Izzie.