You Promised | Mark Sloan ✓

37┃true and real

S5 EP16

[CW: slight panic attack, violence]

A MISTAKE.

A mistake during the first surgery caused complications to a patient. The second surgery that had been a success-yet it, too, soon led to a third one.

Everyone in the OR could tell that Derek was extra stressed out than usual. Addison and Alex monitored the fetal monitor carefully as Derek carried on with the surgery. Norah got a slightly bad feeling which she pushed down to her stomach.

"The swelling's not going down," Derek informed.

"Could the ventriculostomy be plugged?" Norah asked.

"No," he stated before cursing aloud, "Damn it!"

All heads in the room turned to the neurosurgeon; furrowed brows raised on Norah's face as he sighed heavily. She shared a look with Addison and Alex, who both were in the lost, too.

"Dr Shepherd?"

There was a long pause in the OR, where only the foetal monitor could be heard. The beeping sounded in the room, raising unsettlement among the people inside.

"I have to take out the temporal lobe," he declared.

Alex furrowed his brows, glancing at the woman on the table before staring back at the neurosurgeon. "Won't that kill her?"

"Jen could um... lose some of her speech, memory, and vocal pattern," Norah stated with a frown on her face.

"The brain can rewire," Derek claimed, "I've done it before to stop seizures."

"Have you done it before for this?"

The fetal monitor was beeping quicker by the second, making everyone nervous. "I'm doing it now," Derek announced.

"Baby's got decels," Alex informed.

"What are we doing here, Derek?" Addison questioned, but Derek did not reply to her immediately.

"Bayonet forceps."

Norah shifted from one leg to another as she racked her brain, trying to trust that Derek was doing the best thing at the moment-he was the Head of Neurosurgery, after all.

But no matter how much she tried to convince herself, the pit of uncertainty and anxiety kept building up inside of her.

"She's bleeding into the frontal lobe," Derek whispered to himself, "If I can stop the bleed, save the rest of the brain, she'll have a chance."

"Decels are getting longer," Alex informed as the monitor started beeping erratically.

Addison stood up from her spot. "Derek, I have to deliver the baby," she stated.

"No. Just..." Derek panted in disagreement, "She's lost too much blood. If you cut her now, she'll bleed out. I can save her."

"How?" Addison demanded.

"I have to cut out the frontal lobe."

"What?" Norah's blurted out next to him; Addison and Alex, too, had snapped their heads towards the lead surgeon, not quite believing what they had just heard. "She can't live without her frontal and temporal lobe, can she?"

"She can."

"No, Derek, she can't," Addison opposed, and Derek sent her a brief glare. "Listen to me-this baby isn't getting any oxygen," she voiced out, "Now, I know you want to save Jen. You feel like you have to, but not this way."