For the First Time

Six Weeks

"Dr. Grey, do you feel okay?" a resident in the O.R. had asked me. 

"Never better," I said as I lied through my teeth. I knew I was as pale as a ghost. I felt weak, dizzy, nauseous, and beyond everything else, I was exhausted. I couldn't remember the last time I had pulled a 36 hour shift except in my intern year. 

"Dr. Grey would you life a glass of water?" the resident asked me again. This time I sighed knowing that I needed to stay hydrated and that I shouldn't even be preforming this surgery right now. Something felt off with my body today.

"No, I'll go get it," I told him. "Page Dr. Bailey stat, I need her to finish this for me." The circulating nurse nodded her head and immediately paged Bailey as I stood there over the body cavity trying my best to not vomit my entire breakfast into the abdomen. I continued doing small things in the surgery, throwing a few stitches here and there afraid that if I did anything more I would end up injuring the patient. It seemed like it took Bailey hours to get to the O.R. as I continued to stand there and eventually had to close my eyes to prevent myself from passing out.

"Grey, what do you have?" the familiar voice rang throughout the room. I immediately took a sigh of relief and stepped back from the table already beginning to take off my gloves and gown.

"Thirty four year old male, fell off of a ladder while trying to clean out his gutter this morning," I said shakily. "He has a splenic laceration and that's as far as I got."

"Grey, you look awful. Do you feel okay?" she asked as she stuck her stand inside the patient's abdomen. I felt a burning sensation coming up my esophagus and ran over to my the trash can with my already unstable legs and vomited my insides up. Nurses from all over the room came over to my side offering me wash cloths to wipe down my mouth and forehead with. I stood up slowly and soon enough the room began to spin rapidly. 

"Dr. Grey look at me!" one of the nurses yelled as I looked around the room in a daze. Before I knew it the ground hit my body sooner than what I had anticipated and the room continued to spin. 

"Someone get her hooked up to a monitor!" I heard Bailey yell. "And someone figure out what is going on with my intern!" And those were the last words I heard until the entire room faded to black.

Derek's POV

"Two weeks. It's been two weeks since I've stood before a patient's brain," I told the intern standing next to me. "I like being Chief, but damn do I miss getting to cut people open whenever I want."

"Oh shut up, Derek," Mark said as he continued to work on the patients hand. "You get the best of both worlds as being Chief."

"Mark, I would gladly give you the job as Chief, no doubt about it," I said with a chuckle knowing that what I just said was undeniably true.

"You just said you love being Chief!" he bickered back at me.

"Ah, I said I like being Chief, no way in heck I would ever love this job. It's way more work than I ever envisioned it would be. I never get to do surgeries anymore, and sometimes I don't even see Meredith in a days time," I said with a sigh, realizing that I hadn't seen her for two days. 

"Oh tell someone that cares about how you never get to see your precious wife," Mark snickered as he continued to work. We worked in silence for about twenty minutes until we were interrupted by the opening of the O.R. door.

"Derek, can I speak with you? It's an emergency," Cristina said coming into the room with a mask covering her nose.

"Can't you see I'm a little busy here, Dr. Yang? I'm inside a man's brain, can't this wait?" I asked as I glared over at her. She then walked over to me making me look up and meet her eyes and I could immediately tell something wasn't right. "Cristina what is it? Spit it out.