𝐑𝐈𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐏𝐇𝐎𝐄𝐍𝐈𝐗 ━━ 𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐤 𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐝

thirteen | bomb

"This is what my life has become."

Meredith spills four tablets of diltiazem and two tablets of propranolol. She pours a cup of cold water after arranging three pieces of toast on a plate.

"You didn't have to come all the way here to force-feed me." I lean back against the chair. "I'm a big girl, Mer."

"Well, it's been giving me something to do."

"Unlike your job as a doctor?"

"You know what I mean." She sits down next to me. "Do you ever get the feeling that you're going to die?"

My eyes mockingly squint. "Look who you're talking to. I'm the queen of close to dying."

"Do you ever feel like you're going to die today?"

"No, that's different."

After watching me eat for the next thirty minutes — which includes dry heaving the pills  — we leave for work.

Without a long-standing resident to fill in for Bailey, we succumb to minding our business down in the pit.

But the pregnant woman herself returns to yell and boss us around, and the six of us can't be happier for her impromptu visit.

The ambulance arrives with an incoming case: a bleeding man with a wound to the chest and a screaming woman covered in blood.

Alex and Meredith take the woman away to question her, leaving me and Cristina to deal with the paramedic with her hand in his chest.

"How's his respiratory effort?"

Burke enters the trauma room with Cristina in tow.

"Absent breath sounds on the right side." Meredith presses the diaphragm of the stethoscope against his chest. "Air bubbling on the side of the wound. He's shocky and getting a little cyanotic."

"My wife is. . ." Mr. Carlson mumbles, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth.

The cardiothoracic surgeon slips off his stethoscope. "Let's get him intubated and place an occlusive dressing over the wound." He slips on a pair of gloves. "And who are you?"

"Hannah. Hannah Davies." The paramedic responds shakily.

"Hannah, why do you have your hand inside my patient?"

"I'd like to say, for the record, that I told her not to." The other paramedic is quick to defend himself.

"I tried to tamponade the wound with gauze and pressure but the only thing that would stop the bleeding was my hand." She glances down at her blood-stained hand. "Every time I try to move it, he starts bleeding out."

Dr. Burke begins to check the wound.

"Can I take my hand out now?"

"You don't stick your hand inside of a patient when you don't know how he was injured." The male pandemic reprimands continuously. "You don't stick your hand inside of a patient at all."

"Yeah, I know that now!" She yells out in defense.

"Out of my room."

"She gets to stay?"

"She has her hand stuck inside my patient."

As soon as the paramedic walks out of the room, Burke instructs me and Meredith to prepare her and the victim for the O.R.. And Cristina has to take care of the panicked wife.

The three of us scrub in with the rest of the surgical team while Hannah keeps her hand still inside the man's chest.

"Okay, everyone. I'm going to do a thoracotomy, and Hannah here is going to pull her hand out. Dr. Grey is going to clamp the bleeder, and Dr. Phoenix will be on standby, when we have more exposure."