Code Blue | Grey's Anatomy // Book 2 // COMPLETED

56 | Infection

"Okay, so they can debride the wounds with a basic instrument set, but now they're faced with a huge risk of infection." Callie stared up at the board and sighed as we tried to figure out ways to help the Syrians.

"Well, I guess wound vacs are out of the question then." Jackson huffed.

April looked up at us, "Simple wet to dry dressings might work?"

"Mm. No." I dismissed the idea, "They'd have to change those out three times a day. They would use their entire gauze supply with one patient."

"Sugar." Webber turned to us.

Callie raised an eyebrow at him, "Excuse me?"

"It's not in the box, but they may have it around." Webber said, "It's an osmotic dressing that allows you to avoid multiple dressing changes."

Callie nodded, "Okay. Well, somebody go find out if they still have sugar."

"Okay." Webber sighed as April took off to find out what the current sugar status was in Syria.

"Anything?" Cristina asked from the other side of the room as she tried to hand drill into a bone.

Derek shook his head, "You've barely made a dent. It's gonna take forever."

Cristina puffed out some air, "Oh! Well, you try using this hand drill, Mr. Backseat driver."

"Let me try." Meredith offered.

"If they had an infrascanner, It would be a lot easier." Derek tried to come up with another solution to just one of the many problems we had.

"Well, they don't." Meredith said as she took over for Cristina, "I think whoever it is, you just killed him."

"You know, start with a fresh one." Derek slid another bone with a slab of flesh attached to it.

Cristina looked over to the rest of us, "Oh, does anybody have betadine?"

"I just have bleach," Jackson responded.

"Yeah, that'll work." Derek nodded.

Jackson picked up the bottle and tossed it to him, "Sure."

"So anybody ready to start teaching?" Owen entered the room.

Callie looked to him, "Uh, me. I can do fracture repairs."

"Yeah, you can put me down." Jackson added himself to the list, "I got a blade I can use for skin grafting."

Owen smiled in relief, "Great. Get to the lab."

I looked down at the supplies we had, "Uh, give me a little bit more time and I might be able to figure out how to do some deep wound stitches."

Owen nodded and looked to Derek, "Uh, Shepherd, how long until Rachel Dawson's out of the I.C.U?"

"Oh, check with Ross." Derek told him, "He's tracking her through post-op."

"Wait. I thought Brooks was on your service today." Owen said.

Derek exhaled loudly, "Ross gets connected to the patients. He likes to follow through."

"Owen, Peds just called." Arizona walked in and I was having trouble keeping up with the conversations, "Ethan Dawson's grandmother got stuck back East. Her flight got canceled, and she's not gonna make it here until tomorrow. So I think you should call social services and see if they can take him for the night."

Arizona walked out of the room and Owen followed closely behind after he let out a frustrated sigh. Just as this day got better, it got worse. Turning back to the board, I helped come up with a few more solutions before I entered the lab with Meredith and Cristina.

"So you want to stop the bleeding but you don't want to do a blind clamp in a bloody field." Meredith looked to the Syrian doctor.

Cristina nodded and started to demonstrate on the lung we had, "Uh, your goal is to get control of the hilum. Since you won't have a stapler, you can get control by using finger pressure, like that."

The Syrian looked to the dummy he had in front of him, "So...just reach in here?"

"Yeah, you want to feel for the bronchus and then you'll know you're near the hilum," Cristina said.

"Matthew's mother is coming here." April whispered as she entered the room, "I can't meet her. I can't lie to a mother."

"Don't sell yourself short." Meredith said, "You thought you couldn't lie to Matthew either, but somehow you had it in you."

Cristina made a face, "What kind of grown man gets his mommy to pick him up?"

"They have a good relationship." April defended her boyfriend, "He respects women. He has good values."

"I think I'm there." the Syrian spoke up.

Cristina turned to him, "Okay, so if you don't have a clamp, you can just use your hand and twist the lungs on the hilar axis."

The doctor quickly attempted the move. "That's it." Cristina smiled.

"I see it." the Syrian nodded, "Thank you."

"You know what?" April continued the conversation, "He doesn't make fun of me. He thinks I'm brave. He likes it when I babble."

"He's a unicorn." Cristina joked.

I chuckled a little, "A soft teddy bear."

"He's an amazing guy." April exhaled.

I looked to her, "Well, then you should tell him the truth."

April looked away from me and to the foreign man, "I have this really cool technique for autotransfusion that I would love to show you when you're done here."

The Syrian nodded as April left the room. Since I was finished there as well, I took off to do some follow-ups on a few of my post-op patients. That night, a board meeting was called to talk about a bunch of Bailey's patients that were coming back in with infections.

"Bailey said the second patient isn't responding to antibiotics." Owen told us as we sat around the large table in the conference room, "So she's going to need surgery."

"I just operated on the third." Webber sighed, "He's hypotensive and still pretty unstable."

Owen nodded, "Once Murphy's identified all her patients for the day, then we'll get them in here, make sure no one else is infected."

"We're gonna need to make some kind of statement," Jackson added.

"Before this gets out there on its own." Derek agreed.

"Hey, uh, the first patient, Joyce Basche, she didn't make it." Bailey entered the room and broke the news to us, "I thought that the surgery would get rid of the infection, but..."

"You need to get cultures on the other two right away." Arizona told her, "And we need to make sure that we're using the right antibiotics so that this doesn't get out of control."

"Okay." Bailey turned to leave but was stopped by Leah and Meredith arriving at the doorway. "We just lost Joyce Basche." Miranda rose her voice at Leah.

"Dr. Bailey-" Meredith tried to stop her.

"No, she's her patient. She should know." Bailey continued.

"Lead checked all the charts." Meredith said, "She was only on two of the patients that got the infection. She never touched the third one."

Bailey looked to her, "What, is that supposed to reassure me? A woman just died."

"It couldn't have been Leah." Meredith rephrased her sentence, "The only doctor who touched all three patients was you."

Bailey was silent. "We're gonna need to get legal down here," Jackson said as he stood up.

"Wait." Bailey turned around, "Any-anything could've caused this kind of infection."

"Yeah, no." Arizona sighed, "Well, we know that but until there's an investigation-"

Bailey put her fingers to her temples, "No, um, I gotta go, 'cause I have two more people-"

"Owen." Webber looked to him.

"Dr. Webber will deal with them," Owen told Bailey.

"Yeah, this is Dr. Avery." Jackson said into the phone as he called down to legal, "Get me Joelle Geller from legal down here, conference room two."

I just stared around the room. Like I had said before, this day just kept getting worse. "I will...go over my notes," Bailey spoke again.

"Sit down, Dr. Bailey," Owen ordered.

Bailey looked to him, "No. M-my patients are in danger."

"Dr. Webber will take care of them." I reminded her.

"I haven't even told Joyce's husband that she didn't make it." Bailey's voice began to break.

Owen motioned to Meredith and Leah and the two of them took off to inform the husband. "I know the man!" Bailey yelled after them, "I don't need Grey to tell him that I killed his wife!"

"Dr. Bailey, please sit down," Owen repeated.

Bailey glared at Owen, "What are you saying?"

Owen sighed, "I'm asking you to sit down."

Jackson closed the conference room door as we all stared at Bailey. This could be very bad for this hospital.