On Call | Grey's Anatomy // Book 3 // COMPLETED

20 | Hands on Deck

They say life doesn't give you second chances. But we do. Surgeons do. You break a bone, we put it back together. You bleed, we make it stop. You flatline, we resuscitate you. But as much as we give people second chances, surgeons don't usually get them. Because the kind of mistakes we make are sometimes impossible to recover from.

"What's wrong with you?" Meredith looked to Callie as we stood outside waiting for the ambulance to arrive.

"Uh." Callie cleared her throat, "I was...I was up all night."

Meredith sighed, "Me too."

"Ah, Sofia's been acting out, asking questions about me and Arizona, and I don't know what to tell her or how to tell her, so I'm just not sleeping." Callie huffed, "I'm miserable. Why didn't you sleep?"

"Oh, you don't want to know." Meredith brushed some hair out of her face.

Callie turned to her, "What's going on?"

"Derek and I were up having sex all night," Meredith admitted.

Callie turned as the ambulance sirens blared. "Yeah, I kind of didn't want to hear that."

As the ambulance drove in and parked, Owen and I took lead, running over and opening the back doors. "Sixty-nine-year-old male, jumped two stories from a burning building." the paramedic told us, "Shocky, B.P.'s ninety-five over sixty with a rate in the one-twenties. G.C.S. fourteen in the field."

"Hattie..." the elder man cried as they removed the gurney from the vehicle, the man holding on to a woman that was on top of him.

"Why am I looking at two patients on one gurney?" Callie asked.

"She's dead." the female paramedic answered.

Owen turned to her, "What?"

"We couldn't find a pulse." she sighed, "And we tried to pull her off, but the husband just held on. He was agitated. He wouldn't let her go. So we had to stop 'cause we were afraid we were gonna hurt him."

Slowly and carefully, we moved the gurney into the E.R. "What've we got." Amelia walked in but stopped in her tracks, "Oh, wow."

"Witnesses said he carried his wife out the window and jumped to escape the fire." the paramedic continued, "We think he was trying to break her fall."

"Let's get them into trauma one," Owen ordered.

"His skin is mottled and cyanotic." Meredith said as we moved the couple to the trauma bed, "We have to get her off of him."

"Sir, you have to let her go." I told the man, "We have to move her to help you."

The man shook his head, "No. No."

"Sir, what is your name?" I asked.

"Norris." he replied, "I-is she-"

"You don't have to worry about that right now, sir," Owen told him.

Meredith looked to Owen, "No, he does, actually. Of course, he does. Norris, what is your wife's name?"

"Harriet." he answered, "Hattie."

"Norris, it's time to let Hattie go." Meredith spoke softly, "She's gone."

Norris started to cry as he held his wife's body close. "Gone? What do you mean gone?"

"Norris, she died." I informed him, "She's gone, I'm sorry."

"No." Norris refused to believe it.

"You did everything you could." Meredith explained, "You helped her through the hardest part. You held her, you protected her, and she died in your arms. I'm sure she couldn't think of a better way to go."

Maggie nodded, "She's no longer in any pain, Norris, but you are, and she wouldn't want you to be. You have to let her go now so we can help you, okay?"

"She's mine." Norris sobbed, "I can't."

"Norris, I'm so sorry," Meredith said. Finally, Norris released his grip on his wife. Moving quickly, we moved Hattie's body onto the stretcher and she was taken away.

"Airway's intact, but there's a little soot," Maggie said as we started working on Norris.

Owen felt around Norris's stomach, "Hypotensive and a rigid abdomen."

"Pupils are equal and reactive bilaterally." Amelia shone a light into the patient's eyes.

"Right lower leg is tense and swollen." Callie announced, "I'm gonna measure compartment pressures."

"Quiet." Meredith, who was over with Hattie's body, turned to us. "Quiet! I got a pulse. Barely palpable, but it's there."

Owen rushed over. "Trauma two! Pierce, Shepherd, you're with me."

"She's alive?" Norris asked as we started splitting up the team.

"She is," Amelia told him.

Norris smiled, "You'll take care of her?"

Amelia nodded. "I will. I'll take real good care of her, I promise."

Doing the best I could to at the moment, I helped Callie get ready for Norris's surgery when I heard shouting out in the E.R. Walking out, I saw a woman screaming at Amelia. "I want a different doctor!" she demanded.

"What's the problem here?" Owen asked as he walked over.

The woman looked to Amelia, "She cannot touch my mother. She's a drug addict. I can't have her operate on her parents."

Realizing that this was Norris and Hattie's daughter, I took a few steps closer. "Hold it." Owen said, "Dr. Shepherd is our-"

"Is a junkie!" the girl finished, "I met her in narcotics anonymous. She's hooked on Oxy. She overdosed with her boyfriend and woke up with him dead in bed with her. I want another doctor. Now!"

"Come with me." Owen tried to calm things down.

"No!" the girl refused as Owen lead her somewhere else, "Keep her away from them! Keep her away from them!"

Stepping up, Derek took over. "I've got this, Hunt." he walked off to Hattie's trauma room. All eyes in the E.R. were on Amelia now and I could only imagine how awful she must have felt. To be publicly humiliated like that was one of the worst things that could happen to someone.

And just like that, her career was on the line.

Later that day I was pulled into an emergency board meeting to discuss Amelia, which I didn't really want to do because even though I didn't know her, she seemed nice.

"So Robbins is tied up. Should we wait?" Owen asked as we sat around the large table.

"No, yeah, we should get started." Jackson nodded.

"No, no, no." Derek walked in.

Jackson looked to him, "Well, Derek, we just need to figure out-"

"I know you're trying to figure out what's going on." Derek sighed, "I know you've heard some stories about Amelia. I let you believe something. I let you believe that, uh-"

Owen cleared his throat, "Shepherd, you were pretty clear when we spoke, so-"

"She's in recovery." Derek informed us, "She works really hard at it. She's been successful in recovery, and...this hospital should have protected her. This woman should have protected her. And...more importantly, I should have protected her. I didn't. And I didn't because I wanted her job. I wanted my old job back. So now we're here. My fault."

"Derek, why did you even...?" Meredith looked to him.

Derek took a deep breath, "She should stay where she is, Owen. She can do the job. She is doing the job. I couldn't do it any better."

══════════════════

"This was Ellis's house," Maggie said as we sat in Alex's living room drinking with Meredith, Alex, and Callie. "This is where you grew up."

"It was nicer before Alex trashed it." Meredith dealt out some cards as she sat on the couch wrapped up in a blanket.

Alex scoffed, "Oh, shut up. It smelled like books."

"Well, it smelled a lot better when I lived here." Callie chuckled, "Now it just smells like Karev."

I nodded, "Yeah, what happened?"

"Wait, you guys lived here too?" Maggie asked as Alex laughed.

"Everybody lived here." Alex and Meredith said at the same time.

"I practically lived here with George, right?" Callie sighed, "George was my ex-husband. He was in their resident class."

Alex raised his beer in the air, "O'Mally."

"I'm sorry. Your husband?" Maggie questioned.

Alex nodded, "Yeah, she does dudes, too."

"True." Callie smirked and pointed to Alex, "I did him once."

"True," Alex admitted.

I took a sip of my beer, "I did him, too."

"Also true."

Meredith laughed, "I didn't do him. I did do George, though...once."

"Oh, God." Callie chuckled, "We're all related through sex. We all have sexual relations. That is horribly weird."

As the doorbell rang, everyone burst into laughter as Alex got up and answered the door. Walking in, Arizona noticed Callie. The two had decided to separate, which I had only found out a few minutes earlier, and that made this situation incredibly awkward.

"Hi." Arizona brought her bags in, "I probably should have called first, but...someone told me to go home, and I wasn't really sure where I should go."

Meredith looked at Maggie. "See? Everyone lives here."

"Beer's in the fridge. Hard stuff's on the counter." Alex told Arizona.

Just then, my pager went off. A 9-1-1 for trauma. I wasn't supposed to be on call, which was why I was drinking, so it must have been bad. Standing up, I was thankful that I had only had a few sips of my first beer. "I have to go." I grabbed my things without needing to explain anything else. In a room full of surgeons, my pager going off was all the information they needed.

Jumping into my car, I drove the short distance to the hospital before parking and running inside through the ambulance bay doors. That way I could just put on a disposable gown over my clothes and get to work.

Rushing to the front desk, I found April. "What's going on?" I asked.

April looked up at me, confusion on her face. "I didn't think you were on call."

"Yeah, me either." I huffed, "So this better be an emergency."

"It is." I heard Owen's voice from behind me, "We've got one of the biggest crashes I've ever seen coming in. At least ten vehicles involved and a lot of injured people. I'm sorry to call you in, but we're gonna need all hands on deck."

"No problem, hands on deck is what I do for a living." I sighed, feeling less angry now that I knew it was actually an emergency.

It's hard to give second chances. It's even harder to ask for them. A chance to do it again, knowing what you know now...what you've learned. A chance to do it completely differently...a chance to right our wrongs, to try and correct our mistakes...a chance to try and start over from scratch.