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

55 | Burned

Walking through the door of my house that night, after just leaving Meredith's place, I heard the tapping of Bear's nails on the hardwood floor as he ran to greet me.

"Hey, buddy." I smiled, just as happy to see him as he was happy to see me.

Letting Bear into the backyard to run around for a little while, I searched for Owen, but I couldn't find him anywhere. "Owen!" I called, "Are you here?!"

When no answer came, I pretty much assumed that he was stuck at the hospital for the night. Making myself a cup of tea and changing into my pajamas, I crawled into bed with Bear and turned on the t.v.

I had hoped that Owen would be home because I felt bad for sort of ignoring him these past few weeks. I had been so worried about Meredith that nothing else mattered.

Plus, what Meredith had said was true. You could have more than one person, and I wanted to make sure that Owen knew I would always be there for him.

But he was working... as usual. It was no big deal, though. It wasn't like I couldn't tell him the next day.

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Rushing out to the ambulance bay where we had an incoming trauma, I smiled when I saw Owen standing there along with April and...Riggs. I had been calling him Nathan for the first little bit, but eventually, everyone was calling him Riggs and the name just stuck.

"Owen." I tried to get his attention as the ambulance pulled up, but he was too busy fighting with Riggs.

Looking to the ambulance, April smiled. "Oh, yay. Someone's hurt." I could tell that she was just as annoyed by the constant fighting as I was.

"Male, fifty-five, complaining of tightness in the chest." the paramedic told us.

Walking over, April and I got to the patient first. "Sir, do you have any pain in your left arm?" April asked.

"No, my chest hurts like hell though." the patient answered.

"Riggs, you can go." Owen sighed, "I got this."

Riggs, who was a cardio surgeon, shook his head. "Chest pain. I'll take it."

"Sir, what did you eat this morning?" I questioned.

"I had a burrito, uh...two burritos."

Owen grabbed onto the gurney. "It's probably not surgical. I'll page someone if it is. Let's go."

As the three of them headed back into the hospital, Owen and Riggs arguing the whole way, I stayed behind a bit to just clear my head. The constant fighting was a lot sometimes, so I just hung back a little. If only I had known how bad of a choice that was.

I heard it before anything else. A loud explosion from behind, although I barely had enough time to process what was happening before I was thrown into the air and smacked hard onto the concrete a few meters away. I was on my back and I could see the ambulance in flames in front of me, and that's when I kind of came back into reality.

My body felt like it was on fire, and it was. I could see that the right pant leg of my dark blue scrubs had caught on fire, but that was nothing compared to how the side of my face and entire back felt. It felt like my skin was, well...burning.

So, I screamed.

I'd been in a shooting, a plane crash, and a car accident, but I don't think that I had ever screamed that loud. Probably because in all of the other situations I had gone into shock, but right now I was in so much pain that I was past the point of shock.

Owen's face was the first that I saw, and although I knew he was there to help, it didn't bring much comfort. It hurt like hell when they grabbed onto my body and lifted me onto that gurney. Every second that my back touched that gurney was pure agony.

I could hear Owen yelling for a trauma panel as I was rolled into the E.R. Reaching out, I grabbed onto something. It could have been someone's clothing or even just my own clothing. At this point, I just needed something to squeeze.

As soon as we got into the trauma room, people started rushing in and out. It was kind of crazy how much attention a doctor got when they became a patient, but I should have seen it coming. With what happened to Meredith just weeks before, it seemed like Grey-Sloan doctors never caught a break.

Luckily, the overall burning sensation slowly died down and I was finally able to catch my breath. By now Jackson, April, Owen, Bailey, and Amelia were all in the room.

Looking up at everyone, I swallowed hard. "It feels like I am actually in hell right now. Like, the burning pits of hell."

"Shh." Amelia cracked a small smile as she placed the oxygen mask over my mouth and nose, "Try not to speak."

"Call up for an O.R." Owen turned to a nurse.

I cocked a brow...or at least I think I did. "O.R.? There must be others who need to get in there more than I do."

Callie, who had sort of appeared out of nowhere, glanced down at me. "Not with that leg injury."

"Leg injury?" I looked down to see that my left leg was in fact twisted in a very non-normal way. Most likely from the harsh landing on the cement. "Fuck!" I groaned, "How do I not feel that right now?"

"Because the burns are messing with your nerves." Jackson told me, "Okay, we need to get up to an O.R."

As the team rolled me out of the E.R. and up to the O.R., I tried to stay as calm as possible. I had never actually been fully awake or really alert when going into an O.R. before when I was the patient. It was really scary, actually. In this moment, I had a lot of respect for pretty much every patient I had ever had.

Once on the O.R. table, Owen stood beside me and held my hand before I went under. He wasn't allowed to do the surgery since he was the closest thing to family I had, but he could be there for me.

"Owen-" I wanted to tell him how much I appreciated him just in case I never got the chance. Being on an O.R. table really made you think of all the things you didn't do.

"Don't talk," he told me.

I smiled. "Have you ever been on an O.R. table?"

"No."

I looked up at him and we made eye contact. "It's scary," I confessed.

"I'll be right here when you wake up," he assured me.

"If I wake up."

Owen shook his head. "Don't talk like that."

Just then, the nurse placed the mask over my face and told me to start counting down from ten in my head. I just wanted to tell him that I loved him, but instead, I had reminded him of the possibility that I might not wake up.

Sometimes I was so stupid that it was unbelievable. But I had always been that way. I cracked jokes when I was scared because I didn't want other people to feel the same way I felt or know just how scared I really was. So I tried to make people laugh.

They say laughter is the best medicine, but when it really comes down to it...it doesn't actually do anything.