lxxii. tumour on the wall
6.07

Atlas was a heart surgeon, but that didn't mean he wasn't fascinated by other specialties.

Like neurosurgery for one — it was medicine dealing with disorders of the nervous system and the brain. It is the medical specialty surrounding the diagnosis and treatment of patients with injuries (and or diseases/disorders) involving the brain, spinal cord, spinal column, and nerves.

One of Atlas's daily highlight would be when Derek and his siblings told him all about the things they got to do at work. With the twins it ranged from different specialty's and who got to do the most when assisting in a surgery. But with Derek, he got to hear a lot about the brain and nerves, all those fun things. ( Now he also loved it when his mom called him up to come over for tea so they could talk about their days. )

But no matter what, he wouldn't change his specialty because he loved the work surrounding hearts just a tad bit more then he loved any other specialty.

In so many people eyes, Derek Shepherd was a neuro god. People from all over come to see the man in action. To have him save their loved ones. The guy has steady hands and does well under pressure. Does fancy surgery's that cost hundreds of thousands dollars. Starts breaking news clinical trials.

Atlas Lee-Sunny was a cardio god. Simply, he was who people wanted. Not Burke when he was the chief, but Atlas. He had steady hands that didn't shake when under pressure, and he always tried.

What a perfect match, the neuro god and the cardio god.

"I'm here! I'm here!" Atlas panted as he stepped into the scan tech rooms. Derek had paged him and since Atlas was in between patient, he wasted no time in going to where Derek had paged him too.

"Derek's no longer daddy's favourite." Was all Mark said, a grin on his lips.

Atlas blushed, "Derek's still my favourite... oh."

Christina laughed into the palm of her hand, when she composed herself she handed Atlas a scan. "Isaac has a cord tumour." She beamed, the situation was sad but since she had been kicked of Atlas's service, she was more than excited for a surgery. "It's awesome. Look."

Callie stepped up beside Atlas, the orthopaedic surgeon having just show up. "Awesome in a bad way. It's eaten five levels of his spine." She stared at the film in Atlas hand in wonder, "Wait. You're not seriously considering trying to take it out?"

"Of course he is." Christina walked past Derek and patted him on the shoulder, "He's Shepherd."

"It's a bad case of telephone, right?" Arizona asked hurriedly as she walked into the room with Oliver walking behind her. "Isaac's got a bone spur, or a herniated disk, not a — he diagnosed an osteosarcoma case for me a month ago. I thought it was a shadow, but it turned out to be the tiniest little lesion on an x-ray."

"Hi Atly." Oliver waved and Atlas happily waved back. 

"That says more about you than it does him." Mark tilted his head as he talked.

Arizona giggled, "I'm sorry. Do you even know who Isaac is?"

Mark shrugged, "No idea."

"Hey, what's everyone... oh, a spinal tumour. I read about a case at mayo where the surgery took 17 hours. The head surgeon had four rotating assistants, one of whom just administered fluids." Lexie rambled on, her photo graphic memory being very useful in this situation.

Christina wasn't very happy now, "Okay, you know what? Don't try and lexopedia your way on this. This is my tumor." Christina gestured to the film then to herself.

"What happened to the patient at mayo?" Atlas asked, his attention now on Lexie and not the film he had been staring at.

"He died. That's why it only took 17 hours."

"Hey, I just heard. Isaac has an inoperable tumor?" Owen leaned into the room everyone else was in, he looked form Derek to Atlas, then Mark and Christina.

"It's Isaac's tumor?" Lexie exclaimed.

"Okay, yeah, yeah. Boo-hoo, okay Who says it's inoperable?"

"Cristina." Derek caught the Korean woman's attention and pointed to the scan that was now showing up.

"Oh no." Atlas muttered as he leaned closer to Derek to get a better look. Derek took the opportunity to place a quick kiss to his fiancés cheek.

Everyone started to talk over one and other, no one could under stand who was say thing what.

"Why aren't you all at your surgeries?" Everyone turned their heads to Richard, "Go, get to your O.Rs. Don't screw with my schedule on day one."

"Love you." Atlas placed a kiss to Derek's lips before he left the room, not wanting to be yelled at by the chief any longer.

╚═ ☆ ═╝

Oliver and Eliza could be competitive people. Normally they were soft and squishy, and fun to be around. But today the two had a chance to scrub in with Derek.

Derek wasn't going to go easy on the twins, whoever did best in his skills contest would scrub in. The twins didn't get an exception.

"Microsurgery is about precision. The microscope changes your perspective radically. The hand-eye coordination required can be learned, But right now, I need naturals." Derek handed the bill to Atlas, who had been asked to come along and demonstrate what needed to be done. "Each one of you will get a chance to guide this pen," Atlas held up the red pen. "through the hole in the cup."

Atlas did as Derek said, The person who makes a Mark closest to the president's nose and doesn't hit the side of the cup gets to scrub in." Atlas had managed to place a dot right on the presidents nose. "Who wants to go first?"

Everyone who was in the room threw up their hands. Derek selected people and majority of them hit the cup, a few were lucky to hit the paper but it was still no where near the presidents nose.

Finally it was Eliza's turn. The woman stepped up to the spot and relaxed. She placed everything where it needed to go and then she went ahead and did it. "Ooh."  Eliza had managed to hit the paper, right in the presidents cheek. She had done a good job, she figured that not many others could do better than that.

"Good job." Derek nodded his head in approval as Eliza stepped away from the machine.

"Ooh. Here we go." Derek muttered as he handed Jackson Avery a bill.

Jackson took the bill and did the task. He had done well, very well. He had even gotten closer than Eliza did.

"Nicely done." Derek started, "If somebody improves on that, I'll be out of a job."

"Well, I guess you might need to retire, then." Christina said smoothly as she stood up from her chair. She and Olly were the only ones who hadn't gone yet.

"Okay," Derek chuckled.

Christina had managed to hit the paper cup, not going any where near the bill she was supposed to hit. The people around let out ooo's at the fact that she had failed.

"Olly." Derek waved Oliver up, who gladly took the bill.

Oliver set everything up and breathed out. He slowly let his hand holding the pen go down. Clink. And when Oliver pulled his hand away and took off the cup, his little red dot was right in the same place Jackson's had been.

"Doctor Avery and Doctor Lee-Sunny, You'll be scrubbing in."

With those words, Oliver took off to find Atlas who had left during some point.

╚═ ☆ ═╝

The group ( Derek, Oliver, Jackson, Lexie and the staff ) had been in surgery for ten awfully long hours. Derek didn't have a plan then, so what he had done was stand there the whole time.

Derek had just stared at the patients open body. He couldn't figure out a way to operate without cutting the cord.

The residents had all taken turns holding whatever needed to be held, and when they weren't holding things they were taking breaks. Jackson had been reluctant to take any kinds of breaks, but eventually when Oliver told him that Derek wasn't going to start any time soon he started to take a few breaks here and there.

Unfortunately around the ten-ish hour mark, Richard Webber had shown up and shut everything down. The chief had told Derek about how the rate of infection for Isaac was growing with every second he was left open on the table. Since Derek hadn't started and Richard was the boss man, he shut it down.

Now this had all happened a couple hours ago. Now Derek and Atlas sat in bed eating ice cream and chatting about their wedding.

"I wanna talk about the tumour." Derek placed his ice cream on the bedside table and rolled into his said first talk to Atlas.

"Go ahead, baby." Atlas smiled to Derek who immediately got into talking about the tumour.

Atlas, who had been in surgery well Derek was in surgery, didn't get to see what had happened or anything else other than the scans he had seen early that morning. So when Derek tried to explain, Atlas needed a little bit more.

That's why Derek rolled of the bed and pulled their bed away from the wall and spun it around. "What are you doing?!" Atlas looked to Derek with wide eyes as the Shepherd man started to move the bed.

"Did your mom never tell you that it was bad to draw on the walls?" Atlas pointed his spoon towards the wall that Derek was starting to draw on.

Derek, who had a sparkle in his eyes— one he often got from big crazy tumours — only smiled. "The tumour is here. T-7. It goes all the way up to T-2. I open up the posterior column. It's chaos. I didn't know what vessel was connected to the tumour or to the cord. So what I did was..."

In that moment, it was just Derek and Atlas. A pair of people who loved each other with everything they had. Derek and Atlas were only two people who now drew on the walls late at night.

╚═ ☆ ═╝

From in between surgeries, Atlas would go and check up on Derek. Derek and the residents that had been selected, now stood around the operating table. Derek was at the lead surgeons spot where he proceeded to start the removal of the tumor.

They had told Richard Webber that they were cutting the cord. That the surgery wouldn't take very long, not more that an hour or two.

But oh how that was the biggest bullshit ever.

Atlas stood of to the side as Derek and the rest operated. He had been in there for around an hour now, having switched with Mark in their taking care of Derek and supporting him task.

The monitor started to beep erratically.

"M.E.P tracing's losing amplitude." Atlas looked to a different monitor that showed things like the patients left leg functions. "What happened?"

"A vessel burst. It might have been connected to the cord." Derek said back, his voice calm yet the panic that was filling the operating room.

"But if there's not enough blood reaching the cord — " Lexie started only for Derek to cut her off harshly.

"I could've just paralyzed our patient, yes." Derek snapped before he calmed down and asked for suction.

"Easy. Carful. More suction."

"There's too much blood."

"Der, we're losing him." Atlas stated softly, even though he had stated the words softly, Derek knew that he needed to do something and do it now.

"I should've just cut the cord. This is too risky." Derek muttered as he tried to control the bleeding.

"Wait." Atlas said abruptly, "It's back. Amplitude's up."

"So the cord didn't stroke out? You didn't paralyze him?" Lexie asked.

"The vessel was connected to, the, uh, tumour. We're okay." Derek stated quietly in a reply to Lexie's question.

"Good job, Der." Atlas grinned behind his mask.

Derek muttered a quick thanks before he stepped away from the operating table.

"Der?" Atlas asked as he stood to his feet and neared Derek.

"Take off my mask."

"What?"

"Take off my mask."

Atlas hurriedly took Derek's mask off. He stepped back as Derek threw up all over the floor. Atlas gently placed his hand on Derek's back and rubbed smoothing circles.

When Derek bad finished throwing up and had drank some water ( thanks to Lexie ) he had got right back into surgery. There had been some complications, but for the most part, things had ran smoothly. Or that was until now.

They were now twenty six hours into the surgery. Derek had finished everything and only needed to do the blind cut. "A or B. Doctor Grey, a or b?"

"Your done? You got it all out?" Lexie peaked around the thing in front of her.

"Except for the blind cut. I just have to pick one and we're good to go. A or b?"

"Your kidding?" Lexie asked in disbelief.

"Your stalling. Doctor Avery?" Derek didn't even bother to look up as he asked Jackson Avery which to cut.

"I don't like to gamble." Jackson stated awkwardly, his shoulders shrugged.

"Doctor Sloan?"

"What, so you can blame is on me for the rest of your life? Nah." Mark denied with a quick shake of his head.

Derek then looked away from the patient and towards Atlas who had been in the room for the longest. "Atly, baby?"

"I love you, but you pick the one the one that feels like the right choice." Atlas told Derek. Derek did just that. He had made a cut and finished up the surgery.

When the surgery was done and over with, Derek and Atlas had stopped and taken a breather outside in the cool air. "I'm proud of you." Atlas spoke first.

Derek nodded, "Thank you, Atly."

"And I love you too." Atlas wrapped his arms loosely around Derek and placed a loving little kiss to his fiancés forehead.

════════ ☆
mark grinning: "Derek's no longer daddy's favourite."
atlas blushing: "Derek's still my favourite... oh."
i love that very much.

serious question readers! i would like to know your thoughts — derek and atlas wedding before or after the shooting?