𝙊𝙣𝙚

𝘼 𝙃𝙖𝙧𝙙 𝘿𝙖𝙮'𝙨 𝙉𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩

ᴀ/ɴ - ɪ ᴀᴍ ʙᴀᴄᴋ, ғɪɴᴀʟʟʏ. ɪ'ᴍ sᴏ ᴇxᴄɪᴛᴇᴅ ғᴏʀ ᴛʜɪs ʀᴇᴡʀɪᴛᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ɪ ʜᴏᴘᴇ ʏᴏᴜ'ʀᴇ ᴀʟʟ ᴏᴋᴀʏ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴍʏ ᴅᴇᴄɪsɪᴏɴ ᴛᴏ sᴛᴀʀᴛ ғʀᴇsʜ. ɪ'ᴍ sᴛɪʟʟ ɴᴏᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ʙᴇsᴛ ᴡʀɪᴛᴇʀ, ʙᴜᴛ ɪ'ᴍ ʟᴇᴀʀɴɪɴɢ ᴀɴᴅ ɪ ᴄᴀɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ʏᴏᴜ ᴛʜɪs ɪs ᴀ ʟᴏᴛ ʙᴇᴛᴛᴇʀ ᴛʜᴀɴ ᴛʜᴇ ғɪʀsᴛ ᴛɪᴍᴇ ᴀʀᴏᴜɴᴅ. ᴛʜᴀɴᴋ ʏᴏᴜ ғᴏʀ ᴀʟʟ ᴏғ ʏᴏᴜʀ sᴜᴘᴘᴏʀᴛ ᴀɴᴅ ɪ ᴘʀᴏᴍɪsᴇ ɪ'ʟʟ ᴅᴏ ᴍʏ ʙᴇsᴛ ᴛᴏ ᴍᴀᴋᴇ ɪᴛ ᴡᴏʀᴛʜ ɪᴛ.

√v^√v^√♥

                                           𝐈𝐓 𝐒𝐄𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐃 𝐁𝐈𝐙𝐙𝐀𝐑𝐄, both to her and those she passed as she entered the large hospital building, that someone so young, so fresh out of diapers, was beginning their first day as a surgical resident.

  With a tight chest, the brunette found a receptionist, glued to the computer in front of him, who somewhat kindly pointed her in the direction of her destination.

  As she left the saddened area, filled with worried families who waited for doctors, like her, to save their loved ones' life, a sort of weight was lifted off of her shoulders, though it would come back with time.

  She let out a sigh as she found the hall full of interns who waited eagerly and tiredly for their introduction. Nervous faces filled the hall and you could almost taste the cocky cologne; she sure could.

  The hall was full of chatter, but the soon to be intern was too focused on going over her game plan for the day to join in; she almost didn't notice the dirty blonde make his way over to her.

  Shifting her weight, she smiled as the cleanly shaved, doe eyed, intern gave her a small nod.

"Hi, uh, George O'Malley," he held out his hand. "We met at the mixer." She shook his hand with a smile.

"Yes," she nodded with a bright smile. "Hi. Holly Avery."

"H-"

Their conversation getting cut short, they turned as a darker man made his grand entrance. The room fell silent when the interns stopped talking and faced his stance that towered the rest of them.

Introducing himself as Richard Webber, the Chief of Surgery started his spiel. Though, before he could, a door creaked open behind them, revealing a thin figure who joined the crowd of interns.

  With no reaction to the young woman's entrance, the chief led his new students into the operating room behind a door in the hall they had all been told to stand in.

"Each of you comes here today hopeful, wanting in on the game. A month ago, you were in med school being taught by doctors," Webber's voice was calm but authoritative, and loud enough to make a few residents flinch as he spoke.

"Today you are the doctors."

  Holly looked around the room, from the operating table to the gallery above her. She managed to get a glimpse of her future peers, noticing some of them as completely fascinated as she was.

"The seven years you spend here as a surgical resident will be the best and worst of your life. You will be pushed to the breaking point. Look around you. Say hello to your competition."

A selected few didn't bother to glance around, and Holly took note as she scanned the well lit room.

"Eight of you will switch to an easier specialty. Five will crack under the pressure. Two of you will be asked to leave. This is your starting line. This is your arena. How well you play, that's up to you."

ꨄ

As interns threw on their fresh scrubs and, not yet embroidered, lab coats, last names were called off for interns to go with their assigned resident; as far as Holly knew from the email she had received a few times this month and one more time for good measure just last night, she was assigned to Dr. Bailey.

Holly stared into the, magnetic, drug store bought, mirror she placed on the inside door of her locker door, as she pulled her hair to the outside of her lab coat and up in a messy pony tail.

  Tossing the red dress shirt she wore in to the building into the locker along with her jeans, she stood still for a moment, studying herself intently.

"You're a freaking doctor," she spoke quietly to herself. "Hell yeah you are!"

"Only seven women out of twenty," the small blonde who came in late caught Holly's attention.

"Yeah, I hear one of them's a model," the Korean beside her gossiped. "Seriously, that's gonna help with the respect thing?" She chuckled, her voice emotionless.

  Holly let out a small laugh, mostly to get in with the girls because she didn't necessarily care about the model thing otherwise, closing her locker and plopping down on the bench next to the two.

"You're Cristina, right?" The girl beside her asked the Korean.

  Their attention briefly went to the man calling names, though no familiar names were heard so they continued.

"And you..." she began, gesturing to the brunette in front of her.

"Holly Avery," Holly replied, pulling her foot up to the bench to retie her tennis shoes.

"Which resident are you assigned to?" Cristina turned to the two girls as she pulled her hair into a bun. "I got Bailey."

"The Nazi?" Meredith clarified. "Me too."

Holly quickly looked up from her half tied shoe. "Nazi? Why do they call her 'The Nazi'?"

"You got the Nazi?" George chimed in, making his way over from the lockers perpendicular to the three girls. "So did I. At least we'll be tortured together, right?" He humored, trying his best to strike up a conversation with the dirty blonde, Meredith. "I'm George O'Malley. We met at the mixer. You had on a black dress with a slit up the side, strappy sandals and..."

Meredith gave him a quizzical but polite smile.

"Now you think I'm gay. Uh, no I'm not gay," he tripped over his words. "It's, ah, it's just that, you know, you were, I mean, you were very, unforgettable."

"O'Malley, Yang, Grey, Avery, Stevens," the sound of their names echoed through the room.

"And I'm totally forgettable," George mumbled to his unconfident self, earning an unseen frown from Holly, though that was all he got since she didn't know him well enough to do otherwise.

  Holly made her way past unknown interns and out of the cramped space, stopping at the man with a clipboard clung to his chest.

"Bailey?" The caller directed the small group to the end of the hall, where stood a short woman at the reception desk.

"That's the Nazi?" Cristina chortled, eyebrows raised.

"I figured the Nazi would be a guy."

"I figured the Nazi would be...a Nazi," Meredith breathed.

"Why does there have to be a Nazi...at all?" Holly emphasized quietly.

"Maybe she's brilliant," a blonde paraded up to the others, as if making up for lost time. "And they call her a Nazi because they're jealous. Maybe she's nice."

"Let me guess, you're the model?" Cristina assumed bluntly.

  The light haired intern glared at the Korean as the five of them stopped in front of their resident.

"Hi, I'm Isobel Stevens," she held her hand out to the unpleased doctor. "But everyone calls me Izzie."

The experienced resident looked the blonde up and down before speaking. "I have five rules, memorize them. Rule number one: Don't bother sucking up. I already hate you. That's not gonna change."

Holly let out a silent "oh" as she wrote the number one on her small notepad.

"Trauma protocol, phone list, pagers, nurses will page you." Dr. Bailey grabbed a clipboard from the receptionist desk in front of her before hustling down the corridor. Interns grabbed their supplies and followed behind her as she listed her rules. "You will answer every page at a run. A run! That's rule number two."

"Your first shift starts now and lasts 48 hours. You're interns, grunts, nobodies, bottom of the surgical food chain. You run labs, write orders, work every second night until you drop, and don't complain," her words echoed through the catwalk.

The group stopped at a door abruptly as Dr. Bailey pushed it open. "On-call rooms." The interns gawked at the sleeping area. "Attendings hog them. Sleep when you can where you can, which brings me to rule number three. If I'm sleeping, don't wake me unless your patient is dying. Rule four: The dying patient better not be dead when I get there. Not only will you have killed someone, you woke me for no reason."

"We clear?" She hummed.

Meredith raised her hand hesitantly. "Yes?" Bailey questioned, eyes narrow. "You said five rules. That was only four," she informed. As if it were planned, Bailey's pager started to beep.

"Rule number five: When I move, you move," Bailey pushed past her interns and sprinted down the hall, the prodigies following after her. "Get out of the way!" Bailey ordered the frazzled doctors to grab a stretcher as they made their way to the elevator that took them up the the helipad.

Holly pushed the loose hairs out of her face for a clear visual of the helicopter that lowered itself onto the roof. Adrenaline rushed through the brunettes veins as the her first patient was wheeled in past the closing elevator doors.

"What do we got?" A man inquired the paramedic as the interns wheeled the teen girl to the closest empty room. "Katie Bryce, 15-year-old, new onset seizures, intermittent for the past week. IV lost en route, started grand mal seizing as we descended."

"All right, get her on her side," the blonde was lifted to the hospital bed as interns and nurses rushed around to stop her seizing, with their resident supervising in the corner.

  Holly slipped on a pair of gloves at Dr. Bailey's demanding voice. "lzzie, 10 milligrams Diazepam IM." Izzie nodded as George and Holly rushed to set Katie up to the infusion pump.

"No, no." Bailey shook her head at Meredith. "The white lead is on the right. Righty, whitey, smoke over fire. A large-bore IV. Don't let the blood hemolyze. Let's go!" A syringe sunk into the 15 year old's arm and her seizing stopped. The group took a breath of air as a taller man entered the room.

"What do we have here? A wet fish on dry land?" he asked, taking the clipboard from Bailey.

"Absolutely, Dr. Burke," Bailey spoke with her hands on her hips, eyes on her superior.

"Dr. Bailey, let's shotgun her," the man, now known as Burke, ordered.

"That means every test in the book: CT, CBC, chem-7, tox screen." Bailey yelled at her interns. "Cristina, you're on labs. George and Holland, patient work-ups. Meredith, get Katie for a CT. She's your responsibility now." Bailey began to leave the room but stopped when Izzie spoke up.

"What about me?" Izzie asked.

"Honey, you get to do rectal exams," Bailey spoke offhandedly before exiting the room.

ꨄ

  Holly read through the chart of her next patient as she explored the walls of the hospital, making her way her patient's door.

Jessalyn Reed, 14, dizziness after head injury.

  Holly was nervous, who wouldn't be? But she was confident in her skill and she knew that alone would get her wherever she needed to go.

The brunette took a loud breath before knocking lightly on the wooden door and making her entrance with a bright smile.

  The young girl looked up from her book and handed it to the older woman sitting in the chair next to her hospital bed.

"Are you Jessalyn?" The new doctor asked sweetly, taking her stethoscope from around her neck as she received a nervous nod.

"I'm Dr. Avery but you can call me Holly. What seems to be going on?"

"Well," the girl glanced at her mother who gave her a nod. "I've been really dizzy and my head has been hurting...a lot."

  Holly frowned. "I'm sorry to hear that Jessalyn...would it be alright if I check a few things...maybe run a few tests so we can see what's going on?"

  The young girl looked at her mother and then back at the intern with another nod.

"Okay, great," Holly made her way over to the hospital bed, putting her instrument to the girl's chest. "This might be cold...deep breath."

"Sounds good! Jessalyn, when did this start?" The brunette pulled a small light out of her lab coat and ran it in front of the young girl's eyes after a quick warning.

"Two days ago...I ice skate at a rink downtown and I lost my balance and hit my head," she glanced at her mother who nodded her head.

"Is losing your balance normal when you skate, or did it seem out of the ordinary?" Holly directed her question more towards the mother.

"No, I fall sometimes. That's just what happens..."

"She just happened to hit her head," the mother finished.

"I see...okay Ms. Reed. What is your pain level right now, on a scale from one to ten?"

"Right now it's a four."

"Have you had any nausea or vomiting?" She hummed, scribbling down a few things on her clipboard.

"Nausea," Jessalyn spoke quietly. "Am I going to be okay?"

  Holly looked up at the girl and smiled. "At this point, we have no reason to worry. I'm going to get the clear for a CT and we're going to figure out what's going on...Do either of you have any questions?"

  Both the mother and daughter shook their head. Holly nodded, grabbing her clipboard and turning on her heel to leave the room.

ꨄ

Making her way down the hospital corridor with lab results in her hands, Holly read the room numbers aloud to herself as she searched around for the matching doors.

Stumbling forward at the sudden sight of new gray tennis shoes colliding with the toe of her white ones, the figure in front of her regained his balance before turning on his heel.

"I am so sorry!"

"Hey, dude! Watch where you're-" the young doctor paused his reprimand with a sigh as his eyes fell in line with hers.

"I'm sorry, I'm just a little lost...and I wasn't watching where I was going," Holly's confidence melted under the intimidation as she stared up at the taller figure.

"Yeah, you're...it's not a big deal."

Holly let out a breath of air, looking between the hall in front of her and the taller doctor. Taking a step to the side, she smiled lightly. "Sorry again."

Turning back on her heel, towards the dirty blonde who's name she hadn't yet learned. "You don't suppose you could...point me in the right direction?"

He watched her for a minute before nodding and glancing down at the files in her hands.

He let out a chuckle. "You're on the wrong floor," he replied, putting the files into two piles though still in the brunette's hands. "These," he pointed. "Down a floor. And these...up a floor."

"Oh, oh!" Holly grinned. "Thank you. It's a...you know...a big hospital." She improvised, using every word she could that didn't consist of, 'I'm new here' or 'I'm an intern'.

"I'm Holly...by the way...Avery," she beamed with a nod.

"Alex Karev," he watched her with intent filled eyes.

"Well I'll see you around...Thanks again," she gave him a small wave, backing out of the cloud of citrus and fresh wood as she made her way to the elevators.

ꨄ

"Katie Bryce is a pain in the ass," Meredith Grey caught the attention of the table full of interns as her lunch tray slammed down in front of them. "If I hadn't taken the Hippocrates Oath, I'd Kevorkian her with my bare hands."

Holly, along with a few unnamed others watched her with wide eyes. "What?" She asked with a shrug. The suddenly uninterested interns shook their heads and turned back to their meal, though Holly let out a small giggle as she filled her mouth with another bite of salad.

The talking amongst the new doctors subsided as Dr. Burke made his way over to the lunch table, grabbing the eyes of every single one of them.

"Good afternoon, interns," he greeted. "It's posted, but I thought I'd share the good news personally," he paced to the other end of the table. "As you know, the honor of performing the first surgery is reserved for the intern that shows the most promise. As I'm running the OR today, I get to make that choice."

The interns sat up straight in their seats, wondering if they were in fact the intern that showed the most promise. Holly took a breath of air as she watched Dr. Burke eye the crowd.

"George O'Malley," he announced. Burke set a hand to George's back in praise.

"Me?" The intern clarified.

"You'll scrub in for an appendectomy this afternoon. Congratulations. Enjoy it."

"Did he say me?" George repeated, earning a small giggle from Holly who gave him a praising smile.

ꨄ

"Okay, Jessalyn! How are you feeling," Holly hummed, the door clicking shut behind her as she made her way over to the young girl's bedside.

"It hurts."

"Scale of one to ten?"

"A six."

Holly gave her a sympathetic smile before turning to her mother. "Well, CT and MRI came back clear. We're going to keep you a few more hours for precaution, give you some medicine...but it's just a mild concussion."

"So I'm alright?"

Holly nodded. "Sometimes if you hit your head hard enough, you can get a concussion. That explains the headaches and the dizziness...and the nausea. But with some rest, everything will get back to normal in no time! Okay?"

The young girl nodded. "Okay."

"I'll check on you later. Press the button if you need anything," Holly gave her and her mother a smile before pulling herself from the room.

With a few nudges in the right direction, Holly finally found the OR George would be operating in. The first surgery of the year, he was the one to beat. She couldn't have missed it. She had to see what she was up against.

  Holly took a seat next to the blonde that was in her intern group, greeting her with a half smile as she introduced herself.

"We haven't officially met. I'm Izzie."

  Holly's head raised slightly before answering the model. "Holly."

  Holly could tell that George was nervous, she figured it was the couple dozen eyes that judged his every move, every decision; not the fact that he couldn't do it. She believed he could. She hoped he could, for the patient's sake.

  With Dr. Burke whispering in his ear, George pretended to be unbothered as he cut into the patient's abdomen. Cheering filled the gallery. They weren't proud, they were trying to intimidate him, at least most of them were.

  Dr. Burke silenced the room with a gesture while Holly gave George a thumbs up and other interns bet money on which mistake he would make first.

  Piranhas, that's what they were. Holly had wanted to be the one down there but not anymore. She was glad she wasn't the first, but she felt bad for George.

  Cheering, again. "Damn, he got the peritonaeum open. I'm out."

"I told you. He's gonna pull it off," Meredith Grey beamed from the other end of the bleachers.

  An unplanned "yes!" escaped Holly's lips as George tossed the clamped appendix in the tray next to him. Like it was his job. Like he had been doing it for years, like he would be doing it for the rest of his life.

  George's hands began moving quickly, then stopped. It was the last step before closing, he was almost there.
Blood. There was blood, and George was frozen.

"He's choking," Cristina leaned back nervously.

"Come on, George."

There wasn't much time to waste, so Dr. Burke taking his place was the right call, but his asshole remark was uncalled for, leaving Holly with a bitter taste in her mouth, possibly from grinding her cheek in between her teeth.

"He's 007."

"A total 007."

"What's "007" mean?" Izzie turned to the brunette beside her.

"License to kill."

ꨄ

"007," George spoke suddenly. "They're calling me "007", aren't they?"

"No one's calling you 007," the three girls lied in unison, hoping to spare his feelings, though Cristina stayed quiet.

  George used his palms to rock himself back in forth in his wheelchair.

"On the elevator Murphy whispered, "007"."

"How many times do we have to go through this, George?" Cristina pushed herself off her basement gurney and made her way to the vending machines below the stairs. "Five, ten? Give me a number, or else I'm gonna hit you."

"Murphy whispered, "007" and everyone laughed," George called out to Cristina.

"Yes...and for lunch, Murphy used a fork to eat his potato chips."

"How do you-"

"He wasn't talking about you," Izzie stretched her arms over her head, reassuring the intern.

"Are you sure?"

"Would we lie to you?" Meredith soothed.

"Yes."

"007 is a state of mind," Cristina added to the conversation.

"Says the girl who finished first in her class at Stanford."

  The room fell quiet at the beep beep beep of a pager. Meredith Grey's.

"Oh, man. It's 911 for Katie Bryce. I got to go," Meredith spoke with a soft panic in her voice, uncrossing her legs and pushing herself off the makeshift resting area.

"Maybe I should've gone into geriatrics," George thought aloud. "No one minds when you kill an old person."

"Surgery is hot. It's the marines," Cristina made her way back to her gurney with a snack from the vending machine. "It's macho. It's hostile. It's hard-core. Geriatrics is for freaks who live with their mothers and never have sex."

"I've got to get my own place."

ꨄ

"Does anyone know why we're here?"

Interns; confused, tired, pissed off...mostly tired, gathered in a conference room simply because they were told to. Most acted like it was an inconvenience but they wouldn't for a second have rather been running labs or doing rectal exams.

The room quieted at his entrance, an attending. "Good morning," he grinned. Other than his smile, his dark curled hair was the first thing Holly noticed about him.

"For those who don't know, I'm Dr. Shepherd. l'm gonna' do something rare for a surgeon. I'm going to ask interns for help. I've got this kid, Katie Bryce. Right now, she's a mystery. She doesn't respond to our meds. Labs are clean, scans are pure, but she's having grand mal seizures with no visible cause. She's a ticking clock. She's gonna die if I don't make a diagnosis, which is where you come in. I can't do it alone. I need your extra minds, extra eyes. I need you to play detective. I need you to find out why Katie's having seizures. You're tired. You got more work than you could possibly handle."

He got straight to the point, not that he had any time to spare, no time for heartfelt introductions, those would be later, if at all.

Holly hoped he was one of the good ones, not the ones you see on tv. Not one of the scary ones that take advantage of their superiority just so they can get a cup of coffee. Not one of the ones that call their interns pansy ass idiots.

"I understand. So I'm gonna give you an incentive. Whoever finds the answer rides with me. Katie needs surgery. You get to do what no interns get to do: Scrub in to assist on an advanced procedure."

The interns watched him with bright and hopeful eyes, astonished by the medical mystery named Katie Bryce. One of Meredith's patients. They all wanted the surgery, maybe some more than others. Though, only some deserved it, only some were worthy of it.

"Dr. Bailey's gonna' hand you Katie's chart. The clock is ticking fast. If we're gonna save Katie's life, do it soon." Shepherd left the room and the interns scrambled for a folder on the table in front of them. I grabbed a yellow folder and raced out of the room. I have about an hour before I need to check on lab results for one of my patients. So that means I have an hour to figure out what's wrong with Katie Bryce."

ꨄ

George knew he wouldn't be scrubbing in on any type of surgery, any time soon, but he was hoping for some bragging rights. So when he nervously approached Holly about working together, she was more than happy to take the surgery and tell everyone they did it together, though she felt a bit guilty. That is, if they could even figure out what was really wrong with her.

"No tumor?"

"No, CTs clean," Holly hummed.

"Infection?"

"There's no white count, no fever, nothing in the spinal tap."

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Holly grabbed the pager at her hip with a sigh. "Meredith got the surgery. Katie's going to be okay."

ꨄ

After accidentally stealing the Katie Bryce surgery from Cristina and promising a patient's family he was going to be fine right before he died, George and Meredith weren't necessarily in the 'I'm going to be an amazing surgeon mindset'. And all Holly could do was sit in between the two on the window sill outside the hospital.

"I wish I wanted to be a chef or a ski instructor or a kindergarten teacher," Meredith spoke softy, words that even Holly agreed with at times. Not this time.

"You know, I would have been a really good postal worker," George replied, Meredith stifled a laugh. "You know, my parents tell everyone they meet that their son's a surgeon, as if it's a big accomplishment—superhero or something. If they could see me now."

"My mom thinks I dropped out," Holly filled the silence. "Thinks I work at a Starbucks in Georgia. It was the only way I could get her to stop paying for school. She thought she owed me something...now she blames me cause' she's broke and thinks it's for nothing."

"When I told my mother I wanted to go to medical school, she tried to talk me out of it—said I didn't have what it takes to be a surgeon. That I'd never make it...so the way I see it, superhero sounds pretty damn good."

"We're gonna survive this, right?"