How To Save A Life (Grey's Anatomy)

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter 41

Season 6, Episode 16/19

For the first time in months, things were normal. There was no shadow of gloom hanging over me from everything terrible that had happened. I lost one of my best friends and someone I would have even considered a sister but I've finally let it go so I can be the surgeon I came here to be in the first place. I've been working with Callie for the past two weeks trying to get a feel for ortho and I'm really starting to like it.

The both of us were paged to the pit this morning for an ortho consult, only to walk into a very loud ER. Two women were yelling at each other while a grand commotion was circling one of the other beds.

"Wonder what that's all about," Callie says to me with a frown and I return the confused look before Alex walks over to us with a chart.

"She's all yours." He says with a sigh, handing me the file and gesturing over to the two yelling women.

"Oh, fantastic," I mutter as the two of us walk over to the pair. They look like a mother and daughter, looking at her chart confirms our patient, the mother, is in her seventies. Turns out she got into a car accident after stealing her daughter's car to run errands. Callie starts to tend to her ankle while I give her a full assessment to check for other injuries.

"See? This is why I don't want you to drive!" Her daughter yells at her and I flinch, their volume seeming to increase with every word.

"I had to get my medication!" The mother yells back as I try to check her facial laceration, which becomes increasingly difficult with their ongoing banter. "The store was gonna close!"

"Uh, can we not yell, please?" Callie speaks up, trying to diffuse the situation lightly but the daughter shakes her head.

"No, actually. My mother is almost completely deaf, a fact she refuses to accept, which is why she won't learn sign language or get a hearing aid. So we yell." The daughter explains at a normal volume, seeming to be just as annoyed with the yelling the two of them were doing.

"Don't talk to her! Talk to me!" The mother yells, obviously not hearing what her daughter was saying and wanting to be in on the conversation of her medical care.

"I'm just telling them what happened!" The daughter yells at her. "She stole my car...again."

"Uh, Dr. Torres, there's a tenderness over the zygomatic process and a hematoma to the left temporal area." I cut off her potential next rant, which Callie seems thrilled about, looking at me expectantly.

"Okay, run a head and face CT. I'll get Sloan and Shepherd." She says and I give her a nod. "She's got a ruptured tendon in her knee that will need surgery."

As I start to walk away from the head-pounding couple, the crowd gathered around the other patient bed grabs my interest. Pushing my way through the crowd in the ER, I head toward the nurse's station to call up to CT. Once behind the desk, I look up only to notice Jackson. At first, I don't realize the significance of where he's standing, but after another moment, I realize he's standing beside I patient bed in his regular clothes.

I hang up the phone before it had a chance to even ring, taking in the sight before me. The patient in the bed is an older man, with Jackson standing beside him with his concerned frown I've seen many times before. The two of us have been getting closer and while I have been busy working with Callie these past two weeks, we've managed to find the time to sneak in and out of on-call rooms. Which is why seeing him with someone concerns me.

He suddenly looks up, making eye contact with me and I didn't realize until this exact moment that I was staring. He seems taken aback by my presence, the twinkle in his eyes that I'm so used to seeing no longer there. Part of me wants to go over and ask what happened, but the strange look he's giving me is telling me otherwise as if he's asking me not to walk over.