Bright and Shiny

Chapter 25

Meredith was taking her patient into the scanning room for the second time in an hour, the first set had come back blurry.

She had hoped to get the diagnosis to Derek before he went into the OR with the pregnant woman but to no avail the scans did not cooperate. Now she was going to have to go in and give Derek her diagnosis in front of the entire OR and gallery. Which was something she was not really looking forward to.

She had hoped Dr. Stevens didn't piss him off too much because the work day was almost done and she didn't want a pissy husband on her hands. She picked up her new scans and took a glance at the now clear scans, he had some inflammation from his fall but it wasn't surgical. Some proper meds and monitoring and it should decrease the swelling.

As he took the scans and made her way to the OR to give her diagnosis to Derek. She got a page from a strange unknown number. Grabbing a phone on the wall of the exam room, she dialed it quickly.

"Hello MWH," the voice responded with.

"Hello, I was paged to this number." Meredith responded.

"Oh, Dr. Shepherd" the voice replied with recognition. "I've been trying to reach you and your husband all day at home or on your cells phones to no answer. This is Marcus Wakefield from MWH Construction, the company handling your home construction."

"Oh yes, sorry. We've been in the hospital all day and hadn't had chance to get our personal messages. Is there something wrong?" she asked suddenly worried her dream house had a problem like it fell down or something.

"The house didn't fall down did it?" she asked quickly." Marcus laughed at the question before responding. "No, Dr. Shepherd your house hasn't fallen down nor will it. I'm calling to verify that either you or your husband will be available this evening for a preliminary walk through before the drywall goes up."

Meredith got a wide smile on her face of her house being one step closer to finished and that she and Derek were going to get to actually walk through it. Although the house was on the land they owned, she and Derek had wanted to be surprised at their dream becoming reality so they tried to stay where the trailer was and not go peaking at the unfinished under construction area of their house.

"We will be off within another hour or two and will be heading straight home, so we will be there for a walk through tonight."

"That will be wonderful Dr. Shepherd, I'll see you then. Good day."

"Bye" she responded whimsically still on cloud nine of actually getting to see her house at least in some state, although it had no walls, but they were going to put up walls once she and Derek approved it.

She was so happy about the house she almost forgot about the patient. "Crap." She said to nobody in particular as she grabbed her scans and took off running down the halls towards Derek's OR.

She reached the OR out of breath and chose not to scrub in but just use the intercom to speak to Derek from the observation room next to the scrub room.

"Dr. Shepherd I have the scans from the male patient in ER 4." Meredith hesitantly said while pressing the intercom button. Derek signaled for a nurse to press the button for the OR intercom and leave it on so he could talk and the nurse could go back to her job.

"What's your diagnosis, Dr. Shepherd" he asked her taking a quick glance down towards his patient then up to the Chief once again in the gallery, although now with Dr. Burke sitting next to him with a sour face. He glanced back down to the patient again then over towards, Dr. Stevens and Dr. Yang. Yang looked more at ease since their conversation earlier. Stevens, still looked like she was horrified at her being put on the spot in front of the entire OR, but now that jealousy of her not getting the solo patient was creeping back in.

"He has a slight inflammation on the left frontal lobe. No bleeds or tears."

"And treatment for that would be…" he trailed off waiting for her to answer.

"5 cc's IV of dexamethasone for the swelling, 2 cc's Heparin to prevent clotting." She said like it was nothing at all that she had all this knowledge compared to the normal intern.

"Well done, get the patient started on treatment. I'll be in to monitor when we are done here."

"Yes, Dr." Meredith replied with a smile and made the move to take her finger off the intercom.

"Oh, wait." Derek called out quickly before Meredith had the chance to take her finger off the intercom button and leave the observation room.

"Yes?"

"Procedure to repair an anterior spinal cord compression at C4 and central canal dilation?" he asked with a question to his tone.

Meredith was confused as to where that question came from considering his patient is a pregnant woman with pressure protruding on her skull.

Meredith raised her eyebrow in confusion but answered anyway. "Reduce fracture with a halo device, follow with a with C4 vertebrectomy, then a bone graft, and then a C3-5 plating."

"Thank you Dr. Shepherd" Derek smiled brightly under his mask at her and nodded his head. Meredith was still confused but figured she'd question him about it later at home, Izzy looked shell shocked and Cristina did as well.

The others in the OR had smiles or snickering going on. Meredith shook her head as she left the room and walked down the hall while wondering if she even wanted to know what that question was about.