TRIAGE | grey's anatomy (ON HOLD INDEFINITELY)

000: "who are you, really?"

CLEMENTINE SANTOS WISHED SHE COULD FORGET THE FIRST TIME SHE'D BEEN IN AN ER. Wished she could replace her previous memories with the admiration she felt now, with the smells and the textures she'd grown accustomed to, learned to love and appreciate. Clem craved the organized chaos of it all-- the feeling of a fresh trauma gown and sterile gloves; paramedics shouting instructions in a foreign language she was privileged enough to understand; the urgent crackle of electricity and hum of a working defibrillator; and the undercurrent of an IV drip, steady and strong throughout it all. It was a goddamn breathing work of art.

She stepped into the emergency room at Seattle Grace Hospital with a brisk wind following her past the automatic doors, fresh out of a meeting with the chief of surgery. She'd finished most of her transfer paperwork on the six hour long plane ride cross-country, so the meeting had been brief. Interim Chief Burke (also a cardio god) did not soothe any worries Clem might've had, transferring from another program two months into her intern year. Instead, he warned her (not unkindly) that she had come highly recommended from Dr. Tahir at Columbia, and that if Clementine were to be worth the controversy of an interrupted residential program Chief Webber now expected "nothing but the absolute best from the nation's top trauma surgery prospect". Exact words. No pressure, right?

Instead of the adrenaline rush she should feel as one of the country's most promising trauma residents, smack dab in the foreign yet intensely comforting atmosphere she hoped to rule over someday, she felt cold reminiscence hit her like a baseball bat. Every damn time.

(--veins thrumming, legs shaking, blood plastering curls to your forehead, old shoes squeaking on the linoleum, questions upon questions asked by women in flowery scrubs, gloved hands attempting to pull him away from you, "no, please, i dragged him all the way here, save him first!" stripdown, close your eyes, wait for the shaking in your muscles to subside, watch them throw away the dress you wore when it happened--)

A second passed, and Clementine's vision cleared. If there was one thing she knew for certain in life, it was that an ER was an ER, regardless of where you were. Beyond the ground floor, up on the surgical floors she would round for the next four and a half years, she was stepping into an alien universe of hospital politics and different procedures and a fuck ton of newbie scut. But if only for a moment, she could pretend that she hadn't been practically forced into moving across the country, and was in her happy place.

The moment passed. Clem ran a sleepy hand through her thick brown hair and turned around before she was seen, dodging an incoming gurney with practiced precision, and heading straight for the bar she'd noticed across the street.

Suffice to say, Clementine would have preferred working with blood and shattered bone and spilt guts, avoiding the people-- the strange, new people that could be colleagues or superiors or catastrophically ill patients-- that the aforementioned objects typically belonged in.

Like most socially anxious and hardened surgeons, alcohol was the stopgap. So, Emerald City Bar it was.