fic: Falling Awake (5/?)
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Fic: Falling Awake
Rating: Nothing bad here, unless you would count angst.
Feedback: Of course, feedback is like our crack!
Summary: Just when George thought his life couldn’t get any more complicated, it does.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything, unfortunately. It would be cooler if I did though.
Spoilers: All the way until the end of the episode “The Other Side of Life” after that my version takes a different route. I started this fic over the summer so this season doesn’t really count, any similarities is only by coincidence. If you haven’t watch S4 yet and are staying away from spoilers don’t worry nothing here will spoil you.
A/N: Many thanks goes to those who have already read a lot of this and help me sort through my writers block. It was much appreciate! :)
Just a little warning, the medical situations in this may be completely off, I don’t know anything, really, when it comes to hospitals or medical knowledge, so prepare yourself for having to suspend your imagination and belief.
///000///
Bailey pressed the up arrow button as she stood outside the elevator doors and waited for them to open.
It had been a long day, too long. She thought she had made the right decision in giving her interns busy work to make sure they stayed out of the way of George’s care, but now she wasn’t so sure it was the best plan. She had taken herself off the case because she felt too close. Lately, she had been questioning her leadership skills after the turmoil her interns had been through in the past year. She didn’t want to add failing to save their fellow intern and friend to the list. So she made sure to keep herself and her interns busy enough to take their minds off their hurt friend.
Except it didn’t work. She had been worried about George all day and could hardly get any work done because of it. And she knew her interns felt the same way. She had caught them all on George’s floor on different occasions, despite the fact she gave them work that would keep them off of his floor. She couldn’t blame them, though. The only reason why she caught them was because she was checking in on George herself.
As the elevator doors opened up, she allowed the people in it to exit it before she stepped on and pressed the button for the fifth floor. She found herself alone as the doors closed once more and started its slow pull upwards. A fact she was happy about. She needed the quietness even if was for a short ride to the fifth floor.
The elevator came to a stop on the second floor and the doors opened in front of her. The doctor that had giving her such a hard time about the death of Denny Duquette earlier in the year stepped into the elevator with her and turned to push the button for the fifth floor but noticed it was already lit up.
“Dr. Bailey.” He greeted, coldly as he turned back around.
“Dr. Savoy.” Bailey mirrored his greeting.
“I take it you’re going to check on your intern,” he said, nodding to the button that indicated the floor George was on.
“I am. How’s his condition?” Bailey said turning towards him. She couldn’t believe that out of all the residents that could have taken over the case, it had to be the guy that questioned her authority so much.
“It hasn’t changed. Still not responding to any of the test the way we would like.”
“I was told earlier that your interns are suggesting to install a shunt on George, is that right?”
“Where did you hear that?”
“That’s not important,” Bailey said, shaking her head. “Is it true? Because if so that seems a bit serious at this point in time.”
“I don’t know about you Dr. Bailey, but I’m in the business of saving people’s lives. Yes, we are looking at installing a shunt, its been proven to be helpful in other coma patients. And if it has proven to be helpful than it’s not out of the question.”
Bailey nodded as she turned back to the front of the elevator. She felt her emotions rise but held them in check while she was in the presence of the doctor beside her.
“It’s a little ironic, don’t you think?” Dr. Savoy said, breaking the silence.
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s ironic that it was your intern involved in a work related accident. Out of all the interns in the program, once again it’s one of yours making news for the hospital staff to talk about,” He said, smirking down at the shorter doctor.
Bailey turned towards him and furrowed her eyebrows.
“And what exactly is that suppose to mean?” Bailey huffed out.
“Let me put it this way, by ironic I mean typical.”
“It was an accident. Nothing else. George getting hurt…it wasn’t anyone’s fault,” Bailey tried to explain, annoyed.
The elevator finally reached its destination as it came to a stop on George’s floor. As the doors opened up the smug doctor turned back towards Bailey.
“No one’s fault?” he asked, with a tilt of his head and a smirk planted firmly on his face. “Funny, I wonder where I’ve heard that excuse before?”
He then turned and stepped off the elevator, leaving a shocked Bailey behind.
///000///
Callie watched the heart monitor as it beeped out a steady rhythm. She had been watching the monitor screen from the moment they let her back to see George over 24 hours ago. Making sure that rhythm didn’t speed up or slow down. At the moment the rhythm was the only constant thing in her life and it was the only thing that was keeping her together. So she focused on the steady beep that filled the silence in the room. The beep meant George was alive and that was all that matter to her.
George’s mother walked back into the room and went straight to the opposite side of George’s bed that Callie was sitting on.
“Honey, I’m back,” She said to George lying so still on the bed. She fiddled with George hospital gown as she tried to straighten out some of the winkles it had from his listless state. “You’re brothers and I tried that cafeteria you’re always talking about. There were a lot of doctors and nurses there, many of them asking about you.”
Callie noticed once again his mother was acting like she wasn’t there. She had been doing that ever since she had shown up at the hospital with Izzie Stephens in tow. Callie tried to make small talk with the her new mother-in-law, but she would always give her short answers that would pretty much kill the conversation. But it was her mother-in-law so she wouldn’t give up on her just yet.
“Where are Ronny and Jerry?” Callie asked, keeping her focus on the heart monitor.
“Work.” She said, shortly as she smoothed George’s gown out with her hand.
Callie just sighed heavily as she watched the line on the heart monitor go up and down.
“Honey, you’re brothers wish they could be here but they couldn’t take much time off of work after spending so much time here when you’re father was sick. So you’ll have to wake up so when they get off work they can see and talk with you again.”
Callie wished they were here too. At least they actually talked to her.
“They would love to hear you talk again. Maybe you can tell them about your internship or your friends. They would love to hear about them, just as long as you’re talking to them again.”
The sad sound of her voice got Callie’s attention as she looked over at her mother-in-law, she was fiddling with his gown as tears streamed down her face. Callie swallowed hard.
“I’m sure he would love to tell them about it,” Callie tried, lightly.
The older lady looked up at her with anger in her eyes.
“How would you know?”
Callie looked at her in confusion. “Because I’m his wife.”
“Really? Is that why he hasn’t talked to us since the day he told us he married you? Is that why I haven’t talk to my boy in months?”
Callie was taken back by the anger in her voice that was being directed at her.
“Months! It’s been months since I’ve heard the voice of my youngest son! First I loose a husband and then I loose my son to *you*,” She said angrily, making sure to spit out the ‘you’ at the end.
Callie had no clue George hadn’t been talking to his family.
“I told him that night that marrying you was a mistake. It was too soon after his father’s death. It was obviously something he didn’t want to hear at the time. He’s too damn hard headed!”
Callie felt like she couldn’t move. She was rooted in her seat in shock as her mother-in-law yelled from her spot by George’s side.
“He’s always talked to me! Always let me in on his life! But now…now I feel like I don’t even know him anymore.”
She looked down at her son and placed her hand gently on his cheek and leaned down to kiss him on the forehead right below his bandages. She then leaned back up and walked to the door. She paused by Callie’s chair.
“I just want to know my son again,” She said, quietly. “You… you I don’t really care to know.”
She then turned and walked out of the room. Callie watched as the other woman walked out and down the hallway. She turned back towards George and looked at him, he was still lying peacefully in his bed. Unaware of the outburst that just occurred in the room or of the pain and turmoil around him. Callie turned back and focused on the heart monitor again.
///000////
“Well there’s nothing in the Cognitive Rehabilitation book,” Meredith said, slamming her book close.
Izzie looked up from her book as Meredith sat back agitated.
“Did you check the section about Focal Neurological Signs?” Izzie asked from her spot beside Meredith.
“Yup a big nothing. Everything is either too radical or already tried and proven to be useless,” Meredith sighed.
“What about the transcranial doppler section?” Izzie asked again. “There’s got to be something we can find that would help.”
“Yeah check there too, again nothing,” Meredith said. “I’ve been researching so long the words on the page are starting to blur.”
“Here lets switch, maybe I can find something in the books and you can look on the net,” Alex offered standing up to take Meredith’s spot by Izzie.
“Have you tried asking Derek about George’s case?” Izzie asked.
“Yeah but that was yesterday when we didn’t really know anything. And even then it wasn’t a good report. Today he’s been swamp with surgeries, I haven’t even seen him.”
Izzie sighed as she went back to her book. Their shifts had ended hours ago but they all decided to stay to see if they could find something that would help on George’s case. They may not have been his doctors on the case, but they were still doctors. They still felt the need to help out. Or at least that was how Meredith, Alex and Cristina felt. For her it had been something completely different. But she couldn’t tell them that.
“I don’t know what I would do if Derek ever went through something like this,” Meredith said, breaking the silence the group had fallen into while they researched.
“Yeah it would suck for him, who would perform his surgery? He’s the best so asking for anyone else would just be a bit of a downer,” Alex snorted.
“Well, yeah there’s that, but also just the fact it’s Derek. I don’t know how Callie has kept it together for this long.” Meredith said, clicking through websites on her computer.
“You just do,” Cristina said from her spot at the computer on the table next to Meredith. “I mean yeah you go through that level of freak out at first, but you get through it and you just focus on them getting better.”
“George is different,” Izzie said, somberly, as she looked down at the book in front of her. “Burke was sitting up and talking and functioning. His arm was hurt but he was here with you. George, he’s just… there. Not moving. Not talking. Not functioning. Not being George.”
Meredith looked over at her friend sadly.
“Iz, have you been in to see George yet? I mean actually gone in to see him instead of looking in from the window outside his room.”
Izzie just shook her head no.
“Why not? I thought you would be in there annoying him until he woke up,” Alex said, sarcastically as he flipped through the pages of his book in front of him.
“It’s complicated,” Izzie said, thinking about her and George’s predicament. “We sorta… I guess you could say had a disagreement.”
“What did you do use his tooth brush again?” Meredith asked with a small smile. “Or still fighting with Callie?”
“Something like that, yeah. Plus, I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I sorta have bad luck when it comes to my loved ones surviving when I’m on their case.”
Alex rolled his eyes. “He’s not Denny 2.0. He’s not your tragic love story.”
Izzie’s head popped up as she looked up at Alex with a sad look, before just as quickly looking back down at her book. Meredith watched her friend with a raised eyebrow.
“Have you guys ever heard of Therapeutic Hypothermia?” Cristina asked, looking at her computer screen.
“Is that where you freeze people after they’ve gone into cardiac arrest?” Meredith asked.
“Yeah, Burke mentioned it once during a surgery, but I’ve never seen one actually done.”
“So? What does this have to do with George’s case?” Alex asked.
“According to this website there’s been a some experiments on head trauma patients in Scotland and its had a few favorable outcomes.”
“What do you mean by a ‘few’” Izzie asked, concerned as she got up and stood over Cristina’s shoulder to read her computer screen.
“Well there’s been some not-so-favorable cases as well, but it has proven to be helpful in other cases. George has the same test results and pressure problems as the cases that did survive.”
“Do you think it would help George?” Meredith asked.
“I don’t know,” Cristina said, unsure. “But it looks better than everything else we’ve looked up. It’s got to be better than a shunt.”
“Well we’re going to need some help if we’re going to get around annoying guy-who-doesn’t-shower,” Alex said, standing up.
“What do you suggest we do? He seems pretty hell bent on keeping George as his case, like George is some prize to prove that he’s a better intern than us or something weird like that,” Meredith pointed out.
“I have an idea,” Alex said, smiling.
///000////
“Dr. Bailey,” Alex called out, as he walked up to the doctor who was filling out paper work at the nurses’ station. Meredith, Cristina, and Izzie were following close behind him. “We have an idea we’d like to run past you.”
Bailey looked up at her interns. “What are you sucks ups still doing here? I thought I sent you all home to get some rest?”
“We’re still here probably for the same reasons you are,” Meredith pointed out.
Bailey opened her mouth to protest but was cut off by Izzie.
“We have a plan. A plan to make George better.”
Bailey looked at her interns skeptically. “Why does that statement make me nervous?
///000///
Fic: Falling Awake
Rating: Nothing bad here, unless you would count angst.
Feedback: Of course, feedback is like our crack!
Summary: Just when George thought his life couldn’t get any more complicated, it does.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything, unfortunately. It would be cooler if I did though.
Spoilers: All the way until the end of the episode “The Other Side of Life” after that my version takes a different route. I started this fic over the summer so this season doesn’t really count, any similarities is only by coincidence. If you haven’t watch S4 yet and are staying away from spoilers don’t worry nothing here will spoil you.
A/N: Many thanks goes to those who have already read a lot of this and help me sort through my writers block. It was much appreciate! :)
Just a little warning, the medical situations in this may be completely off, I don’t know anything, really, when it comes to hospitals or medical knowledge, so prepare yourself for having to suspend your imagination and belief.
///000///
Bailey pressed the up arrow button as she stood outside the elevator doors and waited for them to open.
It had been a long day, too long. She thought she had made the right decision in giving her interns busy work to make sure they stayed out of the way of George’s care, but now she wasn’t so sure it was the best plan. She had taken herself off the case because she felt too close. Lately, she had been questioning her leadership skills after the turmoil her interns had been through in the past year. She didn’t want to add failing to save their fellow intern and friend to the list. So she made sure to keep herself and her interns busy enough to take their minds off their hurt friend.
Except it didn’t work. She had been worried about George all day and could hardly get any work done because of it. And she knew her interns felt the same way. She had caught them all on George’s floor on different occasions, despite the fact she gave them work that would keep them off of his floor. She couldn’t blame them, though. The only reason why she caught them was because she was checking in on George herself.
As the elevator doors opened up, she allowed the people in it to exit it before she stepped on and pressed the button for the fifth floor. She found herself alone as the doors closed once more and started its slow pull upwards. A fact she was happy about. She needed the quietness even if was for a short ride to the fifth floor.
The elevator came to a stop on the second floor and the doors opened in front of her. The doctor that had giving her such a hard time about the death of Denny Duquette earlier in the year stepped into the elevator with her and turned to push the button for the fifth floor but noticed it was already lit up.
“Dr. Bailey.” He greeted, coldly as he turned back around.
“Dr. Savoy.” Bailey mirrored his greeting.
“I take it you’re going to check on your intern,” he said, nodding to the button that indicated the floor George was on.
“I am. How’s his condition?” Bailey said turning towards him. She couldn’t believe that out of all the residents that could have taken over the case, it had to be the guy that questioned her authority so much.
“It hasn’t changed. Still not responding to any of the test the way we would like.”
“I was told earlier that your interns are suggesting to install a shunt on George, is that right?”
“Where did you hear that?”
“That’s not important,” Bailey said, shaking her head. “Is it true? Because if so that seems a bit serious at this point in time.”
“I don’t know about you Dr. Bailey, but I’m in the business of saving people’s lives. Yes, we are looking at installing a shunt, its been proven to be helpful in other coma patients. And if it has proven to be helpful than it’s not out of the question.”
Bailey nodded as she turned back to the front of the elevator. She felt her emotions rise but held them in check while she was in the presence of the doctor beside her.
“It’s a little ironic, don’t you think?” Dr. Savoy said, breaking the silence.
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s ironic that it was your intern involved in a work related accident. Out of all the interns in the program, once again it’s one of yours making news for the hospital staff to talk about,” He said, smirking down at the shorter doctor.
Bailey turned towards him and furrowed her eyebrows.
“And what exactly is that suppose to mean?” Bailey huffed out.
“Let me put it this way, by ironic I mean typical.”
“It was an accident. Nothing else. George getting hurt…it wasn’t anyone’s fault,” Bailey tried to explain, annoyed.
The elevator finally reached its destination as it came to a stop on George’s floor. As the doors opened up the smug doctor turned back towards Bailey.
“No one’s fault?” he asked, with a tilt of his head and a smirk planted firmly on his face. “Funny, I wonder where I’ve heard that excuse before?”
He then turned and stepped off the elevator, leaving a shocked Bailey behind.
///000///
Callie watched the heart monitor as it beeped out a steady rhythm. She had been watching the monitor screen from the moment they let her back to see George over 24 hours ago. Making sure that rhythm didn’t speed up or slow down. At the moment the rhythm was the only constant thing in her life and it was the only thing that was keeping her together. So she focused on the steady beep that filled the silence in the room. The beep meant George was alive and that was all that matter to her.
George’s mother walked back into the room and went straight to the opposite side of George’s bed that Callie was sitting on.
“Honey, I’m back,” She said to George lying so still on the bed. She fiddled with George hospital gown as she tried to straighten out some of the winkles it had from his listless state. “You’re brothers and I tried that cafeteria you’re always talking about. There were a lot of doctors and nurses there, many of them asking about you.”
Callie noticed once again his mother was acting like she wasn’t there. She had been doing that ever since she had shown up at the hospital with Izzie Stephens in tow. Callie tried to make small talk with the her new mother-in-law, but she would always give her short answers that would pretty much kill the conversation. But it was her mother-in-law so she wouldn’t give up on her just yet.
“Where are Ronny and Jerry?” Callie asked, keeping her focus on the heart monitor.
“Work.” She said, shortly as she smoothed George’s gown out with her hand.
Callie just sighed heavily as she watched the line on the heart monitor go up and down.
“Honey, you’re brothers wish they could be here but they couldn’t take much time off of work after spending so much time here when you’re father was sick. So you’ll have to wake up so when they get off work they can see and talk with you again.”
Callie wished they were here too. At least they actually talked to her.
“They would love to hear you talk again. Maybe you can tell them about your internship or your friends. They would love to hear about them, just as long as you’re talking to them again.”
The sad sound of her voice got Callie’s attention as she looked over at her mother-in-law, she was fiddling with his gown as tears streamed down her face. Callie swallowed hard.
“I’m sure he would love to tell them about it,” Callie tried, lightly.
The older lady looked up at her with anger in her eyes.
“How would you know?”
Callie looked at her in confusion. “Because I’m his wife.”
“Really? Is that why he hasn’t talked to us since the day he told us he married you? Is that why I haven’t talk to my boy in months?”
Callie was taken back by the anger in her voice that was being directed at her.
“Months! It’s been months since I’ve heard the voice of my youngest son! First I loose a husband and then I loose my son to *you*,” She said angrily, making sure to spit out the ‘you’ at the end.
Callie had no clue George hadn’t been talking to his family.
“I told him that night that marrying you was a mistake. It was too soon after his father’s death. It was obviously something he didn’t want to hear at the time. He’s too damn hard headed!”
Callie felt like she couldn’t move. She was rooted in her seat in shock as her mother-in-law yelled from her spot by George’s side.
“He’s always talked to me! Always let me in on his life! But now…now I feel like I don’t even know him anymore.”
She looked down at her son and placed her hand gently on his cheek and leaned down to kiss him on the forehead right below his bandages. She then leaned back up and walked to the door. She paused by Callie’s chair.
“I just want to know my son again,” She said, quietly. “You… you I don’t really care to know.”
She then turned and walked out of the room. Callie watched as the other woman walked out and down the hallway. She turned back towards George and looked at him, he was still lying peacefully in his bed. Unaware of the outburst that just occurred in the room or of the pain and turmoil around him. Callie turned back and focused on the heart monitor again.
///000////
“Well there’s nothing in the Cognitive Rehabilitation book,” Meredith said, slamming her book close.
Izzie looked up from her book as Meredith sat back agitated.
“Did you check the section about Focal Neurological Signs?” Izzie asked from her spot beside Meredith.
“Yup a big nothing. Everything is either too radical or already tried and proven to be useless,” Meredith sighed.
“What about the transcranial doppler section?” Izzie asked again. “There’s got to be something we can find that would help.”
“Yeah check there too, again nothing,” Meredith said. “I’ve been researching so long the words on the page are starting to blur.”
“Here lets switch, maybe I can find something in the books and you can look on the net,” Alex offered standing up to take Meredith’s spot by Izzie.
“Have you tried asking Derek about George’s case?” Izzie asked.
“Yeah but that was yesterday when we didn’t really know anything. And even then it wasn’t a good report. Today he’s been swamp with surgeries, I haven’t even seen him.”
Izzie sighed as she went back to her book. Their shifts had ended hours ago but they all decided to stay to see if they could find something that would help on George’s case. They may not have been his doctors on the case, but they were still doctors. They still felt the need to help out. Or at least that was how Meredith, Alex and Cristina felt. For her it had been something completely different. But she couldn’t tell them that.
“I don’t know what I would do if Derek ever went through something like this,” Meredith said, breaking the silence the group had fallen into while they researched.
“Yeah it would suck for him, who would perform his surgery? He’s the best so asking for anyone else would just be a bit of a downer,” Alex snorted.
“Well, yeah there’s that, but also just the fact it’s Derek. I don’t know how Callie has kept it together for this long.” Meredith said, clicking through websites on her computer.
“You just do,” Cristina said from her spot at the computer on the table next to Meredith. “I mean yeah you go through that level of freak out at first, but you get through it and you just focus on them getting better.”
“George is different,” Izzie said, somberly, as she looked down at the book in front of her. “Burke was sitting up and talking and functioning. His arm was hurt but he was here with you. George, he’s just… there. Not moving. Not talking. Not functioning. Not being George.”
Meredith looked over at her friend sadly.
“Iz, have you been in to see George yet? I mean actually gone in to see him instead of looking in from the window outside his room.”
Izzie just shook her head no.
“Why not? I thought you would be in there annoying him until he woke up,” Alex said, sarcastically as he flipped through the pages of his book in front of him.
“It’s complicated,” Izzie said, thinking about her and George’s predicament. “We sorta… I guess you could say had a disagreement.”
“What did you do use his tooth brush again?” Meredith asked with a small smile. “Or still fighting with Callie?”
“Something like that, yeah. Plus, I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I sorta have bad luck when it comes to my loved ones surviving when I’m on their case.”
Alex rolled his eyes. “He’s not Denny 2.0. He’s not your tragic love story.”
Izzie’s head popped up as she looked up at Alex with a sad look, before just as quickly looking back down at her book. Meredith watched her friend with a raised eyebrow.
“Have you guys ever heard of Therapeutic Hypothermia?” Cristina asked, looking at her computer screen.
“Is that where you freeze people after they’ve gone into cardiac arrest?” Meredith asked.
“Yeah, Burke mentioned it once during a surgery, but I’ve never seen one actually done.”
“So? What does this have to do with George’s case?” Alex asked.
“According to this website there’s been a some experiments on head trauma patients in Scotland and its had a few favorable outcomes.”
“What do you mean by a ‘few’” Izzie asked, concerned as she got up and stood over Cristina’s shoulder to read her computer screen.
“Well there’s been some not-so-favorable cases as well, but it has proven to be helpful in other cases. George has the same test results and pressure problems as the cases that did survive.”
“Do you think it would help George?” Meredith asked.
“I don’t know,” Cristina said, unsure. “But it looks better than everything else we’ve looked up. It’s got to be better than a shunt.”
“Well we’re going to need some help if we’re going to get around annoying guy-who-doesn’t-shower,” Alex said, standing up.
“What do you suggest we do? He seems pretty hell bent on keeping George as his case, like George is some prize to prove that he’s a better intern than us or something weird like that,” Meredith pointed out.
“I have an idea,” Alex said, smiling.
///000////
“Dr. Bailey,” Alex called out, as he walked up to the doctor who was filling out paper work at the nurses’ station. Meredith, Cristina, and Izzie were following close behind him. “We have an idea we’d like to run past you.”
Bailey looked up at her interns. “What are you sucks ups still doing here? I thought I sent you all home to get some rest?”
“We’re still here probably for the same reasons you are,” Meredith pointed out.
Bailey opened her mouth to protest but was cut off by Izzie.
“We have a plan. A plan to make George better.”
Bailey looked at her interns skeptically. “Why does that statement make me nervous?
///000///