Romancing Dr. Bailey

To Tell the Truth

Miranda Bailey was exhausted. She had just been on her feet for 10 straight hours. It was a grueling procedure. The patient, Shel Smalls, had come in two days ago. He was complaining of abdominal pains. Nothing had showed up on scans and everyone was confused. A couple of hours before his exploratory surgery, his heart started to fail. Miranda called on her newest colleague, Maggie Pierce, the Attending cardiothoracic surgeon, to help. Pierce had taken over after one of Miranda's former interns, Cristina Yang, had moved to Switzerland to head her own cardio hospital program. They moved him to the Operating Room (OR) and by the beauty of science and the grace of God, Shel Smalls had started to breathe again. With the combined efforts of Miranda and Maggie, he was also pain free and the tumors were removed from his stomach and other affected areas. It had been a long day.

Miranda was alone. She sauntered into the scrub room and the automatic lights flickered on. She scrubbed her brown hands two times singing softly the words to Aretha Franklin's 1968 hit, "Think" before saying a quick prayer and walking out. Miranda looked into the pocket of her dark blue Attending scrubs and pulled out her To-Do List. There were three items on the list. Number one on her list: Mr. Smalls' surgery. She reached into her other pocket and pulled out her favorite pen. Number two on her list: Call Eli. Eli was her boyfriend and a nurse at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. They'd been dating for about 7 months. She was calling him to ask him if he could pickup dinner because she and Little Tuck wouldn't be getting home until late and she knew that she wouldn't be in the mood to cook. As it turns out, she was rushed into surgery. She'd had an intern call Eli to ask him to not only pick up dinner, but to pick up her son from the hospital daycare center as well. Of course, there was no problem. She loved that about him, he was easygoing and very on top of things.

Number three: invite Richard to dinner. Richard, the Chief of Surgery, was a general surgeon like herself, her boss and her mentor at the hospital. He was like a father to her, taking her under his wing after she'd moved from Boston to Seattle when she was just a newlywed. Her ex-husband, Tucker had gotten a great accounting job and like a good, young wife, she'd applied for jobs in the area where they would be living. Thankful for another person who'd dropped out of the program to become a musician; she'd slipped in and taken the last intern spot. And never looked back. And a lot of that was because of Richard. He'd introduced her to the city, his family and the hospital. She was "young, gifted and black" and everyone knew it. So, Richard began teaching her everything he knew. He groomed her into the force that she was. Actually, they spent so much time together that his wife was convinced that they were having an affair! Miranda chuckled to herself thinking about that encounter. That was a couple of years ago and she knew that her red face a sight to see as Adele, Richard's wife, strolled into the hospital, dressed glamorously from head to toe, marched right up to Miranda who was talking with two other colleagues and accused her of sleeping with her boss. Her fears were warranted. It wouldn't have been the first time her husband had cheated on her. It was common knowledge that he'd cheated on the notorious Dr. Ellis Grey. A woman who'd started at Seattle Grace the same time that he did. Both doctors were married, but they were in love.

The woman was actually the mother on one of Miranda's interns. The intern, Meredith Grey, was also the sister (same father, different mother) of Lexie Grey. Lexie was half of the hospital's namesake. There was a terrible plane crash and she was killed instantly. Dr. Mark Sloan, the Head of the Plastics department, a wonderful and very sexy man, (Miranda knew he'd want her to say that) was also injured terribly and he'd made it back to Seattle Grace only to die because of his injuries. That was around the time that she became friends with Eli. It was very sad, the board of the hospital voted to have the hospital's name changed from Seattle Grace to Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. And the hospital was where Richard spent so much of his time. But Miranda was not the person Adele was looking for. She and Tucker had a long laugh when she told him about that. They'd also had a long night in the sheets. They used to say that was the night they conceived Little Tuck, their beautiful son, the perfect combination of his parents, strong and intelligent. Her thoughts were off-track. Miranda shook her head and remembered Richard. She was inviting him to dinner tomorrow night, a night that she knew that they were both free, she'd checked with his assistant, Patricia. Her mentor had been tested recently, he was off the wagon, a recovering alcoholic and his wife had enough of his behavior and left him. It turned out that he wasn't having an affair with a person, but he was spending all of his nights at the hospital, scouring for surgeries and sleeping in his office.