When I First Met Carina

Ben

Ben Warren was on cloud 9. His idea to combine surgery and firefighting had been in operation for all of six hours, and he had already saved a life with it. And not just any life, but the life of one of their own.

Rigo Vasquez was alive and fighting for his life in surgery, which was not great, but the fact that he was alive at all was 100% because of the PRT. Sure, his excitement was slightly dampened by the fact that someone from 19 had been injured, but he was still feeling pretty good.

As he walked to the waiting room to wait for an update of Rigo, he walked past Andrew and Carina Deluca who were clearly fighting about something, though they were doing it all in Italian so he had no idea what was going on. As he walked past, Andrew stormed away, Carina sighing and shaking her head.

Ben didn't know the OB that well considering she started at Grey Sloan right around the time he was leaving it, but he had been at various functions with her, and he was friends with Andrew so that made them friends by proxy sort of.

"Hey Carina, everything ok?" he asked, walking over to her because he was concerned.

"Si," Carina sighed, "Andrea is just...going through some things right now and he will not let me help him."

"Anything I can help with?" Ben offered, knowing from experience that sometimes things were better coming from friends than siblings.

"No," Carina said, shaking her head, "No. I just need him to understand what I am trying to get him to see. What are you doing here?"

"I am waiting to see how a member of my team is," Ben said, "Did you hear about the rocket near the tech schools?"

"Si," Carina nodded, that incident having been the talk of the hospital, "Did someone from your team get injured?"

"Yeah," Ben nodded, "It was so stupid. Two people who are not really on speaking terms because one of them did something really horrible to the other one ended up working together, and someone got hurt."

"Who got hurt?" Carina asked, feeling a sense of dread filling her stomach, knowing that Maya was currently not on speaking terms with Andy.

She wasn't really sure what she and the fire captain were doing, but the thought of something happening to the blonde made her feel a little sick.

"This guy who just transferred to our shift," Ben said, looking at Carina weird, "Why?"

"Oh, um..." Carina said, trying to figure out what to say, "I just...Andrea and Maggie did that ride along with your team that one day and Andrea is still friends with some of them, and he would want to know if they were hurt."

"Oh," Ben said, nodding, "Yeah, no. He would not know this guy. He's actually kind of a jackass, and no one on our team is particularly fond of him, but it's still hard when someone gets hurt."

"Is your whole team here?" Carina asked, hoping she could go steal a few minutes with Maya, maybe check in with her, "I know sometimes you all wait when someone is injured."

"No," Ben said, shaking his head, "It's just me and the battalion chief. The captain took everyone else back to the station. Everyone is pissed at her."

"Your captain is a woman?" Carina said, playing coy just to see what Ben thought about Maya, having listened to the blonde talk about how much everyone had disliked her as captain, "I thought Andrea said it was a man."

"We just got a new captain," Ben said, "She's the youngest captain in the department and the first woman captain at 19, and it has not gone so well. Her best friend was supposed to get the job, but Bishop got the job instead."