A Fight to Remember

Rip off the Bandage Pt. 2

"I know this is difficult to accept Meredith." Avery started, "But in the last few months some of the staff have brought up concerns about your behavior."

"Really?"

"First it was little things, late here and there, forgetting things, losing things... but now It's starting to affect patient care."

"Patient care?" I asked.

"You forgot to show up for a surgery last week, and three times this month you forgot to order labs for the patients you are working on. Luckily, Dr. Peters caught it. Actually, he's been covering for you a lot, even though he's been focusing on Neuro, he's been logging in almost double the general hours on your service."

"What?" So that's why he'd been with me so much.

"And then there's this..." Avery turned on the tablet. A video of me performing a surgery. "This was yesterday." I watched it for a few minutes, everything seemed to be going smoothly until I saw myself pause. In the video, it looked like I was staring into space. Dr. Peters called my name, from that point forward, Dr. Peters walked me through my own surgery as I tried to pass it off as me teaching him. "What was that?." Avery asked.

"It was... nothing, a new teaching method."

"You stumbled through the procedure like a fifth year resident the whole time. That's not like you, Grey."

I swallowed. "So what does this mean?"

Avery closed out the video on the tablet and pushed it aside. "The board wants to suspend you from surgery until we find out what's wrong."

"What?" The news was a gunshot to the chest. They were suspending me? For what? I hadn't done anything wrong. "That patient made it through surgery. My success rate is high, and it's not because I play it safe. I'm an exceptional surgeon, you know I am."

"I know that, Mer, but it's only because of the exceptional people around you catching your mistakes that someone hasn't died. This isn't something I can allow to happen. You know that."

"So you're suspending me."

"The board wants to, but I have another idea."

I rubbed my forehead. It was too much. That niggling feeling I had in my mind earlier came back with a vengeance. Now my own staff was doubting my abilities? And yesterday...that surgery... Avery was right, but I would never admit it. Halfway through the procedure, I blanked. It was as if thirty years of medical knowledge went down the drain. I remembered staring into the cavity and not knowing what to do. Thank God Dr. Peters was there, and I was able to use him to tell me what to do, until my brain caught up with my hands.

I just wanted to go home and curl up with a nice bottle of tequila. "Well?"

"I say you have a family emergency- take the week off. I can call Seattle Pres, and make an appointment for you with Dr. Allen, he's one of the best Neuropyschologists out there. He'll push you to the top of his list. You go take the tests, see what happens, and then we'll figure it out from there."

I shook my head, this can't be happening. Was this happening? "I-um..."

"You know I'm right. Take the week off at least. Think about it. But if you show up here without those tests done, I will have to go back to the board and we will officially suspend you."

So I didn't have a choice. I couldn't look at Avery anymore, I couldn't be in this room anymore. I had nothing more to say, so I walked out, hands in the pockets of my scrubs.

Is this how my mother found out? Was she forced into a similar situation? Or did she figure it out herself? What if Alex never made it to the OR today, would I have blanked out again? This wasn't a simple procedure, and you had to have a certain level of skill, not that I doubted Dr. Peters, but he was still only a resident. And he wanted to do neuro, not general. I wandered around the hospital until I thought, I should just go home. Alex would be a few more hours and I really didn't want to talk to him anyway, he had been in that meeting and I would probably just yell at him like I did Ellis.