Had I known How to Save a Life

We Got You

Chapter 9
*Meredith POV*

This accident is horrible. We've got a 15 year old, female, burn victim, with a splenic rupture, head injury, and her right leg is holding on by a thread plus a femur fracture.

We still have no idea what happened. And there's more victims coming.

I walk up to our 15 year old in the trauma, "Hi I'm Dr. Grey, can you tell your name?"

She looks terrified. I can't blame her. "I'm..I'm Nicole. Where is my brother? His..his name is Michael. Please don't let him die. He's all I have left." She's crying and we need to get her to CT immediately.

First I need to get the backstory on the accident. "I'll find out about your brother for you, don't worry. First I need you to tell me what happened? Can you tell me what happened?" I ask her.

"I was..uh I was driving. I got my permit last week for my birthday. Michael, he said he'd teach me how to drive. Everything was going good, but this car..it came out of no where. And I looked to the right and then we were flipping in mid air. Our car caught on fire and they pulled us out." She says, she's still crying. I'm going to try and save this girl.

"Don't worry. We got you. We're going to try our best." Derek tells her.

"Okay, Nicole, I'm Dr. Torres, I'm the orthopedic surgeon. I'm really sorry but your right leg was severely injured and we might need to amputate." Callie tells her.

"I'm..I'm a softball player and cross country runner. I'm on varsity and I'm in the top 10 fastest high school athletes in the state of Washington. Please, I really need my leg." She says.

"We're going to do everything we can. We got you, okay. We got you. Just remember that. Okay?" Derek tries to calm her down.

"We're going to take you to get a head CT, then get you into surgery. Dr. Torres here is going to work on your femur fracture and try to save your leg. Dr. Avery is going to treat your burns." I tell her.

She looks at Jackson and flat out says "If I die, I want you to know you have really pretty eyes." She laughs.

"Thank you, we're not going to let you die." Jackson says.

We get into the CT, she's stable for now. I make sure she's in there correctly. Before we send her in I tell her, "You're at an amazing hospital with amazing doctors. We're going to do everything we can."

She smiles and has a sign of relief.

After we get the scan back, it looks as though she has a brain bleed. We need to get her into the OR right now. "Okay honey, we're taking you to the OR now. You've got a head injury that Dr. Shepherd is going to fix." I give her the news.

We're rushing her through and I guess she catches her brother, he's in an bed and Maggie and Christina are telling him he needs a surgery to repair his aorta. "Nicole, Nicole! It's Michael. You're going to be okay." He shouts.

We get her into the OR. Derek sets up for a craniotomy. Alex and I will be repairing the Spleen. Jackson is working on her burns. And Callie and April are on her leg.

"Dammit. Dammit. There's no way I can save this leg. If her femur hadn't been fractured I might have been able to do a below the knee amputation. But it's, I'm out of options." Callie says. It must be bad if Callie has to amputate. Ever since Arizona she's tried to find every way to avoid amputation.

This poor girl. She said she's varsity softball and cross country. She's top 10 in the state of Washington. Why does this kind of stuff have to happen?

Owen comes to see how we're doing on her. "We got a drunk driver in the ER too. I think he's connected with this accident." He tells us.

The surgery takes several more hours, Derek fixed her head. I fixed her spleen. But she lost her leg. The lateral side of the left part of her body was burned, not severely so with Jackson's skin grafts, there will only be small scars. Her brother made it out of survey. He should make a full recovery.

She's in the ICU. She should be awake any minute now. I want to be there for her. When she wakes up. No kid deserves to go through hell and be alone when they wake up.

I walk into her room. I pull up a chair and sit down. A few minutes later, she wakes up. "I'm..I'm alive? I didn't die?"
She looks relieved. "Wait, oh my God, my leg. Its..its gone." She begins to cry again.

I try and think of what to say. But what do you say to someone when their whole world falls down. The ground beneath them tears apart.

"Dr. Torres tried everything. I'm so sorry. I know you think it's the end of the world. Everything around has fallen down. And you're left to pick up the pieces." I begin to say.

"I don't know how I'm going to come back from this. I could of gotten scholarships for colleges. But I'll find a way. I always do. I'm only 15 but I've dealt with worse than this. My mom left when I was 2. When I was 10, my dad died of cancer. Before he died, he told me to be great at whatever I do and whatever gets in my way to knock it down. I promised him I'd be great. So I don't know how yet, but I'm going to be great again." She tells me.

I'm about to cry myself.

"Don't cry, you saved my life. You should be proud. This was my fault. I bugged my brother about letting me drive." She says.

"It was a drunk driver that hit you. You did nothing wrong. I'm going to see how your brother is." I tell her.

When I come back, before I enter I can hear her crying. I wish I could help her more. But it's a long road back.

"Your brother is out of surgery, he's doing great and should make a full recovery." I tell her.

"Thank you so much, Dr. Grey."

I smile and leave.

What must you do when everything around you falls apart? How do you find all the missing pieces? You start from scratch. You figure out how to put yourself back together. You find your old pieces. You make new pieces to replace the ones too far beyond repair.