SO HIGH SCHOOL ― mark sloan

ONE

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HIPPOCRATES ONCE SAID:
"HE WHO WISHES TO BE A SURGEON SHOULD GO TO WAR."

Dorothea cried the first time she held a gun. Her father loved hunting, her mother cooked the deer, and her brother skinned the animal.

But not Dorothea.

Her hands trembled and she dropped the loaded weapon and accidentally shot it off — sending a bullet directly into her brother's calf.

The first time she held a gun was also the first time she met a surgeon.

Dorothea's favorite person in all of creation was her brother. Ten years her senior, carrying her on his back and taking her out for late night ice cream trips — Denny was the most important thing to Dorothea.

Shooting him was a complete accident — who lets a ten-year-old hold a gun on Thanksgiving, anyway? — but meeting the surgeon who held his life in his hands was fate.

Because sitting in the hospital room at Denny's bedside, she asked her dad for every book on human anatomy that she could find. And in the two weeks it took to in the hospital, Dorothea snuck into other patients' rooms and asked about their diagnosis, wrote down the prognosis, came up with treatments.

Because she held a gun and shot her brother, she knew she wanted to be a surgeon.

And she knew, without a doubt, that she was not a soldier.

—

"First days are tough, Dottie," Denny mused as he watched her pace back and forth across the kitchen.

He moved out when he was twenty, taking Dorothea with him. She wasn't legally his kid, but their parents were fairly negligent to the girl growing up — it was always speculated that their father wasn't in fact Dorothea's dad — but Denny never treated her any different.

They'd moved around a lot during her childhood. New York, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Chicago, before settling on the opposite side of the country: Seattle, Washington.

"Yeah, but this is worse than a first day," Dorothea whined, frowning at him. "I'm a resident but my hospital closed and now I have to start a brand-new hospital with brand new people and brand-new codes and brand new—"

"—Dot, breathe."

Dorothea inhaled deeply and let out an exhale. "Okay."

"You can do this," Denny stood, walking towards her and placing her hands on her shoulders. "But you're going to be late in," he grabbed her watch and gave her a pointed look. "Three minutes. So...start driving."

Dorothea squealed, pecking his cheek and grabbing her bag, rushing out of the door. A loud laugh followed her when she ran back inside to grab her keys before slamming the door shut.

—

"This is the Resident's Lounge," a third-year resident explained to her; Callie Torres, if Dorothea recalled correctly. 

Dorothea nodded, glancing around. It was simple enough: an array of lockers, a small kitchenette, wooden floors. 

"I'll spend most of my time in here when I'm not in surgery," Callie continued. "Bailey does too, you'll meet her later." She glanced to Dorothea. "You said you're from Chicago, right?"