Had I known How to Save a Life

What Happens Next

Chapter 64
*Meredith POV*

In surgery, you are sometimes stuck. You're sometimes just left there wondering, what now? Is this it? What happens next? You're left worrying and wondering. After every trauma or disaster you think the same. What happens next? How do I recover from this. But when the big disasters hit, like the ones you have nightmares about...what happens next is life or death.

It's been like two weeks since since Alex's sister got here. But she's about to go back home and Alex & Jo are gonna fly with her there, see his family for like two hours then come back. She's going to move to Seattle though, and she's got a job set up and start going to SJC, Seattle Junior College.

"Should I be nervous about meeting his family? I mean that's usually something that happens before you get married and before you have a baby, so I should be nervous right? Like I'm not just over reacting?" Wilson confides in me after rounds. "What if they don't like me?"

"Wilson you're a grown up. It shouldn't matter if they do or do not like you. Focus, you're my resident for today, let tomorrow's problems be tomorrow's problems." I tell her.

"Right, sorry." She says quietly.

Our patient is 29 years old, a very rare, very inoperable tumor. I've seen a tumor like this before. When I was a resident. We took out all the organs all at once. Edwards is on Bailey's service so she's presenting.

"Maddie West, 29,..." She continues.

"So you're going to take out all my organs, remove the tumor, and put them all back in all at once. And hope it works?" She asks, clearly confused by was we're doing.

All the doctors in the room look at me since I'm the lead on this case, "Well...basically, yes that's exactly what we're doing. It's easier said than done."

"And you think it's going to work?" Her husband asks.

"There's no telling what exactly we're in store for until we actually get the organs out. Just about every other hospital in the nation would tell you this is an inoperable tumor. We've had a case similar to yours not too many years ago and we were very successful. Every tumor is different but, we're hoping with our plan of action we'll get the best results." I explain.

"But you think this is our best shot? No chemo or radiation?" Maddie asks.

"This is our only shot, it's a long shot for sure. And not all the odds are in our favor. But we have an excellent team." I say.

We leave and finish up rounds. This is my only surgery today, because it's going to be very long.

We get her prepped and I see her husband, Ryan in the hallway, "Excuse me, Dr. Grey, this probably sounds silly. But I was wondering, what happens next? After the surgery, do we just go back to normal? No more chemo, no more appointments?"

"The recovery is going to be long, but if this goes the way we want it to go, then yes, it goes back to normal. Of course there will be check ups but they're the good kind of check ups." I reassure him.

We get into the OR. Maggie is here, Bailey, Richard is observing, Wilson and Edwards are the residents, and April is back from leave so she's on this case too.

"10 blade" I say. I can see Derek up in the gallery and he gives me his McDreamy smile. I make the cut, and we get in and see what we're dealing with.

"This is by far the worse tumor I've ever seen," April says.

"You shoulda see the one the first time we did this surgery," I say.

"You've done this before? Like more people can actually get tumors like these?" April asks astonished.

"Yeah we had this girl, Bailey she was what 11? I was a resident still, and I brought my Anatomy Jane doll cause I had found it in some boxes, and that's how we got the idea." I tell her.

"You came up with this cause of a doll?" Jo asks?

"Hey! Not just any doll, THE Anatomy Jane doll." Bailey says very defensively.

On 3, 1...2...3... We lift all the organs out of the body.

"I've seen crazy tumors before. But not this kind of crazy," Maggie says.

"What happens next?" Edwards asks.

We have all the organs out. Yet we don't know where to start. We're just staring at a monster. What does happen next?

"Well don't just stand there people, this girls counting on us to fix her. 8 other hospitals told her she had a death sentence. But we didn't. We told her we can give her a shot. So that's what the hell we're gonna do. No just stand here like we've never seen an organ before!" Bailey says quickly.

We snap out of it and focus up. Hours upon hours pass. She's crashed but we've successfully gotten her back. There's still small piece of the tumor left. And we all look at each other. We quickly lift all the organs together and out the back in.

We did it. For the second time. As a whole team, we all give her husband the news and right after, Alex runs and grabs Jo and says they're flight got changed and they're leaving right now.

That surgery was exhausting. I swing by day care and visit the kids before I have to get back.

I go to see Maddie, as she's just waking up and give her the run down, "This was the second time I've done this procedure and it couldn't have gone better. It was touch and go at some points and a lotta times we did begin to wonder if the tumor was about to get the best of us but it couldn't have gone better." I tell her.

I go home with Derek because we both got off at the same time, after we get the get the kids to bed we're both in the bathroom and I ask "What happens next? The kids are in bed, the house isn't a mess."

"The kids are in bed?" He says? "The kids are in bed." I say with a wink.

He literally sweeps me off my feet and drops me into bed and we have quietly have, much needed, end of the day, hot, sex.

After a few hours of going at it, we call it a night. "This is everything I've ever wanted. You are everything I've ever wanted. Our family. Us. This is beautiful." Derek whispers in my ear as I slowly fall asleep. We're both off tomorrow so we don't even bother setting an alarm and it's Saturday so Zola doesn't have school.

The night passes quickly and ends suddenly when mine and Derek's pagers ring 911. We're not even on call.

Derek calls Amelia to come watch the kids, it's 6 in the morning and it's pouring.

We get to the traumas and right before we go into trauma 1, Webber stops me.
"Grey, you're going to have to be a doctor not family right now."

"What the hell are you talking about?" I ask out loud. Arizona rushes by me, "She doesn't know?"

"What don't I know?!" I say frustrated.

Who's in the trauma rooms? Alex and Jo are in Iowa. I literally talked to Cristina 20 minutes ago.

Webber opens the door. I see a man with a shard of glass from a windshield in-paling his abdomen. I run to Trauma 2, and a woman...Jo and Alex aren't in Iowa. They aren't just in the trauma rooms.

They are the trauma.