A Little Unsteady (A Grey's Anatomy Story)

A Hard Days Night

"Each of you comes here today a hopeful. Wanting in on the game. A month ago you were in med school being taught by doctors. Today, you are the doctors. The seven years you spend here as a surgical resident will be the best and worst of your life. You will be pushed to the breaking point. Look around you. Say hello to your competition. Eight of you will switch to an easier specialty. Five of you will crack under the pressure and two of you will be asked to leave. This is your starting line. This is your arena. How well you play? That's up to you!" Chief of Surgery Dr. Richard Webber stood half way up the steps in the main entrance hall of Grey-Sloan Memorial Hospital and gave us the speech that either sent us running or sent waves of excitement through our bodies

Webber quickly concluded his speech and we were soon assigned Attendings to shadow for the rest of the year. I stood beside 4 other interns, we were all assigned to the same Attending.

"I sure hope we don't get medusa" one of the female interns mumbled inwardly to the group

"Whose medusa?" another intern gulped as his eyes widened at the nickname

"Interns?" We heard a sharp call from the double doors near the reception area

"Shit!" The intern who earlier spoke about Medusa made it clear who we were facing as she cursed under her breath

"I'm Dr. Grey and I'll be your senior attending this year" she mumbled uninterested as she checked her pager "I have five rules" she continued "Memorize them. Rule number one: Don't bother sucking up. I already hate you. That's not gonna change. Trauma protocol, phone list, pagers." She said as she handed us the necessary equipment we had to keep on our person at all times.

"Nurses will page you, you will answer every page at a run. A run! That's rule number two. Your first shift starts now and lasts 48 hours. You're interns, grunts, nobodies, bottom of the surgical food chain. You run labs, write orders, work every second night until you drop, and don't complain. On-call rooms, Attendings hog them. Sleep when you can, where you can, which brings me to rule number three. If I'm sleeping don't wake me unless your patient is dying, Rule four: the dying patient better not be dead when I get there. Not only will you have killed someone, you woke me for no reason. We clear?" Dr Grey came to the end of her lecture and we all stood back overwhelmed

I raised my hand in curiosity

"What?" Grey snapped

"You said five rules, that was only four" I spoke up bravely as the other 4 turned to stare at me

"Rule number five: When I move, YOU move!" Grey shouted as she took off in a sprint through the halls as her pager went crazy beeping

We took off behind her and entered our first patient room and saw the woman convulsing in fits in front of us. Each one of us froze except for Dr Grey. She launched into action fearlessly, calling out orders to everyone around her.

"We need a crash cart in here" Grey called out into the hallway "Don't you idiots just stand there! Quinn push one of epinephrine, Ross get the paddles off the crash cart and prepare for defib, Blake begin compressions and the rest of you just make yourselves god damn useful" Grey ordered

We all moved into action as quickly as we possibly could, the room became manic and just as quick as it happened, it was over. We managed to stabilise the patient and our first crisis was averted.

Dr Grey took a quick glance at us all and left the room without saying another word. We all took a massive sigh of relief and made our way to the Intern locker room.

"I'm Cassandra Blake" the young bright blue eyed brunette cheerily turned to face us as we all took a seat in the locker room "but you can all call me Cassie"