We race over to Seattle Pres, and Nathan is watching me the entire time we're in the back of the rig.
"Dr Grey, if you hadn't gone into general surgery, which other specialty would you have gone into?" Nathan asks me.
"I would have gone into neurosurgery." I say without hesitation.
"Why?"
"I loved how the brain worked and all of it's mysteries. The only thing keeping me back was the inability to fully separate work from home life. De- I mean Dr Shepard was also in neuro and we didn't work all that great together. He did take me under his wing tough, during my intern year. That year made my interest in neuro grow, but things were never going to go that direction. My mother came to visit a few times that year, and died when there was a massive trauma and a ferry boat accident. She told me I was extraordinary. I felt that me being an extraordinary surgeon was pulling me in the direction of general surgery. If she hadn't have come in, or died, or any of it, you would be talking to a neurosurgeon and wondering why she didn't follow in her mothers' footsteps." I say with a light laugh.
"Ellis Grey was a force to be reckoned with." Nathan said.
"You knew my mother?" I say shocked.
"Yeah, we worked together in Boston years ago. I was an intern, and she was the attending on my first case. This girl, a 19 year old, was having severe stomach pain, then being fine and happy as a cheerleader, then back to severe pain. We did a full work up, found nothing. Did every test in the book, CT, MRI, X-Rays, all the blood tests. All clean. I was talking with a friend in the library, looking for reasons why this girl was having this pain, then it occurred to me that it could be something to do with her brain, stomach, or diaphragm. We did more localized testing and found that it was a small tear in her diaphragm that was slowly opening more and more each time she felt the pain. It was a simple fix, but we also found out that she had recently lost a lot of weight, and started singing, running over five miles per day, and swimming for more than 2 hours per day. The stress of that combined with the rapid weight loss, and the fact that she hadn't been active at all before the worth loss predisposed her to weak muscles and a higher risk for something like this to happen. If your mother hadn't put me as the intern on this case, I probably would have picked trauma. I loved the high speed of it, and always having to think on your feet." Nathan shares.
"I had no idea my mother was that caring and invested in patients. Did she tell you never to use the patient's name, to avoid getting attached to them?" I ask.
"Yeah. I don't remember that girls name, but I remember everything else about her. It's weird."
"Yeah. My first case that got me interested in neuro was a 15 year old girl, Katie Bryce. She did rhythmic gymnastics, and during a rehearsal, she fell. Iced her ankle and everything was fine. Later that week, she started having grand mal seizures, with no visible cause. Scans were all clean, blood tests negative for any abnormalities. I was talking with Dr Yang in the library, and we came to thinking that even though the scans showed nothing relating to a hemorrhage, what if she had one anyway. So we did another MRI of her brain, and found a small bleed. We did surgery, me and Derek, and she was fine. She came back 10 years later though, with similar but different symptoms. I treated her again, and it was different but she asked where Derek went, and I said that it was a long story." I say, quickly wiping away a tear that just formed. I didn't realize it, but I had just been choking through those last few sentences. Nathan was now holding me in a tight embrace.
"Doctors, we're here." The EMT says. We unload from the back and go to the OR of Seattle Pres and get our kidney.
