Stitches of Survival

Sleeping Monster

Chapter Thirty-Four: Sleeping Monster

*~*~*~*

"Are you excited?" Mark asked me.

"To get back to work? Hell yes." I nodded, finding his question to be redundant. While I had enjoyed our honeymoon, I had missed work and helping my patients. I was more than ready to get back to work.

"Okay, I guess I should've known the answer." He chuckled as he rolled onto his side to look at me. "Do you know what you're going to go by now?"

"What?" My brows furrowed together in confusion.

"At work, do you know what you're going to go by?" He asked me again. I could feel my eyes widen slightly at the realization as to what he was asking. My mind went blank, not sure what to say. That had been one thing that I hadn't been thinking about, especially not during our trip to Hawaii, a surprise wedding gift from Addison and Jake. "I don't wanna pressure you or anything, you just haven't talked about it and I was curious."

"I'm not sure." I was honest with him. "You know, I never really pictured myself going by anything other than Watley when I became a doctor. It's my mother's name, something I worked so hard to do in her memory, she's why I became a doctor."

*~*~*~*

"We are throwing Bailey under the bus." Derek said as I walked into one of the lounges later that morning, finding him, Jackson, Meredith, Callie, Arizona, and Cristina all sitting around.

"What about Bailey?" I frowned, not knowing what they were talking about.

"Some of her patients died so CDC got brought in." Meredith gave me the short version, making my eyes widen.

"Come on. That is not what we're doing." Jackson turned to Derek, getting back to their conversation that I'd interrupted.

"Yeah, it seems like that's exactly what we're doing." Callie shook her head, agreeing with Derek.

"Two of our patients are dead of the same post-op infection." Jackson reminded her. "A third one's barely hanging on. It was time. We get the CDC in here and figure this thing out."

"Holy shit." I swore as I took a seat in the empty chair next to the couch. Mark and I had only been gone for a few weeks and everything had seemed to go to hell.

"By treating Bailey like a criminal?" Meredith frowned at my brother's explanation. "She hasn't done anything."

"I hope that you're right." Jackson said, trying to make it clear that he didn't want anything bad to happen to Bailey. "The truth is, we don't know that yet. CDC is simply asking us to temporarily freeze Bailey's files."

"Oh, come on." Derek scoffed.

"And that we not discuss this investigation with her." Jackson added, shooting Meredith and I both looks since he knew how close we were with our old mentor. "So today, just keep your distance."

"That is ridiculous." Cristina spoke up.

"Also I think now's the time to put out a statement." Jackson suggested as he looked around at all of us.

"No." Everyone started to shake their heads.

"I just got here and even I know that's a bad idea." I spoke honestly, hoping to get through to him. "Saying something could jeopardize Bailey's career."

"About what?" Arizona asked, a frown pulling at the corners of her lips. "I mean, we don't even know if Bailey's the source of this thing."

"If one of ours is at fault and we just sit on this information, we look like we're trying to cover something up." Jackson tried to reason with all of us. "They only way to let the public know that we can be objective is by being transparent."