The journey to here

7

Meredith Grey was a piece of work.

One minute, we're having amazing sex and cuddled up like nothing in the world could ever be wrong. At the next day at work, she's being a complete bitch.

"Grey, if I have to tell you one more time to lose the attitude, I'll cut you open with a scalpel" I snap, as we round on post ops. It was only noon, and so far, Meredith had managed to annoy me in every way, shape and form.

First, she was ten minutes late. I let that bit slide considering it was barely five in the morning, but then she started mouthing off. Every chance she got, she was questioning what I was doing, asking me if what I had planned for every surgery was the best option, expressing concern in front of patients which would make any patient nervous, but pregnant ladies have that extra set of nerves since their babies are involved in the situation.

I'd told her to drop it multiple times, which led her to ask me if I knew I was wrong and that's why I didn't want to explain to her my choices, which pissed me off even more. There wasn't enough coffee in the world to keep me from strangling Meredith Grey.

"I'm just wondering why it would be so difficult for you to explain to me why you're choosing this approach with the patient instead of leaving her on bedrest to see if the problem resolves itself, after all it isn't like the problem is pressing" Meredith asked me, with a know it all tone to her voice.

Our patient had fibroids in her uterus, which are pretty common noncancerous tumours that set up shop in the uterus every now and then. Some small ones resolve themselves, but our patient was presenting with a couple of larger ones that, while they weren't huge, were a bit of an issue considering she is also thirty weeks pregnant. As the baby grows, I worried that the fibroids will cause worse problems. Right now there were a couple of issues, such as the baby presenting abnormally when we do ultrasounds, but nothing overly pressing. If this were a non pregnant patient, I'd tell her to wait it out a couple months before visiting surgical options.

"Because Meredith, I'm the attending and you're the resident. I have experience and I don't have to explain my choices to you when I obviously know what's best for my patient" exhaustion is evident in my tone; she's driving me to drink.

"This is a teaching hospital; explaining what you're doing to me is exactly what your job is" Meredith fires back, not missing a beat.

"Did you look at the scans?" I ask her harshly, and continue when she nods "well look at them again" I throw them back into her hands from the file I'd been holding them in. She examines them for a minute, and shrugs.

"Doesn't look like there's anything to worry about"

"This" I snatch the scans from her hands savagely "is why I make the decisions. You're an intern, you've been here six months. Even you should be able to catch the problem with these scans; any med student would be able to"

She looks confused for a moment, and I sigh loudly in discontent.

"She's got placenta previa, Grey. The fibroids are blocking the placenta"

And with that, I'm off.

~

By two o'clock, we've finished the surgery and I'm about to operate on Meredith with a smack.