No Time | Grey's Anatomy // Book 1 // COMPLETED |

39 | She What?

After getting Sam's text messages, I immediately called her. Pressing the phone to my ear, I listened to it ring a few times before it was finally answered. "Ellie?" I heard Sam ask.

"Yeah." I stood up from the bed, "I just got your messages. What's this about a job in Florida?"

I could hear Sam sigh, "We should really talk about this in person."

"I can't." I told her, "I'm on call for the next week or so and I am going to be staying here."

"Damn it, Ellie." Sam groaned, "Why can't you ever just put our friendship before your work. Just this once, that's all I'm asking."

I thought for a moment as I started to pace back and forth in the dark on-call room. "Can you at least tell me what's going on and we can talk about it more in-depth later?"

"Fine." Sam gave in, "A while ago I applied for a job in Florida. I didn't tell you because it was such a long shot, but this morning I got a call saying I got it. It's a designer job at a really good company."

I nodded, even though I was on the phone, "Okay. So...?"

"This is an amazing opportunity and I'd be stupid not to take it," Sam explained.

"Yeah, you should take it." I sighed, "So, that's it? You're moving to Florida?"

Sam was silent for a moment, "This isn't the part I needed to talk to you about. I knew you'd want me to take the job, but..."

"What?" I asked.

"I'm selling the house." Sam said, "I need the money to buy a new place to live down there."

My eyes widened, "You can't sell our house."

"Yes, technically, I can." Sam retorted, "It's my house. I bought it. You just moved in with me and helped pay the bills."

"Where will I go?" I questioned.

Sam took a deep breath, "I don't know. Find somewhere else."

"I can't afford an entire house right now." I said, "Besides, I'm never home."

"Then buy an apartment." Sam suggested, "Listen, I have to go now."

Sitting back down, I ran my free hand through my hair. "I can't believe you're doing this." I groaned.

"You can't believe it?" Sam inquired, "You can't believe that I'm finally living my life? Ever since you started medical school, I've been working around you. Everything I did was planned carefully so it didn't interfere with your school hours, and now I never even get to see you. For the past five or six years, I have been living your life, Ellie. Now it's time I lived mine."

With that, Sam hung up on me. Suddenly, the room seemed extremely quiet. Shutting off my phone, I laid down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling for ages before I finally fell asleep.

The next morning, everyone was to meet in the auditorium for a quick meeting or something. Even though my head was still on the situation with Sam, I at least tried to act focused.

"When a heart wasn't available, I opted to continue with Roy Henley's lung transplant..." Teddy was going on about something up on stage.

A row in front of Meredith and I, April turned to Jackson. "It's all in your head," she told him.

"My name isn't on the O.R. board." Jackson said, "I checked the schedule. Nobody wants to work with me, 'cause I'm not on anybody's service."

"It's an oversight, okay?" April tried to convince him, "Just-just ask around."

Jackson sighed, "Do you know how many things I've screwed up in the last month?"

"Stop it." Meredith leaned forward, "I'm serious. Just ask around and get on someone's service and get back to work."

Just then, Alex arrived in a suit and sat down beside me. "You smell like you're sweating booze." Meredith told him, "Where have you been?"

"I want the weekend you had." Jackson turned back to face Alex.

Alex sighed, "What happens in Vegas, you know? Hey, who's Stark? I'm supposed to be on Stark's service today."

"Oh, me, too." April turned back as well, "He's the new Peds attending since Robbins left."

My eyes widened, "What happened to Arizona?"

"You didn't hear?" April asked, but then continued without waiting for me to answer, "She went to Malawi. She got a job there."

"Why do I never hear about these things?" I sighed.

Alex groaned, "Crap. I can't handle a bunch of sick kids today. I can't do it."

April was silent for a moment before she spoke, "So was it a bachelor party or..."

"Shh." Meredith cut her off, "They're talking about Cristina."

Facing forwards again, we gave Teddy our full attention. "It became clear to Dr. Yang that they were gonna need to switch modalities." Teddy spoke into the microphone, "The patient was put on ecmo..."

"And why did Dr. Yang opt to use the intra-aortic balloon pump over an R-Vad?" a doctor sitting near the front asked.

Teddy thought for a moment, "I, um...I can't answer for Dr. Yang."

"And why isn't she here?" the same doctor asked.

"She, um..." Teddy searched the crowd with her eyes, "She quit. She left the program."

"What?!" I almost shouted.

"I'm sorry." Mark called from a few rows ahead of us, "What? She what?"

Teddy ignored Mark, "Dr. Yang cleared the balloon with Dr. McQueen...who agreed that it was the best..."

"Go back." Mark stood up, "Go back. Yang quit the program?

"Yeah, where have you been?" Derek asked him.

"Well, that's the first I've heard of it." Mark replied, "Hunt, what the hell happened?"

Owen shrugged, "She told the Chief she quit."

"Richard?" Mark turned to Chief Webber.

"If we could just finish the presentation, then..." Teddy tried to draw the attention back.

"I have a question." Derek spoke up, "Can you tell us about your decision to put Dr. Yang in charge of this patient?"

Teddy cocked her eyebrows, "Sorry?"

"But she didn't 'quit' quit, right?" Mark stood up again before turning back to Meredith, "Grey. You're joined at the hip. What's she say?"

The entire audience turned to face us as Meredith thought. "Uh, she hasn't spoken to me about it." Meredith announced, "Stop looking at me. Look up there."

As the audience turned around again, Mark wouldn't stop. "Does Torres know anything about this?" he asked yet another question as he pulled out his phone, "I'm calling Torres."

Teddy sighed from the stage, "Can we please just..."

"Look, I guess I'm asking you, why did you choose to put Dr. Yang under that much pressure that day?" Derek asked his question again, only this time re-worded it.

"I didn't." Teddy answered, "I intended the opposite. I gave her a simple pre-op checklist on a stable patient."

Derek sat forward, "Stable patient? The patient almost died twice."

"I couldn't have seen that coming." Teddy retorted, "I'm sorry. Is this a, uh, a patient presentation or a post-mortem on Dr. Yang?"

"Well, you saved the patient," Derek said.

With that, Teddy ended the presentation and everyone exited the auditorium. It was going to be one interesting day today.