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

50 | The Trial

The next day I walked through the hospital doors a little later than usual. I would have been there at my normal time, but I was fully aware that I had no surgeries booked, so I slept a little later, enjoying all the sleep I could get.

After changing into my scrubs, I walked through the halls to look for anything to do. "You're here late." I heard Meredith's voice as she came up beside me.

"Yeah," I sighed, "What'd I miss?"

"Derek started his Alzheimer's trial today," Meredith told me.

I smiled slightly, "That's good."

"Sure." Meredith huffed a little, "Derek picked Alex to help."

"Oh," I understood, "Anyway, I'm just gonna tag along with you for a while," I said and Meredith nodded.

I followed Meredith until she stopped at a room. "Hey. How long are you gonna be in there?" Meredith asked Alex as he walked out of the room holding a chart. 

"Oh," Alex turned to us, "I've gotta put on a localizing frame. At least an hour."

"An hour?" Meredith raised her eyebrows.

Alex nodded, "Yeah, give or take. Dr. Sheppard wants me to be as thorough as possible."

"No! I'm not doing this without my wife." we heard a man yell from inside the room. Rushing into the room, we followed Alex.

"Mr. Cobb, your wife is right here." Alex gestured to a woman standing near the doorframe.

"That's not my wife," he told us.

Alex turned to the woman and gestured for her to enter the room, "Look, it's your wife."

"That's not Victoria." the man yelled.

Mrs. Cobb approached the bed, "Daniel, Daniel, Daniel. Daniel, it's me. It's Allison."

"You're not Victoria." the man, Daniel, said, "You're...you're not my wife. You're not Victoria. I want Victoria. I want my wife."

"It's Allison." Mrs. Cobb told Daniel.

"Get away from me!" Daniel ordered.

Allison stepped away from the bed as Meredith and I stepped closer. "Sir, who is your wife?" Meredith asked.

Daniel looked around the room, "I don't know. I don't know. I told you. It's Victoria. I want Victoria."

"Is she here?" I asked him.

Daniel started to pant as his eyes searched the room once more, "No."

"Do you know where she is?" I questioned.

"I don't-" Daniel sighed, "I don't-I don't know. I don't-I don't know."

Meredith stopped him, "Okay, okay. We...well, we're gonna go find Victoria for you, okay? We're gonna go look for her. We're gonna find her and bring her to you. You sit tight. We'll find Victoria."

Daniel calmed down a little as we turned away from the bed and walked over to his wife, Allison. "Do you know who Victoria is?" Meredith almost whispered.

Allison looked up at us, "Victoria is the woman he loves."

Alex, Meredith, and I let out a sigh before we went to locate Victoria. Turns out, Victoria was a woman who was at the same home as Daniel. As soon as we located her, we gave her a call. Before long Victoria showed up...with her husband.

"They met at the home last year." Allison explained as we all stood outside the room, watching, as Daniel and Victoria sat on the bed, holding hands, "One day he asked me to wheel her towards him. And that was it. I watched him fall in love with her. Well, Ben and I watched."

"You're Victoria's husband?" Alex asked the man, Ben, standing beside Allison.

Ben nodded slightly, "Until she leaves me."

"Oh, she's not gonna leave you, Ben," Allison told him.

Ben sighed, "We'll see. Victoria was diagnosed with vascular dementia. It's not Alzheimer's, but it might as well be. She's like Daniel. When she's lucid, she knows I'm her husband. When she's not...I go from being her husband to, uh, somebody that gets to hear about Daniel all the time."

Allison turned to Derek, who was standing with us, "Daniel can still be in the trail, can't he? This doesn't mean he can't do it?"

"No, he can still do it." Derek assured her, "The rule for the study is, uh, we need his consent. Once we have it, it's okay if he's not always lucid."

"You don't have any more openings, do you?" Ben asked.

"Unfortunately, the trail is only for Alzheimer's dementia," Derek told him.

Ben sighed, "There's no chance?"

Derek shook his head, "I'm sorry."

Laughter could be heard from inside the room. Turning, we watched as Victoria and Daniel kissed. "This is seriously jacked up," Alex whispered.

"He followed me through a snowstorm," Allison said as Alex and I stood by a nurses station filling out charts later that day.

Alex looked up at her, "Sorry?"

Allison smiled, "In college. Daniel saw me in the student union, and he followed me to my class in a snowstorm. Introduction to French poetry...it was in this big lecture hall, and he sat there for an hour and a half twice a week for five months, just trying to get up the nerve to meet me. That was forty years ago. Please. Give my husband the drug."

Alex sighed, "Mrs. Cobb-"

"You could do it if-if you wanted to." Allison cut him off, "You know that you could."

Alex shook his head, "No, I-I couldn't. It...It's completely random. The computer decides. We don't even know if he's getting the drug until we're about to inject it."

"Well, then change it if you need to." Allison begged, "I need my husband back. I need Daniel back."

"I'm sorry." Alex told her, "I just...even if the drug worked, uh...it's not gonna reverse things."

"But I-I can live with that. I-I can-" Allison stepped closer to us, "I can live with what-what-what we have right now. I can live with being a part-time wife. But I cannot live with losing my husband all the way. So...for god sake...give him the drug. Please."

By now, Mrs. Cobb had started to cry. Alex looked down at her, and even though I too wanted to help her, we both knew that there would be some serious consequences with messing with the trail.

Later that day, Meredith, Alex, and I all sat in a room, getting Daniel ready for his surgery. "Day one, and this thing already blows." Alex sighed, "You got one guy begging us to get his wife in the trail, then this other guy's wife wants me to steal the drug for her husband."

"Well, you're the one who wanted in on the trail of the century," Meredith told him.

"Yeah, but with peds, the problem's right in front of you." Alex told us, "I mean, sick kid, worried parents. Here, you-you've got a sick parent who doesn't even know they're sick."

"Well, about five years ago, I was visiting my mother." Meredith said, "And she starts telling me how she thinks she's got herpes and how she doesn't want to go to the hospital and get checked out because she's afraid everybody will know. So I realize that she thinks I'm her best friend from med school, and it's thirty-five years ago. So...I had to just sit there and talk to my mother about her possible herpes for two hours, two very long hours. I couldn't cure her Alzheimer's, but at least I could give her what she needed at that moment."

"Advice about herpes?" Alex raised his eyebrows.

Meredith chuckled, "Advice about herpes."

That night Derek and Alex did Daniel's surgery. As soon as Alex got out, I went to find him. "Hey, how did it go?" I asked him once I found him by a nurse's station.

Alex shook his head, "Placebo."

"Damn it." I huffed.

Just then, Derek walked by. "He'll be waking up soon Karev, let's go."

"Coming." Alex started to walk off with Derek.

Derek spun his head to look at me, "Wanna tag along?"

Smiling, I nodded, "You bet."

We had only been standing at the end of Daniel's bed for about ten minutes when he began to stir. "Honey?" Allison looked to him from the chair she was sitting in beside the bed, "Hi. How you feelin'?"

"Oh, I'm okay." Daniel's voice was scratchy and quiet, "I've got a light headache. Where's my Victoria? Can I see her?"

Allison's face fell as she sat back a little in her chair. Standing up, she headed for the door. Alex rushed over and stopped her, "Uh, Mrs. Cobb, he just came out of surgery. Look, this doesn't mean it's not gonna work. W-we won't know that for a while. When he acts like this, you just need to tell yourself, this is not your husband. But he is somebody who needs your help. So whatever you can give him..."

Allison took a deep breath before turning back to Daniel, "Daniel...I'm gonna call Victoria and get her here as soon as I can. Okay?"

Daniel looked up at her and smiled, "Oh. Thank you."

With that, Derek took Alex out into the hall and I headed home. Well, I was about to head home before I bumped into Jackson. "Oh, hey." I pushed some hair out of my face.

"Hey." he huffed.

"What's wrong with you?" I asked as he stopped off at a nurses station to drop off some charts.

Jackson sighed, "I fought all day for a surgery with Altman, only to end up being played by Yang."

I smiled slightly, "Cristina played you? I would've loved to see that."

"It's not funny," he told me.

"I didn't laugh." I retorted.

Jackson took a deep breath before leaning against the nurse's desk, "So, you about to head home?"

"Well...I was going to." I admitted, "But I don't really want to. I still haven't found a place to live and Sam said I gotta be out of the house in a few weeks. I just don't want to go back there until I have to go back just so I can pack up my shit and get out."

"Rough," Jackson said.

I nodded, "Yup. So I think I'll just head to an on-call room and sleep there."

"You know," Jackson took a step towards me, "I can think of something way more fun than sleeping."

"Really?" I raised my eyebrows, catching on to what he meant.

"Yup." he leaned in and placed a kiss on my lips.

Giggling, I grabbed his hand, "Then lead the way."

"With pleasure." Jackson smiled before pulling me through the halls. Once we found an empty on-call room, we could barely close the door fast enough before our professional white coats were thrown to the floor, completely taking the professionalism out of them.