Code Blue | Grey's Anatomy // Book 2 // COMPLETED

2 | The Flip

"Spinal separation complete." Callie looked up from the dolls.

The sound of Cristina's phone ringing drew me from the surgery as Owen walked over. "I have to go." Cristina sighed, "Teddy."

"It's been two weeks now." Owen told her, "You need a break, and she does, too."

"I gotta go," Cristina said before walking out.

"Okay, I am now prepared to separate them completely." Derek declared.

Arizona stepped up, "Wait. Hold on. What about complications? I mean, what if there's a double hemivertebra or a tethered cord?"

"We will cross that bridge when we come to it," Derek assured her.

"We're done here," Owen told everyone.

Arizona turned to him, "I-I'm sorry. What if we're standing on that bridge right now?"

Owen sighed, "Dr. Robbins, I said-"

"No, no, no, no." Arizona cut Owen off, "We haven't even separated them yet. We haven't gone through the post-separation surgeries. There's so much m-"

"Dr. Robbins, stop." Owen ordered, "We're done practicing. We have practiced our parts not only here in this O.R., but in the shower, on your drive to work. We are ready. We know what to do. Now we just have to do it."

With that, everyone backed away from the table as the O.R. once again became chaos as they started to clear away the dolls and everything else we had used for the practice surgery. And then, the real babies were brought in.

The crying of the infants signaled that this was no drill. No, this was the real deal. "Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Andi and Brandi Edwards." Owen showed us the babies, each with a different colour band on their arm to identify which team had which baby, "Let's give them new lives, shall we? It's showtime."

"Raising the skin flap." Mark, the plastic surgeon from the green team announced, "Avery, you there?"

Jackson looked up at Mark, "One step ahead of you."

"You want to race?" Mark joked.

Arizona shook her head, "No, no, no. No racing."

"That was fun last night." Mark changed the subject and looked to Derek, "Did you and Mer have a good time? I know Julia had a good time."

Derek nodded, "Yeah, we did. You got enough length there for coverage?"

"Yeah. I'm dissecting from the base to the midline." Mark told him, "Did Mer say anything about Julia?"

"She liked her," Derek informed Mark.

Arizona watched over Jackson's shoulder, "Jackson, slow down."

"And Zola liked Julia, too?" Mark continued to talk about God knows what.

Derek kept watching the surgery, "Yes, she did. Everybody liked Julia. Anybody else here meet Julia?" a few people nodded including myself, "Did you like her? Show of hands if you liked her. Ah, you did? You did?"

I, along with a few others, chuckled, glad to sometimes have people lighten the mood during such a serious procedure. "I think I'll update the parents," Lexie mumbled, obviously not too fond of everyone talking about Mark's new girlfriend.

"Hunt." Arizona called, "They're clearly racing. No racing."

"We're not racing," Mark told her.

Arizona groaned, "We have been rehearsing this for months, and now they're gonna jeopardize the patient because-"

"Robbins, you take care of your team." Owen tried to calm things down, "I'll look at the big picture."

"Done." Jackson stood up and at the same time Mark held his hands up and said, "I win."

Mark looked to Arizona who had a disapproving look on her face, "And by that, we mean ready for the colon resection. Cafeteria?" he asked Jackson.

"Race you there." Jackson took off with Mark close on his heels.

"General surgery teams, let's go," Owen instructed and I stepped up. I wasn't exactly a big member of the general surgery team, hence why I didn't practice with them earlier. I was just there to lend a helping hand in case things went to shit.

"Looks like Andi has the bulk of the blood supply to the colon," Arizona confirmed.

The green team's general surgeon looked up, "So we'll give her all the colon then?"

"And leave Brandi with an ileosotomy?" Arizona asked sarcastically, "I don't think so. I'll do an ileoproctostomy."

"Maybe they should just share so we don't have to-" he suggested.

Arizona refused, "No. We'll do it my way. Check the function of the blood supply to the kidney."

"Flip's coming up, and I don't want a repeat of this morning's rehearsal." Owen addressed.

"That's what I want to talk to you about." I heard Alex tell Owen as I stood by with the suction for Arizona, "I'm a little nervous about it. We practiced that flip before, and it turned out great. And today-Robbins doesn't trust anybody today."

"Get to your point, Karev." Owen sighed.

"I just don't want to screw this up." Alex said, "We gotta be the perfect team."

Owen was silent for a moment, "And you're not comfortable doing it with her?"

"She's making everybody uncomfortable." Alex huffed.

I looked up just as Owen nodded, "I get it. You don't need to say another word. Who wants to replace Karev on the flip?

Alex turned to Owen, "No, that's not what I meant."

"Uh, I'll do it." Webber raised his hand.

Owen gave him a nod and Webber went to go get scrubbed in. Once the general surgery part was over, I walked over to Alex. "Why did you give up your only part?" I asked.

"I didn't mean to give it up." Alex groaned.

"You sure you can do this?" Arizona looked up at Webber as they got ready to do the flip.

Webber nodded, "Disconnect and cap subclavian I.V.s, anesthesiologist holds the E.T. tube, designated circulators and the techs hold the monitors. Yours over mine, babies-"

"Don't." Arizona warned, "Don't."

Lexie entered the O.R. again and walked over to us, "Why aren't you doing the flip?"

Alex sighed, "Webber snaked it from me."

"Webber?" Lexie panicked, "But he hasn't practiced. You've been practicing this for two weeks."

"Yeah, tell him that," Alex complained.

Lexie looked at the twins, "I told the parents that you've practiced. I told them that you had this thing down cold."

"Okay." Arizona took a deep breath, "One...two...three."

Carefully, they started to move the babies. "Easy, easy, easy." Webber cooed.

"I hope he drops her." Alex jeered quietly, "How's he gonna like it when one twin's pushing her sister in a wheelchair the rest of their lives."

"Harsh." I turned to him.

Alex scrunched up his face, "I'm just pissed at Webber."

"You're just...a monster." Lexie told him.

"And we're done." I heard Arizona say with a breath of relief.

"Whoo-hoo!" someone cheered as the O.R. burst with applause.

Lexie exhaled, "Oh, good. Okay. Nice work." she turned to Alex.

About half an hour later, I was sitting in the gallery with a bunch of the other surgeons who had done their part, watching the rest of the twin's surgery and eating my lunch. "Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me." Meredith pushed through the crowd with Zola in her arms.

"Okay," Meredith turned to Alex, Jackson, and April, "Look at this face. Seriously, look at this face."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Super cute." Cristina, who was beside me, said, "They're in the spinal cord now."

I smiled, "Very cute. Zola is such a cutie."

Meredith sat down on the other side of me, "Bailey spent the last two hours telling me how crappy my life is, but look at this face. Oh, Zola, look. There's your daddy. He's about to repair a myelomeningocele. Can you say myelomeningocele?"

"What an ass," Alex said with a mouth full of food, still angry at Webber.

"Hey, language," April warned him.

Cristina turned to look at him, "Baby here."

"He pretends he's all gentle and sad with the Alzie wife at home, dispensing zen wisdom from his half-century of being a surgeon." Alex huffed, "Well, guess what. Yoda down there...biggest shark of 'em all. The guy is dangerous and mean."

"I think what Teddy's doing is mean." April leaned down next to Cristina, referring to the fact that Teddy kept making Cristina go over Henry's death over and over again.

Cristina shrugged it off, "It's fine."

"No, it's horrible." said April, "It's-it's horrible and-"

"You know what else is horrible?" Jackson asked, "Having a dead husband."

April disagreed, "No, you know what? You don't know, okay? It's not right. Teddy's O.R., it's like...it's like a morgue."

"Well, Altman's husband died on Yang's table." Alex piped up, "Payback's a bitch."

Cristina turned around again, "Oh, will you just shut up? It's fine. I can handle it."

"Well, it has been two weeks of this." I commented, "It must be getting to you."

Cristina exhaled, "No more than it did yesterday or the day before that or the day before that. It's fine. I'm...I can handle it."

"Damn it." we heard Derek sigh through the intercom, "Spinal dermoid cyst. It's all tangled up in the spinal root."

"Yeah, there's a lot of scarring in there." Callie agreed, "I don't see a clean approach."

Arizona stepped closer, "Well, no, well, you have to take it out because the cyst could become malignant."

"Yes, we're aware." Callie gave her a look, "Thank you."

"Maybe if I can come in from an angle...like this." Derek suggested, "But then we risk the contents spilling out-"

"Which could cause a chemical meningitis." Arizona just couldn't keep quiet.

Callie turned to her again, "Dr. Robbins, we've got this. Okay, what if we stretch the nerve root here?"

"Well, that might paralyze Brandi," Arizona said.

"Yes." Callie almost snapped, "Brandi might end up paralyzed. Yeah, no one understands that better than we do, which is why we will be making this decision, okay? Us. Not you. Us. You all right with that."

Arizona sighed, "Just make sure-"

Callie cleared her throat to cut Arizona off. "Yes, I'm okay with that." Arizona finally gave in.

"No more talking from anyone in the O.R." Derek demanded, "We need complete silence from now on."

With that, the entire O.R. and even the gallery fell deadly quiet. Just watching and waiting for the next move.