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

43 | Responsibility

"We could only get a twenty and twenty-two gauge in the field." Nicole, the paramedic, told us as we started to look the young boy over, the lack of lights making it a little difficult.

"I'll start a central line." April volunteered, "I need some lactated ringers."

Matthew looked to her, "On it."

"I got it. I can see the cords." Alex said as he started to intubated the boy, "Paralytics are working. All right, uh, I-I need an E.T. tube. Orange drawer. Orange drawer." he told Heather.

"I knew that." Heather dug through the drawer before handing Alex the tube he needed.

"No chest sounds on the right." Cristina announced, "I have to throw in a chest tube."

I looked around, "I think I saw betadine somewhere."

Jackson looked up, "Wait a second. Does anybody actually have chest tubes?"

Nicole shook her head slightly, which meant she didn't have any. And we didn't have any either, which meant we had none. "I'm trying to set up this saline drip, and I can't get this thing to stop beeping. Anyone?" Meredith huffed.

"I can give it a shot." Matthew offered.

"All right, I'm not finding chest tubes now, but I got N.G. tubes." Jackson called, "Did anybody actually bring suction?"

Matthew thought for a moment, "Uh, there's a portable suction in the rig."

Jackson looked to him, not feeling a whole lot better by the comment, "Okay."

"I'll go get it," Nicole said as she took off.

"Thank you." Jackson sighed.

"Incoming!" Shane called as Alex, Heather, and I worked on intubating the boy. "Lights." Jackson shut the lights off as everyone fell silent, the room becoming nearly pitch black except from the light that came in through the windows and the large glass door to the ambulance bay. Alex manually pumped air with a balloon pump as we stayed still, waiting for the coast to be clear.

"All clear." Shane turned back to us. Jackson turned the lights back on mere seconds later and we were up and running again. "I'm in." Alex told us, "Brooks, bag him."

"Okay, I'm back." Nicole ran in with the suction, "I got it."

"Help me secure this N.G. tube." Alex demanded, "All right, hook it up so we can suction."

Everyone did their own thing while still working together. It was kind of amazing how surgeons worked in a high-pressure situation. Meredith glanced up, "Okay, who's got the portable ultrasound?"

Everyone looked up to her, having no clue if we had even brought one. "We are not very prepared, are we?" I sighed.

"We don't have one?" Meredith asked.

Cristina turned to Shane, "Happy?"

"On it." Shane took off to find a portable ultrasound.

"Wilson, get in here." Meredith ordered Jo, "We need some more hands."

"If this kid dies because you brought red along on some lame idea of a date..." Nicole looked up to Matthew, referring to April.

Jackson looked to April, "The ride-along was a date?"

"I need some four-by-fours to control the bleeding on the scalp." Alex brought the conversation back to medicine.

I nodded, "All three lines are patent. We can start dopamine at five mics per kilo per minute, but we need to find out his I.V. drip-rate. It's different for kids, depending on size. Um, anybody have a calculator?"

"I always ask a nurse." Cristina looked to Heather, our fake nurse.

"Not a real nurse." Heather reminded us.

Jo sighed, "Broselow tape says he's thirty kilos. Standard concentration of dopamine is sixteen hundred mics per cc. So five times thirty is one hundred and fifty, times sixty minutes in an hour is nine thousand, divide that by sixteen hundred, infusion rate is 5.625 cc's per hour."

We all looked up at Jo, slightly confused and also slightly amazed. "What?" Jo asked us, "I'm really good at math."

April nodded, "Okay, let's, uh, give him 5.6-"

"Except we don't have any dopamine, guys." Jackson told us, "We don't have access to any non-code medications at all unless we have a nurse or a code-"

"Yes, you do." Derek walked into the room.

Jackson looked to Meredith, "You paged him, too?"

"Well, I knew we were gonna need meds." Meredith defended herself.

"I have the code." Derek told us, "Tell me what the patient needs."

After listing off the medications, Jo went with Derek to get what we needed while the rest of us stayed behind to work on the boy.

"I've got free fluid in the left upper quadrant," Meredith said as she started to use the ultrasound that Shane had recently returned with.

"Crap. What time is it?" Alex questioned.

Jackson turned to him, "We have surgery on Brian in twenty minutes. Cahill will definitely notice if we don't show."

"If you guys need to go, go." Cristina assured them, "We can handle this."

"Look, I'm seeing a pneumopericardium," Meredith said.

April sighed "Okay, we should put in another chest tube on the left just to be sure."

"Well, this kid needs an O.R." Meredith declared.

"Guys, we've gotta move him." Jo ran in.

April turned to her, "We can't. Not till we have someplace for him to go."

"There's no time." Jo panicked, "Cahill's on her way down here right now."

"We're staying," Alex told Jackson who agreed without a second thought.

"We've gotta move the rig." Matthew said as we hurried to pack up all of our things, "It's still parked outside."

"It's okay. Go." April told him.

Jackson rushed around, "Move, guys. Move! We gotta get this thing mobile."

As we began to move the stretcher, a monitor went off. "What happened?" Alex asked.

"He's bradying down," Meredith said.

Jo turned back to us, "We gotta keep moving."

"I'm not getting a pulse!" I almost shouted.

Meredith turned to Shane, "Ross, start C.P.R."

"Damn it." Cristina huffed, "His trachea is deviated to the left. His SATs are dropping. I think he has a tension pneumo."

"But he has bilateral chest tubes." Heather was confused.

"It must have gotten blocked." Cristina pulled out her stethoscope, "Someone find me a fourteen gauge cannula or a sixteen gauge. Whatever you can find, the biggest."

"Um, got it!" April rushed over.

"Guys, what about Cahill?" Jo shouted.

April looked down at the boy, "Oh, God. What...what if he dies? What if we brought him here and what if he dies?"

Soon enough the room was filled with people shouting and panicking. "I can't even think." Cristina tried to work over the noise.

"We have to move!" Jo yelled, shutting everyone up, "Cahill's coming down right now. If we don't move-"

"We're moving." Alex cut her off, "Yang."

Cristina finished up whatever she was doing, "Wait one second. One second."

Before I knew it Cristina was done and we practically bolted out of that room, equipment in hand and pushing the gurney. Jackson, Alex, and Jo took off to do the surgery on Brain, their transgender patient, while the rest of us took the boy into an empty O.R.

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"This part of the lung is fried." Cristina commented as we started to operate, "I'm gonna have to do a resection."

"The spleen is out." Meredith followed up.

I nodded, "Let's irrigate with antibiotic solution."

"Does somebody want to tell me where the hell this patient came from?" Alana burst into the O.R. with Owen by her side.

"Whose patient is this?" Owen asked.

No one responded. "Fine." Alana mumbled under the mask she was holding to her mouth as she stepped over to one of the useless tablets in the room, "You don't have to tell us. We can just look it up. All I need is the patient's name."

"Wait." April tried to stop her, "No, um-"

Meredith gave her a look, "I can do it. I'll look it up. It's my patient. You got this?"

April and I nodded. "Thank you Dr. Grey." Owen sighed, "Appreciate your cooperation."

"Sure. No problem. I'm happy to." Meredith walked over, removed her gloves, and picked the tablet up, "Okay. I just have to get into the patient file. Oh, no."

"What?" Alana asked as the sound of a file being deleted rang out.

Meredith looked up at her, "This keeps happening to me. I try to go into the patient file and I guess I deleted it."

Owen shot those of us still at the table a look as Meredith handed the tablet back over to Alana. It wasn't long until they figured out what we did. Once we finished the surgery, they lined us up in chairs in the hall to question us.

"What happened?" Alex asked as he, Jackson, Stephanie, and Jo walked over to us, "Cahill figured it out?"

"They're taking us in one at a time to see who'll break first," April informed them.

Shane took a deep breath, "I can't lie. I'm no good at it. They'll see right through me."

"Stay strong, Dopey." Cristina told him, "You can do it."

"They started with the interns," Meredith said as Alex turned and walked into the room that they were interrogating us in. The room that Heather was currently in with Owen and Alana.

"I'm just trying to find out what happened." I heard Owen say as I walked up to the door.

"You wanna know what happened?" Alex asked them, "I'll tell you what happened. A kid was dying, and we kept him alive."

Alana looked up to him, "Dr. Karev, hello. You mentioned the word 'we.' Who else was involved?"

"I was." Jackson pushed passed me and joined Alex, "This was my call. I took the kid in. I decided to treat him."

"We did the right thing." Alex added, "We saved his life."

Jackson crossed his arms, "And that's what matters. Not these idiotic new policies or some stupid ad campaign."

"So you can punish us however you want." Alex sighed, "We don't care because-"

"That's enough." Owen stopped them, "Just...go."

Alana turned to him, "Oh, that's it? You're not going to discipline them or-"

"Go," Owen repeated as Alex, Jackson, and Heather joined us back in the hall.

Just as they walked out, Derek walked in. I just hoped that Derek wouldn't get in trouble for helping us save a kid's life.


That night Callie called all of the plane crash people up to the helicopter pad. When I arrived, everyone was there except for Cristina. "She's not answering." Meredith hung up the phone after trying to call Cristina I assumed. "I really want to wait for Cristina," Callie said.

Arizona pulled her coat tighter around her body, "Okay, fine. Fine. Let's wait for Cristina. Let's just wait downstairs where it's warm."

"Yeah." Derek agreed as the two of them took off.

"No, we can't." Callie stopped them, "The walls have ears."

"I'm outta here," Derek told her.

Callie sighed, "Okay, all right. Uh, look, I called this meeting because we can't just keep our heads down and lay low. Okay, we're the reason the hospital's in trouble. We have to do something. We can't let Pegasus take over. We have a responsibility. Which is why I think we should buy the hospital ourselves."

My eyes widened, "What?"