InsaneJournal

Continuation of Izzy:

The next morning the helicopters came again, and we went back to work, no hint of the party animals that we had been in the pinched faces bending over the surgery tables. I didn’t like surgery. I felt helpless, dependant on the surgeon’s skills and not on my own. I hoped that I never ended up on one of those tables.

The recovery ward was better, a place where I was clearly in charge, at least of the patients assigned to me, and I watched over them as carefully as I had my cake as it rose. Most of these men would be shipped out in a day or two, a week at most for the difficult cases. Sometimes I felt that they were the lucky ones, and then one of them would go through with only one leg, or no arms, and I’d be grateful that I was a woman, and not expected to enter the battlefield.

These poor men would have broken my heart if I’d let them, but I’d wrapped my heart in my pastries and pies, because it was safe with them. They’d never leave and take it with them. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I’d been less careful, if I’d fallen in love with a soldier and folled him home from the war. Would we have had children? Made love in a bed with white sheets? But it hasn’t happened and it won’t happen. I’m still in Korea, still feeding doctors and nurses and taking care of patients and hoping that the war will end before I’ve lost the habit of love.

Cristina:

Meredith irritates Cristina. She cares so damn much about her surgeon, and he/s never going to do more than look longingly at her across the surgery table. It’s so stupid.

But it’s also Meredith’s only lifeline on normality, and Cristina isn’t going to fault her that. They all need something.

For her it’s doing her job as well as she can, which is better than anyone else could do it. Every helicopter comes with a fresh problem to be solved, a new case to decipher. It’s most interesting when they first came in, but there are things to be learned in recovery as well.

Once a perfectly normal-looking patient who is recovering from leg surgery starts convulsing on the bed, the front of his robe turning bright red. It turnes out that the poor idiot has had shrapnel nestled in close to his lungs, and no one has even noticed. It’s these things that teach her to pay attention. Surgeons can make mistakes, and so they’ve all got to pay attention.

Meredith doesn’t seem to pay attention, but her patients always end up healthy in the end, and she’s quick in the OR.

They’re friends because they’re similar in ways, both very good at what they do, because Cristina needs a friend, because they get along surprisingly well, better than anyone else has gotten along with Cristina in a long time.

But Meredith still irritates her at times.

Tonight they’re playing cards with Izzy. George and Alex backed out, and Cristina knows that they’re off doing something obscene together. It annoys her, and she’s not quite sure why. Izzy has brought muffins, which is half of why they let her play, and all of why Meredith is letting her win. Cristina brought the alcohol, and she’s the one drinking most of it, though Meredith has taken her share. Izzy isn’t drinking, as she’s scheduled for the late shift in the recovery ward.

Finally Izzy wins, because Cristina is having trouble keeping her eyes on her cards, and Meredith is only pretending to play. They put the cards away and finish off the muffins, and Izzy goes off to work, a pale goddess in blue scrubs. The patients love her. She’s hard not to love. Even Cristina, who is capable of disliking anyone, usually likes Izzy. She likes Meredith as well, and tells her so. Meredith just laughs and tells Cristina to go to sleep. Cristina does, mellow and happy. Tomorrow will be soon enough to go back to being irracible.

Coming next: Meredith and George