Chapter Text
The five stages of grief are well-known as the phases a person typically goes through after having suffered a loss or traumatic event. It originated from Dr. Kübler-Ross, who introduced the concept in the context of terminally ill patients coming face-to-face with their mortality.
Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Unfortunately, life isn’t often so generous as to afford dying people enough time to navigate the five phases of death.
Instead, the burden of processing the phases are succeeded to the people that are left behind. The ones that grieve instead of die.
***
Kiera Park was never late.
Never.
It was a point of pride for her. She’d never been late to a day of school, work, or even a casual coffee date. Punctuality was the baseline with which she judged any first impression. Anyone any later than twenty minutes to an appointment with an excuse anything short of alien abduction had no respect for her time, and in turn, she lost all respect for them.
Thus it made absolutely no sense that she was bursting into the hospital, frazzled, panting, and red-faced, and at least five minutes late, on her first fucking day of her residency program.
“So nice of you to join us. We were beginning to think we had our first two dropouts in record time.”
An imposing figure at the front of the large group gathered in the lobby quirked an eyebrow in her direction. Fighting to catch her breath, Kiera skidded to a halt at the tail of the crowd, pinning her ID to the pocket of her jeans clumsily as she went.
“I’m so sorry, sir.” Kiera couldn’t believe this was happening. God fucking damn it, this wasn’t her. “It won’t happen again.”
He gave her one more disapproving look before turning on his heel, talking as he walked. Kiera had to strain to hear, although it was difficult to concentrate through her cursing herself for making a bad impression with the chief of surgery on her first day. Could her life get any worse?
“Each of you comes here today hopeful. Wanting in on the game.” Dr. Webber explained, taking them through a maze of corridors and into a small room. As he spoke, the door they just entered through opened quietly and a young woman, looking around Kiera’s age, slipped inside carefully. She didn’t say a word, and Dr. Webber either didn’t notice the final latecomer or didn’t care to break off in the middle of his speech.
“A month ago you were in med school being taught by doctors. Today, you are doctors.”
He pushed open the double doors, and stepped aside as eager interns filed into the well-lit operating room.
“The seven years you spend here as a surgical resident will be the best and worst of your life. You will be pushed to the breaking point. Look around you, say hello to your competition.”
Kiera had caught her breath by now. She’d been busy staring around the operating room, a rush of adrenaline taking over her. This was it. This was where she belonged. Everything she’d been working toward, was now within her grasp. It felt glorious.
At Dr. Webber’s word, she came down from her reverie and determination, and directed her gaze toward her fellow interns instead.
Some looked like she felt. Others were more nervous. One even seemed unimpressed with Dr. Webber’s speech, a slightly sullen twist to his mouth and arms crossed as he scanned his surroundings.
“Eight of you will switch to an easier specialty.”
Oh, you’ll pry that scalpel from my cold, dead, hands, Kiera thought.
“Five of you will crack under the pressure”
Fat chance.
“Two of you will be asked to leave.”
Okay, that stings a little, but no. I can prove my worth.
“This is your starting line. This is your arena. How well you play? That’s up to you.”
***
The locker room after their orientation buzzed with nervous energy. People chatted to those next to them, and went up to familiar faces they recognized.
“Hey.”
Kiera glanced up. A man with dark hair, dark eyes, and an overall slightly nervous demeanor smiled down at Kiera awkwardly.
“Hi.” Kiera replied shortly. She wasn’t here to make friends, but making enemies probably wasn’t a great idea either.
“I’m George O’Malley. I think we met at the mixer?”
“Oh,” Kiera nodded absentmindedly. She continued to tighten the laces on her sneakers. When she was done, she reached up to pin her hair out of her face. She didn’t recall a George O’Malley at the mixer, but then again, she’d barely been paying attention, and had only gone because her mother had been needling her about it over the phone incessantly. “Kiera Park.”
Clearly the women next to her weren’t set on the same mission not to unnecessarily antagonize anyone.
“Only twelve women out of thirty.” The blonde, the one Kiera remembered as the one that had snuck in late, commented.
“Yeah, I hear one of them’s a model.” An Asian woman with a mass of curly black hair replied brusquely as she shoved her clothes in the locker. Kiera didn’t miss the slightly snide tone. “Seriously, that’s gonna help with the respect thing?”
Kiera was just about to tune out of the conversation when a name caught her attention.
“...Bailey.”
“The Nazi? I got her too.”
Oh, damn it.
Kiera tried to plaster a friendly smile on her face as she turned to them. George O’Malley beat her to it, his attention snapping from Kiera to the other two women immediately.
“You got the Nazi? So did I. At least we’ll be tortured together, right?”
Kiera snapped her mouth shut as the man grinned and ambled over. She shook her head, leaning back against her locker as she waited for her name to be called. She vaguely registered O’Malley trying and failing to make friendly conversation with the other women.
A tap on her shoulder directed her attention to her right, where another intern held up a familiar flyer.
“I heard you saying you’re Kiera Park?”
Kiera eyed the man and nodded warily.
“I’m Alex. You still looking for a roommate?”
She was. But hell if she was going to accept a strange man into her apartment, no matter how desperate she was to split rent.
“It says women only on the flyer.” She looked pointedly at the flyer Alex had in his hand.
“The flyer also says you first put this up this two weeks ago.” He raised his eyebrows. “I’m guessing you won’t get any takers unless you’re more flexible about some of your … conditions. Or, you can take me.”
Her conditions weren’t unreasonable in the slightest, so she had no idea why no one had reached out to her about the spare room.
- Women only.
- Don’t move any of the furniture.
- Everything from food to toiletries will be bought and taken care of separately.
- Early riser, but no cooking breakfast. Only coffee and fruits are acceptable. (The smell of food first thing in the morning made her stomach turn.)
- Clean; slobs will be kicked out with a week’s notice.
- Schedules for chores, living room time, and bathroom time will be made and enforced.
- If you work at Seattle Grace, the commute will strictly be separate.
“It’s really none of your business.” Kiera shot back shortly.
“Alright, well. I’m looking for a place, and I’m interested. Keep that in mind, will you?”
“Sure.” Kiera forced a cordial smile.
“Great. Whose service are you on?”
This guy did not know when to quit.
“Yang, Stevens, O’Malley, Grey, Park, Karev!”
Saved by the voice calling out her name in the midst of five others, Kiera took the opportunity to abandon the pointless conversation.
“Well that’s me, bye.” Kiera dodged his last question and jogged forward to the small group at the entrance of the locker room, where they were then pointed toward the end of the hall by a tired looking resident.
Alex followed her hot on her heels.
“What are you—” Kiera began to protest, but he cut her off.
“I’m Alex Karev,” He grinned at her smugly, and Kiera cringed a little. Today was really not going her way.
“Oh. Great.”
“Try to sound more excited.” Karev rolled his eyes.
“No thanks.” Kiera muttered under her breath as they caught up to the other four.
“Hi,” A tall, blonde woman was smiling brightly with an outstretched hand at the shorter woman sporting a bob and a thoroughly unimpressed look on her face. “I’m Isobel Stevens, but everyone calls me Izzie.”
Alex whistled quietly next to Kiera. “Bet that’s the model.”
“You’re gross.” Kiera glared at him, dropping all pretense and stepping deliberately away from him.
He seemed undeterred.
“I have five rules. Memorize them.” Bailey began. Kiera stood up a little straighter. “Rule number one, don’t bother sucking up. I already hate you, that’s not gonna change.”
Stevens blinked, pinking a little. Kiera snorted despite herself, and accidentally made eye contact with Karev doing the same, a smirk on his face. The amusement dropped immediately. She did not just think the same thing Alex Karev thought was funny was funny.
“Trauma protocol, phone list, pagers. Nurses will page you. You will answer every page at a run. A run. That’s rule number two.”
All six of them scrambled to pick up each item for themselves. Bailey had already left them, marching down the corridor. They had to rush to catch up to her.
“Your first shift starts now and lasts 48 hours. You’re interns, grunts, nobodies, bottom of the surgical food chain. You run labs, write orders, work every second night until you drop, and you don’t complain.”
Bailey began marching them through the hospital, speaking rapidly as she went.
“On-call rooms. Attendings hog them. Sleep when you can and where you can, which brings me to rule number three. If I’m sleeping, don’t wake me unless your patient is actually dying. Rule number four: the dying patient better not be dead when I get there. Not only will you have killed someone, you would’ve woken me for no reason. We clear?”
Kiera thought to herself privately that Bailey was who she wanted to be in a year’s time. She was fucking awesome, Nazi nickname be damned.
Grey raised her hand.
“Yes?”
“You said you had five rules, that was only four.”
Bailey reached for her pager, that had just started beeping.
“Rule number five. When I move, you move.”
***
By some miracle, George O’Malley was the one that was picked to scrub in on a procedure at the end of their first day. As in, the surgery that was supposed to go to the intern that showed the most promise.
Nervous, socially awkward, George O’Malley. This had to be some sort of cosmic joke. Even he had the stunned look of not being able to quite believe it as Dr. Burke walked off with a swish of his hospital gown.
Kiera briefly caught Cristina Yang’s incredulous look across from the cafeteria table. Then she sighed and slid lower in her seat, flipping through the textbook she had open on the table. She tapped on the surface of the book with her highlighter in a rapid and irritated beat.
Kiera had spent the better half of her first shift running back and forth through this absolute maze of a hospital. Once, early on in the day, she’d run into Grey, carting around Katie Bryce in her bedridden state, and the two of them had shared an exasperated look at their clearly shared predicament of not knowing where the hell they were going.
“Where are you headed?” Grey had struck up conversation first.
“Labs.” Kiera had reached over to push the button on the elevator for the second floor.
“No, that’s on the floor I was just on.”
“Which one was that?” Kiera questioned, already exhausted.
“Basement.”
“Damn, I was just in the basement like two minutes ago. Must have missed it.” Kiera had sighed. She had glanced over at the sullen girl in the hospital bed, her mind taking a moment to catch up. “Wait, what were you doing in the basement? Didn’t Bailey tell you to take her for a CT scan? Pretty sure that’s the ground floor.”
“She’s lost. Jeez, are you guys even qualified to be doctors? How did you get through med school if you can’t find your way through a building?” Katie had said loudly.
Grey had sent Kiera an imploring look like, kill me now.
Kiera had just shrugged, hit the button for the basement and the ground floor, and nodded at Grey as she wheeled Katie Bryce out of the elevator.
So no, it was completely unfair that O’Malley had somehow weasled his way into one-on-one time with an attending while Kiera had been covering every square inch of the hospital as she rushed to find her way. Let’s just say directions had never been her strong suit.
Still, it was admittedly fun to be up in the gallery and watch O’Malley quaking in his boots. Kiera had even joined in on the mean-spirited bets on how badly and when he would screw up. She had thirty bucks riding on him cracking under pressure halfway and backing off all together.
“Fifty says he pulls the whole thing off. That’s one of us down there. Where’s your loyalty?”
That was Grey. Kiera rolled her eyes at that.
“Seventy five says he can’t even ID the appendix.” Cristina continued after a beat.
“I’ll take that action.” Stevens replied, simultaneously with Kiera replying,
“Done.”
They smirked at each other as Grey shook her head in disapproval.
Things were going smoothly until O’Malley screwed up and then froze up when he was faced with a bleeder and Burke barking instructions into his ear, tone laced with blatant scrutiny.
Damn. For a second there, Kiera thought he’d pull it off.
“He’s 007,” a voice commented from the back, and Kiera chuckled alongside murmurs of assent, turning to find whoever made the joke while Grey explained the unfortunate nickname to Stevens.
Of fucking course it was Karev. He raised his eyebrows at her, a smug smile tugging at the corner of his lips, and she scowled at him before turning back forward and getting up to follow the rest of the interns leaving the gallery now that the show was over.
Twice in one day. Pull it together, Park, goddamn. That wasn’t even funny.
***
The first night was rough.
Not a single one of them were strangers to all nighters. But what they were used to were sedentary hours poring over textbooks, downing endless cups of coffee, and fighting to keep eyelids open.
This was long stretches of mind numbingly nothingness, followed by brief bursts of activity during which Kiera was forced to blink away brain fog and shake out her aching limbs to take yet another turn around the hospital whose corridors seemed to get longer the deeper in the night it became.
Down in the tunnels between pages, the periodic conversations were barely comprehensible, simply used as a means to keep each other awake.
When Stevens stretched her mouth open in a yawn, Kiera had to resist the urge to tear out a page from her textbook, crumple it up, and toss it at her.
“Great, now you’re making me yawn.” Kiera grumbled.
“Sorry, I can’t help it.” Stevens yawned again. She abruptly sat up from her previous position lying down with blonde hair spilling around her head, and began putting her hair back up, probably just for something to do with her hands. Kiera had long given up on her own low bun she’d opted for at the beginning of the shift, as it was only worsening the headache starting to gather behind her eyes.
“It’s too dark in here, it’s putting me to sleep.” Kiera complained, stretching her arms up above her head and cricking her neck. She’d only just gotten a moment to sit down five minutes ago, but if she were going to keep fighting off sleep like this, she may as well just get back on her feet.
“Just take a nap.” O’Malley suggested. “We’ll wake you up if there’s anything they need you for.”
“Yeah, no way.” Kiera shook her head. “If I sleep now, I’m not getting back up for at least an hour.”
She hopped to her feet, instead, jumping up and down on the balls of her feet. When that didn’t work, she set off.
“Hey, where’re you going?” Stevens called after her.
“Taking a walk.” Kiera replied. She pressed the palms of her hands to her eyes as she walked. When going up and down corridors only made her weirdly claustrophobic, she ventured outside.
It was pouring out, but the cool air hitting her face was exactly what she needed. Kiera took deep breaths, sticking close to the building so that she was offered a little shelter from the downpour, and drew in as much fresh oxygen that hadn’t been exhaled by her intern cohorts into her lungs as possible.
God, she would have killed for a cigarette right then.
She shoved her fists into the pockets of her lab coat, gritting her teeth as the craving tugged needily at the back of her mind. She couldn’t very well pop a stick of gum in her mouth, and she’d forgotten to pack her nicotine patches in her panic-glazed haste that morning.
Just then, the doors to the hospital opened and Grey came rushing out, Yang close on her heels.
What in the world?
Kiera watched in bewilderment as Grey stumbled a little ways down the sidewalk and vomited into some bushes. She wasn’t quite in earshot to hear what Grey said to Yang as the pair of them retreated back into the building.
But that didn’t matter, because Kiera wasn’t thinking about a smoke anymore. Instead, her mind was whirring away.
Grey didn’t seem the type to get squeamish. Hell, none of them were, or they wouldn’t have chosen to become doctors. She also had the air of being distinctly unshakeable, in a different way from the other interns who projected their hardness outward.
So what could it have been that got Grey so freaked out?
It could have been nothing. Yet, Kiera had a shark-like instinct when it came to things that might be of interest to her, and she smelled a blood trail heading straight back to Meredith Grey.
***
The mystery resolved itself bright and early the next morning.
It had been twenty-four hours since their shift began, and the interns were gathered all together in a room by none other than Dr. Derek Shepherd. The Derek Shepherd, whom no self respecting doctor interested in neuro could claim not to know. Kiera was determined to impress him.
Yang and Grey were holed up in a corner, Grey with a moody look on her face and Yang with a half-sutured banana on her knee.
O’Malley was in strangely high spirits, brushing off Yang’s 007 comment easily despite having bitched and moaned about the label all night. He had to be half-delirious.
Kiera seated herself next to Stevens, the one who, in a surprising turn of events, seemed the less likely to try to start up small talk with her. Unfortunately, she had no control over who parked himself down on her other side.
“Thought about it yet?” Karev nudged her, despite her valiant efforts to pretend she hadn’t noticed him.
“I don’t need to think about it, I already said no.” Kiera didn’t turn to address him and spoke into the air in front of her. She gave him a sideways look. “Why the hell do you look so chipper?”
“Took a nap.” Karev shrugged. “Why do you look like hell?”
“Shut up.” Kiera rolled her eyes, rubbing the spot where the headache was still throbbing. She inched her chair as far away from him as possible, even though that led to a disgruntled grunt from Stevens.
Thankfully, before Karev could say another word, Dr. Shepherd strode into the room, followed closely by Bailey.
“Good morning,” he said brightly, receiving a scatter of half-hearted ‘Morning’s in return. “I’m going to do something pretty rare for a surgeon. I’m gonna ask interns for help.”
The energy in the room shifted. Cristina looked up from her banana.
“I’ve got this kid, Katie Bryce.”
Kiera’s eyebrows shot up and she swivelled her head briefly in Grey’s direction, who had a slightly sour expression on her face.
Bingo. The blood trail never failed her.
“Right now, she’s a mystery. She doesn’t respond to her meds. Labs are clean, scans are pure. But she’s having grand mal seizures, with no visible cause. She’s a ticking clock. She’s gonna die without a diagnosis, which is where you come in.”
Oh, so not just bingo. Fucking jackpot.
“Whoever finds the answer ride with me. Katie needs surgery. You get to do what no interns get to do, scrub in to assist on an advanced procedure.”
Thank you, Lord.
It just kept getting better, and Kiera all but fell to her knees and cried out to God that she knew there was a reason he put her through all that bullshit yesterday. This was an apology issued to her directly from the big guy above, it had to be. Her knee bounced up and down as she waited for Shepherd to finish, and was the first to jump out of her chair to receive Katie’s charts from Bailey.
***
Yang and Grey were attached at the hip in the library, bouncing ideas back and forth. While it was annoying, hearing their hushed voices as Kiera pursed her lips and tried to focus, she had to admit Yang’s decision to stick to the intern that had been on Katie’s case from the start was a smart one.
Except Kiera didn’t want any chance of losing this surgery to whoever she’d put her head together with. She was either going to pull this off alone and make a sole good first impression on Shepherd, or she didn’t want it at all.
Trying to play detective while having to constantly run back and forth to do her actual job was next to impossible, however.
She’d just been about to make her way back toward the library, having left behind an obnoxious Karev berating a nurse for continuing to page him about post-op antibiotics, when she faltered in her steps. From the opposite end of the hallway, Shepherd was striding toward her, flanked by Yang and Grey on either side. All three of them looked suspiciously excited for being confronted with a medical mystery that an attending had to ask his interns for help with.
A sinking feeling in her stomach, Kiera darted to the side and let them pass. They barely noticed her, talking the entire time.
“...could have gone her entire life without it ever being a problem. One tap in the right spot and it—”
“Exploded.”
“Exactly.”
Kiera turned and watched as the three continued on to the nurse’s station, animated in conversation. Between being flooded with work and barely having a moment to herself to think, Kiera couldn’t help but feel the competition was over before it ever really started.
Damn it, she really needed that cigarette now.
Finding herself not wanting to know which lucky intern would be the one to scrub in, Kiera began walking back the way she came from. It was only when Cristina strode past her, furious, that Kiera knew for certain.
Grey. Of course it was Grey.
Kiera recalled running into her all those times in the elevators, Katie Bryce incessantly making snide comments at Grey without seeming to care who heard. She thought about witnessing her throwing up into the bushes while it poured rain outside.
If it were Grey or Yang, Kiera supposed Grey deserved it more.
But it should have been me.
Maybe. Probably.
Kiera grimly pushed her way through the hospital. The only good thing that came out of being stuck here for the last thirty hours? She now more or less knew her way around. Usually it took her much longer to get familiar with buildings.
The fight was over before it even began. That much, Kiera was almost certain of. Next time? She was coming out swinging, and she was going to win.
***
By the time the first shift was over, the locker room was split down the middle between those utterly knackered to the point of losing any living spark, and those extremely happy to go home. Kiera fell easily in the first camp.
She almost put her shoes on the wrong feet as she changed out of her sneakers, and the relief of pulling the scrubs up over her head was almost immediately replaced by deep exhaustion settling in her shoulders that made her reluctant to lift her arms to put on her sweater.
Kiera didn’t even make it to her pants before deciding, to hell with optics, and rummaged through her bag until she found her nicotine gum and shoved a stick into her mouth.
“Hey, we’re heading out. We’ll wait if you want to walk out together.” Stevens tapped her shoulder. The other three were waiting at the door for her, all dressed and ready to go. Meanwhile, Kiera was still half-dressed and working her jaw furiously on her gum.
Oh, no. She wasn’t doing this.
“You guys go ahead.” Kiera tried to arrange her face into a smile and failed. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Okay, then.” Stevens nodded and the remaining three turned to leave, not before each directing a word of acknowledgement Kiera’s way.
“Bye, Park.” Yang nodded at her.
“See you.” Grey smiled.
“Get a good night’s sleep!” O’Malley added.
She waved until they were gone.
She took her time, and Kiera was soon the last one out the door.
It had been a long, long day. And yet, Kiera wasn’t eager to go home.
That was how she ended up at a bar not so far from the hospital, popping peanuts in her mouth and nursing a beer. It was her third, actually.
Still she felt no impulse to leave any time soon.
***
It was dark when she got home.
She dropped her keys into the bowl on the little shelf at the front door and dropped her bag to the floor. Toeing off her shoes, Kiera let herself fall face-first down into the couch and lay there for a moment, bones aching.
The apartment was silent except for the dripping sink in the kitchen. None of the lights were on.
Finally, for the first time in forty-eight hours, Kiera found herself alone in complete quiet. It should have been a relief. Before, it would have been a relief.
She dragged herself off the sofa, flicked on the lights in the living room, and wandered in the kitchen to fix herself some food. All she’d had that entire day was a bagel, copious amounts of coffee, four beers, and an absurd amount of peanuts. Kiera wasn’t actually all that hungry anymore because really, that had been a ridiculous portion of peanuts she’d consumed, but if she didn’t, her headache was going to come back full force the next morning.
Rummaging through her cupboards, Kiera grabbed a pack of ramen.
You can’t just eat noodles. A gentle voice chided in her ear, soft but slightly disapproving.
Kiera ignored it and ate quickly. She did the dishes, showered, changed into comfier clothes, and dropped into her bed, exhausted.
For some reason, she couldn’t sleep.
One part of it was glaringly obvious, but utterly out of Kiera’s power to do anything about. The other was her now almost desperate need for a smoke. Beer, gum, seven nicotine patches pasted on various parts of her body, none of her usual tricks helped.
Eventually, she couldn’t take it anymore. Kiera opened her bedside drawer, hand reaching around blindly for her emergency stash, and padded to the bathroom.
On the way, she passed the closed door to the empty room. The one she was supposed to be renting out. The one she desperately needed to rent out if she wanted to keep living in this apartment and not drown in debt.
She quickly skirted past it like it would suck her in.
Once in the bathroom, she cracked the window and sat down on the toilet lid, leaning her head against the cold tile of the wall as she slowly smoked her cigarette.
We’re doctors, I shouldn’t have to tell you how bad that is for you. The voice was back, whispering against her ear. She knew he wasn’t really there, but his breath tickled the nape of her neck and she buried her face in her hands.
I know. That’s why I’m trying to quit, remember?
A quiet laugh.
Rightttt. Was your first day really so bad?
Kiera knew she ought to cut it off. Her cigarette was burned to a stub already, and she was stubborn enough not to allow herself a second one. She simply stared at the smoke curling from the tiny orange pinprick and travelling up and out the window.
You don’t know the half of it. How was yours?
Silence.
Oh, that’s right.
Kiera dumped the butt of her cigarette into the ashtray she kept on the ledge of that window. It was a bad habit, one she’d never break unless she got rid of that damn thing, but she had a feeling she’d be frequenting that window more often for the time being.
Then she hurriedly made the short journey back to her room, and nearly turned too early into that room. The spare room; his room. No. Their room.
Kiera swallowed the lump in her throat, then quickly walked the few extra steps that she still wasn’t used to, back into her own room.
“The flyer also says you first put this up this two weeks ago. I’m guessing you won’t get any takers unless you’re more flexible about some of your … conditions.”
Kiera snorted to herself at the memory.
The room was eventually going to rent out to someone who would respect her conditions. Someone who wasn’t rude, smug, and a complete pig.
Until then, Kiera had absolutely no problem keeping it empty.