Chapter Nine

Peggy stood behind Christina with the other interns watching as she rambled to Dr Hann about the patient while the attending only gave her a weird look. Christina doesn't notice as she continues talking about the patient, "His incision is healing nicely. No erythema or purulent discharge. He'll be monitored, we'll try weaning him off the drip once his meds are maximized. After discharge, we expect him to follow up in the cardiac clinic."

"There are five other people here, Yang. How about letting one of them talk?" Dr Hann gestures towards the interns making Christina glance back at them.

Christina doesn't listen though, "Mr Talbot's cardiomyopathy is unusually complicated, that's all."

"You know, you could take a cue from Dr Stevens. She knows what's going on with her patients, and she's inclusive." Dr Hann tells her before everyone's pagers go off.

Running down to the ER they all rush off to find a patient to take care of, Peggy wanders off to find someone. Walking around she finds a kid with an apparent broken arm, "Hello, I'm Doctor Gallagher! Can I take a look at your arm?"

The girl looks up at her annoyed, "Listen, I'm fine, just let me leave here and I can wrap this myself."

Peggy nods, "Okay I'll let you go home," The girl smiles standing up. "But come back if your arm swells up, we want to safely take it off." The girl stops in her tracks.

"Take it off?" She looks at her confused, "You didn't even look at it, how would you know if it needs to be amputated?"

Peggy purses her lips, "Well, you won't let me look at it so I have no idea if it's broken. So I have no idea if you have any internal bleeding."

The girl looks at her shocked, "Can that even happen in your arm?"

Peggy shrugs smiling, "I guess we won't know since you won't let me check your arm. So if it swells up and you start having unbearable pain, let us know." The girl looks to contemplate it for a second before sitting back down on the bed, "That's what I thought." Picking up her arm and examining it, "I don't feel your bone sticking out any, but we should still get an x-ray and make sure."

"Do we have to, I need to get home and check on my siblings." The girl asks trying to rush her.

The doctor looks at her in understanding, "Sadly yes, I don't want to send you home and something happen because I didn't check." Hesitantly she tilts her head, "Why do you have to check up on your siblings?"

"Because my parents won't, they think their work is more important than their kids." She rolls her eyes examining her arm, "You wouldn't get it."

Letting out a small chucks Peggy shakes her head, "I understand more than you would think." Seeing the confused look on the kids face she explains, "My parents think drugs and alcohol is more important than their kids"

"Really? How many siblings do you have?" The girl asks curiously.

Thinking for a second she answers, "Well there's Fiona, Lip, Ian, Debbie, and Carl, so there's six of us including myself." Taking a second she contemplated asking the next question, "How many do you have?"

"Two, Hayley and Ryan." The girl smiles, "My names Jamie," The girl smiles. "How did you take care of them, you don't look very old."

Peggy sighs, "I used to do odd jobs around town like mowing the lawn, walking dogs, helping local "businessmen", anything that paid really. I used to drag the older three around in this wagon I found, I was lucky enough to eventually get enough to buy an old car." Smiling at her as she reaches to grab a sling from a nearby cart, "I'm gonna put this on your arm and then go see if I can get you an X-Ray."

Jamie looks at her with something Peggy couldn't identify, "Why did you tell me about your life? All of it seemed a little personal."

Giggling slightly Peggy moves to grab a sling, "Where I'm from most people already knows my situation, I guess I have to work on keeping some things to myself."

"Thanks for fixing my arm," Jamie says as she glances at her arm.

Peggy nods, "You're welcome."

✗✗✗

After she finished up with a Jamie, Peggy made her way down the hall when she ran into Lexie who was frowning. "This is so strange, even as an adult talking to these kinds of kids is so hard."

"What do you mean?" Peggy looks at her confused

She sighs, "You know, the ones who are quiet and don't have many friends. I just don't know how to talk to them, whenever I tried in high school they became annoyed with me."

"Oh, you were one of those," Peggy laughs before she sees the confusion on Lexie's face. "You know the popular kid who thinks everyone loves you and want to be your friend. So then when you see a kid sitting by themselves you feel desired to force them to talk to you"

Lexie gasps, "No I wasn't!"

"Let me guess," Peggy stops and stands in front of her friend. "You had a lot of "amazing" friends who you don't even talk to now, you were prom Queen, and you were valedictorian."

The brainiac stares at her in shock, "How did you know all of that?"

Peggy laughs once more, "Because it was obvious the second you described your patient. I knew all types of girls like you, they saw me sitting by myself at lunch and just needed to know why I was alone. It was all bullshit though, they only come over and talk to you to feel better about themselves."

"I never did that!" She yells at her offended.

The girl shakes her head smiling sadly, "Maybe not on purpose but you most likely still did it. You probably smiled at everyone you came across but if they were to walk up to you, you would have no idea who they were. None of us "Loners", as kids like you called us, wanted to be your friend because you were assholes."