Chapter 61

"Swag bags for the Syrians:" April sighs as we stand in the attendings lounge, prepping for the doctors who are flying over from Syria, to arrive."Some, um, sweatshirts and baseball caps, post-its. Ooh, really cool penlights." April says shining the light as she looks at the materials we've packed.

"Ooh, those are nice." Arizona agrees.

"You're sending post-its to Syria?" Richard asks.

"Yeah, I'm working with doctors aid international. We've flown in two Syrian doctors. They're general practitioners, but now with the war, they've been recruited to staff the field hospitals. They're getting advanced trauma training with Seattle Pres, and they're here for a crash course in basic surgical skills." Owen explains.

"They need to learn what they can do quick and dirty." Arizona adds.

"They rope you in?" Chief asks her.

"Mm-hmm." She answers.

"Which must mean that..." Webber began to say.

"Yeah, they're losing a lot of kids." Arizona sighs

"Godspeed." Richard sighs before leaving the lounge.

"All right, let's get this stuff with the boxes of supplies we're sending back with them." Owen says.

"Ah, so Bailey got her genome thing funded. You got this thing funded. I need to get my cartilage project bankrolled while we still got bank." Callie says looking over at me.

"Why are you staring at me?" I frown.

"Because your husband has the biggest vote out of all of us for what projects are funded and I was just thinking maybe you could..." She begins to say before I interrupt her.

"I already know where this is going and the answer is no. You have my vote, but if you want Jackson's vote you're going to have to convince him that your project is a good investment." I say.

"Fine." Callie mumbles before my pager goes off and I leave to go meet Brooks. Derek has agreed to take her under his wing, but I kept her on my service for today since she's familiar with my post ops.

"Dr. Garcia, hey. I wanted to follow up on the patients we saw yesterday, 'cause I care." Shane says running up to me when he sees me in the hallway.

"Ross, you should be learning something else from someone else today, you're not on my service." I remind him.

"Oh, I am. I'm covering the pit, which I can do and manage your post-ops. Also, I brought you a latte." He smiles handing me the latte.

"It's not your job to bring my coffee. Your supposed to be learning about the wonders of surgery, but this is appreciated." I say taking a sip of the coffee as we stop at the front desk.

"Sorry, I'm late. I'm here. I had to get a piece of gum. I had epically bad breath. I didn't want it to bowl you over in the O.R., but I'm all set.See." Brooks says walking over to me and opening her mouth so I can see the gum.

"For starters, there are no excuses for tardiness. I hate late, handle your business before your shift starts and also, I didn't need to see, your gum." I frown.

"Okay. Well, I'm going to check your post-ops. Anything you'd like me to look for?" She asks me.

"Ross actually already checked my post-ops." I answer.

"Spectacular." She smiles.

"Anything we should know." I ask Shane.

"Yeah, Rachel Dawson's awake."

"Okay, tell Hunt she's up." I say before Brooks and I leave to go check on the patient. I begin examining her and her vitals are great and her memory has returned, meaning that the surgery was successful. We check on the rest of my patients, before I go to the skill labs, where we're working on different surgical techniques to show the Syrian doctors, which is going to be difficult because they have limited resources.

"Garcia, how long until Rachel Dawson's out of ICU?" Owen asks walking over me as I work with Cristina, Meredith, and Derek.

"Check with Ross. He's tracking her through post-op." I say as I continue to work.

"Wait. I thought Brooks was on your service today." Owen says.

"Ross gets connected to the patients. He likes to follow through." I shrug. We continue working on different surgical techniques, until we finally finish.

"Hey, you got a minute?" Derek asks as we walk out of the room.

"I always have a minute for you, Shepherd. What's up?" I smile.

"I actually wanted to talk somewhere private."

"Okay." I frown confused, before we walk to an empty conference room.

"Okay, I have something to ask you and it's something big, so you don't have to give me a answer right away." He says.

"Okay, what is it?" I ask.

"Well, Meredith and I were talking about the future and how unpredictable it is. None of us know exactly how much time we have and Meredith and I want to make sure that if anything does ever happen to us, that Zola and the baby are taken care of, so we're updating our wills and we need to assign a guardian in case anything does ever happen to us and I wanted to ask if you would agree to be the guardian to the kids and take them in, if we aren't around to take care of them?" He says shocking me. I definitely wasn't expecting for that to be what he wanted to talk to me about.

"Really?" I ask still surprised.

"Yeah, Meredith and I both agreed that we'd want the kids to live with you if we weren't around. Like I said you don't have to give me an answer right now, I know..." He says before I interrupt him.

"Of course, I'll be the kids guardian if anything ever happened to you and Meredith. I already love Zola like she's my own and I'm going to love the baby like my own too, but it isn't like you and Meredith are going to die anytime soon. You're both going to get to raise your kids and watch them grow up."

"I hope so, but we just want to be prepared for the future and it's a relief to know they'll be taken care of no matter what. Thank you for agreeing to this." He smiles.

"You don't have to thank me, your my best friend. It's my job to make sure your kids are always taken care of."  I smile before my pager goes off.

"I have to go make sure my intern hasn't offed any of patients." I smile sarcastically making Derek laugh, before I leave the room and meet Brooks at the front desk.

"Have you checked in on Rachel Dawson?" I ask her.

"Yes I have. Her neurological test have improved." She says handing me Rachel's chart.

"Okay." I sigh reading over it.

"What's next on our agenda?" She smiles.

"We need to go prep Mrs. Walsh for her tumor resection." I say as we begin walking through the hallway. "Did you switch to spearmint gum?"

"Yes." She answers.

"I can smell it." I say.

"Do you like spearmint?" She asks.

"No, not particularly." I reply before we walk into the patients room to prep her for surgery then take her to the O.R. As soon as I finish the surgery, I'm paged to the board room for a emergency meeting. Multiple patients of Bailey's have returned to the hospital because of a post-op infection and we have to handle this problem immediately and figure out what is causing this.

"Bailey said the second patient isn't responding to antibiotics. So she's going to need surgery." Owen sighs as we sit around the desk.

"I just operated on the third. He's hypotensive and still pretty unstable." Webber says.

"Once Murphy's identified all her patients for the day, then we'll get them in here, make sure no one else is infected." Owen says.

"We're gonna need to make some kind of statement, before this gets out there on its own." I say and everyone nods their head in agreement.

"Hey, uh, the first patient, Joyce Basche, she didn't make it. I thought that the surgery would get rid of the infection, but..." Dr. Bailey says as she walks into the room.

"You need to get cultures on the other two right away and we need to make sure that we're using the right antibiotics so that this doesn't get out of control." Arizona says to her.

"Okay." Bailey says turning around to leave, but stopping when she sees Leah and Meredith entering the room. "We just lost Joyce Basche." Bailey says raising her voice at Leah.

"Dr. Bailey." Meredith says trying to stop her.

"No, she's her patient. She should know." Bailey continues.

"Leah checked all the charts. She was only on two of the patients that got the infection. She never touched the third one." Meredith says.

"What, is that supposed to reassure me? A woman just died." Bailey frowns.

"It couldn't have been Leah. The only doctor who touched all three patients was you." Meredith says shocking everyone and causing Bailey to go silent.

"We're gonna need to get legal down here." Jackson says standing up.

"Wait. Any...anything could've caused this kind of infection." Bailey stutters.

"Yeah, no well, we know that, but until there's an investigation..." Arizona says.

"No, um, I gotta go, 'cause I have two more people." Bailey says.

"Owen." Richard says looking over at him.

"Dr. Webber will deal with them." Owen says.

"Yeah, this is Dr. Avery. Get me Joelle Geller from legal down here, conference room two." Jackson says into the phone.

"I will...go over my notes." Bailey says nervously.

"Sit down, Dr.Bailey." Owen says sternly.

"No. M-my patients are in danger." Dr. Bailey mumbles obviously still in a state of disbelief.

"Dr. Webber will take care of them." Owen says.

"I haven't even told Joyce's husband that she didn't make it." Bailey says before Owen signals for Meredith and Leah to go notify the husband.

"I know the man! I don't need Grey to tell him that I killed his wife" Bailey shouts

"Dr. Bailey, please sit down." I say.

"What are you saying?" She asks us.

"We're asking you to sit down." Owen says.

This is going to be a long night.