Chapter Nine

"Murphy, Edwards! You're with Howard today!" Dr. Bailey told us as she walked up to where Shane, Stephanie, Heather, Jo, and I were waiting for our assignments for the day. I looked over at Stephanie to see that she looked just confused as I was, who was Howard?

"Excuse me Dr. Bailey, who's Dr. Howard?" I asked.

"Dr. Howard?" Dr. Bailey looked down the hall. We all watched as she pointed out a young woman in dark blue scrubs that didn't look much older than us. She looked like she should be an intern with us, not a fellow of attending. Looking at her I saw that she had dark brown hair that was pulled up into a bun that had caramel highlights in it. She looked to be about my height. I recognized her as the woman that all the attendings and fellows had been talking about hanging around the ICU lately.

"That's Dr. Howard." Dr. Bailey informed us. "Wilson, you're with Grey, Brooks you're with Karev, and Ross is with me. Go."

"What do you think she's like?" Stephanie asked me as we made our way towards Dr. Howard, who was talking with Dr. Webber.

"Maybe she's nice?" I shrugged, she had to be better than Dr. Grey. When we reached her her back was still to us but Dr. Webber saw us and nodded. We watched as she turned around and looked at us with an indifferent expression.

"May I help you?" She asked us.

"Dr. Bailey told us that we were on your service today." I informed her.

"You didn't tell me that I'd have interns." She directed the comment towards Dr. Webber, though she didn't look away from us as she spoke.

"This is a teaching hospital." Dr. Webber said simply. "I have to check on a patient, let me know if you need anything today."

"I will." She nodded as he left. "What are your names?"

"Stephanie Edwards."

"Leah Murphy."

"Okay," she nodded. "While Dr. Shepard is unable to work I will be the temporary head of Neuro and while Dr. Robbins is unable to work I will also be assisting in Pediatrics. I have a few rules. One: don't question me, I've been at this longer than either of you. Two: if I leave you to take care of one of my patients and they die you better run because I'll kill you. And three: if I ask you for an update of Dr. Sloan or Dr. Shepard's conditions then I expect you to be able to tell me. Got it?"

"Yes ma'am." We nodded.

"Alright, follow me." She started walking down the hallway and led us into the stairwell. We climbed a flight of stairs before going back into the halls where she led us to a patient's room. We followed her inside to find a young man laying in the hospital bed with a young woman sitting on the edge of it.

"Good morning Mr. Eckertt. I'm Dr. Howard, I'll be performing your surgery today." She introduced herself to the man.

"Please, call me Austin." The man shook her hand. "This is my wife Emily."

"Nice to meet the woman that's going to be cutting open my husband's brain." The woman joked as she shook hands with Dr. Howard too.

"I do make it a rule to meet a man's wife before I look inside of him." Dr. Howard smiled before gesturing to us. "These are some of our interns, Dr. Murphy and Dr. Edwards, they'll be helping prep you for the surgery."

"Nice to meet you." Austin nodded at us.

"Austin was admitted to the hospital last night with severe migraines and after having a seizure. It was later found that he had a brain tumor in his frontal lobe that I will be removing this afternoon." Dr. Howard informed us.

"The surgery, it's safe right?" Emily asked as she looked between the three of us.

"Every surgery has it's own risk factor," Howard was honest with her. "But I have preformed this surgery on tumors far more serious than Austin's. I could do this surgery in my sleep, but seeing as how that's against the law I'll be awake for it."

"See Em, I told you not to worry." Austin patted her hand. "She's always been a worrier, even when she doesn't have to."

"One of us has to." She lightly hit his arm. "If it were up to you you'd never look at the risks to something. You'd be in a ditch somewhere if it weren't for me."

"We don't know that." Austin rolled his eyes.

"I'm going to let the two of you have some more time and then I'll have Dr. Edwards come back and prep you about an hour before the surgery starts. I'll see you in the OR." Howard chuckled before heading back out of the room with us on her tails. She just seemed to ignore us as she walked over to the nurses' station and pulled out a file and started writing in it while we watched. We probably did this for ten minutes before she stopped and looked up at us. "Can I help you with something?"

"What should we do now if his surgery isn't until this afternoon?" I asked.

"I thought you'd both already been through medical school?" She sighed before tossing a file at each of us. "Look over his file, I want you both to be able to recite it from memory for me before surgery. For today Mr. Eckertt is your patient. Understood?" We nodded. "Good now get out of my face."

Maybe I was wrong.

Maybe she be worse than Grey.

***

"No, there's no way that can be true!" Jo shook her head as we all sat in the cafeteria during lunch.

"It's true, she's becoming the new Medusa." I assured them. "It's like she does a one eighty while walking through a patient's doorway. With them she smiles, jokes, and is nice. Then, as soon as we're out of the room, she is cold and mean."

"She told us to memorize the patient's chart when I'm pretty sure she's not even going to let us stand in on the surgery." Stephanie backed me up as she took a bite of her pizza. "She won't even let us work the pit, all she wants us doing is memorizing the chart. How is that going to help anyone if we're not allowed in on the surgery?"

"That's not all though," I shook my head. "She didn't even look excited for the surgery."

"She's an attending, she's probably done the surgery a hundred times." Heather shrugged. "Do expect her to get excited for it every single time?"

"That's not the point," I told her. "Whenever one of the attendings have a surgery, even if it's a simple one, they are somewhat excited. Excited to just be in the OR working on saving someone. With her though she doesn't even seem excited to go into the OR. It's different."

"Maybe she just is nervous about losing her patients. Neuro surgery does have the highest fatality amount." Heather suggested.

"I'm with Leah, no matter the risk I'd always be looking forward to a surgery." Shane agreed with me.

"I heard some of the other doctors talking about her," Jo told us. "Apparently none of them were told that she was joining the staff here. Seems like Hunt, Webber, and Shepard were the only ones that knew."

"Bailey had to have known, she knows everything that goes on around here." Stephanie commented.

"I did a search on her earlier, since no one seems to know anything about here." Shane glanced at the doors, as though he expected Dr. Howard to walk through them at any moment. "I figured that there had to be something out there about her since she's done so much so young, by already being an attending. Searched her name and not a single thing came up. It's like she doesn't exist."

"That doesn't make any sense." Jo frowned.

"Neither does her coming to sit vigil at Dr. Sloan's bedside." Shane pointed out as we all continued to eat.