Chapter 68

"Ow, Ow, Ow." I wince as I limp to the chair at the front desk before taking a seat in it.

"What's wrong with you? Did you hurt yourself?" Derek frowns.

"No. My ankle just starts to ache whenever the weather gets cold, ever since I broke it in the stupid plane crash." I sigh. My doctor told me I would occasionally have pain in my ankle, because I aggravated the injury so much by walking on it after the plane crash, but for the most part I don't have to much trouble with it until it starts to get cold which is normal after certain injuries.

"That's common, my hand does the same thing sometimes. Have you talked to your doctor about it?" He asks.

"I have. He gave me pain pills for them, but I can't take them before operating." I sigh.

"Maybe you should take today off and relax and rest your ankle." He suggests.

"The same thing I said." Jackson says kissing me as he joins us at the front desk.

"I have patients, I can't just take off" I sigh as my pager goes off. "See its time for me to save a life right now." I say standing up and limping away. My patient has a ruptured aneurysm, so we have to rush him to the O.R. for surgery.

"Nice job." I say to Shane after he finishes the craniotomy and moves aside so I can take over.

"Thank you, Dr. Garcia." He smiles.

"Now that we've performed the craniotomy, what is the next step?" I ask.

"You have to expose the aneurysm by opening the dura and folding it back to expose the brain." He says.

"Exactly." I agree as I continue to operate. After 5 hours I successfully complete the surgery then I take the patient to recovery.

"What are you up to?" I ask Derek entering the research lab and taking a seat in a chair as he's messing around with a skull.

"Torres and I are working on thought control prosthetics. I'm trying to figure out a way to insert the sensors through a smaller craniotomy." He explains.

"Sounds fun." I smirk. "Derek, what is this, you should be ashamed of yourself?" I say picking up a pair of badly repaired butterfly wings that go to a Halloween costume.

"I'm sorry?" He frowns unsure of what I'm talking about until he looks up. "Oh, well that's for Zola tonight. It was ripped. I fixed it." He says as he continues working on the skull.

"Yeah, if you call this fixed. I could stitch this up so neat, you'd never know there's been a rupture. You can do better Shepherd." I say examining the wings.

"You do realize we're talking about a Halloween costume and not a surgery here." He smirks.

"I know, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive for perfection." I shrug.

"You're not gonna let this go are you?" He asks.

"Nope." I smile, so he walks over to me and we start working on the butterfly wings.

"You know, if you segmented the wings then she'd flap when she moved." I say as we work on them

"She just has to look like a butterfly. She doesn't actually have to fly." He smirks "I'm surprised you're in here working on butterfly wings instead of operating in the O.R."

"I needed a break. Standing on my ankle for 4 hours did not help my pain at all." I mumble.

"I don't know why you won't just relax and take today off to rest. You're stubborn." Derek says.

"I know." I shrug. "Hey, you know if we attach this to her wrist with strings, it'd sorta fan out." I say as I look at the wings.

"That's a brilliant idea." Derek says.

"I know." I smile.

"Keep stitching. I think you just gave me an idea." Derek says walking back over to where he was working on the skull. While he works on the idea, I continue stitching up the wings until I finish, then I start texting Jackson. He's operating right now, but he's had his scrub nurse using his phone to check on me all day in case I decided to actually listen to him and Derek and go home, which I'm not, because I have another surgery to do later.

"Okay, look at this." Derek says walking over to the projector in the front of the room, where he has diagrams on the screen.

"What is that a fan?" I ask as I roll my chair over to the projector.

"Yeah, exactly. The array is a fan. Now if I can get the fan to go in through a burr hole and open up under the skull..." He begins to say.

"The whole area would be covered with a fraction of exposure." I finish. "How has no one ever though of this yet?" I ask.

"How have we never thought of this yet?" He asks.

"You seem to be enjoying your break from surgery." I say. For the past week Derek has been solely doing research and not operating at all.

"It's only been a week, but uh yeah I am." He smiles.

"Surprising." I say. I stay with Derek as he continues working on his research until it's time for my next surgery then I leave to operate. My patient needs a neuro endoscopy, which is luckily not a long procedure. It only takes me 2 hours to finish, then I have Shane take the patient to recovery, while I go to the locker room to change. I was more then happy for this day to be over, after standing for so many hours during surgery today, my ankle was hurting way worse than when I first came in this morning.

"Hey." Jackson says walking into the locker room a short while later.

"Hey." I say sitting down on the bench as I finish getting dressed.

"Your ankle still bothering you?"

"Yes, it hurts so bad. I should've just stayed home and gotten some rest, but no. I came in because I didn't want to cancel my surgeries, which was so stupid." I sigh.

"Yeah. Pretty stupid." He agrees.

"You know you aren't supposed to agree with that." I frown.

"You know that I was gonna take the whole day off with you, right? We could have spent the entire day at home in bed. I would've ordered Chinese food with extra fortune cookies, because I know how much you like them and we would've watched movies, and I would've massaged your ankle until it felt better, but no you wanted to come into work and stand on your ankle and make it worse and now you're in more pain than you were earlier. Which I told you would happen if you came in today."

"You're right." I sigh "Can we do it tomorrow?"

"We're going to do it right damn now." He smiles taking my hand into his before we walk out of the locker room.

"Oh we can't. Meredith and Derek are having a Halloween party for all of the kids and I have to go see Zola and Bailey in their Halloween costumes." I sigh.

"No, you can barely walk on that ankle. We're going home and you're going to let me take care of you. I'm sure Meredith and Derek will have plenty of pictures to send to you."

"Okay, fine." I agree, before Jackson and I leave to go home. I'm very stubborn at times, but one of the many things I like about Jackson is his ability to take charge when I need him to. There's never a day that goes by that I'm not thankful to have him in my life.