Chapter 11

"Hey Derek, you have a minute?" I ask him seeing him in the hallway.

"No, I have a board meeting I'm already running late too." He shakes his head.

"Okay, well how about I walk with you to your meeting. That'll give us a good thirty seconds."

"Okay, you have thirty seconds." He sighs.

"Ok, so this woman comes into the ER with abdominal pain. She's had it on and off for about six months, and a lot of doctors have told her it's either an ulcer or gastritis." I say before Derek interrupts me.

"Get to the point, you have 15 seconds." He says making me frown at his rudeness.

"So it occurs to me that the nausea is probably caused by a positional shift." I continue.

"CSF. Brain tumor, got it." He interrupts me again.

"Not just any brain tumor. She's got this huge, beautiful ependymoma, so Shadow Shepherd..." I begin to say.

"Dr. Nelson." He corrects me.

"Same difference, anyways he is going to do an intraventricular resection and let me assist and I may even get to debulk the tumor." I say excitedly.

"That's it." He frowns before walking away and going into the board meeting.

"Well who pissed in your cereal?" I mumble before walking to the front desk where Meredith is standing.

"Have you and Derek been having sex?" I ask her.

"Um yes, why would you ask me that." She laughs.

"Because he's in a crappy mood today." I frown.

"Don't take it personally, he's just stressed out with all of this Chief stuff." She says before getting paged and leaving.

"Hey beautiful." Jackson says walking up to me and giving me a kiss.

"Hey." I mumble.

"What's wrong with you?" He frowns.

"Derek's being a jerk." I sigh.

"You want to go have sex to take your mind off of it?" He asks me.

"Jackson." I huff.

"What? It would help." He says.

"You're right, it would make me feel better." I smirk leading him to an on call room. We have a little alone time until Dr. Nelson pages me to meet him in CT to look over the tumor.

"See that? The tumor's pressing down on the floor of the fourth ventricle, which is causing the nausea." Dr. Nelson says as we look at the tumor scans.

"So you debulk the tumor, and then you move on to the stalk?" I ask

"No. You debulk the tumor." He says making me smile before April comes in and starts taking the scans down.

"What are you doing?" I frown.

"Dr. Shepherd has requested these scans. His schedule has freed up, so he's decided to do the resection himself." April says.

"Oh, no! That's my, I am debulking, it's my tumor." I sigh in frustration snatching the scans from her

"It's Dr. Shepherd's tumor now." She says taking them back and walking away.

"That bitch." I mumble.

"Are you referring to Dr. Shepherd or Dr. Kepner?" Dr. Nelson asks me.

"Right about now I'm referring to both of them." I say before angrily walking out of CT. A short while later I see Derek and April standing in front of the OR board and I decide to confront him.

"You stole my surgery, right out from under me!" I say raising my voice.

"It wasn't your surgery, it was Nelson's surgery." He says.

"It's beyond Nelson's skill level. Right? I mean, that's what you said." April says making me glare at her.

"My diagnosis, my tumor, my debulking. Can I scrub in at least?" I ask.

"You're on Nelson's service. If I switch you, it's gonna look like favoritism."

"Dr. Nelson's been given an aneurysm." April says.

"Was anyone speaking to you? No, so shut up before I hurt you." I yell making her take a couple of steps back. I was already pissed and the last thing I wanted to hear was anything she had to say.

"Calm down, people are staring." Derek tells me.

"You stole my surgery." I shout at him before walking away. I was so pissed I didn't even know where I was walking to exactly I just kept pacing back and forth around the hallway. I mean Derek knows how important big surgeries like this are to me and he just took it.

"Hey, I've been looking for you everywhere" Jackson says walking up to me.

"Derek Shepherd is a surgery stealing ass, do you know that?" I yell.

"Calm down, I'm pretty sure the whole hospital heard you yelling at him." Jackson gently grabbing my shoulders to stop me from pacing.

"Calm down? He stole my tumor." I frown.

"Threatening April and shouting at Derek, who is the Chief of surgery now isn't going to solve anything." He says.

"You're right, maybe I should just stab them both with a scalpel." I say folding my arms.

"That isn't going to help either." He chuckles.

"I know, I just can't believe he stole my surgery. I'm so irritated. I need to be left alone for a couple more minutes." I sigh before walking off. I have a couple of hours until the aneurysm surgery, so I go try to take a nap until it's time to operate even though I spend most of the time tossing and turning. After what seems like forever I get paged for surgery, so I go start getting scrubbed in.

"Have you calmed down now?" Jackson asks as he starts scrubbing out from his surgery that had been in the same OR.

"Calmed down yes, but I'm still upset." I shrug.

"Look on the bright side at least you still get to operate."

"Yeah, I get to hold a retractor for Shadow Shepherd while Derek debulks my tumor how great." I smile sarcastically.

"You know what you need to do?"

"What?" I mumble.

"You need to think of yourself as one of the Whos down in Whoville." Jackson says.

"What are you even talking about?" I frown.

"You know, when the Grinch came down and stole their presents. They didn't let that ruin Christmas for them, instead they came out on Christmas morning, and they sang. You're gonna go into that surgery and you're gonna sing. Okay." He says.

"Okay." I mumble.

"Nope, I didn't hear that. What are you going to go into that OR and do?" He repeats.

"I'm going to go into the surgery and sing?" I say.

"Good, now go into that OR and sing Cindy Lou." He says making me laugh before I go into surgery. The surgery goes well, I mean it's no tumor but it'll have to do for today. At least after talking to Jackson I'm in a better mood. After I scrub out, I meet Jackson in the locker room so we can get ready to leave.

"You still staying at Meredith's tonight or are you staying with me?" He asks.

"With you. I don't want to see Derek anymore than I already have today." I say.

"Okay, come on." He says taking my hand as we walk out of the locker room.

"Liliana." I hear Derek call as Jackson and I are about to walk out of the hospital making us turn around.

"What?" I frown.

"Can we talk for a minute?" He asks me.

"No."

"Please?" Derek asks.

"Be nice, go talk to him. I'll be waiting in the car." Jackson says nudging me towards Derek.

"Fine, you have thirty seconds." I sigh.

"I want to apologize, I was a jerk for taking that surgery." He admits.

"Yeah obviously, is that it?" I ask.

"Liliana, I'm saying I'm sorry."

"Unless sorry brings back my chance to debulk a massive tumor I don't really give a damn." I say.

"Liliana." He starts before I interrupt him.

"If it would've been any other attending I would've been mad, but the fact that it was you my best friend that stole it, actually makes me more hurt than angry." I frown.

"Look I understand why you're upset, I would be too. Taking that surgery was out of character for me, it's just ever since I've became Chief I feel like I'm not a surgeon anymore. I spend all my time doing administrative tasks and going to brunches and when you told me about that tumor I got jealous and I let it get the best of me. But I'm really sorry, please forgive me." He says.

"Fine." I sigh.

"Really?" He smiles.

"Yeah, but you are going to have to find me another tumor eventually." I tell him.

"I will. This went better then I expected. I expected more yelling." He says.

"I did think about stabbing you with a scalpel for a second earlier." I shrug.

"Sounds about right." He laughs.