useofcuriosity | PSL Box

Everything about the surgery should have been textbook.

The patient had been in good health save for the surgery that had been required. So when the heart gave out, everyone had been surprised, and everyone had moved quickly to deal with the complication. It hadn't been enough. Lydia was holding the man's heart between her hands, trying to massage it, stimulate it into beating again.

Somehow, before it happened, she just seemed to know, in some fundamental way she cannot explain. The review had cleared her, she'd done everything she was supposed to do, and now all that's left is to deal with her first loss on an operating table. She knew it was inevitable, and yet nothing could truly prepare her.

She sits in a tight huddle in the stairwell, hands pressed to her mouth to keep her sobs from being heard. She doesn't want anyone seeing her cry.

When he's heard about what happened, and of course he heard about it gossip spread around this place like foxfire, he'd been worried. Worried about her, because she was Lydia Martin, and he seriously doubted anything like this had ever happened under her watch before. Especially not with her hands in a man's chest.

So he was worried, and he convinced Scott to take his shift. Went looking for her. She wasn't hard to find, really. There were only so many places to hide in this place. When he did find her, he didn't speak. A first for him, honestly. He sat on the step above the one she sat on and waited.

"Go away."

Don't bother me, please bother me. There's a lot of that with her. Straightening up, she wipes at her eyes with the heel of one of her hands. "I don't need anyone seeing me like this."

"I'm not going anywhere." He scoots down one step to sit beside her. "Then we should probably go."

She looks at him a touch balefully. "Where would we go?" she asks, skepticism in her voice. "I just need to pull it together, that's all. I need to learn to cope better."

"We'll go for a drive. Come on. Allison said she'd cover for you."

She looks at him in confusion that transitions slowly to surprise. Hauling herself to her feet, she takes Stiles' hand as a matter of course. "Allison would notice." she admits, and Allison would know how she feels about people seeing her cry. People seeing her weak.

"She would," he agrees and squeezes her hand lightly. "So, we'll go for a drive. We can talk, if you want. Or not, if you want. We can find some baseball bats and break some milkcrates. Wherever you want to go."

"It's crazy. The hospital is the best place in the world. And I just want to get out of here right now."

She looks at him, her fingers squeezing his back. "Get me out of here. Just drive." Then, "You break milk crates with baseball bats?"

"Nah. I'm terrible with my stance, they mostly just go flying." Is he kidding, or not? Probably not.

"It's all in the physics." she murmurs absently as they head for the parking lot. "Do you ever have times where you just want to stop thinking?"

"Sure. Do you?" He's guessing yes, because why else would anyone ask that question?

"Yeah." she says. "And then I wind up feeling bad about it. It's my responsibility, isn't it? To use what I've got? Even when I don't want to."

He leads the way to his car, thinking about that. "No, not really? You're not a robot. You're allowed to take a breather."

As always, she waits by the car door for him to open it. Established habit. "It's more than taking a breather." she admits. "It's more like surrender." She shakes her head. "The resident in cardio said I did exactly what I was supposed to do. But it didn't do any good. What's the point of doing exactly what you're supposed to do if it doesn't do any good?"

He opens her door, closes it behind her and waits to answer until he gets in. "Because most of the time it does. But not everyone's strong enough to survive what they're supposed to."

She shakes her head, staring at her hands. Only a couple of hours ago there was a fragile, essential organ in them. "I guess that's why we're doctors." she admits. "Because we want everyone to be as strong as we are."

"Is that why you're a doctor?" Things they've never really talked about.

"Why I'm a doctor?" she looks over at him, and then as he pulls out of the parking lot, the road ahead of them. "I found a body once. I was in high school. I just started walking and I found it. It was the weirdest thing...but since then I felt like if I didn't jut sit back, if I tried to do something, I could keep things from happening." She looks at him cautiously, like she thinks he might accuse her of being crazy.

He smiles at her, briefly. He doesn't think that's so crazy. Who wouldn't want to keep people from dying, like that? "That must've been scary, though."

"It was." She leans back against the headrest. "But scarier things happened. I had one of those weird fugues and ended up lost in the woods for two days. I still don't remember what happened during that time."

"Has anything like that happened since?" He's smart enough not to ask if she ever got it checked out. She's Lydia Martin. Of course she did. At least he hopes she did.

"Not like that, no." Whether she did or not, she won't clarify. At least, not yet. "But sometimes I still get feelings. Like right before we get a massive casualty trauma roll in. Like today, while I was scrubbing for surgery." Again her eyes go to her hands. "I ignored it."

"Feelings like something bad is going to happen?"

"Feelings like I've just stepped into a graveyard." She can't look at him when she says that, too busy berating herself for how crazy it all sounds.

Grey's the 3rd - This Shit Never Gets Old...Until It Does

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