Chapter Text
Monica and Amelia hadn’t had the best start to their relationship as colleagues, with Amelia ‘stealing’ Monica’s parking space and all, but where they lacked communication and understanding, they made up for in their amazing abilities to cooperate on cases and preform groundbreaking surgeries. Sure, they were constantly bickering and teasing each other, but there was no denying the small spark between the two women. Of course neither of them would admit to this but there were definitely mutual feelings.
Monica arrived at Grey Sloan at around 6:30am, having been paged early to an emergent case found by Adams and Griffith in the pit the same morning. An 11 year old girl with a head trauma and inability to move the left side of her body had been rushed to the hospital following a bus crash on her way to a dance competition. There were other minor injuries but none as bad as this. Her parents were out of the country and were on the soonest flight to Seattle, but they’d be at least another 9 hours.
“Hi Ella, I’m Dr Beltran head of paediatric surgery, I’ll be helping you out today. Can you wiggle your toes for me?” Monica asked gently as to not scare the girl any more. She’d already paged Dr Sheperd and was waiting for her to arrive before making any decisions. “Okay, this is Dr Griffith, she’ll take you to your room and keep an eye on you while we have a look at your scans.” Her toes weren’t moving and Monica was growing increasingly worried about the little girl. She paged Amelia again, this time to the imaging room on the fifth floor, so they could get a proper look at Ella’s injuries. She was pacing back and forth waiting for the scans to come up when Dr sheperd entered the room, closely followed by Adams and Griffith. She was walking much slower than she normally would, and her face was pale.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Amelia asked quietly. She hadn’t been feeling the best since she got up, but decided to push through it and go to work anyway. Her head was throbbing causing her to feel overwhelmingly faint and she had this awful stabbing pain in her stomach, so she was quieter than usual, which Monica immediately picked up on.
“11 year old with head trauma caused by a bus crash. She can’t move the left side of her body and is in and out of consciousness. Here” Beltran handed her the scans from the head CT, and watched her face shift uncomfortably. It was clear she was in pain. Sheperd seemed to be wobbling on her feet, so Monica gently placed a hand on the small of her back, offering some support to the smaller woman. They had their backs to the wall so neither of the residents picked up on the thoughtful gesture, but it sent butterflies rushing through Amelia’s stomach despite the pain she was in. She leaned slightly into Monica’s hand, letting it steady her as she tried to focus on the scans in front of her.
“Uh, yeah she has bleeding in the right of her brain. It’s risky to operate now and the bleeding might stop on its own. Adams get a repeat CT in an hour and page me here when you get the results, Griffith run standard labs and make sure there’s nothing else going on.” She looks over at Monica, her glassy eyes looked tear filled and Monica’s heart broke for Amelia, and asks “Could you take me to see her so I can do a quick neuro exam?”
“Yeah, of course follow me” Beltran responded, matching Amelia’s gentle tone. She could tell something was wrong, but didn’t want to push Amelia for answers. After all they hadn’t really had any non-work related conversations and if Sheperd was really struggling, she would ask for help, right?
The two surgeons walked slowly though the halls of the peads floor, Monica letting Amelia set the pace just to make sure she wasn’t overdoing it. Monica cared about Amelia, more than she’d let show and if anything were to happen she’d be heartbroken. She knew more than anyone how lonely life could be, and she knew how little people the neurosurgeon had left in her life. Adams had told her about Meredith and Maggie, but had left out everything to do with Kai and Derek. “Hey, are you okay?” She finally asked, gently placing a hand on the neurosurgeon’s shoulder just before they entered their patients room. Amelia was so unfocused she hardly noticed the small movement.
“Yeah, I’m fine just an early start so, pretty tired.” Amelia offered her a small smile before walking into Ella's room. “Hi Ell, I’m Dr Sheperd, I’m just gonna shine this torch in your eyes, if you could keep looking straight ahead for me.” She had a confident expression plastered on her face and her voice had become more loud and assertive, still keeping a fairly gentle tone to match the situation.
She completed the neuro exam and Beltran followed her out of the room. “Neuro exams fine, this should resolve itself, temporary paralysis is fairly common after injuries like these but I’d still like you to check these scans with me.” Sheperd told Monica, her voice weak again as she received a page from Adams letting her know he was about to take Charlotte downstairs for her CT. Amelia felt safe around Monica, and even if she didn’t there was no way she could keep up this act all day, so had to let herself be vulnerable in front of the paeds surgeon.
“Okay, why don’t you try and get some rest while we wait for the scans? It’ll be at least another half hour.” Monica asked, trying anything to get Amelia off her feet and somewhere she could relax a little. After all they both had a long day ahead of them. The on call rooms had recently been renovated, so the beds were much comfier than before, making them a good option to get some sleep.
“Yeah, I’ll uh, see you in a bit” Amelia was practically whispering at this point. She walked slowly to the nearest on call room, collapsing onto one of the beds and falling into an unsettled sleep. She’d had a brain tumour for years and not know about it for god’s sakes, why couldn’t she just push through whatever bug this was? She couldn’t take anything for the pain due to her history, which made things ten times worse, and she’d barely slept the night before. Before she could get any meaningful rest, her pager went off.
Dr Adams : To imaging room 5