Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Richard Webber hated hiring people. It was a fact he did very little, if anything at all, to conceal; the doctors that already worked at the hospital, from the various heads of departments down to the newest intern, were hand selected and vetted and chosen for this program. For this hospital… for his hospital. Hiring a new surgeon ran the risk of throwing off the precarious balance that had finally washed over Grey-Sloan Memorial in the wake of his last hire, Penny Blake. If he could avoid another upset like that amongst his surgeons, his family, then he would. Even if it meant not hiring a single admittedly highly qualified person off of the list before him.

Unfortunately, it wasn't entirely up to him. Bailey would make the final decision, of course, with his recommendation, as she had delegated most of the hiring responsibilities to him. But he still wished he could put it off just a little longer. Catherine had insisted that they needed a new trauma surgeon, however, with April Kepner's pregnancy looming. No one knew how long she would continue to work, how long her maternity leave would be, and that time without another trained trauma surgeon assisting Owen Hunt in the ER left them wide open for failure. And failure was unacceptable. His wife also reminded him that, not only was their ER short staffed even with Kepner still working full time, but Grey-Sloan was a teaching hospital – being short on trained trauma surgeons meant that his interns and residents couldn’t get the education that they deserved. Catherine was right, of course, but Richard hated to admit it.

Almost as much as he hated hiring people.

Sighing, he picked up a resume from towards the bottom of the stack. He had done his best to separate the large pile into promising and not so promising prospects (with one pile being much larger than the other), but it was getting late and he was finding it difficult to find any of them promising at this point. He was happy to be down to the last few resumes.

The name at the top of the one in his hand looked familiar. Richard had been in medicine long enough to know that that was not necessarily a good thing, however. He continued to scan the neatly typed paper and glossed over previous places of employment, almost all military hospitals or operating bases, and most of those in the Middle East. He raised an eyebrow and flipped back to the first page. Typed off to the side was the name of the applicant – Lieutenant Commander Cassandra L. Wise, United States Navy.

Well, he thought with a quirk of his lip as he flipped through the resume again in search of the listed education, as well as internships and residencies, at least I know Hunt will like her.

He found her education information, and looked over it. It was an impressive lineup: graduated top of her class from University of Washington for her pre-med, top of her class from the University of Pennsylvania for med school, with her internship and residency at…

Seattle Grace Hospital?

Hardly believing it, he read the line over several times. She listed her residency as completed with the Navy, which meant she must have left Seattle Grace to join. But based on the years she listed, there was no way Miranda Bailey didn't know her. Remember her clearly, perhaps not, but with his own memory failing him at the moment he had to try; it wasn’t very often that a surgeon worked at Grey-Sloan – or any of its various previous names – and made an active attempt to return.

He picked up his cellphone and called her, completely oblivious to the late hour. To her credit, Bailey answered rather quickly, and only sounded slightly annoyed.

"I'm sorry, I know it's late. Listen, Bailey", he went back to the first page of the resume to make sure he got the name right, "do you remember an intern and resident named Cassandra Wise? It looks like she left the hospital in 2005, in the middle of her residency."

She mulled it over for a second, the name sounding a bit familiar. Bits and pieces of the doctor came to her, like a surgery she was a part of or her scribbled handwriting on a chart, but she couldn't quite place a face to it.

"The name sounds familiar", Bailey admitted. "If I remember correctly she was a few years behind me and Torres. Bright girl. Terrible handwriting. Wanted to go into peds.”

Flipping back to her employment information, Richard looked for any pediatric experience listed and found none.

"She's a trauma surgeon now. And, according to her resume, a damn good one. She served with the Navy for a decade; that's why she left the hospital. Looks like she just moved back to Seattle late last year.”

"Trauma? Really?”

Bailey may not have remembered much about the girl, but she didn't remember there being much of a trauma surgeon in her. The Cassandra she remembered - who always preferred to go by Cass - was goofy, always joking, and loved her pediatric rotations so much so that she always begged to be placed on Dr. Kenley's service. (Which the other residents always let her have, as no one else could seem to stomach the man.)

"That's what it says here. I'm thinking of calling her up for an interview with you later this week. Would you be up for it?"

"Absolutely."

Webber smiled to himself, glad that the search for a trauma surgeon may be much shorter than originally anticipated, and result in a hire of someone that had some roots in the hospital he helped to build.

"Sir", Bailey spoke up just a beat later, "maybe wait until the sun is up to call her?"

Cassandra was nervous – absolutely terrified, if she was being honest – for her interview with the chief of surgery. Richard Webber, who had been the chief when she left Grey-Sloan over 10 years ago, had surprised her with a call to set up the interview the morning before.

She had applied for the job on a whim; no part of her thought that anyone that worked with her during her residency would still be there, let alone that they would call her of all people in for an interview to fill the trauma attending position. The surgeon was confident in her abilities – Cass had a solid resume, and a decent amount of experience in the field – but compared to most of the other trauma surgeons she had met she was young. This middle east may have been a completely different kind of experience than traditionally trained trauma surgeons received, but that didn’t make up for the significant amount of time actually practicing surgery that the other surgeons probably had.

The nerves might not have been due to the job itself, though: the battery to her Jeep picked that morning of all mornings to die, resulting in her having to take a taxi to the hospital. Of course, all of the last minute scrambling to get there meant that she was running almost 20 minutes late for her interview. She had attempted to call Dr. Webber, but he didn’t answer, and the hospital just took a message to pass off to the chief of surgery.

With a final adjustment to her blazer, and a nervous tug on her tie, Cass steeled herself and rushed inside.

Walking through the doors of Grey-Sloan Memorial Hospital was filling her with nostalgia. The hospital may have a different name now, may be under different leadership and with new owners, but Cass could only ever see the place as Seattle Grace. As the place where she started her surgical career. As the last years, months, days and hours she spent as a civilian.

Carefully shouldering her bag so that it didn’t crease what she was wearing, the surgeon took a deep breath and made her way to the front desk.

“Good morning”, a nurse greeted her distractedly without looking up from the computer she was typing away on. “How can I help you?”

“Good morning. I had an interview with the chief of surgery at 9 o’clock, but had a little trouble getting here. I was just wondering if you could point me in the right direction?”

The nurse gave her directions, and Cass was off. She was expecting to wind up in the chief’s office, but the nurse’s directions instead lead her to a large conference room where none other than Miranda Bailey was sitting at the center of the table. Nervously swallowing – and with much more difficulty than she should have had – Cass adjusted the sleeves of her shirt one last time before knocking on the door. After waiting to be told to enter, she walked in.

“Good morning, Dr. Bailey”, Cass said with a too-big smile as she extended a hand. Dr. Bailey just scrutinized it with an eyebrow raised before looking up to meet her gaze. Cass took it as a sign (and not a good one) and slowly withdrew the hand. “I’m Cassandra Wise. I had an interview with the chief of surgery at 9, but my car battery died and I ended up having to catch a last minute taxi. Hell of a Tuesday, right?” She looked around the room a little awkwardly, fiddling with the strap of her bag again. “Is the chief on her way or-“

“I am the chief”, Bailey interrupted.

Cass knew that she should have more tact than to drop her jaw slightly at the news, and she liked to think of herself as someone that did, but hearing that a woman that had been just a senior resident when she had left the hospital was now the chief of surgery? She was a little shocked. Not because the Bailey she remembered was not a more than capable surgeon, of course – she had been at the top of her class of residents, a major contender for chief resident back then – but because it was Miranda Bailey. The fact that she was still at the hospital alone was enough to surprise Cass.

She closed her mouth with an audible click once she realized it was still open and tried to recover with another large smile.

“You’re kidding! Congratulations! I wish Dr. Webber would have told me who I was meeting with when he set up the interview. I had no idea what you still worked here, Dr. Bailey.”

Bailey looked unamused, but finally motioned for Cass to sit down across from her at the table.

“I remember you”, Bailey said once the other surgeon got settled in her seat. She closed the folder in front of her – presumably holding Cass’ resume – and slid it out of her way before clasping her hands and putting them on the table in its place. “I couldn’t put a face to the name until now, but I remember you. Didn’t remember you being so graceless, though.”

The small quirk of her lip was the only indication that Cass hadn’t completely blown her interview – not yet, at least. Dr. Bailey started by going over the position that she had applied for, then the duties and responsibilities that came with being an attending at a teaching hospital like Grey-Sloan. She talked a bit about Owen Hunt and April Kepner, the two other trauma surgeons she would be working most closely with, as well as how they ran their ER and the pros and cons of being a level 1 trauma center.

“Tell me where you were at before coming back to Seattle”, the chief asked later in the interview, once Cass had finally relaxed. She was casually sipping a coffee Miranda had offered her, her blazer carefully folded over the back of the chair next to her.

“I was working at a forward operating base with an Army battalion most recently, in Sarkari Karez, Afghanistan. There were around 300 soldier there, and I was one of 3 trauma surgeons forward deployed with them out of the nearby hospital in Kandahar.”

“And before then you were at that hospital, right?”

“Correct. I got there in 2010, and took over the trauma department in 2011. I was the head of that department there for about 3 years, before I requested to go back out to the field.”

“Requested?”

Cass smiled – she was quite used to that reaction. She would never forget the way that her mother had reacted when she had Skyped to tell her that she put in for new orders, or how her face fell when she told her that she had finally gotten picked up.

“Yes, ma’am. Working at the hospital was amazing – it was nowhere near advanced as here, of course, but it was so nice working somewhere with the equipment and supplies I was lacking in the field for the first time since my fellowship – but I wanted to get back out there. Soldiers and Marines were coming in and they were injured, missing arms or legs, dying more often than not, and I knew that if they had better first responder care they might have just had a better chance. There just weren’t enough trained trauma surgeons out there, and after 3 years I had enough of seeing it and not being able to do anything about it.”

“So what made you decide to get out? And why come back to Seattle?”

Cass shrugged.

“I grew up here. I love Seattle. And my mom still lives here. She’s getting older, and with my dad gone and my brother living in Chicago, I was starting to worry about her being out here alone. It came up that I could reenlist or go reserves and get out, so that’s what I did. She was so mad when I told her; she insisted that she didn’t need anyone to come babysit her, so I got an apartment over on University. It was just time for a change of pace. When I was looking for jobs I saw that you were looking for a trauma attending here and I applied. Honestly, I didn’t think that anyone that I had worked with from before would still be here. I was shocked when Dr. Webber called me yesterday. Almost as shocked as I was when I walked in to meet the chief of surgery and you were here”, she added quickly, grinning.

“You must have seen that Seattle Pres is looking for a trauma attending too, then. Why apply here and not there?”

“Why would I want to work there?”, Cass shrugged again. “This place raised me.”

They chatted a little while longer, about Cass’ mother and a few of her experiences overseas, but Bailey was just dragging the interview out at this point. The chief had already made up her mind. It wasn’t just that Cass was a bright woman, was funny and personable – something that she was concerned about, after hearing about how their last hire was getting along with the rest of the staff – or that she knew that Owen Hunt and April Kepner would like her. Dr. Wise also had the most experience out of the other surgeons that had applied for the position, by far. Plus, she was right – Grey-Sloan had helped make her the doctor that she was, and Bailey was happy that she wanted to get back to that.

“So when would you be willing to start?”

“Immediately”, Cass answering without thinking, then realized what Bailey had said. “Wait, are you offering me the job?”

“I am”, Bailey smiled. “I’ll get the board together, hammer out the details of your contract, but if you want the job… it’s yours.”

With a big smile of her own, Cass popped up and went around the table to wrap Bailey up in a hug. She repeated thanks while squeezing her, and Bailey laughed along with her.

“Welcome to Grey-Sloan, Dr. Wise.”

Cass thought she was nervous for her interview with Dr. Bailey last week, but that didn’t hold a candle to how she felt standing outside the doors of the hospital now – on her first day on the job, as an attending trauma surgeon at one of the best teaching hospitals in the country. She gulped.

At least her car started this morning.

With a deep breath, she put a smile on her face and walked inside, making her way towards the attending’s lounge that Bailey had showed her after her interview. That was probably the strangest part; the last time she had been in this hospital, Cass was about to end her second year of residency. She had just enough knowledge to be considered dangerous, her senior residents used to tell her and the others in her class, and spent much more time panicking about surgeries than actually performing them. Now she was sauntering up to a lounge she used to only dream about being able to use before.

It was amazing what a decade could change.

There weren’t any familiar faces when she finally made her way to her destination; Cass had been hoping to see either Bailey or Webber, as they were two of the very few people that still worked at the hospital from her days before and seemed to ease a bit of her anxiety. It had been foolish to expect the chief of surgery to be down to greet her, however, and she knew that a surgeon as experienced as Dr. Webber was surely a busy man. It would have been nice to see him before she started, though; she hadn’t spoken to him since calling after being hired to thank him for setting up her interview.

Only two women were in the lounge, talking happily to each other as they get ready for work. Amelia Shepherd, the lab coat of one of them read, breezed by her without a word, leaving the other woman to finish tying her sneakers in the now silent room while Cass looked around.

“Can I help you with something?”, the seated woman asked just as the new surgeon had gotten to the lockers to attempt to find her own.

Startled, Cass turned around and plastered a polite smile on her face. She wasn’t eager to admit that she was a little lost, but without scrubs or a place to put her things she didn’t exactly have a choice but to ask for help. Quickly walking over, she extended a hand to the other doctor.

“Cass Wise. Trauma. It’s my first day.”

The woman smiled back, and shook her hand firmly.

“Meredith Grey, head of general. It is not my first day, so if you need something let me know.”

Cass immediately perked up at the name Grey, thinking that there was no way it could be a coincidence that it was the name of the hospital, but had more tact than to ask about it. At least for now. Instead, she shrugged her shoulders and looked around.

“Like scrubs? Maybe a locker?”

Meredith smiled, and it put Cass at ease. It was nice to be greeted with a friendly face; no matter how much experience she had, no matter how many years she spent as a surgeon, or how confident she was with a scalpel, she still felt like the awkward new kid on the first day of school.

The rest of the morning went pretty smoothly, with Grey helping her get a pair of new navy blue scrubs and find a locker to put her bag and clothes in. She also showed Cass to the cafeteria, where they grabbed some coffee, and dropped her off in the ER before Meredith herself had to go off to perform her first surgery of the day.

The emergency room at Grey-Sloan was immaculate. The equipment was state of the art, the carts and cabinets were stocked, and the room had the pleasant buzz of doctors and nurses happy to be busy at work. She took a moment to just stand in the middle of it, in awe. Cass had spent the better part of the last decade working in war zones, where conditions were less than sanitary and supplies were scarce. She almost didn’t know what she would do with herself when her first trauma came in, and she didn’t have to scramble to find the tools she needed to keep her patient alive.

Her moment of awe was relatively short lived, however, as a gurney hit her roughly in the side and she quickly spun to get out of the way.

“Sorry!”, the passing resident yelled, clearly in a hurry to do whatever it was she had been told to do.

Remembering that she was here to work, and not to gawk at the pretty machines, Cass went to work trying to find someone else in navy scrubs like herself. She was in luck, as it didn’t take long; standing at the electronic patient status board (which she made a note to remember to gawk at later when she had a free moment) was a man with strawberry blonde hair, taller than herself and with his back to her. And, as she had hoped, sporting just the color scrubs she was looking for. Assuming that he was the head of trauma, based on the pictures she had seem of the man when researching the department here, she carefully navigated herself through the pit to get to him.

“Excuse me”, she said as she approached. “Dr. Hunt? I’m-“

“Late”, he replied flatly, without turning around.

Suddenly very self-conscious, as her time in the military had taught her nothing if not punctuality, Cass checked her watch. It read 0642, meaning she was more than 15 minutes early for the 0700 shift. She wouldn’t risk being late again, after being late for her interview with Dr. Bailey.

“My apologies, Dr. Hunt, but I think you have me confused with someone else.”

He spun then, eying her seriously.

“You’re… not Wilson.”

“No”, Cass dragged out, raising an eyebrow. “Cass Wise. I’m your new trauma surgeon.”

Dr. Hunt’s rough exterior cracked just a bit then, and he smiled slightly as he extended his hand. She shook it firmly, and he returned it just the same.

“I’m sorry about that. It’s been crazy here this morning and one of my residents is late. I was hoping you were her.”

“In that case I have to say that I’m happy that I’m not, sir. I’ve already almost been run over once this morning, so I’ll do my best to just stay out of the way and learn my way around.”

“You picked a good day to start”, he said as he started to walk around the room, checking in on patients as the pair walked by their bays or rooms. “There’s a trauma on the way in right now. Multi-car pile up on the 5. We’re expecting-“

“Lacs, contusions, crush injuries, blunt force traumas, whiplash, shock…?”

“…I was going to say at least five incoming, but yeah. That sounds about right.”

Cass felt sheepish for jumping the gun, and decided to survey the room instead of making eye contact with her boss again. This meant she didn’t see the way that Owen was surveying her now – taking in her rigid posture, the way her hands were clasped behind her back with her feet shoulder length apart. He had heard from Bailey that he had a new trauma surgeon coming his way, but had been so busy lately trying to deal with feelings about Riggs and Amelia that he never actually went over the resume she had handed him. Now that she was here in front of him, though, he already knew what he would find there. Hunt had spent enough time in the military to be able to pick out his fellows from a distance.

“How long did you serve?”, he asked casually, lowering his voice slightly as he leaned against the wall and put his hands in his pockets.

Cass looked back over to him, catching his blue eyes with her own. The fact that he was asking meant that he hadn’t read her file, but also that he could tell that she had served just by looking at her. It didn’t surprise her at all; she had, of course, researched the man she was going to be working for, but even if she hadn’t she was sure she would have been able to tell that Hunt himself was a military man.

“10 years”, Cass answered at the same low volume, and was encouraged to continue with a nod. “I just got out this past December. Worked at the NATO Hospital in Kandahar for a while, and I was in forward deployed in the , most recently, but… well, something happened and I decided that it was time for me to come home. So I did. I actually planned on getting out of trauma, maybe switching specialties, but…”

“But you missed it too much.”

He looked at her knowingly; he recognized that look on her face, the scars on her knuckles, and the dark circles under her eyes. Owen saw a lot of himself in the younger doctor next to him, and was suddenly very happy to have a trauma surgeon with the same type of experience as himself in the ER. Not that Kepner wasn’t an incredibly capable surgeon – her time in Jordan had proven that without a doubt – but there was just something about working with a fellow military doctor that always put him at ease. Even Riggs, as much as he detested the man, could work wonders in the ER with a similarly trained surgeon backing him.

“Exactly. I missed the rush too much. So, here I am.”

“What rank were you when you got out, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I just put on Lieutenant Commander last year, actually.”

Owen smiled. A high ranking, highly trained Navy trauma surgeon… this woman was a gift. Making a mental note to remember to thank Bailey when he saw her next, he extended his hand again, to which Cass looked a bit confused.

“Major Owen Hunt. United States Army. We’re glad to have you, ma’am.”

After a short orientation to the ER – the electronic system would take some getting used to, Cass knew, but she also recognized how much it streamlined patient care – Owen showed Cass where they kept the trauma gowns and where she could stash her lab coat while they waited outside in the ambulance bay for the first of the traumas to arrive. Cass did as she was directed, folding it neatly and placing it behind the nurses’ counter; Owen gave her a questioning look when he saw the long sleeves she was sporting beneath her scrubs despite the warming weather, but she just shrugged at him.

“I remember Seattle being a little colder”, she explained as she grabbed herself a gown and headed outside.

The residents were already waiting for them, talking quietly amongst themselves with their interns looking terrified in the background. Owen left Cass’ side to stand before the lot of them and address everyone before things started to get crazy.

“Listen up, people. We’ve got six ambulances inbound with multiple traumas. The blood bank has been alerted, ortho and neuro are standing by, and ORs are being held open for us. Interns and residents, today is not the day to forget your ABCs. Do your jobs, and if you have a question – ask! There will be more than enough attendings in the pit to help you if you need it.”

Everyone murmured quietly in agreement.

“That being said”, Owen said just a bit louder to regain the waning attention of the group, “everyone welcome Dr. Wise, our new trauma attending. Let’s show her what we’re capable of.”

All the residents, interns, nurses, and any other person milling about in the ambulance bay immediately turned to her – she stood out like a sore thumb, it turned out, being the only new face in what appeared to be a sea of tightly knit doctors and staff. She waved slightly, blushing, and accepted introductions from a few of the more zealous young doctors, but was thankfully saved from more posturing by the distant sound of sirens.

She would have to remember to get back at Owen for that later.

The first two ambulances contained only minor injuries; a 16 year old male with a broken arm and a head laceration, and an 18 year old female with compound fracture of the femur and mild abdominal tenderness. They were rushed inside with senior residents in charge of them, while Owen and Cass waited outside for the more severe cases that were coming.

The third ambulance had one of the worst cases from the accident, according to the crew of the rig: an 8 year old boy with blunt force trauma to the head, chest, and abdomen, as well as multiple contusions and lacerations, who had lost consciousness in the field with unstable vitals. Owen nodded to Cass as they unloaded him from the rig, and she grabbed the nearest resident as they headed inside.

“What’s his name again?”, she asked the paramedic as he helped them move the boy from the gurney to the bed in the trauma room.

“Parker Granger. He was found about 20 feet from one of the cars… looks like he went through the windshield.”

“He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt?”, the resident asked with more than a little shock in her voice. Cass looked up. She was young, a pretty girl with shoulder length brown hair and fine features. Despite the shakiness in her voice, her face was steeled over and she looked very calm. Cass didn’t encounter a lot of female surgeons in her career, and always had a bit of a soft spot for them. Especially when they could keep a face like that with a case like this one.

“Who are you?”, she asked in lieu of responding to the question, the answer obvious based on the injuries of the poor boy between them.

“Jo Wilson. I’m a resident.”

“Ah, the late girl. Wilson, page neuro. Page cardio. And someone get me an ultrasound and an xray, now!”

“And peds?”, Wilson asked before she walked out, knowing that Alex would be upset if she let the new attending take this case up without at least letting him know that there was child in the ER.

“Sure, page them too. Page everyone. Where’s that damn xray?!”

Time moved quickly then, as it generally did with any trauma; Cass half expected sand to start blowing around her, but couldn’t say that she missed it when the alternative was a nice, clean air conditioned room like this one. Neuro beat cardio down, the woman from the attendings’ lounge earlier that morning who Cass knew now was Dr. Shepherd, and cleared Parker, but ordered a head CT to err on the side of caution. She rushed out as quickly as she rushed in, no doubt running off to assess one of the other five traumas in the ER. Cass was still waiting for her cardio consult as the xray was moved quickly back out of their room, but the consult – Dr. Pierce, according to Wilson – was held up with Owen’s trauma and didn’t make it before the boy’s heart rate started to fall rapidly.

Cass was mumbling curses under her breath and she moved the probe of her ultrasound up from where she was checking Parker’s belly to his chest. She cursed more loudly then, more colorfully, as she confirmed the reason she had wanted the damn cardio consult in the first place – a cardiac temponade, or fluid around the heart. If she didn’t act fast, the pressure could build up and cause a rupture in the pericardium, or cause even more damage to a heart that was already weakened. Then there was the fact that the was no way to tell what was causing the bleeding until the scans came back from radiology. She wasn’t a cardio girl, that was not even up for debate, but she had performed the necessary procedure literally countless times out in the field without the wonderful assistance of an ultrasound. There was no doubt that she could do this now. And it wasn’t like she had a choice, if the consult from cardio took any longer.

“Get me a damn 16 gauge needle!”, she growled out as she made up her mind.

No one in the room moved.

“Dr. Wise, shouldn’t we wait for Dr. Pie-“

“If we want him to die, Wilson! And he needs a pericardiocentesis, right now, or he will. Now get me the damn needle.”

None of the nurses moved, but Jo – unwilling to get on the attending’s bad side when she had just barely learned her name – went through the drawers to find the needle requested. Cass grabbed it from her, and shoved the probe in the resident’s extended hand in its place.

“Hold it here”, she told the Wilson as she indicated where she needed it. “Hold your damn hand still. Also, maybe hold your breath.”

Maggie Pierce, the head of the cardiothoracic surgery department, child prodigy, and a damn good surgeon if she did say so herself, walked into the room just as a doctor completely unknown to her was shoving a large needle into the chest of a very small unconscious boy.

“What the hell is going on in here?”

Jo looked up, deer and the headlights look plastered on her face as she saw the cardio surgeon in the doorway, but said nothing. Cass had just started to pull back on the plunger, the syringe filling up with blood as she did so.

“I swear to god if you fucking move, Wilson...”

“Who the hell are you?”, Maggie asked more forcefully as Cass completed the procedure, and Parker’s heartrate began to climb to within normal ranges.

“Cass Wise, your new trauma surgeon”, she replied as she held a piece of gauze over where the needle had been to ensure there was no more bleeding. Which there wasn’t, much to her (and Wilson’s) relief.

“Okay, Cass Wise, new trauma surgeon. Would you like to explain to me why you were performing a delicate cardiac procedure on a child without waiting for cardio to show up?”

“Well, I-“

“You did say trauma surgeon, correct Dr. Wise?”, Dr. Pierce interrupted, “Not cardiothoracic surgeon?”

“I… Yes, Dr. Pierce. I did say trauma.”

Cass finally looked up from Parker and flashed Pierce her most disarming smile, knowing that the scene that she had walked in on was definitely not ideal; she didn’t want her fellow surgeon to feel like she was stepping on any toes, especially on her first day, but she was not exactly doing an exceptional job so far.

“I didn’t mean to steal your thunder, Dr. Pierce. But I’m sure you’re a busy woman and I assure you, I am more than qualified to perform a pericardiocentesis, on a child or otherwise. So it’s under control here. If you wouldn’t mind taking a look at his scans before you go, though? I think there’s more going on here than I could tell in the ultrasound, or in these.”

Maggie looked annoyed, but walked around to where Cass was standing and grabbed the scans off of the counter that they had been set on. She held them up to the light and examined each one, clicking her tongue as she did so.

“He’s got a coronary arterial dissection, alright. It’s small, but it will only get bigger. He needs surgery, preferably right now, while he’s stable. Can I book the OR or do you have another risky procedure outside your field to perform?”

“Neuro ordered a head CT, so I’d get him there first. He’s got a liver lac and some blood in the belly, but if you don’t mind I can come up with you. I could fix it up while you’re working on his chest, I’ll be in and out before you know it.”

The cardiac surgeon narrowed her eyes at her, despite keeping a polite smile on her face.

“It’s okay”, she said as tucked the scans under her arm. “Meredith Grey is our head of general and she’s free. I’ll have her scrub in and help out. Thank you, Dr. Wise.”

Cass returned her polite smile back at her, very aware that she was being brushed off. She had done enough damage with this particular fellow surgeon, however, and bowing out gracefully might be the best course of action at this point. As much as she disagreed.

“Sounds good. I’ll call the CT for you if you want to head up now, let them know you’re coming. And I’ll make sure the OR gets booked for you and Dr. Grey.”

With a nod, Pierce took charge of the room and sent the gurney up to radiology while she seemingly headed out for the operating room. Cass was left there with the chart, which she handed off to Wilson after she made her phone calls with a dejected sigh before exiting the room and looking for more work to do. Which would have been quite easy for her to locate, if she hadn’t run right in to the broad body of a man that was rushing into the trauma room just as she was walking out.

“Jesus fucking Christ”, she mumbled as she looked up, sheepish. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you.”

“Where’s the patient?”, the other surgeon asked in lieu of either accepting her apology or extending his own. He was looking around the room, eyes only pausing on the resident diligently tapping away on the tablet before looking back at her.

“Parker. Dr. Pierce just took him up; he’s got an arterial dissection and a liver lac, but he’s stable. They were taking him up to get a head CT then to the operating room.”

He just grunted at her before spinning on his heels and going back to wherever he came from. Cass turned and looked at Wilson, her eyebrow raised and hands thrown up in exacerbation.

“Explain?”

“Alex Karev. He’s a peds attending, basically runs the department now.” Wilson looked up then, and had the decency to look a little apologetic. “Don’t take it personally, Dr. Wise. He’s just… like that sometimes.”

With nothing else to be said, and plenty of other patients needing care, she motioned for the resident to follow her and proceeded out to the pit. She spotted Owen back at the counter, so she walked towards the nurses’ station and donned her lab coat while she waited for him to finish his conversation.

“Where do you need me?”, she asked when the other person walked away.

He turned and looked at her with a half-smile on his face, then gestured towards the flat screen TV on the wall just behind them.

“Nowhere. All traumas dealt with, the most severe of which being the boy you were working on and he’s on his way to surgery and- wait. Why are you down here? Shouldn’t you be in OR 3 with Pierce?”

Cass shrugged.

“She didn’t seem like she wanted me there. Said she was going to call Grey to scrub in with her. Which is fine”, she added quickly when it looked like Owen was going to say something, “because it was a small liver lac, the perfect injury for a general surgeon. Plus, I figured you would need me out here. Which… apparently was wrong.”

Still looking a bit skeptical, Owen returned her earlier shrug with one of his own.

“We’ve got it under control. I think the chief wanted to see you, though, if you’ve got time. You know where her office is?”

Nodding, Cass dismissed Wilson to the ER as needed after thanking her for her help, and started off in the direction of Bailey’s office.

“Wise?”

She stopped and turned, catching Owen’s eyes. He closed the small distance between them, and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

“You saved that kid’s life. I know you’re new here, and it seems like a group that’s impossible to get in to, but it isn’t. You did good work today. Don’t let anyone tell you that you didn’t, and don’t let anyone brush you off of surgeries. Trust me – I learned that lesson the hard way.”

Cass smiled back at him and nodded, unsure of what to say or how he had already heard about the confrontation in the trauma room between herself and Pierce. But, however awkward, she appreciated the kind words. With a final scan of the surprisingly calm emergency room, Cass made her way to the stairwell in search of Miranda Bailey.

Chapter Text

The last time Cass was in the office of the chief of surgery, Richard Webber was in charge and she was being chastised, alongside a few of the other junior residents that she worked with, after being caught sleeping in the tunnels with their pagers off during a particularly slow night shift. It looked completely different now, and in a good way. It may have been that she wasn’t a young, inexperienced doctor any more, or that she wasn’t in there because she had done something reckless, but it was more than likely that the person behind the desk was what made it so different. Miranda Bailey, who was a senior resident when Cass herself had left Seattle all those years ago, looked good sitting there. She looked like she belonged.

She knocked on the open door lightly, to which Bailey glanced up from the stack of papers she was reading and motioned for her to come in and take a seat.

“Good morning, Dr. Bailey”, Cass said as she sat down.

“Dr. Wise”, she greeted without looking up again, “I hear you’re already ruffling some feathers. On your first day.”

Cass could hardly believe it; it had to have been no more than 30 minutes since she had talked to Maggie Pierce, and it had somehow already gotten to the chief of surgery? As much as she said she wouldn’t miss the sand and heat of the Middle East, she had to admit that the distinct lack of drama was something she would miss; there were some advantages to being one of the very few female surgeons there. It hadn’t even taken her one day of returning to the civilian surgical world before she was remembering just how bad it could get.

“Are you seri… How did you hear about that already?”

Bailey smirked; Cass may have worked at Grey-Sloan before, but she clearly didn’t work there long enough to get into the dynamics of how the hospital really worked. Or just how fast the gossip could travel.

“Word travels fast around here, Wise.” The chief smirked again, and finally closed the folder with the paper she had been going over before looking up. There was no point in telling her that she had heard Wilson and Edwards gossiping about the encounter as they walked by her door just before Cass had gotten there. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

“With all due respect, chief, it’s okay. I had to perform an emergency pericardiocentesis on a boy and Dr. Pierce walked in just as I was inserting the needle. She had no idea who I was, and was rightfully concerned. If the roles were reversed, I probably would have reacted the same.”

Bailey would be lying if she said she wasn’t a little shocked; she didn’t want to assume that her new hire would immediately delve into talking about her fellow surgeons once prompted, but she definitely would not have been surprised if that’s how the conversation had gone.

“Well okay. That incident aside then, how’s the first day going? How do you like the ER?”

“I love it”, Cass smiled broadly, happy for the subject being dropped for the time being. “This hospital, what I’ve seen of it so far, is amazing. Much more amazing than I remember. It’s been so long since I’ve worked in a place that’s stocked, or has modern equipment in it. Or, you know, was not in the desert. I’m honestly just so happy that I won’t be needing to dump the sand out of my shoes before I go to bed tonight.”

Laughing, Bailey nodded in agreement.

“I’m glad. We do our best to keep the sand out of our emergency room.” Cass smiled at her again, and Bailey returned it. “I just wanted to make sure that you were doing alright. If you’ve got any questions, you know where to find me.”

After a few more minutes of small talk – Cass was of course unaware that Bailey had a baby, or had gotten divorced and remarried, in the years since she left Seattle – Cass was dismissed. She called down to the ER to see if Owen needed her for anything, but he simply dismissed her by telling her that he would page her if he did, and that she should take some time to explore the hospital. Reluctantly, she took his advice, deciding to first head down to the cafeteria and grab some lunch.

The cafeteria, as it turned out, was swamped. Making a mental note to avoid this area of the hospital around 1130 in the future, as it was clearly lunch time for the entire staff, Cass made herself a small salad. She meandered her way between crowded tables with her trey, looking for a place to sit, but the only open table had Pierce, Shepherd, and Grey huddled closely around it. They appeared to be in a heated conversation, so Cass attempted to slide by with full intentions of taking her food back up to the attendings’ longue and eating in there. Alone.

She had not felt more like a kid on the first day of school than she did just then, in the moment. If she really wanted to complete the feeling, she decided, she should just take her food to the bathroom and eat it in a stall there.

Grimacing, she started towards the upstairs longue. Cass didn’t make it far, however, before someone grabbed the sleeve of her lab coat and halted her movements. Looking down, she was met with the blue eyes of Meredith Grey – the head of general surgery, she remembered from their introduction that morning, and the woman who had shown her around before her shift had started.

“Cass! Where are you going?”

“Oh, I was just… going upstairs. It’s crowded down here, and I’ve got some journals I wanted to go over before-“

“Nonsense!”, Meredith interrupted, smiling, “Come sit with us.”

Cass didn’t see a way around it, not without seeming rude. So, despite the less than friendly look on Pierce’s face, she forced a smile and sat down between Meredith and Amelia. Amelia extended her hand to her as soon as she did so.

“Amelia Shepherd. I know I met you earlier, but I don’t remember your name, I’m sorry.”

“Cass Wise”, she said as she shook the hand offered to her. “You had a busy morning. I won’t take it personally.”

The newest surgeon at the table waited a little awkwardly for someone to say something else to her, but no one did. The three other women began their conversation seemingly from where it left off, paying no mind to Cass sitting among them. She started to eat her salad, thinking with every bite that eating alone in the longue might not have been that bad after all. Almost half way through the salad, and just before Cass was about to feign an emergency and excuse herself from the terribly uncomfortable lunch she was having, Meredith cleared her throat and turned her attention to the newcomer.

“So I hear you met my sister this morning”, Grey eyed her, still smiling. “How did that go?”

Cass looked up, confused. The only people that she had had anything even remotely resembling a conversation with, outside of the chief, were Hunt and Pierce. Neither of which seemed very much like they could be Meredith’s sister.

“Sister?”, she said, carefully chewing around a mouthful of lettuce.

“Dr. Pierce. Maggie.”

Maggie then turned and looked at Meredith seriously, as if it was explicitly decided before Cass’ arrival that this particular conversation would not be happening. Clearly not having any desire to avoid what had happened in the ER earlier, however, Meredith brought it up anyways.

“Oh…”, Cass dragged out, looking at each of the women individually with wide eyes before looking back down at her salad. Of course Maggie is Meredith’s sister, she thought. Just when she thought she might have the chance to make a new friend. “Yes. I did. It went… fine.”

“Fine?”, Amelia parroted back. “Fine is an interesting word to use.”

“Amy”, Maggie said to her in warning.

“What?”, Meredith answered for her, somehow still smiling despite the terrible awkwardness of the conversation.

Cass was just getting more and more confused at that point, and decided to interrupt the three other surgeons before she fell even further behind.

“I’m sorry, did I… miss something?”

Smiling at each other, Amelia and Meredith looked at Cass before turning their attention back to Maggie.

“Yes, Maggie”, Amelia said, “did she miss something?”

Defeated, the cardio surgeon hung her head. Cass, still not sure what the hell was going on, just set her fork down and waited for this ridiculous lunch to finally come to an end. She had never hoped so badly in her life for a trauma, and only felt a little guilty for thinking that. A little blood might just distract her from how awful this day had been so far.

“They’re trying to force me to apologize”, Maggie finally ground out, and with what appeared to be a great deal of difficulty. “Because I was a total bitch to you earlier and it wasn’t your fault. I was having some… guy troubles… and I may or may not have taken it out on you. So I’m sorry. For that.”

Meredith and Amelia looked rather pleased with themselves, while Maggie looked downright miserable. It was nice of her to apologize, though, Cass decided. Even though she clearly did not want to.

“Hey, it’s okay”, Cass responded sincerely. “No hard feelings. I was a stranger stabbing a kid with a needle. Guy troubles or not, I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same thing if I was you.”

The awkward lunch then turned much less awkward, the four of them chatting casually for a while until the conversation naturally took a turn towards their newcomer. Meredith was happy to find someone else that had grown up in Seattle, and was surprised to hear that Cass’ mom lived just a few blocks from Ellis’ old house. Amelia expertly answered Cass’ delicately worded questions about her brother – Cass had, of course, done neuro rotations with him when she was a resident, and had no idea that he had passed. She also had no idea that Meredith was his wife, but Meredith handled the questions with just as much finesse. Maggie actually had a lot of questions about Cass’ experiences overseas, but that lead to how she ended up in the military in the first place, and Meredith was surprised to hear that part of the other surgeon’s residency was at done Seattle Grace.

“I had no idea!”, she exclaimed. “What years were you here?”

“Well my internship was in 2001 and 2002, and I left during my third year of residency in 2005. Right before the new intern class started.”

Smiling, Grey nodded, seeing no point in adding that the new intern class had been hers, but still finding it funny how long ago that had been.

“So when you were here, Bailey…?”

“Was a fifth year, I think. Her class was a few years ahead of mine. I almost didn’t believe it when Webber called to set up my interview with the chief of surgery, and when I showed up it was Bailey. She looks the same as she did 10 years ago, I don’t know how she does it.”

“She always said it was the blood of her residents”, Meredith mumbled, a grin still on her face.

“Did you know Torres?”, Amelia asked, Callie being the only other resident from around that time that she knew still worked at the hospital. “She’s the head of ortho here now.”

Cass knew exactly who Torres was, and was surprised to hear that she was still at Grey-Sloan. The two of them had never really crossed paths during either her internship or residency, outside of the normal running into one another that generally happened at the hospital. But she had always liked her, because she was usually smiling or dancing, or both. Back then, before the military and the traumas – both the ones she had seen to and the ones she had lived through – Callie Torres was the kind of surgeon Cass herself wanted to be. Replace the orthopedic specialty with a one in pediatrics, keep the badass attitude and that confident attitude, and without the military, that’s who Cass had wanted to be. That’s the life Cass wanted. She had been so bumbling and awkward as an intern and resident, and Callie was the perfect peer role model. She wouldn’t change the career that she had or the person that she became for anything, but it was interesting to think about the kind of person she might be if her life had gone a little differently.

She was curious to see if Callie still had all that badassery.

“I wouldn’t say I knew her, but I knew of her. I actually sort of looked up to her back there”, Cass admitted. “She was a few years ahead of me, too. I had no idea she was still here.”

They chatted for a few more minutes, about Callie and the fate of the other residents that had been at the hospital around that time – Cass was surprised to find out that Torres had been married, twice, and once to a woman. The ortho surgeon had a reputation for being a bit of a boy crazy surgeon back in her day, so that was definitely surprising news. She almost didn’t believe it when Meredith said her ex-wife was a surgeon at the hospital as well; in addition to having that boy crazy reputation, she was also known for being the type of person that could hold a grudge. Cass found it hard to imagine her being able to work amicably with her ex like that.

It was nice to see that the two residents she knew from her time at the hospital over a decade ago had changed so much – Bailey was chief of surgery, for god’s sake, and Torres had climbed her way to the head of the orthopedic surgery department, in addition to apparently changing a great deal as a person.

The whole conversation made Cass feel a tad bit introspective, thinking about the changes she herself had gone through since leaving Seattle Grace, but the surgeon didn’t have too long to dwell on it: her pager went off, a 911 from Hunt down in the ER, and she quickly excused herself. Tossing out the rest of her half eaten salad, Cass sprinted down the halls towards the ambulance bay.

By the time Cass made it down to the emergency room, they were already moving the patients through the pit and sorting them into the trauma rooms. Owen yelled at her to take trauma 2 as he himself was running into trauma 3, so she threw her lab coat over the back of a chair and grabbed a gown before rushing in. The man on the table was screaming in agony, flailing so much that the resident – this time an attractive older African American man – was having a very difficult time getting an IV placed. The man’s midsection was covered with already bled through gauze pads and bandages, and he actively swung at anyone that tried to examine the area. Every other person in the room was skirting around him, trying to do what they needed to do without getting within swinging distance, which was quite obviously ineffective.

As terrible as it may sound, and she knew that it sounded terrible the second that she thought it, this was where Cassandra Wise, MD FACS shined.

Taking only a second to breathe deeply and clear her mind, Cass finished tying up her gown and took charge of the room.

“Sir, my name is Dr. Wise. We’re here to help, okay? I’m going to need you to calm down so I can examine your abdomen.”

Her soft spoken words did nothing to soothe the man on the table, however. He used big hands to continue to swing at her, and the other doctors in the room, and it was only when he just narrowly missed actually making contact with a nurse that was trying to pass by that Cass started to get annoyed.

“You two”, she pointed to the terrified looking interns hiding behind the resident, who was still trying to get an IV placed, “grab his arms, and hold them tight, so he can get this IV placed. And you”, she motioned to the resident, “push 30 of Fentanyl and 5 of Midazolam the second you get it in.”

The three men moved as soon as the orders were given, the interns only hesitating for a moment; they moved quickly, though, once they saw that Cass herself was moving to help them hold him still. The patient was strong, as to be expected when a man that size had that much adrenaline rushing through his body, but with a little effort they were able to get the IV placed and the medications Cass requested put in. With the man’s sedation in, and the pain meds pushed, she moved around his now relaxed body as she shouted out orders to the other doctors in the room.

One of the interns ran to fetch an ultrasound, while the other called cardio and made sure to reserve an OR. The resident helped her remove the lap pads and bandages, tossing the bloody gauze on the ground with secretly satisfying splats, and revealed the very exposed midsection of the man on the table; almost the entirety of his intestines were hanging out, but there wasn’t much else Cass could tell with all the bleeding. His heart rate was tachycardic, his vitals unstable, and everyone in the room knew that if they didn’t get him to the OR soon, there was no way this man was going to survive the onslaught of his injuries.

“Hang 2 units of O neg, and someone call the OR! Tell Pierce to meet us there!”

Cass wasn’t sure how to keep this man from bleeding out while they transported him; she knew what she would do if she was in the field still, but-

And then it hit her. Why do anything different? That in mind, Cass grabbed as many lap pads as she could hold and climbed on top of the man, using not just her hands but her body weight to apply 140 lbs of pressure right on to the wound. It wasn’t always the best course of action – it wasn’t the most sanitary, and it was difficult to avoid kneeling on exposed intestines or any other organs that may be hanging out – but it was the best way to control the bleeding while they got him up to the OR, where they could really get to work saving him. She had done it literally hundreds of times while she was in the military, however, and would personally swear by it as an incredibly useful life-saving technique.

The resident was gaping at her as he moved the IV lines around to prep him for transport.

“What are you waiting for?”, Cass barked at no one in particular. “Move out!”

Owen was working on his patient in the room next door – he had gotten from the young man, who had to be no more than 20 years old, that he and his friend were playing around with some ‘authentic’ samurai swords a friend from Japan had sent them when a bet was raised on who would win in a sword fight. His patient, Rudy, had only suffered a through-and-through puncture wound to the shoulder that, though it was bleeding a worrying amount when he came in, had amazingly avoided hitting anything major. Rudy’s friend Tommy, however, had not been nearly as lucky; a broad stroke of the sword resulted in Rudy more or less cutting is friend in half. Hunt was in the middle of trying to find out more information about the man in the other room when he looked up – just in time to see Dr. Wise practically sitting on Tom as they rushed him from the emergency room and towards the elevators. Leaving Rudy with Wilson, who was more than capable of finishing the sutures Owen had started, he walked out of the room to see the dwindling trail of blood in the wake of Cass’ patient.

When things settled in the emergency room – Rudy was about ready to be discharged, only waiting for the pharmacy to fill is prescriptions, and Kepner had come in to run the night shift after getting a proper pass down – Owen made his way to the gallery of OR 2, where Cass and Warren were fighting diligently to save their patient’s life. He was surprised to see Bailey up there was well, watching carefully from a seat in the back row.

“Chief”, Owen greeted politely as he walked in. Both the doctors below were wrist deep in Tom, running his intestines and fixing perforations as they found them; it seemed to be going well. “How are you?”

“After having a small heart attack when I saw one of my surgeons kneeling on a man, almost slipping in a puddle of blood in my hallway, and then being kicked off of an elevator by said surgeon and my husband, I would be lying if I said I haven’t had better days”, Bailey said. She looked up to Owen then and smiled, the only indication that she was messing with him.

“It’s a thing we do, overseas. Sometimes you just don’t have what you need to stop the bleeding. Sometimes, the only thing you have to cover that open abdomen, or stop that sucking chest wound, or to keep some poor guy’s leg attached, is yourself.”

“I will never understand how you do it.”

Owen looked away from the window for a second with an eyebrow raised.

“How you serve like that”, Bailey elaborated. “I’m a surgeon, and I’m a good surgeon, but I can’t imagine trying to operate with half the equipment, a third of the medicine, and none of the comfort of an actual hospital. You, Altman, Riggs, Kepner, now Wise…”

She shook her head, looking back down as her husband helped Dr. Wise carefully place the intestines back into their patient’s body.

“She was excited that there was no sand in the ER. No sand. Who even thinks about something like that?”

Smiling, Hunt shrugged at her.

“It was all I thought about when I first got here. Teddy, too – one of the things we talked about when she first came to Seattle was how there was just no damn sand.”

He looked back down to surgery going on below them – they were close to finishing up, with what appeared to be very few complications. All in all, it had been a good day in the ER, if at all a little hectic.

“It’s an adjustment”, he added.

Just over an hour later, Cass and Warren were scrubbing out.

“Good work today, Warren”, she said to the resident as she was rinsing off her hands.

Ben finished up before her and nodded, thanking the attending before excusing himself – he had a wife to get home to, after all, and his 24 hour shift was over about 20 minutes into their 4 hour surgery. He was happy for the experience though, and expressed as much before finally walking out.

With Warren gone, Cass let out a shuddering breath she was unaware she had been holding. She took a step backwards, tripping on her own feet when she did so and hitting the wall roughly with her back. Then she slid to the floor, taking in huge gulps of air as she ripped off her scrub cap and threw is under the sinks. Cass buried her fingers in shortly cropped brown curls and tightly grabbed the hair she found there; if she could just get a grip on something, on anything, then she would be able to breathe again and the panic attack would stop. Hopefully.

That was how Owen found her when he walked down to congratulate her on a successful first day and return the lab coat she had left in the ER – sitting on the floor of the scrub room with her hands in her hair, breathing erratically with her eyes fixed on the wall across from her. Hunt knew all the signs of a panic attack, of course, having had more than he could count when he himself had first gotten out of the Army.

“Cass”, he said quietly, kneeling down next to her. He placed a solid hand on her shoulder and attempted to ground her. “Cass, look at me.”

With another deep breath, she did – her eyes met his and, it took a moment, but she remembered where she was. Cass released the breath then, and looked around the room.

“How long have I been sitting here?”, she asked him shakily, after a beat.

He shrugged, and smiled softly at his fellow trauma surgeon.

“Maybe 30 minutes. Not too long.” Owen shifted then, and sat down on the floor next to Cass. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Cass wiped the tears from her cheeks; she didn’t have the energy to feel embarrassed, and was honestly just glad that it was Hunt that found her and not literally any of the other doctors in the hospital. At the very least, if anyone understood it, it would be him.

“That was just intense, you know? I mean, I know I was in this clean fucking operating room with all this new equipment and with trained doctors assisting me, but…”

“But when you climbed on to that patient”, Owen finished for her, “it felt like you were back.”

All she could think about was her one of her last days in the field, where she had had to do something similar to one of the patients that she was treating there. The setting was different, the people were different, the patient was different, and the situation was definitively different, but she couldn’t seem to keep her mind from slipping back there. Suddenly there was sand whipping by her face, and a squirming Marine with his chest squared off by her knees, where she was kneeling atop him to attempt to keep him from bleeding out from the gaping wound on his right side. She could smell the charred flesh of the man in the next bed, who was hit with a projectile and died in the explosion, she could hear the agony filling the tent, she could even feel the miserable desert heat on her cheeks.

“It didn’t even hit me until it was all over. The entire procedure I felt fine, but as soon as I was alone…”, Cass looked at Owen with wide eyes. “Is that crazy? Am I crazy?”

Hunt shook his head – he may not know the story behind why Cass came back to the states, and he definitely was not going to ask her about it now, but if anyone understood the complexities of PTSD, it was him. If it wasn’t for Cristina, there was no telling if Hunt would even be sitting here next to Cass today – Owen had no idea if Cass had someone like that in her life, and it was a troubling thought. If she was having panic attacks, he thought, there was no telling what other symptoms she may be having.

”Not at all”, he answered seriously, turning his head to catch Cass’ gaze. “That’s not crazy at all. And you are not crazy.”

The two surgeons sat silently on the floor for another half an hour, until a surgical team came in to prep the room for another procedure. Without a parting word, Cass smiled graciously at Owen before exiting.

In the attendings’ longue, Cass was going through the motions of changing out of her scrubs and back into the jeans and hoodie she wore to the hospital almost 14 hours ago. She was exhausted, her episode in the OR draining what little energy she had left; Cass was in the middle of struggling to pull her jeans on without falling over when she heard none other than Calliope Torres come in. She was talking to someone, though Cass couldn’t make out what about or to whom from inside the bathroom stall. The talking stopped just a few moments later, so Cass assumed the other doctors in the longue must have left already. As she made her way out of the stall, however, she immediately brought her hands up to her eyes with a startled gasp.

“Holy fuck, I’m so sorry”, Cass said as she peaked through her fingers, just in time to see Callie and the woman she had been making out with scramble away from each other.

The other woman, a little taller than Cass and slender, with her dark red hair pulled back into a ponytail, was adjusting a light blue scrub top as she blushed and continued to move further away from Torres – who was standing dumbly against the couch, stuttering apologies.

“No, no, I'm sorry”, Torres said when she found her words. “I didn’t know any one was in here and-”

“And I was just leaving”, her friend finished for her.

The red head then made a bee line for the door. Cass actually felt guilty. Torres had her own scrubs in her hand, and if Cass was reading the situation correctly, she was just trying to get a little something in before she started what was sure to be a grueling night shift. She herself had just had one hell of a day, especially for a first day – from fighting with a fellow surgeon to making friends with said surgeon, to a couple of interesting traumas, and ending the day with a solid panic attack – and if she knew that a day like today was coming for her tomorrow, she might go out to find someone nice to make out with to take the edge off, too.

“Stop, wait”, Cass called out. The other woman stopped in her tracks, her hand already on the door knob. “Listen, just… pretend I was never here, okay? I’m heading out. Let me grab my stuff out of my locker and I’ll be out of your hair. This never happened.”

The woman at the door smiled at her – and Callie smiled, too, the same big smile that Cass remembered from a decade ago. It made her smile back at the two of them, although with much less luster.

“It’s okay, I’m going to be late for rounds anyways.” She said, then looked to Callie, who still leaning on the couch. “I’ll catch up with you later?”

Torres nodded at her with another small smile before turning her attention back to Cass.

“I really am sorry about that. I guess the least I could do after all of that is introduce myself”, she said as she approached Cass and extended a hand. “Callie Torres, ortho.”

The shorter woman shook her hand, grinning despite her exhaustion – Callie didn’t recognize her, Cass realized. She didn’t know whether she should be glad, or offended.

“Cass Wise. Today was my first day. We’ve actually met”, Cass added quickly before Callie could ask her how her day had gone, as that was the customary response to finding out it was someone’s first day on the job. And it wasn’t like Cass was at all eager to actually talk about it. “We were residents together here, a million years ago. Before I joined the Navy.”

Callie studied her seriously, an eyebrow raised as she looked over her face. She finally dropped Cass’ hand with a small gasp.

“Holy crap! Cass Wise! I remember you! You were the peds chick, right? Like, what, 2 years behind me?"

“Almost 3, actually”, she corrected with a smile.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t recognize you sooner! You look… different. In a good way!"

And Callie meant it; the surgeon she had remembered was a small young woman – barely more than a girl, really – with unruly brown curls that stuck out in all directions and dark blue eyes that were always hidden behind the frames of thick glasses. She was pale and had freckles, spoke quietly and only when spoken to, and always insisted on wearing the most ridiculous sneakers with her scrubs. That Cassandra was the kind of girl older residents would make fun of behind her back, often placing bets when they saw her name on the surgery board. That Cassandra was nothing like the one standing in front of her today – this Cassandra was no longer scrawny and awkward, but toned and confident. This Cassandra had her brown curls neatly cropped, trimmed closely on the sides and longer on the top, and had ditched her glasses, letting her eyes pop against her skin, which was still freckled but had been obviously tanned during all the time she had spent in the desert. She spoke clearly, loudly, even appeared to cuss casually when Callie couldn’t remember her so much as saying damn during their residency years together. She still wore the ridiculous sneakers, Callie noted as she spotted the bright colors sticking out from the bundle of scrubs Cass had under her arm, but at least now it seemed like she could rock them without anyone so much as thinking twice about them. Or the surgeon that was wearing them.

Cass herself laughed at that – she decided to be glad that Callie didn’t recognize her earlier.

“Well thank you”, she replied, still laughing. “No hard feelings, though – it’s been a long time. I recognized you right away, though. You look the same. Also in a good way.”

They got off track for a moment, Callie apologizing again for the situation Cass walked in on. It turned out that she had indeed called the situation correctly earlier – Penny, Callie’s girlfriend, had just snuck away to the attendings’ longue to see her before their long night shifts started. Cass apologized profusely, but was met with mostly laughter from Callie.

“So how was it working for Alex?”, Callie asked a little later, as she was tying up her sneakers.

“Alex?”

“Karev? The peds guy.”

Cass shook her head with a smirk – she probably should have cleared up her specialty when Callie called her ‘the peds chick’.

“I met him earlier, but I don’t work for him. I’m in trauma. They hired me as an attending here to work under Owen Hunt.”

“Trauma?”, the other surgeon asked, clearly a little confused. “What happened to peds? I remember how you used to almost literally fight the other residents for their rotations with Kinley.”

“Well, I ended up spending most of my career in the Middle East working with the Army and Marines, and there’s not a lot of need for a pediatric surgeon over there. Thank god, right? So, I trained as a trauma surgeon and ended up loving it.”

As Callie finished up getting ready for her shift, Cass attempted to casually shift the conversation to the other surgeon; what Shepherd, Grey, and Pierce had told her early had been pulling at the back of her mind since she got Callie alone, and she wanted to see how much of it was true. Thankfully, she was more than happy to answer the questions Cass had, if at all a little vague. She did have a ton of pictures of her daughter, Sofia, all of which Cass was more than happy look at as the proud mother gushed about her. Callie glossed over how she met her ex, the mysterious head of both the pediatric and fetal surgery departments at Grey-Sloan that no one she had met seemed overly eager to talk about, over the terrible car crash she had been in, over the plane crash that took the life of her best friend and the father of her daughter, and over the various other serious dramas that had taken place in or adjacent to the hospital. She even talked about how she met Penny, all with a big smile on her face. When Cass ventured to ask why Callie and her ex-wife had decided to get divorced, she was met with the cliché, “it’s complicated”.

“Well”, she said in response as Callie pulled her hair up and looked about ready to head out for her shift, “let’s grab drinks some time. Penny can even join us, if I didn’t traumatize her already by walking in on you guys. If I trust anyone to give me the inside scoop on this place, it’s you.”

With the tentative promise of a night out in the near future, Callie went off to work. Cass gathered up her belongings from her locker and finally – just after 2200 – made her way to the parking lot and used the very last vestiges of her energy to climb up into her Jeep.

Her first day back at Grey-Sloan would be one for the history books, she thought to herself as she started the car. There was no telling what day two might bring.

Chapter Text

Cass woke up just after 4 in the morning to the sound of early rising birds chirping away outside her bedroom window. Unable to fall back asleep, despite the exhaustion she felt seeping down to her bones, Cass dragged herself out of bed and pulled on a hoodie and some running shoes – there wasn’t a lot that could get her going at this point, surely not just a cup of coffee, but a nice run might get enough adrenaline pumping to get her through at least the first part of her shift.

Half way through said run, however, a scant 2 miles in, Cass regretted her decision. She regretted it to the point of turning around and heading back to her apartment. How she thought she could do 6 more miles was a mystery; this wasn’t the middle east, she wasn’t running a perimeter, and she didn’t really need to run at all.

Today is going to suck, she thought bitterly as she jogged around the corner and towards her apartment building.

Cass pulled up to the hospital just as Owen did, parking his truck right next to her Jeep. She waited on the sidewalk casually for him to hop out. Sipping her coffee, she tipped it to him as he walked up.

“Good morning, Hunt”, she greeted a beat later with a small smile.

“Good morning.” He looked her up and down, noticed her slumped posture and the bags under her eyes. “You alright?”

“Tired”, she shrugged. They started towards the hospital together, meandering slowly through the parking lot, and around towards the ambulance bay. “I’m ready to work, though. All I need is a trauma to wake myself up, I think. Think we’ll have a busy day in the ER?”

“No idea. I won’t be there.”

Cass skipped a step, falling just a bit behind Owen. She liked Hunt – he was a nice guy, a capable surgeon, and it made her feel infinitely more comfortable to be around a military man such as him. It didn’t hurt that he had already seen her have a panic attack. At least if it happened again she knew that he would know what it was, and what to do. She also deeply appreciated that his first instinct wasn’t to force her to go to psych, but to just talk her down and sit with her. It meant more to Cass than she was willing to tell him.

“Why not?”

“I’ve got a few meetings this morning, then I’ve got to meet up with the board after lunch. I probably won’t be down in the ER until this afternoon.”

“So who am I working with today, then?”

As if she had heard them, April Kepner walked out of the ER and towards the pair. She was practically bouncing, smiling big and talking excitedly even though she was only half was through her 24 hour shift. She greeted Owen, and gave him a run-down of the night before while Cass stood by awkwardly. From the sound of it, not a single major trauma had been brought in since Cass had left the night before. That was a good thing, of course – no traumas meant no accidents which meant that no one had been injured badly enough to require medical attention – but no traumas also meant that there would be a very bored and antsy group of surgeons sitting around the ER all day. Not to mention a group of residents and interns itching for something, anything surgical to come through those doors. It made for a tense working environment.

“Have you met April Kepner yet, Cass?”, Owen asked, pulling her from her morose line of through.

“I have not, and I’d remember meeting someone this happy in the morning”, she responded as she shifted her coffee to her left and extended her right. April looked sheepish, as if she thought she maybe did something wrong, but Cass just smiled at her. “Don’t worry, it’s quite charming. Cass Wise. It’s nice to meet you.”

With the introductions out of the way, the three trauma surgeons chatted as they made their way in to the hospital. April excused herself once they got inside and went off to check on the bored residents gathered by the nurse’s station. Kepner had been right – with the exception of what appeared to be a clumsy skateboarder with a broken wrist in bed 2, which was in no way surgical, there was not a soul in the ER.

Cass thought she should feel excited, because it meant she would be able to steal a few hours of sleep in an on-call room, but really it just made her anxious. Time without work meant more time to think, and with her exhaustion-addled mind the surgeon was a little afraid of where her thoughts might wander.

Owen and Cass continued up to the attending’s lounge, still talking as they did so. They changed – Owen noticed that Cass was wearing long sleeves beneath her scrub top again and kept his comment to himself, regardless of the fact that it was even warmer today than it had been yesterday – and bid each other farewell as they went off in separate directions to start their individual days. Cass made her way back down to the ER, to wait around with the rest of a bored doctors.

It was going on 1300, and Cass was on the verge of falling asleep sitting straight up at the computer behind the nurse’s station when she heard sirens in the distance. She popped up immediately, the prospect of getting to do a little work today being the only thing that made her feel awake since she walked in the doors that morning. Discarding her lab coat, Cass ran outside to the ambulance bay to meet in the incoming trauma; a group of residents were hot on her heels, clearly having been just as bored as she had been sitting in the ER with nothing to do all day.

“Whoa whoa whoa”, she said to them when the unruly group assembled outside, the residents already squabbling over who would get the patient when they pulled up, “not all of you need to be out here right now. I only need one of you to stay.”

“Who?”, someone piped up from the back. Immediately the group went back to arguing, all over-eager for the opportunity to get some work done.

Cass had almost forgotten what it was like to be a baby doctor like the young men and woman around her were right now; she remembered the fights that broke out when it came to days just like this, where they were all tripping over themselves for just the chance to get into an OR. If she wasn’t so tired she might just entertain them – let them fight it out in whatever way they saw fit – but she was exhausted to the core and her patience was wearing thin.

“Reverse alphabetical. The last resident alphabetically can stay, everyone else go away”, she explained when they all looked at her confused.

There were plenty of dejected grumbles and sighs from the crowd, and more than a few doctors mumbling about how they saw their new attending’s method unfair, but they thinned out rather quickly. The only resident left standing when the ambulance pulled up was Wilson.

“What’s up, late girl?”, Cass greeted with a grin.

The paramedics opened the doors to the rig and carefully unloaded a pregnant woman. She was talking animatedly about why she didn’t need to be here, but the large laceration on her forehead said otherwise.

“Jessica Griffin, 25”, the paramedic stated as they started to wheel her in. “Vitals stable, extremely alert and reactive.”

“Hi Jessica, I’m Dr. Wise.” Cass turned her attention back to the paramedic. “What brings Jessica to us today?”

“She passed out in her apartment and hit her head. Her neighbor found her unconscious and called 911.”

“My neighbor is an idiot”, Jessica muttered. “Really, I’m fine. I’m just tired. I’m tired all the time. I’m pregnant.”

The patient turned to look at Cass with pleading eyes as they moved her into a trauma room.

“Come on, doc. Just give me a bandaid and send me home. I’m fine.”

“How about you let Dr. Wilson and myself be judge of that?”, Cass chuckled. She motioned for the resident to move in and take over the questions while she looked their reluctant patient over.

“Do you remember what happened before you feinted?”, Wilson asked as the attending examined the cut on her head then spun around to help the nurse attach a fetal monitor.

“Nothing, honestly. I was feeling a little dizzy so I went to the kitchen to get some water. Next thing I know my stupid neighbor Katie is standing over me screaming, because – like I said – she is an idiot, and a minute later the paramedics were there.”

“Do you get dizzy a lot?”

“Yes… but my OB said it isn’t uncommon. She put me on bed rest and told me to drink more water. My poor husband has been running himself ragged trying to take care of me. I’m surprised he isn’t the one in here because he passed out.”

Wilson chatted with the patient about her husband while Cass watched the various monitors; Jessica’s vitals were strong, but her baby was throwing d-cells every couple of minutes. They always evened back out, but it was enough to cause the surgeon to be a little concerned.

“Jessica, your vitals are strong. I’m going to have Dr. Wilson clean and stitch that cut, and with any luck you’ll barely even have a scar. I am a little concerned about your baby, though.”

“My baby?”, she asked. “Is something wrong?”

“It could be nothing”, Cass answered honestly, placing a reassuring hand on her forearm, “but your baby is having what we call d-cells, or decelerations of the heartbeat. It might just be stress, it might be because you aren’t drinking enough water like your OB said, but I’m going to get a consult from our OB here at the hospital before I send you home alright? I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

Jessica sighed, looking rightfully terrified, but nodded resolutely.

“Can I call my husband?”

“Of course you can. Dr. Wilson can hook you up with a phone in a little bit. In the meantime, you just sit tight. I’ll get the baby doc up down here, we’ll see what’s going on, and hopefully you’ll be back home with your husband before you know it.”

Cass walked back out to the pit. After having Wilson page OB and setting the resident up with a suture kit and a lost looking intern to teach, she meandered over to the patient status board and made sure there wasn’t another trauma room or bay that needed an attending’s attention – there wasn’t, as the cripplingly slow day in the ER hadn’t picked up at all, so she went around the counter and took a seat. She was typing an email to a friend still in Afghanistan when she spotted the bouncy red head of April Kepner walking in to the emergency room. She hit send just before Kepner rounded the corner towards the elevators.

“Kepner!”, Cass shouted to get her attention; her fellow trauma surgeon spun on her heels when she heard her name and walked over. She passed the tablet with Jessica Griffin’s chart pulled up on it over the counter and into April’s hand. “Hey, I just wanted to let you know I took care of the patient that came in on that ambulance. There wasn’t any reason to page you; she’ll need some stitches for that lac on her head, nothing too serious, but I am concerned about her baby. She was throwing d-cells intermittently during my exam so I had OB paged.”

Taking the chart, April looked it over before looking back up at Cass with an eyebrow raised.

“I’m sorry, who are you?”

“Cass Wise?”, she said as she stood and extended her hand to the other surgeon for the second time that day. “The new trauma attending? We met this morning.”

April’s cheeks turned red – how could she forget that she had met Cass just a few hours ago? All the running around stressing about Jackson and Catherine, not to mention worrying about her baby, was clearly starting to get to her.

“Cass, of course! Gosh, I’m so sorry”, April said, shaking the hand offered quickly. “I’ve just been so stressed lately, it must have slipped my mind. This morning seems so long ago now.”

“I know the feeling. Between that and the pregnancy hormones, I’m just happy that you remembered me at all.”

“Who knows, that might be it. I really am so sorry, I don’t know what’s going on with me lately.”

“No, you’re fine”, Cass laughed. “It’s adorable. Really, super cute. Don’t worry about it.”

Kepner looked at her with a smile on her face, but with her eyes wide, unsure of how to respond. It was the second time that day Cass had complimented her like that, and it may be that she was just subconsciously starved for attention now that she was more or less single again, but April couldn’t help but to feel like she was flirting with her. Cass had the decency to look mortified once she realized what she had said.

“I didn’t mean- I just- I would never-“, the stuttering getting on her own nerves, the surgeon took a deep breath. “You know what? Never mind. OB should be heading down soon and I could use a pick me up before they get here. I’m just going to go get some coffee from the cafeteria. Want me to grab you one?”

Not waiting a second longer, not even to find out what kind of coffee April wanted from the kiosk or if she wanted one at all, Cass took off in the direction of the elevators at full speed. Kepner thought it was hilarious; it had been a long time since she had met a fellow surgeon that was just as awkward and fumbling as she herself had the tendency to be. With a shake of her head, she turned back to the chart in her hand. The lac on her head wasn’t anywhere near severe enough to need a plastics consult, but April paged them anyways. With things between her and Jackson still so tense, it was the only way that she could think of to get a glimpse of him without making things worse.

Just as April was finishing up updating all of the information a tap on the shoulder drew her attention.

“Did you page me?”, a familiar voice asked.

She turned to see her good friend Arizona Robbins leaning idly against the counter behind her, looking bored as she scanned the ER in search of the reason she was paged down from OB.

“No?”, Kepner said as she greeted Arizona with a quick hug. “Did you get a page to the ER?”

“Yeah, a 911. Something about d-cells, but the whole thing was in shorthand and I didn’t understand half of it. Figured I would come down here myself, since it’s slow upstairs right now anyways.” Arizona huffed a little dramatically, blowing a blonde curl off of her face. “I should have left someone less competent in charge of peds so I’d have something to do.”

Just then April remembered what Cass had told her before she fled to the coffee kiosk. Cass might just be right, maybe her pregnancy hormones were making her forgetful.

“You know what? It was our new trauma surgeon, who just ran upstairs to grab a coffee. The patient is in trauma 3, though. I’ll go with you.”

While they were walking towards the trauma room, Arizona asked Kepner how she liked her new coworker – Arizona had heard all around the hospital that they had a new addition to the trauma department, but hadn’t heard much other than the fact that they had arrived. With Grey-Sloan being more or less famous for how quick the gossip within its walls could travel, it was amazing to Arizona that she hadn’t heard much of anything else. It shouldn’t have surprised her, however; just because April had forgiven her for telling Jackson about the baby, it didn’t mean that the rest of her fellow surgeons had. The most conversation she had had with another doctor (aside from April, of course) in the past week was with Alex, and it was hardly gossip.

“Dr. Wise?”, Kepner said as she handed Arizona the patient’s chart to review before they entered the room. “Funny. A little awkward. I feel like I was accidentally flirted with, but I couldn’t decide how to feel about that so I just stopped thinking about it to be honest.”

“Flirted with you? Is he cute at least?”

“I’m guessing that you haven’t met her yet?”

“Her?”, Arizona asked with an eyebrow raised. She had heard there was a new trauma surgeon, and that they were a former Navy trauma surgeon that (of course) had hit it off with Owen Hunt. She had even heard snippets about the argument that occurred between the new surgeon and Maggie Pierce in the emergency room the day before, but no one had mentioned in their passing that it was a her. “Is she cute, at least?”, she added quickly.

April laughed; ever since Arizona had started dating again, she had been verging on the ridiculous. When she had told April that Richard Webber and their trivia night ritual was finally helping her get her confidence back, regardless of that she felt about how it was getting that confidence back, it wasn’t like April could protest. She had missed the playful sparkle in Arizona’s eye all those months it had been gone.

“You’re insatiable, you know that right?”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“And I don’t plan on it”, Kepner replied with a smile as she held the door open for Arizona to walk through.

Arizona just winked at her before entering the room and introducing herself to the patient. She ordered an ultrasound, which arrived rather quickly – due in no small part to the mostly dead emergency room. The blonde had been hoping that her instincts were wrong, but if Herman had taught her anything it was to trust her gut feelings. After reviewing Jessica’s chart, the fetal monitor, and the ultrasound, Arizona knew without a doubt that the baby needed to be delivered immediately; there was only so much fetal surgery could do, and with a baby already this close to term, it would be safer at this point to just deliver.

“Jessica, I know this is going to sound scary, but I believe you have what is called an occult umbilical prolapse. It means that your umbilical cord is being pushed through the cervix, which means that your baby might not be getting enough oxygen. I think that’s why we keep seeing these d-cells. It also may be why you’ve been feeling dizzy the past few weeks.”

Jessica looked relatively calm, but Arizona could hear the fear in her voice when she spoke; she hoped that the young woman’s husband was able to make it soon; Jo told her that Jessica was able to get ahold of him, but he worked over an hour away. She had seen plenty of young mothers have to go through scary things like this alone, and it always broke her heart.

“How did my doctor miss this? I haven’t missed a single ultrasound. I take all my vitamins. I’ve been doing everything right.”

“It’s hard to diagnose”, Arizona said with a small smile. “It’s a rare condition, and most of the time it can’t be detected on an ultrasound. A lot of the time it isn’t even diagnosed until after birth, so it's actually pretty lucky that we caught it. You didn’t do anything wrong; your baby just got a little tangled and pushed the cord down first. That alone isn’t too terribly dangerous, but the fact that it has been pushed through the cervix means that it may be clamping down on the cord, which is keeping oxygen from getting to your baby.”

“What does that mean, Dr. Robbins? I don’t know what all of that that means.”

“It just means that today is going to be your baby’s birthday. I’m going to have Dr. Wilson come back in and get you ready, and then I’m going to meet you up in the OR. I’ll deliver him using a C section, and in a few hours you’ll wake up and have an adorable little boy.”

“Isn’t it early?”, Jessica asked, sounding just a tad bit more terrified. “He’s not ready yet, right? We- we haven’t even thought of a name yet.”

“He’s 33 weeks now, so he might be a little small, but everything on the ultrasound looks good. I’ll call up to the NICU and have them get ready for him, just in case, and you can think of a name while I do that. We are going to take very good care of him, of both of you, okay?”

After the last of the preparations were made, Arizona made her way back out to the pit and pulled Kepner aside from the teaching moment she was having with an intern in one of the patient bays.

“Whenever Dr. Wise gets back”, she started, not looking at her friend while she spoke so she could text Alex about prepping the NICU for the baby, “have her meet me in OR 4 to finish up suturing up that nasty head lac. Jessica has an umbilical prolapse and needs a C section. I’m taking her up right now.”

“I’m sure she’ll be back any minute. Do you want me to page her for you?”

Arizona mulled it over, but knew that it wasn’t necessary; she actually didn’t need the trauma surgeon with her at all, but she knew that the ER was slow, and that her fellow doctor might enjoy the opportunity to log some time in the OR today. It also worked in the trauma surgeon’s favor that Arizona sort of just wanted to meet her. The prospect of a brand new surgeon at Grey-Sloan that didn’t know anything about her almost made her giddy – introducing herself to someone that hadn’t yet been there long enough to hear all the rumors about her meant that she might just make a new friend. And Arizona was currently in serious need of some new friends.

Plus, April had never let her know if their new coworker was cute or not. It was only logical that she’d do some investigation of her own.

“No, it’s fine”, she decided on. “Just have her meet me in the OR when she gets back, unless you need her down here.”

“Are you kidding? There’s nothing going on down here. Take her, so at least one of us is getting in an OR today.”

With that, Arizona was off to get ready for her surgery. Kepner went back to the intern, who was doing one hell of a job butchering a poor man’s stitches. Just when she had gotten settled helping him perform a proper suture, Cass came strolling up and placed a cup on the tray next to her without a word. April smiled when she noticed that Cass had gotten her a tea and not coffee; April was clearly not the first pregnant person the surgeon had spent time around. Cass then casually strolled over to trauma 3, and walked back out immediately when she saw that her patient was gone.

“Hey, Kepner?”, she asked as she walked back over. “Where’d my patient go?”

April didn’t look up from the suture the intern was completing, but did look a little apologetic.

“Oh, shoot. Pregnancy memory, remember? Your consult from OB came down. She’s got an umbilical prolapse, so Dr. Robbins too her up to OR 4 for a C section. She said to tell you to come join her when you got back.”

“For what?”

“To stitch up the cut she’s got on her head. I guess Wilson never got to it. I figured one of us should get to see the inside of an OR today, and we’re dead down here. I can just page you if I need you, if you’d like to go.”

“That actually sounds nice”, Cass sighed. “And I couldn’t tell you the last time I saw a C section. Might be nice to have a refresher course. Just page me if literally anything happens down here, okay? It won’t take me long to stitch that lac up if you need me back down here.”

Cass rushed up to the OR, only taking half a second to chug down the rest of her coffee before discarding the cup and heading into the scrub room. With a practiced ease, the surgeon slipped her favorite sushi scrub cap on her head, secured her mask, and went to work scrubbing in.

“Jessica”, she greeted happily as a nurse slipped on her gown and gloves; the other surgeon was standing with her back to her, golden blonde hair visible from beneath her scrub cap. She was standing at the midsection of their patient, who was just about to be administered anesthesia. Cass bypassed greeting Dr. Robbins for the time being and went around to where Jessica could see her. “We have to stop meeting like this.”

“You’re telling me, doc. Are-are you here to help Dr. Robbins?”

Cass looked up and caught the absolutely striking blue eyes watching her behind a mask – light and twinkling in a way her own turbulent grey-blue eyes had never been. The breath caught in her throat. She smiled at her, even though she knew the surgeon couldn’t see it with the mask on, then back down at Jessica.

“I sure am”, she said. “Now you take a nice nap, and when you wake up you’ll have a perfectly stitched up forehead, courtesy of yours’ truly, and a beautiful baby boy, thanks to Dr. Robbins down there.”

The anesthesiologist took that as his cue, and carefully placed the mask over her mouth. Cass asked the closest nurse for a suture kit, then sat down next to Jessica and began to prep to fix up her forehead – she had decided on her way up to the OR to take her time, as Kepner was probably right: this was more than likely the only time she was going to see the inside of an operating room today. It didn’t hurt that the surgeon she was assisting had the prettiest blue eyes she had ever seen. Cass was nothing if not a sucker for a girl with pretty eyes.

“Thanks for letting me assist”, Cass said as she tore open the plastic of the suture kit. “We haven’t met before. I’m Dr. Wise- Cass”, she quickly corrected. “I’m a little new here, and it’s been ridiculously slow in the ER today, so I really appreciate you letting me see the inside of an operating room.”

The OB laughed, and Cass certainly didn’t miss the happy crinkle at the corner of her eyes.

“Arizona Robbins. Don’t mention it. That cut needed to be fixed up. Plus, I’d be lying if I told you I haven’t heard a little about you already. I wanted to meet you for myself.”

Cass blushed – please let this woman be as pretty behind that mask as I hope she is, she thought. Having been married to someone like Callie Torres in the past, Cass found it hard to expect anything less.

“I’m guessing that you’ve heard the gauntlet of Arizona jokes, right?”, Cass joked to try to cover up her nerves.

Laughing, Arizona shook her head as the scrub nurse placed a scalpel in her hand.

“I’ve heard all of them. Flagstaff, Tempe, Phoenix…”

“You know, my mom is from Arizona. She’s from Peeple’s Valley, this tiny town about 2 hours north of Phoenix. I bet you never heard that one before."

“You’re right”, Arizona laughed again, “I haven’t.”

Cass liked that laugh. She decided she wanted to try to hear it as much as possible; not only would it break up the monotony of an admittedly boring surgery, but it was a nice laugh.

“So, Peeps. You ready to deliver this baby?”

With that the surgery began, Robbins going to work beginning her caesarian section while Cass began suturing up Jessica’s forehead. They worked meticulously, each of the surgeons taking their time – Robbins making precise cuts, and Cass carefully cleaning the wound and beginning her line of sutures.

Arizona paused, the scalpel a breadth’s with from Jessica.

“Where the hell is Alex?”, she muttered.

As if on cue, the peds surgeon and his team of doctors and nurses filed in the doors, an incubator in tow.

“Nice of you to join us, Karev”, Robbins said with a chuckle, happy that her friend made it before she had to deliver the baby. The idea of having to send a nurse running though the hospital with a potentially distressed baby was not at all appealing. “Just in time, too. Get ready.”

The final incision was made, Robbins removed the baby – who began crying immediately, making Cass pause and let out a relieved sigh before returning to her suturing. She handed the little boy off to Alex, who quickly checked the baby out before turning back to Arizona and Cass with a thumbs up.

“Apgar looks good”, he said. “I’ll see you upstairs, Robbins.”

With that he was off – the baby’s cries being heard as he walked down the hallway.

“I forgot how awesome that is”, Cass said a few minutes later. Arizona looked up at her with an eyebrow raised, so she elaborated. “Babies. Kids. I worked with soldiers for so long, you forget how great it is to work with the little guys.”

“That sounds like something a peds girl would say.”

“I was a peds girl, actually. Or, I wanted to be. The only thing the people I used to work with here remember about me is how I used to fight the other residents to get on Kinley’s service. I just loved it so much; everyone hated Kinley, and he was a special kind of bastard for sure, but I loved working with him. I loved working here.”

“So why leave?”, Arizona asked.

“A guy I went to high school died in Iraq in 2005. We weren’t close or anything, but his brother recognized me on the street one day and we talked for a while. He told me that Chris had died and when he found out I was a surgeon, he casually mentioned that I should think about going overseas and trying to help out. I don’t know why, but it stuck with me.” Cass shrugged. “I went to talk to a Navy recruiter the next week and before I knew it I was on a C-130 to Iraq.”

Arizona smiled at her fellow surgeon – she came from a military family, grew up with and around people who served for her entire life. She would always appreciate someone that was willing to give up everything and serve their country. Good men in a storm, her father would say.

“That’s pretty amazing. They always need trained surgeons over there. My brother, Tim, he was an Army Ranger that died in 2007. I remember staying up at night thinking, torturing myself really, thinking that if there were more doctors, more surgeons over there, my brother might still be alive. I know it’s irrational, but I used to think, if I was there I could have saved my brother. Never mind that I am a pediatric and fetal surgeon, with no type of advanced trauma training to speak of. I guess I just needed to believe that I could have made a difference.” Cass watched Arizona shake her head, as if clearing the troubling thought from her mind. “Anyways, that’s amazing. Pediatrics probably missed out by not having you, but I’m glad trauma does. You clearly excelled.”

The two surgeons worked in silence for a while then, Arizona humming to herself quietly as she finished suturing Jessica up – expertly, Cass noted – while Cass herself enjoyed the soft music she was hearing and worked on her own stitches. Something the other surgeon had said was stuck in Cass’ mind, however, drawing more of her focus than she was willing to admit. It poked at the back of her skull, distracting her as she carefully tugged on the needle and finished up the line she was working on.

Then, it hit her. The images started flooding her as soon as she realized it.

Timothy Robbins. An Army Ranger that died in the middle east in 2007. A blonde haired, blue eyed, square jawed hell of a man. With a tattoo in the shape of the state of Arizona on his upper arm.

Cass knew him. She was there when they brought him from warzone to the hospital she was working at in Balad, Iraq; she had just started her fellowship when he arrived, with several other soldiers from his unit – most of which were dead on arrival. Tim, though, Cass remembered Tim because he was very much alive. He was talking animatedly, cracking jokes with nurses and doctors alike, making small talk with other patients, brushing off help as it was offered and ushering those doctors to help the more injured men in the small emergency room. He was triaged yellow, meaning ‘delayed’; he had a head wound, and some bruising to his chest and abdomen, but he was just so energetic that they set up his IV and moved on to the men triaged red, meaning ‘immediate’. Cass herself was so busy trying to help the young Marine in the bed next to Tim that had lost both of his legs in the attack that she missed it when the Ranger began seizing. There were plenty of other doctors in the room, of course, plenty of surgeons, residents, fellows, nurses, and innocent bystanders, but Cass was right there. No one even noticed that Tim had died – the nurse that set him up in the bed never attached a heart monitor, probably caught up in the commotion – until much later in the day.

He wasn’t Cass’ patient. It wasn’t her fault, and she knew that. But he had died, had slipped away from a brain bleed without anyone noticing because everyone thought that he was fine, and she was no more than 15 feet away from him when it happened. Out of the 17 men that came in alive that day, 14 of them died. Later that night, her attending caught her crying in a small supply closet, and reminded her that her patient – the Marine – was going to live because of her quick thinking. It did nothing to soothe her, however.

Now, 9 years later, on the other side of the world, she was in an operating room with the sister of a man that died right next to her.

Cass found herself afraid to speak much after that, and the ball forming in the pit of her stomach was growing heavier and heavier with every passing second. She finished up her sutures – no longer nearly as concerned with taking her time stitching – and practically ran out of the OR with barely another word to Arizona.

She exited the scrub room and rushed herself into the nearest restroom. There, the surgeon splashed some cold water on her face. Looking at the mirror, she studied herself while silently praying to any god that was out there and may be listening that she was in the middle of a terrible nightmare, and would wake up any second.

Of course, nothing happened, so with a sigh she walked back out to the hallway and made her way to the locker room the surgeons used to get ready for their surgeries. At first she wanted to avoid everyone – to just find an on-call room and have a nice peaceful meltdown in it – but she was actually happy to see Hunt sitting down and checking his cellphone casually. He had his scrub cap on already and looked about ready to head into the OR, but must have been waiting for it to be ready for him.

“Can I talk to you about something?”, she asked as she slumped down on the bench next to Owen.

He looked sidelong at his fellow trauma surgeon to see her wringing her sushi scrub cap in her hands nervously – unsure if Cass was wanting to talk about what had happened in the OR the night before, or something completely different, Hunt swung his leg over the bench so that he was straddling it and faced her with a small smile.

“I’ve got time. What’s on your mind?”

Cass took a deep breath, held it for just a moment, and exhaled. She still couldn’t believe that this was happening.

“There’s a surgeon here, that I kind of… know. From before. I mean, okay, I don’t know her. Not really. But I know about her. And I want to tell her how, but I’m afraid to. I just met her, and she seems so nice, and cute and – like holy fuck, Hunt, all I could see were her eyes and, listen, they were good eyes – and I don’t want to give her any reason to hate me. Or even to not like me. And, I don’t know her relationship with everyone else here. What if I tell her, she freaks, and she ends up being friends with every other surgeon here and then they find out? It’s barely my third day here and I’ve already got a crisis.”

Looking dejected, Cass dropped her head into her hands with her elbows on her knees, and sighed.

“I almost prefer breaking down in the OR to this”, she muttered.

Owen wasn’t sure if there was much he could say; not knowing the whole story, it was hard for him to give Cass sound advice. And he knew that the two of them had just met. If it was out of line for him to ask about the reason that she decided to come back to the States, then it was probably out of line to ask her what she was rambling about now. He looked around the room – they were the only two in there – but he still leaned a little closer to him and dropped the volume of his voice a bit.

“You know I can’t help you if you don’t actually tell me what happened, right?”

Cass had to laugh at that; her rant probably sounded like the ravings of a mad woman to Owen, who was clearly just trying to relax a bit before a surgery when Cass plopped down and unloaded her bullshit on him.

“Arizona”, she whispered. “I knew her brother. I was there in Balad, when he died. And I want to tell her, but she made her opinion about his death pretty clear.”

His eyebrows disappeared into his scrub cap as his mouth fell open. Of all the things Owen had been expecting Cass to tell him, that was certainly not on the list. He didn’t know much about Arizona’s relationship with her late brother, but he had worked with enough veterans and their loved ones to know that their relationship to the doctors and surgeons they met overseas are not always the best. His new attending was having a hell of a first week, that was for sure.

“Yeah”, Cass said when she saw his face, “that’s how I feel about it too.”

Unfortunately, Owen really had no idea what to say. He didn’t know what advice to give her, or how to even begin to help her deal with the situation. But he did know someone that would.

“You know who would know what to do?”

Cass said ‘don’t say Torres’ right as Owen blurted her name.

“They were married”, Owen defended. “She knows Arizona better than anyone. And they’re close, even now. If anyone would know what to do – if you should tell her or not and how to go about doing that if you should – it would be her.”

Chapter Text

Owen and Cass talked in the locker room for a few more minutes. She had no idea how he did it, but he actually managed to convince her that talking to Callie might be a good idea. She didn’t want to put it off for too long, knowing that she would eventually run in to Arizona around the hospital again. With a secret like the one she had, she wasn’t sure how long she would be able to keep it from the other surgeon.

Part of her thought that she should just keep her mouth shut and suffer in silence – Cass was good at that – but Owen persuaded her otherwise. Cass was unaware of how Penny Blake had come to work with them, so Hunt filled her in. If having a secret like that could cause the kind of ripples it did throughout the hospital, Cass was afraid of what her own secret might do. Having no idea how close Arizona was to the rest of the surgeons, or if she was friends with them at all, just made Cass more nervous – if she didn’t say anything and somehow Arizona found out, there was no telling what kind of effect it would have on the newest surgeon’s relationship with those she had to work with.

With a groan, she left Hunt to go to his surgery while she herself went off in search of the self-proclaimed ortho goddess. Luckily, it didn’t take long. Cass went to the attending’s lounge first, and spotted exactly who she was looking for. She checked to make sure no one else was in the room before walking in.

“Hey Torres, can I talk to you?”

Callie was sitting on the couch with her head tipped against the back and her eyes closed. Her 24-hour shift was close to ending, and the fact that the day had been so slow was no doubt making it seem even longer. Cass sympathized with her; days like today dragged on like no other. The other surgeon cracked an eye open, looking for the person that interrupted her much needed nap. She was happy to see an attending and not another over-eager resident looking for something to do – she had turned away no less than 10 young surgeons throughout the day that were looking to get their hands on a surgery somehow, and if she was being completely honest, she was too tired to deal with it right now.

“That depends on what it’s about”, she replied wearily after closing her eyes again.

“Your ex-wife.”

Suddenly feeling a little more awake, Callie sat up. Torres immediately started to feel bad; though she was happy that Arizona was starting to really seem like her old self again, she had heard rumors from her fellow surgeons on exactly how her ex-wife had regained that confidence, and it worried her. With the way Arizona had been known to casually run through the doctors and nurses in the hospital – like she had before her and Callie had gotten together all those years ago – Callie couldn’t shake the feeling that Arizona was back to her old ways, and may have even started in on Cass before she had even gotten settled in her new position.

Arizona was a lot of things. Callie just didn’t like to think of ‘kind of slutty’ as being on that list.

“What did she do?”, she asked carefully.

“What? Nothing! Nothing. She hasn’t done anything. She’s great. It was me. Or, well. It might be me.” Cass stopped her rambling before it started and took a deep breath. “I need your advice, is what I’m saying.”

Callie listened intently as Cass relayed the story to her – how she met Tim, how he died, how she would always remember him – and the brunette’s jaw dropped just a little more with every word.

Her and Arizona dated, broke up, dated again, broke up, had a baby, got married, survived the plane crash, got divorced… They had gone through more in their time of knowing each other than a couple should honestly have to. Through all of that, though, Arizona rarely spoke to her wife about her late brother. If anything, Arizona actively avoided the subject. Callie wasn’t sure if the news would bring Arizona closure, or push her towards some sort of emotional break. Though Arizona was really starting to act like the happy, energetic Arizona that she had fallen in love with, she was afraid that news like that would do more harm than good.

“So do I tell her”, Cass asked after regaling the entirety of the story to her, “or do I just… keep it to myself? Act like I never knew Tim, like I don’t know what happened to him?”

“Honestly, Cass? I have no idea. Arizona never talked about Tim much. It was like a raw nerve, the only thing that would really set her off before the plane crash. I know it sounds crazy, and maybe it’s just my memory playing tricks on me, but she would get just as upset when I would ask her about Tim as she was about her damn leg.”

“Wait. Sidebar”, Cass interrupted. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Her leg?”

“You don’t know?”, Callie asked. Cass shook her head. “Damn, the rumor mill must be slowing down. The plane crash, the one a few years ago? You haven’t heard any of that?”

“I mean, I know that there was one. I know Mark Sloan died, and Meredith told me about her sister. She told me that’s why they renamed the hospital. It was a tragedy. I didn’t know Arizona was on the plane, though.”

Callie scoffed. She could hardly believe that any person that was inside the hospital for more than 10 minutes didn’t hear the ‘Seattle Grace Five’ story, or about the ‘Grey-Sloan Seven’.

“She was there. She had a large open fracture of the femur, some internal bleeding, a ton of lacerations. They were in the woods for four days, and she got a nasty infection. The first hospital they brought them to, they went straight to amputate. But she wouldn’t let them; she told Owen to bring her here, to bring her to me, because she knew I could save her leg. We had her on broad spectrum antibiotics, I set her up with a Taylor Spatial Frame, and we had it under control – or, I thought we did – but when I was in surgery one day she just… started crashing. Karev did everything to get her vitals up, but nothing was working. The infection was spreading, and if we didn’t amputate…”

“Arizona would have died.”

Cass had seen it literally hundreds of times before. She had watched it claim the limbs of many soldiers that thought in the moment that they had been saved – it was always difficult to tell a young man or woman that, regardless of the fact that their arm or leg was right there for them to see and touch and in some cases even wiggle, they were going to have to lose it.

“She hated me for it”, Callie whispered. “She woke up after the surgery and saw what I’d done, and she hated me. I won’t blame our divorce on it, because it came from all sides, but it was the beginning of the end for us.”

They were silent for a minute then – Cass had no idea what to say, and Callie always hated the way that bringing up the past like that made her feel. Regardless of how long ago it was, and regardless of the fact that Callie had long ago absolved herself of that guilt, it would always be a sore spot in her mind. Arizona was the other mother to her child, a woman she once loved more than anything. Thinking about how much they had once resented each other left a sour taste in her mouth.

“She’ll hate me if I tell her”, Cass finally said.

Callie sighed.

“Maybe”, she admitted, “but she’ll definitely hate you if she finds out some other way. And if she finds out from someone else, she’ll not only hate you, but she’ll never forgive you.”

Callie followed Cass out of the attending’s lounge. They were busy with their heads together, talking quietly amongst themselves about how Cass should go about bringing the subject up to Arizona whenever she decided to talk to her – they were so in to their conversation that they didn’t notice none other than Arizona Robbins herself rounding the corner.

Regardless of the fact that Cass’ every nerve ending was screaming at her to flee, she was frozen in place next to an equally as shocked Torres. It was the first time she had seen Arizona without a scrub cap and a surgical mask on, and Cass was floored – when she had thought that Callie would only marry a gorgeous woman, she was right. Arizona’s blue eyes were even more stunning than she had first thought, made even brighter against her pale complexion and the few errant blonde curls escaping from her ponytail. What really blew Cass over was the other surgeon’s smile. It was so warm, so happy, with dimples and everything; it was the kind of smile that makes everyone around her smile.

As much as Cass wanted to run, she really wanted to keep seeing that smile.

“Hey!”, she greeted happily, completely unaware of what she had been interrupting. She tilted her head casually, looking between to the two surgeons with a big grin.

“Arizona”, Callie said, eyes wide. She was hoping to avoid her ex-wife tonight, if at the very least to give Cass more time to mentally prepared for her talk with Arizona. “Hey. How are you?”

“I’m good! I’m great! You ran out on me, Cass”, Arizona redirected her attention with another big smile. “I was going to ask you if you’d like to run across the street and grab a drink with me when you got off. We didn’t get to talk much during that surgery, and I’d love to get to know the new kid on the block.”

“You’re more than welcome to join us”, the blonde added quickly, a little awkwardly, looking back at Callie. “If you want. Penny, too. The more the merrier!”

Just as Cass was about to make up some excuse and run as fast as possible in the opposite direction, Callie opened her mouth and spoke over her.

“That sounds great, but Penny and I have plans. But Cass, Cass here isn’t doing anything tonight. And she would love that! Wouldn’t you love that, Cass? Getting a drink with Arizona?”

“I would, of course, and I appreciate it, but I- I was actually just going to head home and-“

“No way!”, Callie interrupted again. “You could use a drink. And Arizona? Arizona is a great person to drink with.”

At this point, Cass was just trying to come up with any excuse to put off the conversation she knew she had to have with Arizona just a little bit longer. She didn’t have one, though, at least not one that would stand against the very persistent Callie – who was clearly conspiring against her – and the big, excited grin of Arizona Robbins.

“I don’t have anything to wear”, she tried. It came out just about as weak as she expected that it would.

“I guess it’s a good thing I have a locker full of clothes you can go through. I’m sure I’ve got something in your size in there.”

“You don’t need to dress up-“

“Yes she does, Arizona.” Callie turned to Cass then. “Yes, you do.”

“I’ll… just let you two fight this out, then”, Arizona decided for them. She checked her watch, then clapped her hands excitedly. “I can’t wait. I’ll meet you at Joe’s at 9?”

With everything settled, the blonde spun on her heels and went back the way that she came. Despite the protests, Callie grabbed a slightly struggling Cass by her shoulders and steered her back in to the attending’s lounge and right to her locker.

“Callie, are you serious? Listen, I lied. Okay? I have clothes in my locker. I can just wear what I wore to work this morning. It’s fine. I’ve got like, a hoodie or something. That should be fine, right?”

“You want to wear that to go get drinks with Arizona?”

“You’re making it sound like it’s a date.”

“Well, you’re stupid if you don’t think it she thinks it is. You’re new here. You don’t know much about Arizona. But I do. She never asks people from the hospital out for drinks. And the fact that she invited me and Penny out with the two you?”

“Like a buffer”, Cass realized, smacking her forehead. It had been a while since Cass had been on anything even remotely resembling a date, but she remembered the use of the buffer well.

“Exactly. Don’t underestimate Arizona. She goes all out, like, all the time.”

The pair rifled through Callie’s locker, pulling out clothes that would fit Cass and sorting them into ‘maybe’s and ‘no’s. After much deliberating – and a good amount of flat out arguing on Callie’s end – the two of them decided on an outfit: the jeans Cass had worn in that morning with a pair of boots she’d left in her locker, a borrowed grey henley, and one of Callie’s too-big flannels tied casually around her waist. Callie even shoved a beanie down over Cass’ brown curls, saying that her scrub cap gave her crazy hair and there was nothing the surgeon could do to tame the unruly mop on the top of her head in the next 20 minutes.

In Cass’ opinion, she felt like she was dressed more like a college student than a distinguished surgeon, but Callie wasn’t going to let her argue. After fiddling with her outfit just a bit more Callie decided that she was dressed.

“Can I go now?”, Cass asked her fellow surgeon with a groan.

“You may. Go forth. Spill your beans. Call me afterwards. And Cass”, Callie called out to her as she was walking out the door, “good luck.”

The last time Cass walked in to Emerald City Bar – more commonly known as simply Joe’s – was the night before she was sworn in to the Navy. Then, she was meeting a large group of friends, fellow residents and people she had grown up with from in and around the Seattle area. Now, she walked in and was just hoping to catch a glimpse of some blonde hair in the sea of unfamiliar faces.

One drink and I’ll tell her, she kept telling herself. One drink and I’ll spill everything. Then I’m going to go home and drink good scotch, alone, in my apartment, and try to forget this day every happened, like a grown up.

She didn’t see Arizona anywhere, however. Just as she was about to turn around and save this fight for another day someone yelled her name from the back of the bar. She spun and saw Maggie and Meredith in the corner, empty shot glasses covering the table and big smiles plastered on their faces. Cass forced herself to smile back, waved, and made her way through the busy bar towards them. If Arizona was going to be late, she might as well pass the time with two of the only people she knew in the bar.

“Well you two look like you’ve had a good night”, she said to them in lieu of a greeting.

“Yes, we have”, Maggie slurred. “And I see no reason for it to end. 6 more tequila shots, coming up!”

“Pierce, there’s only 3 of us.”

“And we each need 2 shots!”

Maggie hopped off of her stool then, to her credit only wobbling a bit, before making her way to the bar for their shots. Cass walked up and leaned against the table with her elbows, unwilling to sit down in case Arizona eventually showed.

“How was your day?”, Meredith asked. She wasn’t slurring as much as Maggie had been, but the big goofy smile on her face betrayed her drunkenness where slurred speech did not.

“Not as good as yours, obviously; must have been nice to have the day off. It was okay, though. Slow in the ER. I honestly just want to go home and crawl in to bed. I’ve got a 24 tomorrow.”

“Why did you come here then? This place is a black hole for surgeons like you and me. If you take these two shots you might not make it home at all.”

“I’m actually meeting someone for drinks”, Cass admitted.

Just then Maggie came back with a tray, a ridiculous 8 shots of tequila and a cup full of lime slices balanced very carefully on top.

“Meeting who?”, she asked Cass as she distributed the drinks.

“Why are you handing me 4 shots, Pierce?”

“Because you’re behind.”

Cass didn’t wait for the other two surgeons to get to their own shots before she took hers – they were already pretty far in to their night, and Maggie was right: Cass was just starting out. She needed to catch up to them, if anything. Especially if she was going to be stood up.

“I’m meeting up with Robbins for drinks”, Cass finally answered when the shots were downed, with the lime between her teeth. She grimaced – tequila was not exactly her favorite – and checked her cellphone for the time. “She was supposed to meet me 20 minutes ago.”

“I’m sorry, did you just say that you were going on a date with Arizona?”

“Who just walked in the door”, Meredith finished for her sister before the trauma surgeon could argue that it was in no way a date.

Cass spun quickly, lime still in her mouth and protests still on her tongue, and saw Arizona working her way through the tables and towards the bar. Her date-not-date was wearing black slacks with matching heels, a nice white blouse with a simple blazer over it, her hair no longer pulled up, but in loose curls that framed her face and cascaded down her back – suddenly, Cass felt underdressed for these casual drinks she was supposed to be having.

Callie hadn’t been kidding when she said that Arizona was going to go all out.

“You were going to say that it wasn’t a date”, Meredith whispered in Cass’ ear, leaning forward and smiling big, “but she looks like she would say otherwise.”

“Shut up.”

The sisters just laughed. Maggie tugged Cass’ beanie down over her eyes before she walked away, and yelled good luck after her as she started off towards where Arizona was. The brunette huffed as she navigated through the bar, deciding to discard the beanie all together – she threw it back at Maggie (who dropped it, as Cass knew she would) with one hand, while ruffling the unruly mess on her head with the other.

“I was starting to think you stood me up”, Cass said as she slid in to the booth next to the blonde. She flagged down the bartender and ordered a beer, which was placed in front of her almost immediately. “After how charming I had been earlier, I was shocked.”

“Cassandra”, Arizona greeted, another dazzling smile on her face. She spun towards the bartender herself then, quickly ordering her drink – a gin and tonic – before spinning back to the other surgeon. “And here I was thinking that you were late.”

“Well as the person that was actually late, you don’t have a leg to stand on”, Cass joked. Then, realizing what she had just said, turned beet red. Less than a minute in to this and she’d already made an ass out of herself. “Oh fuck, I’m so sorry. I have a way of always putting my foot in my mouth like that.”

Arizona had to laugh at that. For someone who claimed to be charming just a second ago, Cass was having a rather difficult time holding this conversation together without making a leg or leg related joke.

“You’re really blowing this”, she stage whisptered to her fellow surgeon with a wink, still laughing.

“I’m so sorry. I swear, I’m usually not this tactless. It’s just, Callie told me about your leg earlier. I had no idea, at all, and then she told me and-“

“It was all you could see when you looked at me”, Arizona interrupted, and awkwardly looked away as she accepted the drink that was handed to her. She was pretty accustomed to that reaction. “I get it.”

“Trust me”, Cass reassured, placing a comforting hand the arm holding up the glass, “I see a lot of things when I look at you, and that isn’t even one of them.”

The two of them shared a smile, Arizona’s dazzling while Cass’ was accented by a bright blush. Cass took a large swig of her beer, the alcohol offsetting the heaviness in the pit of her stomach. The whole point of agreeing to grab drinks with Arizona was so that she could talk to her about Tim, but even with the liquid courage she was finding it difficult to think of a way to breech the subject. Lucky for her Arizona was much better at conversation.

“So you talked to Calliope?”, she said, pulling her from her thoughts. “About?”

“You, mostly. I… well, I have something I want to tell you. But I wasn’t sure if I should or not. I was convinced that Callie would be able to help me, but really she just made me more confused. When you offered drinks, I wanted to say no, because… honestly, I’m still not sure that I should tell you. But here I am, and I’m getting a little drunk, and in good company, so why not?”

“I’m guessing you started before me, then?”

“Grey and Pierce”, she motioned towards the corner where the two sisters were still slamming shots like it was nothing, “bought me a few shots when I first got here. I blame them entirely. They are not nice, you know.”

“You’re a talkative drunk. Has anyone ever told you that before?”

“All the time”, Cass admitted.

Arizona smiled at her – whatever it was Cass was struggling to tell her, she was glad that the other surgeon had agreed to come out and get drinks with her. She was a talkative, boisterous, funny, and – to Kepner’s chagrin, she was sure – Arizona found her adorable.

“Well let’s make a deal. You can tell me your big bad secret, but not before I get to know you a little better. I like to keep secrets between friends, and you already know way more about me than I do about you.”

“That’s fair. But only if it’s one for one.” Arizona shrugged, and Cass took it as a concession. “What do you want to know?”

“How about the basics? Where you’re from, your family, where’d you go to school… that kind of stuff.”

“Those are some heavy basics, Phoenix. Yuma. Chambers… Tuba City?”

“Did you look up cities in Arizona before you got here or something?”, Arizona laughed.

“You can’t prove that.”

“You do know I’m not actually named after the state, right?”

“Let me get drunk before I hear that story. I like to take my cheerful family stories with a side of inebriation.” To emphasize her point, Cass took a sip of her beer. “Are you sure you want to know all that stuff about me up front? Don’t want to ask me my favorite color or something first?”

“What can I say? I’m a surgeon. The basics usually go a little deeper than that for me.”

“Good point”, Cass shrugged. “Alright then. I’m from Seattle, born and raised. My dad passed away about 5 years ago, but mom still lives here, right down the street from the hospital. I’ve got a younger brother – Adrian – but he’s lives in Chicago now. He’s at Northwestern, in his second year of med school. Trying to follow in my footsteps, I guess.”

“They seem like decent footsteps to follow in. Did you go to Northwestern too?”

“Are you kidding? I was 16 when I graduated high school. There was no way my parents were putting me on a plane and sending me to the other side of the country.”

“16?”, Arizona asked with a small smile and an eyebrow raised.

“Kids in my pre-med class used to call me Doogie Howser”, she mumbled in response, then motioned the bartender over and ordered herself another beer. Cass ordered Arizona another drink without asking, deciding that if she was going to be this drunk than she was going to bring her fellow surgeon down with her.

“At least now I know what to call you when you break out the Arizona jokes. Where’d you go to med school, Doogie?”

“Penn Med. I graduated in 2001-“

“Let me guess”, the blonde interrupted. “Graduated cum laude, top of your class, head sorority girl complete with the train of boys following you everywhere, had offers from every medical school out there?”

“Did you read my resume?”

“I didn’t have to. I’m good at this stuff.”

“Well, for the record then, it was summa cum laude. And I wasn’t in a sorority. I actually couldn’t stand those girls.” Cass eyed her drinking partner up and down – she took in the way she was sitting so poised on the stool, how she sipped her drink delicately, even had her pinky raised, and smiled brightly as she expertly navigated the turbulent waters of small talk. Arizona had sorority girl in her blood, Cass could tell. “I bet you were one of them, though.”

“What?!”, Arizona asked, feigning offence. “Why would you think that?”

“You’re kidding, right? Blonde hair, blue eyes, gorgeous, all bubbly and shit. I would bet money that you had people tripping all over themselves just to carry your books for you. It’s practically written on your forehead.”

To emphasize her point, Cass reached out with an uncoordinated hand and swiped a finger across Arizona’s forehead – or, attempted to at least, as she missed and brushed her fingers along the blonde’s cheek. Without thinking, Cass tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear as she completed the motion.

“Thanks”, Arizona said distractedly. She watched Cass shakily withdraw the hand, a stupid grin on her face. Drunk Cass seemed to have all the charm that a slightly more sober Cass claimed to have.

“How about you, Hackberry?”, the brunette asked. “Where are you from? Where’d you go to school?”

“Is that even a city in Arizona?”

“I’m almost certain that it is. Stop avoiding the question. We agreed on one for ones, you know.”

“I was born in Japan, actually, in Okinawa. My dad was a Marine, and was stationed there at the time. But I moved around a lot, so I learned not to really call anywhere ‘home’. When my dad got out we lived in California. I didn’t want to move too far from home, so I want to Stanford-“

“Where you were the leader of the Tri-Delts-“

“For my pre-med and med school at Hopkins”, Arizona finished, not confirming Cass’ accusation. She would never admit to being a Tri-Delt; she was a Kappa Alpha Theta girl, after all. But Cass didn’t need to know that.

“So you didn’t want to move too far from home for college, and moved across the country for med school?”, Cass teased when she realized she wasn’t going to get anywhere with the sorority thing. It did nothing to stop her from imagining a young, bouncy, California-tanned Arizona running the Stanford campus and raising hell in the way that only a sorority girl could.

“I did a lot of growing up in college, I guess. I loved Hopkins. I stayed and did my residency there, too, was even chief resident in my fifth year. Richard Webber recruited me himself after Kenley died, and I came here in 2009.”

“I’m guessing that’s when you met Torres.”

“That’s a good guess.”

“I’m sorry that went south, by the way. I don’t know the whole story, but divorce is never easy. Are you dating anyone now? I-I mean, it’s been a while since you two split right? An acceptable amount of time to have a new- not that you need a girlfriend, you know, you’re clearly- Jesus, you know what I’m asking, Robbins.”

“No way”, Arizona shook her head. “You already know that about me so it doesn’t count. The real question is are you dating someone?”

“You know I just moved back to Seattle, right?”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

Cass groaned. Normally, she hated talking about her love life. But tonight she was happily drunk, in the company of a pretty girl, and she decided that she had nothing left to lose. She knew a lot about Arizona’s love life, after all – more than she had let on – and it was only fair that she would share a little bit, too.

“I haven’t dated anyone in years, Robbins. I haven’t been with anyone since… what? 2009?”

“2009?”, Arizona gasped dramatically. “You know that was 7 years ago, right?”

“Are you trying to tell me it’s 2016?”, Cass joked in response. “I had a girlfriend here in Seattle. Kiersten. We dated for about a year before I joined the Navy. We were together for 2 more years after I left, but… you know, I’m just shitty sometimes. And long distance is a bitch. Especially when I was so reluctant to come home. In the 2 years we were together after I left, I only came home a handful of times. And most of those were because my chain of command made me take time off.”

“So she ended it?”

“No, I did. I felt terrible that I didn’t feel terrible, and I knew that it wasn’t fair. To either of us. So I broke up with her. Over Skype.”

Arizona laughed loudly at that, tipping her head back and showing off the expanse of a long neck. Cass was happy that the bartender set another beer in front of her just then, and gave her something else to look at.

“That’s terrible”, the blonde said when she recovered. “You’re terrible!”

“I know. I know! After that… well, I had a few flings, I’m sure you know how it goes, but I haven’t dated since then.”

“I imagine it’s hard to find time to keep a relationship going when you’re busy saving lives.”

“You’re one to talk”, Cass smiled at Arizona, was tipped back the rest of her drink and – to Cass’ surprise – ordered another. Maybe she wouldn’t be the only drunk one here after all. “You’re the head of two departments. I don’t even know when you find time to eat, let alone sleep.”

With the alcohol weakening her inhibitions just a it, Arizona smirked at the other woman.

“I don’t sleep much”, she said.

The two of them chatted for a while longer, about their careers and their love lives, swapping funny stories about their exes and things that had happened to them on the job. The more they drank, however, the looser their lips became, and soon they wound up talking about much more serious subjects.

“I would have never guessed it was a prosthetic”, Cass admitted to Arizona when the blonde had dared her to knock on it. “I’ve known a lot of people with prosthetic legs, but normally I can tell right away. They have that-“

“That gait”, Arizona finished for her. “I know what you mean. Once I finally dragged myself out of my bed and got to the prosthetist, it was one of my biggest concerns. I didn’t want people to be able to tell. I worked hard at it. It’s hard to feel sexy in heels when you have a limp.”

Cass winked at her.

“It paid off.”

Arizona blushed, picked her drink back up, and Cass took it as an opportunity to fill the silence, and learn a little more about the woman.

“You know, I’ve never seen someone with a life-like prosthetic like that. Maybe it’s just because I’ve been around mostly soldiers, but I’m used to that sexy black number. You know the one”, Cass elaborated when Arizona looked at her with an eyebrow raised. “Why opt for the fancy leg and not just the basic one? I can’t imagine it has any functional advantages. Other than really looking good in a pair of heels”, she finished quickly with a smile.

“I have one of those ‘sexy’ black numbers, but I don’t wear it much anymore. I just… don’t want people to look at me and be able to tell right away. It doesn’t bother me as much as it used to. There was a long time that I was so depressed, so angry about it, that I wouldn’t even leave my house. I refused to go to physical therapy, I didn’t want to go to work, I didn’t want to play with my daughter, I didn’t even want to look at my wife. Honestly, I spent every waking second wishing I had died in that plane crash.” The blonde took a steadying breath. “I’m better now, though. I feel like me again. I used to be so happy, I was just a happy person, and I can finally smile like that person used to and not even have to fake it anymore.”

“It doesn’t mean I want everyone to know about it”, she added. “It really just means that it doesn’t bother me when people find out. It’s like… there’s this big nasty scar, and then where my leg used to be, there’s… nothing. I don’t mind if people see it, but I don’t go around showing it to everyone. Does that make sense?”

“We’ve all got scars”, Cass reasoned with a shrug. “Some are physical, some are emotional. Some are both. But, you carry them with you all the same. It doesn’t do much to hide them, you know. You’re a survivor. You survived something terrible, and walked away with a few scars. I say, put them on display. Let everyone know what a survivor you are.”

“What do you know about scars? Sounds like big talk from someone with both legs”, Arizona joked. Cass’ face fell, however, and the blonde immediately felt bad. Sometimes she forgot that she was much more comfortable joking about the fact that she had one leg than anyone else around her ever would be; while a few years ago she would have viewed it as an accomplishment, now it just steered Arizona in to more than one very awkward encounter. “Hey, I’m sorry. I’m kidding. Sometimes I forget that the cripple jokes are only funny to me.” She sighed again, and looked down at her drink dejectedly. As bad as Cass had been when she first showed up at the bar, Arizona was certainly giving her a run for her money. “Maybe you are the charming one here.”

Too drunk to really hear it, Cass ignored the apology.

“I have scars”, she defended.

Wanting to prove her point, and too intoxicated to care that she was still in the middle of a relatively crowded bar and more than likely surrounded by other people that she worked with, Cass rolled up the sleeves of her long sleeved shirt.

Arizona gasped when the skin beneath it was revealed – all pink and silver, raised and bumpy in some places and dipped in valleys in others, both arms of the woman next to her were covered from just above the wrist up to beyond where her shirt was bunched up around the elbows in burn scars. There were some patches of smooth skin, where it looked as if skin grafts had been attempted, and a few long scars from incisions, but the majority of the skin that the blonde could see was covered in hypertrophic burn scars.

“What…?”, Arizona stammered out. It took her a beat to look up and meet Cass’ eyes. The scarring on her arms was extensive, and it honestly shocked the other surgeon to see it. Especially when she hadn’t been expecting anything like that. Arizona reached a tentative hand out and brushed the tips of her fingers along the length of Cass’ right forearm. “What happened?”, she finished, lingering on the other woman’s wrist for just a moment.

“Fucking MEK happened”, Cass answered quietly before taking a big swig of the beer that had been placed in front of her with her free hand. “I was working out of Camp Fallujah in 2009. I had just gotten there – it was my first duty station as the lead surgeon – when a Marine was brought in from Falahat, this tiny fucking sand dune of a town about 15 klicks from our camp. His injuries weren’t too severe; he had a through and through to the thigh that managed to avoid anything fatal, his bleeding was under control, and his vitals were stable. It wasn’t even surgical, for god’s sake. I was just standing there talking to the kid about some football game when suddenly I got knocked on my ass. When I came to, my ears were ringing. I couldn’t see anything, there was so much smoke and sand blowing in from the huge hole in the side of the tent. I remember thinking to myself, how long has that fucking hole been there? Then there were doctors and corpsman standing over me, mouthing things at me that they didn’t know I couldn’t hear. I kept telling them to check on the Marine, but when I tried to talk I just started coughing up blood. I reached up to push them out of my way, but I couldn’t move my arms. I couldn’t even feel my arms. I thought they were gone. When I looked down, it didn’t even register what I was looking at.”

Cass raised both arms, held them palms up and eyed them suspiciously. Arizona, still too shocked to say anything, wrapped her own hands carefully around Cass’ wrists to ground her.

“The Marine I had been talking to?”, Cass continued. “The missile hit him, square in the chest. He literally exploded, right there in front of me. The shit on my arms, the pink mess that melted my skin right off, the thing sticking out of my chest… it was that Marine. His skin, his intestines, part of his fucking arm. What was left of all of it, anyways.”

“Oh my god, Cass. I’m so sorry.”

She shrugged. Cass gently removed herself from Arizona’s grasp, and pulled the sleeves of her henley back down.

“I wear a lot of long sleeves. It works out better now than it did in the middle east, considering that it was literally always 100 degrees outside there. The hoodie industry is making a killing off of me now that I’m back in Seattle.”

“How are you joking about this right now?”

“How did you joke about your peg leg earlier?”

“Practice”, Arizona said with a smile. “I’m guessing you have just about as much of it as I do.”

Cass returned the smile, but turned back to her drink in lieu of saying anything else. She finished off the beer in front of her, and politely refused another when the bartender came by to take the empty bottle from her.

“Time to turn in?”, the blonde asked.

“I think so.”

“Do you want me to call you a cab? If you’re going north, we could split it. I don’t have a lot of cash but if you think I’ve got an honest face I can pay you back at the hospital tomorrow.”

Cass shrugged.

“Or, we could just go to my place.”

“Well that was forward of you, Dr. Wise.”

“What I mean is, my place isn’t far from here. We could walk there. Sober up a bit.”

“And once we get there?”, Arizona smirked. “Once we’re in your apartment, sobered up? What will we do then?”

Cass returned Arizona’s smirk with one of her own. It had been a while since she had flirted with a woman, but unlike her, the blonde was clearly on top of her game. Arizona was nothing if not smooth.

“I guess we’ll just have to see what happens”, she replied.

The two of them staggered out of the bar together – Cass caught Maggie and Meredith grinning at her from their table in the corner as the pair made their way outside, and chose to ignore them. She knew that she’d hear all about it the next time she saw either one of them.

They had already decided on walking, of course, but Cass steered them towards her Jeep to grab a heavier jacket out; after spending so much time in the sweltering desert heat, the surgeon was uncertain that she would ever readjust to the balmy northwestern weather that she grew up in. Arizona casually leaned against the side of the car while Cass rifled through the back.

“I swear I left a jacket back here”, she mumbled once it was clear that she wasn’t going to find it. She pulled her upper body out of the car, shivering, and looked to the blonde apologetically. “Here’s hoping I don’t freeze to death on the way home.”

Arizona just smirked at her, not saying a word. Slowly, and without breaking eye contact, she pushed herself off of the Jeep and made her way towards Cass – who was standing frozen (literally and figuratively) in place by the driver’s side door. She stopped just inches away from the other woman, close enough that Cass could feel the heat coming off of her.

Time stopped, for just a moment, and Cass really looked at Arizona for the first time. Arizona did the same, seeing up close just how grey Cass’ seemingly blue eyes really were, seeing how many freckles there were dusting across her now and cheeks, watching her unruly chestnut curls blowing around in the cool Seattle breeze. Her eyes wandered down to Cass’ lips, which were slightly parted, with little puffs of steams coming out of them and filling the space between them.

Just when Arizona had finally worked up the courage to lean forward and press her lips to Cass’, Cass surged forward and captured the blonde’s lips with her own.

They kissed softly at first – barely there and tentative brushes of their lips together – but the alcohol in their bodies wouldn’t let them hold back for too long. Soon Arizona was pushing Cass against the Jeep. With her back against the cold metal of the car , her front pressed against a warm body, and full, skilled lips working with hers, Cass could almost forget who it was that she was kissing.

Almost.

“Wait, Arizona”, Cass pulled back. Her head was swimming, and it couldn’t all be due to the alcohol – not only was this moving too fast for her, but the secret she had been keeping from the other woman was threatening to bubble up. “Arizona, stop”, she said unconvincingly when the blonde took the chance to move from Cass’ lips to her neck. “I have to tell you-“

“What?”, Arizona breathed into her ear, sending a shiver down her spine. “What could possibly be so important that I have to stop doing this?”

To emphasize her point, Arizona scraped her teeth along Cass’ pulse point. When the woman beneath her didn’t respond, Arizona huffed and pulled back to see Cass looking up at her with glassy eyes.

“Cassandra, it’s okay-“

But it wasn’t. She was right there in front her, one hand on Cass’ hip and the other in her hair, and all that Cass could see when she looked at her was a man that died 15 feet from her, with the same blue eyes and a tattoo of the state of Arizona on his arm.

“I knew Tim”, she blurted out.