Medical Center
ER Entrance
Several ambulances screeched to a halt.
Adam was the first to rush forward.
"Mara Christ, 34, female. Abdominal rupture, skull fracture, third-degree burns, at least 40% of her skin directly infected," the paramedic rattled off quickly while unloading the stretcher.
"Got it, I'll take it from here," Adam said, stepping in. "Notify Dr. Shepherd, prep OR 2. Melendez, Little Grey, with me!"
"Yes, sir!" Shorty and Lexie snapped into action, following close behind.
"Dr. Duncan, what about me?" Carter jogged up, eager.
"You stay here, assist Dr. Bailey," Adam said, glancing back at him.
"Yes, sir," Carter replied, reluctantly stopping in his tracks as he watched Shorty and Lexie disappear with Adam toward the operating room.
Dr. Bailey, after training Cristina's crew, was currently short-handed. If she needed residents, she'd have to coordinate with Chief Resident Callie. For interns, she'd go through Cristina's team. If Callie decided to make things tough for her, it could get messy.
---
OR 2
Adam handled the chest and abdomen, while Dr. Shepherd took the brain. Shorty assisted Adam, and Lexie shadowed Shepherd.
"You're Meredith's sister?" Shepherd asked during a lull in the surgery, glancing at Lexie as she peeked over his shoulder.
"Yeah, half-sister," Lexie said with a smile.
"How are things with you and Meredith?" Shepherd continued, chatting casually while operating.
It was pretty normal for surgeons to talk during procedures. Over in the next room, Dr. House had once performed surgery while video-conferencing a courtroom hearing. Of course, that was a perk reserved for genius doctors in the TV-drama world. For them, these operations were second nature—chatting didn't throw them off; it was a way to unwind.
Take the surgical chief, for example. He could pick up a new suturing tool he'd never used before and, with decades of muscle memory and rock-solid fundamentals, stitch perfectly—fast and flawless—with his eyes closed.
Then there were freaks like Adam. He could engage in intense mental sparring while pulling off complex memory feats. Multitasking was just another day at the office for him.
But for regular doctors? Trying to copy that would be straight-up reckless toward the patient.
"Family stuff—it's awkward," Lexie said with a wry smile. "And I think she hates me."
"She doesn't hate you," Shepherd corrected her.
"Really?" Lexie blinked. "How do you know?"
"Trust Dr. Shepherd," Adam chimed in, smirking as he worked on the patient's chest with Shorty's help. "No one knows Meredith better than him. If he says she doesn't hate you, she doesn't."
"You and my sister…" Lexie trailed off, finally putting two and two together as she looked at Shepherd.
Shepherd just smiled faintly, saying nothing.
"…"
Lexie got the hint. She glanced at Adam, catching his teasing look, and suddenly felt like a stampede of a thousand wild beasts was thundering through her head.
Her sister Meredith… Adam wasn't kidding! It was unreal! Every time she thought a doctor seemed cool, they turned out to have some intimate tie to her sister.
Buy a sturdy belt, don't drink, and don't hook up with senior doctors—Adam's personal advice was starting to feel eerily spot-on.
"Someone remind me what caused this accident?" Adam asked suddenly.
"Apartment kitchen explosion!" The Nurse Who Gets It, Violet, answered right away. "The patient was cooking, set off a blast, blew a hole in the room. Neighbors got hit, and in the living room, her husband, their one-year-old son, and a friend who'd stopped by were all caught in it too."
"Looks like our patient isn't your average housewife—she's a mad chemist," Adam said, using tweezers to pluck a white crystal from the patient's chest and holding it up to the spotlight.
"What's that?" Lexie asked, wide-eyed.
"Adam, are you saying this is…" Shepherd trailed off, equally stunned.
"If I'm not mistaken, it's methamphetamine," Adam said, inspecting the crystal closely.
"She was cooking meth!" Lexie blurted, connecting the chemical name to its infamous TV-drama alias.
Hmm. A synthetic drug with a serious kick to the central nervous system.
Think of that high school chem teacher, Walter White—an absolute legend in the field. Unlike Walt and his dropout ex-student Jesse, this seemed more like a husband-wife duo.
"Yep," Adam said, pulling another white crystal from the patient's abdomen. "These two have slightly different colors. Looks like our patient's a 'mad chemist' with ambition—she's been purifying her product."
In the TV-drama world, making meth was easy. Take Jesse—a total slacker who'd barely learned some chemistry from Walt before dropping out, yet still managed to cook and sell it on his own. Sure, his stuff was low-grade, but it worked.
Or Penny's jailbird brother, who sneered at his sister for being "just a dealer" while he fancied himself an upstream "chemist." With his self-proclaimed "not white trash" attitude and laughable IQ, even he could pull it off. That's how basic the process was.
The trick was purity. Your average "chemist" churned out stuff around 70% pure. A real chem prodigy could hit 96%. But someone like Walt—a near-Nobel-level hidden genius—cranked out 99.9% pure product right out the gate. His blue-tinted byproduct took the world by storm, crushing older competition.
Purity was king in this game. The varying purity of these crystals embedded in the patient suggested she'd been experimenting with new methods, chasing that edge for a competitive product—only to lose control and blow herself up.
Studying "white chemistry" like Walt, pushing the boundaries of research—that's a true "White Scholar"!
"Violet, rush this to the lab for testing," Adam instructed. "And tell security to quietly keep an eye on the patient's husband, the neighbors, and that friend who 'just dropped by' this early. We don't want any surprises."
He'd cross-checked the crystals with his mental database and was pretty damn sure he was right. But without 100% confirmation, you couldn't just call the cops. Still, for the staff's safety, he'd have hospital security stay on alert.
When it came to messes like this, you couldn't be too careful. These people danced on the edge of crime—violence could erupt any second.
"Yes, Dr. Duncan!" Violet replied, snapping to it.
(End of Chapter)