"How To Boil A Lobster" - A Short Snippet (Patreon)

A serving of ruthless! Grey - enjoy!

You've been in many unenviable positions before. 

Hell, no one wants to be an intern - making the list, changing wound vacs, retracting for hours on end while the senior resident gets to actually cut. But right now, you know for a fact that you're glad you're not Xavier Price. 

See, Xavier Price committed one of the cardinal sins of surgery: pissing off the scrub nurse. And, not just any scrub nurse, but Marsha - the scrub nurse who's been at Citadel since it's founding, who's ushered many an intern into their first surgery, who's then seen them come into their own as residents and then attendings. Sure, everyone knows not to take it out on any unsuspecting member of the healthcare team, but taking it out on Marsha? 

You have to have a bona fide death wish. 

"He can gown himself," Dr. Grey says as you watch Marsha grudgingly reach for a towel so Xavier can dry his hands. 

Marsha nods, and you can feel the tension in the air. You sneak a glance at Dr. Grey, expression hidden behind his face mask, and it's disconcerting seeing his eyes like that - normally so patient - cold, like chips of ice. 

It is agonizing, watching Xavier fumble with his gown. It is even more agonizing, watching him fail at slipping on his gloves once, twice - thank God, he got it the third time. It's like watching the slowest car crash in the world, and maybe if Dr. Grey weren't watching, Xavier would've gotten it on the first try, but he is watching - with that piercing gaze that he normally reserves for his cases, the tumors killing his patients - and that, you can see, makes Xavier's hands shake.

You move to start draping the patient, but freeze when you hear Dr. Grey's voice. 

"Xavier will do it," he says, and even though you know none of this is at directed at you, your stomach clenches anyway and a bead of sweat rolls down the back of your neck. "Any surgeon should know how to drape their patient."

More minutes pass. Somehow, Xavier survives draping the patient, Dr. Grey correcting him whenever he even starts to make a wrong move. He never raises his voice, he never even so much as moves closer to Xavier - and this somehow is worse than any of Dr. Saxon's barbs, that naked scorn he lobs out to any resident less than competent. If Dr. Saxon goes for the jugular, then Dr. Grey peels the skin from the flesh - long and slow and torturous. You imprint on your brain, on your most crucial synapses, to never get on Dr. Grey's bad side. 

As soon as the surgery is over, Dr. Grey explicitly assigning Xavier the intern work of wheeling the patient to post-op, and there's no one left in the room but you, Marsha, and the rest of the surgical staff, you find yourself letting out a breath that you must've been holding for the past five hours. 

"Damn, Marsha." The surgical nurse shakes his head. "Remind me to never get on your bad side."

Marsha doesn't even look up from counting the surgical instruments. 

"I don't know what you mean," she says lightly.

"That was excruciating," you blurt out. "I didn't know Dr. Grey was so..."

Terrifying. 

"Don't worry." The surgical nurse chuckles. "As long as Xavier learns his lesson, he won't be on Dr. Grey's shit list forever."

"I didn't even know he was...capable of having a shit list," you admit. 

"Oh, honey," Marsha says, and now she looks over at you. "You didn't think he got where he was out of luck, did you?"