Bella pushed the last of her remaining tomato on top of the sliced cucumber, watching as her tower of salad tumbled back onto her plate. She pushed the food around, hungry but too anxious to even consider eating, nonetheless grateful for the 30-minute dinner break she'd been granted.

She had copious amounts of charting to get through, endless orders to sign and a mountain of consult notes to complete. She finished off her afternoon by charting on her code blue patient. She combed through every detail of the patient's chart, learning that his name was Marcus Cartwright. He was 36 years old, a father to two children, and he'd been admitted overnight for a gunshot wound to the chest. He'd been triaged by Dr. Cullen, who apparently never slept judging by his overnight activities, and operated on by Dr. Cullen and the cardio-thoracic attending.

Bella realized in looking through his chart that Marcus surviving the night had been somewhat of a miracle. It wasn't shocking to anyone that this man had coded and eventually died. He'd sustained life-threatening trauma to his heart and lost a tremendous amount of blood. He had been in surgery all night but based on the extensive and meticulous postoperative notes the cardio attending wasn't confident the repair would hold.

Apparently, it hadn't. She tried her best to shrug off the loss, but she couldn't shake the picture she'd illustrated in her mind of Marcus and his young children. She wondered what their life would be like now that they'd lost their father, and how their family would cope through such a traumatic loss.

Her fork became her instrument of distraction as she used it to maneuver the remaining bits of salad across her plate. The rest of her morning had been eventful. Her pager had gone off a total of five times, three pages for trauma consults in the ER and two pages for post-op complications. The senior resident on the trauma rotation for the day was an older man who had very little patience and no aptitude for teaching. He stuck Bella with all the charting for the day, providing little to no guidance about what would be expected of her. Thankfully Bella had run into Carlos again – he was on ortho for the week and came into the ICU for a consult. He stopped by the charting station and offered Bella as much guidance as he could, giving her a boost of encouragement and reminding her that this rotation would only last a week.

She had yet to meet the attending, but she was glad for it. She didn't think she could handle another ego to stroke for the day. She knew this was part and parcel of residency, but today had been such a strange and unusual day, and she was still struggling to process the interaction with Dr. Cullen. It had left her with more questions than answers and it was still weighing on her.

"Are we interrupting something?"

Bella looked up, smiling brightly when she saw Carlos standing across from her, holding a lunch tray in his hands. Next to him were two other people, and Bella recognized one of them as an intern from this morning.

"Hey – I'm Tamika Sanders, a surgical intern, like you." Bella nodded and smiled at the woman standing across from her, reaching to pull out a chair, motioning for Tamika to join her.

"I'm Stefan, second year surgical resident." Stefan was a tall man, easily over six feet. He had a handsome face, and light blonde hair that he had combed neatly across his forehead. His eyes were a pale shade of green and Bella marveled at how a man with such large hands would be capable of performing the delicate procedures often required of surgeons.

He must have noticed Bella's gawking because he said, "don't worry, I'm not planning on specializing in neuro," he grinned, and Bella's face turned from ashen white to a deep shade of red.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled trying to regain what little composure she had left, "it's been an odd day…"

"Don't sweat it. We all heard about the morning you had. That's a rough way to start off your first day," Carlos offered, digging into his plate of pasta while he spoke.

Bella managed a half-hearted nod, grateful for company that could understand the way she was feeling.

"My first death was on day five. Pulmonary embolism post op. I ran in to run the code and within five minutes I'd lost her. She was only 23," Carlos reminisced with a heavy sadness in his eyes.

It was true that you never forgot the first time you lost a patient, Bella realized. She'd seen death many times before in med school, but she was never in the driver's seat when it happened. She was accustomed to an observational role, an extra set of hands to hold a clamp or calm a patient at best, but never the person in charge.

She wanted nothing more than to lay herself across the table and sleep for a very long time. But her day wasn't done yet, she was only 12 hours into her first shift. She chatted casually with her colleagues, directing most of the attention toward them, appearing to burgeon with curiosity though it was mostly an effort to draw attention away from herself.

She learned that Carlos bussed tables to make his way through med school, while Tamika came from a wealthy family, born to two parents in the field. Her mother was a psychiatrist and her father an oncologist. Stefan was quieter, more reserved than the others, offering very little information about himself. Bella understood the inclination to remain quiet. She wasn't willing to divulge much of anything about herself for fear that the conversation would eventually have to include her own experience of med school. She knew there would be a natural curiosity about why she'd left Florida for Washington.

After they'd finished dinner they cleared their trays, Carlos and Geoff heading in one direction and Tamika and Bella heading in another.

"Let's walk together?" Tamika asked, "We're headed in the same direction," she explained. She seemed to know the hospital well, piquing Bella's curiosity. She'd been wandering around the place all day struggling to remember radiology from the ER or the North Wing from the South Wing. It was a huge hospital, twisting and turning enough that Bella felt lost at every turn.

"You seem to know your way around quite well," Bella remarked, walking shoulder to shoulder with Tamika.

"Yeah, I basically grew up in these halls. My mother is a psychiatrist here. My father used to work in oncology," she explained, unraveling her beautiful, tightly curled hair before pulling it back into an even tighter bun.

Bella sensed the heaviness in her voice when she mentioned her father. She thought about inquiring but wondered if the subject was too painful. She settled instead for light conversation, aiming to satisfy her steadily burning curiosity at the same time.

"So, what's your take on the Chief of Surgery?" Bella tried to sound casual but was sure she wasn't successful.

Tamika looked at her, eyebrows waggling suggestively while she whistled in appreciation.

"So, you've met him then?" Tamika asked, a wide smile on her face.

Bella nodded, perplexed by Tamika's reaction.

"Are we simply appreciating how insanely attractive he is, or are we actually discussing his merits as the Chief of Surgery?"

"Both," Bella laughed, Tamika joining her.

"He's an exceptionally talented surgeon. He hasn't worked here for very long, about three years, but he was a shoe-in for Chief of Surgery when he arrived. He's calm, decisive, fair… and hot as hell," she grinned, stopping to lean against a wall near the nursing station of the cardio wing.

"He seems decent," Bella agreed. It seemed she wouldn't glean any more information from Tamika and it was apparent that she hadn't noticed anything strange about him. Bella wondered if she'd hallucinated the strangeness of the interaction. It seemed hard for her to believe that someone could look at him and not have questions about his physical appearance.

She shrugged it off, not wanting to draw unnecessary attention to herself on her first day.

"If you think he's decent, wait until you meet his brother. He's the head of cardio – a genius prodigy and one of the youngest people to ever hold a chief position."

So, he has a brother… interesting. I wonder if his brother looks as oddly as he does?

"Anyway, this is my stop. You're down the hall – follow the signs for the elevator and head to the second floor," Tamika explained. Bella was grateful to have someone around that knew how to navigate the maze that was Harborview.

"Thanks, appreciate it."

"Oh, and Bella?" Tamika called after her.

"Yeah?"

"What're your plans for tomorrow night?"

"Um, I'll probably be trying to sleep off this shift?" Bella replied, more of a question than an answer.

"Not anymore," Tamika said, "come to Monty's after you've slept a bit. We can chat and have a few drinks?"

"Sure," she agreed. She didn't know much about Seattle, but she'd already heard about Monty's from fellow interns. It was the local bar right across the street from Harborview. Apparently, it was crawling with doctors and nurses.

"Oh, and don't forget we have skills lab at 7 pm tonight!" Tamika called after her, and Bella was grateful for the reminder. She'd been told this morning but had already forgotten in the midst of her chaotic and overwhelming day.

Bella couldn't help the feeling of relief that washed over her. As much as she'd wanted to keep to herself, she realized this residency would be nearly impossible without some allies on her side. She could create boundaries and still make friends.

A fresh start, she thought, anything's possible.

A/N: Thanks for being patient! The next chapter should be up in the next few days and we'll finally get to meet a certain someone...