a hard day's night (season 1 ; episode 1)

The sleeping blonde rolled over as the sunlight invaded the room and hurt her eyes. Her arm stretched out and slammed down on the alarm clock next to her head.

Danielle reached out for her phone, tapping her hand against the desk in search. Yawns escaped her parted lips as she blinked her eyes multiple times in an attempt to wake up. 

Her phone rang as she finally made contact with it, the screen lit up with the caller i.d 'sperm donor', a small smile playing on her lips.

"Hey dad." She greeted, forcing a happy tone in her voice as she pulled on underwear, leggings and a strappy t-shirt and her trainers.

His angry voice sounded in her ear, startling her awake."Yes I'm awake, I know, I won't disappoint you, I won't dirty the family name." Tears welled in her eyes but she sniffed harshly.

Her hand wiped her eyes as she ran her hands through her hair. "Love y-" Dani started but was met with the harsh dial tone. A single tear escaped and slipped down her cheek, onto her top. 

Phone in hand she headed downstairs, picking up her backpack, water bottle and car keys. Messaged pinged from her phone as she plugged it in and played shakira.

Fifteen minutes later, she pulled up in front of her new workplace and parked, but not exiting the vehicle. Music turned off, she rested her head in her hands and sighed.

"Hey god, we haven't spoken in nine years, but if you're even up there, please help me. Give me the strength to fight my demons and make my family proud." She whispered before smiling.

Nodding her head slightly she got out of the car, locked it and slowly walked towards the coffee cart outside the hospital doors.

She waited in line and paid for her double espresso before walking inside, looking around in awe. Lost, but following the big crowds of equally confused people, her intern class.

This was her life now, away from her parents, siblings, rubbish ex boy and girlfriends and backstabbing friends. She didn't need them anymore, she had Seattle.

Two messages pinged simultaneously onto her phone, from the only two of her six siblings who cared, wishing her luck. Typing out replies to both of her older brothers, a small smile resided on her face.

The sound of her ringtone flooded her hearing as the screen lit up with a picture of her uncle. "Hey uncle Denny, what's up?" She questioned, walking further through the hospital and finding the operating room.

"Uncle Denny, you didn't have to call me, it's like five a.m, go back to bed. Love you." She put her phone in her pocket and entered the room full of interns, looking similarly nauseous.

As the door shut, another woman slipped inside, standing besides Dani. She had long blondish brown hair and hazel eyes. Doctor Webber, the chief of surgery, started his speech looking at all of the interns in front of him.

Everyone else was silent, nobody even dared to breathe, they all paid full attention to their new boss. "Each of you comes here hopeful. Wanting in on the game. A month ago you were in med school being taught by doctors. Today you are the doctors."

A wave of panic washed over Dani as it all crashed down on her, it was real, she was really here. "The seven years you spend here as a surgical resident will be the best and worst of your life." Dani hoped that the majority of her residency would be the former.

But she sincerely doubted that, given her luck previously in her life, she also doubted this could top her life with her family. Back home. Shaking off the bad memories, she refocused, looking around the room.

"You will be pushed to the breaking point." Again, she sincerely doubted this could break her, she had been trained for this her entire life. The first time she held a scalpel, she was five.

Everyone seemed to be scanning the competition, afraid to meet eye contact. "Look around you. Say hello to your competition." He paused to allow them time to visualise their future. 

"Eight of you will switch to an easier specialty, five of you will crack under the pressure and two of you will be asked to leave." Dani thought that he was adding extra suspense into his speech to squeeze all the distractions out of them.

Like every hospital, they wanted the best. "This is your starting line, your arena, how well you play? That's up to you." He dismissed the new blood, fresh meat. 

In a similar fashion to how they arrived in the operating room, they left, all following each other down the wrong turns, before finally finding the intern locker room. "Only six women out of twenty." The blonde who Dani recognized from earlier spoke, a sigh in her voice.

A Korean woman shook her head, a sarcastic smile playing with her lips. "Yeah. I hear one's a model. Seriously, like that's going to help with the respect thing?" Dani scoffed slightly.

Yeah, the stereotypical profession of a model wasn't ideal for the female interns who were doubted already, but it doesn't mean that they should be discredited for their achievements. 

The two women turned to look at the blonde, who was tying back her long, blonde hair. "What? I mean, yeah it's not going to help us with respect, but whoever she is, her achievements shouldn't be discredited because of how she chose to use her life." Dani muttered.

"And besides, she probably has no student debts." The other blonde nodded her head, but continued talking to the other woman.

Of course this was going to be like high school all over again, with the cliques, and the popular girls and the mean girls and the cliches. For once her life couldn't be uneventful. Maybe she should've stayed in bed, give up on pleasing her family.

An impossible task.

The rest of the uncomfortable time she drowned out other conversations and listened out for her name. Dani unhooked her medical bracelet from around her wrist and relooped it around her necklace.

"O'Malley, Yang, Grey, Stevens, Walsh." Dani stood up, nodded slightly to herself and put one foot in front of the other, one step at a time.

Danielle kept to the back of the group, following the others, muttering about nicknames and nazi's. 

A blonde and perky intern popped up besides Dani's shoulder, spawning seemingly from nowhere. "Maybe it's professional jealousy, maybe she's brilliant, maybe she's nice." She babbled, Cristina turning on her heel and glaring.

Instead of standing in the middle of the hall like an idiot, Dani walked ahead, with confidence, and waited at the desk where her resident was. 

The blonde from earlier, Izzie Stevens, jumped out again, extending her hand to the resident. "Hi, I'm Isobel Stevens, but everyone calls me Izzie." She smiled.

Bailey, on the other hand, didn't. She looked the extended hand up and down, a scowl of unimpression upon her face. Slightly embarrassed for her fellow intern she looked away from the awkwardness.

Bailey sighed and turned to the nurses station, Dani sensed another speech coming. "I have five rules memorise them. Rule number one, don't bother sucking up, I already hate you, that's not gonna change." She was tough, blunt and down to the point, Dani liked that.

Her green eyes landed on piles of equipment as Bailey gestured to them, each intern taking a pile. "Trauma protocols, phone lists, pagers. Nurses will page you, answer every page at a run." The other interns were writing down the rules, other than Dani.

 Growing up in a hospital, she knew the general gist of how it worked. "Your first shift starts now and lasts forty-eight hours. Your interns, grunts, nobodies, bottom of the surgical food chain." She paused as they crossed the bridge.

"You run labs, write orders, work every second night till you drop and don't complain!" They paused, as she opened a door to the on call rooms. 

Slamming the door shut they continued, as she pointed some out. "On call rooms. Attendings hog them, sleep when you can, where you can." It made sense to Dani, that the attendings hogged them, they were in charge in their eyes, god complex's the lot of them.

"If I'm sleeping, don't wake me, unless your patient is actually dying. The dying patient better not be dead when I get there." Their speed increased as they continued to follow the resident.

Feet pounding against the hard floor, Dani was ready. "Not only will you have killed a person, you would have woken me for no good reason." Bailey was mean, that was a good skill in a resident.

They push their interns hard, they don't coddle them and they tell them when there's a stick up their arse. Good residents won't take no for an answer, or handle any idiocy.

Bailey's pager beeped as she started running. "When I move, you move. Get out of my way!" She hollered as the group of six sped down the halls.

Outside, above the hospital, they waited on the helipad, gurney in hands for their patient. The paramedic began the handover as they positioned the seizing girl onto the gurney and took her inside.

"Get her on her side. Izzie, ten milligrams diazepam." Bailey told the blonde intern, whose hands shook as she messed up. "No. White lead on the right, righty whitey, smoke over fire, large bore I.V, don't let the blood hemolyze." Izzie froze and Bailey took over.

Her seizures stopped as a new doctor appeared. Dani knew who it was, she heard all about the cardiothoracic surgeon, cardio royalty. Doctor Preston Burke. "Wet fish on dry land?" He asked as Bailey nodded. "Shotgun her." Bailey nodded as she filled in her interns.

"That means every test in the book." Bailey listed them off as Dani waited for instructions. "Cristina, you're on labs. George, patient work ups. Meredith, Dani get Katie for a CT, she's your responsibility." Dani nodded as she and Meredith took Katie's gurney.

Meredith and Dani walked alongside the gurney, pushing it into the elevator. "Walsh? As in?" Meredith questioned as Dani sighed and nodded.

Dani looked up at the hazel eyed woman and offered a small smile. "Grey as in Ellis?" Meredith nodded, a small smile sent her way. "Glad to know somebody may understand the pressure." The rest of the journey was silent.

Until, a certain teenager decided to make her voice heard. "You're lost." Katie stated, looking at her nails, a pout on her face. "I'm missing my pageant." Danielle struggled not to laugh.

Of course she was one of those girls. The beauty pageant contestants, were always conceited and self obsessed rich girls. Dani had never met one who had a kind joint, bone, nerve or muscle in their body.

And she didn't think this would be any different. Katie just gave her the 'rich girl' vibe, and she was right.

Katie proceeded to go off on a tangent about the pageants and how she got through the first two rounds and it was her year. Dani zoned it all out. But she could only resist the devil so long. "I twisted my ankle. I do rhythmic gymnastics. And even the nurse didn't get lost." 

Ding ding ding. The winner of the horrible personality pageant went to Katie Bryce.

After hours of taking Katie to scans and then to her hospital room, the two finally got lunch. They headed over to the table of the others, their conversation instantly halted. Meredith, however, was talking to someone by the coffee cart. "I know you're talking about us, get it over with."

At first they denied it, but after her look of bullshit, they stopped. "I would kill to have Robert and Jeanette Walsh as parents, I would kill to BE them. Same with Ellis Grey. You two are so lucky." Cristina ranted as Dani sighed and shook her head.

It was always the same, everyone thought that it would be fabulous to have surgical royalty as parents, but it wasn't. Especially for Danielle Marie Walsh. She hated it and if she could trade, she probably would.

"Listen, I earned my place here just like anyone else. I am not here because of my parents, I am here because I have what it takes." Dani snapped.

Ever since Dani could remember she had always had problems with food, her mother induced the fear of calories, carbohydrates and weight gain, school added to it and eventually Dani cracked.

So eating in front of people, was not her favourite thing, and if possible she would avoid it at all cost. Dani picked up her tray and walked away as Meredith sat down, she sat on another table by herself.

Peace and quiet.

Slowly she brought up tiny morsels of salad to her lips, forcing them down. Now, years later she was still terrified for food to pass her lips. Which brought her to only eating two small meals a day, mostly salads and only ever drinking water and the occasional coffee.

Well, two or three a day, but apart from that she was healthy.

Cristina's shrill voice could still be heard from across the cafeteria as George questioned something. Everyone went to watch the surgery, but Dani didn't want to listen to a bunch of people moan and groan about it was their surgery, when it wasn't.

George was chosen and it was good for him. So she decided to spend the time reading up on Katie's scan and lab results, trying to find out the source of her seizures.

Hours later and after two false pages to Katie's room, she found herself at the nurses station chatting to a nurse, being kind.

"4B's got post-op pneumonia. Start antibiotics." A male intern, the one who caught her eye earlier that morning, told a nurse, arrogance surrounding him.

He proceeded to throw med school in the nurses face and storm off. "God I hate nurses." Dani rolled her eyes as she focused on her charting.

Meredith corrected Alex as Dani continued with her charting when their pagers went off simultaneously. "Meredith come on." The blonde called out as the brunette stood there.

Dani rolled her eyes and started running up the stairs towards Katie Bryce's room. When she arrived she was met with Katie seizing and nurses running in and out of the room.

"Full on prazepam?" Doctor Walsh asked as she read through the chart, a nurse nodded as she thought and muttered to herself. "Page Bailey and Shepherd." Meredith arrived as nurses continued to push medications.

After a few minutes Meredith froze as Danielle took over. Her heart stopped and she started coding. "Code blue. Charge paddles to 150." Nurses followed her orders as Derek ran in.

"She had a seizure and then she coded, she's full on prazepam, we loaded her with pheno, two rounds of epi pushed." Dani recited as he checked her pupils.

Shepherd bit Meredith's head off as a nurse interrupted. "Dr Shepherd, Dr Walsh took charge, she ordered the phenobarbitol, she performed CPR and she led the code." 

Danielle smiled in gratitude at the nurse, Lisa. "Thank you Lisa." Derek pulled Danielle aside.

Two hours later and Derek had pulled all of the interns into a side room. He briefed the new interns on the case of Katie Bryce and asked for help. 

"Whoever finds the answer, rides with me." Walsh zoned back in as she looked at the brain scans on the board.

She took copies of the scans, her chart, labs down to the cafeteria and took two books on neurosurgery and seizures and brain injuries. 

"Come on Dani, think." She muttered to herself. Her eyes scanned through the charts, down her patient history.

Wracking her brain for anything Katie had said that could give them any idea as to what was causing the new onset seizures.

"No white count, no anoxia, no acidosis, clean scans, clear spinal tap." She muttered to herself, marking down on a piece of paper.

Dani heard laughter as two bodies sat besides her. "Yang, Grey." She greeted as she wrote notes. "Let me guess, you want to team up?" Meredith nodded.

"Who will take the surgery?" Cristina shot her hand up as Meredith shook her head. "I don't mind." Dani smiled.

"Right, I've gone over labs, scans, history, previous injuries and illnesses nothing. Only thing was she mentioned a sprained ankle and a bang on the head a few weeks ago." Dani explained to the two interns.

"Bang on the head..." She trailed off, Cristina looking at her. "Let's go." She stood up and ran out of the cafeteria to find the attending, Yang and Grey fast on her heels.

"Doctor Shepherd, I need you to trust me. I know there are no indicators but I think she might have an aneurysm. She does rhythmic gymnastics, sprained her ankle and bumped her head a few weeks ago." Dani paused as Derek looked confused.

"If when she fell she caught her head, it could have burst an aneurysm. So small that a normal CT would not pick it up. It's a one in a million chance, but it's still a possibility." Derek smiled as he started moving.

Three hours later and Meredith was scrubbing in on Katie's surgery, Derek chose her out of the three. Danielle had opted to checking up on patients and updating charts, eavesdropping on Karev.

"Can anybody name the common causes of a post op fever?" Doctor Webber questioned loudly, Danielle raised her hand as he nodded in her direction.

Dani stood up and looked over at Karev. "Wind, walking, water, wound, wonder drugs. The five W's. Pneumonia is easy to assume, if you don't bother to test." Webber nodded in approval. "I think that she's a prime candidate for a pulmonary embolus." Karev rolled his eyes.

"Diagnose with spiral ct, vq scan, provide O2 and dose with heparin, consult for an IVC filter." Doctor Webber smiled, as he glared at Alex Karev, yelling at him.

Dani went back to her charts as Doctor Webber approached behind her. "Well done Doctor Walsh. How are your parents?" He questioned as Dani smiled.

"They're good. Telling me what to specialise in. Mom wants me to follow her into cardio and dad wants me to go into neuro. I don't know, but I like ortho and general." Richard smiled as he walked away.

Hour forty eight of her shift rolled in and out as she walked out of the hospital, to her car and drove to her apartment shared with her three best friends and her goddaughter. Her legs were heavy as she collapsed onto the sofa.