"You're mad, aren't you?" asked Maggie as we left the OR and I angrily tossed the used gown into the bin. Instead of an answer, I growled softly and then set in motion, fists clenched, to confront my student.

It was bad enough that Jo Wilson was the reason my best friend had backed down from me, now to treat me with such disrespect as a supervisor was too much.

I hurried across the hallway and stopped where Jo was talking to Alex - of all people - and Meredith. "Dr. Wilson!" I raised my voice and looked at her firmly "We need to talk. In private." I hissed, nodding toward an empty room. "I see no reason to be humiliated again just because you..." she contradicted me and I could see Meredith raise her eyebrows out of the corner of my eye.

"Fine. Here then." I raised my shoulders and continued to look firmly at my student. "In case you've forgotten, I'm the attending here and YOU are still in training. So when I give you instructions in my op, you have to carry them out without discussion. Otherwise, you will be kicked out of my OR in the future without further ado. Do we understand each other?" My voice was soft and cutting, but our little conversation had gathered some onlookers around us in the meantime.

"But..." Jo put on her usual, defiant look - presumably she had also managed to get her paranoid jealousy of me through to Alex. But this was not the topic now.

"Okay I'm going to tell you this exactly once and then this topic will never come up from my side again..." I took a deep breath and didn't let my eyes stray a millimeter from Jo's face. It was uncomfortable and I didn't want to do it here in front of the assembled crew, but she gave me no other choice. "You don't have all the suffering and childhood trauma in the world to yourself. EVERYONE here in this hospital has experienced suffering, but no one here plays the traumatized victim all the time.

Meredith has lost friends, her sister and her husband, Webber has lost his wife, Amelia has experienced things most of us don't even think about, Alex..." my gaze slid for a split second over to my - formerly - best friend "I think you know about his past. I was raped in my teens by some guy while my drunk mother sat in the next room.... But we all learned to deal with it and don't whine all the time just because something doesn't sit right with us right now. Get a grip and stop acting like a little girl. It's bad enough that you took my best friend away from me - but my patients will not suffer from your whims." I finished my lecture and then turned on my heel without waiting for an answer.

Before I slipped into the elevator, I heard Bailey's grumpy muttering in the background, "Don't you have anything else to do?" Yes, I did, and that's what I was going to take care of now. Since Arizona had left, Alex was in charge of pediatrics. This fact and the fact that I also worked as a senior physician in this department did not make it easier for me. Since our first day here, Alex and I had been kind of friends. At least as far as you could tell from two people who didn't really like each other, but still hung out together all the time.

It wasn't until my half-brother Jackson also transferred to Seattle Grace - as it was still called back then - that something changed in my friendship with Alex, too. It was probably the shooting and his injury that made us sit together after work, drink beer and talk about everything. I never thought I would ever lose my best friend - especially not to a woman who made a drama out of everything and ultimately kept pressing the tear button until Alex had gradually withdrawn from me over the last few weeks. In the meantime, we only exchanged technical information and this broke my heart day by day.