Chapter 2: Familiar Strangers
Vanessa's apartment was everything George's wasn't—lived in, warm, cluttered with the comfortable chaos of someone who actually used their space. Books stacked on the coffee table, a throw blanket draped over the couch, photographs on the walls from travels George had only heard about. Hong Kong harbor at sunset. The Great Wall disappearing into mist. Her parents, stern-faced and elegant, at some formal event.
And one photo that always made George's chest tight: Vanessa in a hospital bed, smiling despite the bruises, her hand reaching toward whoever was holding the camera.
Him. Two years ago, when he still looked like himself.
"You're staring at it again," Vanessa called from the kitchen.
George pulled his gaze away. "Sorry."
"Don't apologize. I stare at it too sometimes." She appeared in the doorway, wooden spoon in hand, wearing yoga pants and an oversized sweater that probably cost more than George's first car. Her hair was down, falling past her shoulders in dark waves. Without makeup, she looked younger than twenty-eight. Vulnerable.
"How much longer until dinner?" George asked.
"Ten minutes. Wine?"
"God, yes."
She disappeared back into the kitchen and returned with two glasses of red. George took his gratefully and collapsed onto the couch. Every muscle ached—not from physical exertion, but from the effort of being someone else for ten straight hours.
Vanessa settled next to him, close enough that their knees touched. "Tell me everything."
"I don't know where to start."
"Start with Dr. Bailey. You've talked about her the most."
George took a long drink of wine. "She shook my hand and didn't know me. This woman who taught me everything, who called me her 'baby', who cried at my memorial—she looked at me and saw a stranger."
"What did you expect?"
"I don't know. Something. Anything." He set down the wine glass harder than intended. "Meredith said I seemed familiar, but it was just... nothing. A feeling she couldn't place. Like I was someone she passed on the street once."
Vanessa's hand found his, fingers intertwining. "You knew it would be like this."
"Knowing and experiencing are different things." George closed his eyes. "Owen Hunt tried to save me. Did I ever tell you that? When they brought me in, when I was John Doe, he fought for hours to keep me alive. Today he shook my hand and welcomed me to the team like I was any other attending."
"George—"
"And Cristina. Cristina Yang, who never cares about anyone, who built walls higher than anyone I've ever met—she stood alone at my memorial service. I saw the photos. She didn't cry, but she was there, and she was grieving, and today she made fun of me for looking pretty."
Vanessa squeezed his hand. "You're torturing yourself."
"I'm lying to everyone I care about. That's not torture, that's just facts."
"You're protecting them."
"Am I?" George opened his eyes and looked at her. "Or am I just a coward who's too afraid to face what he's done?"
The timer beeped in the kitchen. Vanessa stood, pressing a kiss to the top of his head as she passed. "You're not a coward. Cowards don't push strangers out of the path of buses."
George followed her into the kitchen and watched as she plated the pasta—carbonara, creamy and perfect, the kind of comfort food his mother used to make. They ate at the small table by the window overlooking the city, and George tried to focus on the food instead of the guilt churning in his stomach.
"This is amazing," he said.
"My grandmother's recipe. She insisted I learn before I moved to the States." Vanessa twirled pasta around her fork, not eating. "Can I ask you something?"
"Always."
"Do you regret not telling them the truth today?"
George set down his fork. "I regret everything and nothing simultaneously. Does that make sense?"
"Not really."
"I'm glad I'm back. I'm glad I can practice medicine again, glad I can see them, even if they don't know it's me. But every second I was there today, I wanted to scream the truth. To grab Meredith and say 'It's me, I'm alive, I'm so sorry.' To tell Bailey that I learned everything from her and I'm still learning. To let Cristina know that her standing alone at my memorial meant everything."
"But you didn't."
"But I didn't." George picked up his wine glass. "Because then I'd have to explain where I've been. What happened. How the Chen family spent hundreds of millions of dollars to save someone who was supposed to die."
Vanessa flinched. She did that every time George mentioned the money, like the reminder physically hurt her.
"I'm sorry," George said immediately. "I didn't mean—"
"I know what you meant." Her voice was sharp. "You think you're not worth it. That you didn't deserve to be saved, that the money should have gone to someone more important, someone who mattered more—"
"That's not what I said."
"It's what you think." Vanessa pushed back from the table, standing abruptly. "Every time you bring up the cost, every time you mention what my family spent, it's this... this guilt. Like you're a burden. Like I should regret it."
"Vanessa—"
"Do you know what you gave me, George?" She turned to face him, and there were tears in her eyes now. "You gave me my life. Not just by pushing me out of the way, but by choosing me. You didn't know who I was. You just saw someone who needed help and you didn't hesitate. You didn't calculate whether I was worth saving. You just did it."
George stood, crossing to her. "I know. I'm sorry."
"Stop apologizing for existing." She grabbed his face between her hands, forcing him to meet her eyes. "You're alive. You're here. You're a brilliant surgeon who saves lives every day. Stop acting like you're not enough."
"What if I'm not? What if—"
She kissed him.
It was sudden and fierce and tasted like wine and desperation. George froze for a heartbeat, then his hands found her waist and he was kissing her back, pulling her closer, trying to lose himself in the warmth of someone who knew him, really knew him, the person underneath the stranger's face.
Vanessa's fingers tangled in his hair. George lifted her onto the counter, stepping between her legs, and for a moment everything else disappeared. There was no hospital, no lies, no George O'Malley haunting him from the grave. There was just this—the press of her body against his, her breath catching, his heart racing for reasons that had nothing to do with fear.
She pulled back first, breathing hard. "Sorry. I shouldn't have—"
"Don't." George rested his forehead against hers. "Don't apologize."
"We said we'd take it slow."
"We did."
"That wasn't slow."
George laughed despite himself. "No, it really wasn't."
Vanessa smiled, and it was real, reaching her eyes. "I don't regret it, for the record."
"Good. Because I really don't either."
They stayed like that for a moment—her on the counter, him standing close enough to feel her heartbeat. Then George stepped back, giving her space to slide down.
"We should finish dinner," Vanessa said, but her voice was unsteady.
"Probably."
They returned to the table in silence, but it was a comfortable silence now, charged with possibility. George forced himself to eat, though his appetite had transformed into something entirely different.
"Tell me about Meredith," Vanessa said after a moment.
George looked up sharply. "What about her?"
"You talk about her differently than the others. There's... I don't know. Something."
"We were close. Before."
"Were you in love with her?"
"I—" George stopped. Thought about it. "I don't know. Maybe. At one point I thought I was. But looking back, I think I was in love with the idea of her. The broken, brilliant, dark and twisty woman who saw something in me when no one else did."
"And now?"
"Now I'm someone else. She doesn't know me as George. She knows Gideon Matthews, confident trauma attending who doesn't stammer or apologize for existing." George poked at his pasta. "She seems... sadder. Thinner. Like grief's been eating at her from the inside."
Vanessa was quiet for a moment. "Does it hurt? Seeing her like that?"
"Everything hurts. Seeing any of them hurts. But yes, Meredith especially. Because she blamed herself, I think. For not recognizing me sooner. For not saving me."
"It wasn't her fault."
"I know that. But grief doesn't care about logic." George took another drink of wine. "She offered to show me around the hospital. The hiding spots, she called them. Places to breathe when things get overwhelming."
"Are you going to take her up on it?"
"I shouldn't."
"That's not what I asked."
George met Vanessa's eyes across the table. "Probably. Yes. I'll probably take her up on it, because I'm weak and selfish and I want her to know me again, even if it's as someone else."
"That doesn't make you weak."
"Doesn't it?"
Vanessa reached across the table and took his hand again. "You're allowed to want connection, George. You're allowed to want your friends back, even if the relationship is different now. You're not betraying anyone by accepting her friendship."
"Feels like I am."
"Because you're an idiot with a martyr complex." She said it fondly, without heat. "Eat your pasta before it gets cold."
They finished dinner talking about safer things—hospital politics, Vanessa's upcoming meeting with the Chen Foundation board, whether George should get a cat ("Absolutely not, you're barely keeping yourself alive"). By the time George left, it was past midnight, and the city lights blurred together as he drove home.
His apartment felt emptier than before. George showered, changed into pajamas, and stood in front of the bathroom mirror again.
The face that looked back was handsome. Symmetrical. The kind of face that turned heads, that made nurses smile a little too brightly, that fit the name "Gideon Matthews" better than it would ever fit "George O'Malley."
George traced the line of his jaw—sharper than before, defined by surgeons who'd rebuilt him bone by bone. His nose was straight, no longer the slightly crooked result of a childhood soccer accident. His eyes were lighter, the result of contact lenses Vanessa had insisted on. "Your eyes were too distinctive," she'd said. "Too easy to recognize."
So now even his eyes lied.
George's phone buzzed. A text from Vanessa: Thank you for coming over. Thank you for being here. Thank you for existing.
He typed back: Thank you for not letting me disappear.
Three dots appeared, disappeared, appeared again. Finally: I won't. Ever. I promise.
George set down the phone and climbed into bed. Sleep didn't come easily—it rarely did anymore, not with the nightmares waiting. But eventually exhaustion won, and he drifted off thinking about Meredith's smile, Bailey's handshake, and the way Cristina had called him "new guy" like he'd earned a place in her world.
Tomorrow he'd do it again. Tomorrow he'd be Dr. Gideon Matthews.
Tonight, in the privacy of his own head, he could be George O'Malley one more time.
Even if that person didn't exist anymore outside of memory and lies.
Two years ago. Chen Family Recovery Facility, Vancouver.
George woke up screaming.
The pain was everywhere—chest, legs, head, places he didn't have names for. Machines beeped frantically. Voices shouted in languages he couldn't parse through the agony.
"Hold him down—"
"—blood pressure spiking—"
"—sedate him, NOW—"
A needle pierced his arm and the world went soft at the edges. George tried to speak, to ask where he was, what had happened, whether the woman was okay, but his jaw wouldn't cooperate. Something was wrong with his face. Everything was wrong with his face.
A woman appeared above him—Asian, elegant, her eyes filled with tears. "You're safe," she said in accented English. "You saved my daughter. You're safe now."
George tried to ask about Meredith, about Bailey, about whether they knew he was alive. But the sedative pulled him under before the words could form.
When he woke again, three days had passed.
Dr. James Chen—Vanessa's father, world-renowned plastic surgeon—sat beside his bed. "Mr. O'Malley," he said gravely. "We need to discuss your injuries."
George managed a nod. Speech still wasn't happening.
"The damage to your face and body was extensive. Multiple facial fractures, traumatic brain injury, spinal damage, severe lacerations." Dr. Chen pulled up a tablet, showing scans George couldn't process. "You died twice on the operating table. We brought you back both times."
I should be dead, George thought. Why am I not dead?
"My daughter insisted we spare no expense. We've assembled the best team in the world. But I need you to understand—" Dr. Chen leaned forward. "The reconstruction will take years. Multiple surgeries. Experimental procedures. And when we're done, you will not look like yourself. The damage is too severe. We'll rebuild your face, but it will be... different."
George tried to speak. Failed. Tried again. "—ow dif—rent?"
"Very different. Unrecognizably so."
The machines beeped their steady rhythm. George closed his eyes—one of them, anyway, the left was still swollen shut—and thought about Seattle Grace. About his friends who'd probably already moved on. About his mother, who'd bury an empty casket. About the life he'd left behind when he'd made one selfless choice.
When he opened his eye again, Dr. Chen was still waiting.
"Do it," George whispered.
*
The physical therapy was worse than the surgeries.
Six months in, George could walk short distances with a cane. Eight months in, he could use his hands again, though the scarring made fine motor control difficult. A year in, he could look in a mirror without vomiting from the sight of the bandaged, swollen, barely-human thing staring back.
Vanessa visited three times a week. She'd sit beside his bed and read to him when the pain was too much for conversation. Medical journals, mostly. Case studies. Surgical techniques he'd never get to use again.
"Why are you doing this?" George asked one day, his speech finally clear enough to be understood.
Vanessa looked up from a journal on trauma surgery. "Doing what?"
"All of this. The money, the time, the—" He gestured at the sterile room, the machines, the prison of his broken body. "I'm nobody. You could have saved a hundred people for what you've spent on me."
"You're not nobody." Her voice was sharp. "You saved my life."
"So this is guilt?"
"This is gratitude. And if you're too stubborn to see the difference, that's your problem." She closed the journal. "Besides, my father says you have good bone structure. Once the swelling goes down, the reconstruction should go well."
"Your father is a liar who's trying to make me feel better."
Vanessa smiled. "Probably. But he's also the best plastic surgeon in the world, so I'm choosing to believe him."
George looked at his hands—swollen, scarred, barely recognizable as the hands that had once held a scalpel with precision. "I'm never going to practice medicine again, am I?"
"That's up to you."
"How? My identity is burned. George O'Malley is dead. They held a memorial service. My mother buried an empty casket. I can't just walk back into Seattle Grace and say 'surprise, not actually dead, just horrifically disfigured.'"
Vanessa was quiet for a long moment. "What if you didn't walk back as George O'Malley?"
"What?"
"What if—" She leaned forward. "What if we gave you a new identity? New credentials, new history. You'd be someone else. Someone who could practice medicine."
"That's fraud."
"That's survival." Her eyes were bright, intense. "George, you're a brilliant surgeon. The world needs you. Seattle Grace needs you, even if they don't know it yet. So what if you have a different name, a different face? The skill, the compassion, the heart—that's still you."
George shook his head. "I can't lie to them like that."
"You're already lying. You're letting them think you're dead. At least this way, you'd be alive and helping people instead of alive and rotting in a recovery facility."
"I need to think about it."
"Take your time." Vanessa stood, gathering her things. "But George? The man who pushed me out of the path of a bus didn't hesitate. He saw someone who needed saving and he acted. Maybe it's time you saved yourself."
She left him alone with his thoughts and his pain and the impossible choice she'd laid at his feet.
It took George three more months to say yes.
*
Present day. Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital.
George jerked awake at 5 AM, heart pounding, the phantom sensation of impact still echoing through his nervous system. The nightmare was always the same—the bus, the woman's terrified face, his body moving before his brain could catch up, and then pain, so much pain, everything breaking at once.
He rolled out of bed and limped to the bathroom. His right leg always ached in the mornings, the legacy of three shattered bones and eighteen months of physical therapy. George splashed water on his face and stared at the stranger in the mirror.
Good morning, Dr. Matthews. Time to lie to everyone you love.
He arrived at the hospital at six, an hour before his shift officially started. The surgical wing was quiet, just a few nurses doing rounds and one exhausted-looking resident charting at the nurses' station.
George grabbed coffee from the doctor's lounge—the good stuff, not the cafeteria sludge—and made his way to the gallery overlooking OR 2. According to the board, Derek Shepherd was doing an aneurysm repair at seven. George wanted to watch, to remind himself why he'd come back.
The gallery was empty. George settled into the back row and let the peace of the space wash over him. This had always been his refuge—watching surgery from above, learning from the masters, dreaming about the day he'd be the one with the scalpel.
"Starting early, Dr. Matthews?"
George turned to find Cristina Yang in the doorway, two coffee cups in hand. She offered him one.
"I thought you had coffee," she said.
"I do."
"This one's better. I know the nurse who makes the private attending stash." Cristina sat down next to him—not in the row ahead, but directly beside him, which felt oddly significant. "You're watching Shepherd's aneurysm repair?"
"If that's okay."
"Why wouldn't it be?" She sipped her coffee. "You a neuro enthusiast?"
"More of a general surgery enthusiast. I like seeing how different specialties approach problems."
Cristina studied him with dark, assessing eyes. "You're weird."
"Thank you?"
"That wasn't a compliment. Or an insult. Just an observation." She turned to watch the OR team prepping below. "Most new attendings spend their first week posturing. Showing off, marking territory, making sure everyone knows they're top dog. You're watching other people's surgeries and admitting you're still learning."
"I am still learning."
"We all are. But most attendings won't admit it." Cristina leaned back in her chair. "I like you, Matthews. You're humble. It's refreshing."
If you only knew, George thought.
"Can I ask you something?" Cristina said.
George's stomach dropped. "Sure."
"How did you end up in trauma? It's not exactly the glamorous specialty. Neuro gets the glory, cardio gets the prestige. Trauma just gets the blood."
"I wanted to help people at their worst moment," George said, which was true but incomplete. "And I'm good at thinking fast under pressure."
"Most trauma guys are adrenaline junkies. You don't seem like one."
"I'm not."
"So what are you?"
George considered the question. Below them, Derek was entering the OR, greeting his team with easy confidence. "I'm someone who thinks every life is worth saving. Even when it seems impossible."
Cristina was quiet for a long moment. "We had a resident like that. George O'Malley. He believed the impossible was just the difficult that took longer."
George's hands tightened on his coffee cup. "What happened to him?"
"He proved himself right. Saved someone's life doing something impossible. Then he died anyway because the universe is cruel and life isn't fair." Cristina's voice was flat, matter-of-fact, but George knew her well enough to hear the grief underneath. "He was an idiot. A brilliant, compassionate idiot who deserved better."
"Sounds like you miss him."
"I don't miss people. Missing people is inefficient." But her fingers tapped against her coffee cup in a rhythm George recognized—the way she used to count sutures when she was stressed. "He was my friend. One of the few people I could tolerate for extended periods. The hospital's worse without him."
George wanted to tell her. Wanted to grab her shoulders and say I'm right here, I'm alive, you didn't lose me. But Cristina Yang didn't forgive easily, and she definitely didn't forgive lies.
"I'm sorry," he said instead.
"Don't be. You didn't know him." Cristina stood. "Surgery's starting. You coming?"
They watched Derek work in silence. The aneurysm repair was textbook—perfect clipping, no complications, exactly the kind of surgery that made Derek Shepherd a legend. George found himself narrating the steps in his head, the way Bailey used to make him do during his intern year.
Exposure. Proximal control. Clip application. Verify flow. Close.
"You're muttering," Cristina said.
George stopped. "Sorry."
"Don't apologize. It's how I learn too." She glanced at him. "You were trained by someone good. I can tell."
"What makes you say that?"
"You track the surgery like Bailey's residents. Methodical. Every step matters." Cristina's eyes narrowed. "Where did you say you trained?"
"Johns Hopkins."
"Hm." She didn't sound convinced, but she let it drop.
The surgery ended successfully. Derek closed, and the OR team began cleanup. George stood to leave, but Cristina grabbed his arm.
"Word of advice, Matthews. People here are going to test you. Figure out if you're solid or just another pretty face with credentials." She released him. "Don't fail. We've lost too many good surgeons. We don't need another disappointment."
She left before George could respond.
He stood alone in the gallery, watching the empty OR below, and wondered how long he could keep pretending.
Seven thirty. Time to start his shift.
Time to be Dr. Gideon Matthews.
Time to lie.
patreon.com/Twilightsky588 - 10 advanced chapters