"What do you care? With your hair products and your perfect little face, perfect little life. What do you care how I am?" Bailey muttered angrily, sitting down on the gurney outside the patient's room.
"My perfect little life," Derek repeated. "Have you been paying attention at all?"
"Yeah, I pay attention. I pay attention! I pay attention to people in all walks of life, all types. I notice people. I see people. It's guys like you who don't see people like me," she replied.
"I don't see you?" he asked, his eyebrows knitting together in confusion. "I'm not talking about you, Shepherd," Bailey told him, looking at him at last. "Just guys like you. Who don't see girls like me. We don't exist for you. We exist to do your homework! We exist to build your ego up... I am a successful married mother. I am chief resident, I am chief resident of a major metropolitan hospital! I am a surgeon, who saved his life today! And he still doesn't see me... I may as well still be that high school girl with the mushroom haircut and the coke bottle glasses and the band uniform. The girl who didn't get to go to homecoming dance cause it didn't even occur to him to ask me. All those late nights tutoring him, and it didn't even occur to him to ask?"
"Mmm. Band uniform. Really?" Derek smiled faintly.
"Do I look like I wanna be mocked by you right now?" she snapped.
"No, you don't," he replied. "I'm just gonna say one thing. In high school, I was 110 pounds, and I hadn't yet figured out hair product, so I had a big afro. And, um, I had acne... and I too, wore a band uniform. Sax."
A smile spread over Bailey's face. "Oboe."
"I would have been honored to take a girl like you to Homecoming," he said, putting an arm around her shoulders.
Miranda Bailey leaned into Derek's shoulder and cried softly.