'Grey's Anatomy': Real-Life Doctors Dissect the Drama

From left, Vanessa Ngakeng, Ben Gbulie, Michangelo Scruggs, Gautam Siram and Mustafa Loiy watch the ABC show in a Howard University Hospital lounge. (By Bill O'leary -- The Washington Post)

Scene: Morning. Derek "McDreamy" Shepherd is waking up in bed next to fellow doctor Meredith Grey. Izzie Stevens bursts in -- wearing only a towel -- and starts complaining about another doc who just walked in on her in the bathroom.

Ben Gbulie, chief resident at Howard University Hospital, is incredulous.

"Do you realize there is one attending [doctor] and three residents in the same bedroom right now? In the morning?? And one of them is half-naked?!"

Gbulie and some fellow real-life interns and residents have gathered to watch a recent episode of ABC's hit medical drama, "Grey's Anatomy." The show's interns at fictional Seattle Grace Hospital practically all live together in one big house, where bed-hopping is a sport and drunken bacchanals are de rigueur.

"Um, noooo, my life isn't really like that," Gbulie says.

But it's so nice to live vicariously.

Joining Gbulie are residents and interns in orthopedic surgery, ophthalmology, podiatry, general surgery and a trickle of others who wander in and out of the room at Howard, all on-call, many of them 15 hours into their shifts. Amid their harried work lives, it's not easy to be a regular "Grey's" watcher, but they're likely -- even from casual watching -- to know more personal details about the characters on "Grey's" than they do about each other.

"Sure, we all have stories," says sixth-year resident Vanessa Ngakeng.

"But," Gbulie breaks in, "we leave them at the [front] door."

"Grey's Anatomy" is the nation's most popular non-reality program -- emphasis on "non" -- and it definitely stirs some chatter in hospital hallways, lounges, cafeteria.

It's addictive. So when members of the Howard group watch the show, many get sucked in despite the soap-opera drama. Or, often, because of it.

"It's not about the medicine," Ngakeng says. "It's entertainment."