Bleeding Bloods - Mark Sloan (discontinued)

ᶜʰᵃᵖᵗᵉʳ ᵉⁱᵍʰᵗ

As she into the hospital past the nurse's desk, she spots Derek.

"Who knew Paige Mae Avery would be " He puts a finger in her face, silencing her as he checks his watch, "30 minutes late."

She rolls her eyes at him, "At least I'm never late for a case."

"What are you trying to say? Just because I was 500th for that marathon does not mean anything."

"And I was 5th, we started at the same time, next to each other..." She tries to explain but she shakes her head. "How about this, we've got a case we need to be at. We race and we see who the real winner is."

Derek shakes his head as he crosses his arms, "This is a hospital, not a playground. Oh, and look-" She turns her head to see Burke and Bailey walking together to the case room. "I will walk like the professional doctor I am."

"Okay, whatever." She replies, waving him off before walking back to the nurse's desk, "Dan..." She looks at him, he already had a hand on his hip knowing what she was asking. He looks at her in annoyance before giving in and grabbing her belongings as she shouts a very loud 'thank you' while running down the hallway, leaving the rest of the nurses chuckling at her antics.

While running down the hallway, she says hello to the many patients that go past. She finally sees Derek walking to the room with Burke and Bailey by his side. She could his figure coming closer to her but as she rushed past him, she turned around, gave him a wink and continued to run down the hallway almost going into a patient.

The trio stops, watching the whole thing but then suddenly Derek takes off after her. Bailey and Burke watch the two run in a hospital. They turn their heads to look at each other before continuing to walk the way, with a secret smile on both their faces.

Obviously, Paige won. Unfortunately, she didn't expect to run into a room full of interns and doctors, but then again this is a hospital, not a playground...

She stops as they all turn to stare at her. She gives a quick smile to them, with Alex struggling to not laugh and George with a smile on his face. Her face was red, not from the running but from the embarrassment as Derek walked in completely blind to the group of people.

"Okay, okay. You win. Wow for me that was not bad. Besides, you had a head start." Derek places his hands on his hips watching the young doctor not even look at him. "Hey, you won. You should be happy, that doesn't happen-" He stops as she hits his stomach with her arm. "What, what..." She hits his arm trying to bring his attention to the elephant in the room. "What are you doing?"

A cough silences the room.

He turns around to see Dr Webber watching him with a pointed look.

"How long have you been standing there?" He then whispers to Paige, "How long has he been there?"

"As I was saying, I appreciate the control you all have had with this case. Now I best be going, but the doctors will represent the surgery."

Dr Webber looks to Derek, who was still standing next to Paige, before leaving the room for Bailey and Burke to enter.

"Due to the mass of the tumour, which we will be removing, we will need some interns to retract the tumour as we remove it." Bailey announces but stops as Derek just stands there. "Dr Shepherd."

"Right..." He moves next to Bailey and Burke. "O'Malley, Yang and Avery will be retracting for the whole surgery." The interns move out as the latter start walking to the scrub room.

_________________

"You guys ready for the next 14 hours to be your worst?" Bailey asks with a smirk on her face, watching her intern's faces drop. She chuckles to herself before walking to the OR.

"You know sometimes I regret my life choices." George added as they all washed their hands raw.

"I'm not surprised. You are...you." Cristina states with a nicer word than the thousands of bad ones in her head before leaving them.

"Don't worry Georgie, you'll be fine and Annie will be fine."

She stares at the rain pattering against the ground like she watched Annie die. The rain poured down her face, mixing with the salty tears that were unnoticeably flowing down her face. She watched as the cars blurred into coloured dots, as her vision got cloudy. She couldn't help but wonder if Annie would still be alive if she went to the hospital and if her daughter would still have a mother. While it was a mistake, it will be a mistake for everyone to learn from.

And sometimes you have to make your own mistakes. We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today's possibility under tomorrow's rug until we can't anymore until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin meant. That knowing is better than wondering. That waking is better than sleeping.

And that even the biggest failure, even the worst, most intractable mistake beats the hell out of never trying.

words: 932

a/n-

okay, so that was...

bittersweet, I loved the derek and paige moment!!!

i also tried something new at the end, using the voiceovers to end the chapters

let me know if you guys like that!

thanks for reading all this way,

kimi