TRIAGE | grey's anatomy (ON HOLD INDEFINITELY)

009: "steady, as she goes"

IT WAS HARD FOR CLEM TO BREATHE WITH MARK SLOAN STARING AT HER, LET ALONE TREAT HIM-- WHICH IS SOMETHING SHE WOULD ADMIT, OH, NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS. The air was thin and space was lacking in Sloan's private trauma room (that he insisted on instead of the normal beds that mere mortals used), and as par for the course because he was a doctor, the man was a god-awful patient. He'd fussed about every detail, down to which brand of skin prep Clem was going to use, but that was the limit of their conversations. Instead, Sloan stared through the blinds to where Clem's friends were waiting, spying on their conversation unabashedly. Attempting to keep her cheeks from blushing burgundy, and already dreading the grilling she would get when she exited the room, Clem preferred the silence.

When Meredith returned to the room, having left to get a suture kit, is when Sloan started talking.

"I should've known," Sloan said suddenly, causing both girls to flinch slightly. "Derek and I always did have the same taste in women."

Meredith and Clementine shared one of many looks, the nonverbal yet screaming-loud kind that the twisted triplets excelled at. "Excuse me?"

The man was doing a good job at smoldering while getting a cut cleaned, Clem would give him that. "You're Derek's lusty intern, right? Heard about you all the way back in New York. You're famous."

"Hmm." Meredith didn't look particularly pleased at that one, so Clem dug her q-tip covered in chloroprep a bit deeper into the wound than necessary. When she got a dirty look from the doctor, she smiled apologetically, murmured a saccharine oops. "Well, I heard about you all the way here in Seattle, so I guess we have a lot of common."

Sloan seemed unperturbed. In fact, a little smug. "We're the dirty mistresses!"

"I suppose we are," Meredith said lightly, her eye contact with Clem now sparkling, like she was offering an invitation to join their private club that Clem would oh-so-graciously decline.

"My 400 dollar an hour shrink says that's because behind this rugged and confident exterior, I'm self destructive and self loathing to an almost pathological degree," Dr. Sloan continued, as if his therapist's observations were not a slightly alarming diagnosis but conversation fodder. Clem couldn't help but be amused; she had done the same thing, especially when she was younger.

"Hey, we do have a lot in common. Although, I'm sure Dr. Santos over here could've told you that within a five minute conversation." Clem glared at Meredith for roping her into this conversation, when all she wanted to do was get through wasting her time on Sloan and get back to Jake and her other patients in the Pit. "She's very good at that sort of thing."

Dr. Mark Sloan turned his electric blue gaze on Clementine, his eyes wandering up and down her body like she wasn't watching him do so, in the blatantly lazy way of a man who'd always gotten away with it. "Dr. Santos, huh? I bet you do read people well. Wanna give me a go?"

"I'll pass," Clem said shortly, because she would probably say something unkind in an overtly feministic and subtly unrealistic way. As in, an every woman you fuck and then forget is another dead puppy on the side of the highway kind of thing, which wasn't very fair and also incredibly disturbing, but was how she was feeling. As she was situating local bitch-boy Mark Sloan into his special trauma room, Nurse Elle had flagged her down; Jake's recent reports were looking like the bony tumors were encroaching on his brain, explaining his headaches and his nausea. A tumor resection of that kind was incredibly dangerous. Clem simply didn't have time to deal with Sloan's drama over a facial lac that he most definitely deserved.

It was worth it to see Sloan look slightly taken aback, like that line had actually worked on some women, but he turned to Meredith and continued to stir the pot. "You know it's funny, Derek... Derek walks in on me naked with his wife actually in the throes. And he just turns around and walks away, but he sees me so much as talking to you and I'm on the ground bleeding. Interesting, don't you think?"