Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟬𝟲 so it goes...

"Seen anything you like?" Mark cleared his throat and gestured over towards the stalls that were scattered throughout the hall. His question was almost suggestive. Each one was equipped with an old white man who looked as though they'd rather be somewhere fishing. I followed his gaze, chewing on my bottom lip. "Have anything in mind?"

"I don't know," I shrugged, crossing an arm over my chest. "Addie wants me to go into Paeds... Archer wants me to go into Neuro..."

My siblings didn't seem to understand the whole 'it's my choice thing'. The only conversation they liked to revisit more than my love life was my career, with both of them constantly bombarding me with their specialities. It made me laugh, almost-- the constant reminder that they were successful in their own areas was enough to propel me in the opposite direction. I would not be able to survive in their shadows, I knew that much. Maybe that was the problem I was digging myself into by choosing the exact same career as my siblings— no matter how hard I worked or what I chose to do, I was always going to be compared to them.

"How about Plastics?" He grinned over at me, looking like a commercial spokesperson. He was met with another shrug.

"Could you imagine what Addison would think?" I winced at the thought of it. She seemed to frown upon anything that wasn't what either her or Derek were doing. Any surgery that didn't involve brains, kids or vaginas seemed to be completely out of the question. Mark covered his chuckle with a mouthful of champagne.

His expression told me that he knew exactly what Addie would think. Even though she didn't regard Mark as one of her friends, he clearly thought of her as one of his. He seemed to know her well enough to know that me putting time into any speciality that didn't involve an Addie stamp of approval was a waste of time.

"Well, what do you think?" He countered. "What do you want?"

His question made me falter.

No one had asked me what I thought. No one had asked me what I wanted. Throughout this whole process of selecting medical courses and surgical programs, no one had once stopped to ask me what I wanted. I felt almost ambushed by the sudden appearance of it— what did I want? It almost completely blindsided the spectacle of Mark Sloan being the person (out of everyone in my life) to ask me that.

Do I even know what I want?

I didn't. I didn't know what the fuck I was going to do.

Hell, I was in medical school, I had no idea what my life was going to be like when it actually came to choosing my speciality. All I knew was that surgery was what I wanted and surgery was what I was going to get, come rain or shine. I figured that I was going to gravitate towards an area of surgery when I went through my surgical internship, that was what I was banking on.

He was staring at me, watching the cogs churn in my brain. I stared back, feeling like a kid who'd just been caught out charading as an adult. It felt like one of those moments in a movie where the adult is exposed as two kids in a trench coat. My cheeks burned under the weight of his raised eyebrow. After a few passing moments, I just sighed.

"I don't know," I felt almost foolish repeating those words. There was nothing more shameful in my family than being indecisive or confused. "I'm hoping I figure that out before Addison disowns me."

Mark laughed at that. "Funny."

Thanks for noticing, I felt like saying. I constantly felt like my own source of comedic relief.

I just rolled my eyes. "You think that's a joke?"

He paused for a second, despite not seeming to need much time to think about it. Mark just shook his head gently. We both knew that Addison took these sort of things far too seriously. I could only imagine the sort of hell I'd get if I decided to switch around and go into something like psychiatry instead. There was only one thing that surgeons hated more than other surgeons and that was psychiatrists.