Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟰𝟮 petunia (reprise)

𝙓𝙇𝙄𝙄.
PETUNIA / 𝘙𝘌𝘗𝘙𝘐𝘚𝘌

──────

WELL, FUCK ME, I thought as I watched the ball drop in New York on television, it's 2010.

I had twenty dollars worth of ice cream surrounding me, my comforter wrapped so tightly around my body that my feet were slowly going numb and my reading glasses perched on my nose. 

I watched the fireworks, I watched the way people celebrated the new decade while Boom Boom Pow by The Black Eyed Peas played in the background. Beside me, my cell phone buzzed, showing that it was a text from Charlie, wishing me a 'Happy New Year baby!'. 

I looked away, pulling my comforter tighter to my body.

I avoided looking at the unopened bottle of wine on my dining table, the bottle glimmering maliciously in the light of a candle I'd lit.

The last twenty years of my life had been a storm. Twenty years ago I'd done the same thing as every Montgomery child and booked a one-way ticket to New York. I'd definitely never looked back. Nearly ten years ago I'd left that same city. I'd always be looking back, wondering what had gone wrong. 

My New Years resolution for this decade, not year, was to stop caring. Although, just as I established that, my phone started buzzing again, this time with a call. I let Addison go to voicemail with a twist of pain in my heart. 

I didn't care. I didn't care. I'd always cared too much and 2010 would be different.

The ball dropped and I finished my pint of ice cream (my hand was numb and unresponsive from clutching the cold container with determination). I found myself staring at a black screen, my head buried in the past and a spoon slipping from between my lips. 

A brief thought flickered across my attention: how lucky I was that I wasn't lactose intolerant like Arch, I wouldn't be able to self-pity-binge on ice cream. Again, the wine bottle caught my eye and the little demon at the back of my head whispered: we have other ways of doing that.

I looked away.

***

Arizona and Callie woke up to a bottle of wine on their doorstep with a note tied to it, telling them to have a Happy New Year! and thanking them for being welcoming to both me and Charlie. 

Mark got fuck all.

At work, Callie thanked me for it, telling me that it was much needed after the week they'd had. I said a very quick 'you're welcome!' with a smile that was all teeth and continued my wandering around the Psych ward, checking up on the patients that were currently sanctioned in the behavioural unit. 

My morning was bleak and when I was eventually called down into the pit for a consultation, I felt as though I was walking on thin ice. 

Luckily, the case was over very quickly, the patient was deemed mentally sound and Owen was the next person to thank me for existing. I smiled again and retreated back into my domain.

Sure, I was avoiding the issue at hand. I found myself turning out of corridors that had Mark in, avoiding elevators with Lexie and just trying to float out of my plane of existence. I was doing everyone a favour: I wasn't here to bring bad vibes into 2010, no sir. I'd taken to eating my lunch in the psych department, the thought of going into the cafeteria like a sitting duck was enough to break me out in hives.