Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟯𝟳 petunia

"A trauma ER placement?" He raised an eyebrow over at me. "I thought you wanted to do surgery?"

"I do." My head bounced up and down. "Baby steps, my tutor recommended-"

"Medical students can't break the skin." Addison reminded Sam; he shrugged, handing me the contract. I hid it away in my bag. Again, I decided to completely ignore the fact that Addison was on some sort of downward spiral today. "I still think you could have gotten a better offer from Bellevue— maybe even Lincoln—"

"I think it's brilliant that you've found somewhere you like." I smiled at Naomi, appreciating her support. Addison, in the background, coughed loudly.

"Still think you should've applied to Bellevue." She sounded as if I'd made a big mistake.

"I didn't want Bellevue," I said curtly and left it at that.

"You sound like Mark," Sam chuckled, taking a seat beside his wife and throwing his arm around her. She leant into him, sipping idly on her cocktail. Mine just sat in front of me on the coffee table, looking rather sad. Sam was a damn good bartender but I wasn't in a damn good mood. "He's been complaining about all of his offers for the past month."

I frowned. "Offers?"

"He won't shut up about them," Sam continued, "Constantly talking about how he can't find the right place, how they're not pursuing him like they need to be— Personally, I think he's running out of options—"

"What happened to Lincoln?"

I was completely lost. I frowned at Sam from across the room. He looked slightly baffled that I hadn't heard the news.

"They dropped his funding."

At my look of surprise, Addison raised an eyebrow. "I thought you and Mark were talking again?"

Well, Addison, I wanted to say, We don't talk at all if you know what I mean.

"We don't talk." I opted for instead.

We didn't talk at all.

Mark hadn't told me that Lincoln had dropped his project. He had told me fleetingly that they'd offered to fund one of his plastic surgery projects, one that he claimed was going to help him make it big on the East Coast.

He hadn't shut up about it until I'd had to find a way to stop him from talking about it. But after that— absolutely nothing. I wasn't particularly invested in his career, but it would have been nice to have the heads up that Lincoln could've received my placement CV.

Even still, having your funding dropped was pretty major.

"He's applied to every funding program in the city, even as far upstate as Rochester." Sam continued, feeling the need to fill me in with everything Mark hadn't. "I don't think he's going to take them, though. I heard from Derek that he got a pretty solid offer from Mayo."

Mayo? That wasn't in Manhattan.

For some reason, I couldn't imagine Mark Sloan existing outside the city. It was as if he breathed through it, or the city breathed through him. He'd lived here his whole life. I wasn't sure what New York City would do without him.

"I also heard that he's still complaining about Mayo— apparently it's just not right—"

"I'll give him 'not right'," Addison muttered. "An offer from Mayo is incredible, especially in the plastics researching department. One of my colleagues at Bellevue spent his tenure there, said that it was almost impossible to get into—"

"Tell that to him," Sam said, shrugging. He looked over at me and tilted his head to the side. "Seems like the two of you are as equally stubborn. You can't be picky when it comes to medicine, I'm happy that you've found somewhere you love."