Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟯𝟯 bad idea right?

𝙓𝙓𝙓𝙄𝙄𝙄.
BAD IDEA RIGHT?

──────

NEW YORK

AMELIA SHEPHERD HAD a drinking problem, it was pretty clear from the moment we'd arrived at the nightclub.

She'd ordered ahead and slammed drink after drink, leaving me in the dust as I nursed a rum and coke.

I was pretty sure she snorted something nondescript when I turned my head, and when I turned back to her, she was already onto cocktails. The bartender didn't look surprised: after all, she was a regular here.

Revolution was a low-budget nightclub in Chelsea, a little bit out of the way of the usual places I'd go for a drink with the acquaintances I'd made at Columbia.

It was dressed in dark colours and lacked basic hygiene. But that didn't stop Amy from idling across the bar and eventually dragging her face against the floor.

Every one knew her, she knew every one. I'd been invited by Amy into a world I didn't know for a night and paid the price in the form of blank stares and "and this is?".

Amy's idea of fun involved a lot of illegal things. I caught her doing things out of the corner of my eye. Doing deals she shouldn't have been.

My chest deflated as I realised how rocky this night would be.

Somehow I'd ended up, reeled in like a chaperone for a middle school dance, amongst an intoxicated crowd in a nightclub on a weekend. It was a dark crowd that seemed to move as one, tumbling me about as my chest tightened— fuck, how did Amy do this sort of stuff?

I felt like I was a little boat caught in a very stormy sea, really out of my depth and totally fucked. I'd had too many cocktails and I was just about sober enough to still know that I didn't like being here.

"You just have to keep going..."

Amy kept saying, appearing in my way if I made any move as if to leave. She seemed to materialise out of no where, her dark hair leaching out of the shadows with bloodshot eyes.

"We're celebrating- don't call it a night yet- the nights young—"

We were celebrating.

I'd just finished my first year of medical school and had a stretch of free time. It was now enraptured by the talons of a nightclub, my credit card held hostage behind the bar and my arm shackled in Amy's iron grasp as she came and went periodically.

"Celebrate!" Amy called from across the crowd, the sound echoed by her friends- a sea of faces I couldn't place names to.

I squinted around at them. I recognised a few of them from Addison's failed New Years party. Others I'd never even met. They all stared at me blankly, either too drunk to recognise me or too high to care— they all had the same plastic look to them.

Kind of like freshly packaged dolls, vacant but forced upright almost unnaturally. Between the bright lights and the lingering taste of apple liquor at the back of my throat, I felt completely submerged in a synthetic and intoxicating world.

My chest tightened.

I want out.

I'd never had panic attacks before, but there was always a first time for everything— as my chest heaved and I tried to force myself to stayed grounded, I tapped out a text to Derek, all while watching Amy out of the corner out of my eye.

I want out.

A minute later: On our way.

It took a lot to drag Amy, eventually, out of there.