Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟮𝟱 (ouch)

"Olivia-- Where's Psych? I asked you to page them over an hour ago..."

I was rather taken by Lexie's tone; her eyes were slated as she looked down at the redhead and repeated the question Eli had asked only moments ago. 

Eli and I exchanged a look and I caught him rolling his dark eyes, clearly displaying a dislike for the younger Grey sibling.

"I've paged them... twice," The nurse, Olivia, repeated to Lexie calmly although a muscle jumped in her jaw. "If you want to see the logbook..."

"I want to know how a paranoid patient managed to get out of the ER," Again, Lexie's tone was far more pointed than I was used to. Her eyes were slated and she hunched her shoulders, attempting to assert her position as a surgical intern. "Where were you?"

Again, Eli shot me a look that didn't look too impressed. Meanwhile, Olivia just glowered back at the brunette, gritting her teeth.

"I had stepped away from my desk to deal with another patient," Olivia responded calmly and sweetly, causing Lexie to falter. 

The younger woman lost her edge and stepped backwards, noticing how the Nurse didn't appear affected at all by her bluntness. 

"And normally," She added, "Being a punching bag for the doctors is just a part of the job, but there's a merger, and we're all being looked at, and I am not about to go down for a mistake that wasn't mine." Ouch. "So if you'll excuse me, I'll page psych again."

The nurse took off in the direction of the nurses' station, leaving Lexie to frown to herself, a clear look of indecision and guilt blooming across her face. The first thing she registered was the unimpressed look on Eli's face as he shook his head at her again, tutting to himself softly. He briefly shot me a smile, before turning away and joining Olivia. That just left Lexie and I; and when she looked at my face, she gasped.

"Dr Montgomery, are you alright–?"

"Do I look okay?" I quipped, then chuckled at the look of concern on Lexie's face. 

I must have looked pretty bad as Lexie's eyes were fixated to the top of my head and the blood staining my fingertips as I attempted to make the swelling going down, around my injury. 

"I'm fine, it's not too bad..."

"I'm so sorry about what happened," She gushed suddenly as if she'd set me up to some sort of death scenario. 

I waved her apology away with my free hand; it wasn't her fault at all, she wasn't the psych expert, here. That, sadly, was all me.

"You have nothing to apologise for..." I said softly; Lexie sucked in a deep breath, nodding slowly and repeatedly glancing up at my forehead. She looked as though she was extremely intimidated by my head injury and I just sighed to myself, not having quite seen it yet. "Be honest with me... Does it look bad?"

"Uh," Lexie looked rather caught off guard by the question; she bit down on her lip. "I mean-"

"I'll take that as a yes."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't apologise.

"Sorry."

***

I'd passed all of my work over to Dr Mable Chaudhary, who'd come down from the Psychiatry department with the look of someone who'd just been dragged into their personal nightmare. She'd been the first face that I'd come across when I'd arrived in the department, and she'd been the first person I'd come acquainted with, other than Katherine, the head of Psychiatry.