Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟮𝟱 (ouch)

She was a tall, pretty Punjabi-American woman who had vocalised her distaste of the surgical department to me many times. In fact, most of the psychiatrists had vocalised opinions: the unanimous verdict was that all of the surgeons were too 'up themselves for their own good'.

Knowing people like some select plastic surgeons and neurosurgeons, I hadn't hesitated to agree.

"You just had to get beaten up," Mable shook her head lightly as she approached me in the ER, pulling back the curtain with a curt sigh.

I was sat there, arms crossed over my chest and my head gently laid against the back of the raised bed. I shot her a brief, dry look, watching as she continued to look down at me like I'd received some sort of karma. 

Suddenly, a chuckle fell past my lips and I pressed a hand to my cheek.

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?"

"I'm not going to deny it." She echoed my laugh, her lips twitching and her hand coming upwards to smooth her long, dark hair over her shoulder. "This discomfort that you're feeling right now, is your karma for throwing me in with the sharks of the surgical floor."

I'd gotten to know Mable decently well over the past month or so; she was my number one source of places to eat in Seattle and was a good ear to have when I wanted to talk through something related to my cases. 

But she had a small smile on her face as she leant against the bottom of the bed, one hand holding a clipboard and the other holding my pager, something that must have fallen from my pocket when I'd been hauled off of the floor by Eli. She handed it to me and I weighed in my palm, gazing down at it with a slight disheartened feeling in my chest. But as soon as it came, it'd left- I stuffed it into my pocket.

"I've got security sweeping the whole of the surgical floor looking for your patient," She explained softly, "The surgical floor upstairs is on complete lockdown until they find him. I was told by Katherine to come to find you and serve you an incident report."

The document appeared out of nowhere, was clipped onto the board and I let out a silent, sarcastic cheer as she handed it over to me. I glanced down at it, seeing the collection of boxes and dotted lines and details that required my attention; my smile dropped and I groaned.

"Is this a new record? An incident report two months into the job?"

"You'd be surprised."

I was about to respond further but I was cut off as a small, portly woman- possibly an intern- rushed up and pulled back the curtain that surrounded my bed. 

Abruptly, she gave the two of us hurried smiles, before slapping down a suture kit and drawing up a chair. There were no words that fell through her lips-- all that was exchanged was the look between myself and Mable as we watched the intern scramble to get my incision fixed up. 

We both stared at the intern for a prolonged amount of time, our silence causing her to look upwards. Startled by the expressions on our faces, her face flushed.

"Oh right- sorry," She said, "I'm Dr Guzman, and I'll be going your stitches today."

 I could tell, instantly, that this was the last person I wanted near my forehead. 

My eyes dropped to the stitches that she prepared and I licked my chapped lips, worry building up inside of me. Her hands were shaking wildly and something about the way she kept swearing to herself softly as she failed to prepare the stitching equipment, made me think that this wouldn't go too well.

"Wouldn't it be easier to glue the wound?" I asked tenderly.

For a split second, a thunderous expression fell across Guzman's face; at that moment, Mable shot me an amused looked, as if to say 'this is the ego I was talking about, see it?'. However, it was gone as soon as she noticed the scrubs the two of us were wearing, alongside the mess it had made of my face.