Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟮𝟰 down, down, down

I looked up, beaming at people as they all stared blankly at me. The only person who looked moderately interested was Lexie, who was smiling at me but still looked extremely stressed. I figured that that was just how her face was. Meredith, on the other hand, rolled her eyes, looking down at her pager and mentioning something about a patient that needed help. That left me with Alex, who was giving me a certain look as if I was the most idiotic person in the world.

A pause passed.

"I'm not coming." He said finally.

Alex seemed to say it as if he didn't expect me to be amused by his answer, as if he expected me to be a mature adult about this all.

"You weren't invited anyway, Karev."

***

When I appeared in the ER, the first thing I saw was a bloodbath.

Where bloodbaths in New York and Indonesia had been full of traumas and woe, this was very different. Everywhere I looked, there were staff members, bustling about, fighting for trauma cases and to tend to patients. My brow creased and I halted, watching as interns lined outside of trauma rooms and nurses hurried back and forth with papers and blood bags. 

For a second, I figured that this was some sort of mass casualty, but then I realised:

This wasn't that kind of bloodbath, this was fear.

Each staff member had a seemingly permanent look of petrifaction, just as Lexie had earlier. They seemed to swamp around me, always moving and rushing forwards as I made my way across the ER and towards the front desk. Like the rest of the department, the reception was over-staffed, with three nurses all turning to attend me as I approached; they exchanged stagnant looks and raced towards the trauma room patient listings. 

I watched with wide eyes and my thanks were barely audible as one nurse directed me towards the right room.

"Someone call for Psych?"

I slapped on a pair of medical gloves as I stepped through the door, having to side-step at least four interns as I barely fit through the door. Everywhere was so packed that it felt as though I'd just crawled my way into a tin of sardines. 

I looked up to see the turned back of Alex and two patients, presumably involved in some sort of casualty, with one on a trauma bed and the other stood in the corner.

"Yeah, I called you, on the request of the patient," The paramedic gave me a brief glance before turning back to Alex. "We've got Jodie Crowley ... The 60-year-old driver who lost consciousness and hit a parked car. Vital signs stable. Complains of abdominal pain..."

It seemed as though Alex had just received the patient and he bustled around the woman on the trauma bed. The other patient was a middle-aged man, his eyes slightly disorientated and unfocused as he moved around in an agitated manner. 

My attention instantly flickered to him but my path of movement was intercepted by a paramedic as they began reeling off information to a distracted Alex.

"It wasn't a parked car," I could just about hear the man muttering to himself in the corner, his tone slow and causing my interest to pique. 

I could tell that there was something abnormal about his behaviour and I instantly began assessing for any sign of trauma. He moved around frequently and there was no sign of any head trauma, so my brain began whirring immediately. 

"It wasn't a parked car. It was them. They hit us..."

I didn't seem to be the only person who was taking notice of the man as one of the many interns in the room turned around, peering over at him with a look of suspicion on their face. I found myself caught in between a trauma nurse and Alex's stooped figure as the man turned his disorientated and stared fearfully at the intern.