Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟴𝟭 the seven stages of grief

"Or," He rolled his eyes, "maybe I've just been watching too many episodes of Bridezillas—"

"It's good luck, actually," Beth corrected him, "Apparently, it's supposed to signal that the marriage will last for a very long time." When faced with his raised eyebrows, she sighed. "I googled it literally as soon as I saw the weather forecast."

"Romantic," Eli chipped in, giving her a wry grin, "Let me guess, you googled last-minute vow ideas too?"

"Don't be stupid," was her response with a scoff, "I'm saving that for five minutes before."

It was Eli's turn to roll his eyes. 

While he scoffed at how easily she'd withstood his volley, Beth found herself wondering how exactly her morning would go. Admittedly, she had a bad feeling, one that was so deeply buried into her bones that she was sure it was just an extension of her DNA. 

As she walked through, into the hospital, Beth had the unwavering impulse to turn on her heel at leave—

No, it was going to be a good day. She was determined. 

She was sure. 

The weight in her chest was just pre-wedding jitters and the tingle of cold toes. Her intuition had never been good anyway. She was going to have a good day, marry a good guy and spend the rest of her life schmoozing about how great and impulsive this whole thing was.

Deny. Deny. Deny.

***

II – GUILT AND PAIN

In theory, this morning was going to work like clockwork.

Beth had a very simple plan.

She was going to go into the ER, finalise some scripts with Daphne and then make her way up to her meeting with Bethenny Ballard at 11 AM. 

Two things, two simple, straight forward things that she could probably do in her sleep. 

She'd finalised prescriptions over a hundred times in her career and she'd made that fateful trek into the ER double that. 

It was the sort of shit she could do with her eyes closed: sign your name, tick a box, hand it over to the nurse who would then go on to exchange it with the pharmacy to make sure the medication was properly sorted and dispersed. 

It was, furthermore, the only reason Beth was in the hospital earlier than her meeting.

God, that meeting. 

The thought of walking into that office and handing over the resignation letter stowed away at the bottom of her purse, now that was something that Beth was slowly coming to terms with. 

It was almost exciting; she'd never resigned from a position before, forever holding onto jobs with all the strength she had—she'd had a lab position back at college and she'd worked half to death until her lab manager had pointed out that she was no longer a student and couldn't continue. 

This job, in particular, one that she'd considered the one indicator that she wasn't a corporate medicine failure, it was a little bit harder to let go than she'd anticipated.

But, she supposed, things had to come to an end eventually.

The end looked like a resignation printed on reasonably good quality paper. It was header with her name and signed at the bottom, and she'd been treating it like the plague for the past few hours.