𝟘𝟝𝕩𝟘𝟟
☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:⠀ *⋆.*:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆
The sun came up a little too fast for Natalie's liking and need. And all she needed was a little bit more rest, a little more time of feeling safe. But the reality is always around the corner, not letting you breathe for the right amount of time. Not letting you be free for too long.
Mark was the one who woke up first. He barely slept that night anyway. He woke up every half hour to check on Natalie. She woke up from a dream a couple of times but it wasn't as bad as before. Not screaming herself awake, no sleep walking. It was almost peaceful. Almost like before. And all because she was not alone.
Having someone next to her helped her feel more safe, keeping her warm. She felt more in control of herself, knowing that someone was lying right next to her in case she'd lose her breath.
One of the hardest parts of her divorce was to learn how to sleep in a bed alone. And even though she seems like a woman who despises any form of affection, she is nothing like that. She loves the touching part of a relationship, the cuddling at night, the hair stroking. She's all in for it. It's just not easy for her to open up. It wasn't before Isaac, it's definitely not easy after Isaac.
Mark spent a couple of minutes just staring at Natalie. She was sleeping so quietly that Mark could barely hear her breathing. She was not one to snore or move around a lot. Night terrors and insomnia was something she had never experienced before. It was always easy for her to sleep. She was a light sleeper instead, and someone who didn't know that could easily assume she was dead.
That's why Mark moved his hand under her nose to check if she was breathing. Too worried for a second.
He enjoyed the minutes of silence he spent, gazing her peaceful face. He enjoyed not feeling rejected by her, as he loved her in silence. That's all he could do. But when he realised that it was getting weird just watching her sleep, he decided to wake her up to get ready for work.
"Natalia." He said quietly not wanting to scare her. He reached for her face, moving some hair out of her eyes. "Hey, I know it's hard, but you need to get up."
Natalie hummed in reply and only opened one eye to look at Mark. He smiled at her, his eyes shining a little brighter as he looked at her. "You're still here." She mumbled and closed her eyes again. She hugged her pillow, feeling a void as she realised that Mark's arms were not wrapped around her anymore. She instantly missed the warmth, but she didn't want to admit it, not even to herself.
"I was not planning on leaving." Mark whispered making Natalie open her eyes.
And again they just stared at each other, no one speaking. Not words at least.
"You didn't have to stay, it's not like we are together." Natalie finally spoke. And despite what she was saying, she was grateful that he stayed. Whatever it was about him, it helped her sleep. He helped her sleep. And breathe. He helped her rest.
"I know that, you don't need to remind me." Mark tried to not seem bitter. He didn't want to guilt trip her. Even if it feels like we are, Mark thought. "Do you feel better?"
"Yes." She admitted. "You make a good pillow." She cracked a joke. She closed her eyes again, enjoying the last few minutes of peace and quiet. "Thank you" she mumbled. And it didn't seem enough. "And thank you for not making this weird." It should have been weird, with their history. And somehow it wasn't. But Natalie was still thankful that Amber was sleeping over to her friend's house that day.
When Mark stayed quiet, she opened her eyes again. And yet again, his eyes were on her. "What?" She asked softly.
Mark shook his head, unable to hide the small smile on his face. "You're beautiful."
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Derek had just entered the hospital, a big yawn escaping his mouth. He was the one who didn't sleep that night. His girlfriend's night chat with her best friend had kept him awake. And he was sure he looked like Natalie the last few days.
But his next yawn was cut off when Natalie and Mark entered the hospital together. They were chatting and laughing. Derek narrowed his eyes following them with their gaze until they separated into different directions and he followed Natalie who was waiting for the elevator. "Nat." He called out.
"Good morning." Natalie turned her head and smiled when she saw Derek walking up to her.
"Is there something you'd like to tell me?" He asked her, not holding back.
"No. Like what?" Natalie asked confused.
"Like if you're sleeping with Mark again?" Derek was worried about her. He was worried because she hadn't been okay the last year. Not even for a day. And he was worried because he wasn't sure of Mark's intention. And frankly he was not a big fan of the two of them together. He thought of Natalie as his sister and he didn't want to see her getting hurt again.
"Depends how you define sleeping." Natalie narrowed her eyebrows, not feeling up to explaining herself. But Derek had accused her too many times of not sharing with him.
"I define it in having sex."
"Then no." She said not explaining how she was actually sleeping with him, in the literal meaning of the word. But that was not something she could explain. She definitely hadn't explained it to herself. "What do you want Derek?"
"I am your friend and I am worried." He tried to hold back his yawn, but he failed.
"I am doing fine, despite you. You look like me the past few days." She didn't lose the chance to mock him.
"Meredith kept me up most of the night—"
"I don't want to hear about your dirty, nasty—" She interrupted him.
Causing him to interrupt her. "—talking on the phone with Cristina."
"And they stole your sleep? Did you say Yang goes or I go?" She continued mocking.
"I don't think I'd win that one." He admitted. "Before she had Burke. Burke helped. Maybe I can ask Mark to sleep with her."
Natalie burst out laughing. "You think Cristina Yang is going to sleep with Mark Sloan?"
"Well, you slept with him and I never thought you would."
"Okay, you win that one." And the mocking stopped right in that moment.
And no matter what Derek was saying, she did not regret sleeping with Mark Sloan.
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True to his words, Derek found his best friend riding the elevator. "I need you to have sex with Cristina Yang." He didn't miss a second.
"Good morning." Mark told him trying to ignore what Derek had just said.
"Distract her." Derek continued. "Engage her. Give her something to do after midnight besides call my girlfriend and wake me up."
"Yang? No. No, too serious, humorless, un-fun ... not my type." Mark turned him down. His mind already wondering to someone else. Someone that at first sight seemed like she was all that, but she was all the opposite. The woman he had met was everything he ever needed.
"Yang should be your type. She's intense, intelligent, complicated. She's like a single malt scotch, and you're used to beer bongs."
"Natalia Turner is no beer bong." Mark scoffed. He always felt proud for actually sleeping with Natalie.
"Oh, you know, wait a minute. I get it. You don't think you have a shot. You're probably right." Derek tried the reverse psychology trick.
"Oh, I have a shot."
"Then try it, as a favor."
"No. I'm not your stud horse. You can't just ..." Mark made a face, "just tell me who to sleep ..."
"You slept with my wife." Derek reminded him.
"Yeah, I'll give it a shot." Mark agreed and his day went on a little bit like this.
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It went a little bit of Cristina not even understanding that Mark was hitting on her. Until Mark had enough. So at the end of the day he found her at the nurse's station. "Dr. Yang, I'll need you to, uh, bring me the post-op report on our beating victim before you leave tonight." Mark had his charming smile on.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Did you say something?" Cristina asked, too lost in her own world.
"Yang, what is wrong with you?" Mark snapped.
"Sir?" Cristina asked confused.
"I've had women go through needless elective buttock enhancement surgery just for another chance to be flirted with by me. So what's your deal?" He asked. He hadn't been taken rejection well lately. Not since Natalie kept rejecting, again... and again.
"I have no idea what you're talking about." Cristina was still confused.
"I've been hitting on you all day." Mark exclaimed.
"Oh. I ... Really?" Cristina started laughing before she shook her head in disgust. "Excuse me." She said and walked away.
"It was a stupid idea." Mark called out. "It wasn't even my idea. It was Shepherd's idea."
"Oh, it didn't go well?" And then Natalie showed up behind him, trying her best not to laugh.
"You knew about that?" Mark turned around and looked at her. "That woman is not a single malt scotch. She is bad, cheap wine that gives you a headache you can feel in your teeth."
"You do everything Derek asks you to?" Natalie chuckled.
"Well, he's my best friend and I did sleep with his wife. You're enjoying my pain aren't you?" He asked annoyed only making her smile wider.
"What type of alcohol am I then?" She asked him instead.
Mark didn't even pause. His answer ready. "The 21 Year Single Malt Irish Whiskey. I don't remember the name but the high-quality describes you perfectly. Ireland's finest creations. The whiskey and you."
Natalie was thankful that when she blushed, her whole face didn't heat up. Just her ears. And she didn't remember the last time she blushed because of a compliment. "Bushmills." She said the name of the whiskey.
"Bushmills." Mark repeated with voice barely a whisper as they looked at each other. Natalie took a shaky breath and turned her eyes away from him and into the floor. But Mark didn't stop looking at her. "I'm free tonight." He said with the suggestion in his voice.
"What?" Natalie looked back at him. Every part of her body wanted nothing more than have him by her side that night. The feeling of trusting someone to hold you in the sleeping condition. When your nervous system is relatively inactive, your eyes closed, your muscles relaxed, and your consciousness practically suspended. And they show the same amount of trust back.
"If you need a sleeping buddy tonight, I'm all yours." He continued.
"I am going home to my daughter." Natalie stated but she smiled because she needed Mark to feel part of what she was feeling. How thankful she was for him.
"Tell her thank you for the text." Mark had started liking Natalie's daughter more.
"Good night Mark."
"Good night Turner, I hope sleeping away from me won't bring you nightmares." He called out making her shake her head at him as she walked away.
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When Natalie arrived home, she found Amber preparing dinner while feeding Mulan something she should have not been eating. Natalie hadn't seen her daughter since the previous night. They had spoke on the phone, but Natalie hadn't mentioned anything about the text. "Hello young lady." But she was read to speak about it.
"Okay, this is odd." Amber looked up at her mother confused. She was not used to hearing that tone. "Am I in trouble for something? Because I didn't do a thing. I came home few hours ago and I was just studying. I swear."
Natalie leaned against the kitchen counter and crossed her arms on her chest. "How about what you did last night?"
"Oh come on, I just wanted you to have some company." Amber said.
"You can't interfere again like that." But Natalie was not having it. "I am the adult, and I handle things. I will handle my insomnia. It's just a phase and it will pass. I don't want you to worry about this. You worry about school and your things. I will handle my things."
"Well, I worry. Of course I worry, you're my mom. And it's nice to know that there is someone else who worries about you. You don't have to be alone." Amber argued.
"I'm not alone." Natalie's eyes soften as she spoke to her. "I have you, who sends nannies to my house to take care of me."
"You like the nanny I sent you, though." Amber tried to get the slightest information from her mother. But she only got a glare instead. "It's okay, you'll admit it in time. And I'm okay with it. He seems decent. I have to know more about him. Maybe I'll hang at the hospital more often."
"You're fourteen, not forty." Natalie sighed, for a moment hating how mature her daughter was.
"I'm fifteen, my birthday passed. You have to accept that I am growing up."
"I am not accepting anything because I missed your birthday, so it doesn't count."
And the night carried on, with the two of them just laughing and teasing each other.
☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:⠀ *⋆.*:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆
𝟘𝟝𝕩𝟘𝟠
And the moment Natalie thought it was over, she had a really bad episode. Sleep paralysis. She couldn't move or speak. And she was fully aware of what was happening to her, but she could do nothing about it. So after a night of sleep, she went back to work looking like a wreck.
Natalie was trying so hard to keep her eyes open. But coffee was not working for her. So she only opened her eyes when she fell on Lexie who gasped in pain "Ow!" Natalie looked at the younger girl's arm, noticing bandages at the area close to her wrist. "Um... These are scratches from my kitten. He's a crazy scratchy scratcher." Lexie rambled.
"You're a cat person?" Natalie narrowed her eyes at her.
"I meant hairbrush. I have a crazy scratchy hairbrush."
"Are you okay Grey?" Natalie asked. She had started liking Lexie a little bit more than the other interns and residents, so she wanted to make sure that she was okay, even though everything was wrong with her.
"I'm on top of my game, really." Lexie shrugged her off. "Will you now be the head of cardio since Hahn left?" Lexie wondered, taking Natalie by surprise.
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Natalie's next move was to find Derek. He had just arrived along with Meredith. "So Hahn quit, the moment I needed a break from surgeries. Say goodbye to job promotion again." She told Derek. "Also Lexie is acting weird. I am worried she may be a secret cutter. Do you know anything Grey?" She then turned to Meredith.
"I don't know." Meredith shrugged.
"What are you gonna do?" Derek asked his girlfriend.
"Nothing."
"You can't do nothing. She's your sister." Natalie argued with her.
"And?" But Meredith needed a little more time to understand what family meant.
"And your family." Derek added.
"I'm not understanding." Meredith was like a lost puppy.
"Lexie's your family." Derek tried and Meredith looked like a lost puppy. "Forget it." Derek sighed.
"Hey, when you have some free time come find me." Natalie told Derek before leaving. It was time to learn and fix whatever was wrong with her.
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When Natalie got paged in the E.R. she felt her breath getting caught in her throat. She couldn't handle it. But there was no one else to handle it, since Hahn had left. And from what Callie told her, she didn't even say goodbye. Natalie wanted to tell her that it was better like that and that Hahn was not good for anything. But that wouldn't exactly help Callie.
"Hey, did you page me?" Natalie entered the E.R. room finding almost everyone in there.
"I did." Owen told her.
"I am out the O.R." Natalie tried to keep her eyes away from the patient.
"Look, I've seen guys cut in half, amputations, eviscerations, but I've never seen anything like this. I wondered if you could help." And there was no way Natalie would back down.
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Timothy, the patient, came into the ER after being crushed in a garbage truck. He was impaled upon himself due to his open femur fracture. Since they couldn't proceed without freeing his leg, they did that first, which caused him to wake up.
"I won't live if I can't walk." The patient was explaining his situation to the doctors.
"We'll do our best to save the leg." Natalie tried to reassure the patient, even a little bit.
"I'm homeless." The patient confessed and all doctors looked at him. "Walking is how I survive, it's how I get from one day to the next. Marion Street's safe from 2:00 to 6:00am, and then I go over to Hadley Bridge and I hang there till 6:30 until the traffic hits. And then I go over to Belltown, and I hang out over at the waterfront. And then the waterfront, if it's trouble, then I go back to 4th Street. I'm homeless. I can't not walk! I... What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?" He cried.
"Your injuries are critical." Mark tried to explain to him. "If we don't get you to surgery..."
"Will your surgery make me walk?" But he interrupted him. The doctors looked at each other, knowing that it was going to be hard. And Timothy realised. "Then I don't want it!"
"Okay. All right. You heard the man. The surgery's off." Owen said.
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"So that's it? No surgery, you're just gonna walk away." Derek and Mark had history of picking up fights with Owen. They didn't agree with the way he was handling things. And he was away for too long so it was not easy for him to keep up.
And now they were mad at the way he gave up on the patient.
"I'm respecting the patient's wishes." Owen argued. "We are packing his open wound."
"This guy's circling the drain. You cannot walk away." Mark backed Derek up.
"Don't tell me how to run things in my ER." Owen argued back.
"Your ER?" Mark asked surprised.
"We save lives here. We don't just patch up patients and leave them to die. If you can't handle that, go back to the desert and leave us here to do our jobs." And with those final words from Derek, Owen left making it clear how mad he was.
As Derek and Mark turned around, Natalie was standing in front of them with her arms crossed, while Callie, Cristina and Meredith looked confused at the fight.
"Are you done playing alpha males? Because Dr. Torres and I have an idea to save the man's life and legs." Natalie gave them a 'you're both stupid' look and turned back to the room, with Mark and Derek not having another option but follow her.
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After the doctors went through their plan and Owen managed to convince the patient to do the surgery, Natalie was standing in front of the O.R. board looking at her name. She hadn't read her name up there for a little too long.
Mark walked up to her and stood there staring at the O.R. board. "Are you okay?" He asked, noticing that she looked like crap, exactly like she felt.
Natalie scoffed and looked at him "Do I look okay?"
"You look great." He said catching her in surprise.
"Then I'm okay." And once again he had managed to make her smile.
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Halfway through the surgery the chief passed by to check how his surgeons were doing. "Just thought I'd stop in to see how everything's going. Dr. Turner good to have you back in the O.R."
"It's good to be back sir." She replied without looking at him. And she was thankful that no one could recognise the lie in her tone, because she didn't feel glad to be back. She wanted to be as far away as possible. She couldn't even trust herself. But she continued trying to keep the patient alive. Because that's all she had to do. And she had done the same countless times for countless people.
"I'm still several hours away, but I may actually pull this off. Rebuilding a man's skeleton from scratch." Callie said proudly.
And minutes after the chief left, the machines started beeping like crazy. "V-fib." Meredith called out.
"Starting CPR." Natalie informed them "Push one of epi and charge the paddles to 360." She grabbed the paddles from the nurse. "Clear." She said and everyone stepped back as she shocked the patient.
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The flatline tone was the only thing Natalie could hear. She couldn't hear Owen calling time of death. Just the flatline.
And then Callie spoke. "I built his bones."
"You tried. We all tried." Derek said quietly. They had all worked so hard to keep him alive, that it was not easy. The flatline was never easy.
And then something snapped inside of Natalie. "No, she didn't try, she did it. She did her part, she built his bones. And we were supposed to keep him alive. That is all we had to do. We just had to... keep his body breathing. He just had to keep him safe and breathing and living until... We just had to keep him alive." Her voice cracked as she repeated the last phrase over and over again.
"Why don't you guys go ahead and I'll help Dr. Turner clean up." Mark stood behind Natalie his hand finding its way to her lower back as he tried to calm her down. But Natalie was trying really hard not to fall apart in front of everyone. "Go call the morgue. We've got it."
"Everyone, clear out." Owen ordered when no one moved.
"I just had to do this right." Natalie cried and Mark hugged her. One hand behind her back and one hand tangled in her hair. She buried her face to his chest and cried some more.
She had finally snapped about everything that had happened the past year. Everything that had hurt her and she pretended that she was handling. Because she had handled everything but not her feelings.
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When Natalie had calmed down, she paged Derek to an examination room. It was late, and the morning shift was almost cleared out. But not Natalie nor Derek. "Are you okay?" He asked her when he entered.
Natalie was sitting on a chair, calmer than before. But so much more exhausted.
"I know I don't share a lot." She said as she played with her fingers. "I have some trust issues. But you are one of my closest friends and I need your help right now."
"Whatever you need."
Natalie took a breath before she started speaking. "So the symptoms are, insomnia, night terrors, sleep paralysis and headaches. I also lost my temper in the O.R. and I don't know if it's because of the lack of sleep or because of something brain related. I've never lost my temper like that in the O.R. before. That's not me. So I need you to run some tests for me. I need to know how to handle this. And if you'll help me handle it, whatever it is."
"We'll figure it out, I promise."
And Derek Shepherd always kept his promises. So he was going to figure it out. And he was going to solve it. They just needed to find out if it was actually brain related.
☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:⠀ *⋆.*:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆
ꜱᴏ ʏᴏᴜ'ʀᴇ ꜱᴛɪʟʟ ᴠᴏᴛɪɴɢ ʙʀᴀɪɴ ᴛᴜᴍᴏʀ?