𝟘𝟟𝕩𝟘𝟚
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"It was nice that something good happened after all those months." Natalie commented when her and Mark arrived back home after the night of Owen's and Cristina's wedding. "I mean, after us getting back together." She added with a small smile as she put her coat at the hanger. Mark followed her movement.
"You look really beautiful tonight." Mark changed the subject by bringing her closer to him. He gave her a look full of love and lust. Getting compliments from Mark was something that Natalie was used of hearing, but the way he made her feel every time hadn't changed. And Mark was still taken aback by how beautiful she was. "I want to take you up at your room and unzip your dress." Mark's hands roamed at her back and played with the zipper of her dark purple dress.
"Our room." Natalie corrected him. "It's our room." She bit her lip when Mark's lips started leaving small kisses on her exposed collar bone. And she was glad that her daughter was sleeping over at her father's house that night.
"Our room." Mark repeated with his lips against her skin.
"Now you were saying something about unzipping my dress." Natalie sighed and Mark looked back at her before his eyes roamed through her body.
"I mean, it looks great on you, but I think it's going to look better on the bedroom floor."
"You did not just say that." Natalie laughed, but Mark caught her off by kissing her, and guided her towards the bedroom, making her forget about the cheesy line.
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"Andrew Perkins hasn't signed off on her. You disagree with him?" The next morning Owen was trying to convince Natalie to let Cristina scrub in on one of her cases for the day. Cristina was one of the few remaining residents that hadn't been cleared for surgery after the shooting incident. And Natalie couldn't blame her.
"No. Keeping residents out of the O.R. until they're ready is the right approach for most of them, but not for Cristina." Owen replied to her. "She won't feel like herself until she's back in surgery again. You know Yang."
"I do." Natalie agreed. "And you want to start her on an ex vivo heart reconstruction?"
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime-"
"It is a hell of a lot of pressure is what it is." Natalie cut Teddy off who was also there to back Owen up. Cristina has been working on her survive from time to time so she also wanted to help her.
"Well, she operated on..." Owen continued. "I mean, she saved Derek Shepherd with a gun to her head. I don't think that pressure is the issue for her."
"That's not what being under pressure means." Natalie argued. "That was being scared for your life. And I know, because I was with her, I was supposed to help her and I didn't."
"Natalie, that wasn't your fault." Owen reassured her. "And you can be with her now. We owe her this, and she needs it."
"No Owen, I am not being part of this." Natalie shook her head. "I know far well what it means to have a mental breakdown and I am not going to stand here watching you break her even more. She needs time. That's what she needs. And once she's ready, she is going to be the best resident of her year. But if you pressure her right now, she might never come back."
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"Okay, multiple burn victims." Natalie was covering the pit that day instead, after Teddy and Owen insisted on letting Cristina go into surgery for her case, she handed it out to them. "Two with paralysis, three with vision loss, one, uh, blown eardrums, and one dislocated hip." Natalie informed the residents, Liam and Bailey around her.
"House fire?"
"Explosion?"
"Car wreck?"
One by one asked why there were so many traumas around them. "Uh, act of God." Natalie replied to her. There was a lightning strike that took out a whole flag football team. "God was in a mood today." Natalie commented.
"How did it strike all of 'em?" April questioned when one by one was walking towards the patients.
"Well, they're mostly flash burns, so it probably hit one of them then conducted off onto the rest." Liam replied to her. "Lexie." He then turned to his ex-girlfriend, giving her a look. Lexie had a hard time after the shooting and Liam was still worried about her, even after months. "T. M. Rupture, trauma one. I'll see you in there." He didn't want to leave her side. "Tell me something." Liam turned to Natalie when Lexie had walked away. "When a person gets out of the nut house... What's the appropriate amount of time to wait before you propose?"
"What?" Natalie exclaimed. "Long. Longer. Long ... a long time. Not now." She pointed her finger at him and gave him a warning look.
"Specifically, how long?" Liam asked and followed her. All the years Natalie knew Liam, he was always too bad at relationships, that's why he never had a true relationship until Lexie. But Lexie was not ready for everything Liam wanted and had missed all those years.
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"Hey, how was your night in jail?" Mark asked Derek. Meredith had left him at jail after the police caught him driving too fast once again. And that resulted in him missing the wedding. "You shank someone right off the b? You gotta let the other cons know not to mess with you."
"That's not funny." Derek commented unamused. "They almost charged me with reckless endangerment."
"I'm sorry. What?" Natalie exclaimed. She had just walked down the stairs when she spotted her friend and her boyfriend chatting, so she walked towards them. "You mean that's where you've been all morning, in jail for reckless endangerment?" She yelled at him, her mother mode on.
"Nobody was endangered." Derek reassured her. "I told you that I didn't want her to know." He hissed at Mark for not noticing her.
"You were endangered." Natalie pointed out. "Are you stupid?"
"Now..." Derek took a breath, ignoring her question. "Have you ever been over 120 miles an hour before? Nat, have you ever been over 80? It's fun. It's really fun. I mean, especially when you go through a corner like that at that speed, and ... and you're not sure if the rear end's gonna stick or not, and you lose control, and then you put the throttle down, and the car corrects a little bit, and you take it to the limit and you don't lose control, you just grab it. Have you ever done it?"
"Uh, uh, no, Derek, no." Natalie shook her head pissed at him.
"You want to? I'll take you." Derek suggested.
"It's ... really great." Mark agreed and Natalie glared at him. "I mean, stupid. Don't do this ever again Derek."
"Let's go right now. Let's do it. Come on."
"Do you see my face?" Natalie gave him a stone cold glare. "Do you think that this is the face of a person that wants to kill herself for speeding?"
"No." Derek and Mark whispered at the same time.
"NO!" Natalie said loudly. "Let me call Amber, if she's running over 60, we're gonna have a problem." She muttered and pulled her phone out dialling her daughter's number.
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When Natalie found out that Cristina had a breakdown at the O.R. she rushed to find her. She felt responsible for her, especially after she made her operate on Derek all alone. And Natalie was used to feeling responsible for another human being. She was a mother after all.
"Hey, I heard about what happened in the O.R." She entered the resident's lounge and sat next to Cristina, keeping a safe distance between them. "You couldn't have seen that."
"I-I can't..." Cristina stuttered, feeling ready to cry. She wasn't used to feeling so helpless and lost. "I can't do it. Owen said I could do it."
"Owen is worried and he is trying to help you. He thought you were ready. But it's okay if you're not. Cristina, I know what you're feeling." And it was true, because even though she had been back to normal, she knew that she wasn't okay. She knew that she wasn't okay when she was yelling at Derek for speeding, when she was worried about everything Amber was doing. She was scared for her loved ones. She was scared that anything would happen and they would be taken away from her, just like her baby.
"I don't feel anything." Cristina broke down. "I can't be in there. And if I can't be in there, I don't know where I'm supposed to be."
"You don't have to be anywhere right now." Natalie squeezed her hand to give her strength. "You always pressure yourself Cristina and you love it. But maybe this once you could take a moment and allow yourself to feel everything that happened. You don't feel anything, you say. But you feel angry and scared and there is nothing wrong with that."
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"Amber's not staying for dinner, she says it's Friday and she has plans." Natalie announced when she entered the kitchen, where Mark was preparing dinner. "She's meeting all these new kids and I don't know them at all. She's not saying what happened to Tom or Rosie. They were her best friends, well Tom was her boyfriend, bloody hell, he was even sneaking in her room."
"She's making new friends, not a big deal." Mark tried to calm her down. She had been on edge a lot and he could see it more than anyone.
"It is a big deal, because I don't know them and I don't know what they do in their free time, what if they do drugs?" Natalie let out a deep sigh as she felt her chest heavy.
"Nat-" Mark started saying but he was caught up by the bell.
"I'll get it." Natalie walked towards the front door and opened it only to find a teenage boy, which she didn't recognise, standing there with a 'I own the world' look.
"Yo, babe, I've been waiting for you-" He started saying thinking that Amber was at the door and then he noticed Natalie standing there, with one eyebrow raised and an intimated look on. "Oh, sorry, Mrs Harris."
Natalie sucked in the scream she wanted to let out at the fact that he called her Mrs Harris. "Excuse me? Who are you?" She asked instead.
"I'm-"
"He is with me." Amber ran down the stairs, and grabbed the boy's hand wanting to leave as fast as possible. "He is my friend who I told to wait for me by the car." Amber gave him a pointy look.
"Why don't you want me to meet your friends, honey?" Natalie said in a fake sweet voice.
"Mrs Harris it's a delight to meet you, I am Oliver-"
But when he called her with that last name again, she couldn't hold back. She closed her eyes tightly before warning him. "Okay, if you call me Mrs Harris one more time, I will make sure that you never see the daylight again."
"Mom!" Amber exclaimed.
"What?" Natalie scoffed.
Amber shook her head. "We're going now. I'll be back a little bit after midnight."
"After midnight?" Natalie scoffed again. "If you're not back by eleven thirty, I'll come and drag you back by the hair."
"What?" Amber asked as they walked towards her car. But Natalie only gave her a smile as a reply.
"Your mom's strict, but like in the hot way." The boy commented and Amber rolled her eyes at him.
"Don't talk about my mom." She warned him. And once they drove away, Natalie walked back tot the kitchen, having no idea that Oliver was the same guy that had once tried to get a very drunk Amber to his car.
"I am going to lock her in her room until she's 30." Natalie breathed out once she was back in the kitchen. "Did you hear him?" She continued without giving Mark the chance to talk. "Why is she hanging out with him?" She wondered and then the doorbell rang again. "Oh, they're back, I am going to talk to her.. I really need to talk to her."
But it wasn't Amber at the door. It was Liam. "Lexie told me to leave her alone. And I... I really needed a friend."
"Come in. Mark is making dinner." Natalie invited him inside.
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𝟘𝟟𝕩𝟘𝟛
☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:⠀ *⋆.*:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆
"Good morning." Amber walked inside the kitchen that Monday morning, finding her mother there drinking coffee, as always and Mark reading the newspaper.
"Good morning honey" Natalie stood up the moment Amber got inside the room. She had a plan, and at the beginning it didn't involve yelling. She didn't feel like yelling. "I was thinking that it's been a while since we did something together, would you want- I'm sorry, what's that thing on your nose?" But in the middle of her sentence, Natalie was too focused on something shining on her nose, a very small object, and she hoped that it wasn't what she thought it was.
"A piercing." Amber said like it was obvious.
"A pier-" She huffed trying to calm down herself. "Who gave you permission to do that?" And Natalie wouldn't freak out about Amber getting a piercing, but she didn't like the fact that she didn't ask her.
"Did I need permission?" Amber wondered. Her whole attitude had changed since the shooting, she had changed. Even her friends had changed.
"Did you need permission?" Natalie repeated. "Where did you even find the money? Did your father give you money to get a piercing?"
"No, Mark did." Amber pointed at Mark, who was trying to stay out of it since the beginning.
"I'm sorry you did what?" Natalie yelled at him.
"I thought you'd be fine with it." Mark placed the newspaper on the table, and he used a very soft voice, not wanting to anger Natalie more.
"Do I look fine with it?" Natalie questioned back.
"Yeah, I'll let you guys solve this." Amber pointed between them and then put her bag over her shoulders. "I am going to school."
"Seriously Mark?"
"Oh come on, she's just going through a phase." Mark shrugged it off, even if he was also getting worried about Amber, but maybe it was just because she was growing up.
"I can't let her do whatever she wants." Natalie pointed out the obvious.
"Okay, I am sorry." He finally apologised, something he should have done from the beginning. "I just don't want to say no to her."
"If you're going to be with me, you're gonna have to."
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"Hey. Where could I find Dr. Shepherd?" A young woman entered the hospital that morning the same time Natalie and Mark were. Natalie was still going on and on about the whole piercing situation, and Mark was still apologising, but it was getting nowhere at this point.
"You have an appointment?" The nurse questioned.
"I don't. Uh, could you just point me in the direction of his office?" The woman asked, but the nurse only froze, because the last time someone had said that it didn't end well.
Mark and Natalie quickly caught on the situation, and it didn't take long for Mark to recognise the woman as Derek's youngest sister. "She has that look on her face because the last time someone walked into this hospital looking for Dr. Shepherd without an appointment, he shot him."
"Mark!" The woman exclaimed and hugged Mark tightly. "Oh. Oh, my God!" Natalie took a step back and frowned her eyebrows, wondering who the woman who was hugging her boyfriend was.
"Hi, Amy." Mark said once they let go of each other.
"You still look hot." Amelia flirted.
"And you, uh," Mark cleared his throat, glad that Natalie wasn't the one to make a scene, "look a lot more grown-up than when I last saw you."
"You can say "hot, " you know? 'Cause I am. I'm hot."
"No, I can't, because in my mind, you're still Derek's 12-year-old sister." Mark shot her down gently and then his hand reached for Natalie. "And my fiancee is standing right next to you and she's the only hot person in the room, in every room actually."
Natalie choked at the word fiancee, she felt her eyes going big, not sure where the word came from. But she also didn't want to make a scene in front of a stranger, so she forced herself to smile. "Sorry, I..." she apologised when there was a small pause for a few seconds. "Hi, I am Natalie Turner, the hot cardio surgeon in the room." She decided to joke and ignore her heart beating a little too fast.
"Nice to meet you. I'm Amelia, Derek's sister." Amelia shook her hand and gave her a bright smile.
"So what are you doing in Seattle?" Mark questioned.
"Uh, Derek's an ass who won't return my calls." Amelia replied. "Derek's an ass who got shot and won't return my calls, so I brought him a present or a bribe or a peace offering. Whatever. I brought him that." She pointed at a guy that was standing behind them.
"You brought him Brett Favre?" Natalie questioned.
"No. I brought him a brain tumor." Amelia replied overexcited and Natalie knew that Derek wasn't going to have much fun that day. But she also knew that she wasn't going to be anywhere near him that day, because being near him meant being near Mark and she needed to figure out when was the moment Mark proposed to her and she missed it. And she also missed herself saying yes.
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"Dr. Murphy, Dr. Bailey needs a consult in room 11-35." Lexie walked up to Liam and Natalie at the nurse's station.
"I'll be right over." Liam told her and Lexie walked away, not wanting to stay with him longer than needed. But his look followed her, and Lexie glanced back at him weirdly as she walked away.
"Look away." Natalie muttered, noticing that he was staring at her for a little too long.
"What?" Liam asked, not taking his eyes away.
"Stop staring at her."
"I can't." He refused.
Natalie forced him to look at her instead by squeezing his cheeks with her hand. "Her last words to you were, 'leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone', only louder." She reminded him. "Look away."
"Maybe she just needs a little more time." Liam suggested. "I'll try to look away." He sighed defeated.
"Thank you." Natalie said and let go of his face. "So, um, has anyone ever called you their fiance without you knowing that you're getting married?" She suddenly questioned.
"What?" Liam asked confused.
"Nothing." And Natalie couldn't catch a break that day.
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"A virgin ... at 27?" Natalie was at the O.R. with Meredith and April. Gretchen, the patient, came in with trouble breathing and she and her future husband were worried that it was cancer. Natalie was using a bronchoscope to figure out what the problem was.
"Well, maybe she was waiting for the right person to come along" April defended the woman, "someone special, someone who really got her. It's sweet. It's ... It's idealistic."
"It's smart is what it is." Natalie said instead. "If you don't sleep with 'em, you ... you don't get pregnant. Y-you sleep with them, and then 16 years later, you have a teenager daughter that stresses you out every time she walks out of the door. And next think you know her hair is blue and you're not sure if she's just going through a phase or if she's in trouble." Natalie said all at once and the two female residents stayed silent not sure what they were supposed to say. "Graspers." Natalie ordered.
"Is that the mass?" April questioned.
"Yep." Natalie confirmed.
"Is it a tumor?" Meredith asked.
"No, it... it looks like... a foreign object." Natalie said and tried to pull it out. "All right. I got it. What the hell is that?" Natalie questioned. "Is that a condom?"
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The end of their shift had arrived and Natalie had found herself hiding in the attendings lounge, drinking with the rest of the female attendings. "I can't believe that you keep Brandy in your locker." Natalie commented and refilled her glass, much needing alcohol to her system to actual face Mark, after avoiding him all day.
"A patient gave it to me." Bailey informed them.
"Oh, yeah? You sneak in and take a swig every time you see a spider?" Callie mocked her. The word that Bailey screamed like a little girl over a spider had come out.
"Every time I see a spider crawl out of a human limb, yes." Bailey corrected her, making them all laugh. "And it is a phobia, okay? It is not... hey. Give me back my bottle." Bailey said when she noticed Teddy having a little too much to drink.
"Oh, no, no, no, Teddy needs it." Arizona argued. Teddy was supposed to say goodbye to the shrink that had come to the hospital and with whom she had a short relationship with.
"You finish it, I'll hurt you." Bailey warned her.
"We're gonna live in a frat house forever, aren't we?" Arizona suddenly said. Her and Callie had moved in together, but it didn't seem like Owen and Cristina were moving out anytime soon.
"Hey, no. Meredith's is a frat house." Callie corrected her. "Our place is just that off-campus apartment where the burnouts go to buy pot."
"Oh my God" Natalie jolted in her seat. "What if Amber buys pot? And why on earth is Mark calling me his fiancee?"
"He's doing what? For fuck's sake." Callie cursed at her friend. She had spent hours with him telling him to handle this right, this time. But it didn't seem like it.
"Give me the bottle." Natalie grabbed the bottle from Teddy's hands, her second glass already empty. "Did you tell him good-bye?" She then asked her.
"I've kinda been avoiding him." Teddy informed them. "I'm afraid if I see him, I'll start crying, and then he'll think I'm some kind of crazy stalker." And once she said that the doctor entered the room.
"Uh, let's go buy Bailey a real drink." Arizona said.
"Yeah. Yeah, let's go do that. Excuse us." Callie agreed.
"I am going to talk to Mark." Natalie decided.
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Natalie had spent the whole ride to her house, trying to think when it was the moment Mark proposed to her. And the only moment she could think of was the night she returned from Ireland. The night Mark spoke to her so truly and told her how much he loved her, and he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. And Mark knew how much Natalie wouldn't want to get down in one knee. So he didn't.
"Hi." She whispered when she unlocked the door and found Mark sitting at the living room. He was watching whatever was on tv, waiting for Natalie to get back.
"Hey, I haven't seen you at all since the morning." He pointed out.
"I am well aware." Natalie confirmed. She sat down next to him and looked at him with a look Mark couldn't recognise.
"Are you okay?" He asked worried. "Are you mad because I gave Amber money? I just want to make sure that she won't end up hating me, okay? It's important to me that she likes me because I really care about her and about you, I love you and I want this to work."
"You called me your fiancee, this morning." Natalie said, not listening to anything he had said. She played with her fingers nervously.
"I did" Mark confirmed, like it wasn't a big deal and Natalie wondered if there was something wrong with her and she was overreacting about everything.
"There was never a question and I never said yes. I would have remembered that." Natalie whispered.
"I mean I know I didn't ask, but I just knew that you wouldn't want me to get down on one knee and propose... I can do it if you want me to." Mark said and went to stand up.
"God, no, don't." Natalie grabbed his hand, keeping him in place.
"I gave you a whole speech about how I want to spend the rest of my life with you" Mark took her hand between his, "what did you think it meant? You want me to make it clear? I want to marry you and I don't want to waste another second waiting. I love you, you are my whole world."
"We lost a baby Mark, I don't think we're ready. We need some time." Natalie tried to reason with him. Even though she was against getting married again, she could see herself spending the rest of her life with Mark.
"Yeah, but we found our way back to each other." Mark stated. "And no matter how much this hurts, I can't not be happy about this. And I don't want to lose you again."
But the conversation was cut short when Amber unlocked the door. "Amber, what happened?" Natalie stood up the second she saw Amber's nose all bloody. And tears kept running down her cheeks.
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ʜᴇʟʟᴏ! ʜᴏᴡ ɪꜱ ᴇᴠᴇʀʏᴏɴᴇ?
ʜᴏᴡ ᴅᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ɪᴍᴀɢɪɴᴇ ᴍᴀᴛᴀʟɪᴇ ᴡᴇᴅᴅɪɴɢ? ɪꜰ ɪᴛ ᴇᴠᴇʀ ʜᴀᴘᴘᴇɴꜱ.
ʙʏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴀʏ ɪ'ʟʟ ᴘʀᴏʙᴀʙʟʏ ꜱᴛᴀʀᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ɴᴇxᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴀᴍʙᴇʀ'ꜱ ᴘᴏᴠ.