𝙓𝙓𝙓𝙄.
LIMB
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"SO YOU SAID 'Deal'?"
Her tone was inquisitive and she seemed to watch me closely, one eyebrow hitched up to the point that it nearly flew away into her hair.
I pressed two clammy palms together, nodding with a slightly cautious jitter.
"Yes."
"You started over."
"Yes."
"Just like that?"
"Yes." The word came out more impatient than before.
"Why?"
I'd come to the conclusion that hating Mark Sloan was beginning to feel like a burden rather than fuel for my hellfire.
I was tired. Tired of feeling as if he deserved to be anything more than a ghost in my rearview mirror. Tired of feeling like I cared whether Mark Sloan would feel my wrath or not. Tired of not being able to grow up.
A truce was the closest I could get to getting rid of Mark Sloan.
So I took it.
But still, in that first therapy session, I shrugged.
"I don't know."
The first sessions were always the hardest.
I'd chanted that to myself all the way to my early appointment, from the moment Charlie had kissed me goodbye at the door to embark on my little bus journey across the city. I'd had therapy before, but not since I'd actually become a therapist.
Rehab had been filled with sessions like this, heart-to-hearts when I'd been so affected by the withdrawal that my hands had shaken violently and my blood had pounded through my ears.
The thought of letting someone pick my brain made my stomach ache.
And now there was this doctor, Dr. Laurel Hargreeves who'd come highly recommended by Katherine. Apparently, you could make a career out of being a therapist for therapists. She had a degree over the door for it. From Yale. From the moment I'd stepped into her office, she'd insisted that I called her Laurel and attempted to clear the air around us— "Just imagine we're two friends just catching up."
I couldn't help but cross compare. The woman sat across from me was lounged comfortably in her chair, in a way that was friendly and approachable but still seemed to exude a sense of control.
One leg folded across the other. Flats, not heels. She was in a blazer and had this kitschy Leslie Rosen in First Wives Club hair cut. Eyes sharp but mouth curved warmly.
Meanwhile, I was in a blouse that was a tad bit too big for me, shifting at irregular intervals, swamped in a mess of fabric.
My legs were stock-still, my posture slightly off-beat as if I was trying to copy a Wikihow article on how to be as uncomfortable as possible. I still held my head high, hands pressed against my thighs and my thumb tapping softly to a random beat I'd heard on the radio.
The air in the room felt stiff. There was no music to fill the pause in between question and answer. It smelt sterile, like a hospital should, but didn't look like it at all. The bookcases lining the wall didn't look like they were government grade, nor was the carpet underfoot sanitary by any means.
Sweeping curtains and the shiny little diploma over the door didn't fit the hospital aesthetic.
She was good. I'd give her that. She offered me tea, she offered to put on some music in the background. But again, I couldn't help but cross-compare.
Was she better than me?
Undoubtedly.
The first few sessions with her were interesting to say the least, but I returned every time. A month in, when Charlie was finally settled in Seattle and everything seemed to be going well, she'd been caught completely up to speed with everything.
She knew about everything. I wasn't foolish enough to neglect a therapist when I was given one- I'd spoken passionately about my sobriety, my time in Canada and everything in between. A few details were left out, a few things that still left me sick to my stomach.
A few topics were completely shut off...
My childhood? No fucking way.
My relationships? In your dreams.
But even still, each time I shed a little secret, I watched her face.
Oh, she's good, I'd said to myself over and over, look at her, barely even reacting over my confessions.
Even when I told her that there was a good period of the 90's that I didn't even remember.
I found myself becoming comfortable. Blouses turned to t-shirts. The heels I'd forced myself into transformed into flats.
"Do you not feel like you have anyone to talk to?"
She sprung that question at the end of one of our longer sessions. I'd already been on my feet, ready to leave. I was in the process of putting on my coat when I halted completely. She sat there, impassively watching me with her little bright eyes.
"No one that has doctor-patient-confidentiality." I'd stated plainly, unable to shrug because of the fabric restricting my arms.
"Is that why you feel unable to confide in people?"
"I confide in a lot of people." I said matter-of-factly.
"You don't tell them the things that really shape you."
There was something so uncanny and all-knowing about Laurel Hargreeves.
She held eye-contact confidently but not in an intimidating way, in the sort of way that told you she could understand whatever nonsense you could come up with. I was surprised that I wasn't uncomfortable; it'd had a lot of different shrinks over the years, some good, some bad. Laurel was slowly falling into the good category.
She pressed when there were topics that I didn't want to talk about; she applied growing pressure, a friendly, warm pressure that didn't make me even realise what she was doing. She was like a fucking superhero. I felt grossly lesser than.
"We've been having these sessions for a month now." Yes, October was fading into November, marking my fifth month in Seattle and the end of Charlie's first. "I feel like you're holding us both back from progressing. It's time to be honest with yourself, Beth."
I bit into my cheek.
Honesty wasn't something I was renowned for.
It was the price of becoming a junkie; crawling off the face of the earth for five weeks to go on a bender had liar written all over it- Addison had thought I was doing a placement in Wisconsin but really I'd only been in Brooklyn with Amy the whole time.
Sure, I was open sometimes; my deadpan comments were iconic to the point that Derek regularly looked at me when the time felt right for my two cents. Honesty and humour for me went hand-in-hand, but then it became a diversion, a way to shove the conversation along instead of addressing what really counts.
"Fine." I sat back down, letting out a sigh of defeat. We still had 10 minutes left of the session and I could tell Laurel intended to use every moment we had. "What do you want me to be honest about? What do you want to talk about?"
"Not with me." Laurel dismissed me with a shake of her head, her short blonde locks bouncing despite the hairspray she seemed to always reek with. "I'm talking about with other people. With the people around you. Be more open to talking about what you feel. You'll feel less anxious."
Anxious. God, that word liked to creep up on me.
In our first session, she'd asked me what words I'd like to blacklist- I'd said heal without a moments hesitation. Anxious was close to getting on that list.
It made me feel fragile- an "f-word" that I would gladly blacklist in a heartbeat.
Fuck was fine though.
"I think my problem is I can't shut up, personally." She seemed to pause at my answer. I rolled my lips together, kissing my teeth.
"You're defensive." Laurel noted. "That's what I'm talking about. You use comedic relief as a way of avoiding conversations that really matter."
Again, that wasn't anything new to me. I was painfully aware of it. Addison had called me out on it too many times. Amy did the exact same thing. I'd been doing it since I was a teenager, jumping from one turmoil to the next with a few dashes of hormonal angst and sarcasm.
"I can tell that there's something you're not comfortable talking about." Her voice was tender, like a welcoming hand being outstretched, trying to coax me into another round of confessions. My jaw clenched. I wasn't going to bite today. "And that's fine- that's something that we can address when we come to it."
We.
"I think we're going to have to work on your mindset." She said calmly, looking down at her notes with a fleeting eye. "I find it concerning that you immediately snap into offence or become defensive when certain areas of conversation come up." I tilted my head to the side, not quite engaging what she was saying. "Do you have any idea what might have caused this sort of reaction?"
In my head, I saw a supercut of mildly infuriating images: drugs, drinking, cheating, lying, the rockiest moments of my childhood, a slo-mo video of my life going to shit. I swallowed, hard.
I shook my head. "I have no idea."
Laurel didn't say anything, just hummed lightly and almost dismissively to herself.
That became another note on my record: Continues to avoid every fucking important topic we want to discuss.
"In the next session I'll like to touch on a possibly sore subject." Laurel continued nonchalantly as a chill crept up my back. "I'd like to discuss your family, if that's okay with you."
Family. The big "f-word". Drugs, drinking, cheating, lying all suddenly seemed so attractive— yes, let me spill out all of my sins so wildly and chaotically like a tapped vein. That conversation would take a few sessions, that was for sure— but maybe not as much as the "F Word."
"Sure."
She's going to think I'm crazy- if she doesn't already.
***
"I need to be committed to a mental asylum."
My statement caused both Mable and Helen to raise their eyebrows at me. Out of the two of them, Helen looked more alarmed; she opened her mouth to speak but then closed it absently, as if she'd second-guessed it.
Meanwhile, Mable paused for a blink-of-an-eye and then shrugged as if to agree with me.
"What's brought this on?" Helen stared at me as if I'd grown a second head.
I ran a hand through my hair, collapsing against the nurses' station as if I was a dramatic muse in a renaissance painting.
Everyone else in the hospital seemed to be busy; we were lingering on the reception, with my two colleagues lining up for the coffee cart. The crowds around us were a familiar sight of blue scrubs and civilians. Weather was light but cold. A true November feeling.
"I need one of you guys just to sign on the dotted line and get me in the doors," I continued, almost ignoring Helen's question. They'd progressed to the beginning of the line and ordered their coffees, pausing only for Helen to pay for the two of them. "Or maybe send me to the ranch like Dr. Phil? Just somewhere for me to have a nice getaway... because god knows my shrink won't do it."
"You're in therapy?" Mable quirked an eyebrow at me, pausing for a few moments over her charts. She gave me a once over. "Good choice."
"Either way, I need one of you just to ship me off, okay?"
"I thought you liked Seattle?" Helen asked cluelessly, frowning at me as if she didn't quite get my strain of humour.
Mable let out a loud, long breath to indicate that she thought Helen was painfully dumb. I just shrugged aimlessly, tapping my fingers against the worktop.
"My shrink wants to talk about family."
I'd quickly come to the conclusion that my family was one of the reasons I was so dark and twisted. Something Laurel had brushed on briefly within our sessions had been trust, or, the lack of in my case. I'd just placidly crossed my arms over my chest and concentrated on anything but what she was saying— where the hell do I even begin?
"Oh," Mable paused, eyebrows drawing down over her dark, stormy eyes. She halted in mid signature at the foot of one her charts. She was caught deep in thought for a few blistering moments. "Your sister is a bitch."
I chuckled. "You're telling me."
"You surrendered your medical records to her, right?"
Helen was an odd person. She was lovely, but she didn't quite fit. She was a square in our very circular friend group. She was a colleague, a woman who I didn't particularly like nor particularly disliked, but spoke to at work as if we'd been best friends for our whole lives.
I knew only hearsay about her. She knew only hearsay about me.
She was this kitschy woman, lived alone in a big house on the outskirts of Seattle- according to Mable, who seemed to know everything about everyone.
She didn't have a cat and she also had been at Seattle Grace (sorry, Seattle Grace Mercy West) for nearly five years as an Attending Psychiatrist, a specialist in Aggression- which I always found very ironic as she was the most unaggressive person I'd ever met. The only time I'd ever heard her say anything mildly negative was about Kyle Bateman.
I shrugged.
"Then what do you have to worry about?"
Helen's question was very blasé. In a way, it was nice for her to think that all of the shit I'd done was legal. That everything that was fucked up about me was all set down on those lovely little medical records I'd handed over to Laurel prior to our first session.
As I stared at her wordlessly, I caught Mable rolling her eyes just in the corner of my peripheral vision.
"Thanks Hel," Mable said thickly, sarcasm coating her serrated tongue. "You're being very helpful."
"Anyway," She shot Mable a sharp look that was seldom ever seen on her face. "I thought your sister was lovely. Addison used to make small-talk with me in the elevator every day."
"Yeah," Mable interjected. "She's nice until she sleeps with your boyfriend, right Beth?"
I didn't say anything, just chortled, amused by the look of shook that flashed across Helen's face. Her mouth opened and then closed, a dark embarrassed blush unfurling across her cheeks. I smiled, eying Mable as she seemed to give herself a mental pat on the back.
That's the sort of person Mable was, I'd discovered that she liked to do justice pieces a lot. Putting people in their place, reinstating order. I could imagine that she was a nightmare on the internet. Maybe it was a good idea I'd never made a Facebook account after all.
"How busy is your schedule today?" Helen breezed into a new subject, pushing her hair behind her ear and ignoring Mable's smug smile. For the thousandth time today, I shrugged, it was a so-so day. "I was paged a while ago to go cover a case for surgery but it was a 'Montgomery preferred call'-"
She gestured to the mountain of paperwork in front of her.
"On it."
Helen and I both shared responsibilities for the surgical pages. We alternated what cases to take and picked up the slack for each other when there wasn't enough time in the day. My job contract literally stated that as soon as a page for a consultation came through I would have to clean up and go ASAP.
Helen was bogged down, she'd signed the same papers- I was on hand to help.
"Fab," She breathed out, noticeably thankful. "It's getting busy down now with the holiday season coming up-" She caught the look that passed in between the two of us; Mable looked as alarmed as I did at this revelation. "Wait, you guys do realise that Thanksgiving is tomorrow, right?"
Fuck.
It was half-way through November already?
The last time I'd been this disorientated there'd been at least a couple of pills involved. Honestly, I couldn't quite remember the last time I'd celebrated Thanksgiving— Calum and Rose hadn't, Charlie had gone home without me before we'd gotten together.
The last Thanksgiving turkey I'd had was probably done by his mother, by an actual domestic goddess, the same year that we'd taken off on our worldwide business ventures.
Something told me that Mable hadn't celebrated it either. I was never too sure what religion she practiced- she didn't seem too eager to share those sort of details with anyone and I didn't want to intrude. But even still, I was pretty sure that Mable wasn't thankful for anything.
"Well, time flies when you're having fun, huh?" I commented idly, although inwards I was screeching incoherently.
What a better time than to talk about family than the most family orientated time of the year?
***
Helen had been right.
The holiday season was too much.
On the eve of Thanksgiving, everyone seemed to be erratic.
I wandered through the ER, eyebrows raised as I noticed all of the casualties around me.
In a dark way that satisfied the darkest corners of my brain, I wasn't surprised that Thanksgiving was so violent. It all came back to the "f word", the big fore bringer of tension and aforementioned erratic and violent behaviour— I barely blinked at an incoming trauma of a man with a butcher knife buried in his hand.
See?
Holidays made people ballistic. It made people make mistakes.
"What a marvellous time of year." I turned my head to see Mark float past, looking all too happy with what he'd snagged himself. His patient, a middle-aged man who looked as though he was in a copious amount of pain, writhed on the bed as it was wheeled along by technicians. Mark flashed me a grin. "Third degree burn from deep frying a turkey? It's like music to my ears."
Then he was gone, off into a trauma room.
Lexie was on a bed in the far corner, tending to a boy whose nose seemed to be turned on as harshly as a faucet- blood streaming down his face as his concerned parents hunched over him. I sighed to myself, side-stepping another incoming trauma, this time a woman who seemed to have a cookie cutter impaled in her foot.
"Where am I needed?" M
y tone seemed rather desperate, more than I suppose that I'd wanted it to be. My eyes flickered around the carnage, oblivious to the fact that no one was paying attention to me. If I was still in surgery this would've been an amazing shift to work.
I leant against the front desk, trying to attract the attention of one of the nurses at the station. However, the all buzzed about, too busy to notice the small cluster of people waiting for charts or help— a blonde girl was stood beside me, noticeably aggravated and attempting to flag down whoever she could identify as an employee. Eventually, her eyes fixed onto me.
"Hey- excuse me?" She must've been in her late teens, tired but determined looking. A pair of vaguely familiar blue eyes stared me down as she hugged a coat to her chest. "Can you help me?"
"Uh, sure."
"I'm looking for Doctor Mark Sloan."
I paused for a moment, looking at her. She met my gaze and lifted a brow, caught off guard by the way my mouth twisted slightly. There was a clear nervousness about her. She shifted from one foot to another, she moved restlessly, cocked her head to the side when I didn't immediately respond.
What could she want with Mark?
It was a subconscious scepticism that reared its ugly little head. A reflex response to anyone asking me anything to do with his where-about's.
Fucking hell, if she was one of his flings then I was clearly not the only one doing illegal shit— after a pregnant pause I turned in the direction of the trauma room Mark had bustled into.
"Uh-" I cleared my throat. "You see the guy with the burns? The guy in that room on the trauma bed?" The visitor nodded, her blonde curls bouncing as she jutted out her bottom lip, looking confused. I got the immediate impression that she'd never met Mark before. "Sloan's the guy making him scream like a little girl."
This will be interesting.
"Doctor Sloan?" She repeated, as if to make sure that she hadn't misheard me.
"Uh-huh." I nodded. "Although you might want to wait a bit before you go in there-" But she'd already left, taking off in the direction of the trauma room. I shook my head- teens these days.
Turning back around to the nurses' desk I managed to finally get a bed number; I'd been paged by an intern, no less, to a bed at the back of the ER. I let out a huff, hauling my ass through the chaos of the main floor and over to where I was needed to be— I pulled back the curtain and my eyes widened.
"I'm here, how can I help?"
Then I noticed who was sat on the bed.
Charlie waved back at me, his face cheery but noticeably pallid.
Instantly, my heart skipped a beat and I found my mind reeling- what the fuck was going on today? Charlie must've seen my reaction as his nose screwed up in a little knot, as if to brace himself for an explosion.
I took in a long breath— not quite registering the fact that Callie was in between me and my boyfriend, an ice box on a nurse's cart beside her.
"What the fuck?"
The front of Charlie's shirt was criss-crossed with blood like an avant-garde Jackson Pollock painting, his jacket looking a little worse-for-wear. He was even wearing his little patriots hat, but it drooped down sadly like a flag at half mask.
He had one hand outstretched and in Callie's lap, the other reached out in my direction and interlaced with mine, pulling him towards me.
"I'm okay," He mumbled, although Callie did something to his hand which made him wince audibly. My grasp on his free hand tightened and my eyes widened in alarm. "Really, Beth, I'm fine-"
"OH MY GOD?!" My eyes caught sight of what was in the ice box. "Is that your finger?"
My dumbass boyfriend had fucking severed his finger.
I seemed to be more terrified than he was. It'd been a long time since I'd seen some shit like that- Charlie's finger was propped up in amongst the ice, looking like something straight out of a horror movie. It nonchalantly chilled, as if it'd just fallen off naturally— my mind flew to the casualties outside.
"Oh my god." I exhaled sharply, my horror instantly turning to fascination. My tone had completely dropped into a low fascinated drawl. "That's your finger."
I leant towards it, staring down at the mess of blood and bone, cocking my head to the side as Callie started talking. She started talking but I wasn't listening- eventually, Charlie snickered, elbowing me in the stomach.
"Hey- uh, babe––"
I rolled my eyes and looked away- see this, was a nice trauma for Callie. Just like Mark had his nice deep fried human, Charlie had been nice enough to serve Callie a second meal— his finger, on a platter. Literally. Charlie went onto to sheepishly admit that he'd brought his own finger into the hospital in a Tupperware container filled with ice.
I'd made a mental note to maybe go shopping for more Tupperware.
"It's just the distal phalanx, luckily." Callie hummed.
She was cleaning the end of Charlie's finger, causing him to wince and inhale sharply at odd moments. I squeezed onto his free hand, but couldn't help staring back at the chunk of flesh Charlie had served up on ice. He'd literally fished it out of the nearly empty pumpkin, wrapped it into a paper-towel, placed it into a box to present to an impressed Callie.
I'd honestly never heard something so aggressively Charlie.
"You just missed the nerves for the top of the middle phalanx." I sat down on the bed beside Charlie, placing his uninjured hand in my lap and stroking his wrist with my thumb. "And to be fair- this is one of the cleanest cuts I've seen in a long time. Your knife work is... breath-taking."
"Thanks." Charlie cheered, his good-natured smile bouncing across his lips. "But clearly not that great if I completely missed what I intended to cut-"
"What were you doing?" I asked, my brow creasing.
Cooking was the most probably answer, and it was correct. Charlie was panic baking a last minute pumpkin pie to get into the festive season- I shook my head at that and pressed a miffed kiss against the back of his hand.
His grip had slipped while he was trying to empty his pumpkin and the top of his left index finger had fallen victim to an unlikely pumpkin cleaning accident.Again, the most aggressively Charlie thing to ever happen.
We hadn't done Thanksgiving in years and clearly, it showed. We hadn't celebrated it in Indonesia, or wherever we'd been before that, and then before that and before that... Charlie making kitchen mistakes
"We've been summoned to Boston." Charlie added on tenderly, when Callie had finished cleaning out the wounds and was now fishing around his distal phalanx, attempting to find a nerve pulse with an electromyograph.
"Boston?"
"Yeah," Charlie said in undertone as my brow furrowed. "Mom's invited us up for dinner tomorrow night. I know it's last minute- I mean, clearly, it's last minute seeing as I was panic-carving a fucking pumpkin-"
"I've found a pulse, it's very faint, but it's there." Callie interrupted our conversation, much to my brief and fleeting relief. She turned the screen around so we could watch the little line jump up and down. It was an odd sight, seeing her hunched over Charlie's severed finger as if she was the moon orbiting the earth.
"Good thinking with the Tupperware, babe." I joked lightly. Charlie rolled his eyes.
"I'll be able to reattach it, get you in the OR." Callie turned around to look at the two of us, I squeezed Charlie's hand once again. "It's a very delicate procedure but won't take longer than an hour. I've done it a million times- I could probably do it in my sleep-"
"How long does it take to heal?"
"2 to 4 weeks." Callie recited like the good little surgeon she is.
"And the rehabilitation process?"
"Finger exercises are usually started after 48 hours." Callie responded, causing Charlie to nod thoughtfully. She glanced between the two of us, a smirk dancing across her face. "But you know- not that type of finger exercises."
Charlie's cheeks burned and I looked away, rolling my eyes. She'd been hanging around with Mark too much, clearly- his inappropriate humour was catching, just like all the other diseases he'd passed on through the years.
"I think I'm going to pass."
I blinked.
Astonished, both Callie and I wheeled around to give Charlie a look that fully shone with how incredulous we both were. My boyfriend just smiled meekly, untangling his hand from mine, pushing his hat up his forehead and leaning forwards.
"Uh- Charlie-"
"I don't really have time for a surgery and rehabilitation." He said softly, and I bit down onto my bottom lip. Another Charlie trait. He was always too busy for his own good, to stressed, too buried under the weight of everything. "So-uh- I think I'm going to pass."
Callie opened her mouth and then closed it. Then she opened it and then closed it again.
"Fair enough." She said eventually and that was that.
She rose to her feet, slapping off her gloves and telling us both off-handedly that she would go find someone from Plastics to suture Charlie's wound. As soon as she disappeared behind the curtain, I turned to Charlie, my brow furrowed.
"If you're stressed about tomorrow-"
"I'm not stressed." He said insistently, but couldn't avoid cracking under my gaze; I lifted a single brow and shook my head lightly side to side. His eyes dropped back to his finger in a single swoop. "Okay, so maybe I'm a little stressed."
"You don't have to make a pie." I continued in the same tone, a hard-pressed voice that was softened with concern. I pressed my hand to his cheek and he leant into it, sighing out of his nose. "We don't have to go to Boston."
"But the flights-"
"It's short notice. Don't disfigure yourself because of your mother."
Charlie didn't really talk about his parents often, in the same way that I didn't talk about mine. But it was clear as day- his mother was over-bearing, his dad was scrutinising.
When his mother said jump he'd been pre-programmed to say "how high?" I just kissed him and laid my head on his shoulder.
I knew that Charlie had shit in his family too. Again, the "f word" was proving a misery today.
I knew that it'd literally driven him to accidentally amputate his own finger. He always got stressed around Thanksgiving, even back before we'd been together, when we'd just been roommates and he'd gone on his own across the city. He'd cook the whole day before and fret over every little detail until everything was perfect.
He seemed more stressed this year. I didn't exactly know why.
"Fuck the finger." He said, suddenly. I looked back up at him and quirked an eyebrow, a slightly-caught-off-guard chuckle falling past my lips. Despite what the last ten minutes or so would suggest, Charlie didn't really swear all too often. I found myself shocked once again. "Fuck Boston- fuck the pie- fuck my air miles-"
"Charlie," I said, squinting up at him. "Now's not the time for teenage rebellion."
He was riled up by something, something that I could see bubbling in his head.
"Could you imagine how angry my Mom would be if she saw my finger like that?" He jerked his head in the direction of the ice box. I sighed, knowing where this was going. Pissed. She'd be pissed. "Fuck the finger-"
Fuck the finger sounded a lot dirtier than he intended. Like Callie, I'd contracted the inappropriate sense of humour. I stared at him for a few moments, waiting for the ball to drop. This was very distinctively not a very Charlie thing to do—
"I mean," He faltered, staring down at the poor little shard of bone and flesh. His fingernail gazed back at him. It was the top of his left ring finger. That'd make a wedding ring interesting.
"Look, Charlie, you don't have to disfigure yourself for your mother... or to piss off your mother." I felt oddly parent like, which was bizarre. Usually Charlie was the one holding the reigns of the sanity, he was the one who was talking me off of the ledge when it came to horrendously irresponsible things. "But, unfortunately, you're an adult so it's your decision."
"I'm having a moment, aren't I?" He blinked at me, suddenly looking very confused.
"I think it's called a crisis. I'm not sure which one but it's happening." I answered.
He didn't disagree.
"I don't want to go to Boston tonight." He admitted finally, licking his lips and this time, squeezing my hand with the one that wasn't mutilated. "I want to throw out that bloodstained pumpkin and order in, maybe from that Indonesian restaurant again."
"Sounds good to me."
It did. It sounded really good.
"Do you want me to go and get Callie and tell her you're going to let her reattach your finger?" He nodded as if he was a schoolchild and I was a teacher asking him to tidy away his belongings. I let out a breath, patting him on the shoulder. "Good call babe."
"It's a deal-breaker? Isn't it?" He called after me as I got to my feet and ducked under the curtain. I briefly glanced back, watching him wave his bloody bandaged fist in the air. "You can't deal with a bit of blood? And please- please don't tell Andrew about this-"
I rolled my eyes.
Another forbidden "f-word". Finger, Family. My list was growing.
Derek was stood at the back of the OR, buried underneath so many charts that he almost looked like he was drowning. At his right-hand side, Mark sat in a chair, staring off into the sea of chaos before him, Callie briefly exchanging a few words with him. I swung beside the three of them and Callie grinned.
"OR?"
"Yeah."
"I'll get him sorted."
"Thank you, I'm sorry he's so dumb."
She chuckled and headed towards Charlie's bed, off to book an OR and to get him sneaked into the queue that I'm sure was forming.
In the meantime, I just let out a long sigh, shaking my head at the thought of my dumbass boyfriend.
"I think my boyfriend's broken." Derek didn't look up at me from the chart he was writing, but his fingers twitched up in amusement. "He really just severed the top of his finger while trying to gut a pumpkin and then almost refused to get it sewn back on because of some long suppressed teen angst."
Mark didn't even seem to acknowledge anyone was talking; he appeared absent, distant, in the way that had me momentarily distracted. I looked over at him, my brow furrowed.
"Is Mark okay-"
"How old did she say she was, again?" Mark suddenly seemed to come alive at the mention of his name; his eyes didn't move from it's distant spot but they widened noticeably. His face was pale, lifeless almost.
"18." Derek answered, again, even looking up from his paper.
"18." Mark repeated.
"Yeah, 18."
"What's going on?" I stared between the two of them, very confused, wondering what the fuck had transpired to make Mark so visibly unsettled. "Don't tell me you're broken too."
"You do realise that I tracked you down because I need you for something?" Derek looked dryly at his ex-best friend, shaking his head as Mark didn't respond.
He continued to look very dead inside, simply rattled to the core. It was a rather dramatic contrast from how happy he'd been earlier, trundling across the ER with his deep-fried human.
"I'm too young." He mumbled almost incoherently.
I blinked. Wait.
"It's a nail in my coffin," I was staring to put together the pieces: the look of vague amusement on Derek's face plus Mark's deathly tone. "It's like death has come to call."
"Okay, can we put a pin in your existential crisis for a minute?" I interjected, attempting to try and wrap my brain around the suspicions that were rapidly forming.
Suddenly, Mark seemed to be aware of the fact that I was there- his head snapped around, his blue eyes blazing as he fixed me with a rather unhinged gaze.
"No," He mumbled, "that's why it's called a crisis."
"Would someone like to elaborate?" I finally asked.
I looked over at Derek. He just shrugged and gestured back to Mark, who'd reverted back to his dormant, shaken state. I had a feeling no one was going to elaborate.
"I want to bolt." Mark confessed, wringing his hands and moving uncomfortably in his chair. "I want to quit— I want to... I want to go back to New York... Or, I don't know Arkansas— somewhere no where will go looking for me."
"Try Canada."
Derek shot me a brief look that was only vaguely disapproving.
"I don't know how to talk to her. The thought of being in a room with her is breaking me into hives-" Mark Sloan was genuinely distressed and it was an interesting experience to say the least. His tone shook very slightly and he kept rubbing his face. Very distressed. "And- I don't know what she wants from me."
"Mark, you need to breath, okay?"
I fell into an awkward pilot mode. He was panicking. I hadn't quite seen him like this before and from a single glance in Derek's direction, he hadn't either. I dropped to a squat in front of Mark, squinting up at him as he hunched over.
"Mark- focus on me- okay- just like that-"
Admittedly, the psychiatrist in me was leaking out and that was interesting to say the least. Mark stared at me, his breathing unsteady and his foot bouncy around in a jaunty, unsettled fashion. Eventually, I pressed a hand onto his arm, and even Derek joined me, squeezing Mark's shoulder.
"It's just the guilt." Mark spoke quietly, his face lined with exactly what he was describing. He was oddly monotone, as if he was attempting to distance himself from everything that was happening. "I think it's the guilt–– I don't really know but something is punching me in the gut every time I look at her––"
What guilt? I wanted to ask. Who is her? But I didn't- I asked myself, what would Laurel Hargreeves do? And filled in the blank from there onwards.
"Well, you shouldn't feel guilty." Derek responded when I didn't say anything. "You didn't know."
Mark shook his head and lean back in his chair, away from us, away from Derek's comforting hand.
"I did know- I knew when her Mom got pregnant."
The girl from before. The blonde teenager who I'd angled in his direction. The girl with the familiar blue eyes and the slight distaste at not being heard. The girl who'd exited the conversation once she'd deemed it useless and had gathered everything she needed to find
Mark.
To find her father.
It was my turn to stare at Mark silently. My head raced and I seemed to completely disassociate completely— he noticed. His brow furrowed and amongst his turmoil, he seemed to share a little bit of guilt with me. I swallowed and my hand slid off of his leg.
Mark had a kid.
"Her Mom told me- Samantha told me." When I rejoined the conversation, Mark was shaking his head again in shame. "But we were kids- we- we were young- and I gave her a couple of hundred bucks and I left town- and I never saw her again."
He seemed to pause to gather his thoughts.
"You know- I figured she got an abortion." He sounded so hopeless as he spoke. The words rang in my ears. "I guess I even hoped- but I knew- I knew about the kid."
Something ugly twisted and unfurled in my stomach. I turned my head away and decluttered my thoughts briefly- what would Laurel do, what would Laurel do, what would a fucking therapist do?
"You're not 18 anymore." Derek said calmly, reinstating his comforting hand on Mark's shoulder. On the other hand, I'd gotten to my feet- Mark glanced at the noticeable distance I'd placed in between the two of us and didn't comment on it. "You're a grown-up now."
"Yeah." Mark muttered, gazing down at his hands. "A grown up and a father."
Family, finger, father.
My list was getting longer and longer.