When Derek returned to the waiting area, Mark was pacing like a mad man. Derek felt his heart drop into his stomach, as he looked for some indication as to why Mark was so agitated.
"What happened?"
Mark turned to him, a wild look in his eyes. "She is in the ICU. Bailey is letting me go in for a few minutes."
Derek breathed a sigh of relief. "That's great. So she will be okay?"
Mark sat down heavily on one of the chairs, putting his head into his hands. "She lost a kidney, Derek. A mother-fucking kidney."
"People live full lives with only one—"
"Don't give me that bull, I know that. Do you think I don't know that?" Mark's breaths were heavy, and lacking in consistency. In fact, it seemed as though he was breathing without taking in any air. "That doesn't change the fact that she lost an organ. And blood. So much blood. How am I supposed to get over the fact that she almost died?"
"Do you want the standard answer?"
"How 'bout the truth," Mark said.
Derek shook his head, as if he were trying to clear his mind. "You won't get over it. Now, in the beginning it is fresh and new. It will drive you crazy if you let it. And when she wakes up you will feel as though every move she makes needs to be monitored and analyzed so that she is safe. Eventually, you will move that panic, that fear, to one small corner of your mind, but it will always be there, haunting you. When she is fifteen minutes late, when there is an accident nearby, when she wants to take a risk…you will never forget or get over it, but it does fade." Derek took a shuddering breath. "I am sorry to say that I know exactly how you feel. So I can be here for you…if you want."
"Sorry, no." Mark said, his eyes looking into Derek's. "You don't know how I feel." His voice contained some small challenge, as if he were daring Derek to test him.
"With Mere—"
"Meredith was, and is, the woman that you love," Mark replied. "So in that way, yes, you know what I am going through. But as for the rest, you really have no idea."
"I don't know what you mean," Derek said. "What 'rest'?"
"You have had a charmed life, Derek. Before Meredith, there were many other people who loved you. Your mom, your sisters, numerous girlfriends, Addison, they all would have lined up to take a bullet for you. And you don't know how lucky that makes you. But me, I have never had anyone. No one who ever saw any good in me and chose to love me."
"That's not true," Derek argued. "My mom—"
"Your mom loves me because of you, Derek," Mark said. "Perhaps that has changed now, but in the beginning that was certainly true. And I don't begrudge you any of it; don't think I do. It's just that I never had that. But Lexie…well, everything was different with her from the beginning. She came into my life and just exploded everything that I knew about relationships and love and what I was capable of. So yeah, Lexie is like how you feel about Meredith in that sense, but the difference is, is that Lexie is it for me Derek. She is the only person in the world who loves me, and she is the only person that I have ever been able to trust enough to love."
Derek had never heard such words come out of his friend's mouth; he didn't know he was even capable of such feelings.
Mark continued, "So if I lose her, if this doesn't turn into the reunion that you and Meredith had, then that is it for me. I'm done; I'm out. I couldn't even begin to imagine living without her and I am not sure that I would even want to try. I think I could operate and do paperwork, and exist, but I would never want to feel anything again. So no, Derek, I don't think that you could, for even a moment, relate to what I am going through."
Derek opened his mouth, but then he closed it again. What was there to say?
"Dr. Sloan?" A nurse stood there, holding a clipboard. "Dr. Bailey sent me to take you back to see Dr. Grey."
Mark had lurched up from his seat when she had started speaking and followed after the ICU nurse as she led him through the corridor back to see Lexie.
Derek did not follow; he knew Mark wanted time alone with her. He wanted to deny to himself all that Mark had just said, but he knew he could not. Derek had been blessed with a wonderful support system that Mark had always wanted. Derek supposed that Lexie was his support system now. Derek only prayed that Mark did not have that taken away from him too.
***
After thanking the startled nurse, Mark opened the sliding glass door that served as the barrier to Lexie's room. From where he stood, he could see her chest rising up and down in a gentle rhythm, but that was not enough to assure him of her beating heart. Moving more fully into the room, Mark watched her monitors as if he was guarding against some horrible twist of fate. When nothing seemed awry, he dragged a chair over by Lexie's bed and sat down.
It was horrible to see he like this. She was still intubated; that tube sticking out of her mouth at an odd angle, dragging on her lips. And in addition to that, she was attached to wires all over her body, monitoring everything. Mark had a hard time seeing her connected to all those things, but it was her face that he had the hardest time looking at. It had now begun to swell, as purple bruises had finally decided to appear.
To Mark, each bruise was a symbol of how Lexie had suffered because of him. Though this reasoning made little sense, even to him, Mark felt guilt when he saw her face. She was in pain because of him. There was no other truth in his mind.
And yet in his mind, even with all the tubing and the wires and the bruises, Lexie was still the most beautiful woman in the world. It amazed him how she could, even recently, doubt her own beauty.
"Will you still love me when I am old and wrinkly?"
Mark looked over at Lexie, who was propped up in their bed against the pillows reading a book and not even looking at him for an answer. "Is this a trick question?"
Lexie grinned, and put down her book, turning her brown eyes to him. "No, really, I want to know. You have seen a million faces, and you are a plastic surgeon. I want to know if you think it is possible to love someone when they have grown old."
Mark put down the medical journal he was holding and gave her his full attention. He sensed that this was one of those relationship tests that he had to pass. "I will still love you when you are old, Lexie."
"And wrinkly?" Lexie asked.
"And wrinkly too," Mark agreed.
"You won't want me to get surgery when I get to a certain age?"
Mark looked at her, genuinely shocked with what she was asking. "Why would you want to do that? You wouldn't be Lexie anymore."
She smiled. "I would, I would just be a younger, better version of me."
Mark shook his head. "Lex, it is not like that at all. People don't come to me when they like their lives. They come to me when they want to change. When they need some impetus to alter their existence." His eyes bore steadily into hers. "I wouldn't want you to take away any part of you that was part of making you the woman that I love."
"So when every part of me starts to sag, you are saying that it would be fine with you?" Her eyes were warm in contrast to her skeptical, if teasing, tone.
"Lexie, our relationship has never been about just that. Had I wanted to use you and was this more shallow, then I would say do whatever you want. But that is not what we are about and never has been. I love you Lexie, and it was my great surprise when I realized that the thought of lifetime with you didn't scare me."
"What are you saying?" Lexie asked.
"I am saying I want to grow old with you," Mark replied, coming as close as he ever had to proposing. "I want to see you at every stage of your life, unaltered." He then looked back down at his medical journal as if the matter had been settled.
Lexie looked at him with surprise and pleasure on her face. "I love you, Mark Sloan," she said, picking up her book and beginning to read again.
There was a pause, and then Mark smirked and said, "Besides, I think you are going to be hot when you are older."
Lexie snorted. "Women are never 'hot' when they are older, that is why we have to put up with such annoying sayings as 'ageing gracefully'."
"I dunno, I think most people age okay," Mark murmured.
"That's easy for you to say," Lexie grumbled. "You will probably look like Sean Connery when you get older."
Mark just laughed, tossing the article aside and pinning Lexie beneath him. "Does that make you my Bond girl?" He asked, a wicked grin on his face.
Lexie just shook her head. "What am I going to do with you?"
"Kiss me," he said, "And as for the rest, I promise to love you always."
She smiled, and pulled his face to hers. As he kissed her, Mark wondered how it was that Lexie was so insecure about the future, when he was so worried about the here and now.
Mark lifted Lexie's hand, ignoring the monitor attached to one of her fingers and the IV in her vein, and kissed the tops to her knuckles. She was still as beautiful to him as that night in his hotel room when she had taken off her sweater and asked him to teach her. Little did either of them know that it was he who would receive the lesson.
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