Author: Grand Delusions
Rating: T
Disclaimer: If they were mine, it'd be called "Sloan's Anatomy"
Spoilers: up to 3x10ish
Keywords: Mark, snark, drabble
Author's Note: This is somewhat high on snark and irreverance. You've been warned. It is also oh so not betaed or proofed.
Summary: A perspective is directly impacted by the vantage point of any given situation. Change the vantage point, and you're certain to change the perception. What would happen if the occurrences in Seattle Grace were seen through Mark's eyes?
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Vantage Point
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The unfortunate reality is that you can never escape yourself. And no matter how hard you try otherwise, you are who you are.
If you ask around, I'm a jerk. A selfish, egotistical ass. A rude, abrasive womanizer. On the flip side, I am also considered a very attentive dinner date (until I have to rush off to my next engagement). But if you wander the halls of Seattle Grace you will learn that I am uniformly viewed as the resident asshole.
You would think that doctors and nurses would be able to look at things from every angle. These are professionals who have spent so many years of training and education dedicated to learning how everything from a seemingly simple diagnosis to a seemly basic virus that's composed of a series of complex structures would be able to carry that concept along to humans.
But pediatric nurses seem to assume every parent with a sick child is an abuser, and every resident in the psych ward thinks everyone has their own set of personal issues (except for themselves, of course), and every member of the surgical ward seems to think that I'm a shallow manwhore.
If only it were all that easy.
So why am I here?
I wish I knew.
Sometimes it feels like a cosmic joke that I accepted the challenge when Webber asked me to revive their failing plastics department. Like someone else made the decision for me without any sort of consideration how it would play out in the long run.
And every day I see a new affront to the gods of surgery and I scratch my head and wonder how this department hasn't lost its accreditation or been sued for negligence or malpractice.
When Webber brushed over the subject that Seattle Grace was a 'teaching hospital,' I should've honed in on that.
I'm sorry, I thought I was brought out here to restructure their lackluster plastics department. Do they seriously expect me to humor interns when I have to bring this department into the 21st century?
My job is to operate, not to teach green interns fresh out of medical school how not to kill anybody.
Not that they couldn't benefit from such a lesson. Frankly, it's a wonder the hospital hasn't been shut down already. Teaching accreditation? Seriously? When the interns are left to wander around, killing patients, cutting LVADs, and sleeping with their bosses for surgeries?
Oh yes, the nurses talk. I've heard it all.
It's quite frightening to see the surgical interns running about the surgical floor like lost children. At first, I figured it was best to avoid them, and based on how I've heard the nurses talk about them, I can see I was correct. I've never been a fan of nurses, but their constant chatter does allow for the transference of valuable information.
Unfortunately, occasionally the façade of "educating" the hapless interns forces me to take one or two with me on rounds, but since this joke of a residency program doesn't place them in specific rotations for the areas of surgical practice, I'm only forced to work with one for a day or two. If I was lucky, I could run them off in a day with demands for coffee and errands.
I don't work with interns. 'Intern' is synonymous with 'idiot.'
They all look the same. Wide-eyed and idealistic. Not the stuff a capable surgeon is made of at all. I saw a few of them during my first few days fumbling around the hospital. They'd kiss up thinking that by asking if I needed anything that I would turn to them with such grateful appreciation that I would automatically allow them in on a surgery.
I didn't become the best plastic surgeon in New York by allowing brown-nosers in on my procedures. In fact, the best thing about my private practice was the luxury of working alone.
They're all idiots. All of them. I'm surrounded by idiots.
The biggest idiot of them all is some kid named Karev.
Now, it's not that I hate Karev. It's just that whenever he gets within ten feet of a scalpel, he starts salivating worse than Pavlov's dogs. He's best skill is trailing at my heels as though it would help endear himself to me.
Maybe it's a result of all that time working with Addison, and that may have worked just fine for her, but she's headmistress of the gynie brigade, and she's into that touchy-feely stuff. If I'm doing any touchy-feely, it will certainly not be with Karev.
Although the hot blonde Stevens chick isn't a bad option.
Except for the fact she's a walking liability.
The first day it clicked in my mind who all of Grey's friends were I was just a little over a week into my job. Torres and I had managed an uncomfortable elevator ride in complete silence until we were deposited on the surgical floor and she mentioned she'd see me in the M&M.
Webber had also apparently failed to mention mandatory pow-wows with the rest of the staff. Great…
So as I wandered the corridors until I found the auditorium where residents and attendings were filtering in, I noticed what could only unmistakably be an intern carrying snacks into the M&M.
Snacks! As though malpractice and liability was some sort of spectator sport!
After grabbing a seat along the back wall I settled in for what was undeniably an interesting introduction to Seattle Grace, which cemented in my mind why I'm perfectly justified treating the pack of 'terns like the hired help they are.
But apparently I am here to teach, and teach I must. But before the potter molds the clay he must beat all the impurities out of the material. That's what I'm doing—removing all imperfections from my students. And the first lesson is to listen to your attending.
It sounds like a nice excuse, doesn't it?
Addison doesn't get it. Richard doesn't get it. No one seems to get why I don't want one of these breathing malpractice suits following me.
If Karev's my intern and if he's as interested in plastics as he likes to brag to the rest of his rag-tag band of misfits, then I reserve the right to train him in whatever way I see fit.
And why am I training them, anyhow? They never seem to learn—the only thing floating around their painfully empty heads is the thought of cutting someone open.
When I was an intern, your job was to sit quietly and do your chores without complaint. This issue of cutting in your first year? Highly unprofessional.
You don't allow a child to operate a dangerous machine by putting them behind the wheel, and you don't put some cocky kid with a blade in hand over a living, breathing body. There's a reason you practice on corpses, after all.
Like I said, it's shocking this place hasn't been shut down.
The biggest conundrum of all is how offended everyone seems that I'd like to just do my damn job. Sure, I find my dinner dates in the hallways, and I insist that my interns run my errands, but it's all so I can be at the top of my game when I operate.
I am who I am. I like caffeine and coffee, clean clothes and sex. I know I'm the best, and considering the problems this place has been having, I don't understand why everyone acts like the status quo has been working for this place.
For some reason, people seem to resent the one who rocks the boat.
-el fin-