A/N: Alright, I generally make it a rule not to put Author's Notes before the actual story, but I'm making an exception here because I want to make sure everybody reads this. I am getting literally no reviews, which can only lead me to believe that my story is getting worse. So please, review the chapters and give me some feedback, because I'm considering discontinuing this story due to lack of reader interest. Now, sorry for the long monologue. Enjoy the next chapter!
Home Is Where the Heart Is
Stepping into the hospital that he'd only been in once before, Mark felt more at home than he had since Addison had called him to Seattle - more at home than when he'd lain next to Addison in her bed and felt her warmth, more so than their last conversation in Joe's bar, and certainly more at home than he'd felt this morning in the barren hotel room he was living in until he found a more permanent place at which to stay.
After Addison had left him in Joe's Bar, Mark found that he no longer ached to be in New York. Before, there had been hope in New York. Hope that Derek would forgive him, hope that Addison would see that she had lost her claim on Derek's heart and want his instead. There was nothing left for him there. Seattle, for all its rain, had a life for him, and so Mark found himself selling his New York practice, buying an umbrella, and taking Meredith's advice. As she'd suggested to him, Richard Webber did have a place for a Head of Plastics at Seattle Grace, and now Mark was a doctor there.
As he walked up to the conference room in which he'd been told to meet the Chief, Mark watched keenly for any blue-clad doctors he recognized from his previous visit, hoping for Meredith. As much as he wanted to repair his relationships with Derek and Addison, he craved a friendly face among the strangers rather than one filled with contempt.
He found the room with some difficultly in the massive hospital, and saw the Chief waiting with an important looking man. "Dr. Sloan, this is our head of legal," the Chief greeted him. "You've just got one more form to sign, and then we will officially welcome you as the new head of Plastics here."
Mark signed the form, and the Dr. Webber held out a white coat, monogrammed with his name and title. He accepted it and pulled it on before shaking hands with both men. Mark looked up, through the window of the conference room, just in time to see Addison catch sight of him. He couldn't hear what she said, but whatever it was caused Derek to look up, followed by the turning heads of the interns standing just outside the room. Their stricken faces spoke louder than the words that drifted through the glass.
"Is that…" one intern, the boyish looking one, started to asked before trailing off.
"McSteamy," another one - Dr. Yang - confirmed, grinning triumphantly.
Mark was just turning away from the hostile faces of Derek and Addison when the boyish intern's attention was suddenly riveted by something Mark couldn't see, and the flash of an explosion filled the corridor with blinding white light an instant before the intern shouted urgently, "No, Mr. Sullivan, don't light that!" The hallway became chaos as the Chief, Mark, and the cluster of interns all rushed towards the man who had been foolish enough to light a cigarette in front of his oxygen tube.
The first few moments flew by in a blur of activity as all emergency procedures did - tiny details standing out in astonishing clarity while everything else was fuzzy, out of focus, obscure. The charred, blackened face of the middle-aged patient - the resident ordering her interns into action - the sterility of the white gauze that Mark pressed against the raw, grotesque skin of Mr. Sullivan.
The uneasiness that Addison's and Derek's glares had incited was forgotten as Mark fell into a role that was the same regardless of where he was or whether it was raining or not. There was a patient, and he was a doctor, and Mark experienced a feeling that he'd forgotten in the past Addison-filled week. For as long as Mr. Sullivan needed him, Mark knew who he was and he was sure, which, it it's own way, was a kind of finding of a home.
"Looks like you didn't come here a moment to soon. No other plastic surgeon in the country could make something out of what's left of Mr. Sullivan the way you can," the Chief commented during the quick tour of the hospital he was giving Mark.
"Don't get you're hopes too high," Mark cautioned, wondering if his fame had set an unattainable precedent. "I'll do what I can, but with burns that deep? He'll never look the same."
Dr. Webber shook his head slowly. "I wouldn't blame you if you couldn't do much for him. What kind of idiot lights a cigarette in a hospital."
Out of nowhere Derek appeared, and Mark closed his eyes briefly, knowing the moment of confrontation would come at some point, but wishing that it could be put off for at least a few more hours. Even behind his closed eyelids, all Mark could see was an afterimage of Derek and his stupid, perfect hair.
"Apparently people do idiotic things all the time," Derek said, and Mark opened his eyes to see that Derek was talking to the Chief, not him. Was that it, then? Mark wondered. Did his ex-best friend think that they could work together and not even speak?
The Chief put his hands on his hips and turned away to walk up the nearby staircase, and to Mark's relief, Derek followed, calling after him.
Mark turned his gaze away from the retreating backs of Dr. Webber and Derek, and the relief vanished as Addison seemed to materialize in front of him out of nowhere.
"I thought you were going back to New York," she said, crossing her arms over her chest.
"I thought it was time for a change," Mark said, making an effort to sound offhand.
"You can't be here."
"Sure I can," Mark said, keeping his voice slow and smooth, trying the tone he used when reassuring a worried patient about a surgery. "It was easy. Sublet the apartment, sold the practice."
"You cannot come here and destroy the respect that I have earned. I was the woman who cheated on the wonderful neurosurgeon with the perfect hair. I'm not that person anymore, and your presence destroys who I am." Addison crossed her arms more tightly and glared.
Mark was taken aback at the unexpected accusation. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he'd always known that he cared for Addie more than she ever cared for him, but did she really believe that he regarded her as callously as that? He'd come for her, for Derek. How could she not know that?
"Why are you here?" Addison hissed at him.
"Why do you think I'm here?" he asked, slightly perturbed.
"This," Addison said, gesturing vaguely at the length of his body. "This is why I left you."
Mark narrowed his eyes at her and pointed out, "I thought you left me for Derek."
Addison seemed at a loss for words, but Mark never discovered what she would have come up with to distance herself from him further because Meredith, who was standing nearby with a small audience of interns, suddenly snatched her hair away from her face, leaned over the counter of the nurses' station, and vomited.
"Oh, this is just perfect," Addison sighed as Derek left the Chief and rushed down the stairs to Meredith. "An adulteress love child."
"Goes along with an adulteress sociopath," Derek muttered, his voice like ice. Mark groaned quietly as Addison stalked away and the attention turned to Grey. Thankful for the diversion, he slipped away amidst the commotion to round on his first set of patients. As he left the scene behind him, he chuckled quietly to himself that his fellow dirty mistress never failed to pull through for him when things got rough.
Mark finished rounding on his patients and was coming up outside Mr. Sullivan's room, where he saw a resident leafing through the patient's chart. She glanced up as he approached her, but rather than giving him the chart, continued to look through it. "That's my patient's chart," he said, holding out his hand for it.
"Yeah, I know, the short woman said, still not looking at him. "I was checking on the Sullivans, and how is he doing because-"
Mark, thoroughly bewildered at her behavior, raised his eyebrows and asked in confusion, "You are?"
"Dr. Bailey," she said, seeming as surprised as he was. "We met this morning." She was looking at him as though there was something wrong with him. "I was the resident on Mr. Sullivan's bypass," she reminded him.
"Well, I don't need a resident on this case, so…" Why did she still have his chart?
She widened her eyes. "Excuse me, I wasn't asking to be your resident. I was asking how my patient was doing," she pursued.
This was not the first time Mark had been caught wrong-footed during the day. This certainly was a strange hospital with a very vague pecking order. "He's not your patient anymore," Mark said simply, plastering a charming smile on his face to cover his confusion, and escaping from this oddly intimidating resident, only to do something he was looking forward to less and less. He wished that he hadn't sent his overly-eager intern off for coffee so that it could be Karev rather than himself seeking out Derek for a consult.
Mark was unsurprised to find Derek leaving Meredith's room. "How's your little intern there doing?" Mark inquired cautiously.
"Oh?" Derek said coldly. "You've got designs on her, too? My wife wasn't enough? Leave, Mark. And she's not my 'little intern'."
Mark wished he hadn't made a personal comment. "I need a neuro consult." Mark fidgeted with the edge of the scrubs that he'd changed into, feeling like they were still awkward kids on the playground asking for a turn on the swing set.
Derek glared. "Fine."
"Fine," Mark answered, somehow making the word into a childish retort.
Minutes later, Derek was in the burn unit recommending a night of observation before surgery.
Mark raised one eyebrow at Derek's judgment and asked quietly, "Is that really necessary, Dr. Shepherd?" Derek cast a glance at Mrs. Sullivan, who was watching anxiously, twisting her hands together. He stepped away from the gurney and came close enough to speak more privately. "The longer we wait, the greater risk of infection."
As Derek protested, Mark marveled that even in the doctor-patient setting, Derek didn't fail to convey the depth of his hatred merely though the tone of his voice. "Why did you ask for a consult if you'd already determined a course of action?" Derek asked, his voice tight.
"Because I thought you were good enough at your job to put aside your personal issues," Mark growled.
Mark knew he was walking a tenuous line, but half of him wanted Derek to punch him as he had when Mark had first arrived in Seattle, because that would have been better than Derek's calm, rational hatred. His train of thought was disrupted when the patient's wife entreated him to just fix her husband's face. Mark raised his eyes to meet Derek's with an unveiled expression of gloating triumph. Derek spun around and stalked out of the patient's room. Mark exhaled in a huff and followed on Derek's heels, the family of Mr. Sullivan forgotten.
"Derek," Mark tired to speak. Dr. Shepherd walked faster, pulling on his white coat with more force than was necessary. "Derek!"
"What?" Derek paused, still keeping his back towards Mark.
"If what happened between me and Addison is so unforgivable," Mark said, his voice low and angry, "how do you justify what happened between you and Meredith?"
Derek yanked the collar of his coat straight and looked piercingly at Mark. "What are you talking about," he spat furiously.
Mark clenched his hands. Always, always, Derek was the one who was right. When they were children and now, it was still the same. Derek was perfect, while he, he had never been more than the lonely charity case Carolyn Shepherd was generous enough to accept. Derek had always been McDreamy, even before a group of ridiculous interns had coined the name. Mark was still the dirty mistress. For his whole life he'd fought to be as good as Derek - to have Derek's family, his hair, his charm, his skill.
"If you want me to be the bad guy, fine," Mark snapped. "But I'm not the only bad guy here, Derek. You and me? We're just the same." It was liberating, to finally say those self-righteous words - liberating until he stopped and looked into Derek's eyes and saw that he had said the one thing that could possibly make Derek loath him more than he already did. Left standing there alone, Mark rubbed his hand over his face and wondered how he had only damaged things when all he had wanting in moving to Seattle was to win Derek back.
He sighed and walked to the nurses' station, hating himself for letting himself argue with Derek again. When he heard the phrase "McSteamy" in the background, he gritted his teeth and sighed. Meredith's endearing name had taken on a life of it's own, and it ensured that nobody at the hospital saw him as anybody more than the whore who slept with Derek's wife. He closed his eyes, wondering if Seattle would disappear if he kept them shut long enough.
"McSteamy! Woo hoo!" the voice called again. This time Mark turned towards the sound, and he saw Meredith sitting up on a gurney, waving animatedly at him.
He strode towards her, his face lit up. "Is that what you're calling me now, 'McSteamy'?" he asked even though he was far too well acquainted with the name. He felt like his face might split from smiling so broadly after such a long time.
"Yeah, but I don't think you're s'posed to know that," she drawled.
Mark decided that he enjoyed the drug-laden Meredith almost as much as the sober one. "How's my favorite dirty mistress ?" he asked, oddly happier than he'd been in a long time.
"Haven't ya heard?" Meredith asked. "Now I'm an adulteress whore."
Mark laughed, a real laugh, the kind that started deep in his throat - somewhere near his heart - the kind of laugh he hadn't had since he could remember.
"I knew you'd come back to Seattle!" she chirped happily.
"Well, you know," Mark said, leaning in towards her as he whispered conspiratorially, "We dirty mistresses need to stick together."
