Don't say victim

Chapter 11


Mark Sloan had been sitting in the cafeteria for five minutes. Addison had been hassling him to go an eat for over an hour now. She had been on his case about looking after himself more and more in the last couple of days and finally he had given in and walked down the hall to the cafeteria. He had ordered himself a healthy lunch and had eaten all of two bites before he let out an exasperated, exhausted and frustrated sigh and pushed the tray away.

It had been over a week since the night he refused to allow himself to think about, she had been awake for nearly five days so far. She was healing slowly, very slowly but both Alex and Christina had assured him that she was in fact healing, physically anyway. It had been five days since Mark had kissed her and even then it had been a chaste kiss on her bruised, grazed and swollen forehead. Five days since he'd held her hand and five days since he had been into her room. Five days felt like ten years and he was having withdrawal. Consumed by his thoughts of his broken Callie, and his seclusion from her room he didn't notice the employees of Seattle Grace watching him closely, his every move. Doctors, Nurses, janitors, surgeons and the lunch ladies alike all watching him, waiting ..for something. He also didn't see the interns who had been given a break from being in the hospital spotlight and they were rather unsure if they liked it or not. He missed George's eyes flickering his way more than often as well as Meredith and Izzie's. They looked lonely, unhappy, and incomplete now that they were missing two fifths of their group. Mark did notice something else however about ten minutes into his lunch,

When Derek Shepherd ran through the doors of the cafeteria, Mark looked up as if almost sensing him and pushed and quickly stood up, something was wrong, something had happened. He began to run towards Derek who shook his head making Mark frown and come to a stop.

"It's nothing like that, it's alright" Mark looked at him questioningly,

"Callie's parents are here" Mark paled feeling his throat constrict and he almost groaned before turning and beginning to walk back towards Callie's room. Derek walked alongside him and as they neared her room they could already hear loud voices,

There was yelling almost screaming actually screeching would be more accurate and all Mark could see from the window was Mrs. Torres yelling and screaming at her daughter. While he couldn't understand the Spanish that was flying from her lips he could understand the upset, tortured and pained expression fixing itself on Callie's face.

Mark stood beside Derek and the pair stood in front of the crowd that was beginning to form watching the scene in front of them unfold but when the tears began falling Mark couldn't hack it anymore there was no way he could stand there and let her go through anything else. Not when he finally had some control in what happened to her so he pushed the doors to her room open and walked in.

"Mr and Mrs Torres I'm sorry I'm going to have to ask you to step out please"

"Sloan" Mark was surprised that the patriarch of the Torres family remembered his name,

"I'm sorry but her stats are rising and after her surgery Callie really can't be under any more stress" Mark looked at the pair and Callie watched all three of them closely,

"me has decepcionado Calliope" Adrianna spat towards Callie before striding out of the room. Callie looked down lowering her eyes, breathing heavily,

"Callie" She stared at him her chest rising and sinking erratically almost in time with her irregularly fast heartbeat.

When he moved closer, he wanted to comfort her, to hold her and make sure she knew it was going to be okay, she jerked away from him physically pulling her entire body away from him. He watched her face grimace at her actions from the pain but he didn't dare move forward,

"Cal breathe, breathe hon, you're alright" It was incredibly hard to stop a patient hyperventilating without being able to get closer to them, to touch them, assure them it was okay. And it was even harder to watch Callie lose control of her body, she was so composed, so directed normally and now...it was too hard to watch, too hard to watch her suffer and hurt and not be able to help her, fix her, hold her. As Alex, Addison and Christina together moved back into the room Mark stumbled backwards out of it. He met Callie's eyes when she raised them to meet his, they were wet with tears and they'd lost their normal sparkle, they were dull, haunted and he couldn't do anything to fix it.

Little did he know the heartache, the pain, the complicated mess that this all was, was about to increase tenfold.

Mark escaped the whole scene; all of a sudden it was too much. He felt as out of control of the whole situation as one person could be. He'd gone from being Callie's rock, her best friend and for a very brief time, her boyfriend to the man who wasn't allowed in her room, who she didn't feel safe with, who had left her to be...he shook his head. It wasn't his fault. And yet as many times as he'd told himself that, as Derek had told him, as Addison and Owen had told him he still just couldn't quite get himself to truly relieve himself of the responsibility.

Mark slid down the wall of the male toilets. He was lost; he'd been walking around this hospital lost, meaninglessly for the last week or so. Waiting,

He hated waiting.

He hated waiting, helplessly unable to do anything.

He sat there for a couple of minutes before breathing deeply and moving out to the bathroom leaning against the sink,

"Why were we not called? We're her parents why weren't we the first people rang?" Mark looked up to see a furious Esteban Torres glowering at him in the mirror. Mark stood upright and turned bracing himself,

"You're not her emergency contact Sir, I am and Christina Yang is her secondary contact. We're here Sir it made more sense, Callie is mine and I'm hers. She's my best friend" It had made perfect sense in his head, but listening to the words he'd just blurted out he couldn't help but think he was about to be in even more trouble,

"HER BEST FRIEND! Then why aren't you in there with her then? Why is it some other man that is comforting my daughter while you're out doing God knows what Dr Sloan" Marks fists tightened at his side, he knew it. He felt more useless than anybody could tell him he was, but hearing it from someone else, her father none the less was different. Mark spoke quietly,

"She was assaulted Mr. Torres everybody deals with it in different ways and if this is Callie's way then I will wait. I will wait until she is ready for me to be in the same room as her, I will wait until she is ready to talk to me. I will wait and I will be here for her every minute of every day. I won't let her down, I won't leave her to fend for herself in her worst moments I think too much of that has happened already, don't you agree?" Esteban's eyes narrowed at Mark's accusation,

"You can't let people recover from this type of thing like this, you need to force her to talk, Callie doesn't deal this way. You need to go in there or she'll never let you in there and we certainly won't be leaving either Dr. We have to make sure our daughter gets back on her feet don't we? Especially if no one else is going to do it "

"What before you disappear from the face of the earth again, before she doesn't hear from you for another year or something?" Mark knew he should stop, you don't tell a parent that they're doing a terrible job and you certainly don't tell the very powerful, very influential Esteban Torres that he was doing a crap job at parenting and yet here he was yelling at the man.

"You left her with nothing, you deserted her when she needed you most and I was there for her then and I'll be there for her now. I'm not going to force her to do anything, there's another thing she's been through a bit too much of, you really think that's the best way to get Callie better?" The man reddened further,

"You forced her to move out of her home, she was forced to take a demotion, now this, not to mention the constant manipulation from you and your wife!"

"You do not talk to me like this boy"

"WHAT YOU HAVEN'T HEARD IT BEFORE, YOU DON'T TREAT PEOPLE LIKE THAT, YOU DON'T TREAT CALLIE LIKE THAT! You know I have stuck up for you time and time again, told Callie that she's lucky to have you and let me tell you she loves you so much. And then you do this and now I get it. She's not lucky, if this is what she grew up in, constant criticism, constant pressure, you and her mother always telling her she's not good enough, JESUS SHE BECAME A DOCTOR FOR YOU! TO IMPRESS YOU! AND WHAT DO YOU DO NOW, YOU AND HER MOTHER JUST GO AROUND TELLING HER THAT SHE'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH, THAT SHE CHOSE THE WRONG FIELD, MADE BAD DECISIONS!"

It was safe to say that the bathroom had been cleared a while ago but the yelling had obviously attracted attention and his voice was obviously loud enough to hear outside as Derek and Owen moved into the room,

"YOU GIVE HER SUCH A HARD TIME, YOU TOOK EVERYTHING AWAY FROM HER BECAUSE WHAT? BECAUSE HER HUSBAND CHEATED ON HER? BECAUSE SHE GOT MARRIED IN VEGAS? BECAUSE SHE GOT DIVORCED? SHE NEEDED YOU SO MUCH AND WHERE THE HELL WERE YOU? WHERE WERE YOU? CAUSE I WAS HERE AND I KNOW THAT YOU DIDN'T CALL I KNOW THAT YOU DIDN'T SUPPORT HER, NO YOU TOOK AWAY HER SAFETY, HER HOME AND HER DIGNITY. YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU DID TO HER SO DON'T COME IN HERE AND THINK THAT YOU HAVE ANY RIGHT IN THE WORLD TO TELL ME HOW I SHOULD BE LOOKING AFTER HER OR WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE CAUSE IT WILL ALWAYS BE A HELL OF A LOT MORE THAN YOU!" Esteban Torres simply looked at him and for half a second Mark swore the man was going to punch him out, the vein in the older man's head was bulging dangerously and Mark would swear his eyebrow twitched, but he did nothing. The older man simply glared at him before walking out, he walked passed Mark and the other two men and left the room, left an angry Mark.

"FUUUUUCK" Mark swung around and slammed his fist into the wall beside him,

"DAMN IT" he clutched his hand which was now bleeding before he turned back to Derek and Owen.


Christina Yang had been paged exactly twelve minutes ago and Addison and Alex sat by Callie's side. Alex was flittering around, filling in her chart. They'd finally got her breathing under control and eased Callie safely back down in bed. She knew it was now, now that she had to tell them, she wanted to wait for Christina, but she didn't know how she'd react, in reality she didn't know how Addison or Alex would react either. Ideally she wanted Mark, she wanted to tell Mark everything, wanted him to hold her and tell her that it would be okay, that she was safe and that he would look after her. She wanted Mark to be everything that he hadn't been. The other he. But there was no way she was going to risk it she didn't want to Mark to look at her like he had, say the things that he had said. She knew she had to talk now though or she wouldn't ever be able to say it.

"It happened before" Her voice was quiet but Addison looked up at Callie from her seat next to her and Alex turned from filling her drug cabinet, they both froze puzzled and yet as they turned to look at Callie a sinking feeling settling in their stomachs told them something was about to get a whole lot worse,

"What do you mean Cal?" Alex questioned softly

"This...this..me being...this, it all, two years ago, I" Callie broke off unable to form the words as tears invaded her eyes and ran down her pale cheeks,

"You were assaulted two years ago?" Addison asked her eyes wide. Alex and Addison just looked at Callie waiting for an answer not believing what they had just heard, Callie's confession had made the feeling well in the pits of their stomachs intensify and bubble up into their chests while at the same time made everything else make sense. Addison just looked at her best friend for a moment taking in Callie's shame. She watched the woman avoid their eyes and wrap her arms around herself as much as she could as if she was shielding herself from their reactions. Addison wondered if Callie had told anyone, she doubted it. They hadn't been friends at that time, she'd barely known her but then again it was around the time she was with George, maybe he had known. It was all Addison could do to stand up and perch on the side of Callie's bed before stretching out her arms. It took all of two seconds for Callie to collapse into them and Addison tightened her grasp on her best friend, as the hardcore orthopaedic surgeon began to cry in earnest letting out two years of pent up emotion.


What do you think? Please let me know...

And yes I know, I know I'm making it even worse for Callie but ... well wait and see :D

And thank you sooo much to everyone who had reviewed this story it helps soo much to write!

Nina xx