xii. circles

(song by post malone)

.

.

It was only a matter of time, Nina laughed under her breath as she walked out of the intern locker room dressed out of her scrubs and ready to face the music. After being completely blindsided by Abbie showing up at the resident's lounge – with Mark Sloan, of all people –; Nina had convinced her former sister-in-law to wait for her in Joe's bar while she changed. She should have known, truthfully, that telling her mother she was living in Seattle would be the start of the fall. If she had to guess she'd say her mother had called all her friends to try to understand why she moved in the first place, and not knowing she hadn't told anyone else where exactly she was set off this incredibly annoying storyline where Abigail Fucking King showed up at SGMW out of nowhere.

She was the only one inside the elevator when the man of the hour walked in looking all serious and somber, which was a very unusual look for Mark Sloan. Even though Nina wanted to be mad at Mark for carelessly having told Abbie about Stella, she knew it would be irrational of her. It wasn't his fault, he doesn't know the kind of mess her life really is. The intern sighed, deciding to be a grown up and check on him.

"You ok?" She asked and he closed his eyes at her voice, almost as if it startled him.

"I just saw Karev and Lexie walk out of an on call room together." He explained after a few seconds of silence, and she nodded in understanding.

"Rough." She said simply and he looked at her with a raised eyebrow. "What?" She asked confused.

"That's it?" He asked incredulously. "Rough? That's all you have to say? Aren't women supposed to be good with advice and compassion, or something?"

"Hey, I didn't sleep with your girlfriend." She defended herself and he rolled his eyes. "Besides don't you have Callie for all that?"

"Callie is happy." He groaned. "Happy people always think they can fix other people but they don't understand what it's like." She laughed as she agreed with his bitter statement before realizing something.

"Wait. What? You don't think I'm happy?" She asked with a smirk, faking her offence.

"You're very... Mysterious, White." He explained with a frown. "There's gotta be something wrong there." She laughed out loud and nodded.

"Look, I don't know all that went down between you and Lexie but I know this... She's only sleeping with Alex because she's trying to get over you." Mark gave her an unimpressed look but she continued. "Now you have a decision to make... Do you want to get over her or do you want her back?"

"She doesn't want me." Mark sighed but Nina only rolled her eyes.

"Didn't peg you for the giving up type." Mark laughed.

"I don't want to have to convince her to be with me..." He confessed. "I want someone who wants me." Nina was silent for a few seconds as she thought his words through.

"Yeah... Don't we all?" The elevator stopped on the ground floor and they walked out.

"Do you wanna... Get a drink with me?" Mark offered after a little bit of hesitation, Nina smiled but shook her head.

"Can't. I have a sister-in-law to meet up with and I think she's gonna want a lot of explanations, thanks to you." She joked with a smirk and he laughed with a shake of his head.

"I'm really sorry for that." He said. "I had no idea... Well, I don't even know what..." He frowned as he thought back to earlier with the blonde woman. "Do you have two girlfriends or something?" He guessed with what little of knowledge he had, Nina laughed out loud.

"You know what?" She said as she turned away from him. "Let's just agree not to talk about it."

"See what I meant... About the mystery?" He said louder as she walked away, smirk on his face.

When she walked into the Emerald City Bar, the first thing she thought was that Abigail King didn't belong there. She laughed as she walked up to her, who was sitting at the bar with a cocktail in front of her, and prepared herself mentally for the conversation that was coming. Don't get her wrong, she was glad to see Abbie. They had become friends even before Nina met Jake, and Abbie was always so much fun to hang out with but... She was still Jake's sister and Nina did not want Jake to know she was living in Seattle, at least not yet.

"So..." She started as she sat down on the stool beside the blonde. "What are you doing in Seattle?" She grinned at the dumb question and the blonde huffed before answering.

"Visiting." Abbie answered sarcastically. "I heard the weather was lovely this time of year." It was downpour outside. "I'm here to make sure that your dumbass was still alive." She said with a roll of her eyes and Nina scoffed.

"God, you're such a bitch."

"Oh, nice, the pot calling the kettle black." Abbie raised an eyebrow and they both laughed out loud.

"Seriously." Nina said after ordering a beer from Joe. "Who told you?" She asked, knowing it wasn't directly her mother because the two didn't know each other.

"Parker." Abbie admitted with a shrug. "Your mom called him and Sam." She explained and Nina shook her head in disbelief even though she already suspected it.

"I'm not going back to Chicago." Nina said after a few seconds of silence.

"I know." Abbie responded quietly. "I really just wanted to see you. You know, you don't have to leave all of us behind."

"Abbie..."

"No, Kahlani." Abbie interrupted before Nina could feed her some bullshit excuse. "I get why you left, but..." The two stayed quiet for another long while, there was so much to say but it felt like such a heavy subject. "You can't just cut your friends out of your life like that."

"I'm sorry." Nina said with a heavy conscience.

"Forget it." Abbie shrugged it off as she put a smile on her face. "Tell me about Seattle..." She asked with a grimace. "And who's Stella?" She smirked and Nina groaned, to her delight.

They stayed in the bar for a little over an hour, talking about Nina's current life in Seattle and desperately avoiding the darker topics; before Abbie convinced her they had to go dancing. It was something they always did back in Chicago, especially when they first met and became friends almost five years ago. At the end of the night, when she got into bed with a grin on her face and tired feet, Nina promised herself that she would call Sam and Parker in the morning and apologize for being such a shitty friend.

A week had passed since Abigail King's impromptu visit to Seattle, a visit that caused Nina to realize that she needed to get her head out of her ass and stop being so damn selfish. Yep, she had called her friends the next morning and apologized for not keeping contact, then she met up with Stella and broke up with her (if it could even be called that, in Nina's opinion what they had wasn't even a relationship anyway), and lately she was trying to balance her time better. Just last night, she went out with her intern friends; and tonight she and Alex had plans to spend time together. All in all, things were going smoothly.

"Hello sir." She approached the man in question as he looked something up on the computer.

"Hey." He greeted her with a smile. "Big coffee." He smirked at the cup on her hands. "Someone's hungover." She rolled her eyes at his teasing. "What'd you do last night?"

"We went dancing." She grinned as she told him. "And we did some karaoke... It was fun." He nodded at her words. "But tonight, it's you and I, pal." She laughed at the look on his face at her choice of word. "Come on; be proud of my time management skills!"

Before Alex could respond, the two were approached by a hesitant-looking Jackson who had just come out of an exam room. He stood there for a few seconds before Alex turned to him in annoyance and asked what he wanted, Jackson telling him that he needed help because he couldn't find his patient's heartbeat. Nina laughed under her breath at the sound of Jackson being ashamed to admit that before deciding to let the two handle themselves and walking away.

Nina was sitting down with Sarah at a nurse station, the two updating some charts, when she watched right in front of her as Mark Sloan and Teddy Altman went through a very awkward attempt at making plans. Mark wanted to have dinner which seemed to surprise Teddy, who made it clear that what she wanted from him was a hookup. Nina laughed under her breath as Teddy walked away and Mark got pulled aside by Owen, the intern deciding to follow him and try to make sense of whatever that was.

"Did you just ask Teddy Altman out?" She asked with mirth in her voice as she caught up to him, who was walking away from Owen.

"Don't." He warned her when she started to laugh. "This is Callie's fault, she told me to."

"She told you to date Teddy?" Nina frowned.

"Yeah." Mark rolled his eyes as he got into the elevator and Nina followed. "She said I need to date like an adult."

"Well... Sounds reasonable but..." Nina told him before biting her lips. "Don't you think you should look for someone more..." More like him. "Laid-back?" She tested the word. "Oh, and definitely someone's who's not clearly in love with somebody else." She scoffed and Mark turned to look at her in surprise.

"Teddy is in love...?" Mark repeated, making her roll her eyes. Was he blind? Teddy being in love with Owen was as clear as day.

"I'm very observing, you know..." She smirked. "I'm just not a gossip like certain people." Mark laughed at the teasing in her voice.

"If only you weren't gay, White." He sighed as they walked out of the elevator, but she frowned.

"I'm not gay."

"...You have a girlfriend." He said after a few seconds of giving her a weird look.

"I'm bisexual." She shrugged. "And I also don't have a girlfriend anymore. We broke up."

"Oh." He nodded before a sly smile started to grow on his lips. "Well, then why don't you and I...?" Nina laughed out loud at his words.

"Let me just stop you right there..." She said with a smile. "You're very attractive and all but... I don't sleep with doctors anymore." She explained with a grin before turning to walk away from him. "Sorry."

Turns out the patient that Jackson was having problems with earlier in the day, Todd Holmes, had one of his lungs removed when he was 9 and because of it, over time his heart had slowly moved from his chest cavity and drifted down to his kidney. And all that going on inside was causing him to suffer bronchial compression, making it very hard for him to breathe so Teddy wanted to use saline implants to stabilize his heart; a surgery that Nina really wanted to be a part of.

Hence why, as she walked into the cafeteria with Miles, she took a quick look around for Mark. According to the gossip she heard from Miles, Mark was going to be placing the implants himself so Nina figured he was the best person to ask to scrub in. She chose her food and told Miles she was gonna join him, Sarah and Miles in a second before walking over to the table where Mark, Callie and Arizona were sitting together. Unknown to the intern, they had been talking about her from the minute she walked in.

"Did you know White is not gay?" Mark asked the two women when he saw the intern coming into the cafeteria.

"What?" Arizona asked with a frown, Mark was the one to tell them Nina was gay in the first place.

"Obviously." Callie answered at the same time, earning herself a look from the other two. "You don't remember...?" She rolled her eyes at Mark. "Few weeks back, that hot boxer guy with the bone fracture...? She asked not to be on his case because she was attracted to him." She reminded the plastic surgeon who nodded with a faraway look on his eyes as he thought back to the incident.

"Oh, so she's bi?" Arizona commented.

"And single." He stressed out the last word, making Callie and Arizona share a look.

"And she's an intern." Callie reminded him with a glare. "That's not a good idea, Mark."

"Don't even bother; she's already shot me down." He rolled his eyes as he remembered their encounter from earlier. "Said she doesn't sleep with doctors anymore."

"Anymore?" Arizona repeated.

"Yep." Mark shrugged, looking back to his food.

"Huh." But Callie understood the underlining that her girlfriend did. "You think she slept with someone here?" She smirked while her eyes widened.

"No." Arizona rolled her eyes. "You don't think...?" She asked with a squint and Mark looked up in confusion, trying to keep up.

"Gotta be Karev." Callie said with certainty. "They're always together."

"Karev is with Lexie." Mark groaned out with a scoff.

"Oh, please. You think they're exclusive?" Callie laughed but Arizona quickly shushed the two.

"She's coming over." She warned them as she noticed Nina walking in the direction of their table. "Hi Nina." She smiled at the intern, who stopped in front of their table.

"Hey." Nina greeted the three attendings, clueless to what they were talking about. "Uh, Dr. Sloan?" Mark looked at her with more attention. "I heard you're putting saline implants on Dr. Altman's post-pneumonectomy syndrome patient... I would love to scrub in on that if you'll let me." She grinned at him, hopefully.

"Sure." He agreed with a small smile.

"Cool, thanks." She nodded before turning to walk away before he called her back.

"White?" She turned in question. "How old are you again?"

"Uh... I'm 23." The intern answered with a confused frown.

Mark simply groaned to himself before turning his back on her, focusing on his food again. She looked up to Callie and Arizona in question, confused by his question and reaction, but the two women simply smiled and shook their heads that it wasn't important.

From the experience she already had scrubbing in on two surgeries with Dr. Altman before, first a tumor resection that turned into a hot chemo lavage and then on a ruptured aortic arch dissection repair, Nina knew how competent the Cardio attending was. Both surgeries had been incredibly amazing to be a part of but this one... The patient's heart was by his kidney! It was probably something she would never see again, it was a one in a million kind of surgery. She was so excited to be a part of it that when she scrubbed in with Alex, Teddy and Mark, she was grinning so hard that the three were giving her weird looks.

"Sorry." She mumbled as they walked into the O.R. "But this is so cool."

The three almost wanted to laugh at the intern's eagerness but only smiled slightly, before they had to focus on the surgery at hand. Watching Teddy Altman made her understand Cristina Yang a lot more than Nina ever thought she would; hearts really were beautiful. She smirked to herself at the thought; it reminded her of when she started working at Northwestern all those months before and how Jake had tried to get her to work with him in Cardio, joking that he was gonna get her to switch specialties. Cute enough to stop your heart and skilled enough to restart it; such a dumb pick-up line and she still fell.

"Okay, the heart is back where it came from." Teddy announced as she finished and looked back at Mark, who stood by the sides. "Dr. Sloan?"

Mark walked forward to the table and Nina straightened her posture, she was there to assist him after all. He only gave one look at the patient on the table before starting.

"Two Cs." He asked the intern and as she turned to grab what he asked for, Teddy gave him an incredulous look.

"You're just gonna eyeball it?" She asked surprised.

"This is what I do." Mark smirked as Nina handed him the implants.

"If you say so."

"Syringe." He asked again and Nina handed it to him but as he went to grab it from her, Alex jumped back out of the way. "Whoa. What, are you afraid I'm gonna stab you?" He mocked the resident. "No needle." He showed the syringe with a playful look.

"He's hypotensive." Alex said after a while as Mark worked.

"Your implants are sitting on the vena cava." Teddy told Mark, sounding nervous as she looked over his shoulder. "There's too much fluid."

"No, there's not." Mark calmly answered. "Just need to reposition it. Relax."

"B.P.'s still low." Nina informed him.

"Dr. Sloan." Teddy spoke in warning.

"When people rush you, does it usually help?" She was definitely annoying him.

"No, but it would be nice if we didn't let him die." And clearly didn't trust him.

"I feel the same way. And you thought we had nothing in common." Mark mocked and Nina smirked beneath her mask, he was funny when he was mad.

"Pressure's coming back up." Nina spoke again, mostly to ease Teddy.

"Imagine." Mark teased as he finished and walked away from the table, taking his mask off.

"Dr. Sloan." Teddy called his name as she checked over his work before looking back at the plastic surgeon. "Nice work."

"What, that? Just a hobby." He smirked. "Professionally, I'm more focused on my work as a male escort." Nina giggled under her breath as they all watched Mark walk out.

After the surgery was over, Alex and Nina were walking out of the O.R. when she remembered to ask him what he planned for tonight. The only thing he had said was that she needed to clear the day for him because he wanted to hang out but that was very open to interpretation.

"So what do you wanna do tonight?" She asked as the two stopped by a nurse station, Alex asking for Todd Holmes' chart to update it after the surgery.

"I don't know..." He shrugged. "The Seahawks are playing the Eagles tonight..." He commented as a suggestion and she frowned.

"I don't even know what sport that's supposed to be." Nina admitted it and he laughed. "But I'm down as long as there's tequila. Oh, and we could have some nachos." She raised her eyebrows in excitement.

"No." He shook his head. "No. We could do something you like..." He offered. "Aren't you obsessed with that new karaoke bar?" He said as he remembered all the times she told him about the place. "We could go there."

"You hate karaoke." She pointed out with a frown.

"Do you really wanna sit through 3 hours of football tonight?" Alex smirked when her eyes widened.

"It takes 3 hours?" She scoffed. "God no."

"Drunk karaoke it is."

Nina laughed and told him she'd see him later, leaving to go to the bathroom before catching up with Sarah who had asked for her help with some charts. Alex looked back to his chart in hands that he still needed to update when Jackson stood up from the chair he was sitting at behind the station, blocked from view.

"Look at you, whipped by an intern." Jackson mocked, having heard the entire conversation.

"What?" Alex asked with a glare.

"What are you gonna sing?" Jackson continued, smirking. "The way you look tonight or Careless whisper?"

"Are you trying to get punched?" Alex threatened but Jackson only laughed one more time before walking away.

On her way to the intern locker room to change into her normal clothes, Nina watched from a few steps away as Alex and Lexie talked. It wasn't anything unusual, especially now that two were sleeping together, but the intern couldn't ignore the crestfallen look on Lexie's face before she walked away. Alex continued on her direction so Nina grabbed his arm.

"What did you tell her?"

"What?" He asked confused and she gestured behind him at Lexie's retreating form. "Lexie? Nothing." Nina gave him a look and he rolled his eyes. "I'm serious. She just asked if Mark was acting crazy again and I told her no."

"Oh my God, Alex." She rolled her eyes this time, quickly understanding what probably happened. "Did you tell her about Teddy?"

"Uh..."

"Did you tell Lexie Grey that her ex-boyfriend is moving on to Teddy Altman?" Nina repeated the question more explicitly.

"...Yeah?" He frowned and she groaned.

"Do you not understand women?" Nina whined at his stupidity.

"What? She's moving on too, she's sleeping with me. She said she wanted him to get over her."

"We all say that." Nina rolled her eyes in frustration. "Doesn't mean it's true. That girl is still in love with Mark Sloan."

"Well... I..." He mumbled, feeling guilty before feeling annoyed. "What was I supposed to say?" He defended himself.

"God." Nina glared at her clueless male friend one more time before walking away from him.

The intern seemingly didn't have any reasons to why she followed Lexie Grey into that bathroom, Alex himself probably thought it was pity. I mean, Nina and Lexie weren't close, they weren't even friends to begin with, they barely talked. But the way she saw it, the intern understood that she had a lot in common with the resident. They were both coming out of a serious relationship and trying to move on, while stumbling along the way; the difference was that Mark was here and Lexie had to watch as he moved on too while Nina had been too afraid of that. She walked into the bathroom to find Lexie sitting on the floor, sobbing loudly as she cried while Meredith watched in concern.

"Hey, Lexie." The intern greeted with a small voice as she bent over to look at the resident.

"Hey, hi." Lexie tried to smile as she pressed her hands to her cheeks to mask her tears.

"You know what I think you need?" Nina grinned, trying to cheer the resident up. "Alcohol and a night out." Lexie laughed under her breath and Nina smiled bigger. "I know it's really hard to see it right now but..." She bit her lips as she spoke, hoping Lexie wouldn't think she was overstepping. "Sometimes relationships need to end. Maybe you two will get back together some day, maybe you won't. But you will definitely grow from this."

"Yeah..." Lexie closed her eyes before opening with a sad smile. "Thanks."

Nina smiled back at her as she helped the resident to her feet and Lexie walked over to the sink and washed her face under Meredith's curious gaze. Mark and Lexie were adorable together but they broke up for a very distinct reason, Mark wanted marriage and a family but Lexie wasn't ready for it. Even if it hurt now, it wouldn't be wise to just ignore these differences and get back together. In Nina's opinion, what Lexie really needed was to act her age; go out for drinks, have one night stands, come to work with a hangover, do all the stupid things you do before it's time to grow up. With that in mind, the intern smirked to herself.

"Lexie." Nina called her attention and she looked up in question. "Do you like karaoke?"