This is a casino. You are in a limbo of slot machines, roulette, and poker. Gamble. Pull the lever, place your bet, hide your cards. Make a decision, choose a path, wear your mask. Try and fail, keep on betting, wait until you get it right. You're fixated. To be flawless, to be undefeated, to be a winner. Stack your chips, fool your opponent, put it all in. All or nothing. You can walk home empty-handed. You can walk home with a new bank deposit. Your call. Everything is your call. This is a casino. Gamble your choices, gamble your morals, gamble your future. Hope for the best. Make friends with the dealer. Go with your first instinct.
Mark Sloan carefully lifted the skin graft and squinted into the magnifier, focusing with such intensity that Jackson had never seen before in his career in Plastics. Usually, Mark was nonchalant, quick to affirm every move. Today, he was distracted as ever, questioning each move, taking more and more time off the clock.
"Dr. Avery, can you take over for me?" he suddenly said.
Jackson looked at him quizzically, taking the blunt probe from his hand. "Is everything ok, Dr. Sloan?"
Mark nodded and removed his scrub cap. "Everything's fine. You can take it from here." He gave him a quick wink and proceeded out the operating room. He hastily pulled off his gloves and tossed them into the trash can.
He navigated his way downstairs into the lab, where an electronic dummy was set up for the interns. He sat erect, his eyes wide open. A couple of interns held needles in their hands, warily drawing blood from the dummy.
"Dr. Sloan?"
"Move!" Mark shouted. "Move!"
Without so much as glancing at the interns, standing in utter perplexity, he found his fist flying towards the dummy's face.
"Ow," the dummy said.
Mark threw another punch, to the cheek, to the gut. The interns had silently filed out of the room. His veins pulsed with anger, flooding through him in such a rush he felt as if he were going to burst into pieces. His face grew disconcerted, flushed. He threw another punch. Another punch.
"Ow," the dummy said. Artificial blood spilled from his mouth.
"It should hurt, you son of a bitch!" Mark yelled. "It should hurt more than Lexie was hurt under that plane. It should hurt more than I how felt when you took her away from me!"
Another punch. The ECG monitor began to crash.
The sound of the monitor rang in his ears. With both hands, he took the tray, stacked with a box of surgical gloves and intravenous supplies, and tossed it across the room. Just as he was about to toss the pair of scissors, he heard a booming voice echo through the room.
"Hey!"
Callie Torres stood before him. In seconds, she charged across the room and grabbed onto him by the shoulder. He writhed in her grip, but eventually settled down. She wrapped her arms around him, forming a cocoon.
He pinched his nose with his fingertips to suppress the tears. "Lexie's gone."
"I know," Callie whispered.
"Lexie is gone."
"I know."
She walked him to the table and sat him down. It was as though saying it out loud, multiple times, would somehow affirm her death. Affirm that this was not a dream or a hallucinogen effect, but rather, reality.
"I told her we'd have kids. And siblings. For Sofia," Mark explained, staring blankly ahead.
"Sofia would have liked that." Callie lifted her arm and began rubbing his back in tiny circles.
He shoved his hands through his hair and bent over, resting his elbows on his knees. Suddenly, he felt her slap the back of his head.
"Ow!" he protested.
"Get up," she said cheerfully, clapping her hands as if he were a dog and would wag his tail at her beckon.
His face scrunched up. "I'm in the middle of sulking, Callie. I'm not getting-"
"Get off your ass, and get up," she said, pulling him upwards by the arm.
His shoulder was practically dislocated. Ironically enough, Callie was the doctor who could also fix it. He stumbled forward and found his legs, though weak and limp, summoning the strength to stand straight.
"You're dead," she said.
"Huh?"
"You're dead inside. I mean, you are not the Mark Sloan I met. By now, you would have slept with about ten nurses and you would be kicking-ass, though not as much as me, in a hardcore surgery."
"Are you saying I should go sleep with a nurse?" he asked.
She shook her head. "The point is – anytime you were sad, you tried. You tried to get over it. And now all I see you doing is giving all your surgeries to Avery and crying in the middle of work. Frankly, Mark, you're being a pussy. I think you're afraid of what life is going to be like when you move on, and you're upset that Lexie can't."
"I'm not afraid of anything," he retorted.
"It's been a month. I can't stand to see you sad like this. Just try, okay? Try for me. Go to the goddamn ER, get yourself a seriously injured patient, and kick ass in a fourteen-hour surgery. You fought a broken penis, you can sure as hell fight death."