School sucks, yo.

Sorry if the message isn't all too clear in here, but you should pick up on it by the end of the chapter.

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"Mark, I need to talk to you," I called desperately. Mark stopped silently. He didn't turn towards me or show any signs of having heard me, but I knew he was listening and waiting for more. I wasn't sure what I was going to say to him, but I had to say something to keep him from walking away. "I'm pregnant."

I'm not quite sure what possessed me to say it. I watched the words slip out of my mouth and by the time I realized what they meant, they were too far out of my reach to pull back. Mark's head snapped in my direction so quickly that it must have hurt. But he showed no indication of being in pain, other than the emotional pain that filled his eyes and distorted his every feature. His eyes and mouth were wide open in shock and fear. I was pretty sure my eyes mirrored his.

"You're…what?!" he exclaimed, unable to believe the words he was hearing. I couldn't either, to be honest.

Now that I'd said it, I had to make a choice. I had to stick with it and tell him I was pregnant, or I could laugh it off as a joke, maybe pretend he heard me wrong. I was silent for several minutes while my mind worked five times faster and harder than it's ever had to before. Eventually Mark gave up waiting for me and took several steps forward, his hands gripping my shoulders. I didn't even feel the pain of his vice grip.

"Layla. Tell me you're not serious." Mark's voice was pleading and his eyes begged me to laugh and call 'April Fools!' or something ridiculous like that. I didn't.

"I'm…I'm pregnant," I restated quietly. For a moment, Mark didn't react. For a moment, everything was okay. And then my words registered in his brain. And then Mark broke down.

His head dropped pathetically and when he raised it a moment later, tears were preparing to fall. He quickly withdrew his hands from my shoulders, taking several steps backwards as if I had a disease. No, as if I was a disease. And unfortunately I was. I was a sickness that Mark had caught and couldn't fully get rid of. I was cancer.

"No…"he whispered. Then he grew louder and angrier. "No! You're not! You're not! You can't be! You're lying! Stop lying to me!"

Through the tears that now appeared on both of our faces, I tried to convince him I wasn't lying. I tried to get him to believe me. He was yelling and ranting so loudly though, I don't think he could hear me. He was getting angrier and more distraught with every passing second. He pushed me roughly against the wall, demanding that I tell him the truth. When I opened my mouth and once again attempted to tell him that I wasn't lying, he slapped me. My head snapped to the right with astounding speed. I now had a stinging cheek, a sore neck, and a sick stomach.

"Mark!" someone called. Hands pulled Mark away from me. Mark fought them for a second and then gave up, hanging pathetically in the arms of whoever had saved me.

I sank down the wall, my sneakers sliding across the floor until I was eventually sitting down in the hallway. I looked up and saw that it was Derek Shepherd who had pulled Mark away from me. He and Mark were talking quietly and animatedly to each other. Thought it would be more accurate to say that Derek was talking quietly and animatedly to Mark. Mark didn't seem to be speaking, although the tortured look on his face screamed at me louder than he had himself.

His head snapped in my direction. It was just for a fraction of a second, more of a twitch in his neck. But in that nanosecond, his burning eyes met mine and any kind of minimal control I had held on myself was lost. My tears doubled in intensity and my body shook with the effort of staying calm. I tried to keep as quiet as possible, but it was growing harder with every glance at Mark. And try as I might, I couldn't stop myself from looking in his direction.

After our eyes locked, I noticed that Mark had lost some of his recently obtained control as well. Instead of letting Derek and I (and most others in the hallway, who had stopped to observe what was happening), Mark turned quickly and stalked off in the opposite direction, struggling to maintain his stoic composure. Mark was leaving to call Callie Torres, leaving to find an empty on-call room where he could beat himself up, leaving to curse my name and my existence; the point is, Mark was leaving.

After watching Mark walk away with obvious confusion, Derek squatted down next to me. Although I didn't know him too well, he placed his left hand on my back and waited by my side as I pulled myself back together. He didn't speak or move at all until my sobs were to a minimum and I was able to breathe regularly. He looked at me questioningly, mentally asking if I was alright. I nodded briefly, still unable to speak. He nodded back and stood up.

"Th--Thank you," I gasped between breaths. He paused and looked down at me. I wondered if he knew what was happening, if Mark had told him while I was sinking deeper and deeper into self-loathing and contempt. But when he smiled at me pleasantly, I figured that Mark, like me, had been unable to tell him the news.

I didn't spend much more time sitting on the hospital floor. Mostly because everyone in the five yard radius had witnessed the entire altercation and was staring at me silently. People moved out of my way as I stood and walked down the hallway the opposite way that Mark and Derek had gone, but their eyes never left me. I felt them constantly, burning into me, examining me, judging me. I'd never felt so vulnerable before.

I walked without any intention or purpose, something that was completely against my beliefs. I realized then that somewhere along the path I had chosen, the one that chased Mark Sloan but could never quite catch him, I had lost myself. No longer was I Layla Devon, successful cardiac surgeon. Now I was Layla Devon, the lying whore who ruined a man's life for nothing. Nothing but false hopes of winning him over.

But how could I have won Mark over if I was the one who destroyed him? I couldn't have, ever. But somehow I'd made myself believe that I could make Mark mine. And in that obsessive mindset, I had spit out the biggest lie of my life: "I'm pregnant."

Panic rose in my chest as I thought the words and what they meant and the consequences of having spoken them aloud. My airways constricted and my breath caught in my chest. I shouldered through the nearest door before I started hyperventilating. I found myself in a well lit, but tiny, supply closet. I searched the shelves as quickly as possibly, finally finding a small paper bag, which I stuck to my face. After a minute or so of puffing into the bag, I felt myself calming down. Just as I deemed myself well enough to reenter the hallways and face the rest of the hospital, the door opened.

"Thought I heard you in here," Mark mumbled. He was looking at me, but was instead staring at the dusty floor with intense interest. I didn't say anything in response and after a moments' awkward silence, Mark tried again.

"I wanted to apologize…for before…" he said quietly. "My reaction was…not the best. It just…surprised me, and, to be honest, freaked me out. A lot….I talked to Callie and I've calmed down a lot now, and I've been able to think more clearly. I'm not sure how the hell I'm going to tell Lexie but…Are you keeping the baby?"

Throughout his entire speech, I listened quietly. It sounded more as though he was talking to himself than to me. But the last question, thrown in at the last minute, held curiosity and hope. I didn't know what he was hopeful of, but I was pretty sure he was looking for me to say 'No'.

"I'm not sure," I whispered at last. For a moment, Mark's face fell, but then his expression was blank again.

"Well…if you do decide to keep the baby…I want to be there. For the kid. Look, even if this was a huge mistake, which it was, the kid still deserves a Dad, right? I can't take that from him." My ears perked up. The beast inside of me, the one that had driven me to do all the things I had, lifted its head and sniffed the air hopefully. Was Mark truly offering to stay if I had this baby?

"Okay," I said simply. My voice was weak and low.

Now all I had to do was get pregnant.

She's not pregnant?! What?!?!?!