if any of this was mine do you really think i'd be writing fanfiction? (answer is no...it's not mine)
I'm two reviews off getting fifty! My happiness cannot be put into words!
On slightly less exciting news: I am in need of a new beta. And, as some people have pointed out, my proof reading is shocking. I apologise for this chapter, it was very hard for me to write...I did try my very best. Help me out! Please! (I want to update it when I get a hand, so all problems can be fixed!)
The song is by an AMAZING Aussie band called the Whitlams!
Chapter six
Buy Now, Pay Later
We can't read minds. We can't predict the future, and no matter how well you know a person, they can still surprise you. So, to make a decision, sometimes we have to listen to the hearsay or even…gossip, because it's the only source of information we have...
o
"Look, Chief." Mark said, "Derek has about two hours before he has to go into surgery. Not including prep. You need to make a decision"
"Dr Sloan. I do not want you working in this hospital."
"That's a lie, and you know it." He said calmly. "You can't have a chief of neurosurgery liasing with patients when he has no lower lid and a scar that looks like he's had a tumour removed."
"There are other plastic surgeons in this hospital."
"That will make that scar look like he removed his own tumour." He laughed to himself. "The injury is over the right eye. One wrong move…eye's gone."
"You are the most arrogant then any surgeon I have ever met."
"A neurosurgeon, without depth perception?" Mark persisted. "You need me to perform this surgery."
"You'll leave this hospital when you've finished."
"Chief, I am arrogant." He said, unfazed "but, I'm arrogant for a reason. You have to, to be the best surgeon…And I'm arrogant enough to tell you that I'm not going to perform this surgery, unless you keep me on."
"Are you blackmailing me, Dr Sloan?"
"No, I'm trying to show you how Seattle Grace functions." He replied, "Your hospital runs on gossip. Your nurses are more interested in each other's lives to focus on their job. Your surgeons are too busy screwing each other, and then excusing each other of using sexual favours, to really get ahead. And you, firing me, is only enforcing this mentality. You can't tell people it's wrong to have a private life. Their lives are this hospital. Everyone is running around this place…feeling guilty for trying to be normal. If you can't keep their lives, within this hospital, as private as you can, how can you expect them to function normally? Look at yourself. You're more interested in what I do out of the OR, then assessing me properly, or you'd realise that I am the best person for the job."
o
Meredith stood in the corridor, looking into the chief's fishbowl office, trying to predict the outcome. Mark was perfectly composed. If it wasn't for the chief's furious expression, they could have been talking about the weather. The chief paced, while Mark stayed still, leaning on the wall. Every now and again, he'd glance up at her. She couldn't read him, but it was comforting.
"You haven't even changed into your scrubs yet?" he asked, coming out of the office alone. He was still in his suit and she was still in a dress she borrowed off Cristina. "This is a long one, you expect to stand up in them all night?" he looked at her heels.
"You still work here?" she asked, amazed at his relaxed temperament
"Why wouldn't I?" he asked seriously, but his eyes gave him away.
"I'm glad." She laughed at him. She was relieved. The pain that he had caused her in the last few days was forgotten. She was glad he was still around to help her cause trouble. She stepped forward and hugged him, catching the doctor by surprise.
"Go get changed." He ordered, laughing as she left.
"I'm glad too." He whispered to himself after she was out of earshot.
o
Meredith found Mark outside Derek's room. He was having a furious, whispered argument with Addison.
"Sorry," Meredith interrupted "Dr Sloan…"
"Oh stop it" Addison said, continuing her frustrated tone "Don't pretend that we're not all…involved."
"Addison…" Mark started.
"Derek asked for you." She said to Mark "he didn't ask for her. Don't make this more complicated"
"She's the only intern here that's not in surgery. He lucky, that she's one of the best."
He waited to see if Addison would argue, but she didn't. "I'll ask him."
Mark entered the room and the two women followed soon after, but stayed back.
"Derek?" Mark asked as he approached the bed and pulled out his torch
"Mark…" He responded, slowly. "How am I looking?"
"Not at your best" Mark replied, seriously
"You can restore my sight." He didn't ask.
"From what I can tell," he said, gently examining the eye. "There is no corneal damage…the eyelid defect is about twenty percent of the horizontal dimension of the lid. Dr Grey?"
"Yes, Dr Sloan." She asked hesitantly moving towards the bed.
"Look here please." He ordered his patient, who was straining to look over to Meredith, before Mark asking his intern: "if we're attempting to reconstruct the lower lid...with more then fifty percent damage, what procedure should we be performing?"
"This isn't the kind of thing an intern should know." Meredith protested
"I asked for an answer, Dr Grey. Not an excuse."
"A modified Hughes procedure?"
"Correct." He said, with a slight smile. "Now take a look at this…what needs to be done?"
"Well." Meredith said, tentatively peering into Derek's eye "the…the patient…has a lax lower lid…the damage is much less then one third of the horizontal length, this can usually be repaired by direct closure?"
Mark looked over at Addison, who was standing in the doorway. "So, she passes?"
Addison smiled wearily and waved a hand in submission. "Good." Mark said and turned to his intern, with a smile. "Where did you learn all that?"
"My mother had a lot of books, lying around the house."
"You didn't get out much as a child, did you?" Mark asked. Derek chuckled
"Seriously?" Meredith asked, defensively. They weren't allowed to gang up on her.
"Can you go at tell O.R. three that we're coming?" Mark asked, re-arranging the monitor to move his patient
"Yeah," Meredith said, annoyed. And left the room, closely followed by Addison.
"Addison, I…" Meredith turned around, unsure what to say
"Don't worry, I'm not…angry with you." She said, walking up to her and putting her hand on her shoulder, before walking a head of the intern "Now, let's go and prepare that room."
"Are you operating?" Meredith asked, running a little to catch up.
"I'd never operate on Derek." She laughed to herself, "I'm just helping you…set up"
"Oh, right."
Addison stopped before they entered the O.R.
"You know." She said, hesitantly "You're good for him."
"Sorry?" Meredith asked, confused by this sudden kindness
"Mark…well, I don't know exactly," she replied, scratching her head "but, you're smarter then he is. And he knows it. It's good for his ego…I know he's a little insensitive at times, but he's really a great guy. Underneath all that." She said, slowly realising the qualities of the guy she rejected, "He's caring, and I…I don't think he'd take you for granted. Like…"
Addison was going to mention Derek, but seeing Meredith's stunned face she stopped, awkwardly. "I'll...I'll just go and get someone," she motioned to the surgical nurses station, and quickly left the taken aback Meredith.
O
Mark joined Meredith just as she started to scrub in. She greeted him with a malicious stare as he moved up to the tap beside her.
"What?" he asked, naively
"Oh…you know," she said, accusingly
"Oh, you mean back there?" he asked
"Why did you pick on me like that?"
"I don't know." He said simply, soaping his forearms
"You don't know?" she sighed.
"Well, really…it goes back to primary school." He said smiling, and stopped soaping to look at her "I always pick on the cute girl."
"Oh really?" she asked
"I'm only nice to the people I don't like." He said truthfully. "It's the people I do like that get my terrible persona…you should be flattered."
"You think so?" Meredith asked, as she finished washing and moved away from the sink with her hands raised in front of her.
"I like you a lot, Meredith" he said, also raising his hands and turning to look at her with a smile, before entering the OR "I'll apologise in advance."
O
The OR was abuzz. Some people would later say it was due to it being Dr Mark Sloan's first surgery at Seattle Grace or the fact that it was Dr Derek Shepard on the table. They would mention the rumours about what Addison did and maybe that the intern scrubbing in had slept with both the surgeon and the patient. Those who pretended that they weren't interested in the gossip would say it was because Dr Sloan flawlessly repaired Dr Shepard's eye. But Meredith would remember it as the day her life became, if possible, just that little bit more complicated.
o
"Open heart surgery." George said with a happy sigh, sitting down next to Meredith, but not looking at her. "How Dr Shepard's eye?"
"I'm sorry, George," she sighed, "I should never said anything that day. I was trying to cope with a lot. It really wasn't that much…compared to today, but I'm…I should never have said that."
"I…I understand." He didn't
"You know what's funny?" Meredith said, turning to look at him, "Mark and I, its not real, its all planned."
"It is?" George couldn't hide his excitement
"I'm doing it to try and get McDreamy back," She said lightly, not noticing George's question, "I don't think it's working. I don't think he'd take me back…I think he hates me." She laughed, sadly. "We've fought before, but not like this…"
"He'd be crazy not to."
"Some times I think I'd be crazy to take him back." Meredith said pensively, "But I don't want to back out of the plan now. We're just getting started…And I like him too."
"Who?"
"You George," She smiled at him, coming out of her daze and not answering the question. "You're a good friend."
George didn't respond as she stood up and walked out. He didn't even notice that Meredith hadn't heard a word he said. He didn't know what she meant, but he resolved, as he watched her walk out, that he was going to find out.
o
It was six o'clock in the morning, and the interns were starting pre-rounds. Izzie had only just started work, after having a good nights sleep. Her previous patients while hating the disruption to their sleep, enjoyed her happy demeanour and were appreciative. But the patient in room 413 was in no mood for the pretty intern.
"How are you doing Dr Shepard?" Izzie asked, picking up his chart at the end of the bed.
"I'm no longer experiencing pain. My stats have remained stable. I'm able to move my right eye." He said, obviously uncomfortable in the patient roll, "I want to remove the bandage to check my vision."
"The ophthalmologist will be down shortly to give you an examination." Izzie replied, "It says here you fell in your trailer."
"Yes," Derek sighed, leaning back in his bed, realising that Izzie was not going to let him remove his bandage.
"I have my own trailer battle wounds…one here." She said with a smile, pulling up her hair revealing a small scar. "The other was a little more vicious, on my back. Covered it with a tattoo when I was seventeen."
"Right," Derek, replied uninterested.
"I don't talk to my brother any more." She said, changing tone "after spending twelve years, everyday, same room. It's hard living, 'cause you're on top of each other; there's no personal space. He moved an inch, and I knew about it. No one got along. You know? Every single person in that park wanted to leave. And he did, when he was sixteen. No one wants to live like that, especially when they could leave…and move into anything they wanted. That's why I stick up for her, you know?"
"Sorry?" Derek asked, confused
"Addison," She replied, "She can afford to move somewhere else. And yet, she stays in that trailer. For James, my brother, his family wasn't important enough anymore, leaving was. And I don't blame him; I did the same thing when I was seventeen. You take the first chance. But, she loves you enough to stay. If she loves you enough to stay in a trailer, she'd never…attack you."
O
"What happened Addison?" Mark asked, as he spotted Addison Shepard sitting alone in a line of chairs out side the gallery.
"He fell Mark." She said with a sigh
"He fell?" he asked suspiciously, sitting down next to her and leaning his arm on the shared rest. "That's the oldest one in the book."
"Which is why it's true." She explained, tiredly "I see it day in, day out. If I was going to lie, I'd pick something convincing."
"He just …fell?" he asked, still sceptical,
"We were fighting…verbally." She corrected, "from opposite ends of the trailer. And he starts to walk towards me. And for a second I though he was going to hit me…I was so angry with him…so angry, that's what I wanted to do to him…He wasn't really. I mean, what was I thinking? This is Derek! He couldn't bring himself to break the cadaver's leg in med school! He could have been going out the door. Or even been trying comfort me. But he starts towards me and I scream and then he slips in that goddamn trailer…And, I never get to find out if he wants to save our marriage." She took a deep laboured breath and then placed her hand on top of his, "What am I going to do, Mark?"
Addison looked at him. First the hand and then the look. He knew the signs…and had he been twenty-four hours younger, he would have followed through. But something held him back. He knew that she just wanted to be comforted, that she just wanted to fill the gap temporarily. He wasn't going to stop the plan for one night, no matter how good it might be. He wanted more. He wanted her to really love him.
"Give him the three days recovery, and ask him." He said quietly, and after tapping her hand he stood up.
"Mark…" Addison was confused
"You find out if he wants to…make sure you know what you want, Addison." He walked away, trying to answer that question himself
o
If we aren't going to tell each other, what is really going on, we have to be ready to cope with the consequences when people make different assumptions. Hard decisions wouldn't exist if we knew all the answers. There are supposed to be difficult questions. But, we don't really know how difficult until they have been made.
Hope you enjoyed. I have almost finished the seventh chapter...but would it be mean of me to ask for reviews in exchange for the new chapter? all i want is one more review then my last chapter? They give me HUGE inspiration!
this week's burning question:
Fin has just turned up on the Australian screen...i love him. Do you think it would be a bit much to include him? probably...