Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟱𝟮 some kind of death

𝙇𝙄𝙄.
SOME KIND OF DEATH

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tw: gun violence, death, a lot of angsty stuff

 this is a very overwhelming chapter pls take care

It was going to be a good day.

Lexie Grey had woken up this morning, ate cornflakes and washed her hair. She'd been woken up by her pager but she still fell into her routine. 

She'd stared at herself in the mirror and given herself the same pep talk that she gave herself every day: today was going to be a good day, it was going to be productive and it was going to be good. It was an easy mantra, but not always convincing. 

There was something weird about today, she discovered as she grabbed her lab coat and dashed into the hospital. Today felt strange.

For a day to be good, Lexie knew that it had to be interesting. There had to be patients and there had to be only a tiny percentage of sadness. After all, a hospital was full of sadness, but her job was to minimise it to the best of her ability. She had to make good out of bad. 

Lexie had to spin a bad situation into one that would make people happy, that was what made her whole job worth it. She woke up that morning determined to have a good day— but sometimes, not everything goes to plan.

"Is he dead?"

The woman was unnerved, panicking on the spot as she fought to look over a nurses' shoulder. Lexie could hear her from five beds away, raising her head and glancing over towards the commotion. She had a little girl that had appendicitis, a child in tears and two anxious parents beside her and yet, the woman had her full attention.

The first case had been a man who'd come in from an ambulance. It was the woman's husband. Shot, he'd said, shot by a man who drove into him and then shot him point-blank. 

No rhyme or reason. A senseless violence. It had made Lexie deeply uncomfortable. 

His wife was crying, begging to see her husband, begging Owen and Teddy to save his life— Lexie winced at the thought of being at the end of a gun.

Senseless violence sent shivers down her spine. Bullets. 

They could inflict too much damage. A split-second decision could be so harmful. They ricocheted through bodies and cut vessels, skin and bone and muscle and tore people up from the inside. Such a small projectile could cause so much damage.

This guy had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Lexie had had to remind herself that stuff like that happened. Sometimes people just got hurt real bad and sometimes it didn't happen for any particular reason.

She'd left the ER with an awful feeling in her chest. It crept up on her very slowly, following her every footstep as she walked through the department and up towards the surgical

It was something that she tried her best to shrug off: Today's going to be a good day. It's going to be a good day.

And it was-- well, until people started dying.

Lexie didn't know when people started dying.

Hospitals were built for that, she guessed. These long empty hallways were built for the smell of death. These lights were a little too bright and these doors were a little too snug.