Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟰𝟴 hurricane amy

𝙓𝙇𝙑𝙄𝙄𝙄.
HURRICANE AMY

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I WAS CONVINCED that I'd be a goddamn awful housewife.

I couldn't cook, I complained about cleaning and every white laundry load I seemed to do would turn out at least slightly pink. It was safe to say that I really didn't consider myself marriage material...

My Mom, on the other hand, had been the ultimate housewife.

It must have been the most common thing I'd heard in my childhood: "Oh Bizzy, I don't know how you do it!"

 A frivolous laugh out of the lips of a Stepford wife as she glanced between the three of us. Archer, Addison, me. I'd always been dwarfed by my older siblings and sometimes people didn't even see me. They'd look at my mother, poised, smiling and bright-eyed, and praise her for whatever it was that she'd accomplished. 

Usually, it was some sort of brunch; it was always brunch with rich white people— I understood that more and more when I came to New York. She'd reply with a smile, the same one that we'd all inherited, closed lips, head tilt to the side: "It's easy when you've got children as well trained as mine."

And offhand laugh, a "Oh you're so hilarious Bizzy" and a couple of looks under the eyelashes.

If there was a thing I knew for sure about Bizzy is that she took her role as a wife very, very seriously... well, that was when other people were watching. She was who Addison seemed to inherit all of her fun little quirks from; a strict brunch regimen, a stiff upper lip when it came to being a hostess, a tendency to stew quietly when things didn't go her way.

I knew absolutely nothing about her other than the fact that she put up with my father's crap for a very long time, cared about her social status more than her own kids and had a tendency to throw money at problems to make them go away rather than to fix them.

I clearly had no idea what I'd inherited from her.

My father, on the other hand, had been a functioning alcoholic, who was completely dedicated to his career as a physician in his private clinic. He took his job very, very seriously and passed his worth ethic onto his children (among other things apparently). 

I knew absolutely nothing about him other than the fact that he pined after a woman who'd fallen out of love with him decades previously, had numerous affairs, cared about his car more than his kids and, also, liked to sink his problems with a wad of cash. The Captain refused to go down on any ship he crashed.

That's how I met Calum.

His father was a lawyer who specialised in fixing things when people couldn't do it himself. It wasn't legal and it wasn't right— but it was the perfect market for families like mine who had a little bit too much pride and money to deal with things the fair way.

Oh, faced with a lawsuit that will ruin you? Fixed.

Faced with a clinic that's going under and need some very questionable investors? Fixed.

Faced with a pregnancy you don't want on your medical record? Fixed, hey it's like it never happened.

It was a family business and it had enveloped Calum and torn apart our engagement like I'd been a toy tossed to his father's favourite Rottweiler. 

People like Calum and Dom could solve things too easily. 

Calum's dad had tried to fix my parents marriage but that hadn't been possible.