Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟮𝟰 down, down, down

𝙓𝙓𝙄𝙑.
DOWN, DOWN, DOWN

──────

MESSAGES BETWEEN YOU AND CHARLIE

CHARLIE | 10:56PM
Hey

Hey

CHARLIE | 10:58PM
How's your day been?

Good, yours?

CHARLIE | 11:OOPM
Messy

That sounds familiar, hope Andrew's not working you too hard.

CHARLIE | 11:03PM
I'm actually coming to the end of my term here,
I'm coming back to Boston at the end of the month.

Yeah, I remember!

CHARLIE | 11:10PM
Will you still be in Seattle?

I think so

CHARLIE | 11:11PM
I'd really like to see you when I come back
(read)

***

"Did you hear?" was the first thing I heard when I appeared in the canteen, a coffee in one hand and a jello pot in the other.

I sat in between a dishevelled looking Meredith and Lexie, who was reading some sort of medical journal with a feverish velocity. To my surprise, the person who spoke was Alex, who was tossing an apple from one hand to the other, his eyes dark and rather dangerous.

"Hear what?" I asked apprehensively. All of the surgeons seemed to sigh in unison and I got the impression that it wasn't my lack of knowledge but rather what they'd heard that exasperated them.

"The merger." Alex all but spat, his face contorting in disgust as he rather abruptly dropped his apple to the table. "The hospitals' gone to shit and now we're merging with Mercy West."

I blinked, my eyes widening as it seemed to come out of the blue. 

Granted I'd only been here for a couple of months, but I hadn't noticed anything of the "going to shit" movement. The first thing I'd heard of something rocky in this hospital was Richard Webber's possible dismissal... I looked at all of them, wondering whether this was Alex's attempt at a crude joke.

But no, everyone looked solemn. Meredith was stabbing a pasta salad mournfully with a plastic fork, her expression shrouded in clear distraction. Even Lexie had stopped her high-speed reading and had raised her gaze from the pages, looking extremely meek as she grimaced. 

Come to mention it, look around at all of the employees, all of the surgical members and other assorted staff members, they all looked as if they were preparing themselves for the worst. A few tables over, a group of interns were frozen in their seats, staring down at their meals and silent like some sort of half-ass mannequin challenge.

"What does that mean?" I was confused. Did that mean that they were bringing in new employees here or that we were moving to the other side of the city?