Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟭𝟵 seven forty-five

𝙓𝙄𝙓.
SEVEN FORTY-FIVE

──────

NEW YORK

IT WAS, BY far, the most humiliating walk of shame.

I was still in the clothes from yesterday; my favourite silk blouse and a skirt that was slightly torn at the stitches now and I feared would fall and defamed me within milliseconds if I walked too quickly. 

My hair was messy, dishevelled and honestly slightly sweaty—my scalp groaned as the wind combed the tresses through and I was almost thankful for the shiver it sent down my body. I also happened to be covered, head-to-toe in hickies, large ones, large and prominent ones.

All in all, I looked a right state hurrying away from his apartment in the middle of the morning—as mentioned before, I couldn't quite move quickly, either. The intense fear of my skirt just falling straight off my hips was enough to mar my movements into an awkward hobble, my bare feet moving irregularly across the sidewalk. 

I grimaced at how awful I must have looked, alongside how awful I actually felt.

It was definitely called the walk of shame for a reason.

Every inch of my skin seemed to crawl with self-deprecation; I hung my head as I slowed at a street corner and took a split-second to catch my wits. Around me, the city hummed and thrummed and caused a tingle to travel down my spine. 

The city was beautiful, but unfortunately, the storm that raged through my head was too devastating for me to be able to stop and appreciate it all. I was too consumed by the weight in my chest and the tears that threatened to leak from my eyes.

Furiously, I rubbed away at my eye sockets, scoffing under my breath as I caught sight of the heavy mascara dripping from my fingertips in a flash of a passing bus. I chuckled; of course, I looked like some sort of satanic ritual gone wrong—I could put all of the money in the world onto the fact that I looked like some half-ass Samara with the sweaty hair and the pale, gaunt and hidden face.

I felt disgusting, refusing to meet the eyes of early morning stragglers as they roamed about aimlessly; I wondered whether I'd adopted the twisted powers of Medusa in the few minutes since I'd been staring right into the eyes of the man I'd spent the last few hours with. 

I was so terrified to recognise a face and make eye contact with someone that I felt as though I would somehow envoke death every gaze I met—it was a disastrous mindset that had me gawking into a dark wind.

Ever so often, my head would wind backwards, back in the direction of the apartment I had high-tailed out of. My mouth would subside as I'd regretfully search out for the familiar, stormy-eyed man who had attempted to follow me down the apartment block and out the door. I'd managed to lose him- finally that brief track team dabble in high school was paying me back- somewhere around a Macy's a few blocks back, but I was highly paranoid that I'd meet my end quick and fast.

I stopped to catch my breath again a few blocks down, outside of a bus shelter. My breathing was heavy but somewhat bearable and I took a few moments to adjust myself. With a heavy heart and an even heavier reluctance to continue moving- 

I found myself gravitating towards the map in front of me, an interconnecting mess of lines that represented the subway lines that ran below.

Where was I running to? I blanched and hung my head. I hadn't thought that far ahead.