Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟱𝟱 blood diamond

𝙇𝙑.
BLOOD DIAMOND.

──────

MARK DIDN'T KNOW for sure what was happening, but he figured it out pretty quickly:

He was dying.

He couldn't feel the pain but his subconscious was telling him that it was there. There was a little voice at the back of his head screaming at him: dying, dying, you're gonna die, this is it, this is how you go. 

There was a numbness in his body, a feeling of emptiness that he couldn't place. He was only able to properly gather his thoughts when he was lying on the floor, hands stuck to the bleeding wound on his side.

A faceless man had shot him and now he was dying.

Mark couldn't focus on anything but the feeling of numbness creeping over him. He couldn't see the stranger with the gun turning away and he didn't know how the fuck this had happened. 

One moment he was walking down the corridor, next minute the shooter was in front of him and he was watching a barrel turn towards him.

There'd been no conversation, there'd been no chance for him to beg or whatever the fuck people did in this situation. There was just Mark, the gun and the finger on the trigger and then BANG. He was on the floor, head reeling and room spinning.

"Mark?"

Mark wondered whether this was what had happened to Beth, to Derek. 

Had they just seen him and then BANG, they were on the verge of death? 

Was that how this situation went? Did he just bleed out on the floor and that was it? 

Mark wasn't sure what he'd expected, but he didn't feel any pain, he didn't feel anything. He just stared into a nonexistent space and wondered whether he was bleeding.

He couldn't see any blood but he was sure he was. He couldn't move his head. He was fixed in place as the shooter just walked away, leaving him on the floor. He must be bleeding. That's what happened, right? 

Blood and blood and blood, pain and pain and pain— where was it?

He couldn't even feel the floor under his head— he just felt the oncoming knowledge that he was going to die.

And what a shit feeling it was. Mark didn't even know whether he was breathing. He didn't even know whether this was what death actually felt like. Of course, he didn't, he'd never felt the flatline before. Sure, he'd seen it plenty of times but this was different—

"Mark?"

He didn't even know where he was— what was this place?

It felt like the hospital but it also didn't— Was it empty? Was it full— he was beginning to wish he'd just bleed out quicker— Holy shit, Death was taking it's sweet ass time— 

There was a faint beeping sound at the bottom of the hallway— was it a security door? It sounded more like a machine— Fuck where was that beeping coming from? Could he not die in peace?

What a joke it was: BANG and then you died.

How angry the thought of that made him. 

How dare he die so quietly. He was Mark fucking Sloan. Guys like him didn't just die like that. He deserved something more dramatic. Derek deserved something more dramatic. He deserved better. Derek deserved— Beth deserved better—