Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟳𝟴 beth and derek

𝙇𝙓𝙓𝙑𝙄𝙄.
BETH AND DEREK

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LET THE RECORD show, Derek's proclivity to work late at the night was not anything to do with his marriage.

Even so, he guessed that he hadn't worked like this in his last marriage. 

He knew how Addison had described him: cold, callous and work-obsessed to the point where it had distanced them and left a void between them that they hadn't been able to navigate. 

But even then, he'd never gotten like this~

He sat there in his office, shuffling papers and wondering whether he was the only doctor left in the administration wing. 

It was dark outside, bottomlessly dark and he knew that somewhere out there, his wife was at a dinner with friends that had once been his. Instead, Derek was sat at his desk, scrawling on paper and going over budget meeting notes that he was dispassionately interested in. 

Ever so often, he'd glance up at the clock, watching the hours tick and the night go onwards, counting the minutes it'd been since his secretary had phoned through to tell him she was leaving. He sat there with numb fingers and numb toes, his nose still bruised, and a deep sense of conflict still buried in his aching bones.

And then someone knocked on his office door.

He hadn't expected it. 

Usually, if someone needed the Chief of Surgery at this hour they'd page through or phone directly in, past his secretaries' desk. 

Initially, Derek had been so unused to the structure of this job, on how everything had to be organised, cleared and booked to the point where his day was timetabled, and colour coded. 

It had been a headache for a surgeon like him to acclimatise to, going from a job where he was constantly kept on his toes and taken by surprise at every twist and turn—at first, the monotony of it had driven him crazy (or maybe it still was and Derek had just gotten used to the eye twitches and the solemn sighs?) and it had taken everything within him not to quit.

He found it oddly sad to think that this was the height of his excitement these days: a night-time visitor who wasn't scrawled into his schedule.

"Come in."

Derek had long forgotten what it was like to be surprised (even Beth's serve had been booked and properly approached) but he felt it when he looked over towards his door. 

He watched it swing open, his brow folding slightly as he tried to place the face—the woman walked in, a guilty but stressed smile on her face as she closed the door behind her. 

He watched as her dark hair shifted against her psychiatry uniform and her equally dark eyes flickered across the overcast, dark office. She moved carefully, as if she didn't want to disturb him, but her steps were urgent and slightly hurried. Her apologises about interrupting his work came at the exact moment he realised who it was.

"Doctor Ballard," Derek said, realising this was his new Chief of Psychiatry, the only other person in this hospital who understood a fraction of paperwork and stress he was subjected to. 

It seemed as though he wasn't the only person who was working late tonight. She halted in front of his desk and heaved a breath that was half exhausted and half-strangled.

"Don't apologise," He said, "It's a welcome surprise—"

She seemed to laugh to herself, drawing his attention to a manila folder that she had grasped in between her fingers. Her hair was slightly mussed as if she'd been combing her fingers through the tresses obsessively or yanking it at the root.