章 11: Chapter Ten
"I thought I'd find you here." A familiar voice spoke up. I looked away from Mark's bedside to see Derek in a wheelchair that was being pushed by a nurse I didn't know. I just watched as she pushed him into the room so he was next to my chair at the bedside and then she left, shutting the door behind her. We both just sat there in silence watching Mark's breathing.
"It's nice to see you back in scrubs, it was weird not seeing you in them since you've been here." Derek broke the silence after a while. "Navy blue is nice on you."
"He woke up last night." I told him what I was sure he already knew. "The one night that I left he woke up. I wasn't here to tell him that I was here for him."
"I'm sure he knows you're here," Derek patted my arm, trying to comfort me. "He knows that you'd be here when he needed you, when any of us needed you."
"That's bullshit and you know it." I scoffed.
"Do you remember the last time we saw each other?" His question caught me by surprise.
"It defiantly wasn't under the best circumstances." I thought back to years ago, the day he'd left for Seattle. "You weren't in the best of moves."
"Well, I was having to process the fact that I'd caught my wife and best friend in bed together." He pointed out. "That's not the point though. Do you remember what I told you?"
"That no matter how bad things became that you'd always be there for me, that all of you would be. I was the heart of our friendship." I recalled his words as if he'd just said them a moment ago. "I'm the heart, you're the brain, Mark's the mouth, and Addison's the eyes and ears. Without one another we'd be incomplete."
"You can be surprisingly sentimental when you're pissed." I commented.
"Well, I wanted to make sure you knew that you weren't alone." He shrugged. Real good that did, after he left so did Addison and Mark wasn't far behind her. Though they'd all promised that I would never be alone they all left. Derek and I had lost touch not long after he'd come here, it seemed as though his life had been too busy to include much of me. Addison hadn't been much different until she moved away from them too and settled in California, it was only after that that we started communicating regularly again. Mark was the only one who never stopped talking to me. We'd talk to one another at least once a week and made sure to meet up somewhere every couple months to see each other, just like we were supposed to do the day their plane crashed. He was supposed to come to meet me in my hotel room after I'd flown out there to see him before the surgery.
My plane should have been the one to crash.
Not theirs.
"When is your surgery?" He asked me.
"Less than half an hour." I said absently as I glanced at the clock on the wall opposite the bed from me. The slow ticking of it seemed to be mocking me.
"You should be up there then, making sure the OR is ready and checking up on your patient before he's taken in." He told me what I already knew I should be doing.
"I know it's just..." I trailed off, not knowing how to form the words that were caught in my throat.
"You can tell me Bria," Derek rubbed his thumb along the back of my hand, a simple act that used to make my worries disappear but now didn't even ease them.
"I feel like...if I go up there then I'll break." I struggled to get the words out as I felt the tears stinging in my eyes. I looked away from Mark's sleeping figure and towards the sad and understanding face that Derek was giving me. That was the thing though, he didn't understand what was going through my mind. He didn't- no couldn't begin to understand what I was feeling and thinking, what I'd been feeling and thinking for all these years.
"If I go up there then I feel like I'll only be able to see him. I can't do that Derek, if I see him then I know that I'll just break. Just like I did when it happened." I whispered as I lowered my head and held it in my hands. I couldn't break down, not like I did last time.
The last time I'd broken down Mark had been there to pick me up when I fell. He had been able to comfort me in a way that only he could and he wouldn't be able to do that if I broke again. I still remember my legs giving out from underneath me and my phone falling to the crowd with a thud, the screen cracking as strangled sobs escaped my lips. Mark's strong arms encircling me and him softly whispering that it'd all be okay as his hands rubbed circles in my back to try and relax me. By the time my tears had all been used his shirt had been soaked through and my eyes had been red and swollen, that had been after hours. He had just sat there holding me for hours, never once trying to stop my crying or to move me. He'd known that I had to cry, that I had to feel.
Now I was afraid to do that here. Afraid to break apart like that without Mark there to catch me.
"I need to get something." I shook my head as I saw Derek open his mouth to say something. Ever since I had came here we'd been acting as though these last several years hadn't happened, like we'd never stopped talking. Now though I was able to see the changes the separation had brought upon our relationship, how little we actually knew each other anymore. It hurt to have to realize that.
"Bria-" Derek tried to stop me when I reached the doorway, and I did stop. I glanced back at Mark's sleeping figure and Derek's worried face. I simply shook my head and wiped away my tears, I couldn't let the interns see me weak. I couldn't let anyone see me weak, not even Derek. I turned to leave again but before I did I said the one thing that had been running through my head all morning.
"He called for me. When he woke up, he called my name."
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