was heavily on Mark's mind Sunday afternoon.

He wasn't sure when the right time was to have the conversation, or even how to have the conversation. He wasn't even really sure if Daisy would take him up on his offer, and the thought of rejection made Mark wince.

Mark was cursing, mentally, at the fact that he was scared to have a conversation with a thirteen-year-old. He wasn't sure how much lower he could get.

The day had gone by agonizingly slow. He didn't have any surgeries, there were no bodies to cut into—much to his dismay.

There was a certain lull to the day. An eerie quietness that Mark wasn't sure what to do with.

Mark was working in the ER suturing wounds. But even in the usually overflowing, action-packed, explosive emergency room, things were relatively calm.

Mark had finished suturing every minor cut in sight, and he genuinely didn't know what else to do.

The most intense case that had come into the pit today was a woman who had scolded herself with hot water attempting to make tea. The small wound had taken no more than a minute for Mark to dress.

Where were the crazy cases? The knives to the gut, the axes to the head, the occasional chopped off finger. Mark ached for some sort of action to wake him up.

Of course...perhaps it was a good thing that the ER was so slow. It meant that nobody was getting hurt, and people were being safe.

But still. There was nobody for Mark to help, and he let out a loud sigh from where he was standing at the ER desk. His eyes slowly raked over the flushed out pit.

Jackson was in the corner, trying to explain to a woman that the emergency room really was not the first place to go to for a stomachache. There was a man with some sort of bandage on his forehead, waiting to be discharged. There was a kid in a soccer uniform, her arm in a splint of sorts.

Mark was drawn back to reality when he felt a sharp prick of pain radiate through his arm as Callie came over and hit the man.

"Ow." Mark groaned, rubbing the sore spot on his muscle. He was used to Callie's playful punches, but this one felt particularly hostile. "What's wrong with you today?"

"You need to talk to Daisy."

"I'm going to. Eventually, I swear."

"You need to hurry it up." Callie snapped. "Because she thinks you're gonna throw her to the wolves and she's scared and it is sad to watch. Tell her."

"I'm going to, jeez." Mark mumbled.

Callie sighed out, tilting her head. "When?"

Mark wanted to say tonight.

Because that would be the right time.

But Mark was sort of scared he would get home tonight and chicken out of talking, and push the conversation off to another day.

"Why are you so scared to talk to her?" Callie groaned as she surveyed the man's face.

Mark was not scared to talk to Daisy.

But he was scared to have this particular conversation.

The weight of it just felt so heavy. Mark didn't know what he would do if Daisy turned him down. He'd need a back-up plan, and then it would be a whole messy thing, and...Mark didn't want that.

The conversation had felt so much easier to have with Calypso on account of the fact that she was merely seven. She didn't really understand the premise of what Mark was asking her. To Calypso, adoption was just sort of a really long extended vacation in which you never leave.

But Daisy understood the concept wholly, and she was terrified of it. Daisy understood every little detail of what Mark would be asking her, and he knew he would have to pick every single word he spoke very carefully.

"I'm going to. Tonight, I'll tell her tonight." Mark finally decided as he spoke to Callie. "I will. I just...it kind of has to be special, you know?"

Callie understood what Mark meant. Daisy hadn't ever faced the possibility of adoption. Daisy had been faced with horrible foster placements. Daisy had been faced with nightmares and messy baggage and skewn emotions. Daisy had been dealt a horrible hand, and this moment had to be the most special it could possibly be for her sake.

However, Callie knew the girl wouldn't care at this point. Daisy was so psyched out and paranoid about being separated from her sister, Callie knew all Daisy wanted was to be told that she could stay.

"It doesn't need to be special. You just need to talk her." Callie spoke firmly. "Talk to her. She's worried."

"I will."

"Tonight. Talk to her tonight." Callie got one step closer as she spoke, something that unnerved Mark just a little as her tone got quieter. "Because I am in no position to be taking on a child but I swear to God, Mark, if this conversation does not happen tonight, I will steal your child and adopt her myself."

Would Callie actually swoop in and just take Daisy?

Mark didn't actually know, but he also didn't care to find out if Callie was just making empty threats or if she was actually telling the truth.

"Tonight." Mark conceded, slowly nodding. "It'll happen tonight...okay?"

"Perfect." Callie smiled as she clasped her hands together, very cheery as if she hadn't just been threatening the man five seconds prior. "Do you have any patients?"

Mark sighed, shaking his head. "No. I mean, look at this place. It's so dead."

"Don't say that." Callie scolded, immediately reaching over and knocking on the wooden front desk. "That means people aren't dying, that's good. Don't conjure up all the sick people."

Mark sighed, watching an older woman wheeled in from the amublance bay. She looked incredibly disoriented, but didn't appear to have any sort of bodily harm. Each doctor in the desolate emergency room watched the woman eagerly, each doctor ready to assist and have some sort of patient interaction.

Callie's pager rang out loudly, Mark grunting.

"I'm glad you have some sort of action."

"A ninety-year-old with a broken hip is hardly action." Callie mumbled, the woman beginning to walk away as she spoke, pointing a long finger at Mark. "Tonight. Your place. I'm bringing ice cream because we're going to celebrate because you are going to talk to Daisy."

"Calypso can't have ice cream on a school night. It'll make her crazy." Mark tried to come up with some sort of excuse in case he bailed, but Callie was not having it.

"Tonight. Your place." Callie turned away as she walked. "I'm bringing ice cream!"

Mark let out a sigh, leaning back against the desk. One of the interns was already at the older woman's side assisting her, and Mark had lost his window of opportunity to aid the woman himself.

Mark found himself particularly attentive of the empty pit, and he observed the way each of his colleagues worked.

He watched the way April sprang into action when she was informed there was an incoming trauma three minutes out, the woman quickly pulling on a gown and gloves and making her way out to the ambulance bay, the look on her face unreadable.

He watched the way Jackson's face contorted in annoyance, the man's tone growing slightly louder as he struggled to win the battle in letting the woman in bed five know that no, she could not come to the emergency room over a stomachache that could easily be solved with an antacid.

He watched the way the interns looked slightly unsure about everything, glancing over at each other for help as they struggled to recall the medical knowledge they had retained in med school. They struggled to find their place in the hospital food chain, not used to having to balance being a twenty-something-adult while also being the bottom feeder—the kid in which nobody wanted to speak to.

Mark supposed the hospital was a bit like high school, in that sense. There were teachers, and students. Being assigned to scut was comparable to detention. As a hungry intern, getting to scrub in on a surgery brought that same sense of excitement as the final period bell ringing out.

The interns were pretty nerdy too, Mark thought. The interns were like the annoying kids that Mark would have "accidentally" nailed with a dodgeball in gym class.

The blaring sirens of an ambulance came in from a distance, and Mark supposed he could help with the incoming trauma. The ER was like a ghost town, and Mark decided he would rather help than stand alone for a couple more minutes and find more comparisons between a hospital and a high school.

Mark was just beginning to pull a yellow gown on when the trauma came in, and the man grimaced at the sight. Although Mark dealt with blood on a daily basis in surgery, the blood he saw in the OR was nothing compared to that of blunt trauma victims. It was always so gruesome and graphic, and there was a blatant reason that Mark hadn't picked trauma as his specialty.

The bloodied figure strapped down on the gurney was mutilated and tiny, seeming to be a child, and Mark felt his heart ache as he thought of his own two girls. He knew two devastated parents would be following behind the gurney, and Mark wasn't sure what anyone would be able to say to make them feel better. There wasn't anything to say when someone's kid is bloodied and mutilated and strapped to a gurney, and Mark felt sympathetic for the sorry parents.

"Where do you need me?" Mark asked as he tied the strings of the gown behind his back, walking quickly beside April who was rushing with the gurney.

"You're not needed, Dr. Sloan."

"But I can help."

"But you're not needed." April snapped in a harsh tone, not daring to look in the man's eyes as she spoke. "Please. Go somewhere else."

Mark's footsteps faltered to a stop as the gurney continued on down the hall at a brisk pace, the doctors desperate to get the kid immediate medical attention.

Mark noticed Jackson staring at him from the bed next to where he was stood, the younger doctor probably having witnessed the events that transpired between his mentor and his wife.

"Your wife is kind of a bitch today." Mark mumbled, not caring if Jackson snapped back at him. Mark didn't like that Kepner had been so harsh to him for no reason, and he didn't think it was fair that she was acting like that.

Jackson's eyes were clouded though, attentive and stone-cold as he peered forward. His lips were agape so slightly, the man unable to find his voice until he could finally sputter out a single, weak word.

"Mark."

Mark noticed that Jackson wasn't actually focused on him, but rather the space behind him.

The man turned, his eyes met with the sight of another bloodied figure standing in the hallway leading out to the ambulance bay.

Except this bloodied figure wasn't mutilated like the previous one, and Mark recognized this bloodied figure.

He was able to take one step, and then another, and then another, trying desperately to get to the girl as quickly as possible.

"Daisy?"

The girl didn't respond, her eyes stuck on an unknown point, cloudier than the Seattle sky.

"Daisy." Mark spoke more urgently this time as he got closer to the girl, hoping she would respond.

But her movements were like that of a zombie—sluggish as she took the tiniest step forward into the hospital, the girl looking more disoriented than the older woman that had just been rolled in. The normally pristine white shoes that Daisy insisted on keeping clean were stained the deepest shade of crimson red, ugly splotches of the liquid strung all over the laces and encrypted into the fabric.

"What the hell happened?" Mark questioned frantically, holding onto the girl by her shoulders as he scanned all over her face, trying to find any sign of a big cut or bleeding wound. "Are you okay?"

The obvious answer was no, of course, because the girl was covered in enough blood to make Carrie look like a joke, and Mark felt stupid for having even asked the question in the first place.

But Daisy nodded slowly, her lips parting to produce a voice that came out strained and hoarse. "Yeah. I'm...good. I'm good, yeah."

She didn't look good, though, and Mark was genuinely panicking.

Daisy reached out to hold onto Mark's arm, as if needing help holding herself up, leaving a red handprint on the yellow trauma gown.

"Where's...are you..." Mark had trouble forming the right words as his eyes took in so much. Daisy had blood on her hands, and blood splattered on her t-shirt, and blood smeared across her cheek. "What happened."

Daisy couldn't find it in herself to provide a summary for the events that had transpired in the past hour. Daisy was deeply troubled by the thoughts coming in, and even more so by the state of instability she was in. Pictures flashed through her head.

Mark watched as Daisy reached up to rub her temple like she had a headache, unknowingly smearing more of the red liquid just above her browbone.

"Where are you bleeding? Did you get cut, or...or did you fall, or..."

"Oh, this isn't mine."

The words Daisy spoke sent chills down Mark's spine. The sentence provoked a specific question, of course. An obvious question. A question in which Mark didn't want to ask, a question in which Mark didn't want the answer to.

The man blinked, time moving around the two ceasing to exist. He spoke desperately, wanting there to be some sort of sane answer to all of this.

"Whose blood is that, Daisy?"

Daisy blinked, not able to find the voice to answer. The girl wasn't even really sure what had happened, anyway, because it had all happened so quickly. Everything had happened so quickly, and Daisy's brain was having trouble processing all of it.

Mark noticed it was particularly quiet, and he noted the absence of the talkative girl who usually made things loud. Calypso was always glued to Daisy's side, and yet there was an empty space next to Daisy's bloodied body.

"Where's your sister?"

Daisy blinked again, her eyes stuck on another faraway spot as the wheels in her head kept turning.

Daisy said nothing, and yet she didn't have to, because Mark truthfully knew where Calypso was as pieces came together

Calypso was the bloodied body strapped to the gurney, and Mark was the sorry parent.

"Oh my god."

"I..." Daisy began to speak, swallowing hard as a she let out a brief, panicked sort of laugh.

The girl rubbed at her temple again, the crimson liquid smearing farther across Daisy's skin as she rubbed. "I think I need a shower."