Fallen
When she closes her eyes, ruby-coloured mist swirls behind them. Her stomach is in knots; her legs are aching with the effort to keep them splayed in the stirrups. She never thought that she'd end up being the patient. She never thought she'd end up hearing the news instead of telling it.
It started with a dull ache on one side – this sort of occasionally-stabbing pain that she never much thought of. At 38 years old, Addison Montgomery was focused on her career; on her dying marriage; on her budding relationship with her intern, who turned out to later become her wife. She never really paid attention to the fact that her period became erratic or that she started to bleed during her ovulation cycle. She never paid attention to the dull back pain or to the fact that sometimes she shit five times a day or sometimes it took almost a week to pass anything. If she had noticed these things, she would have sworn that it was due to stress, a change in diet, something. No one wants to admit there's something off. No one wants to slow down, and Addison was a person for whom slowing down would have equaled death.
So, she let it go. And she enjoyed life, and it was only when she realized that the pain was getting worse, not better, and she was slightly nauseated the majority of the time that something may be up. This also coincided with the fact that she had missed her annual gynecological appointment. After several tests over several weeks, Addison was called back into the office. And now the pretty doctor staring into her vagina raises her head and regards Addison with soft brown eyes, opening her mouth to speak.
It doesn't matter. Addison already knows what she's going to say before she even opens her mouth. She closes her eyes and tries to close her ears to the news, but she can hear it through her ruby fog anyway.
"I'm so sorry, Dr. Montgomery. You've got ovarian cancer."
And just like that, her world tumbles down.