Title: This Place is a Prison
Rating: M
Words: 670
Summary: Post-S2. Addison makes a decision. // The Seattle hospital scene is the surgical equivalent of a one-night stand.
You thought you were done with surgery.
Okay, not done done, but done with the impersonal, high pressure, cut-cut-cut, "hi-I'm-your-surgeon-any-questions-bye" way of, you know. Operating. But a patient coming to a doctor's home, drugging her, and cutting out her unborn baby? It, well, it shook you. It shook you more than it should, probably. Or maybe not enough, considering. You can't be sure. But it hit you for a six or something, and you'd suddenly felt exposed. Vulnerable, in a way that you never had felt at your strictly confidential, privacy-controlled Manhattan private practice. But then it was the Seattle hospital scene, the surgical equivalent of a one-night stand. Wham, bam, thank-you ma'am, and the prospect of regaining the socializing and the individual care of a practice, it had excited you suddenly. You wanted to know the people and not just what was wrong with them, and you wanted them to tell you, not a piece of paper. You'd craved it.
The need for anonymity hit the same way. You didn't belong in an office. Not any longer. You didn't belong in an office, and the office didn't belong to you. You felt fraudulent at best; you'd barely known her. Everyone else; their mourning was much more legitimate. They'd all known her longer than you had, and, whatever. It just didn't work.
You went back to the hospital at first, cloaking yourself in purple scrubs and almost enjoying the dry skin brought to you by your sudden need to keep the entire surgical soap industry afloat. Water. Soap. Rinse, repeat. St. Ambrose was, well, it was better. You slipped back into the surgeries and the blood and the exhilaration. Charlotte had given you the hours you wanted and first pick at any surgery because you're friends with Cooper and Cooper was friends with Violet and if only Charlotte hadn't called him then he would have found Violet before it was too late and god, Charlotte has a guilt complex to rival Meredith's.
But.
The problem was, other people worked at the hospital. (You've got it all worked out.) Specifically, stupid freaking married Noah was there and you just couldn't bear his stupid small talk and stupid brushing past you in the scrub room and, you just couldn't. He was there with his freaking wife and their freaking baby. Their baby who had reduced you to a selfish, burning Addison-shaped ball of shame. It was just a thing, a thing with his pheromones or the scent of his detergent and you knew it was really, really bad, what you were feeling, you knew it was bad when he wasn't within a five-foot radius but closer than that, goddamn.
But once he was more than five feet away from you, your rational self took over. The same rational self who brought you to Seattle in the first place, incidentally. You figure your rational self tends to think things would be better somewhere else.
Well, let her. Everything there in LA was suddenly unbearable, stifling. Excruciating. You weathered it for a long time, longer than you thought you could. Long enough that Naomi stopped blaming herself for not having stricter confidentiality. Long enough that you leaving wouldn't compound everything that you, the least-affected one, had been putting back together for oh so long.
And then you broke. You broke free from what had once represented freedom itself.
You were going to go back to New York, but. Your rational self had already condemned the Big Apple and, really. Who were you to cross with her? New York was okay, but you'd left it once and you couldn't do that again. That had nearly killed you the first time.
So your rational self watched in pleased approval as your hand—nails kept short now, short means efficient, short means intact gloves—reached out and lifted your cellphone. Dialed. Answered when the voice chirped in your ear about specials and tickets and travel tips.
It was gray when you landed. Gray and drizzly.
You smiled.