A/N: So, I was re-watching episode 3.22 and thought of some things to say about it, if belatedly. Richard Webber's line is a direct quote from the episode.

What if I got it wrong
And no poem or song
Could put right what I got wrong
Or make you feel I belong
What if you should decide
That you don't want me there by your side
That you don't want me there in your life

What If, Coldplay

You took Grey's advice and acted like an adult. You let Addison go.

You made a mistake.

You made a mistake so big and so massively wrong, that as you wake up and blink your way into hung-over consciousness, not even the dim blur of your hotel room's early morning light can muffle the devastation that's pounding in your chest and ringing in your ears.

As a doctor, you know you're supposed to call it a panic attack. As a man who yesterday sent away the best thing in his life out of injured pride and a moment's misguided selflessness, it's obvious your bruised and battered heart is trying to get your attention before it's too late.

You can hardly breathe, and you get up shakily, unable to suck in air in any way that's useful to your body or your sanity, and look around for something to help you. On the desk, in the corner of the room, is the brown paper bag that the bottle of scotch you drank by yourself last night came in. You retrieve it and sink down in the silk upholstered chair, scrunch up the end and breathe into it until your lungs start to work again; and along with your lungs, breathing in and breathing out, your heart starts to calm.

But it's a repair job and not a very good one. The air caulks up the bigger cracks, but there are so many little ones from so many different papered-over wounds, the pain persists even when the pounding stops.

Letting her go may have been the single best thing you've ever done for her. Your single greatest act of love. There were others. Others that she even liked at one time. Before you became superfluous except as an unpaid, long-distance whore. But all of those offered you something, offered you the chance to hold her, be with her, make love to her. Offered you the chance to maybe have a life with someone who loved you back.

This one was pure. Altruistic. Apart from the unfamiliar sense of having done the right thing, you got nothing from it, and she got everything.

Because you could convince yourself, on the stairs at Seattle Grace, propped up by anger and a sense of injustice, or in the enfolding dark of your hotel room, wasted on scotch and self-pity, that you don't want her and that she's not worth the pain and humiliation of being permanently second-best, if that, to some other guy. But it's not true. You'll take her any way you can get her. And that's why, when you told her you broke the bet, you made the biggest mistake of your life.

You look over at the bed. The bed you've shared with her so many times now. Inside her, or next to her while she slept and you couldn't. The bed where you, the manwhore, lay awake with a heart splintered into shards of an exquisite pain that you called love because it was the best you were going to get.

You've made a lot of mistakes with women. Woken up in the morning in a lot of hotel rooms to find last night's fuck that you can hardly remember and don't find attractive and regretted the progression of depressing substitutions that you call your life. Until the next time, anyway. But Addison's absence, on this particular morning, in this particular hotel room, is so much worse than the presence of someone unwanted.

You would give anything if you could turn back the clock, not blow her off, not give in to her need to discard you, and make the only reason she's not here and you're alone that there are still twenty-seven more days left of your bet.

You don't know how to live in a world where you don't love her. You've loved her as long as you can remember. When she wasn't yours; when she shouldn't have been yours; and for the brief weeks when she pretended she was yours, even though her heart was somewhere else and, if you were honest with yourself, you knew that. You loved her yesterday, despite the anger and pain and defeat. And you love her today.

Which is why it was a mistake.

Because the crumbs of love she gives you? The sex she has with you out of love for one guy and lust for another, neither of which is you? You'll take it. It's pathetic, you guess, but you'll take it. Because, for you, Addison Montgomery is the one, the one and only woman, and she always will be.

What kept you hanging on was hope. Because you know that buried under the layers of her justified skepticism about you, you have something to offer her. Ironically, you're more certain of it since yesterday.

You never kidded yourself that she really wanted you, but you thought she'd settle. You're friends, she's used to you, you have similar tastes, you're good in bed and you look pretty when she takes you places. You knew that was more or less all you were worth to her, that loneliness figured more in her side of the bet than desire. But you'd hoped it would change. That one day, when certainty and routine and the simple fact that she was the only woman you'd slept with for years had lulled her into a sense of acceptance, that one day she would look at you and see you and know. Know who you were. And know that, all along, you were the one she loved too.

Letting her go really was the biggest mistake of your life and you're going to put it right. Tell her you lied, tell her how much you need her, tell her you'll take anything, whatever she has to give, as long as she'll just try with you. Let you show her what you can be.

So you shower and change and drive to the hospital and now any irregularity in your breathing is from anticipation. Just the thought of seeing her again gets you excited. The thought that you can make this right; the thought that you get one more chance to do the right thing and forgive her for breaking the bet. Maybe that will be enough. Maybe today will be the day she sees you and loves you.

Except she's not there. You can't find her. And somehow you know, from the feeling of emptiness that assaults you when you lean against the men's room wall and try not to have another panic attack, that it's not temporary and you're too late. But that stupid bit of hope that dogs you and makes life that little bit worse when it's dashed insists that you track down Richard Webber and ask him what he knows.

Derek's with him. But you're so lost in your need to find her or at least find out where she is, that you hardly even register that he gloats a little at your barely disguised pain when the Chief confirms she's gone

"All she said was she needed some time. To be happy and free if I recall correctly. Excuse me," he says before he walks away.

You don't know if he's rubbing your nose it in it or just being factual and, frankly, you don't even care, because still, in the face of her absolute absence, all you can think about is her.

You blew it. She took the first opportunity she had to leave you. No regret; no waiting; no recrimination even. Without you, she's happy and free.

You did the right thing for her. After what Richard just said, you're even more certain of that. But for you, it really is the biggest mistake you've made in a lifetime of screw-ups.

So you turn and start your day's work. Maybe you'll help someone today. You hope so. Because, for you, the possibility of happiness and freedom and the love you thought you might one day get to feel just decisively ended, and surgery and patients are really all you have left.