ON ANOTHER PATH
In another life, where Mark and Addison are happily married, there are still a number of seemingly insurmountable struggles to overcome.
Trigger warning for miscarriage and infertility.
Massive AU, no spoilers to be seen.
Because they always have been and always will be my OTP, and I still can't let them go…
It's madness, because the possibilities are endless, apparently, but it's like you can't seem to make them all add up. Because it was never going to be anything but simple, in your mind, and all of a sudden it's like senior year algebra.
You can still see a little red head with Mark's eyes running around in your mind's eye, and you think Mark looks for a second grateful when you tell him you'd be happy to try IVF.
You know you've got a very skewed sample, but considering most of your work is with women who are a lot further along the line than that mildly important part known as conception, most of your exposure to IVF is where it's worked. You don't like to think about all those that don't, and the stories you get from Naomi when you finally get round to catching up, about the seemingly endless cycles of failure after failure, the marriages that break, the couples that give up completely.
Because you've never tried before, and it might work first time, and it'll be really like you never needed any help at all.
That's the way you're thinking, anyway.
Dr Reilly gives you something of an awkward half smile as he lets you look down the microscope. You look through the lens, and suddenly the enormity of the whole thing chokes you. It looks perfect, that tiny cluster of cells, but so so fragile. And suddenly the most important thing in your life, so the infinite fragility is less than ideal. You find your hand gripping round Mark's, who's just behind you, awaiting his turn to see what might define the rest of your lives.
As he steps forward to take a look, you hear his breath catch audibly and are grateful he's having something of the same reaction. You hadn't been being crazy, you hadn't been overthinking things – it wasn't the same as all the pictures of blastocyst embryos you'd seen in med school, on conferences, even in Naomi's lab. Because that one in front of your husband right now, that was something completely different. That was the building blocks of that tiny red headed child you could see in the back of your mind somewhere, with Mark's eyes.
And you had to believe that.
After the implantation, Mark insists on following Dr Reilly's advice to the letter, and takes you straight home, insisting you sit straight down and barely move a muscle, as he orders a takeout, a wide smile on his face as he pours himself a large glass of wine and gives you a soda, and slips your favourite movie into the DVD player.
You chuckle to yourself. "Nine months, you're going to have to be my butler, Mark."
He gives you an even wider smile, leaning forward, kissing you on the forehead. "I wouldn't have it any other way. Only the best for you and baby Montgomery-Sloan. The very best."
You catch his hand. "The first few days are key, though, Mark, you know that… nothing might come of it, we have to be ready for that…"
His smile softens, somehow, and for a second there's a flash of the fear tightening itself in your gut in his eyes. Only for a second, though. He's careful. "Maybe we've had all the difficulty we're going to have. Maybe someone up there's going to decide actually we would make such a beautiful baby it would be practically a crime not to allow it…"
You snort, rolling your eyes, but you drag him beside you and don't let go of his hand until the takeout arrives.
That first time, it's the next morning. Mark kisses you on the cheek as he leaves for work – you've taken a few days holiday at your husband's insistence to rest – and you snooze for maybe an hour more. When you decide it's finally time to get out of bed, if only to get some breakfast and read a couple of journals, you pull back the covers and are greeted by a spread of crimson across the otherwise pristine white sheets. For a moment you freeze, because this can't be happening, you didn't feel anything, it can't go that unnoticed, to lose a child.
Not a child yet, your brain says in a concerningly sensible voice, that doesn't sound dissimilar to your grandmother, God rest her soul, less than 500 cells.
And it doesn't look like a child, it looks like so much blood. You're a surgeon, for heaven's sake, and you've never been squeamish in your life, but suddenly you rush to the bathroom and throw up the leftovers of last night's takeout, retching with violence over the toilet. You can't work out whether the tears running down your cheeks came before or with the vomiting.
You're scanned that afternoon, after calling Mark and having him leave work in an emergency, and confirmed that you couldn't hold on to the embryo. Dr Reilly tries to tell you in a calm, sensible voice that you should have a break and consider the emotional turmoil that continually attempting IVF will give you, but with one look at each other you sign up for the next implantation slot at the right time in your cycle – you've both always been determined, stubborn and dedicated, and this isn't any different. You figure it's going to be alright, you're going to be fine, you don't feel any different.
That night, however, you've never felt so small and empty. You curl into a shell on your side of the bed, facing away from Mark, and silent sobs wrack through your body. You think he's asleep, and you're grateful for that, because right now you're not sure you could bear being held. You feel so inadequate, so useless that you don't feel like you have the right to be loved so unconditionally, not right now.
It's not until your shoulders stop shaking, probably more with exhaustion than anything else, that his hand comes to rest on your hip bone.
You try again, and this time the bundle of cells survives inside you for nearly 36 hours before bleeding out, as if it had never been there in the first place. You and Mark hardly speak for about a week after the second time, with only the general niceties, 'morning' and 'have a good day at work' and 'night, I love you' but nothing that's really saying anything. It's like you're coexisting in this strange world where nothing is going according to plan, but as long as you don't acknowledge each other's existence there, none of it will be real.
Attempt three is another quick finish, so when attempt four makes it past the 48 hour mark, something catches in your chest, because maybe, just maybe, it's your turn, now. You see the smile back on Mark's face, and he kisses you before you go to sleep that night, and for the first time in weeks you don't feel somewhat guilty for kissing him back.
That's half the reason why it's even more heart-breaking when you wake up in the middle of the night in excruciating pain, to a flood of blood in your underwear. The pain subsides quickly after you rush to the bathroom, leaving a lightly snoring Mark in the bed beside you, but there's blood running down your legs and it feels like your heart's bleeding out of you with the almost-baby, and so you sit in the bottom of the shower, and set the water on low, watching the pink water tinged with blood wash away from your body.
You're not sure how long you've been sat there when Mark comes through the doorway, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He sees where you are and when you see tears in his eyes as he slides back the shower door, you realise you're crying, and you're not sure how long you have been. Mark only cries when you cry.
He turns the water that's almost running cold now off at the wall, and wraps his warm dry arms around you, burying his face in your wet hair. He doesn't say anything, but you don't suppose there are any words, in that moment.
After an insurmountable length of time, he lifts you in his arms and out of the shower, and he wraps you in one of the teal towels, knotting your hair behind your head, pressing his lips ever-so-gently against your cheekbone. You stiffen slightly, but he shakes his head almost imperceptibly at you, and you lean into him heavily after that, your forehead resting on his collarbone.
There's a faint strand of light creeping through the bathroom blind before you move again.
He calls in sick the next morning and lays by your side, as you stare up at the ceiling, with some sort of emptiness. It feels like if you roll over, get out of bed and start about the day, there'll be some sort of finality in it.
Fingers find their way interlacing with yours, and you turn your head to the pillow, to find Mark looking at you, with tears somewhere behind his eyes. Not close enough to come out, but you can see the first seed of them there.
"This isn't going to work, is it?" you whisper, and it's like you've drawn a line under what feels right now like everything you've ever wanted. He doesn't move, except his thumb starts stroking over the back of your hand.
"You can't keep doing this, Addie. It's not fair."
You wish your laugh didn't sound quite so bitter. "None of it's fair, Mark." You reach out and cup his cheek, because somehow the more connected you are the more you feel like you have another source of energy was your battery is drained. "I could keep trying."
He shakes his head, sadly. "It'll break you. You're so close as it is… we'll find another way…"
There's a tear running down onto the pillow as you close your eyes.
Telling Dr Reilly you're not going to try again is one of the hardest parts, but he nods and smiles like he's seen it all before a thousand times. And then he starts talking about other options and surrogates and perhaps taking a break from it for a while, and it suddenly becomes suffocating. You take Mark's hand and you concentrate on breathing.
When Dr Reilly leaves you to get a couple of coffees, leaving you time to process everything, you look down at your hands. Yours is gripped like a vice around Mark's, his fingers bloodless. When you release him slightly, he folds his arm around you and buries you into his side.
I'm going away for a few days now, so there'll probably be a slightly longer delay in the posting of the next part, which may or may not be the final part (I suspect I might write a fourth!) Would love to hear what you think of this one!
