~ Beautiful Disaster ~
"My wife never had a miscarriage." Derek stated firmly, although the numbness pervading him suggested it might be otherwise.
"I'm sorry, Dr. Shepherd, but we have a medical record of it. Addison Forbes Montgomery miscarried a child about three years ago. She was about 14 weeks pregnant when it happened. It would, of course, be confidential, but I assumed you knew."
Derek looked at the file. The medical evidence stared him in the face. How could he have not known? That was back when they were married, back in New York, before Mark. This was impossible, and Derek couldn't even fathom that it might be true. He got up slowly from his chair and left the room, trying to escape from the terrible truth.
Meredith sat back in her chair in shock, her eyes tearing up. Addison had carried Derek's child, and Addison had lost that child.
Derek found himself on the roof, gazing out over the city. The rising sun and the ferries in the distance calmed him and force him to face some unpleasant realities. Had he really been that absent?
While on the roof, another unwelcome realization dawn on him. Mark must have known.
"You knew!" Derek yelled, slamming Mark against the wall. They were on the surgical floor, and everyone backed away, out of earshot, although they were clearly watching. "You knew the entire time, you knew about our child, you didn't even think to mention it, and you call yourself my friend?" he hissed, trying to control himself so the entire hospital wouldn't find out.
Mark is surprising calm throughout all this. "Yeah, I knew. She told me one day when I was filling in for you. She wanted to tell you, but you weren't there, were you? There was a time when she told you she needed you to be there, just once, and you weren't."
"Derek, wow, you're home. It's a miracle."
"What do you want, Addison." he said tiredly.
"I really need to talk you about something," he barely noticed her voice had turned pleading. That should have been the alarm bell right there. Addison rarely begged. She was too proud. But she was begging for the sake of their child.
"Not now, Addison, I've got a lot to do." For once she didn't argue and ask what he could possibly have to do.
"Alright, then, come with me to dinner on Friday. I'll make reservations. Just promise you'll be there." She had put her mask back on.
"Alright."
Addison, however, continued walking after him. "I really need you to be there for this, Derek. We have a lot to discuss, and I want to work things out. Also, there's something . . . else, something important."
"Okay, Addie, okay. We'll talk then."
Mark watched Derek break down, and knew he was remembering.
"I didn't go." he whispered brokenly. "She was going to tell me about our child, and I didn't go."
"Yeah, you sent me instead." Mark said.
"Mark. Mark! I've got an important surgery. Can you go to this dinner with Addison tonight?" Derek asked, obviously in a hurry.
Mark, for once, hesitated. "This sounded kinda important, Shep. You might not wanna miss this."
Derek sighed. "I have a surgery; I'll talk to Addison later. Please, Mark?"
An hour later Mark walked into a fancy restaurant and gave Derek's name. He was led to a table where he found Addison holding back tears. She looked up hopefully, but her face fell when she saw that he was not Derek. Her white dress made her pale skin and black smeared makeup stand even more in contrast, but she still looked beautiful. Broken, but beautiful.
"Hey, Mark." she said dully.
"I'm sorry, Addison."
"It's all right." she said brokenly as he sat down. "I shouldn't be surprised anymore, but I can't help hoping. I was going to tell him tonight, but since he's not here and you are I'll tell you instead: I'm pregnant."
Mark knew how much she wanted a child. "Addison, that's wonderful."
"No, its not." she whispered, blowing her nose. The lights twinkled around them, casting lights on her creamy skin. "I'm alone. I mean – you're here. Thanks for being here. I-I really mean that. I'm just scared that I'll be raising this child by myself."
Derek's eyes were red-rimmed. Mark felt for him, he really did, but Derek had screwed up pretty badly.
Derek was attacked by another wave of guilt as another memory surfaced.
He had been in Japan for a consult, an amazing opportunity. He had gotten to scrub in on a phenomenal surgery. He had been very pleased about it but remembered that before he left Addison had not seemed so pleased. He pushed her out of his mind, he needed to focus.
"Dr. Shepherd?" one of the nurses said. "An emergency phone call for you."
"Tell them I can't take it now, I'm in the middle of surgery." he told her, his voice bored.
She said something into the phone, and then spoke to him again, "It's about your wife, Dr. Shepherd."
Now Derek was annoyed. This was a difficult surgery, he needed to focus. "Addie can wait until I've at least finished this procedure."
"Your wife is in the hospital, Dr. Shepherd. Something about a m-."
Derek cut across her. "Tell them that I will deal with this later."
But he never had. He had come home, and Addison had been home and walking around and fine, so he had assumed it was nothing, if he had actually bothered to assume anything at all.
"I held her while she cried, Derek. I was with her when she lost the baby. She sobbed night after night. And I filled in for you so many other times, including your anniversary. She cried and I would piece her back together. When we went out, people thought I was Dr. Shepherd, not Dr. Sloan. You really wonder why I fell in love with her? You really wonder why she cheated?"
Derek was silent. He could finally see Addison's side of the affair.
"I was holding her one night not too long after the miscarriage. She had just asked me to hold her, so she could feel loved. She was clutching at me and sobbing and somehow it just happened. She needed to be loved and I had fallen in love with her. And it was a bad situation and a bad time, I know, but it woke you up. Now you truly know how much of a McBastard you've been, Derek." Mark told him, and walked away.
Mark sewed up the girl's face, which had been mauled by a dog, and wondered how his life had gotten so screwed up. He remembered his joy when Addison was pregnant with his child. But he had freaked out and cheated on her and she had aborted the baby. He hadn't been ready to be a father back then, and she hadn't been ready either. After first losing Derek's baby and then being pregnant with his and then finding him cheating, she had been a wreck. He couldn't fully condone the abortion, but he could understand it, considering what she'd just been through. And that was why he had forgiven her for it, and always came after her.
He remembered the night Addison had lost her baby. She had been three and a half months pregnant, and glowing. It was icy and cold out, and Mark was taking her to the movies. She walked out wearing her usual designer clothes and heels, and had slipped on the steps of the brownstone. She fell down them before he could catch her and hit her head. He remembered the red of her hair and blood in contrast with the snow, and how her labored breathing had clouded the hair while she tried not to cry out in pain.
He drove her to the hospital himself while she alternated between conscious and unconscious. He made them call Derek, who was in Japan, while he comforted Addison. He held her while they told her that she only had a concussion and a cracked rib, but her baby was dead. He sat behind her, cradling her back against his chest while they removed the tiny fetus.
She had seemed to fade after that day. Derek came home, but he did nothing to comfort her. Addison told Mark he didn't know. And one night when Derek was late getting home Mark found Addison crying in the kitchen over the dinner she had made for them. He held her like he always had. One minute he had been wiping away her tears, and the next he was kissing her and taking her up to Derek's bed.
"So guess what I found out today." Meredith said glumly to her friends. Alex, George, Izzie and Cristina leaned closer across the cafeteria table.
"What?" said Cristina when Meredith wasn't forthcoming. "Rose isn't pregnant, is she?"
"No!" said Meredith. "But Addison was. She miscarried his McBaby three years ago."
"Seriously?!? They all exclaimed.
"Yup." said Meredith.
"Oh my god, that's so awful." Izzie said. "No wonder their marriage fell apart. Poor Derek. And poor, poor Addison. And we called her Satan. Jeez."
"Derek didn't know?" Cristina asked, and Meredith shook her head.
Alex, who had been working in Neonatal lately, chimed in, "Think of how hard it must have been for her to deliver all those healthy babies."
"Okay, yes, we have established that it was awful and sad and all that stuff. But can you all just . . . stop expressing sympathy for Addison right now? Be a little supportive, Derek and I are in couples therapy."
"Dude, Meredith, that is pretty selfish. I mean, Addison lost a child. We feel sorry for her. So lay off, okay?" Alex said as his pager went off. "That's me, I gotta go." He kissed Izzie's cheek and left.
"What?" Meredith asked her friends. "You don't agree with him? That was like, three years ago anyway. They should be ov-"
"Meredith, okay, just shut up." George said. "You're being kind of insensitive." He and Izzie had finished their lunches and got up to leave.
Cristina was looking down at the table. "Not you too?" Meredith asked.
"Mer, I love you, I do, but . . . losing a child is awful. It's happened to me. And the brave face I put on to hide that pain, well, it's not that different from how Addison acts like she's fine all the time when she's really not."
Derek sat alone outside his trailer that night. He thought back to the early years of his marriage and how happy he and Addison had been. Addison had always been there, cooking dinner, cleaning the house when she had time, watching his surgeries, while he had gotten complacent.
They both worked their asses off over the years to earn their reputations. And somewhere along the line, his work had become more important than Addison. He had assumed she'd always be there, even when he wasn't, but that wasn't fair, and now he knew that. It had hurt to see her in bed with Mark, but she had been hurting too.
Meredith and Addison were so different. He and Addison had been friends before she had finally agreed to go out with him. He had a whirlwind romance with Meredith. Addison was somehow strong and vulnerable at the same time, while Meredith needed comfort. His relationship Addison was wild and loud and loving and consisted of crazy fights and hot makeup sex. With Meredith, things were different – calmer, sweeter, slower, their relationship progressing slowly.
Two parts of his life, Meredith and Addison. And a baby he had never known. In that moment, Derek felt lost, as though the meaning in his life had gone missing. And he knew deep inside that the place he had to look for it was in LA, where his past and the story of his lost child resided.
Thank you for reading! And thank you to everyone who reviewed. I do love reviews, so please review :) I actually have a lot of chapters typed out already so you won't have to wait long for an update. But as I said last time, if there's something you want to see in the story, let me know, and I might put it in there. Also, I did change the summary, just fyi.
