'*' Diary of Jane '*'
Feigning
*'*''*''*'*
Her heart shouldn't be this fluttery, she's been on thousands of dates, most of them, admittedly, not in her late thirties, but she's got the dress and the shoes and the success and really nothing to be nervous about. All that's left in her life journey, really, is to secure love until she's ready to leave the earth, but for some reason she seems to be the perfect lay but no one's forever. It becomes wearing, after awhile, to return home to only Milo, whom her lavish affection has turned spoiled and moody.
She only has so much time, so she called the stranger without a name and agreed to meet him at a coffee shop just a few blocks from the practice; she doesn't know she's sealing her fate with blood red wax.
A bell tinkles merrily as she passes the threshold and takes in the scene around her: the earthy scent of coffee, plants spilling from windowsills that display the sparkling azure sea, and small antique tables placed intermittently through the small shop; she falls in love with it instantly. The mystery man is nowhere in sight so she orders a frappuccino and settles herself at the nearest table, willing her recently volatile stomach to calm.
Ten minutes pass, porcelain teeth dig into full red lips, and being stood up shouldn't cause tears to pool in her eyes but she's been through so much lately, been rejected and left behind and tossed aside with such frequency that her tolerance and confidence have waned. She's strong, but not strong enough to be used, not strong enough to be alone forever.
The cool, blended drink soothes her churning stomach, lulling her into a state of relaxation such that the woman trying to get her attention has to tap her shoulder repeatedly before Addison rouses herself.
"Yes?"
"I think that man is trying to get your attention. He's been rapping the glass for the last two minutes," the woman informs her with undue exasperation as Addison twists in her seat only to find her mystery date seated outside, waving at her. She grins back and stands, the warmth of being wanted pervading her.
"Thought I stood you up?" he smirks, gesturing at the seat across from him, which she takes, trying to keep the scorching metal from touching the bare part of her legs exposed by her dress.
"No," she states, but she can see by the glint in his eye that he knows she's lying.
"A nice guy like me wouldn't do that."
She rolls her eyes. "I don't even know your name."
"Guess." She gives him an incredulous stare when she realizes he's serious, and he pushes a powdered doughnut toward her and lounges back in his chair, indicating that he has time. Her eyes narrow in on the way his muscles ripple under his designer button-up, and her mouth waters a little.
"Um, Greg?" she suggests, naming her previous patient's overly attentive husband.
"No."
"Derek?"
"Really? Do I look like a Derek?" he teases.
"No. I was just making sure, because that's my ex-husband's name," she explains, and then cringes, because she's already managed to bring up her incredible amount of baggage on their first date. Stupid, stupid Addison, she chides herself.
"I take it that didn't end well?" the man infers cannily, although he misreads her mortified expression.
"Not exactly," she chuckles, but doesn't offer further details when he raises his eyebrows. "That is a discussion for another day."
"So we're going to meet another day?"
"Are we?"
"Only if you can guess my name," he jests.
"Um … Joe?"
She never guesses his name but by the end of the date knows that it is Jack, and that he is a lawyer at a respected firm only a few miles away, and that his last girlfriend, whom he had dated for two years, left in the middle of the night without so much as a note of explanation. Addison, in turn, tells him about life as a neonatal surgeons (he's interested in the gore of surgery), about Naomi and her other friends at the practice, about how she used to live in New York.
They make plans for Wednesday night at seven. She mistakes the desire in his eyes for interest.
But first, something adds up.
*'*''*''*'*
In earlier years that are dominated, in her memory at least, by silver braces and awkward gawkiness, Addison explored her creative side (or rather, Bizzy forced her to) and played the alto saxophone in her high school's marching band. This did not prevent her from sitting alone at her own table at lunch every day, or the lisp that even Archer occasionally mocked, but Addison reasoned later that it bestowed upon her fingers the dexterity she so prized in surgery.
She always thought it could have been her second calling, only, of course, if surgeon or ruler of the universe fell through.
But now she thinks she should have explored the fine arts a little more, because her face could be a freaking Picasso, quality wise, at least. There's no proof that a clot of blood oozing from the side of her head had stained the oatmeal colored carpet just half an hour ago. The violet bruise slowly blossoming on her other cheek is hidden by a flawless blend of face powder and cover up. She rotates her head slowly in the mirror of the practice's bathroom to evaluate the necessity for any last minute touch-ups, but she looks perfect.
This was what she had wished for, as the geeky sax player whose name was only said in malicious whispers behind beautiful girls' hands. All she wanted then was to be beautiful, successful, and married, maybe with a couple of kids to show for it. It's all a farce, and the rush of water into the basin below encourages her to wash it all off.
But she can't. Her oppression by Jack is the only thing keeping Marin alive; the toddler is so fragile that all her husband would have to do is wait for her tiny heart to give out. Diagnosed with Congestive Heart failure, Ebstein's anomaly, and a ventricular septal defect at birth, Marin was on medicines before she was even an hour old. The septal defect was repaired by surgery, but as a preemie she was too delicate for the more complex procedure that would completely repair her heart.
Sometimes, Addison blames herself. Mark broke her heart shortly after they conceived Marin, and although it is genetically impossible, she thinks she may have somehow passed it on to her unborn daughter.
Now she's on diurectics, amiodarone, an anti-arrhythmic drug, and metoprolol, a beta-blocker that reduces the force which her small, fist-sized heart contracts, therefore alleviating an iota of stress placed on the slowly failing muscle. All of these medicines, while prescription drugs, would be simple for her to procure as a doctor.
Digoxin is a medication derived from foxgloves, which are beautiful but deadly flowers. Her daughter receives it to regulate her heart rate and relax her blood vessels, and for these purposes it works extremely well, keeps Marin alive. The problem is that Jack has hidden this medicine. The problem is that Digoxin's toxicity levels are so high that even a deviation of a single nanogram from the dosage could kill the two-year-old.
The problem is that when the medicine was first administered, Marin had an adverse reaction that landed her in the hospital for a week. The dosage was changed. Jack and the physician who treated her, one of his friends, incidentally, know it. Addison doesn't. A wrong guess could kill her.
She's trapped, a fly in a spider's web, as the life force is slowly drained from her.
Satisfied with her appearance and aware that she has a patient in about fifteen minutes, Addison gathers her things and heads for the door, adjusting the long, filmy sweater that obscures her bruised forearms. Her distraction causes a run-in with Naomi, however, who seems to have had the same idea of a little last-minute primping in the bathroom.
"Hey," she breathes to her best friend, eyes cast down because she knows their skyline depths will leak telltale signs of tragedy if they meet the chocolate brown orbs that exude concerned suspicion. Jack hates Naomi and finds her meddling irritating, as he has informed Addison angrily on several occasions. She imagines her best friend harbors similar feelings for her husband, but conceals them out of respect for her.
She attempts to brush past her friend but Naomi steps in front of her, examining Addison carefully. She knows the other woman suspects something, but if she opens her mouth she might spill it all and if Jack gets wind of even a single word uttered, Marin will be dead before she can draw another breath. And although the idea of Jack in jail is satisfying, it wouldn't bring her daughter back, maybe the only child she'll ever have, a glimmer of light in her otherwise shrouded life.
"I don't understand you," Naomi states, resting one gentle hand on Addison's upper arm, unaware of the tender bruises underneath the thin layer of fabric. "You have a kid and get married and you pretend that you're happy, but we all see that you aren't. You go home right after work, avoid Violet like the plague, and brush all of us off if we ask if anything's wrong. I don't … I don't know you anymore."
"I'm sorry," Addison apologizes hollowly. "Things are just … really busy, Nae, with Marin. It's hard, you know, watching her waste away, day after day? You and Sam and Violet and Pete and Dell, you don't understand. Your children aren't dying."
"Addie, Marin may be sick, but she isn't dying yet. You can't live your life in fear that something is going to happen, because that's not living at all." Addison doesn't respond, so Naomi interprets this as permission to continue. "I'm worried about you; you need to pull it together. Addison Forbes Montgomery doesn't -"
"I have a patient. I have to go." She wrenches her arm out of her best friend's grasp, suppressing a wince as she does, and manages to get her body through the door before promptly collapsing against the wall. She's learned that the injuries reduce her stamina but that another hit still won't shatter her like glass.
Violet passes her in the hallway and she quickly averts her eyes and increases the speed with which her heels tap the floor. She still catches Violet's frown and can imagine her and Naomi in front of the mirror, psychoanalyzing her life; she's already flushed one too many bottles of antidepressants down the toilet. The clock on her wall informs her she still has eleven minutes, so she opens a desk drawer and tenderly pulls a large book from within.
Addison had never been good at crafts and even though selecting stickers and paper patterns and glitter was fun, it took several tries and a couple of frustrated store assistants before Marin's scrapbook looked like it was assembled by a grown woman, who also happened to be a world class surgeon, instead of a twelve year old. She's tried to find mostly happy pictures to put in here, ones where Marin wasn't in the hospital and she wasn't bruised practically beyond recognition. There's one of her shortly after giving birth, exhausted and sore because she refused the epidural (she wanted to experience the birth of her only child undiluted) but still radiant with Marin cradled against her chest. There's another with Marin and Lucas covered in wild strawberry juice at Pete and Violet's barbeque and another of Marin hugging an extremely displeased Milo.
She's planning on sending it to Mark, because she thinks of him and the life she could have had and knows that he would do anything for them. He deserves an explanation, though, of why she kept their child from him. At first, it was for him, so he could be with Lexie, and later it was for her, so she could live her fairytale with Jack. Never once, she realizes belatedly, had the decision been made with purely Marin in mind.
Addison places a ducky sticker next to the picture of Marin in the bath with a mohawk, and her eyes fall on the post-it temporarily attached to the last empty page.
I know you might be mad, the note says. But there are two sides of every story. Under it lays the envelope of photographs that depicts the other side of their life, the photos where Marin is pale and hooked up to machines and Addison has a black eye and a split lip but her daughter is begging for her mother to be in the picture with the crab she found on the beach.
*'*''*''*'*
"Jack! Jackie, who is it?"
"Shh!" Nine-year-old Jack presses his finger urgently to his lips, because Amy's voice is tinny and shrill and sure to be heard even over the cacophonous dinner party below. The four-year-old obeys and sinks down beside her brother and the two kneel, swathed in moonlight, hands gripping wrought iron railings, as their father opens the door.
Edward Deveraux greets his guest with warm murmurs whispered into curled crimson locks, secret nothings that the children, one in a frilly pink nightgown, the other in oversized flannel, cannot hear. The woman presses red lips to their father's cheek and allows him to remove the voluptuous fur coat that hugs her slim body, revealing a midnight blue evening dress that makes Amy gasp.
"Daddy brought us a princess for Christmas, Jackie!" Amy squeals, bouncing up and down on stick-thin thighs as her teddy bear tumbles out of her lap. Jack snags it before it falls below and onto the head of the 'princess', although his mischievous nine-year-old self would love to see it fall. Jack is shrewd, though, observant, and jaded enough to trade pranks for knowledge, for the latter is an ocean current against a tiny, babbling stream.
"I don't think that's a princess, Aimes," Jack warns before his little sister becomes too excited. She's vibrant in the dim glow; dark curls bouncing, emerald eyes aglow; she doesn't remember the late Augustine Deveraux and likely never will. Jack does, though, almost as well as he remembers a parade of women sneaking into their house, his house by night, entering his father's room less than a month after his mother's death.
"Who is she, then?" Amy asks, eyes glimmering with admiration as their father sweeps the younger woman further into the depths of his house.
"I think that's Vivian," Jack sighs.
Amy wrinkles her nose and nearly sends her teddy flying again, this time into a large bowl of lurid red punch. "Who's that?"
"Dad told us about her, remember?" Jack explains with a tinge of impatience in his voice. "He's always going off to spend time with Vivian." As if the woman could hear him, piercing, green-blue eyes connect with his and Jack shivers. She's elegant, flawless; an ice queen who has infiltrated their palace once filled with laughter and light, and Jack's body swells with fear and hate simultaneously. Vivian looks away a moment later, scarlet curls bouncing, and Jack inhales sharply.
"I thought he just had an imaginary friend," Amy chirps happily. "I didn't ever saw her so I thought she wasn't real."
Later, their father will introduce them, and the fate of Jack Deveraux, Vivian Montgomery, Addison Montgomery and Marin Sloan will all be decided.
*'*''*''*'*
A hallway stretches out before him, tiled with squares of black and white, shrinking into the distance, lined with doors of red. He feels rather like Alice and wonders whether any of the small green plants rooting through the cracks are supposed to be eaten; he also wonders what that stewardess put in his scotch.
It is only when he begins to walk, placing one foot tentatively in front of the other, that he discovers his feet are bare, frigid chunks of ice against the marble floor. The plants hiss when he steps on him, but he continues forward, to the hallway that seems to get narrower as it stretches into the distance (he vaguely wonders whether the passage appears bigger in the distance behind him, but doesn't turn to look).
Then he blinks, and she's there.
"Addie?" he calls, his voice reverberating through the warped hallway disconcertingly, but he receives no answer from the woman draped in blood red further down the corridor.
Mark steps forward, and Addison's eyes, shards of blue-green ice, flash to his, and for a second he's wary of their fey nature, of the emotions contained in them, because this isn't his Addie.
Except she's always his Addie.
"Addison." It is more an acknowledgment than a query now, and his footfalls increase in frequency as he jogs closer to her, although the distance between them remains the same. She smiles; it doesn't look right. "Addison, talk to me."
She doesn't.
"I'm sorry. I made a mistake leaving you, I didn't love Lexie. Not like I thought I did. Please, babe," he pleads, but she only regards him coolly, her smile almost satanic in its wickedness. "Addie!"
He's running now and can't decide if the increase in proximity is a cruel trick of his brain or if he's actually closer to smelling her soft skin, the scent of sunshine and New York and vanilla and Addison; or if he's really any nearer to the red strands that frame her face, the soulful eyes, the rose petal lips.
His feet make no sound against the marble.
"Mark!" she finally calls, her entire body shuddering, and then she bleeds. Mark skids to a stop before doubling his pace, trying to get to her before her veins pour forth every last ounce of her life force, but the cuts well with crimson and by the time he reaches her, she's just a puddle at his feet.
"Addison!"
"Sir -"
"Addie!"
"Sir!" Mark opens tightly shut eyelids and finds that not only are his closest neighbors and two flight attendants staring at him strangely, his chest is also heaving and he's effectively moistened his grey t-shirt with sweat. Addison, he thinks immediately, but she's safe here, with the man of her dreams, or so he has been led to believe for the last two years.
He wishes she still needed him because then he wouldn't feel so pathetic needing her.
"Sir, are you all right?" the stewardess prompts, to his mortification. "We just landed in LA."
"I'm fine," Mark grumbles, glaring at all his nearest neighbors until they look away uncomfortably. Addison is his vice, the one drug he can never quit, the one fix he will always need, the one habit he'll never be able to break. He'll have to keep praying to a god he barely acknowledges that he believes in because she's his forbidden fruit and he may be going to hell for it.
Eve may have caused humanity's downfall, but Mark can't blame her for it.
He exits the plane quickly, weaving through families and old ladies with too many carpet bags until he reaches the busy terminal in LAX. A bone dry cappuccino does little to clear his mind as he stands in the sun, gazing out at the palm trees and waiting for the taxi that will take him to her again.
The conference is long forgotten, as is her husband. He needs to see her; it's been too long.
On a whim, he asks the cabbie to stop at the nearest strip mall and procures a bouquet of white lilies, marveling at their perfect depths, the unique texture of the petals and the way the anthers contrast with their snow-white silky depths.
Then he remembers Addison open under him like a flower, skin nearly as white and ten times as soft, red hair fanned out over a pillow, and his heart beats faster. He isn't sure whether he'll be able to leave without her this time.
*'*''*''*'*
The world spins, blurring the bright hues of her comfortable office, as she tries to focus on individual threads in the carpet, to no avail. Convinced she is about to loose the green juice and two pumpkin scones she had for breakfast, Addison falls against the glass door, rattling the closed blinds, where she remains until she is sure she can make it to her desk without vomiting.
A bead of sweat paints a glimmering trail down her forehead as she utilizes the mahogany of her desk as support for her weak, aching body.
She can't say it hasn't crossed her mind, but she can't deal with one line or two at this point in her life, so she avoids, pretends it isn't only in the mornings she is bent over the toilet, that the tampons she purchased a few months ago haven't gone untouched. She skirts coffee and alcohol as well, however, just in case, but has ceased to touch any region of her abdomen at all.
Preoccupied with attempting to control her body, Addison discovers she didn't lock the door when Naomi and Violet burst in simultaneously, both a little out of breath and bearing a strangely-bulging bag. She's intrigued, but she doesn't let on.
"Okay, this? This has got to stop," Naomi states firmly, moving toward Addison as if afraid of scaring a wild animal.
"Denial isn't getting you anywhere," Violet adds, and Addison is seized with a sudden desire to run from this intervention. The only problem is that the other two women are blocking the door.
"We have brought chocolate, we have brought candy, and we have brought alcohol for the two of us, but Addison, it's time to accept this."
Addison finally graces them with a steely gaze. "Whatever you two know that I don't -"
"Addison," Violet chides.
"You will drink this water, you will go in that bathroom, you will close the door, and you will pee on these goddamn sticks, Addison. Then you will eat some chocolate, drink some more water, and pee on some more sticks, and prove me wrong, or so help me, you are not leaving this room," Naomi informs her, waving around a couple of pregnancy tests, still in their boxes, for emphasis. "Right, Violet?"
"Yep, as long as I can open the Merlot."
*'*''*''*'*
Sorry, this chapter took a bit longer than I anticipated. Rest assured that the next one is what everyone has been waiting for :) Also, while most of the flashbacks are to show how Addison and Jack got together and Marin was born, a few, like the second one in this story, will reveal events that happened a long time ago (I hope everyone caught that that was Jack's childhood) like who the mysterious Vivian Montgomery is (you can guess in a review ... or tell me what you thought in general). The next update should come sooner, I've been waiting to write it!
Oh, and Shonda said she wants to reunite Maddison possibly sometime in the future. Hehe. I'm happy :D. She better make good on that.