A/N: Thank you so, so much for your reviews. I should really be doing something else right now, but after your awesome response to this story, I figured you deserved Chapter 4 as a happy-end-of-2018 present. I hope you enjoy it!

Every Woman's Dream

Gestational Age: Seven weeks, six days
People Who Know So Far: Three (including one embryo and one intern, terms that are often interchangeable but not in this case)
Unsuccessful Attempts to Tell Husband: Three and a half
Unsuccessful Attempts NOT to Tell Husband's Ex-Girlfriend: One (unfortunately)

..

For a moment after Meredith Grey appears ... time freezes.

"Close the door, Grey!" she barks frantically as the reality slams over her – then rolls her eyes and hisses, "I mean with you inside it," as the intern prepares to leave.

Grey looks like she'd prefer to be on the other side of the door, and Addison can't exactly judge her for that. She's already grabbed the paper from the table to wipe the gel off her abdomen and is hastening to shove her blouse inside her skirt and zip it up but she's not exactly decent.

She wouldn't really blame Grey, if she ran.

But she doesn't: she comes inside and closes the door.

"Okay, now lock it," Addison prompts.

"We're actually not supposed to – "

"Don't recite regulations, Grey, just lock the door!"

The intern looks like she's considering answering back. Which would be well deserved, in fairness. Something like: you care an awful lot about locking the door now when you couldn't be bothered before.

But she does it.

Meanwhile, Addison's already shut off the Doppler but the baby's pounding heartbeats still echo in the air.

"Um … sorry," she says after a moment, not sure whether it's for snapping at her about the door, for confronting her with evidence of her pregnancy, for being pregnant in the first place, or just in general … for showing up in Seattle and killing the buzz she remembers perfectly well of having all of Derek Shepherd's attention focused directly on you.

"It's okay," Grey says. This is awkward for her too, certainly. "The log said the room was empty," she adds.

"Yes. I know what the log said." Addison sighs.

Meredith Grey.

Seriously?

Of all the intern gin joints in all the towns in all the world …

Addison glances at the monitor. And sees Grey's gaze skate there too.

Jane Doe.

Now Grey is looking at her.

Waiting.

Okay, time to practice saying the words. Not like there's any mystery left. She might as well just … say them.

Here goes:

"I'm – "

But she doesn't finish the sentence; she can't because she's lurching to her feet and stumbling into the attached bathroom. She's sinking to her knees, her body contracting painfully, her stomach emptying itself first of water and then, when she's still not finished, bile.

Distantly, she can feel someone behind her, drawing her hair away from her face as she retches and holding it back.

Finally, she slumps over the commode and tries to catch her breath. Her head is throbbing and vomiting hasn't helped as much as she'd hope with the nausea.

Someone is talking quietly to her, but she can't hear it over the sound of her pounding heart.

She concentrates on breathing and then the room comes back into focus, the cold tile under her legs.

"Are you okay?" Grey asks from somewhere behind her.

"I'm great. I'm great," she repeats hoarsely, her throat sore. "I mean … doesn't every woman dream of the moment her husband's girlfriend finds out she's … ?"

Her voice trails off. Pregnant, just say it, but she doesn't.

"Ex-girlfriend," Grey corrects.

"Semantics," Addison croaks, gripping the sides of the tank as a wave of dizziness hits her. Between the chemical toilet and the exam room – oh well, she can always chop her hands off later.

"Don't get up too quickly." Grey has her hands under her elbows now, helping her ease away from the commode but leaving her sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall.

"Be careful, I'll crush you," Addison offers weakly, trying to sound like she's joking. Not like she's been stealing glimpses of the other woman's little bird bones. Wondering through her pounding headache, even just for a second, if Derek misses her very different body. And then feeling guilty about it, because Grey's really doing overtime here as a good Samaritan and Addison would really like to think of herself as the type of feminist crusader who doesn't think things like skinny bitch in the workplace but then again she's also a human, so ….

"Thanks," she says quietly.

Grey is tiny, there's no doubt about that … but she has a good grip.

"I'm stronger than I look," she says, shrugging a little.

That must be nice.

As for Addison … she's fairly certain she's weaker than she looks.

Grey, meanwhile, is still in Samaritan mode. Or intern mode. Or making-up-for-screwing-your-husband mode, because she's at the sink now wetting paper towels and passing them tactfully down to the vomitorium so Addison can mop her face.

She takes her time wiping her face, her neck, letting the cool water soothe her. Grey disappears and comes back with a cup of water, which she drinks gratefully, and a package of plain crackers.

"Thanks."

Grey nods. She's leaning against the open bathroom doorway.

"You're pregnant," she says quietly.

"What gave it away?" Addison presses her fingers into the tight muscles of her neck. "Was it the Doppler or the vomit … or what I'm now thinking might be minor mood swings?"

Grey just watches without saying anything.

"Sorry," she says, for the second time, and the other woman just nods.

"Derek doesn't know," Addison admits. "But I, uh, I was going to tell him. I am going to tell him."

Grey looks away for a moment.

"I'm not … I'm not telling anyone yet," she says as if it's a set plan and not four days of sheer world-spinning confusion, "so if you can please not tell – "

"I'm not going to tell him," Grey says.

"Not just him." Addison sighs. "Your – the others," she says, waving a hand to get across that hyena pack of interns who'd love to get something else up on Satan. "I, uh, I already have enough people doing the whole … staring and whispering thing when I walk by."

"Yeah." Grey looks rueful. "I get that."

"Great." She tries not to sound sarcastic. It's not Grey's fault, it's not Grey's fault.

Too bad Derek isn't here to remind her that it's her fault.

"I won't tell anyone," Grey is saying her now, her voice annoyingly reassuring, "I can't tell anyone, even if I wanted to – I'm technically treating you right now."

Addison frowns. "Says who?"

"I brought you water." Grey gestures to the cup. "I brought you crackers. I gave you towels. That's transactional, it's treatment. You could sue me."

"Interns aren't very idealistic these days," Addison comments, massaging the throbbing point in her forehead with two fingers. "That, or Richard's first-day-of-work speech to the interns isn't as inspiring as it used to be."

Grey almost smiles and then she does too.

God, her life is strange right now.

"Are you feeling better?" Grey asks.

Than what?

She makes a non-committal shrug.

"The crackers might help," Grey suggests, and Addison has to bite back a reply about accepting medical advice from an intern barely older than the embryo inside her … but she manages, and she manages to keep down two small crackers, too.

They do help, a little.

Grey is just looking at her.

"I am going to tell him," Addison says, a little defensive, not sure why she feels the need to say it. "I was going to tell him, it just wasn't …." Her voice trails off and she sips a little more water to soothe her aching throat.

"Dr. Shep – Addison," Grey says, her tone infuriatingly gentle, "you don't need to explain anything to me."

If only that were true.

"Well." She looks down, adjusting her blouse. The collar is damp from the wet paper towels, or at least she hopes that's what it's from. "I appreciate that … Dr. Grey."

Dr. Grey. But what is she supposed to call her? Sure, this particular intern might be Meredith when Addison and Derek are arguing about her in the trailer, but right now – despite all appearances, including the fact that she's improbably splayed on a cold linoleum floor in a tight pencil skirt after her husband's ex-girlfriend held her hair back over the toilet like an efficient sorority girl – now, they're at work.

"And I appreciate your, uh … your discretion," Addison adds.

"It's my job," Grey says. She glances at her blackberry. "I should actually get back to work, if you're – "

"I'm fine," she says quickly.

She even moves her mouth up at the corners in what she's pretty sure a smile looks like, she says thank you one more time politely like the good little Greenwich girl she's supposed to be, and then she's alone again.

She's standing up, re-locking the door, and fixing her makeup and hair in the unflattering bathroom mirror.

And then she's just staring at her reflection.

So … this is her life: pregnant, and the only other person who knows … is her husband's ex-girlfriend.

At least she's pretty sure it's his ex-girlfriend.

She and Derek are married, after all. And married people don't keep secrets from each other, right?

..

Meredith looks a little flustered when she finds him at the nurses' station – nothing major, a few wisps of hair around her face, just a little … rumpled, and he studies her with concern, closing the chart he was holding.

"Are you all right?" he asks.

"I'm fine." Meredith gives him a brief smile. "I put a rush on Mr. Greenspan's labs, but there's a backup."

"Thank you." He smiles back at her. "Are you sure you're – "

"I'm fine," she repeats.

They review her next steps and as she walks away, he finds his mind wandering again to Meredith's absurd suggestion this morning that Addison was –

She's not, obviously.

But still. Addison, pregnant.

It's a concept he stopped considering … years ago, now.

There was a time when he was young, they were both young, and it was a far-off certainty: exciting, inevitable, but irrelevant.

And then there was a time when they were both not so young and it was off the table. Gone, just like that. Like an empty place setting.

In between those periods, they talked about it. In the marital sense of talked, that could be anywhere from resentful references to passive-aggressive needling to all-out red-faced yelling fights to the simple exchange of a wordless glance.

The words changed. Their jobs changed. Their homes changed.

But at its core, the talk remained the same: Addison wasn't ready.

There was always something in the way: first waiting for her to finish her residency – all along watching his mother try, sometimes successfully, to bite her tongue about the fact that each of his three older sisters spent at least nine months of her successful residency pregnant – and then waiting for her to finish her fellowship – and then, in one of their last and most vicious talks, there was her second fellowship.

Before all that, before the conversation calcified into something hard between them, a space in their bed where another person could have fit – before that, before Addison was ready, he was ready.

Addison would remind him, angrily or sadly depending on her mood, what she would need to give up to stop her residency for a child. Just once, he knows, his mother recruited Liz – the oldest, officially, and the unofficial wisest – to Talk To Addison. Like that: in capitals.

All he knows about that incident is that his sister took Addison to lunch on a drizzly weekend afternoon the last year of her residency, on a rare day off, and his wife came home in tears. You set me up, she said, and when he tried to wrap her in his arms she pushed him away. What he remembers is that her coat, her scarf – they were damp with beaded moisture he knew was from the rain outside but meshed so closely with her tear-streaked face that it seemed as though her whole body was crying.

He remembers that she softened to him eventually – she always did – and comfort turned to something else and he was buried inside of her, their bodies as close as two can be, when she reached up and framed his face with two trembling hands. I need to know that I'm enough for you, even if it's just for now, that's what she said. And he was a good husband. Back then, he was a good husband. He did what he was supposed to do: kissed her fingers where they gripped his face, kissed away the tears marking her cheeks once again, held her trembling body, afterwards, and whispered reassurances into her tangled hair.

They stopped talking about it.

..

"Look – there it is."

Her patient, who has stayed remarkably perky considering she passed out in a bus shelter, stares round-eyed at the screen. "It's okay? The baby's really okay?"

"The baby's great. See that?" Addison gestures with one gloved finger. "There's your baby's heartbeat."

"Ooh." The patient looks wistful for a moment.

"You want to hear it?"

"Yes!" There's that perkiness again.

Addison wields the Doppler, and the pounding sound of the baby's heart fills the room.

Her patient giggles. "It's so loud! And fast!" She pauses. "Is it too fast?"

"No. It's perfect."

Her patient laughs again, then chews her lower lip a bit. "I haven't told Brendan I fainted. Can't call him 'til his shift is over and he's going to be so freaked out."

"It's very normal to feel some dizziness in the first trimester," Addison reassures her. "Your hormone levels are changing, widening your blood vessels to make sure your baby gets enough blood … but that means your blood pressure gets lower. And that can make you feel dizzy."

"Oh." Melanie considers this.

"You're looking out for the baby, in other words," Addison tells her.

"That's cool."

"Isn't it?" Addison smiles. "Let me just get one more – "

But her patient, apparently reassured, is beaming now, and she wriggles, moving the wand.

"Melanie … can you hold still for me for just another minute?" she asks patiently.

"Sorry.

"It's okay." Addison smiles at her patient. It is okay. Other people can be excited about their pregnancies.

"Anyway, so Brendan noticed that I wasn't, like, cycling," her patient continues chatting as Addison moves the wand carefully inside of her, apparently ready to return to the story of the baby's father. "Not 'cause I wasn't bitchy, I mean, I wasn't but that's because that's PMS but what he actually noticed was that I wasn't," and she lowers her voice like she's about to curse, "ovulating."

Addison smiles weakly.

"…you know, because it makes me, like, want to do it all the time."

Charming.

"Yes, that's very normal," Addison says, although she has a brief flicker of wondering whether she should have pursued some nice specialty where people's sex lives and babies wouldn't be in her face 24/7. Like podiatry. Or … the circus.

"Brandon is really tuned in to me," her patient is saying serenely. "He noticed before I did!"

Just keep rubbing it in.

"He sounds like a very attentive partner," Addison says instead, in a tone no one – okay fine, maybe Derek back when he used to listen to her – would know is less than sincere. She withdraws the wand. "How does he feel about the pregnancy?"

"Literally over the moon," Melanie beams.

That's literally not what literally means.

"How wonderful." Addison withdraws the wand. "You can get dressed now, Melanie. Everything looks good. I want you to try to eat breakfast for the next few weeks – that may help with the dizziness. Snacks during the day. And try not to stand up too fast – even when the bus finally gets there."

"Got it," her patient says, sitting up with a great rustling of paper, Addison hovering a hand just in case. "Brendan's gonna like this – he loves making me waffles in the morning!"

Of course he does.

"Dr. Shepherd?" Melanie asks once she's scooted off the table, holding wads of paper in her hands.

"Yes?"

"Do you have kids?" Melanie's face is bright and uncomplicated, and then it falls a little. "Oh, sorry, is that, like, too personal?"

"It's fine," Addison says tightly. "And, uh … no, I don't have kids."

"Oh, that's too bad," Melanie says. "You'd be a good mom. You're good at explaining stuff."

Goddamn it, now her throat is tight.

This never happens in podiatry, she's almost certain.

"Well. That's a nice thought. Thank you." She draws the curtain. "Take care, Melanie. Remember – breakfast."

..

"Can you grab my fingers?" Meredith asks as Derek watches from a foot away, smiling reassuringly when she glances at him. She has a good rapport with patients, Meredith. He can see that as a teacher, not just a … friend.

"Great. Now I'm going to … ."

He's listening, not tuning out the familiar words of the exam.

"Dr. Shepherd?"

Meredith is glancing at him. As he watches, she repeats the test, indicating the gaps in her field vision. He takes out his own penlight.

"Tell me again what medications you've been taking?"

"Ganostantin," she says.

Derek glances at Meredith. "Who prescribed it to you?"

"It's like a hormone thing or whatever."

Ah. Fertility treatments.

Derek turns to Meredith. "Page OB. See if they can get an endocrine consult for us."

Meredith nods, turning to the door.

"Ms. Davis? Whoa, hey." Derek puts a hand on her shoulder as she starts to get up. "I need you to sit still for a minute longer for me, okay? Dr. Grey and I want you help you get sorted out and make sure you feel better."

"The drugs are good," she says, sounding tired. Her voice is a little slurred. "It's a lot of drugs … but it worked."

"What do you mean, it worked?" Derek's heart speeds up. "Ms. Davis? Are you – " at her nod, he calls out:

"Meredith!"

She turns back, a hand on the door.

"Forget OB. Page Addison."

She arrives with a click-clack of heels and a billow of her lab coat just like always.

"Hey," she says quietly when he meets her at the door to catch her up.

There's no trace of this morning's illness, or whatever it was. She's focused entirely on the consult, getting information from him efficiently before she turns and strides to the patient's side.

"Ms. Davis? I'm Dr. Shepherd." Addison smiles down at the patient. "Can I take a quick look at you?"

Derek watches her work. She's calm and reassuring, using Meredith effectively as she checks the pregnancy. He notices the way she directs her – Addison has always liked teaching, even if it's uncomfortable watching her … teach … in this particular capacity. Unless he's mistaken, Meredith looks a little uncomfortable too, but she handles the patient well.

Addison doesn't rush, answering the patient's questions, and then she leaves Meredith with the patient and gestures Derek into the hall.

"I've seen this before, a number of times," she says when they're alone. "The patient is still supplementing with PIO, but her body is making enough progesterone now that she's reacting to the increase, and she's change was too fast for her RE to notice. But the pregnancy is progressing normally."

Derek doesn't respond.

"What?" Addison asks, a suspicious note in her voice.

"Nothing," he says. "Just, uh, thank you."

"Oh. Well, you're welcome." She pauses. "I called in an order and she should be fine, but I want to review the labs when they come back to see if we should admit her. Someone can monitor her for a few hours? Grey, or … ?"

He nods.

"Page me if anything comes up."

"Good. Thank you," he says again. "You're, uh, you're working," he adds.

"You noticed." But she doesn't seem offended.

"So you're feeling better." She always works; he knows this.

She nods.

Your wife threw up this morning.

"You, uh, think it was a bug this morning, or something you ate, or … ." His voice trails off.

She looks at him for a moment. His blackberry buzzes, glances down, and when he looks back up she's looking at him. He waits for her to answer.

"Maybe," she says after a minute. "Then again … throwing up is a perfectly natural reaction to the stench of rotten fish first thing in the morning."

"Rotten?" He frowns. "That trout was swimming peacefully in the lake an hour before you started insulting it."

"Peacefully." She looks amused. "Until you murdered it."

"Addie, you do realize sushi isn't grown in a lab, right? So those fish were swimming once too?"

"I do realize that, Derek, but there's a reason I didn't marry a sushi chef."

"Because you hate fish," he prompts, "when it's convenient to hate fish."

She points a finger at him. "Didn't I ask you this morning not to say fish again?"

"You did," he admits, "but I don't recall agreeing."

Her mouth twitches. "Well, do you recall – "

"Dr. Shepherd?"

They both turn around at the interruption. It's Meredith, leaning her head out of the patient's room, holding Ms. Davis's chart.

She looks from one of them to the other. "The endocrine consult called me back … if you still want it."

Derek glances at Addison, who nods. "I still want it," he tells Meredith, "but have the consult talk to the other Dr. Shepherd first."

Meredith looks from him back to Addison. "Sure. Of course."

"Thank you, Dr. Grey," Addison says, before turning to Derek. Her eyes scan him up and down. "Dr. Shepherd," she adds, politely, before she click-clacks away down the hall, her hair swinging a little with the speed of her stride.

Addison never let a little thing like ridiculously high heels get in the way of how fast she walked … how fast she expected everyone to walk, from residents – who did their best to keep up – to pedestrian tourists at Christmastime – who did not.

"Dr. Shepherd?"

He glances back at Meredith, reorienting himself. Dr. Shepherd. It sounds … wrong, somehow, but he doesn't want this to be hard for her.

"I'm going to check on the labs."

He feels his face soften. "Good idea."

..

… make that four and a half unsuccessful attempts to tell her husband she's pregnant.

And fine, so telling him in the hallway right after he asked her about her uncharacteristic nausea wouldn't exactly have been perfect for the baby book, but it would have been something.

He was – okay, not warm exactly, but he wasn't that cold either. He did sort of ask how she was feeling. With enough sincerity that she tossed off a couple of he hates me not petals and realized she wasn't even annoyed about this morning anymore.

But then his blackberry buzzed, and the moment was lost.

As it is, he still doesn't know. And Grey does … but at least that awkward three-way consult was mercifully free of any more homages to The Exorcist.

She's going to tell him.

First she's going to be stalked by pregnant women, apparently. All day.

Although, in fairness, she did sign up for that. But that's not the point.

The point is that he needs to know. She just wants it to be … right.

Somehow.

Maybe because everything in Seattle so far has felt so wrong?

Whatever the reason, she can admit – grudgingly – that it would nice to be able to tell him on her own terms. Without that cold muted anger from him, with his attention focused on her and not just for a consult either. On her, the person. Her, Addison.

His wife.

So. How to tell him.

She has some ideas:

One: Set up the doppler and have someone tell him to come find her. He walks in to hear the heartbeat … but that's a little too close to how Meredith Grey found out, and while she's not totally horrified by the idea of this modern friendship thing with her husband's ex-girlfriend … she's not French, either.

Two: Buy a darling little onesie. Put it on a trout. Okay, it's possible she's still a little annoyed about this morning

Three: Corner him after a successful surgery when he's all happy and arrogant and whisper it in his ear. A few issues there: she'd have to watch to make sure it was successful, and that's time-consuming when she has her own patients. Depending on how messy the procedure is, getting close enough to whisper in his ear might be difficult … and rather unhygienic. Not to mention the other people in the scrub room. She imagines ten people listening. Satan's pregnant? Yeah, that won't work.

Four: Ask him for a consult, then be alone in the exam room when he gets there. Have a portable ultrasound in there too.Where's the patient, he'll ask, and she'll wait for him to figure it out. His eyes will get wide with the question and she'll nod slowly, confirming it. He'll be so excited he'll lift her off her feet and – my god, this one is embarrassingly … soppy. Mushy. She cringes.

Five: Offer to go fishing with him. Yeah, she's not quite that desperate yet.

… but check back tomorrow.

To be continued, of course. Look, I don't want to be shameless, but you know how much I love hearing from you. Reviews power my fingers and encourage me to avoid other tasks I should be doing to write instead! (Yes: shameless) So show me some love and I'll get another chapter up by the end of this week. Shameless. That's me. I hope you enjoyed the chapter - thank you for reading, and happy new year! Here's to another year of Addek Revolution!