A/N: I suck at updating on schedule. I really do. I had a legitimate excuse for not updating last Friday like I promised: I had a class last week and didn't get any writing done. And then I had some writer's block and needed to update my other story too, so I got to this way later than I wanted to. It's not the best chapter in my opinion (especially Addison's POV; it just didn't flow the way I wanted it to) but I have a rough outline for the next chapter and it should be a lot of fun, and better than this one. It won't be as dark and sad either, which I realized that a lot of this has been so far. And it will be up by next Friday. I promise.

HUGE thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter. I love reading what you think about the story and how it's progressing. Special thanks to Fire Dolphin for letting me know about the existence of Addison's son. I don't watch Private Practice (yet) and so I had no idea that she had a baby. To those of you who read but don't review, that's okay, but I'd love to know what you think, even if it's just "good chapter" or something like that.

ANYWAY. Enough of me talking. I'll just let you read. Enjoy!

Addison was here. Not just here as in here in Seattle or here in the hospital, but here as in here in this room, curled up in a chair by the bed, fast asleep in a position that looked anything but comfortable. He wasn't surprised that she had come; despite all that had happened between the three of them, he and she and Derek had somehow been able to retain a sort of friendship. Mark figured that, after so many years of doing everything together, it wasn't worth the effort to cut each other completely out of the others' lives. There were just too many parts of their lives that intertwined. The thing that surprised him was that she was here; asleep by his bedside when there were surely more comfortable places to be sleeping, like an on-call room, or the hotel room he was positive she had booked at the Archfield. That, he supposed, was the power of friendship, the proof that, blood was thicker than water. They hadn't really spoken to each other in the better part of a year, and yet, she was here forsaking all comfort to be at his bedside, presumably so that he wouldn't wake up alone. The gesture had been much appreciated, though only after he got over the crushing disappointment that the hand holding his wasn't Lexie's.

She was everywhere. He'd been aware of her forever, but everything had become so much more acute since she'd died. He was more aware of her now simply because she wasn't there. He'd never really realized all the things that she did, or the incredible presence that she had until she was gone. Her ghost was everywhere he turned, like a nightmare that he couldn't escape. Missing her had become a physical ache more painful than anything he had ever known, like a vital part of him had been removed and he was still trying to figure out how it was possible for him to function without it.

She had told him that he was in her like a disease, but it was he who had been infected, on he hadn't realized how much until she was gone.

Since he had the time—Addison showed no signs of waking up anytime soon—Mark looked at her, really looked, something he hadn't done since Lexie had walked into his life. He'd seen her the couple of times that she had been here to visit, but never for very long, and he'd never really had time to catch up with her because of work, and life, and Lexie. This was probably the first time since she'd gone to L.A., since she'd broken his heart—though he now knew the real meaning of heart break—that he'd really actually looked at her. She looked a little thinner than he remembered her being, though those famous curves were still very much there, and her skin had that soft, golden, sun-kissed glow of someone who spent plenty of time in the sun. She looked younger than when she had first come to Seattle, probably a bi-product of the tan. Her long, auburn hair fanned out over the back of the chair, hanging suspended like a waterfall. He was glad that she'd let it grow out again; he'd never been a fan of the short cut, even though everybody else was. He'd always been a fan of long hair.

The dark shadows under her eyes didn't go unnoticed, and made Mark wonder if this was the first time that she had actually slept since coming to Seattle. Part of him wished that she were awake, so that he could make some joke about how she was always coming here in the wake of some kind of crisis and that maybe next time she should consider coming when everything was calm, but he didn't want to wake her either, not when she looked so peaceful. Knowing her, this was probably the first bit of piece she'd had in a while.

She made no sound when she approached, but he could sense her coming. The presence was familiar, and Mark could feel the hope welling in his chest—maybe this was just a horrible mistake, a misunderstanding, or some kind of awful test to see whether or not he was actually serious about her—only to have it crushed when he realized it was Meredith who standing in the doorway, and not her sister. Was this going to be what his life was like from now on: full of false of hope followed by crushing disappointment when he realized that the knock on the door, the voice calling him in the hallway, the ringing of the phone wasn't Lexie? He wasn't sure that he had the strength to do it.

"Hey." She was hovering in the doorway, as if unsure whether or not to enter the room. A chuckle rumbled in his throat, as he remembered that was the same position Addison had been in when he'd spied her in the doorway.

Meredith frowned slightly, not sure if she was being laughed at, or if he was laughing at something else. "What's so funny?"

Mark shook his head. "The floor's not made of glass, you know. You can come in the room."

There was a slightly awkward pause, before Meredith crossed the threshold slowly. "Well, I wasn't sure if you wanted visitors or anything," she replied, glancing pointed at Addison.

"You and her both. Honestly. Last time I checked, heart surgery doesn't affect your stunningly good looks."

A ghost of a smile flashed across Meredith's face. "Well, it certainly hasn't done anything to your humour. How are you feeling?"

The carefully constructed, carefree façade vanished in an instant. "Awful." Whether or not she was talking about his pain after the surgery or his pain after Lexie's death, the answer was the same.

Meredith sighed, perching awkwardly on the bed because Addison was occupying the only chair in the room. She reached towards him, as if to grab his free hand, but seemed to changed her mind at the last minute, and pinched the sheet between her index finger and thumb instead. She wouldn't look at him; this wasn't easy on her either.

Neither of them said anything, blanketing them in uncomfortable silence. What was there to say? Mark didn't really want to talk about Lexie; his grief was something that he dealt with quietly, in his mind, and not something he shared with anyone. None of them, not even Meredith, understood what it was like, and he didn't need any of them holding his hand and pretending that they understood what it was like. Meredith wasn't the type to pretend that she knew what people were feeling; if she told you she understood what it was like, it was because she understood what it was like. She'd racked up the mother load of painful experiences in her life, but he didn't think any of them came close to this.

He could feel the pain welling up from somewhere deep inside of him, the agonizing ache that filled the hole in his chest where his heart used to be and spread so that it consumed him. Being here with Meredith made everything worse because she was too close. When Mark though of Meredith, Derek, Zola, and Lexie immediately jumped to mind. The four of them were all entwined in his mind, when he thought of one, the other three popped up. Lexie's words rang in his ears, words that he didn't ever want to hear again. Please tell Meredith that I love her and that she is a good sister.

He couldn't take it anymore. He couldn't sit here with Meredith and not talk about what had happened, and be constantly haunted by the memory of her dead sister and the wish that it had been Meredith crushed under that plane and not Lexie. He wouldn't wish this agony on anyone, and certainly not Derek, who, for all intensive purposes, was his brother, but that didn't stop him from selfishly wishing that the love of his life had been saved and not Derek's. Derek and Meredith had had more than enough moments together. Mark and Lexie hadn't had nearly enough.

"I should, uh, get going. I told Derek I would stop in before I left." Meredith stood up, still not meeting Mark's gaze. "I'm glad you're doing okay."

Mark nodded numbly. He wasn't really paying attention to what Meredith was saying. He just wanted her to leave so that he could go back to the morphine-induced haze where everything was fine.

She paused in the doorway and turned to look at him, her face full of sadness, as if to remind him that he wasn't the only one who was suffering. "She would have wanted you to live," she said quietly, before turning and walking away.

Mark sighed and let his head sink deeper into the pillows. Addison's hand was still in his, and for that, he was glad, because, with his eyes closed, it was easy to pretend that it was Lexie's.

He was tired. Pulling a long shift—or longer than usual for him—had completely zapped all of his energy. All he wanted to do was go home, have a long, hot shower, and go to bed, though he knew the latter wasn't going to happen right away. Lexie wouldn't let him go to bed without eating something, and so there'd be take-out—that he'd order, if she hadn't already—and a beer to eat while watching the end of the Celtics game. This was one of the few game nights where Mark wasn't actually in the mood to watch the game, but they were playing the Knicks at Madison Square Garden, and he knew that this particular game was going to be rehashed at work tomorrow, especially since Derek was a die-hard Knicks fan. The rivalry between the two of them had been in place since they were kids; Mark was born a Celtics fan—one of the few things he inherited from his father—while Derek, like any good Manhattan boy, worshipped the Knicks. It had gotten to the point where Meredith had banned them from watching Knicks/Celtics games at their house because there were too many expletives and violence—all of it playful—for Zola. Mark's apartment had become their go-to place for game night, which meant that Lexie spent the night at Meredith's—like her sister, she wasn't a fan of Mark and Derek's method of watching the game. If the Knicks won tonight, he'd never hear the end of it tomorrow, and if the Celtics won, well, Mark wasn't going to miss out on a chance to rub it in Derek's face, no matter how tired he was.

He could hear the sound of the TV going as he jiggered with the key in the lock; the familiar sound of the NBC sports broadcasters sounding from the other side as if they were sitting in his living room and not coming from his TV. That was unusual, though not totally surprising; Derek may very well have come over here to watch the game, though had that been the plan, he would have mentioned it at work. Derek wasn't one for showing up unannounced at people's houses.

The battle between him and the lock was a never-ending one, but when he finally did get the door open, he was surprised to see Lexie sitting on the couch, bowl of popcorn balanced on her knees, watching the game. She wasn't a huge sports fan—baseball was the only one she really followed, having once been a softball player herself—and he was sure there were many more interesting things for her to be watching on TV.

She looked up at the sound of the door closing, that familiar, beautiful smile filling her face. "It's about time you came home. The game's almost over."

Mark couldn't help but stare. She was just so beautiful, so perfect, and part of him still couldn't believe that she was his forever. "Sorry I'm late; there were some complications with the surgery. Nothing I couldn't handle, of course," he added, grinning.

Lexie snorted. "Right. I forgot: nothing slips past the god of Plastics. Meanwhile, I've been sitting here watching the Celtics get absolutely slaughtered by the Knicks."

Mark groaned, running a hand through his hair. "Seriously?"

She nodded grimly. "Derek is going to have a field day tomorrow."

"No kidding. Why are you watching it, though? I didn't think that basketball was your thing." He sank down on the couch beside her, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her close.

She shifted the bowl of popcorn to prevent it from spilling everywhere, and shrugged. "I figured you were going to be late getting home, and I knew that Derek was going to want to rehash the game tomorrow, so I figured the least I could do was give you the basic rundown so that you wouldn't be completely out of your depth. I even took notes!" She grinned, gesturing to the impressive array of Post-Its stuck to the arm of the sofa, all filled with notes about the game in Lexie's handwriting. "Most of them are just me copying verbatim what the commentators were saying, but still."

Mark chuckled. She never ceased to amaze him. Basketball was not something she followed or understood, and yet here she was, taking notes so that he would know what to talk about with Derek tomorrow. "You know I love you, right?" he asked, pressing his lips gently against the top of her head.

"Yeah," she said softly, snuggling closer to him. "I do."

At first, Addison had no idea where she was. When she realized that it was a hospital room—the beeping and whirring of machines and the blank, sterile atmosphere were dead giveaways—her first thought was of Amelia and her disastrous pregnancy. It wasn't until she was Mark asleep in the bed, hand clasped in hers, that she remembered everything.

Slowly, as so not to disturb Mark—who needed all the sleep he could get right now—she sat up, suppressing a groan as her stiff muscles tried to un-kink themselves. She'd been so tired that she hadn't worried about getting comfortable in the chair before drifting off, and she was definitely paying for it now.

Her BlackBerry vibrated suddenly in its case at her hip, shattering the silence. Cursing, Addison fumbled it out as she hurried out of the room, praying that Mark wasn't going to be woken.

"Hello?" She hated how breathless and gasp-y her voice was; it made her sound desperate and uncollected, two things that Addison Forbes Montgomery loathed to be.

"Addie?" Sam's voice was full of concern. "Are you okay?"

Am I okay? She wasn't sure she had an acceptable answer to that question. The honest answer was no, she wasn't okay, but that wasn't exactly something she could tell Sam. Her life was falling to pieces, but she couldn't tell him that because it would mean divulging some dark truths about herself that she'd kept hidden away for a very long time, one of them being that she had always been—and always would be—in love with Mark. Sam had just asked her to marry him, had finally told her the words she had been waiting for so long to hear him say: that he wanted her and Henry, that he wanted them to be a family, and telling him that she was here in Seattle falling to pieces at the bedside of Mark Sloan, who would never love her the way she loved him, was definitely not the best course of action. She hadn't given him an answer yet regarding the proposal—she'd told him it was because she needed some more time to get used to being Henry's mom before she tried to become anything else, but in reality it was because she wasn't really sure whether she wanted him or Jake—but she didn't want to scare him away. She needed to know that there was someone for her to go back to in L.A., someone who could love her and take care of her the way Mark never would. "I'm tired." It was true; this whole thing had worn her out completely in a way that no amount of sleep could cure.

"You should get some sleep then," Sam said gently. "You don't have to spend all of your time at the hospital."

"How did you know I was at the hospital?"

Sam chuckled. "Amelia called Charlotte to give her an update on how things were going and advised her to get me to talk to you. She said that otherwise she was afraid you'd never leave the hospital."

Addison sighed, pushing stray, straggly pieces of hair out of her face. "I'm fine, Sam. Really," she added, sensing his disbelief. "I just had a nap."

"A nap isn't good enough. You need a good night's sleep, Addie. Otherwise, you'll wear yourself out."

"I'll get some sleep later, Sam. I promise." She wished he'd stop bugging her. They weren't married or even engaged yet, and it annoyed her that he went around acting like they were. He had no right to tell her what to do.

There was a silence on the other end of the line before Sam said, "I'm coming up there."

"What?" Addison couldn't believe it. The last thing she wanted was for both Sam and Mark to be here. It would be impossible to conceal her true feelings towards Mark in this situation, and they were not feelings she wanted Sam to know about, especially if they might be getting married sometime in the future.

"Relax, Addie. It's only for a few days. They're my friends too, you know," he added defensively.

Addison slumped into the chair behind the nurses' station. "When are you coming?" She wasn't in the mood to argue with him right now.

"Probably late tomorrow. I'm looking at last minute flights right now," he replied, and she could hear the faint sounds of the mouse clicking in the background.

"What about Henry?" It was with a terrible pang of guilt that Addison remembered her son. In all the commotion following the crash and the terror of Mark's possible death, Henry had completely slipped her mind. Perhaps because she knew he was safe in L.A. with Sam—she'd decided this would be a kind of test to see whether or not he really meant all that stuff about wanting to be a family—or perhaps because she had simply been worried about too many other things. Whatever the reason, Addison felt awful. There was no excuse for a parent forgetting about their child, and she couldn't help feeling that this made her a terrible mother. "You can't just leave him in L.A."

"Well, I was going to see if Keisha could take care of him during the day and maybe ask Charlotte and Cooper if they could take him at night."

What a disastrous idea. Keisha couldn't be expected to look after Henry all day for a couple of days, and asking Charlotte and Cooper to take him at night when they already had Mason to deal with was a recipe for disaster. "Why don't you bring him with you?" If there was anything that could make Addison feel better, it was Henry.

"Are you sure?" Sam sounded uncertain about the prospect of flying with Henry.

"Of course I'm sure," Addison snapped. "He's my son, Sam, and I want to see him. I don't know how long I'm going to be in Seattle, and it's not fair for you to be expected to look after him for an indefinite amount of time. Besides, I miss him." That last was true; now that she thought about it, the desire to see hold her son in her arms was overwhelming.

"All right," Sam said hastily, immediately backing off. "I'll call you with the details?"

"Yeah," she said wearily. "I'll meet you at the airport." Which would mean she needed to borrow someone's car. She was pretty sure if she asked Callie really nicely, she might be able to borrow hers. Or Mark's for that matter, since he obviously wouldn't be able to use his right now—though she'd always hated Mark's penchant for sports cars. They were too fast and too finicky, and definitely not a good method of transportation for a baby. She'd probably be better off asking Callie. Or Derek. He and Meredith both had a car, didn't they?

"Okay. Take care of yourself, Addie."

She hung up without saying goodbye. She wished that everyone would stop trying to look after her, especially when there were so many other people that needed to be looked after so much more than she did.

"Addison?"

She looked up, already forming an excuse for why she couldn't talk to whomever it was who was getting her attention, and found the excuses dying when her eyes locked with Callie's. The two women had barely seen each other since Addison's arrival in Seattle, what with Mark being in one ICU and Arizona in another.

"Hey," Addison said wearily, slipping her BlackBerry—now set on Silent because she had no patience to deal with any other calls—back into its case. "How are you holding up?" Hopefully, by asking how Callie was first, she could deflect any questions about how she herself was doing.

Callie sighed. "Pretty good. Arizona's doing much better; they anticipate she's going to make a full recovery." She glanced towards Mark room. "No change?"

Addison shook her head. "He was awake for a little bit and he was talking a little, but he fell asleep again pretty quickly."

"So did you by the looks of it," Callie said with a chuckle, gaze shifting from Mark's door to Addison's hair.

Out of habit, Addison reached up and ran a hand through her hair, as if trying to get it to look normal again. She knew that it probably wouldn't do any good; her hair was already a disaster after having not been washed in a couple of days. Normally she would have had a shower in the locker rooms in an attempt to freshen up and look somewhat human, but she there had been too much on her mind for the last few days and the thought of having a shower had never occurred to her. "Yeah," she said absentmindedly. It was still a little hard to believe that she was so tired she had fallen asleep in a chair, but her rumpled clothes and stiff muscles were incontestable proof. "I guess I did."

Callie frowned, concern etched across her face. "Listen, there's a group of us going to Joe's for drinks; do you want to come?" she asked gently. "You look like you could use a few drinks."

Addison considered. She didn't know many of Callie's friends, and she hated the idea of Mark waking up alone, but the thought of drowning her sorrows in several glasses of vodka was incredibly appealing.

Callie took her silence as a sign of hesitation. "Mark's not going anywhere. He's fast asleep, and—knowing him—he'll probably still be that way when you come back," she persisted. "Besides, everyone knows that alcohol always makes you feel better."

Addison was tempted to point out that alcohol often had a tendency to make you feel worse, especially after the fact, but didn't, as she got the feeling it would make Callie think that she was still hesitant to go. She didn't want to fight with anyone anymore. "All right, all right, I'm coming."

Callie grinned triumphantly. "Great. I've got to go check in with Carolyn before I go and make sure that she's got all of Sofia's stuff. She's taking Sofia and Zola to sleep over at Meredith's tonight—"

"—so you can go and get all out drunk?" Addison couldn't help smiling slightly. Carolyn had taken immediately to both of her granddaughters and was more than happy to babysit the two of them so that Meredith and Callie could stay at the hospital. She and Callie had never met before, but they had quickly come to like each other.

"Well, not necessarily," Callie said, though her grin clearly stated otherwise. "But with this group, you never know. Besides, something tells me you really need to get drunk."

Addison chuckled. "You might just be right."

"I'm always right," Callie replied smugly. "Anyway, I've got to run. I'll meet you there, okay?"

Addison nodded. She knew that the responsible thing was to go back to the hotel and get some sleep, especially with Sam and Henry coming tomorrow, but she was tired of being responsible. Sam was right: she had been worrying too much about looking after everyone else and not enough about herself. She deserved to go out and do something for herself, even if she wasn't going to remember it in the morning.

That's not the real reason you agreed to go, the little voice at the back of her head chided.

Addison frowned. Her subconscious was right, it wasn't the real reason, but it sounded a lot better than the truth: she just wanted to forget about everything for a little while.

So Addison's finally decided to go out and do something for herself. And since it involves Callie, alcohol, and her desire to forget about everything (a bad combination, I know), it's going to be one hell of an evening. ;)

I'd love it if you'd leave me a review. Who knows? If I get a lot of them, I may just decide to update before Friday! :)