Part 6

She rides the floaty release of love and sex and celebration straight into work the next morning, her body still feeling soft, cuddled and warm. And it lasts all of five minutes; she's barely got herself into the office before she hears the rumbling. She can't make out just what it is, exactly, that the nurses are all abuzz about, but she hears Sam's name, hears hers, and she knows. On some instinctive level, she knows that he's back again.

She sits, tries to stop herself from tensing up, but she knows she's fighting biology on this, fighting the most primal instinct of flight, of fight, of defend. She wants to run, she wants to scream, she wants to just curl up in a ball and hide somewhere, but she forces herself to close her eyes for a second, modulate her breathing and think.

And then Addison comes in, looking like she's just kicked a puppy, or been the puppy who was kicked. She flexes the tension out of her fingers and sighs.

"How'd you get stuck with this?"

"Had a crap day already," Addison says. "Why not do this one more thing?"

She feels like there's something in there that, as chief of staff, she should push on. But she puts that away for a second. "If what I think's happened has happened, it isn't your...look, you want to just tell me? All of them out there, they're whispering without saying much."

"He's here," Addison says. "The man who...he's here. Beat up his girlfriend and she stabbed him with a kitchen knife."

And like that, she flashes through it, every blow, every memory. The hand, coming up behind her. The elbow, knocking out her eye. Her fingers, reaching out to scratch, to hit, to fight. And the grunts, as he...damn. She shakes her head, tries to clear away the pictures, tries not to throw up all over Addison's shoes...

"Charlotte? Are you..."

"He dead?" she finally manages.

"Not yet. Sam's treating him."

"Cooper know?"

"If he does, it won't be from me. Like I said. I've had a crap day already, I'm not doing that one too. Look, are you...can I leave you, here? Are you gonna be okay?"

"I'm fine."

"Cause I could...I mean, if Cooper's coming, I could wait, until he..."

"It's fine, Addison. I'm fine."

"Well, you don't look fine."

She chuckles a little, and, grateful for the opportunity for distraction, adds "Neither do you."

"Susan has a DNR."

"Ah."

"Bizzy doesn't know. If Susan dies, she'll blame me. She'll find some way..." Addison stops, shakes her head. "You don't need to know this right now."

"Well, as chief of staff, I suppose I should point out that this is precisely why we don't want doctors treating family..."

"Bite me."

"Back atcha. Hell, Addison. So that son of a bitch is back. What am I supposed to do with that?"

"Maybe he's dead by now."

"Don't think I want him dead yet. Damn. That sounds really sick, doesn't it? Saying I want him to suffer a little first?"

"Hey, you're preaching to the choir. I saw what he did to you..."

"I know you did."

Addison slumps again. Definitely the puppy who's been kicked. "Well, that's life, isn't it?" Addison says after a moment. "It's just one horrible thing after another..."

She stops for a moment, and to her surprise, she feels something inside her relax just a little as she makes the first decision she'll make today, about Lee McHenry and the power that he will -or won't- have over her life. She makes her peace with Addison. She tells herself that this one thread of that terrible night is done.

"Hey," she says. "Addison. Look at me."

Addison looks up, and she's tearful and a little scared. "What, Charlotte?"

"You said something to me. After the...you said something. You said you could be there for me. That we could be friends. And I think I wasn't quite there when you said it. But maybe now...maybe now, I could be there for you. I'm learning how to do that. I could be there."

She gets a smile- a weak one, but still. "I'd like that. It's gonna be a hell of a day."

"Yeah. For both of us, sounds like."

"Are you okay, Charlotte?"

"Probably not. Are you?"

"I don't think so."

They sit for a minute, and Addison's not the doctor who was there that night, and she's not the patient who had to endure yet another violation at the end of something horrible. They're just two people hurting together, knowing they have to go out there and face it all again.

"I'm sorry," Addison finally says.

"I'm sorry too. But thank you for telling me."

After a moment, Addison reaches over, squeezes her arm, smiles again and leaves her. She sits there for a long time before she gets up herself, take a single deep breath for fortification and goes out to see what's been done and what she has to do about it.

She speaks to Sam and then goes back to her office and sits there for a minute, trying to think about what to do about Cooper. It she doesn't call him soon, he'll hear it from someone else, and that will be bad for him. He'll worry about her, and he'll be hurt that she didn't call to tell him herself. But if she does call him, that will be bad for her. He'll come charging over here to take care of her -or worse, to take care of it- and she isn't sure she can face that just yet. Damn. You open yourself up to people and it leads to all sorts of complications.

She breathes, tries to clear her head, recognizes that for the defense mechanism that it is and tries not to take it seriously. She still has that little streak of self-destructiveness in her, that same impulse the controlled the pills and the sex and the various other escapes that got her through life when she needed them. And she still has that instinct to push away when she feels threatened or afraid or out of control...

She picks up the phone, puts it down again. Then picks it up one more time, but the number she dials isn't Cooper's.

He picks up on the second ring. "Sheldon Wallace."

"Hey Sheldon, it's Charlotte."

"Oh! Hi! Is everything..."

"Let me ask you something," she says. "In general."

"Okay..."

"You tell a person something, and he's going to want to do X, but you want him to Y."

"Okay, less general," Sheldon says.

"He'll want to swoop in. You want him to hang back- at least for a little while, anyway, til you get your own head on straight. What do you do?"

"Well, you tell him that."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that. Is this about Cooper?"

"I didn't say it was about anything. So, really? That's all I have to do is just say it?"

"Well, if this about who I think it is...he loves you, Charlotte. He may come on strong about it because he cares so much, but what's driving it is a need to make sure, especially now, that you feel safe and loved and comfortable. If you need him to do something -or not- in service of that, it will over-ride a lot of impulses he might otherwise let lead him."

"Okay..."

"So you just tell him what you need to tell him, and when he asks you what he can do to help, you tell him that too."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that."

She sighs. "I'm sorry, Sheldon. I never learned this when it was you."

"Wouldn't have mattered. You were always Cooper's girl. But hey, I have a friend, don't I?"

"Always."

"So, good. Take care of my friend today, will you?"

She hangs up with Sheldon. Then, she picks up the phone one more time. For Cooper.