Alright, fair warning, there's a lot of crying. I feel like that might be a bit out of character, given Addison doesn't cry much, but I'm pretty sure she'd still be hormonal possibly maybe at this point? Anyway, her baby died – she will, without a doubt, cry at some point. Also, no Lexie this chapter. And there was a change of plan, given there is no Sam this chapter – he appears NEXT chapter. I promise I won't change my mind again this time, although I'm pretty sure nobody cares about Sam anyway.

Unchained Melody

Chapter 10: Girl With One Eye

How do you tell someone their baby is dead?

Nobody ever had to tell Amelia her father was dead; she'd seen him get shot, and even as a five year old she knew that when someone has their skull blasted apart, they don't survive.

She still had nightmares about it, re-living the exact moment she saw the halo of splattered blood and grey matter around his head, the way his blank eyes stared at her. She saw him and she screamed for a very long time – the way she'd wanted to when she saw that guy pull out a gun, but hadn't been able to for Derek's hand across her mouth stopping her, even when she bit him and hit him and tried to wriggle out of his grasp. She screamed until long after the police arrived.

This was very different.

It wasn't going to be the same, with Addison. She never got to meet her baby – she didn't get five minutes, let alone five years and she hadn't even known the baby's gender, let alone been in possession of fond memories of the two of them together to look back on.

There wouldn't be a funeral, because there was never a baby.

It was just an embryo – that was exactly what Addison would say, Amelia knew. There was never a baby, it was just an embryo. Implanted in the wrong place, doomed from the beginning.

How were you supposed to get closure if there was no funeral? If there wasn't even a body? If all you had to remember the life that was inside of you by was fading scars and the loss of a Fallopian tube, how did you cope?

You didn't really ask yourselves those kinds of questions when you were dealing with normal patients. You just composed yourself, looked contrite, and gave the family the bad news so they could grieve. If you couldn't do that, you had somebody else – a nurse, an intern – do it.

This was different.

This was Addison, not just some patient.

Amelia stopped before the door to Addison's hospital room, trying to get herself ready to break the news to her best friend. She took a deep breath, and tucked the hair falling into her face behind her ear. Her fingers brushed against the shiny silver stud in her ear.

It had been Addison who took the then newly thirteen year old Amelia to get her ears pierced. She'd known the Shepherds nearly a year by that point in time, yet another stray bought into the family by Derek to replace the gap created through the loss of his best friend. The whole family had loved her, the Shepherd sisters welcoming her into their circle, the youngest generation of Shepherd children enamoured by her pretty hair and talent for dealing with children, but Amelia had always loved Addison the most. As much, if not more, than Nancy or Liz or Kate.

It wasn't a case of how to tell someone their baby was dead.

It was a case of how do you tell your sister that her baby is dead?

And then Amelia pushed open the door and entered her sister's room and she realised that she didn't need to tell Addison her baby was dead.

Addison already knew.

When Addison woke up, she knew the baby is gone.

She didn't have to read her chart, or ask a nurse.

She woke up, groggily rejoining the world of the awake, and she knew it before she'd even opened her eyes: there was no longer a baby in her uterus, if that was even where it had been in the first place.

Quite simply, Addison felt empty.

She felt hollow.

Her baby was gone.

She didn't cry. Not really. The tears pooled in her eyes, and those eventually become red-rimmed, but only a few escaped. She let them pool, and she didn't sit up, but she stayed lying down the way she awoke, counting tiles in the ceiling.

If she focused on the counting, she wouldn't have to think about it. It, the baby. It, what she said to Mark. It, how it was all her fault, everything was her fault. It, how she was a failure, and she failed.

It. Everything.

She kept counting the ceiling tiles, but she always lost track. She never got past twenty-six. She always got distracted, and started thinking.

There was this dull, empty gnawing in her stomach. Like hunger, except it was the baby kicking inside the curved swell of her belly and cradled within her arms so she could stroke soft fair hair and smell that soft new baby scent which she craved, not food.

She wondered when, exactly, everything went to hell. Did she do something wrong? Did she not eat enough, or drink too much in the days when she was blissfully unaware of the pregnancy that was not to be? Was it when she fell out of bed? Was it when she tripped, running in the morning, last week? Were things a mess from the beginning, damned since conception?

At one point, she thought about what the baby might have been like. Blonde and tall, perhaps. Or maybe red-haired, with eyes that were more green than blue. Would they be interested in surgery, or a completely different field? Would they be healthy? With the way the powers that be seemed to enjoy torturing Addison recently, and with her luck, the baby probably would have been born with two heads and a forked tail.

It was her fault that little person would never exist. The one who would have called her Mommy and tugged on three hundred dollar pencil skirts with sticky hands and had the same gap in their front two teeth that Addison had as a kid.

It'sallherfaultit'sallherfaultit'sallherfault and she heard Bizzy's voice in her head, for God's sake Addison, will you for once in your life be the daughter I wanted you to be and do something right?, and she kept hearing a baby down the hall crying and its screams merged with the phantom sound of a child laughing in her head, and suddenly, there were deep, bloody, half-moon indentations dug into Addison's pale hands.

She curled up into a ball and rolled onto her side, and then instead began counting floor tiles, not really faring any better than she did with ceiling tiles.

The act of moving made her actually notice the slight tug of pain in her abdomen, and her hand trailed down to her stomach to trace one of the three small scars on her abdomen.

It made the tears pool in her eyes all over again, and she choked on a sob. The only tangible memory she'd ever have of her maybe-baby would be three fading scars. Not adorably tiny baby clothes in neutral colours of yellow or green or white because she wasn't far along enough to know whether it was a girl or boy yet, or a copy of the ultrasound to keep in her pocket or wallet to take out and look at sometimes.

She didn't have anything, and it was once more all her fault because she was so stubborn in denying that there was a baby at all.

She didn't deserve a baby. She jinxed it. She pretended there wasn't a baby and she said there wasn't a baby and now, there was no baby.

Some time passed. She managed to break her record of twenty-six tiles and made it to thirty-two. She changed position again, this time actually sitting up, with the sheets keeping her decent, given her knees were drawn to her chest and she was wearing a hospital gown, and she hugged her pillow for some semblance of comfort.

That baby down the hall started crying again – in all her years as a neonatal surgeon and OBGYN, delivering bad news and good news to parents all in the same department, she'd never realised what an awful idea it was to keep all these patients in such close quarters – and she plugged her ears and hummed loudly until he sopped. It felt childish, and it probably was childish – Bizzy would definitely have said it was childish – but her baby had just died and the last thing she wanted to hear was the crying of somebody else's living child.

Her chart was at the foot of her bed, lying on the table there. It would take next to no effort at all to grab it and read it and find out what happened to her baby, how she lost her baby, but she didn't want to know. She wanted just a few more minutes of being oblivious.

Deep down, she already knew what must have happened. She could remember the symptoms she'd been so fiercely denying, and the marks surgery had left on her body were a pretty big, pretty obvious clue.

But she just needed a little while longer. A few more minutes. Just a little more time during which it was unconfirmed.

However, eventually, that small masochistic part of her which just had to know, had to know for definite, won out and she reached over for the chart.

And she opened it. And she stared at it. And stared and stared and stared.

The medical information washed over her. She didn't get much far past the words ectopic pregnancy and ruptured Fallopian tube and salpingectomy.

She couldn't stop looking at it. It was like the entire world had faded around her and everything had narrowed down to the dark print on the paper in her hands which was fast becoming blurry as she blinked rapidly to avoid yet more tears falling.

Sometimes, when you hold a seashell to your ear, you can hear the distant roar of what appears to be the ocean.

Now the chart was in front of her and now she knew it really was her fault, the beeping of the few machines around her had faded and that distant roaring was all she could hear, and somehow now that there was no longer this constant little presence inside her she felt like she was so lonely she may as well be somewhere out in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by nothing more than blue and emptiness. Sure she had Amelia and Callie and Derek, others to some extent, but they all had their own lives, and she hadn't spoken to her brother or parents since she moved to Seattle from New York. Although it felt selfish when she should have been focused on the baby she so stupidly lost, it made her wonder, would anyone notice if I was gone?

If she'd had the baby, there would have always been somebody there to notice when she wasn't home. She'd have had a family.

But as it is, they wouldn't. Nobody would notice. Not for at least a few days. And even that brought forth the question, would they care? She was sure they'd be sad, but ultimately, they wouldn't. Not enough.

Her daughter would have.

Because although she would have loved a son just as much, she knew it was a girl.

Ella.

Not her full first name, but a nickname. For Elena, maybe, or Elizabeth. But Ella, all the same – of that much she'd been so sure, even when she was in complete denial of there being a baby.

There wasn't going to be an Ella now. The realisation rang through her head loud and clear once more.

There wasn't going to be an Ella now, and it was all her fault.

She wasn't sure how long she mulled over that horrible, horrible thought, but by the time she'd finished ruminating on it and had returned to trying to focus on the rest of the chart, Amelia was slipping into the room. She was drowning in a sweater Addison recognised as her own, and playing with the too-long sleeves in a way Addison knew was anxious habit.

Amelia gently slid the chart out of Addison's hands as the woman, unresistant, sat very still and watched her put it back down where it had been, and then flopped into the chair by Addison's bedside. "I'm so sorry, Addie," she told her. "There was nothing they could do. You know that."

"It's all my fault," Addison croaked, speaking her thoughts aloud, and it was only then she remembered she still hadn't had a drink since waking, because her throat was feeling raw and dry. "It's all my fault."

"It was an ectopic pregnancy," Amelia said. You know it was-"

"Doomed from the beginning. I know. But still."

She couldn't stand it – the pity in Amelia's eyes. They'd known each other for what felt like forever, but the pity almost felt guaranteed – Addison was certain there was probably at least some pity in her own eyes when Amelia was fifteen years old, hissing and spitting and scratching like an angry cat as Derek wrestled her into the car that would take her to rehab.

"You still lost a baby," Amelia said.

Addison shook her head. "Not a baby," she murmured. "An embryo. And it's all my fault."

It was all her fault. She lied to Mark and she lied to herself and she ignored the baby and she jinxed this and she was a failure as a surgeon and a person and a mother and so what if she was sorry?

That didn't make it hurt any less.

The pain was still there. The pain would always be there. It could fade and grow faint over time, like the scars which would forever serve as a constant testament to all her biggest failures, but it would always be there in the background, a constant reminder of it. Everything.

It didn't matter that she nearly did get an abortion, weeks ago, when she first found out, or that she still had the pills hidden behind an army of creams and shampoos at the back of her bathroom cupboard from when she still wasn't sure if she should throw them out, because her choice got taken away.

An entire future was torn from inside her and it felt like it took a chunk of her heart with it, too, because it was now like there was this hole inside her.

"You should drink something," Amelia told her.

"Scotch?" she smiled weakly to make it sound joking, although that was very much what she'd have liked to drink at the moment. She missed the familiar sting of alcohol sliding down her throat, days when feeling pathetic because the only biggest reason for her drinking scotch was because it reminded her of Mark were her biggest problem.

"Water," Amelia said. "Juju, later when I can find some. I might even spike it, if all the drugs have worn off by then and you're not getting any new ones."

She passed Addison the plastic cup of water which has been sat by her bedside, ignored, for a while now. She set it back down once Addison had taken a few sips – two sips. It was tap water and not bottled water, she could tell, and it was not like she minded the difference but… it was tap water. Still, it soothed the thirst in her throat somewhat.

Amelia pulled something small Addison couldn't quite distinguish out of her pocket. "This, uh… I got this for you," Amelia said, unclenching her fist from around the present to reveal a small stuffed unicorn roughly the size of Addison's thumb – the kind you could clip onto your key ring or hospital ID or stethoscope. "I got it before you lost the… embryo. I was going to get a matching, bigger one – you know, a huge one that's like, the size of a Doberman – for the kiddo, once they were born, 'cause I always wanted a unicorn the size of a Doberman, but… well, it would have felt wrong not to give it to you even though there won't be a matching one for the kiddo so here."

"Thank you," she said in a wavering voice that betrayed she was already about to cry, and then the unicorn was in her hand and she was crying, and Amy was patting her back and saying it was going to be okay, but it was not going to be okay. She wasn't sure it ever would be okay.

Today, Mark's drink of choice was whiskey.

Honestly, he hated the taste of whiskey. His drink had always been scotch, before, because he liked the taste of scotch, certainly a lot more than he did the taste of whiskey.

But right now Mark didn't care much about how he didn't like the whiskey, because it slid down his throat the same way scotch would, and he was too drunk to care about the difference in taste.

Mark had been drinking since… well, he wasn't sure since when. For a while. A long while. He said goodbye to the dead baby who was almost his daughter, found out that his real daughter or son had been aborted by the woman he loved – and goddamn, how was it still that beneath the anger and the betrayal, he still managed to love her? – and then went to Joe's. Then Joe closed The Emerald City Bar for the night, so Mark slept in his car for a little while, and then he woke up sometime in the late morning and went back to Joe's.

And while Mark had been drinking, he had been thinking. He had been thinking a lot of things.

He thought about Addison at first, and how mad he was at her. There is no baby. You would have been a horrible father Mark. Did she say horrible, or terrible? It didn't matter – either way, what she meant was still clear.

Mark liked to think that one day, he would be a great father. The kind of dad he always wanted, who made hot dogs and organised fun games at birthday parties. The kind of father Derek's dad had been. He'd always been slightly jealous of what Derek had – the four sisters, the loving parents, the house that was never quiet. He himself had always secretly wanted that, wanted the house with the backyard and the wife and the five kids.

It was what he'd once thought Lexie would be.

But she wasn't.

She was alive, though – awake and already on the path to recovery, although obviously devastated by the death of her baby, he knew from the texts Meredith had sent him.

What he thought about the most, though, was how he found out about the baby. It was that night – the same night Addison told him she'd had an abortion – and Callie was the one who spilled the beans when she asked about Addison and 'The Kiddo'.

Except… Callie and Amelia would have known if Addison'd had an abortion, right? If they'd been aware of the baby first, she wouldn't have allowed them to just continue thinking she was still pregnant, because there was only so long she could look non-pregnant for until they realised something was up.

Right?

And that's what Mark thought about the most. He tried out all the options – maybe she just hadn't gotten around to telling them, maybe in their tired states they'd just forgotten – and there was one which made the most sense, and it sent a warm flush of hope over him which may have just been the alcohol taking effect.

Maybe she didn't have the abortion. Maybe she was still pregnant.

So he payed Joe and he made his way over to the hospital, his movements a little slower and more lumbering than usual.

Once he got to the hospital he realised he had no idea where Addison was. He checked the NICU, the nursery, and many other places she could often be found in, but she wasn't in any of them.

He asked his favourite nurse, Jenny – at fifty something, old enough and married enough that he hadn't slept with her but nice enough that he still liked her – where she was. She nodded towards the hospital room a little to the right and across from the nurses's station, which currently had a closed door and closed blinds. It was the hospital room they generally reserved for important patients – ex-nurses or friends of the Chief, that kind of thing.

He reckoned she must be in there talking to her patient about a case, or something like that. Until a nurse exited the room and he caught a glimpse of red resting against hospital gown and realised that she wasn't.

And then he entered. He didn't stop to think about what he was going to say or take a deep breath. It could have been the alcohol, but it was more likely that it was Addison.

She wasn't crying when he entered. She had these red, puffy eyes which were tell-tale of the fact that she had been crying, a lot, and she was sniffing and hiccuping in a way that suggested she was crying recently, but there were no tears actually falling down her face.

She froze when she saw him.

He picked up chart. The words swam around the pages but he was able to decipher most of what was important. Ectopic pregnancy. That was the most important part. Ectopic pregnancy. He knew enough of what that entailed, having spent a lot of the last few months with Addison. He knew that it didn't matter whether she had an abortion – there was no baby, now.

He put the chart back down and looked at her. She saw the look on his face and promptly burst into tears again.

He was still angry. He was still betrayed. He still couldn't forget what she'd said. He still hadn't forgiven her.

Yet still, something deep inside of him reacted and he gently moved her a little toward the other side of the bed before kicking off his shoes and climbing in beside her, wrapping his arm around her tightly and stroking her hair in a way he knew she found comforting.

"You smell homeless," she told him in-between hiccupy breaths as she started to calm down.

"I'm in love with you," Mark replied.

Alright, that's a wrap! I'm not going to say I'm exactly happy about this chapter - there are just some points where I feel like the characters are rambling a little - but I think it's probably better than the earlier chapters of this that still make me cringe at some points? Anyway, thank you to all those who reviewed, and I finally figured out the review problem! From what I can tell, it only applies to guest reviewers, in that all reviews posted by guests seem to appear two days later than they should, although they do still appear on my email account after they're posted so I can read them.

Thanks to all those who reviewed, because it really does brighten up a person's day.

Irony-FLD – I agree it was sad, both to read and write :(. Mark and Addie should finally have a bit of a long overdue conversation about all this next chapter, and I promise that they will – eventually – be happy. I think. Anyway, I'm really glad you like my story and thank you for reviewing!

Hushedgreylily – thank you, a lot, for thinking this was good and explaining that. I think it's very interesting to have a medical side of things too, and while that isn't always necessary in a Grey's Anatomy story, it can be a little annoying when it isn't mentioned at all within a fic when these are, after all, surgeons. I'm glad you're looking forward to more and that you like this so much and I thank you lots for reviewing.

Wintermachine - I'm glad you like the fic, and the different perspectives – I don't think I really even realised I'd been writing from points of view that weren't Addison's or Mark's until you mentioned it. The Murphy's Law part wasn't really planned so much as me thinking about how much I like Murphy's Law and then thinking 'wait, I could implement this!' so I'm glad it worked out. Thank you for reviewing, both times!

Guest – sorry? I definitely don't have the prosperity of someone writing for Shonda, should I be flattered though? I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that you 'don't care to read anymore' but I'm sorry you found this chapter unnecessary. Hey, things will perk up eventually?