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"Yes, yes of course." Mark says. "I would love to. I'm sure he would too. Thank you."
Her head is still spinning. Mark and Amy.
Mark and her.
Derek and her.
Mark and Amy. When? She thinks it must have been only a few days before she kissed Mark in her office, when Amy caught them. He never said a word.
Mark. And Amy. Derek's sister. His missing, recovering addict of a sister.
What was Mark thinking?
What had she been thinking?
Mark sighs as he tosses the phone onto the coffee table. "I've been roped into lecturing at Duke, but no sign of Amy."
"What about you?" Derek asks her.
"Nothing."
It was... a year ago? More? They went to dinner, Derek and Amy and her. Amy was just starting her fifth year at Mass Gen and she was excited, chattering about the clinical trial she was assisting on and the surgeries she'd gotten to do with her mentor. She traded war stories with Derek, teasing them, asking about the rest of the family. She was only in the city for a few days, attending a conference, but she wanted to let them know she was okay. Sober, going on almost ten years now.
It was the first time she'd seen Derek in three days - they were on opposing schedules at the hospital, and she'd only caught glimpses of him as they rotated in and out of ORs. She didn't know if he'd seen her, or if he'd even wanted to. But he turned up at the restaurant on time, in the shirt she'd left in his office with a post- it instructing him to wear it stuck on.
He made conversation through dinner, and neither of them got paged. He actually came home with her, afterwards, and they had a drink because they hadn't earlier, in front of Amy.
"She's doing great." Derek had smiled. "I never thought she'd get this far."
"She's your sister," she'd laughed. "Of course she did."
Then, maybe a month later, the news that she was taking a year's leave from the program. Derek was furious - he called her, yelled, called the director of the program and asked him to talk to Amy. Make her come back.
She asked Amy to move in with them.
"It's my fault."
She hears Mark, but doesn't say anything. It's always someone's fault.
The friend who gave her her first pill. The second, the third. Her family, who thought baby Amy was just being rebellious.
She herself, leaving a seventeen year old Amelia alone in the house. Carolyn was at a wedding of a friend's grandson or something equally boring, and Amelia stayed at home. She and Derek went down for the weekend; they were in the middle of their second year and it was the first time they had two days off in a row at the same time. They'd been married almost two years by then, and she remembers Carolyn's constant chatter about grandchildren, how much she enjoyed spending time with them, that she already had about seven but she wouldn't mimd more... Derek seemed unaffected, shrugging her off. She felt guilty, then harried, then finally annoyed.
She remembers Amy at that age fondly; short, scrappy, dressing as scandalously as she could without her mother grounding her. She was fun, that Amy. She'd follow her around, she liked to play dress up in her closet, twirling in front of the mirror and posing for polaroids she pinned to a felt board in her room.
She was quiet that weekend, though, spending a lot of time in her room blasting music. Derek yelled at her, then cajoled, then finally threatened to take back his ancient Mustang, promised to Amy on her sixteenth birthday. That got her out of her room, but she spent the day on the couch with her headphones on.
And then Derek went to see a friend from school, and he asked her to come but Carolyn had asked them not to leave Amy alone. So she stayed.
Someone from the hospital called her, asking her for something - it was trivial, but she couldn't get a signal. She stepped outside for a moment. Just a moment.
He remembers that day, almost twenty years ago now. He went to meet a friend from high school - he remembers it was horribly dull, they had nothing left in common anymore and the coffee was terrible to boot. He knew it would be boring and he'd asked Addison to come, but she decided to stay with Amy instead. They would probably paint their nails and talk about how annoying he was.
Afterwards, Addison would say that she stepped outside for a moment - just a moment - and the next thing she knew there was the sound of metal crunching into wood, and people were screaming, and by the time she got there Amy was stumbling from the smoking wreck, scraped and shaken but otherwise unhurt.
At the hospital they would learn from the tox screen that she was in fact as high as a kite, she couldn't walk straight, much less drive. She got three stitches and six months of being grounded.
He didn't speak to Addison for a week.
When she was in the beginning of her third year of residency she sprained her ankle. It was the stupid annual surgery vs. medicine softball game and she wasn't even playing, but she slipped on someone's spilled soda and wound up having to wear sneakers to work for weeks. Derek thought it was hilarious.
They gave her a prescription for painkillers - it was actually a bad sprain but she was not about to fall behind at work - and they made her fuzzy and loopy, so she didn't take them. Amy came to stay one weekend to celebrate graduating high school - just barely, but no one cared - and it was bad timing because she and Derek both had major surgery and had to stay late. They had moved up to being first assist by then, and neither was about to pass up a chance to cut.
Derek came home a few minutes before she did. He must have taken a cab, and she walked, which meant he had probably left at around the same time she did but didn't tell her. The doorman said he had already arrived, and she recalls calling him a choice name as she dragged herself upstairs.
He found the apartment dark - they hadn't bought the brownstone yet - and he called out for her, then for Amy. He said later that he thought they'd gone out without him. Just like him to forget she was still at the hospital.
He tossed his jacket on the couch like she was always yelling at him not to, then went into their bedroom. He took off his watch and put it two inches away from the little china tray put on the dresser for this exact purpose, which usually ratcheted her blood pressure up a few points.
Then he went into the bathroom, and screamed so loudly she heard him on the second floor landing. It was an almost feminine scream, and she might have teased him about it if the circumstances hadn't been so dire.
His third year, Amy came for the weekend after high school graduation. He had a late surgery and came home to a dark apartment. He remembers being insulted that his wife and sister had apparently headed out without him - doubtless so Amy could buy clothes his mother would have a herat attack upon seeing, then blame Addison for it, which would make his wife complain about his mother until...
He found Amy in a puddle of vomit, unconscious, the orange bottle still perched neatly on the counter next to a white streak of powder.
Her skin was cold, her lips bluish, no palpable pulse. He tipped her head back, shoved down on her chest, wiped the foul vomit from her mouth with bare fingers.
Addison ran into the tiny bathroom still in her coat, clutching her bag; she was screaming something at him, but he couldn't hear over the hammering of his heart.
She must have called an ambulance, because paramedics came bursting in about a lifetime later. They made him stop compressions, took over themselves. He knew them from when they brought patients into the ER. One of them nodded to him as they left.
They left him standing there awkwardly, hands sticky, his face wet. Addison was silent, breathing panicky little breaths, staring at him. He was staring at the little empty bottle, with Addison's name on it.
He always maintained that she should have known better. That she should have made sure Amy couldn't have gotten at anything. She knew his sister was a recovering addict - why wasn't she more careful?
She put away all the knives after that, the sewing kit Carolyn optimistically gave her one year for Christmas, the suture kit in the first aid box, the scalpels from their med school dissection sets. Hid the liquor. Locked the medicine cabinet.
Amy never came back to that apartment; Mark drove her to a rehab facility that Addison herself visited only once, because Amy hurled a glass at her and screamed at her to leave me alone. It was plastic, though - no sharp objects allowed - and the resulting bruise on her forehead was faint enough that Derek never noticed.
Derek never visited.
Addison refused to speak to him for days that year, after that last blazing argument they had about him not being there for Amy.
The way he saw it, Amy had thrown away her life. She had brought this misery upon herself. She deserved it; no one shoved the pills down her throat, did they?
And he was busy, so busy. Third year is no joke. He was vying for a neuro fellowship in a few years, cramming research into his packed surgical schedules, wringing every hour possible out of their already-limited weeks. He didn't have time to trek upstate to someplace Addison's friend in Psych found, where irresponsible people like his sister go to sweat it out.
He also didn't think he could look Amelia in the eye.
Not after what she did to his mother. What she did to his marriage.
She remembers that after Amy was done with rehab, she got into a small community college. Lived at home. None of them even knew what she was studying until she graduated first in her class, aced the MCAT and went to Harvard.
She knew Derek liked the idea of his wayward little sister cooped up in lecture halls and libraries, studying, focused. It kept her out of trouble. They were attendings by then.
Derek was content with his job. So was she. Hadn't they sacrificed their twenties - and okay, some of their thirties, to reach as far as they had? One fellowship is enough, which is what she said to Vivian when she ambushed her with an application for a fellowship in medical genetics. Vivian said she should do it, that it would put her in a class all her own. That Derek wasn't the only star surgeon in the family.
And speaking of family... they had a discussion, after they both got those jobs. The kind of discussion they had been putting off since their wedding, almost eight years ago. They had finally agreed that it was the right time - that they could afford to slow down a little, that they were ready to start a family. She threw her birth control pills in the trash.
She forgot all about the application after that, actually. Vivian made her send it in.
They went on vacation that year, celebrating the results of nearly fifteen years each of training. Megève. Skiing for him, and she found herself a spa. She didn't like racing down a mountain at breakneck speed with two strips of wood on her feet.
She remembers how relaxed he was, smiling, the old romantic Derek she had married coming out after a long time.
Vivian called at three in the morning, local time, shrieking. She had gotten it, the fellowship.
Derek said he was proud of her.
He remembers that time they went on holiday to some ski resort Addison picked out, where she spent half the time avoiding the actual skiing.
Vivian called in the middle of the night, about some acceptance that he'd heard nothing about until then. Apparently his wife didn't think it was necessary to discuss taking a two-year fellowship with him.
He was proud, of course. She'd be one of a handful of people in the world who could do whatever is was she was planning to do.
But it did interfere with his - their - plans. They had agreed to start trying. She made a whole thimg about throwing away the pills she had been religious about taking their entire relationship, and then insisted they practice. Often. Not that he was complaining.
But then this - it would mean putting off their baby plans for two, maybe three years. They had already been married for eight, dating for four before that.
He pointed this out, and she accused him of not being supportive, whereupon he accused her of being selfish and to cut a long story short they came home three days early and she started the fellowship a week later.
And now she's pregnant. Say what you want about Addison, but she does have a knack for yanking the rug out from under his feet.
"What's that?" Derek frowns.
"Your meds." she says, stating the obvious. He won't take them, she'll ask him to, he'll make a pointed remark about her nagging, she'll leave, and he'll swallow them five minutes later. She's convinced he's just trying to kill her via irritation.
"Did your boyfriend leave?" he asks.
"Mark left, yes."
"Big help he was." he mutters, accepting the glass of water. "I can't believe he knew. I can't believe you knew Amy was using, and didn't tell me."
Would it have made a difference? Should she have told Derek?
She'd carried her suspicion that Amelia was using again like dead weight, feeling it like a cold lump in her stomach. She was good at keeping secrets, though, she'd learned young, and she managed to keep it from Derek. Derek would just yell at Amelia, and she'd storm off in the kind of adolescent fit she hadn't quite outgrown even now.
She knew Amelia was definitely using only after she caught her and Mark kissing in her office, when she traded her silence in exchange for secrecy.
Mark was sleeping with Amy. Feeding her misery, giving her more reasons to hate herself, enabling her drug habit.
Mark slept with her. And okay, it was mostly her idea, but there is something inherently wrong about that - and not just the fact that she is his best friend's wife.
Amy must have laughed at them. She kept her end of the bargain, though. She never breathed a word to anyone.
Amy kept her secret.
Honesty - both with ourselves and with others, in word, deed and thought.
Wasn't that one of the things they said in the meeting? She'd gone to a few with Amy, when she was feeling particularly low and needed support.
Honesty.
Is it her fault? Again? Is she responsible for destroying Amelia, just as she has hurt Derek?
"If you're going to vomit, please do it in the bathroom." Derek says, handing back the glass.
"Addie - are you okay?"
She jumps a little when he takes her hand, his eyes looking concerned above his scowling mouth.
"I...I need to tell you something."
Please review! This might be the last update I post for a while - exams coming up - but I would really love to know what you thought and where you would like to see the story go next !
I always thought that Addek didn't fall apart overnight, and maybe it was a hundred little things over the years that drove them apart. Eleven years seems like a bloody long time to be married.
