In My Blood
Chapter 14:
Authors Note: This chapter is just several things that happened before Oakley was discharged from Hospital. So around 4ish weeks. Only the first (Addison coming home) and the last (Oakley coming home) really matter timeline wise. Everything else is just in between.
PART 1
I am not sure what made me agree to do it, but after the disastrous visit to the NICU I let Mark bring me home. He carries my bags up the stairs of the brownstone for me, and I follow him, feeling more like a little lost puppy than the rich lady who owns this beautiful home. I walk in and everything is exactly how it was before I went to hospital. I can't figure it out. If everything is the same why does it feel so different?
"Do you want to relax? Maybe watch some TV?" Mark asks
"I don't know." I say, and he leads me into the Livingroom. They have me on a new medication, and although I've had increase mental clarity, and the fog of depression is lifting it makes my brain feel odd. Maybe I am just not used to it. Perhaps I'm just not used to the painful level of awareness it brings. I automatically gravitate to the window seat, overlooking the busy road outside. How many hours had I spent in this very place after Heavenly's death? He touches my shoulder gently, and I turn back around and our eyes lock.
"It's going to take some time to adjust." Mark says carefully. "I'll have someone come and sit with you, keep you company while I'm at work, I'll start looking for a nanny for Oakley. She should be able to come home soon. We need to go shopping and get a nursery started." A nanny. Fantastic. This is going to be a great situation to explain. 'Hello? Yes, could you please come raise my child that I don't want because I love my dead child more?' Oh, and by the way I will probably either be sleeping all day or not home so really it will be your full responsibility to keep her alive. Thanks.' My instinct chimes in that he is telling me these things to cheer me up, but I am struggling with the fact that it is doing anything but. What kind of mother doesn't love their own child? That same thought keeps coming up everytime I think of the beautiful little girl, and my absence of any motherly feelings towards her.
"I don't really want to be here."
"I know."
"I could stay close, I could get an apartment or….."
"This is your home Addison."
"It doesn't have to be." I say and then "I just can't believe you're replacing her…."
"What do you mean?"
"You're talking about shopping for a nursery and hiring a nanny and all these things, like you're already over her death and ready to move on with this new baby."
"I'm not replacing her Addison! I just don't have the luxury of being able to shut down everytime things get hard like you do." 'He said, but then he instantly feels bad. Her eyes are full of tears and he is looking at him like he just struck her. "I'm sorry" He says shaking his head. "Addison….. I didn't mean-"
"No. It's fine." I say, but really it's anything but, and I can tell he is reading my tone.
"Addison-" He says in the tone that clearly says, 'you're being unreasonable.'
"No! You don't get to Addison me! This year has been pure hell." The weight of the anxiety, depression and PTSD alone is crushing me, then once you add in all the medical complications…. He doesn't understand, and I don't have the words to tell him. I almost wish he would have kept me overly drugged, they say I was 'nearly dead' but wouldn't that be preferable to this?
"Mostly self-inflicted hell." He couldn't stop himself, thinking of all the things I've done to hurt myself over the last year. Maybe if they had just allowed me to deal with my grief without putting me in such an overly medicated state to begin with I would have been able to cope better, maybe I would be less unsteady now but really isn't that like comparing apples and oranges at this point? We can't change the past.
"Fine Mark. You win." I say putting my hands up in surrender. It's not like me to give up this easily, but I'm just over it. I go to walk away but he grabs my wrist.
"Don't touch me!" I demand, but he holds tight, not tight enough to hurt, but to keep me there.
"I'm sorry Addison…. Really."
"Let Me Go." I say, shaking my head. "You have fault in this too." I pull away and lock myself in the downstairs bathroom. I turn on the shower and sit on the ground, clothes and all. Letting the ice-cold water splash against my skin, soaking every inch of me. I don't know how long it's been but after a while the tears come, and they won't stop. Mark is knocking on the door, but I ignore them, trying so hard to stop crying. He is talking, trying to get me to come out, but I am so numb. I can't move. This goes on for some time. I begin shivering from the cold, but I don't move. That would require too much effort. I hear him dialing a number on his cell phone and then a one-sided conversation.
'Can you come over?'
'She's not adjusting well'
'uh huh the doors open, see you in a minute.'
"What did you do?" I hear Meredith's voice, scolding Mark.
"Nothing"
"Obviously it was something.' She knocks on the door,
"Addison are you in there?"
"Of course, she's in there, where else would she be? Do you think I've been sitting outside this bathroom door for the last two hours for my health?"
"Mark you're making this worse, go away." She says, and her tone is so authoritative this I hear him getting up and leaving.
"You OK?" She asks, I know she is sitting with her back to the door.
"Yeah, I'm fine, I'm OK, I'm good." I say, but I can't stop the crying. I know she can hear it over the running shower water.
"Don't make me take the door knob off. I'll do it but just to warn you I'm really bad at home renovations and it's highly likely that the entire damn door would fall down." I remember the time that Willow and Heavenly accidentally got locked down in the Play room. We have a walkout basement. It connects to the main house, but the play room, which was essentially a soft play sensory gym heaven is in the other half of the basement, which doesn't have access to the walkout. We had to call the fire department. They tried ramming it, but when that didn't work they had to take it down with an ax. We still haven't replaced that door. The memory makes me cry harder. I try to hide my tears, but the sobbing makes it a wasted effort.
"You're not OK." She points out, as If I couldn't clearly see this myself.
"No." I whisper.
"Do you want to talk about it?" She asks lightly.
"I wouldn't even know where to begin." I admit.
"At the beginning?" she suggests, and I smile a little.
"I'm just overwhelmed. " I admit. I am not sure why I am admitting this to her right now, yes, she was 'is' I correct myself, my very best friend in this entire world,but what good will it do?
"Transitions can be really scary, and we haven't done our best job helping you transition."
"Yeah." I say.
"You went from being a mom to loosing your daughter to finding out you're pregnant, to lapsing into a crippling depression and anxiety, to 'waking up' from the overly medicated haze months later to find yourself still struggling with both of those things and while everyone else has had time to absorb the shock of Heavenly's death, and heal, you haven't really been able to properly grieve. Not to even mention all of the medical complications." She says the last word with only partial implication that they were made worse by me self-harming.
"I don't know what I am doing here. I don't want a baby Meredith."
"With all the trauma you've endured I don't really think anyone expected you to, but I am proud of you for overcoming everything you've been through to get her where she is."
PART 2:
Do we really need all this junk?" I ask Meredith annoyed. She had showed up to my brownstone chipper and with two coffees in her hands. She relieved the nurse Mark had hired to 'keep me company' and barley gave me time to get dressed and brush my hair and teeth before she was dragging me out of the house to Pottery Barn Kids. Looking at the size of her list I guess it was a good choice to bring her car, vs taking a taxi, which would have been faster. How would we have carried all this back in a taxi's small trunk?
"Well what are you going to do with her when she comes home? You just had a baby, babies need things." She points out. "And since you have nothing but an empty room-"
"I won't be doing anything with her Meredith. She is Mark's baby. He is the one who should be doing the shopping." I say this simply, but I know my voice is cold, unappreciative. The truth is, I don't know what I am going to do with her. Will Mark expect me to be the perfect mother to her that I was to Heavenly? I hate shopping. Heavenly's bedroom is Pottery Barn. Everything is still there, in her bedroom just opposite of the room that will become Oakley's room. On my therapist's advice Mark left her bedroom exactly as it was. He didn't take things out or give things away. When I began to "wake up" after her death we just kept the door shut, as if not looking at it would make it less painful that it's there and she's not. Mark suggested that we could turn the bedroom into Oakley's room. Heavenly already had all the furniture a baby would need. Her dresser is really a changing table combo without the changing pad on top. Her twin bed is a convertible, that goes from a crib to a toddler bed to a twin bed. The rocking chair a dream for rocking babies to sleep. I just couldn't though. I'm not ready.
"Addison you promised on the way here that you'd try…." And then she see's me thinking hard, and her voice softens. "Are you OK? Do you need anything?"
"I'm Fine." I say quickly, shaking the thoughts out of my head, giving up a little. How do I keep getting dragged into situations I don't want to be in? When did I lose the ability to say no? We walk through the aisles, and somehow decided that her theme will be flowers. We find a bedding set, and get two because who has time in the middle of the night to wash bedding when there's been a blow out? Two mattress protectors, so we can double layer the crib (Mattress protector, sheet, mattress protector, sheet) for easy middle of the night bedding changes. Babies are gross.
"What are you so afraid of Addison?" She asks me. We are looking at wall hangings now. I randomly pick a few with the same flower theme, and then some with butterflies. "Come on Addie, you love shopping. Let's make this fun, especially since Mark gave me his card, and told me to buy you anything and everything you want today." I don't respond to this directly and instead we just make small talk as we choose a mattress, crib, a changing table dresser combo, and a rocker. I don't realize until we've already paid and arranged delivery to the brownstone later that day that I chose the exact same set that I had for Heavenly. We are quiet as I help her to load everything that's not being delivered into the car, but when we get in, and I've buckled I turn to Meredith.
"I am afraid I am going to hurt her."
"What do you mean? Do you want to hurt her?"
"No."
"Then what makes you think that you'll hurt her?"
"I already have, how do I know I won't again?" I say shrugging.
PART 3:
"I'm sorry Addison, the Nanny called in with the flu, and Derek is removing an inoperable brain tumor from a woman's temporal lobe. I could have just stayed home, but I already told Evangeline I would come." Evangeline is the nurse that Mark hired to 'keep me company' while he was at work. I really think it is ridiculous.
"It's OK." I say, nodding hard, trying to convince myself more than anything else. "It's fine." I bend down to the little girl and smile. "Hi Willow!" I say trying to keep my voice light. "Do you want to come inside and color, or play?" Before Oakley was born, when I was keeping Willow frequently I bought toys, books and games, so she would have her own special things to play with while she was here.
She squeezes me hard and smiles 'Can I go play in the playroom?' She whispers.
"Sure, as long as it's OK with your Mommy."
"Pleaseeeeee?!" She begs, doing a little dance in front of her Mom. Excitement surging through her, she loves playing in the play room, with all of the climbing and swinging and ball pit it's the perfect place for imaginative play.
"Ok." Meredith agrees, "But you have to play carefully." She says, "No jumping off the roof of the soft play house like last time!"
"Yes Ma'am." Willow says dully, but then she's darting around us and running across the Livingroom, through the kitchen, and down the stairs to the playroom. I smile a little. Isn't that just like a five-year-old for you? I catch myself when I think of her age. She is older than Heavenly now.
I open the drawer in the kitchen and pull out the tablet, setting it up on the table and opening the application for our security system that allows for monitoring of all the rooms in the house, bringing up audio and video monitoring for the playroom, and making that the only room showing.
"We can watch her play." I say with a little smile, but it makes me sad, so I busy myself with getting us drinks from the fridge instead.
"She comes home next week." Meredith says. Lord, not this again does everything have to center around talking about Oakley? Why can't we just have a normal conversation? "I went to visit her today and she has been able to completely come off the oxygen and the feeding tube."
"That's great." I say uninterestingly. Evangeline checks on me one last time. I assure her I'm fine and she grabs her bag and leaves, saying 'thank you Meredith' and 'see you tomorrow Mrs. Sloan.' I don't know how many times I've told her to call me 'Addison' but she still calls me 'Mrs. Sloan' and Mark 'Mr. Sloan.' Sometimes I wonder where he found her. Is this common in New York? Maybe, but I don't think so.
"Where is she off to today?" Meredith asks
"I don't know, but she's annoying me. Mark is paying her eight thousand five hundred dollars per week to watch my every move. I can't even pee without her right outside the door. Do you know how many pairs of shoes and handbags I could have bought with that?"
"He's worried about you." Meredith responds
"He's barley even talking to me. All he wants to talk about is Oakley. 'Won't it be nice to finally have her home and how many cloth nappies do you think we're going to need for the newborn phase' and 'are you sure the car seat base is installed properly. 'and, and, and. I thought putting her room together would make him shut up but it never stops."
"I think he's just excited. Did he find a nanny?" She watching Willow climb on the climbing rope, push off from the wall hard, and fall shrieking with giggles into the ball pit.
"No. Everyone is 'too young' or 'too inexperienced.' I told him if he would just stop talking about it I would watch her, but now I feel bad because I think that's the decision he wanted me to make the entire time."
"Oh…" She says, looking at me oddly. "Do you think you're ready for that?"
"Its not like I could screw it up with nurse Perfect Pants hanging around."
She doesn't say anything for a few minutes, and we are just still, watching Willow playing on the screen. She is in the puppet theater now, playing with two little dolls. 'Don't worry.' She says to the doll with the blonde hair that used to be Heavenly's ' I'll do your part for you.' And she begins to go through the little skit that she and heavenly used to play, one puppet on each hand, only now she's doing both roles. They made up that play when they were three. I'm surprised she even remembers it. I don't mean for it to happen, but I start to cry.
"I don't know if I'm ready," I admit. " But it's the right thing to do, so I'm going to try."
PART 4:
"Today's the big day!" Mark says, gently shaking me awake. "We have about an hour before we have to be at the hospital."
I move my hand over my face, trying to block out the sunlight.
"You haven't gone yet?" I ask groggily.
"I'm waiting on you."
"I don't have to go do I?"
"Most mothers want to see their child graduate the NICU."
"I'm not her mother." I say. Biologically yes, but for all other purposes no. She's been in the NICU since she's been born, and I've only been to visit her once before I left the hospital. My phone is full of videos and pictures of her, but only because Mark won't stop sending them to me everytime he sees her, which is at least three times a day on the days he works. She's stopped crying for me and accepted him as her comfort. She doesn't really need me. He can afford to buy breastmilk from the milk bank.
"What have you told people?" I ask him.
"That you're too poorly to visit, they know you are recovering from major surgery."
"That's not a good excuse." I say, getting up and going to the closet to find something to wear. How many mothers have I operated on that were begging to see their newborns the moment they woke up from the sedation? How many mothers have I personally wheeled down the halls because they can't walk due to this or that but are dying to see their baby?
"We'll I thought you'd prefer that to 'my wife's gone completely psychotic.' "He says, I can tell he's joking, things have gotten a little better between us but not much. I frown at him. Going through my closet I am put off by the sheer amount of stuff. Why don't I have clothes like normal people wear? I wonder briefly why I can't wear a tee shirt and leggings, and then have to remind myself that I can't wear a tee shirt and leggings because I don't own a tee shirt and leggings. I was raised that It's better to be uncomfortable than to be caught dead wearing 'something as tacky as that' out in public. My mother's voice echoes in my head and I cringe.
"Just put on something and let's go. You're going to the hospital, nobody cares what you look like." He says, but then I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror.
"I look like death."
"Months of starving and self-harm will do that to a person." He says, "Now get dressed, come on Addison we're going to be late." I sigh, I can't wear a dress because then not only will I be cold, but I'll have to wear high heels. I finally decide on a floral top and jeans. I put on a random pair of flats and pull my hair back. I look in the mirror again, deciding this is probably as good as it's going to get.
"Ok then…." I say, trying to psyche myself out, and put that 'I'm fine' mask back on. "Let's go take our baby home." It takes a lot to say that 'our' baby, when even yesterday I was hellbent on having nothing to do with her. I take several deep breaths, trying to push down the anxiety that is threatening to show its face. I can do this. I can pretend everything is ok, and maybe eventually one day it will be.
By the time we get to the hospital I feel like I am going to pass out from anxiety. Mark squeezes my hand tightly as we walk up to the hospital pushing the travel system. He pulls me aside just before we go into the doors.
"Most of the hospital doesn't know what's really going on. The only people who know were those directly involved in your care, and the chief they've graciously signed non disclosures to prevent the rumor mill that normally accompanies this place."
I raise my eyebrows at him, not thinking him one to go through the trouble. Nobody told me in the months that I was stuck here that there was a non-disclosure agreement.
"The chief and I agreed that it would be best, to protect you- and now I just-" He pauses like he is struggling with something, he takes my face gently in his hands, searching my soul with his eyes. "I need to know that you're OK before we go in there. I know this has been hard on you."
"I'm fine." He hates it when I say that he gives me a look and I start to tear up.
"You're not fine, no one's fine Addison." He says.
"I am….. I swear I just…. we finally get to bring our baby home today." I wipe my eyes, smiling and really try to mean it.
"Are you sure?" He asks me, and I nod. He gives me a look of distrust but puts his arm around me protectively and we walk into the hospital, pushing the travel system to the elevator, and then to the NICU. My hands begin trembling on the handle of the stroller and he gives me a tight hug to try and calm me down. Mark disconnects the car seat from the stroller and carries it inside. I fold the stroller and sit it out of the way in the scrub room and we clean our hands. We don't have to wear the gowns since we are both clean, infection free, with no open wounds.
"I'm fine I'm just excited." I say, trying to keep my voice airy. I'm fine. This is fine. Everything is fine.
I follow Mark over to Oakley's bassinette and look down at the beautiful little girl we've created. One of the nurses, Sophia, is changing her diaper and putting her on a tiny little onesie with cats and ice cream printed on it.
"I'm glad you're feeling better Dr. Montgomery." One of the interns, Emily, a third year says cheerfully. "Your little girl has been an absolute pleasure to work with. She's the cutest little thing on this earth aren't you Oakley?" She coos at the tiny baby while Sophie finishes dressing her and moves back to get everything she is going home with ready.
"Do you know when you're coming back to work yet? Joy is driving everyone insane." She informs me.
"A year, maybe more." I say as I lift Oakley up, holding her gently, so gently.. smiling down at her while I'm talking. "I want to spend every moment I can with this little sweetie before I have to come back." I am going to say more, but Mark comes up behind me.
'Did you miss Mommy? Mommy missed you, yes I did. Your daddy sent me lots of pictures of you and videos…..you've grown up so much." I Tell her in a sing song voice.
"She's all signed out are you ready to go love?" He asks, looking over my shoulder at Oakley, and smiling that goofy smile down at Oakley, who was unphased by any of this in the slightest and had fallen asleep in my arms.
"She really is perfect isn't she?" I observe.
I say goodbye to everyone as I put her into her car seat, buckling her so that the chest clip and straps are just so. I tuck the little kitty blanket that matches her outfit around her, so she doesn't get a chill I take her bag from Mark and he lifts her car seat.
Mark attaches the car seat to the stroller base, and we make our way back out to our car together, chatting almost cordially as we admire the beautiful little life we made.
No one can tell what the future will bring, but for now, for now I'm going to fake it til I make it and hope for the best.
Authors Note:
Thank you for all the kind views on the last chapter of In My Blood! I am having a lot of fun writing this and the other stories I have had the opportunity to update this winter break. What do we think about Addison's sudden change of heart? Please comment and review let me know what you think!