A/N: I have a wicked big soft spot for this story. I'm so grateful that you lovers of the good ship Addison/Angst are signed on too. Thank you for all your feedback; this ride may be long but it's going somewhere...

..expectations..

Karev actually digs up a name your baby book somewhere.

From the NICU? The patient library?

I don't know.

I just know he shows up in Hannah's room with a battered old copy a few inches thick with a dusty, partially ripped cover. He holds it up to show me, like he has to prove himself.

The book has obviously been handled quite a bit. One of the ears of the faded but angelic-looking baby is missing. For some reason, I start wondering where that little piece of the cover has gone. Just a shred of cardboard with a baby's ear on it. It's a somewhat disconcerting thought so I revisit it a few times, forcing myself to experience the discomfort - like poking at a healing wound.

Hannah's dozing, but Karev stands by her bed like a sentry, and I take the opportunity to caffeinate ... again.

I'll reread that article on correlations between coffee consumption and breast cancer again later.

When I return I don't even have to touch the door to see inside the room.

Karev is sitting in the chair by her bed; his back is to me, and they seem to be discussing something.

"...leader?"

It's Hannah's voice, soft and pensive.

"Yeah," Karev says.

There's a pause.

"Do Zack," Hannah requests quietly as I stand in the doorway.

"Like Zachary?" I hear the rustling of pages. "It's Hebrew. Means, uh, remembered by god."

"Oh. That's nice." Another pause. "Zack was someone I knew … but it was a long time ago. I like it with a k."

She must be getting tired. There are long spaces now between names, but Karev hasn't moved from her bedside, flipping through the battered baby name book he found.

And it's keeping her calm. So I'm grateful.

I lean against the wall outside the room. I don't want to walk in and interrupt their flow ... but I don't feel right leaving, either.

She's fully quiet now, but she must be awake or signaling her desire to keep going somehow, because Karev seems to start filling in his own names.

"Richard," he suggests.

Hannah must make an inquisitive face because he responds, "My boss. Well, my boss's boss's boss, really."

"Richard," she repeats. "What does it mean?"

"Strong ruler. It's Norse."

"What's your name?" she asks at one point, her eyes half open.

"My name?" I peer in and see Karev still spread out in that chair by her bed, still thumbing through the baby book. "Alex. Uh, Alexander, same thing."

"Yeah." She pauses. "What does that mean?"

"Defender of men," Karev says without looking it up and that's when he looks up and notices me in the doorway.

I can see his embarrassment even in the dim light.

"Defender of men. I like that," Hannah says softly.

Karev turns his attention back to Hannah and I knock lightly on the door as if I've just arrived.

I still haven't heard from Mark and that's when I realize don't have my cell phone.

Shit.

How could I forget that?

I glance back and forth between Hannah, who's starting to doze again, and my empty hands.

Hannah is the priority.

But Derek … is drunk and Mark is doing one or both of us a favor. Not to mention every other form of communication.

"Karev." I nod toward him and we talk quietly at the edge of the room.

"You want me to go get your phone?" he asks when I tell him.

"You can't. You're on call."

"No I'm not."

Oh. Right. He's just a masochist.

Well, I can relate to that.

"I'll go," I tell him. "But, um, can you stay with Hannah?"

He has been already, all this time, and I wait for him to call me on it but he doesn't, just nodding instead.

"Sure."

..

There are clusters of people I vaguely recognize drinking at Joe's, doctors or nurses or others I must pass day to day in the hallway without noticing. It's not like they notice me, either; I'm either gossip fodder or another white coat alternately teaching and criticizing them. I doubt they recognize me in street clothes. I doubt they care.

I mean, I don't really work in that hospital, after all. I don't really live in this town. I'm just living out my punishment here, nothing more. I'm just retracing my steps ... quite literally, the ones I took earlier, to the bar. Except there's no drunk Derek. It's just me.

Alone.

I've grabbed my phone and am about to turn around and head straight back to the hospital when something catches my eyes halfway down the bar and I have one of those oh my god maybe destiny is real am I in a movie moments that don't come around that often.

(But you know them when they do.)

Because I recognize the distinct ink patterns on the forearm of the patron a dozen seats down the bar.

"Tad?"

The slumped figure looks up with bleary eyes.

It's him.

In my experience ... some of the most important decisions are made in an instant.

Want to get a drink with me? Yes.

Will you marry me? Yes.

Aren't you tired of being ignored? Yes.

Yes.

God, yes, I was so tired of it by then.

So I make another split-second decision and slide into the open seat next to the father of my patient's baby.

He's staring at the rather murky surface of the bar. "How is she," he asks, no real question mark. I see the tip of his visible ear turn red.

"She's hanging in there," I tell him.

"You must think I'm a real asshole," he mumbles, "being here, I just ..."

His voice trails off and then he looks away; he's so skinny I can see the tense muscles in his shoulders through the thin fabric of his shirt and I think he might be about to cry.

"Tad..."

He glances over.

"It doesn't matter what I think."

"But Hannah..." His voice trails off.

"Look. I'm not going to say Hannah needs you. I think she thinks she does, but I also think she can do this on her own."

He blinks.

"That doesn't mean she should do it on her own."

"I want ..." He stops talking. "I should be there."

I just listen.

"I ... don't know if I can."

"I've seen a lot of parents through this," I tell him quietly. "I never met anyone who regretted saying goodbye."

He scrubs at his eyes.

"The baby ... is he going to be … I, uh, I saw some stuff …"

Of course he did.

If I could rip down every inaccurate website ... or worse... but I can't. It's out there and all I can do is arm my patients so they're ready to see it.

"He's going to look like a very small baby," I tell him softly. "Your baby. And if it would make you feel better, more prepared, come back to the hospital and I'll show you some pictures to give you a general idea of what you can expect."

"No," he says immediately.

"Okay," I keep my voice calm. Maybe it's his unnatural thinness but he has the aura of a frightened rabbit, like the one that got into the pool house in the Hamptons one summer. Trapping it was a bitch. It just kept hopping frantically deeper into the house to get away from us, making things worse for itself. We couldn't seem to convince it all we wanted to do was set it free.

"Okay, Tad. You don't have to do that."

Long moments of silence ensue while he stares into his half-drunk beer.

"My cousin gave me his old carseat," he says finally. "Last week. You have to have one in the car to drive the baby home, that's what he said, it's like a law or something."

His voice is thick and there's nothing I can say to that.

It's never anything but heartbreaking, no matter how many times you witness it.

Because their baby isn't coming home, and maybe Tad's finally realized that, staring into the bottom of his beer and chancing quick glances my way.

"Why are you talking to me?"

I consider his question. "Why not?"

"You're a doctor and, like ... you have all these other patients."

"You were the only one in the bar," I tell him, not sure why I decide to strike a light tone but his thin lips actually twist up into something like a smile. So maybe it was right. Then his smile drops.

"Hannah thinks I'm a coward," he mutters.

"No, she doesn't. She wants you to come back."

"I am a coward, though." He's peeling the label on his bottle of beer now. "I can leave, you know? I can come ... here. Get out of there. And she can't. It's not fair."

No … it's not.

"You could come back," I suggest. "Both of you could be there. Together."

"Yeah." He glances at me. "Should I?"

I could say yes. I could tell him it's his fatherly duty, his duty as a partner, his duty as a human being, suck it up, whatever.

But I don't.

Just like Hannah's decision … this one needs to be his.

"What do you think?"

He rips another piece of wet label off. "I should be there," he mutters.

I lean back in my seat. "You still could be," I tell him casually, "if you wanted."

He picks at the label. Some of it is sticking to his fingers.

"Well." I adjust the lapels of my jacket, even though there was nothing wrong with them. "I should be getting back to the hospital."

"Okay," he mumbles.

"Tad? We could ... walk together, if you're leaving too."

He glances over. "I have to take a leak," he says.

Charming.

"Go ahead. I'll wait."

I close out his tab – ethics be damned; anyway, he's only had two beers. Joe gives me a sympathetic glance. I have no idea what he thinks is going on. For all he knows I'm picking up skinny twentysomething guys with tattoos these days. I know the rumor mill has been singing since Derek left me – hell, since I got to Seattle in the first place – so it doesn't really faze me.

Not much does these days.

"Um, Dr. Motngomery?"

Tad is back from his biological errand; he surprises me by holding the door open for me to pass through.

I nod as we make our way up the path toward the hospital.

"You think – could I walk in by myself? I just ... I don't want Hannah to know you brought me," he mutters.

His cheeks are flushed with shame.

"Tad..."

I wait for him to look at me.

"I didn't bring you. I walked with you. Big difference. You made the choice to be here."

I see hope flicker across his face.

(I always recognize hope, because I don't see it that often, and I don't get not to crush it that often when I do.)

"Hannah doesn't need to know we walked here together; even if she doesn't know those are two different things … you should. Because they are." I pause. "Go ahead in; I'll wait."

I stand a few feet from the door of Hannah's room. Part of my job is standing a few feet away at the most critical points of people's lives: Birth. Death.

... and the challenging times, like now, when those two moments coincide.

Hannah is still a few hours away from completing the procedure. She's reunited with Tad under the watchful eye of Karev (he shoots me a look almost as if he knows ... but he doesn't; it takes year to realize how much you don't know and he's just a kid). And I'm ...

Well, I'm alone, but I'm used to that. I've been alone since long before it became official.

I'm alone, and I'm exhausted, and my clothes have passed well worn into a desperation to feel clean.

I could go shower and change.

I consider this. The Archfield is less than ten minutes by car.

I could shower with my own products instead of that deathly shampoo in the locker room. Change into real clothes – I have a spare set in the car but they're not the ones I'd choose. And I don't want to wear scrubs all day. Those days are long past for me – plus, they remind me of things I don't particularly want to think about.

After a quick check-in with Karev, who assures me he's not going anywhere, I make the decision. Thankfully the hotel is practically in the hospital's backyard, because I feel my eyes start to flutter at the second traffic light. I'm tired. God, I'm tired, and unlike in Manhattan where taxis and car services ferried me around after all-nighters, here I still have to take my life into my own hands even after I've worn myself out doing the same with other people's lives.

..

The hotel is like the glass of wine you don't realize you need until you start pouring it and then every drop into the glass feels like a waste of time until it gets into your mouth. The closer I get to the hotel, the more I realize how desperately I need to be away from the hospital. The smell of it is clinging to me. I need to wash away Dr. Montgomery and then put her back on in fresh clothes and the collection of products I've built up over the years to wage the war I need to feel pretty.

I won't take too long.

Being Dr. Montgomery is still better than being Addison. Addison makes terrible decisions. One after the other. Addison's the one who threw her life away. Dr. Shepherd is that neonatal surgeon who sold her practice and moved into a fucking trailer to try to win back her perfect husband. And lost.

Dr. Shepherd lost.

And Dr. Montgomery? She's an intern who still has ill-advised bangs. A second-year resident who's barely touched death. Until we signed the divorce papers, I hadn't seen Dr. Montgomery in eleven years.

I can be quick. I need to feel clean.

But quick decisions ... can still be regretted.

I start to regret this one when I push through the revolving glass doors and that clinging hotel odor tickles my nostrils, too wrong to be real, reminding me that I'm not home. That I don't have a home.

Even if the carpet in the hotel hallway is starting to feel familiar under my feet ... which is a depressing thought.

If I thought there was nothing more depressing than living in a tiny shoebox of a trailer with a husband who couldn't stand the sight of me, it's living in a hotel.

Living.

That's not the word you're supposed to use for hotels. You stay in hotels, you don't live in them. Back when I was an intern and Savvy was a junior associate, I remember her getting shipped around for long stretches of time that seemed exotic to someone whose life moved between locker room, patient room, OR, and dingy student apartment. She lived in a hotel in Paris for six weeks doing something I don't really understand - that's our agreement, Savvy's and mine, or it was when we were friends; I don't really understand what she does and she doesn't really understand what I do but we still manage to understand each other.

I wish I'd realized what a rare gift that was when I had it and not let it slip through my fingers like I did every other good thing in my life.

Anyway, I was an overworked intern who fell asleep in cabs and bus shelters and sprawled in the bottom bunk of a dingy on-call room, and the idea of six weeks in Paris sounded glorious. I teased her a bit for complaining, I remember.

What about the food, Savvy, what about the wine?

I'm living in a hotel, I remember her saying, her voice blank, food and wine can't make up for that.

She had one of those zippy little rolling suitcases with her and then she was off to Tokyo. Savvy was accustomed to a certain lifestyle - believe me, I'm not judging - but you'd think the kind of expensive hotels the client stashed her would meet that standard. Artisan chocolates on my pillow and professionally fluffed pillows sounded pretty good to someone who fell asleep at the bus stop that morning.

It's depressing, she would say, it's lonely, and I didn't understand how she could be lonely when she was working all the time, surrounded by people, or how she could complain about a whirlpool soaking tub with a glass of complimentary champagne at the end of a long day when I was so tired I would step into the shower still wearing scrubs and not understand why my body felt so heavy. I know Weiss wasn't there, but in those days he was working hours almost as crazy as Derek's and mine as a fledgling prosecutor, how much would she have seen him anyway?

I didn't realize until now, until the Archfield, that it's more. It's something else: it's something about the coldness of the sheets and the forced neutrality of the decor, about the row of rooms marching down the wall, about how the number on the door marks you as a statistic instead of a person.

Sure, a few nights is a getaway, a week or two can be a holiday, but living there, living in a hotel, is ...

... fucking depressing.

I could call her and tell her I get it now.

Because Savvy got a new job and stopped living out a suitcase and I progressed through the ranks and stopped living in the locker room. But I didn't appreciate what she was saying about hotels until I moved into one.

God, it's just ... depressing.

And it takes a lot to stand out as depressing in the train wreck we all know my life has become since the night I swallowed bad punch and believed my husband was coming back to finish our dance.

(I know, I know. My life went off the rails before that. But I get to sulk, I get to ... mind what he did to me even if no one else does. Or maybe because no one else does. See, I'm still a villain in Seattle and I don't know where else I can go, so I don't really see the narrative changing at this point ...)

Hotels are depressing ... but efficient. The staff are so polite, greeting me by name; good evening, Dr. Montgomery; is everything all right, Dr. Montgomery; let us know if you need anything, Dr. Montgomery.

I've been working off some of my guilt by doling out oversized tips.

It's something Derek used to complain about. You think people who aren't rich are noble, somehow. They're just people. But I preferred to think of it my way, that the hard-working housekeeper would use the extra fifties I slipped her to buy food for her kids, winter boots, I don't know. It can't be that they're just the spectrum of regular, some good, some bad, most of them a depressing combination of the two.

The tips don't make me feel better, exactly ... but I don't think it's personal: nothing much has been making me feel better these days.

Maybe that's why I pause halfway down the hall, and then find myself turning right instead of left.

I don't want to do anything.

Not really.

I just want to find out how Derek is. And I want to ask Mark if he thinks I'm crazy for going back to the bar, and I kind of want to challenge myself to see if I can keep my clothes on.

Maybe I just don't want to be alone.

(But I like to think I'm more complicated than that.)

Whatever the reason, I end up in front of Mark's door and not mine. I hesitate with a raised fist and then fish his key card out of my wallet instead. I've kept our keys religiously separate so they wouldn't demagnetize; there's a procedure here. A protocol for everything; we're surgeons, we're precise, and with a neat click the door unlocks.

And at the same time I hear the knob turning down like Mark knew I was on my way in.

I brace myself for whatever he's going to say to me for using my key.

But I never find out because when the door is pulled all the way open it's not Mark standing there.

It's Derek.

It's Derek with wet hair falling over his forehead, a towel around his waist and a toothbrush in one hand. His eyes skim carelessly over my face like I'm a story he's already read.

"Sorry to disappoint you," he says.

To be I love: all of you, angsty Addison, dark roast coffee, Maddek, and reviews. Maybe in that order ... and maybe not. (And msmiumiu, I promise I will get to updating the others as well!). Thank you, from the bottom of my angst-loving heart, for reading and I hope you'll let me know what you think.