You know you're winter (or a freakishly close facsimile) when you offer fluff to get over a suspenseful story ... and then update this one instead. Fluff is coming tomorrow, I promise. For now ... here's some more tangled Maddek web.

.. autopilot ..

"Sorry to disappoint you," Derek says.

"When? Now, or when we were married?"

"Amusing," he says. "You always have a quip."

I just stand there.

"I guess that explains your ... wildly successful personal life," he adds.

"Really." I prop a hand on my hip. "I didn't know screwing an intern in an exam room, leaving your wife for her, and then not dating her constituted a wildly successful personal life."

"Of course not, not when you're still screwing Mark."

"I'm not still screwing Mark."

"Then why are you – forget it." He shakes his head, then glances down at his toothbrush and the towel wrapped around his waist, and then back to me. "Do you mind?"

"Not at all. I've seen you brush your teeth in a towel before, I think I can manage to keep my panties on."

"That would be a first," he mutters.

The sparring isn't his best, and he doesn't even seem to be enjoying his cheap shots. I let him anyway; he's going to have a bitch of a hangover.

"Where is Mark?"

I try to look past him into the hotel room but Derek doesn't move, blocking my entrance.

"He's not here. Sorry you won't get your booty call after all."

I wrinkle my nose. "Do you have to call it that?"

"I don't know, do you have to do it?"

"What did you expect me to do, Derek, after you humiliated me like that at the prom? At least I waited until it was over …"

I stop talking, because I've walked right into that one. I wait for Derek to say not the first time, you didn't.

He says nothing at all. I guess it's too easy even for him.

"I called Mark," I say with as much dignity as I can. "I called him … because maybe I needed someone in my corner."

"Your corner," he snorts, looking like he's warming up to the fight at last, "is that what you're calling it these days?"

"I didn't come here to fight with you."

"No. You came here to screw Mark."

"Actually, I came here to ask Mark how you were doing, Derek, since the last time I saw you, you were about to pass out at Joe's."

He doesn't look embarrassed – of course not, he's Derek, he doesn't get embarrassed – but the tiniest hint of a shadow crosses his face.

I'll take it.

Or rather, I can't seem to help taking it, because my voice softens of its own accord. "Derek … why did you drink so much?"

"Why does anyone drink?"

"To forget?" I make the obvious suggestion, waiting for him to provide the equally obvious comedic retort: to forget what? ... I forgot. But he doesn't, he seems to take the question seriously.

"To forget," he repeats. "You mean to forget that my wife turned my girlfriend against me?"

"She said she's not your girlfriend," I tell him – and it's not lost on me that that's the correction I make first, but there's no time to unpack that now. "And I'm your ex-wife."

He studies me for a moment.

"Finally," he says.

Ouch.

I'm reminded that Derek is so precise, so good at this, that he can make a single word as painful as others would need a paragraph to do.

"Oh, hey." Mark appears behind me before I can reply, dressed casually with a brown paper bag in his hand. "Derek … you didn't tell me you were going to be entertaining."

"You didn't tell me you were handing out keys," Derek counters.

"Only to the lucky few." Mark is standing very close when he says that, his hot breath tickling the top of my ear, and then he rests his hands on my hips to move me out of the way so he can walk into the room … letting them linger just long enough for Derek to look nauseated.

Or maybe it's not me, it's all the alcohol he consumed.

"Here … I got your ginger ale." Mark hands Derek the paper bag he was holding.

I guess he took his caretaking role seriously after all.

"Well, you're obviously in good hands," I tell Derek, not leaving him time to turn that into a dig at me about Mark's hands. "So I'll just …"

I'm still hovering in the doorway. God, I hate this feeling. It reminds me of the early days of medical school when Derek and Mark were so joined at the hip that I constantly felt like a third wheel.

(Another thing I hate? That expression. The third wheel is pretty freaking important if you're talking about a car. A bicycle? That's different. People should be clearer about these things.)

Later, of course, Derek and I became the inseparable ones, and Mark was on the outskirts. He seemed to get over it quickly – Mark's terrible at holding grudges, and the unfortunate flip side is that he's surprised when anyone else holds one.

… which is inconvenient when you're the kind of guy who frequently pisses people off.

The two of them are both inside the room now, standing next to each other with similar postures, just ... looking at me.

Waiting for me to go, I guess. I don't say goodbye. I haven't said goodbye to Derek in more than a decade. Not when we'd stop by each other's offices, not the last morning in New York we walked in opposite directions to our offices, and not the night he left me.

Either time.

We'd talk on the phone often, before texting and emailing became a thing, but even after. Quick logistical soundbites, I should be home by ten, let's make a reservation for eight, did you call the caretaker about the pipes?, I'm not going to make it tonight.

That last one got more frequent in recent years.

The point is, we'd just exchange information and then hang up when we were done. No goodbye. We never talked about it either, that's just … how it was.

Maybe because marriage is one long conversation; there never is a moment when one exchange ends and another begins.

Whatever the reason, the time for pontificating about marriage is over … long over. So I just give a little nod and push the door open to make my escape.

"Wait."

Mark calls out and then catches up to me before I can close the door; it swings shut behind him.

"Come back later," he says, his hands finding their way back to my hips again; we're not even three feet outside his hotel room.

"Mark, I was just trying to find out how Derek is."

"Derek is Derek." Mark shrugs, then tucks a lock of hair behind my ear with his other hand. "How are you?"

It's so … sleazy, but he's smart enough to know what works on me and I wouldn't admit it out loud, but I'm usually dumb enough to fall for it.

Usually, that's the key.

I takes a step back, away from his hands, and ignore his question to ask one of my own.

"Why did Derek drink so much? Did he tell you?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know why he drank so much or you don't know if he told you?"

He frowns. "Don't grill me."

"I'm not."

Okay, I kind of am.

What am I supposed to do, admit that I'm a little hurt that they're back in the boys' club but Derek still hates me and Mark …

I push his hand away as it creeps up my ribcage. "Cut it out, we're in public."

"That didn't stop us when-"

"Mark, I mean it."

He sighs like I've asked him to take on the world but he complies.

And then follows me down the hall to my room.

I turn around with my key in one hand, the doorknob poking into me.

"What about Derek?" I look down the hall pointedly.

"I think he can get dressed without my help. Tell you what, I'll tie his shoes for him when we're done here if it will make you feel better."

"When we're done," I repeat. "We're not doing anything."

His eyes travel the length of me appraisingly. "You look like you could use a shower."

"Thanks for the compliment."

Not that it's not objectively true … but it's the principle of the thing.

He's just standing there – just being there, which is Mark's ultimate weapon when you think about it, and I try not to think about it because I'm the one who comes out looking terrible.

So I slide the key in the lock and push the door open.

He follows me, and then leans against the closed door, just ... looking. Not at me. Past me.

At the room, maybe. My room looks exactly like his.

Big.

White.

Empty.

Are we the two most pathetic people in Seattle?

"What's wrong?" He frowns. Now he's looking at me.

I shake my head. "You're only asking that so I'll let you shower with me."

"I'm asking you that because you look like something's wrong." There's a flicker in his eyes - actual concern?

For two seconds, and then he grins that wolfish, predatory grin. "You're going to let me shower with you either way," he smirks.

"No, I'm not."

"Yeah, you are."

"No, I'm not."

How do we keep getting into grade school playground arguments about sex? Those two things should not go together.

"Derek said we'd be bad parents," I blurt, not sure why the words slip out.

Because you can't control yourself around Mark, which is the root of all your problems.

… well, that and my fundamental flaws as a human being. Which, as both Derek and Mark have enjoyed pointing out for different reasons at different times, are substantial.

"You and me, I mean," I clarify. "He said we would be bad parents."

"Derek's an ass," he says casually, as if it explains everything.

"An ass that you're trying to get to be friends with you again. An ass in your hotel room. An ass you went out to buy ginger ale for."

Schweppes. The ginger ale will be Schweppes; I know that for sure even though I couldn't see inside the paper bag. Derek's not picky ordinarily but give him Canada Dry when he's got a hangover and he'll gag.

Mark shrugs. "He's an ass … but he's still family."

And there it is.

That's why Mark's going to end up back in, and I'm always going to be outside. Standing in the doorway.

"Addison." Mark shakes his head. "Come on, who cares what Derek thinks?"

I shrug.

"You didn't want the baby," he reminds me.

God, if only it were that simple.

Of course it's that simple in Mark's head.

"If you'd kept it, you'd be pregnant right now," he muses, studying me as if he's trying to picture it.

"Yeah, I guess I would."

His eyes drift up and down my torso. "Your boobs would be pretty big by now, huh?"

Ugh.

I shake my head at him. "And you wonder why I think you would be too immature to be a parent?"

He looks vaguely offended – it's okay, he won't be for long. He's Mark, insults slide off him like water. It's the validation he craves.

"I could have done it, you know," he says.

"Done what?"

"Grown up."

"You think?" I study him for a moment. "Then why didn't you?"

"You didn't give me a chance," he says with surprising fierceness. "If you'd kept the baby, we could have stayed in New York, and I could have grown up. I could have. I could have done it all. The family thing, the kid thing. You know. Get one of those kid-backpack things and wear it on the subway."

"You never take the subway."

"I could have started. Chicks love when guys wear babies."

"Do you hear yourself, Mark? Do you actually hear yourself?"

He doesn't say anything.

I prop a hand on my hip. "How many women did you sleep with while we lived together in New York, Mark?"

"Only one that counted," he growls, and he pulls me toward him.

"That's not going to work," I warn him – optimistically, I will admit, because my traitorous body craves touch and I have to force it not to melt against the hard planes of his chest.

When he dips his head to kiss me I manage to turn my face away, which is ... something, at least. His lips just skim over my neck and I steel myself against the waves of sensation that seem so easy for him to produce.

Everything seems easy to him.

So why is everything so hard for me?

Giving in to Mark is hard.

Not giving in to Mark is hard.

Talking to Derek is hard.

Not talking to Derek is hard.

"Mark ... stop," I tell him. "Go back to Derek. I'm not sleeping with you. I'm showering, by myself, and then I'm going back to work, and you can nurse him through his hangover."

"You're the one who made me take care of him!" He sounds outraged, which is no surprise; he's not used to not getting his way.

I close the door on his look of confusion and annoyance and lean back against it in the same position he did, surprised at so many things – like that the door doesn't burn through my blouse when there was so much heat coming off his body – but most of all …

Most of all I'm surprised that I can still surprise myself.

And then I take the shower I so desperately need.

Alone.

Just me and the hot water spray and products that smell more like clean and less like despair.

I'm exhausted.

I'm beyond exhausted.

I haven't slept decently since … I don't even know when, maybe the last time in that claustrophobic trailer when I actually thought we were getting somewhere, when I actually thought he was trying. That he might care. And I let myself drift off against his shoulder while he played with my hair like he used to and no, it wasn't our sleigh bed in the brownstone or the antique four poster at the summer house. But it was … it was something.

And now?

Now … I have nothing.

Nothing except a big empty hotel bed where they change the sheets every morning, even the mornings I never unmake it, just stumble back down the hall at dawn to shower off the night before.

The showers never really help.

But even this bed, this strange square of hotel loneliness – I wish I could crawl into it.

My body is pulled toward the bed, the pillow, sleep, but I've been refusing my body what it needed for a long time.

All doctors have.

And then we go to work and tell our patients what their bodies need.

It's sheer autopilot that gets me out of the shower, into a robe, that dries my hair and applies my makeup and finds an outfit to wear, a skirt and blouse expertly laundered by the hotel at some exorbitant fee that people like me pay so we keep our outsides looking the exactly opposite of our insides:

Unruffled.

Put together.

Not a mess.

I move through the hotel room still on autopilot, thanking god for muscle memory as I move forward through sticky molasses exhaustion, toeing into heels, pulling my hair back with a clip, loading my phone into my bag, and my keys – I have a system, I have to have a system, or I wouldn't be able to get out of the house – well, the hotel now – on as little sleep as I allow myself.

Thank god for autopilot.

Or not.

Because I don't realize it until I've driven drunk on lack of sleep to the hospital, parked on an angle that I can only get away with thanks to the sticker on my car that announces its driver is Very Important, and made my way into the hospital with steps that are far more confident than I am and dropped my bag on the nurses' desk so I can start sifting through the charts that have piled up for me overnight.

And Nurse Tyler passes me another folder and I reach for it with my left hand.

That's when I realize that autopilot … is a bitch.

No, not just a bitch. A fucking Benedict Arnold.

Because I see exactly where Nurse Tyler's eyes have drifted and I realize that after telling everyone the divorce was final, changing my name on every freaking piece of paper in the hospital – it took half a day; do you think Derek lost half a day of work like I did? – I'm once again wearing my rings on my left hand.

Goddamn it.

I must have picked them up out of the dish on the chest of drawers where they're still sitting – I know, I know, but I still haven't decided what to do with them – because …

… it doesn't matter why. What matters is that autopilot put them on my finger and now I'm wearing them and they suddenly feel like they're cutting off the circulation to my left hand.

My left arm.

My heart.

I can see my epitaph now:

Here Lies Addison Adrienne Forbes Montgomery Not-Shepherd-Anymore
1966-2006 (never had to turn 40, lucky bitch)
Beloved Nothing
Dead of a Three-Carat Diamond She Should Have Just Thrown in the Fucking Bay

Yeah, I'm pitying myself right now. Sue me. No one else in this town spares any pity for me. So yes, I have to pick up the slack on my own.

And yes … autopilot is a bitch.

That, or it's out to get me like everything else in my life is.

But I have no time to contemplate this, to take off the rings, or even to feel sufficiently embarrassed because my pager vibrates against my hip and then I see Karev jogging down the hall toward me.

"She's at six centimeters," he tells me as he approaches.

We both know what that means.

It's time.

To be continued. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, I need your reviews like Addison needs to figure out her life. I appreciate every single one of them, and they make my writing go faster. So please ... press that review button?