A/N: Thank you so, so much for your response to the last chapter. This story is one that sometimes comes in great leaps and bounds, and now seems to be one of those times. Good news if you like this story: the next three or four chapters are pretty much all ready to go (which is a lot for commitment-phobic moi), or at least close to it. I hope you enjoy this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it.
..
oversteps
..
"Colton would be here, but the quarterly meeting is keeping him too busy. He wants an update, though. A thorough one. I told him you would update him."
"Mm-hm." I try to do the noncommittal-but-supportive thing while I'm moving the wand over the expanse of her pregnant belly. "Eleanor, just hold still for one moment, please … there you go. Perfect."
Next to me, Derek is watching the screen intently while Eleanor drones on about her husband. I show him the issue – all I have to do is lift my chin; he knows what to look for, and he nods. Then he leans a little closer to ask me a question – it's a good one, of course, he's still Derek, and I'm in the middle of answering him when Eleanor pipes up.
"What are you two muttering about?"
Oh, if only you knew.
But out loud? "We're just discussing your treatment plan, Eleanor, for the babies," I tell her patiently.
"Well, I can hear it too, you know. I'm not an idiot. I did – "
I stop listening before she can tell me again that she graduated magna from USC and I can dutifully pretend to be impressed.
"I'm filling Dr. Shepherd in on what you and I have discussed with Dr. Graves," and I remind her enough about the specifics to pacify her, at least for now.
Not that we know that much.
We do know that Baby C – the one with the cerebro-spinal malformation – is a triplet, which means there are two other babies sharing the womb. A and B, they're boys. They have their own placenta, of course, but I've studied enough cases of single-triplet fetal malformation to know it's not that simple. What happens to that little girl affects both the boys, too. Meanwhile, they're growing normally. Small, but normal. While she's a little time bomb who could tip everyone's balance.
It's not really fair … but that's just how it goes sometimes.
..
So you know how Eleanor Rivers is stuck in Trendelenburg and none too happy about it, and I'm not her favorite person? Well, she's actually been lying still since Derek worked his magic. She even stopped complaining.
On the other hand, she's still managed to mention Colton about sixty more times during the ultrasound.
Colton thinks …
Colton wants to make sure …
Colton said …
I nod and smile while Baby C flickers on the screen.
The truth is, in all the time I've been treating Eleanor Rivers, I've only met the famous Colton once. He had a thick wedge of grey hair and eyelashes far too long for an adult male; he was wearing a four-thousand-dollar suit – not one I would have chosen – and he was on his blackberry the whole time.
So, yeah, I'm not unsympathetic.
I know why Eleanor is compelled to keep talking about him.
She's moved on now to discussing Colton's impending bonus and while I certainly wouldn't have done that – talking about money is unseemly, don't you know? – I still get why his name has to be alive in this room. Because –
Ugh, now we've moved to his prowess at the gym. Derek catches my eye while I move the wand, and without saying anything I know we're both trying not to laugh.
It reminds me of a hundred other times where all we've needed is a quick glance and suddenly, everything is funny. Everything is okay.
That only lasts for a second, of course, and then I remember why it's not funny.
I remember why I get that Eleanor needs us to think he cares.
I've been there.
A couple of years ago I was supposed to be photographed out in the Hamptons for some magazine spread – one of those articles about how women can have it all and still find time to pay a killer landscaper and get a blowout. Whatever. You know, girl power type stuff: you, too, can pretend your house always looks this good and that your work clothes never end up stained with other people's bodily fluids!
So that was the plan on my part.
And Derek, well, Derek was supposed to come join me at the house and be in the photograph too. Throw an arm over my shoulder or gaze at me on the lawn and let everyone who saw the spread see how handsome my husband was. How present. How in love we were.
… I bet you can tell where this is going.
So I'll skip to the end: he didn't show.
I did the shoot alone.
And I couldn't even be mad because it's not like he was drinking or playing pool or watching the Yankees. Not my husband. He was saving someone's life. And it didn't matter that he chose to take that surgery and it didn't matter that someone else could have done it.
I couldn't complain.
I couldn't compete.
And sure, the pictures turned out great. I wore that white dress with the thing on the waist and they even had a fan to make my hair look perfectly windblown. The lawn looked incredible, and the pool looked even better.
It was still just me, though.
When they ran the article they even stuck in a smaller picture of Derek and me together from some benefit. My outfit and hair made it clear it was taken more than a year before the rest of the shoot, but Derek was still there, technically. We were on the same page, standing next to each other, smiling.
Proof of life … or proof of marriage anyway.
And my husband did make it out to East Hampton the next day with a Barolo in his hand far too expensive for him to have picked it out himself, and I knew he hated shopping for wine even more than he hated shopping for shoes and I forgave him.
Of course I forgave him.
He told me later that same night, when we'd finished making up and I was lying sated in his arms – physically sated, anyway – that some of the guys at work were pushing him to bring me jewelry instead, or at least chocolate, but he knew I'd rather have wine.
I thought it was sweet, then, how well he knew me. I didn't think it was manipulative.
Now …? Now I don't know what to think.
Except that as Eleanor's voice starts telling us how excited Colton is to decorate the nursery, and her expression tells me that actually Colton says sure, sounds good to all of her suggestions without looking up from his blackberry, she notices me looking at her.
It's just for a second, but I see it in her eyes.
Neither of us acknowledges it; I say something noncommittal like oh, really? How great, and keep pressing the wand against her belly so I can see every centimeter of her triplets. And she blinks and keeps talking.
We both let it go – but I still know what it was. That flash in her eyes.
Because I remember that my chest would feel tight every time someone looked too closely at that photograph in Hamptons Life, because I knew that they knew why I was sitting alone in an Adirondack chair next to that perfect blue pool.
They knew why the magazine ran that postage stamp picture from the benefit on the opposite page.
They knew Derek didn't show up for me.
And I don't care how fabulous my hair looked in that shot … they knew that I knew it too.
"Wait," Derek says suddenly – this Derek, now Derek, his tone serious.
And then I remember where we are, and that it's not actually about me.
..
It's always awkward trying to talk about a patient when she's right there, without alarming her – especially when she's barely holding onto a high risk triplet pregnancy.
So even though I know Derek is trying to get a closer look on the screen, I'm doing my best to carry out the ultrasound like everything is still – not fine, of course, but the same as it was before.
Derek gestures with his chin toward the screen and I nod a little so he knows I get it, but he's impatient.
"Addison." He's describing a circle with two of his fingers, trying to get me to move the wand faster.
When I don't, he actually puts his hand over mine. Seriously? This is why I never let him finish teaching me how to drive stick.
"Do you mind?" I hiss.
"Would you just – move two millimeters transverse," he says, annoyed, but he does let go of me, and I direct the wand accordingly.
He's immersed in the screen.
"Increase the magnification," he instructs, and I do it instead of arguing that I'm not his freaking sonographer. I know Derek, he's not being patronizing on purpose, not really – he's just focused.
Very focused.
"Derek," and I keep my voice low but calm because I know Eleanor is watching us. "What is it?"
"Just give me a second," he mutters.
"What's going on up there?" Eleanor asks nervously. It's hard to take her seriously sometimes, in that awful tipped Trendelenburg position and with her proclivity for mindless chatter and taking her understandable hostility out on me – but right now, her voice is small, and she sounds like anyone would right now.
She sounds scared.
"Dr. Shepherd is just examining the babies, Eleanor," I tell her, in my most reassuring tone.
Eleanor actually glances over at Derek as if to say, should I believe her?
Girl power, indeed.
Derek backs me up, though, nodding at her. He's working the soft eyes, and Eleanor looks reassured.
Thank you, Derek, for the vote of confidence.
No, really, I do appreciate it. And Eleanor certainly does too.
Oh, wait – if you're wondering why Derek was touching Eleanor's face, a few minutes ago, when it's one of the triplets who has the CNS malformation?
It's because Eleanor is convinced she's having her own neurological crisis. It's somewhere between projection and the unfortunate consequences of her time in Trendelenburg. Walter Graves is businesslike, not indulgent, but he's always taken her complaints seriously. Trendelenburg is a bitch – there's a reason it's treatment of last resort these days, a little medieval for my tastes and prone to causing all sorts of unpleasant maternal side effects, including headaches. Sometimes severe ones, the kind that make you think you're going to stroke out … because you're a patient, not a doctor, and you don't actually know what that means.
But Trendelenburg, as uncomfortable as it is, is also still, in some cases – like Eleanor's – the best way to maintain a pregnancy when an incompetent cervix threatens to bring on early labor.
(Don't you just love how many women's health terms manage to point the blame? Incompetent cervix. Like they're just not working hard enough, or not smart enough.I wonder how many men get told at their annuals that they have incompetent prostates.)
Eleanor first presented with signs of early labor, that's all. A simple incompetent cervix. I'm the one who discovered the CNS malformation and got Graves involved.
(See – I do more than mope about my wrecked life and sleep with the wrong people. I actually have a job, too. And I'm pretty damned good at it, even when everything else in my life is falling apart.)
"Mrs. Rivers, thank you for being so patient," Derek is saying now, smiling down at her. He glances at me. "I hope you don't mind if I borrow Dr. … Montgomery Shepherd for a moment?"
That's not my name.
But I know he's placating the patient, who still thinks of me as Dr. Shepherd – or, more likely, that bitch who gets to sit up whenever she wants and walk to the bathroom by herself.
Not that Eleanor is likely to mind my leaving; she still sees me as the architect of her misery.
Derek lifts his eyebrows when I'm still standing there. "Can I see you outside, please?" he asks pointedly, and I ring for a nurse to help get Eleanor settled.
..
"You think it's a VGM." I look at him. "Really?"
Derek nods. He's holding Eleanor's chart now.
"But I've been monitoring daily since – "
"A fetus changes every hour," he interrupts, in the patient tone of a professor. "Daily monitoring, even twice daily, gives us a snapshot. That's helpful, but now I need the panoramic. I need to put the pictures together."
Sounds good, right? Impressive?
Those are my words. He knows that because of me.
"Derek – are you lecturing me on fetal development right now? Seriously?"
"No, of course not," he says quickly.
I sigh a little. "Look, we're aware of the CNS malformation, but it's been unspecified up to now. There's been no change since the fetal survey," I remind him. "We've been tracking the fundal height, and there's no sign of – "
"No change yet," he says.
"Excuse me?" I tilt my head to take it in. Derek's good, I know that, but even he doesn't usually use psychic powers to determine neurological conditions.
"No change yet," he repeats. "But that possible dilation at A2 – the one you didn't want to move the wand to show me – "
Ugh, of course he would say that.
" – I'd like to see it more closely." Then he nods as if a course has been determined. "Order a fetal MRI," he says.
"I'm not your resident," I remind him.
"Then have your resident order a fetal MRI." Derek snaps Eleanor's chart closed, then glances at me. "How's Graves on endovascular?"
"He's on your team, wouldn't you know better than I would?"
"This is prenatal, Addison," he says, like I don't know that.
"I'm aware, Derek … but it's neurosurgical too."
"Just order the fetal MRI," he says, sounding resigned rather than annoyed, "or get Karev or whichever intern is getting intimidated on your service today to do it for you, and have the scans sent to me so I can review them."
"It's Walter's case," I remind him.
"Then we'll review them together." His tone is patient, like he has no idea how annoying he's being.
"Derek … what are you doing?"
"My job," he says immediately, looking a little confused.
"Actually, it's Walter's job."
"Walter is in the OR." He pronounces the guy's name like he once did with Preston Burke, making sure I know he's not thrilled with the fact that I actually talk to people here. Sometimes.
"I know that."
"And it was my consult." He studies my face for a moment. "Do you disagree with my advice?" he asks. He sounds genuinely curious, just one professional seeking another professional's opinion.
"No," I admit.
It's not like I hadn't considered a vein of Galen malformation – they're rare, and potentially very serious, but I've been monitoring Baby C closely and she just hasn't been presenting that way. Triplets are fragile, exponentially so compared to a singleton, and more invasive testing hasn't been worth the risk.
But I don't actually disagree.
"I didn't think so." He pauses, clears his throat a little. "Addison. I was – wondering if I could speak with you."
"You just did."
He grimaces. "Speak to you about something else," he clarifies, looking over my shoulder.
"You'll have to wait a minute," I tell him, adopting my most deferential tone. "I need to order a fetal MRI for my attending."
My sarcasm isn't lost on him, at least.
..
But joke's on me, since once I've snagged a resident to get the order in and left no doubt as to its urgency, I'm left with Derek.
Derek, who wants to speak with me.
Great.
I smile weakly at him, hoping maybe he's changed his mind, but he just glances down the hall and then just gestures for me to follow him.
I do, trying not to feel like the Spider and the Fly – no way in hell am I going near a supply closet, I can tell you that – but all we do is turn the corner where there's the tiniest semblance of privacy.
I guess it will have to do.
Derek's voice is low when he starts talking. "Look, about last night …."
Oh god, no conversation that opens that way has ever gone anywhere good. I just stand there with my listening face on hoping I don't look as uncomfortable as I feel. Maybe I'll get lucky and a meteor will hit Seattle Grace before I have to respond.
(A meteor can't be that much more unlikely than a live grenade in a patient's chest, can it?)
"I just wanted to say that I'm sorry," he says.
Okay, that was a little unexpected.
Those words don't exactly come naturally to my husband.
(Ex-husband. Ex. I've got this.)
I mean, he did apologize last night. Twice, actually. Twice more than I ever expected him to.
But that was different. That was about the past, the nuclear explosion that was the end of our marriage.
This is about …
Well. I'm not sure what this is about.
"Sorry about what?" I ask when it doesn't look like he's going to clarify.
He blinks. "I'm sorry if I … overstepped, last night."
It's my turn to blink now. I'm processing his words.
Well, just one of the words: overstepped.
Overstepped.
Seriously?
What, by showing up at my hotel room? Bringing back the rings, trying to figure out if I was committing suicide-by-gin, sticking around to make sure I didn't choke on my own vomit, sleeping over, what?
I mean … we were married for eleven years.
That's eleven years of birthdays and anniversaries and summer vacations and sitting across from each other in restaurants and sleeping side by side. Fine.
It's also eleven years of washing each other's underwear – or at least gathering it up for the maid to wash – and morning breath and getting naked in those married ways that have nothing to do with sex. I was there when Derek lost his first patient; I was the one who locked the call room door and cradled his head in my lap while he cried. I've held his hand when he left flowers on his father's grave, and he once stopped my mother from slapping me in the face and when I begged him never to bring it up again, he kept his word.
I even had to give him Reglan one time for an insane bout of gastro … and I don't mean orally.
Yeah, sorry for the image, but you get my point. I hope.
And if not, here's my point: what's overstepped, when you met when you were twenty-two – babies, actual babies – and you were married for eleven years? What's overstepped, for us?
I don't say all this to him.
Of course I don't.
I say, "it's fine," and give him a tight smile.
"Good." He pauses. "Are you … feeling better?"
I consider the question. The pain in my head has lessened to a dull ache. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to vomit anytime soon, at least not from my hangover.
Slowly, I nod.
"I was worried about you, Addison," he says, after a moment of silence.
His tone is quite a bit different from the one in the doorway of the hotel last night when he discovered me with Mark, laced with disgust, and said the same words: I was worried about you, Addison. And here you are screwing him again.
"You said that last night," I remind him.
"I was worried about you last night."
For a moment we just look at each other. His gaze drops to my hands and I realize I'm unconsciously fingering the spot where my rings would be.
God, even my hands can't be on my side.
I shove one of my hands in the pocket of my lab coat. "Yeah, I got that. I'm, uh, I'm sorry I worried I you."
"You don't have to apologize." He pauses. "Should I be worried now?"
Good question. The thing is, I'm not sure. And I'm not being coy, I mean it.
I know I yelled at him last night that I never asked him to worry about me – and that's true insofar as we're talking post-divorce – but then I also know I kind of lost it on him right after that.
Literally … on him.
My cheeks are warm at the memory, and I don't quite meet his eye.
"Addison."
He has his boy-scout face on, and I can tell he's having one of the Good Guy moments when he feels some obligation to me.
Obligation, like the reason he took me back – grudgingly – in the first place.
And I didn't want to believe that was all it was last night, but it wouldn't be the first time I gave Derek far too much benefit of the doubt.
Still, though …
"That was a lot to drink, even for you," he says.
"Yeah, well, it was a long day," I remind him.
"Yes. You mentioned that, earlier." He studies my face for a moment. "All your days are long," he adds, and I can't argue with that.
At least not while I'm living in Seattle.
(Well, "living.")
Now he's glancing at his blackberry. "Listen, Addison, if you need – "
Oh, god, I have to close my eyes again so he doesn't finish the sentence.
If you need anything.
One of the worst fights I can remember, back when we still bothered to fight, started with that line.
If I need anything? Really? Because you think if you say it that means you don't have to do anything, right? Like you've already done something. Points for Derek, all the points for Derek.
He yelled back, obviously, something about how I turned everything into a competition, I couldn't seem to remember we were supposed to be a team, a few more bullshit sports metaphors.
If I need anything, let's hope I have an aneurysm so you can spare ten minutes to look at me – why don't you just say it that way, since that's actually what you mean?
He slammed the front door hard enough when he left to knock a frame off the occasional table.
You know what's funny? I remember the shattered frame as holding a wedding picture. I don't think it actually did, but symbolically it might as well have, you know what I mean?
I had the frame repaired, of course, the picture set behind new glass, and we never brought it up again. I never asked him if he noticed what he'd left in his wake and I never told him what I had to do to fix it.
We just added it to the list of things we didn't talk about.
And when his eyes flicker to my left hand again, I realize we're still adding to the list.
He brought me back the rings.
Why?
I don't ask him. Of course I don't.
And back here, in the unfortunate Seattle present, Derek's sentence is still half-finished.
Listen, Addison, if you need –
And he doesn't finish it.
Which is good, because I don't want to answer it.
Because I need.
I do.
I need so badly, right now, that it scares me.
So I do what I always do when I'm scared. And it hasn't failed me yet.
(Right? That's why my life is so fantastic right now. So top-notch, not at all depressing, just how I always dreamed.)
I lie.
"I'm fine, Derek," I tell him, "really. You shouldn't worry about me."
It's just a half-lie, though.
Because the truth?
The truth, I realize now, is that even if I'm not fine, he should still stop worrying about me.
Because his worrying about me hurts. I think it hurts even more than his not worrying about me … and I'm tired of hurting. I'm tired of being sad.
"Okay," he says.
He actually looks a little sad, believe it or not.
"Okay," I repeat. My throat is aching. I don't understand how so many conversations we have can sound just like goodbye when we never even use that word. Can hurt exactly the same way.
I just know they do.
But all I do is smile, as much as I can, and wait for him to leave … except he doesn't.
For the second time in twelve hours – he surprises me by staying put.
He says my name, quietly, and there's nothing I can do except hold on in case he's planning to surprise me one more time.
"You brought me back the rings," I blurt before he can say anything else.
… nothing except that, anyway.
Okay, so I surprised myself this time. But actually, Derek looks even more surprised than I feel.
I guess I'm not the only one who thought we'd never bring it up again.
To be continued, of course. Very soon, assuming I stay this inspired. Help me out? Thank you, as always, for reading, and I hope you'll let me know what you think.