Addison Montgomery Shepherd's Point of View

"Dr. Shepherd? Dr. Montgomery Shepherd Can you hear me?" I groan inwardly. I smell the sticky clean smell of the hospital recovery ward. My eyelashes flutter. I try to open my eyes, but the sedative is too strong. I can feel that they're wearing off, but I can't open my eyes.

"You did fantastic!" The nurse exclaims in her bubbly 'you just had a medical procedure done I have to be nice to you' sort of way. "You're in recovery, the sedatives will begin wearing off shortly, and if you feel any pain you just let me know okay honey?" I feel her placing the nurse call button remote in my hand.

"Baby…" I ask. Groggily. I move and feel a hot searing pain in my stomach from where Derek punched me. I try so hard not to cry out. I feel the sticky wetness of blood between my legs. I remember everything. Maybe he had the wrong dose because I remember, and it's like something from a nightmare. He injected me with something. I can't remember what he said it was.

"The baby is fine for now. You're bleeding, but your cervix is high and tight. You're not contracting. There were high levels of Rohypnol and Misoprostol in your system. Your rape kit came back positive for fluids and tearing. We've given you medication to counteract the effects of those drugs, but the next few days are critical."

"Owe." Is all I can manage to say. My mind is running a thousand miles a minute as I try to process everything through the sedative fog that is thankfully beginning to lift. I'm used to the pain and the bruises. I am used to the ugly scars and the lies. I'm used to the layers of make up to try and appear perfect. This pain that Derek had just drugged me, raped me, and tried to kill our daughter, a whole new level of sad.

"On a scale of 1-10 how would you rate your pain?" The nurse asks, pulling me out of my thoughts. I half heartedly smile at her. The nurse is wearing white scrubs, and in the sparkly aftermath of the heavy sedatives she looks like that inflatable marshmallow man from the Disney Movie I have seen the children of my patients watching.

"Is a million an option?" I whisper, my smile fading. Tears falling down my cheeks as I look away from the nurse and at the television mounted to the wall. There is a gameshow on.

"This will help Hun." She says, sadly. She injects something else into my I V and sits down to monitor me as thankfully the medication knocks me back out.

Mark is sitting next to me when I wake up again, in a normal hospital room. I look up to see that he has just been sitting there, watching me sleep. Mark looks over at the monitor, monitoring the baby's heartbeat, and the one monitoring mine. He looks at me, and maybe he doesn't realize I'm awake, because he shudders.

"Mark." I say, swallowing hard. He takes my hand and squeezes it.

"Welcome back Red."

"I'm so sorry."

"What?" He asks. "Addison this is not your fault. I'm the one who should be apologizing. I shouldn't have left you, not even for a second." He whispers, looking down and fidgeting with my hospital bracelets. I realize just how pale my skin is. The white self-harm scars on my wrists glow from varying degrees of bright white to baby pink in the horrible soft yellow hospital lighting.

"No. Mark please don't."

"No?" He asks puzzled, looking up at me.

"It's not your fault either. You have to be able to leave this place sometimes." I close my eyes tight. My voice is weak and raspy. I open the closely and see his tears. I hold his hand as tightly as I can manage.

"He saw us together." Mark assumed. "God Addison, we should have just left town. I should have never brought you back here."

"It's not that." I speak carefully. "He knows about the baby."

"He can't! We were so careful, and you're not even showing."

"Maybe he paid off someone on the team or read my chart or something. He does though. He knew when he came into the room. He injected me with something to induce the pregnancy."

"Of course, he did." Mark says, bitterly.

"I told him that the baby was yours, but he didn't believe me." Our eyes lock and I see that his hold the same sadness as I feel. I wonder if he is thinking the same thing as I am. 'Would this have ended the same way if I wouldn't have told him that.' It's not like he would have ever found out the truth. The plan was to put the baby up for adoption at the moment of birth. He would have never even seen her.

"Why would he?"

"I mean he did catch us in bed together…"

"That's true." Mark says, remembering, biting his bottom lip.

"Are you mad?" I ask.

"Mad about what?" He asks, I look up at him, feeling vulnerable. He strokes my face gently. "Baby I would never be mad at you. This wasn't your fault. I should have been there. I promised I would protect you."

"I didn't want to be alone with him, but if I screamed it would have been worse. I didn't want him to hurt the baby and…" He places a finger over my lips, silencing me. He looks as conflicted as I feel. Why did I risk my life for a baby I do not even want?

"He hurt you. You do not have to explain yourself and what you did to survive." I know that he is trying to be strong for me, but tears continue to fall down his cheeks.

"I'm okay. Mark look at me." I say, and he looks at me in the eyes. "I'm okay." He nods and lays his head on my legs. I run my fingers through his hair. "I'm okay. He didn't do anything to me that he hasn't done a million times before. I'm okay." It is sickening that I am so used to the idea of marital rape that I am able to convince myself that what happened doesn't affect me in the slightest.

"He raped you." Mark points out.

"I'm okay. Mark I'm fine."

"You're not okay, you're numb."

"This is normal, trust me. I just need time. I told him that the baby is yours because I thought that would resolve the issue. He doesn't want anything to come between him and Meredith. I wasn't intending to tell him anything. I just didn't want him to hurt her." I try and explain. Mark climbs on the bed next to me, careful of all of the tubes and wires. I lay my head on his shoulder. Numb, but feeling like I am dying all the same. Rage. Despair, but not able to shed a single tear. He strokes my hair gently and rubs my back. Not knowing that Derek had done exactly these same things before he attacked me. Unlike with Derek though I completely melt into Mark's embrace.

"It will be okay." He knows me. When I am too mad to cry It's a dangerous situation. "The baby's safe; we don't have to talk about this anymore if you don't want to. I'm mad at Derek. I'm not mad at you." He noticed they had put the locket with Ella's pictures on it back on my neck after the testing was completed. "You're both safe, that is what's important." He says gently.

"I'm so fucked up." I say, hitting myself in the head with my hands hard. He gives me a look and grabs my wrists before I can do any serious damage. "You have to protect her. I can't. I'm not strong enough."

"We'll protect her together. We'll figure out what's best for her together."

"If she's born now, she probably a sixty-five to seventy percent chance of survival." I say. My stomach tenses up and then releases. Contraction? No. God no it can't be. The percentage should be seventy five percent chance of survival, but my past. I feel like it's put her at a disadvantage. I know this isn't Braxton Hicks though. I drink some water from the cup Mark offers me. "Keep Derek away from her. If anything happens to her, she is your daughter. Talk to an adoption agency if you can, but you have to sign her birth certificate before Derek can demand a DNA test. It will keep her safe." I can't be going into labor. Not now, this is happening too fast, way too fast.

"Addison you're scaring me. Why do I feel like you're saying goodbye?"

"I'm not." I claim, moving in discomfort.

"You are." He insists.

"No."

"Then what?"

"I'm having contract…" I start but another one hits, taking my breath away. I curl up against him, trying to make myself numb. Two contractions in less than ten minutes. "Contractions." I say quickly. I look at the marks on the monitor. The contractions are not bad, or even particularly strong, but I know that they cannot be a sign of anything good. They are too close together. I hit the nurse call button to page the nurse and give them detailed instructions on the medications and procedures that would need to take place to stop the baby's early arrival. I'm surprised at how calm my voice sounds. I certainly do not feel very calm.

"What do we do?" Mark asks, suddenly panicked, but I remember something, another baby, another time, and the day I found out my sweet little Ella was gone.

*FLASHBACK*

"Addison, they tried." Mark exclaimed. "I made sure that they tried, for you." Tears fall down his cheeks. "When they took her out, she was purple, she wasn't breathing. She was limp. I knew she had been without oxygen for too long, but I made them try. They tried for over an hour Addison."

"I want my baby! Where is my baby Mark?" I screamed, unable to process the fact that she was gone. My breath quickens as the tears came hard and fast.

"It's okay." Mark coaxed, trying his best to be supportive. "Well, I mean it's obviously not okay right now it this moment, but it's going to be okay. You have to calm down. You'll pass you. You need to breathe."

"Calm down? Breathe? THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT YOU MADE ME LOVE HER!" I explode. I rip the phone out of the wall and throw it at him. He dodges. I push the tray of food as hard as I can, it crashes into the wall and falls over, spilling food everywhere. I didn't want a baby. I wanted an abortion but my love for him was stronger than that. He was the one who made me want to be a mother. He is the one who spent months soothing my anxiety, convincing me that it's okay to love her. He gave me hope that I would never have to go back to Derek. Hope that we'd have a perfect family. He swore that nothing would go wrong. He climbs up into the bed with me and holds me tightly, allowing me to hit him over and over until all that was left is exhaustion and dry sobs.

"We can have another baby. We'll buy one if we have to." Mark promises.

"I don't want another baby! I want this baby! Our baby!"

"They did their best." Mark says, sadly. "She was just gone for too long."

"I could have saved her." I choked; voice raw. "If it had been anyone else, I could have saved her." I know it's not true. How many babies have I lost as a highly trained doctor? I break down completely at this realization and Mark calls the nurses in to sedate me.

END FLASHBACK

"Addison are you okay?" Mark asks. "You're zoning out." My attention snaps back to him. I shake my head to clear it, and then nod slowly.

"I'm fine. I was just thinking about…something." I then continue our conversation as if nothing had happened. "The nurse will give me a shot of terbutaline which will slow down the contractions, a shot of betamethasone which is a steroid that will help mature the baby's lungs. She'll start a magnesium sulfate IV drip. Hopefully all goes well and the combination of these things will stop the labor. They'll keep me in the hospital on restrictions until the baby is born, but it could buy us weeks if it works." I say, rattling off a Textbook response. My go to for when I don't really want to think or feel.

"If that doesn't work?" He asks, wearily.

"Then you'll have to get ready to welcome your fake daughter into the world." I say numbly as the doctor on call comes in with the nurse for my exam and administers the medications.

The worst part about pain is the minute you think you've passed it; it starts all over again – Meredith Grey.