In My Blood
Chapter 11
Mark Sloan's POV
I am just closing my patient up when a nurse bursts through the operating room door.
"You're breaking the sterile filed." I inform her. I look up, she is panic stricken, struggling to catch her breath. She is holding a mask up to her face as to not introduce new germs into the room.
"Dr. Sloan there's been an emergency. I need you to scrub out right now"
"What happened? Is it Addison? The baby?" I ask, but she doesn't respond.
"It would be best if we speak outside." She says, and I nod, annoyed and being interrupted during this delicate procedure. I give Kordeen the resident on the case specific instructions. Threatening his job if he does not do the sutures exactly like I've taught him. We don't want to leave a scar. Emily and I leave the operating room.
"What's going on?" I demand the second we are in the scrub room.
"Grey and Thompson sent me to find you, there's been an emergency with your wife."
"What is it?" I ask, trying to gauge the seriousness of the situation. If it is just Addison throwing a fit or being petty over how annoyed she is to be stuck here I'd rather finish my surgery and help with the overflow from the catastrophic event that happened earlier. The entire city is going crazy. The situation is triggering, but my calm is my work.
"I don't think I'm qualified…"
"What happened?" I don't mean to shout, but I do and she moves backwards. It's a funny thing when you're used to the constant frailness of someone with mental health concerns as demanding as Addisons. Your mind automatically assumes the worse. It panics. It freezes.
"I'm so sorry Dr. Sloan, she tried to commit suicide. She's stable, but they are requesting your help." Emily murmured. I pushed past her, running down the hallway without even properly scrubbing out. I look at my phone and see that Meredith has paged me and texted me nine one one over a hundred times. I check my pager. Nine one one Addison.
I burst into the room and see her laying on the bed, one of her arms wrapped in white bandage, both of her wrists restrained against the bed. "Addison…" I whisper. "What have you done?"
"Where the hell were you?" Meredith asks angrily, coming out of the bathroom which has been cleaned since she found Addison on the floor of the shower. The mirror replaced with something temporary. Shatter proof like the ones you see in a prison.
"Emergency surgery. There was a mass casualty situation. The whole city's going crazy. Have you bothered to look at the news?" He asks.
"No. Actually I haven't. I was too busy saving your wife's life."
"What happened? You left her alone?"
"I'm so sorry Mark. I don't know. We got into an argument; I was only gone for a few minutes to clear my head. I had no idea she'd do something like this."
My eyes fall on Addison, cold sweat pouring from my body. She is laying so still. Her wrists are cuffed to the bed with psych restraints. "Restraints?" I ask, adrenaline surging through my veins. I can't just be grateful that she's okay. I can't get over the fact that she was left alone. Meredith knew she was upset, and she left her alone. She could have said anything to me right now and it would have been 'wrong'.
"She has to have the restraints. I had to use the restroom and clean myself up after getting covered in her blood. I couldn't risk leaving her alone again." She says, and I nod, understanding. "I borrowed this outfit from her bag, but I'll wash and return it. I couldn't get ahold of anyone to bring me clean scrubs."
"Is she okay?"
"We're closely monitoring the baby. She has inflating compression socks massaging her legs to help avoid blood clots." She answers. Her voice is robotic. "She'll likely be asleep for a little while longer. We had to give her a mild sedative."
"Is she okay though?" I ask again. I'm afraid to go near her. I'm not able to think of anything more productive and positive to say to her. I can't sort through this roller coaster of emotions. "Thank you for helping her." I tell Meredith. Addison looks so tiny and frail on the hospital bed. You'd think I'd be used to it by now but seeing her like this makes my knees go weak, and not in a good way. I sit down in the chair next to Meredith instead.
"She'll live if that's what you mean."
"What aren't you saying?"
"It's not my place."
"Just out with it Grey." Calling her by her maiden name, and not Grey-Shepherd seems to catch her off guard. Unlike Addison she changed her last name, well, hyphenated it anyway. I move closer to Addison, afraid I am going to hurt her, not touching her.
"You should have let Addison abort the baby. The wrong choice was made when you decided Addison would carry the baby to term and kept her so drugged up that she was forced into compliance." She says quietly, though she almost looks like she wishes she'd stay silent, she knows the alternative.
"She agreed to carry Oakley to term."
"Did she really have a choice? As soon as the funeral was done you pumped her full of so many drugs, she didn't even know her name most days." Meredith argues. She takes Addison's unwrapped hand, making small circles with her fingers.
"If she had ended the pregnancy, she would regret it for the rest of her life." I say defensively. "If I would have just let her deliver the baby instead of brining her to the hospital… delivering the baby and watching it die probably would have killed her. We would have both spent the rest of our existence with the what if's." I check her monitors and relax a little bit when everything appears normal.
"What you did was wrong. You're wrong for using your grief for Heavenly to blind you to the fact that you're using your wife as a human incubator for a child she clearly does not want, and I'm wrong for knowing what was going on and doing nothing about it."
"Oakley would have died Meredith. I would have lost both of my children."
"Is her life more valuable to you than your wife's? More valuable than the woman you are married to for better or for worse who you call your very best friend?" She asks. I swallow hard and cannot answer. It's complicated. It's just a baby. It's one baby. Why do I care so much? We can always have another baby later. The answer comes to me though.
"I'm Oakley's father." I put a certain amount of emphasis on the word father as if that makes the point clearer. I am her father. Of course, I would want her to survive.
"Yes, but you're also supposed to be her husband." She says, looking towards Addison "And I'm supposed to be her best friend. We both failed her. We should be protecting her more than anyone else should. We are her people. Just keeping her alive isn't enough."
Addison Montgomery's Point of View:
I wake up to them arguing. It's nothing new. Of course, they're arguing about me. I cause this to happen. They used to be friends. We were all great friends. I couldn't just be the happy, glowing pregnant lady they wanted me to be. Not this time. I know it's not just the pregnancy with Oakley. When I was pregnant with Heavenly, I was so happy. I try to pretend like I'm still sleeping, thinking maybe they're too caught up in their argument to notice me. Oakley moves in a way that is painful and I let out a gasp. I attempt to move my hand to soothe her and am confused to find them both restrained to the bed rails. Fantastic. They're both looking at me now. I give a sigh of discontent. I try sitting up, but the effort of holding my body up at this angle is a lot.
"I'm sorry Addison, we had to." Meredith says quietly.
"You didn't have to do anything." I say, defeated. I let my body go limp and fall back onto the uncomfortable hospital bed. "Why are you wearing my clothes?" I ask.
"It's better than wearing your blood." Meredith says, shrugging. I consider this for a minute, and I guess it does make sense. After what happen she probably wasn't able to just leave. We're friends, it's not like we haven't shared before.
"I'm just so sick of this… all of this." I say quietly.
"Obviously not sick enough." Meredith says coldly. "You're hitting your head against a wall Addison."
"I did what I thought was the best option, for our family, for you and for Oakley." Mark says coming closer to me, too close. Taking the blame off of Meredith. Why can't they understand that I just want to be left alone? Maybe if they wouldn't have intervened it would be over by now.
"Better never means better for everyone. It always means worse for some." I say, my eyes are growing heavy though. The medication they had given me hasn't completely worn off. I can still hear Heavenly. I can see her dancing around the hospital room. I blink my eyes hard, but I can't keep them open anymore, and fall back into the darkness of sleep.
Hallucination / Dream
"Mommy! Mommy you're finally home. Mommy watch me twirl!" She is wearing her pink and purple Waltz of the sugar plum fairy costume. She's moving so fast, from here to there, dancing around the hospital room. It is dizzying to watch, but I can't possibly move away. She's radiating glitter. It's falling all around her. I know this isn't real. It can't be real. It's a hallucination brought on by the medications, of the exhaustion setting in. My memories and reality are colliding.
I remember this day. It was a crisp, cold day in December. Recital Night. I was running late, and it fell on Mark to get her ready. I walked into the brownstone to see Mark chasing after her as she twirled around the living room. He's holding a hairbrush and her ballet bag in his hands, looking frazzled if were honest.
"We need to get you ready little sugar plum or Willow will waltz without you and your waltz will have to wait until next year." Mark reminds her gently. Meredith texted me asking where I was. They are already at the ballet studio's auditorium. He was always so gentle with her, even when she was testing his limits.
"You want to play, don't you?" I ask her. She stops spinning, crosses her arms on her chest and says 'yeah' with a little pout. I scoop Heavenly up and swing her around in the air. She laughs and wiggles. I throw her up in the air, making her fly and catch her again before collapsing on the couch with her, tickling her. "The problem is it's time to get dressed. Your friends and your teacher will miss you if you're not there to dance with them tonight." Willow and Heavenly's chemistry was so great that they were chosen from the three-year-old class to dance a duet together in addition to their dance with the class.
She looks thoughtful for a moment. I can almost see the gears turning in her little head before she says, "Okay Mommy." And lets me put her hair into the perfect little ballerina bun. I remember the warmth of that day. It's crazy to say I felt warm when it was below freezing outside but after what a terrible day, I had at the hospital coming home to my perfect little family eased the heartache and made me feel warm. I was late because I lost a mom and her unborn twins in the operating room this evening. I spent extra time comforting the family, and then I had to stop in the on-call room and cry, so I didn't bring that weight, that dark energy home. There is no good way to balance home life and work life, but these moments with Heavenly are my everything. She is my everything.
END Hallucination / Dream.
"Addison are you alright?" Meredith asks. Maybe I had blacked out, or maybe I was just blankly staring off into the distance, watching the baby's fetal monitor. Her voice breaks through though. It catches my attention and when it does everything comes into clearer focus. Mark is pacing the room. He looks like he cannot decide if he wants to scream at me, or cry. He runs his fingers through his hair. His face is panicked. He sinks down onto the ground, against the wall, just watching me laying on the bed. Maybe if I said I'm sorry he would feel better. What I did was unspeakably cruel. There are no words.
"Why did you not let someone know it had gotten this bad?" Mark finally asks me, his voice cracking.
"How many times did you ignore me saying I don't want this baby? That I don't want to be a mother? I'm suffocating Mark." He can't turn this around on me. He just can't. I made my wishes known. I let him know where I stood from the very beginning. I ask these questions in a way that is simple, but it doesn't diminish the complexity of my feelings.
"If Heavenly was alive, would you have wanted this baby? Would you have wanted Oakley?" He asks, and I feel my heart pinch when he says her name. He was her father, but the name 'Heavenly' sounds so foreign coming from his mouth after all this time.
"No." I say quietly, "I wouldn't, but that's not even fair Mark, you cannot bring her into this."
"Me speaking of our daughter isn't fair but somehow you think this is?" He asks, gesturing to the restraints. He's always wanted a big family, but we weren't ready yet and then loosing Heavenly changed everything for me.
"I'm not the same person I was before." I try and explain. It isn't a good explanation. People heal from terrible circumstances. People recover and move on with their lives. Why can't I move on? "I am thirty weeks pregnant. The baby is past viability and would have a ninety eight percent chance of survival. Dr. Thompson could take the baby and I could leave, get out of both of your hair."
"Why? So, you can kill yourself without guilt?" Mark asks, spitefully.
"Mark!" Meredith scolds.
"What?" He asks, offense in his voice. "I'm not off base, you left for a few minutes, and she slit her wrist. What do you think is going to happen the moment the baby is out, and she has nothing tying her down?"
"Maybe she'd have a better chance of recovery if it wasn't for all the extra hormones making her crazy. I…" Meredith starts but I cut them both off.
"I'm right here!" I yell as loudly as I can. "Stop talking about me as if I'm not right here." I formulate a quick plan in my head. I could deliver the baby and then leave as soon as I am discharged from the hospital. I don't know where I'd go, but I have money and I could rent a car. Maybe I could take a cross country trip to LA to visit Naomi and Sam. The finer details would have to be worked out later.
"You're not strong enough to deliver. You need more time."
"If the baby was in distress or I went into labor on my own I'd be strong enough. What's the difference?" I ask annoyed, but I know the difference. With an induction or a C-Section the risks of complications are heightened greatly. When you go into labor naturally it's your body doing most of the work and not drugs. It's risky, especially when your pregnancy is already high risk.
"She should have been taken when I was already on the operating table then." I say, and Mark looks as if he is going to be sick.
"The survival rate for a twenty-five-week preemie is only between fifty and eighty percent. The chance of permanent disability is fifteen to twenty five percent." Meredith says, gently. "She wasn't in distress. Delivery would have been fatal. You were already bleeding out Addison. Joy refused to make that additional cut. While you were in the medically induced coma you were both stabilizing and doing well. The decision was made to give you both more time." She explains carefully.
"The risks are manageable, especially now that I am thirty weeks, and the baby has a better chance of survival outside of the womb." I know it's nonsense though. They're worried about the bleeding risk for me. They know that she'll be fine. I try to remove myself from the situation. What would I do if It were my patient laying here cuffed to the bed?
"I have the medical power of attorney. You will not put your life or our child's life at greater risk Addison." Mark injects.
"I'll take you to court." I argue.
"No judge would sign off on that." He says, grimacing at me.
"Oh, the press would have a field day." I tell him. "You unlawfully blocked safe access to a wanted abortion. You kept me so drugged up that I couldn't function and needed a caregiver until I was so close to the legal cut off, I wouldn't have been able to even if I was in the right mind to do so. A judge doesn't need to sign off on it. All I have to do is call my lawyer, let him know how you are abusing your power and file a Revocation of Power of Power of Attorney."
"That's not abuse. I never hurt you."
"Maybe not intentionally, but I didn't say you abused me. I said you abused your power over me."
"You can't call anyone with your arms cuffed, can you?" He asks snarkily. "This latest little episode is really going to help your case to get the power of attorney dropped. I'm sure." He says, sarcastically.
"You're unlawfully detaining me. You cannot use restraints on a woman in her third trimester. It's inhumane, and it poses risk to my life, and the baby's life."
"What's inhumane is your obsession to kill yourself and our unborn child."
We are silent for a long while. Meredith had busied herself checking my vitals, checking on the baby's papers anything she can think of to 'disappear' while still being in the room.
"I want a divorce." I say, breaking the tension.
"You don't mean that Addison." Marks says, stepping back from me as if I had punched him.
"No Mark. I do mean it. I want a divorce and I want never to see you again. It's too late now, but this is not a post dystopian forced birth future we're living in. This is not the fucking Handmaid's Tale. I deserved to have a choice. I deserved to be able to decide what I can and can't handle. It's my body, it should have been my choice.
Authors Note:
Thank you for everyone continuing to read. Please review! I really like how Addison is standing up for herself. Of course the story is still going to go where it goes, but I like this.