In My Blood
Chapter 12
Addison Montgomery's Point of View
February 2011
"Addison you're having mild contractions. I'm going to have you walk around and change positions. If that doesn't help, I'll check you. You could have just been laying still too long." Joy says, putting down the ultrasound wand, and wiping the gel off my skin. "Are you in any pain?" She asks, and I shake my head 'no'.
"It's been two, weeks Joy, really. Can we stop with the feeding tube and all of the extra precautions now? I've been cleared by psych twice. What else do you want from me?" They did away with the restraints when I was cleared the first time, but it was only a small victory. I am still on one-to-one supervision. I'm not even allowed to pee alone. I move as soon as the gel is cleared away. My back is aching from lying flat in one position for the length of the ultrasound. I'm still not used to the weight of the baby pressing down on my spine.
"You were only cleared because you lied to them." She reminds me.
"I didn't." I object. Okay the truth is she's right and I did lie, but she doesn't know that. She's just speculating.
"The feeding tube is healthy. Your face is filling out. You have pigment in your skin again. You look so much healthier." She says, showing me the pictures, she had printed out and then randomly giving me a ton of information, I have no interest in. I zone out until she stops talking.
"When she's born, she goes straight to Mark." "I remind her. "I don't want to see her or hear her. I don't want to nurse her. I'm just the surrogate here. She's his baby, not mine."
"Addison are you absolutely sure that's what you want?" She asks. I had gone over my plans with her. Needless to say she wasn't so impressed, but she didn't tell anyone.
"I'm positive." I say, walking back and forth within the length of the feeding tube hose and the other monitoring wires. I feel like a dog on a chain. "The second she's born take her." My heart is breaking, and I don't really understand why. I don't love this baby. I have no attachment to this baby. Keeping her would do her more harm than good.
"Does he know you're leaving?" She asks, "Does Meredith?" She is watching me carefully, looking to me, to the read out and then back again. The contractions are coming closer together now, but still not too bad. I know she's seeing them on the read out.
"No. I haven't seen or spoken to him since I asked for a divorce." I hold onto the bed for support as Oakley move, kick, karate chop, double flips through my insides. This movement takes my breath away and causes a rush of fluids to hit the floor. I open my mouth in shock. Momentarily unable to speak.
"You might want to make that confession sooner than later?" Joy says with a sympathetic smile.
"No. I'm not in labor." I protest stupidly when I can breathe again. I try to convince myself it was just the baby moving that brought on a false contraction and caused me to wet myself. That's extremely common in third trimester pregnancy. Many of my patients have had this happen and then have come in fearing their water had broken. Why is it more comforting to hope that I've peed myself that to admit that I am truly in labor? I'm finally getting the thing I've wanted for the last thirty-two weeks, but it feels dirty.
"It was a real contraction." She says carefully.
"It wasn't."
"So, you want me to believe that the monitor is faulty and you're not standing in a puddle of amniotic fluid right now?" She asks, her tone slightly amused. I must look a hot mess.
"It can't be today." I beg her. "The cerclage must have failed. Please you have to stop this."
"The cerclage bought you eight weeks. It's done better than any of us could have hoped for. All you've been talking about is wanting her out. Why are you suddenly so resistant? It would be more dangerous to try and keep her in at this point than it would be to deliver her." She looks at me so sympathetically. I don't recognize myself. Who is this needy dependent person I've become?
"I'm resistant because Mark's not here." I am beginning to panic now. I'm not so worried about delivering her alone, but "Whose going to hold her? She is his baby he should be here. He wants her so bad. Loves her so much. He should hold her first." I know at thirty-two weeks the baby would go straight to the neonatal intensive care unit to be checked out anyway, but in my mind, he should hold her first.
"I'll find him." She promises "We have some time. I do need to check you though and remove the stitches if the cerclage is still in place." She helps me up onto the bed and then pages Meredith and Mark. The gloves go on and it feels like she's sticking her entire arm up there. I scream out and start crying. Then realizing I press my hands tightly to my mouth to muffle the sound when she continues to check everything out and more fluids gush.
"I'm scared." I admit. "I'm going to die and he's not even here to hold his baby."
"I'm so sorry." She says. "You're right the cerclage failed. The stitches worked their way free under the weight of the baby against them. You're about three and a half centimeters dilated, and fifty percent effaced. The test was positive for amniotic fluid, and it looks like you may have contracted another infection as well." She looks up at me when I say I am going to die.
"I want you to get that out of your head right now." She says. "You're just nervous, everything will be Okay. We always new the cerclage may fail, it was placed later than recommended and you had other risk factors, but you're thirty two weeks. That's an amazing accomplishment."
"She's coming today." I say, swallowing hard, trying to mentally prepare myself.
"Yes." She gives me a clean hospital gown and helps me to the bathroom to get cleaned up. My nurse Abigail comes in and Joy tells me she is going to go find Mark. I just nod, completely unenthused at what's to come. Abigail changes the bed sheets and lays down a disposable pad to catch the fluids. Someone else cleans the floor. Joy left the door to the bathroom open so Abigail can supervise while doing other things. Abigail comes into the bathroom when I have finished and helps me into the hospital gown. She gives me the steroid shot, starts the antibiotic drip and takes several vials of blood to determine what type of infection I have this time.
"I'm sorry." I almost whisper. She looks at me confused. "I'm sorry you got stuck with me tonight." The contractions are coming more frequently, and she hooks me back up to the portable fetal monitor.
"Don't be." She says. "I've been on your team for five years. We've seen a lot worse than this together, haven't we?" She asks, an attempt to cheer me up and I smile. "Besides you get a pass this time. You've been through hell this year. There are no words." I nod, but don't say anything, wishing I had been stronger. Wishing that this year hadn't been as terrible as it has. She makes sure everything else is okay and then after assuring me she'll be back to check on me in a little while leaves the room. For a moment I panic. I haven't been alone in weeks. Were the restrictions lifted now that I'm in labor and assumed too miserable to do anything counterproductive? What was I going to do... but before I could even finish my panicked rambling Meredith walks into the room?
"I heard it's baby time!" She says.
"Where's Mark?" I ask. "I need Mark."
"He was in surgery earlier." Her voice is calm, soothing. "Everything okay. Joy is looking for him, she just found me first." She says softly, trying to calm the crazy bubbling up inside of me.
"Whose going to hold her?" I ask. My voice sounds strange. She brings me an inflatable yoga ball and I kneel on the floor, leaning against the ball. Stretching through the contractions. "I cant. Meredith I can't."
"If Mark can't be here, I'll stay with Oakley. I'll keep her safe until he can." She promises. She's the most logical thing in my world right now.
"I don't want to see her."
"You don't have to."
"I don't want to hear her cry."
"That might be harder."
"Not even for a second Meredith. I just want them to take her. This can't be made any harder than it has to be." I am trying not to cry. I sit up for a few minutes, and then lean back on the ball, pushing down on the ball hard through the contraction.
"Oh Addison." She walks over to where I am at and kneels down next to me. She leans on the ball from the other side, mirroring my positioning and touches her head to mine. "I'm so sorry this happened to you. I know you're afraid. I wish I could have protected you from all of this." She strokes my hair, pushing it out of my face.
"I know." I respond numbly. "I'm so scared." She moves beside me and hugs me closely too her. The tears come and I am unable to stop them. Another contraction pushes through and I'm crying harder. My breathing faster. She tries to calm me, but it won't stop. The machines start going off. She helps me back up onto the bed and places a nasal cannula delivering oxygen.
"Shhh. It's okay. Everything is going to be okay."
"I'm going to die. It's not going to be okay this time Meredith this is it." I don't mean to say this any kind of way, but her face looses about three shades.
Dr. Thompson comes into the room as the machines keep going off. She checks my vitals, the baby's stats and everything all over again. Meredith helps her to position me on the bed and lets me squeeze her hand tightly as Joy examines me, and her face goes sheet white.
"What's wrong?" Meredith asks, paying the attention to Joy that I was not.
"Addison." Joy says, looking up at me. "You're bleeding and I'm holding the baby's hand. The umbilical cord has prolapsed. We're going to have to prep you for an emergency c-section."
"No. You can't. You do not have my authorization to do this surgery. Where's Mark?" I demand.
"I'm sorry Addison, he's not coming and fortunately it's not your authorization I need. He gave me consent to treat. This baby needs to come out, and soon. We don't have time to debate this without risking her life, and possibly your life as well." She said, deciding last minute it was better to tell the truth.
"Did you tell him I'm in labor?"
"I did." Joy keeps her hands where they are, and instructs Meredith to call Abigail to prep me, and to book the OR.
"I need him. I can't do this without him." My heart is racing as I think of the surgery ahead. I go through every step in my mind one by one. I don't want to be in the operating room alone.
"Fuck Mark and his man baby temper tantrums." Meredith says. The transfer team comes, and joy helps position me in a way to provide as little pressure on the cord as possible during the transfer to the OR. Meredith holds my hand tightly, running along with the gurney. "You don't need Mark. You're going to be okay Addison. You're not alone. I'm here." When we get to the OR she leaves me temporarily to scrub in, and then she is beside me once more.
The team transfers me to the operating table and the anesthesiologist give me the spinal. Someone helps me to lay down on the table, and the drape is put up. Minutes from the time Joy had spotted the bleeding she is making the first cut to remove the baby. With the first cut the baby's monitor starts going off, showing distress. There was a flurry of activity. People giving me medication, checking the monitors. Meredith looks down on me, explaining everything as it happens. She looks worried.
"Someone find Mark. Please… I'm dying I need to see Mark." I cry, begging someone, anyone in the room to find him. I can't move, but I'm so cold. I'm shivering and I'm getting woozy. My blood pressure is rapidly dropping. I'm injected with another round of different medications.
"You're doing fine Addison." Meredith says, she's fixed face. She has a gentle, soothing expression now. "It's going to be Okay." I'm still crying. They increase my oxygen. Meredith squeezes my hand tightly and whispers a bunch of words that don't make sense. Her words are spinning, dancing in jumbled letters all around me. Other people are talking. Their words are spinning too. Unintelligible. The words were coming rapidly but nothing makes sense.
'Baby's Out.'
'She's not breathing.'
'Mother's heartrate is dropping.'
'Baby needs oxygen. Get her warmed up and start compressions. Intubate if needed.'
'I can't get this bleeding to stop. Suction.'
'Hang two units of o-'
'Dr. Thompson baby's still in distress.'
'The bleeding is out of control, switch to full sedation. NOW.'
People are talking to me in these spinning nonsense words, but I have lost the ability to hear them. The last thing I see is the sedation mask going over my face and Meredith's hand gently caressing my cheek before everything goes black.
In The Recovery Room
Addison Montgomery's Point of View
"Can I go now?" I ask as soon as I am awake and can speak again.
"Do you want to know what happened?" Meredith asks.
"Not really." On Mark's orders they are not allowing me to refuse any medications. The cocktail they have me on is making me tired. I'm awake, but I'm so tired. "Where's Mark?"
"He's with the baby in the NICU." She says, keeping her tone even. It's almost like she is walking on eggshells, not sure just what she can say without upsetting me.
"That's great. He finally has what he wants, please can I go now?" Meredith just looks at me, conflicted.
"Do you want to see her?" She asks me carefully. "You sacrificed a lot for…"
"No. I don't want to see her. I want to go home." I respond. I want to pack up my shit and leave I think silently. I notice the emptiness in my body for the first time. I place my hands on my flattened stomach. It finally feels like I can breathe again.
"You just had an emergency surgery with complications. You will need to stay in the hospital for an additional three to five days, but then you're free to go." Joy's voice is emotionless when she pulls back the curtain surrounding my bed. "I just came from the NICU. Oakley is fine. She only needs a feeding tube and supplemental oxygen. Mark has her."
"I told you I don't want…"
"I know you don't want to hear about the baby, but you need to hear about the operation and your recovery." Joy looks over to Meredith who comes closer again and takes my hand. "There were complications during the surgery. With the first cut the baby started crashing. You started hemorrhaging. We tried everything we could to stop the bleeding, but you went into hypovolemic shock and that caused multisystem organ failure. You coded and we almost lost you. I had to do an emergent cesarean hysterectomy to stop the bleeding. Once it was removed you stabilized rapidly. I expect you'll make a full recovery, but you need to take it easy for the next six weeks."
"Who authorized that." Is all I can manage as this new information sinks in.
"Mark authorized it." Meredith whispers. "The baby was not breathing; you were bleeding out and coding on the table. He absolutely lost it."
"How? He wasn't even in…"
"He was watching from the scrub room. He came in when we had to sedate you. He didn't want you to know he was there. He thought that it would upset you more."
"So he heard me crying for him? What's worse than that is ya'll knew he was there and didn't say anything? He had no right to make that call." I'm crying and they look at me sympathetically. Perhaps thinking I'm crying because my uterus is gone, but it's not that. I was knocking on deaths door. I was probably minutes, if not seconds away from death. They could have let me go. I could have been with Heavenly instead of here, in the hospital, missing a vital organ.
"I'm so sorry Addison. He begged me to do whatever it took to save your life." Joy said and she is crying now too. We're both crying and now I'm confused. Why is she crying? She isn't the one who feels used, abused, and violated.
"He is so fucking selfish!" I shout through the tears. "Just get out!" I exclaim to Joy and thankfully she does leave the room without argument. I let my body fall back onto my bed, picking up the morphine button.
"It's locked. You can't go past your safe dose." Meredith informs me. I hit the button over and over again until it dings and lets me know the max dose has been reached.
"I told you I was going to die." I tell her. The medication is kicking in, and I can feel myself falling backwards into that beautiful drug induced nothingness.
"Well like you said, death doesn't stick." She says, dimming the lights and then sitting next to me as my eyes close and everything fades into blackness.
When I wake up, I am in a normal recovery room and Mark is standing by the window, like some sort of creeper, just staring at me. His eyes are red and puffy. When he sees I am awake he walks closer to my hospital bed.
"What are you doing here? Just leave."
"I can't leave you're still on 1 to 1. I'm just giving Meredith a break. She went home to have a shower, dinner with Derek and Willow. She'll be back."
"So, call a nurse or cuff me to the bed. I don't want to look at you after what you've done."
"Our daughter is beautiful."
"I don't want to hear about her Mark."
"She's three pounds eight ounces. She's fifteen and three quarters inches long. She has strawberry blonde hair just like yours was when you were younger, and her eyes are blue. They're already so fierce."
"Mark please stop." I put my hands over my ears and curl up as tight as I can with my incision, trying hard, so hard not to imagine the baby he is describing. I have to keep my distance.
"She needs oxygen, and a feeding tube because her suckle reflux is underdeveloped but she is otherwise healthy Addison. Despite everything you've been through you gave birth to a healthy baby girl. She's a fighter. Sloan's are fighters."
"I said stop!" I hate crying, but now I am crying again for what seems like the millionth time today.
"Baby…" He says carefully, moving closer, reaching for me.
"Don't touch me." I caution.
"Addison, just listen to me."
"I will hurt you." I warn him. I look around for something to throw at him, of course there is nothing.
"I never meant to hurt you." He says. I can hear he's being honest, but I don't care.
"I want a divorce." I say repeating what I had said before the baby's birth. "You took away my right to choose what I wanted to do with my body, with the baby. THEN because I didn't agree with you, you took away my reproductive freedom to ever have another child out of spite, just because I never wanted this baby you're so desperately clinging to. Feeling sorry after the fact doesn't change what happened Mark."
"You were circling the drain. Addison, you have to believe me. You were in hypovolemic shock. You were in multi system organ failure. You coded. You would have died on the table if I hadn't made that call. I was trying to save your life. When will you realize that I can't lose you too?"
"You've already lost me." I tell him. "If I died, I could have been with Heavenly. Heavenly needs me. I just want to be with…" I object, but he grabs me and shakes me hard. He squeezes me too tightly. His face is so close to mine I can smell the salty tears on his cheeks.
"You have a living child that needs you. Oakley needs you Addison." He lets me go, and I already know I'm going to have bruises. I don't blame him though. I deserve them, just this once. My head is spinning, and I feel like I am going to be sick. I cannot raise a child I have no attachment to. She doesn't need someone who doesn't love her. What kind of monster doesn't love their own child? I am doing her a service by leaving her somewhere safe. She is with her father. She's safe. He loves her. He can give her the stability that I cannot. Everyone may hate me for this, but it doesn't matter what he or anyone else says to me. I have already spent thirty-two weeks saying so much worse to myself. "What are you so afraid of?" He asks, giving me a look of disgust and leaving the room, slamming the door behind him.
Authors note:
Thank you for reading chapter 12! I was a little anxious with her being still pregnant 12 chapters later so here we are, surprise, we now have a healthy baby. This chapter has taken the story in a new direction, but I am loving it. PLEASE REVIEW, suggestions / ideas / questions / comment / concerns/ etc.