A Shepherd By Any Other Name…
This little scene was inspired by a prompt from winter machine...Addison deciding what Emme's last name should be. Send me prompts for anything that might not have been covered in Don't Want to Need You or the sequel, Life Ain't Always Beautiful.
"You're really giving her his last name?" Mark asks as he paces the floor, little Emmeline Beatrice...whatever swaddled in his arms.
Addison is being discharged today, but before she can leave Emmeline's birth certificate has to be filled out. It really shouldn't be a problem, but Mark won't stop harassing her about the baby's surname.
"Well, he is her father. He might come back," Addison offers meekly from her hospital bed where she's dressed and ready to go.
"He's not coming back!" Mark spits a little louder than he intended, causing the baby to startle. "Shh shh shh, you're okay," he soothes, bouncing her a little; she lets out a few dissatisfied mews, the one arm she managed to free from her swaddle flailing spastically, before yawning and drifting back to sleep. "Are you really that stupid, Addison? How many times have you called or emailed him? He's had eight months to come back. He didn't, and he won't."
She flips him the bird. "But he might," she asserts a bit more firmly this time. "He's her father, and I'll have to tell her about him eventually, so why hide it?"
"He doesn't deserve to be her father," Mark hisses. "The divorce? I get that. Really, I do. But refusing to acknowledge your own child? That's low."
"Oh, and you cheating on me after I threw away my marriage for you? That was low. I don't even know why you think you get a say in this."
He doesn't have a good comeback - or any comeback, really - for that, but he tries anyways. "And yet, here I am waiting to take you and Derek's kid home, so I guess it wasn't that low, was it?"
Oh, it was low - but so, apparently, are her standards. Her spirit. Her self-esteem. Mark may be a man-whore to the fullest extent possible, but he does tend to help with the self-esteem thing. And also the lonely thing, and the "how the hell am I going to raise a child by myself?" thing.
She just rolls her eyes and ignores the comment. "She's a Shepherd. End of discussion."
He leans against the wall and stares down at Emmeline. Her dark hair and round little face certainly do scream Shepherd, but the way she fits so perfectly along the length of his forearm, the warmth of her tiny, slumbering body against his chest, say something else. Not Sloan, because he hasn't earned that right, not yet anyways - he and Addison have only been together for a month following their falling out after she caught him with that nurse, after all - but Shepherd is all wrong. If she was a Shepherd, there would be a grandmother and four dark-haired aunts crowded into this hospital room fighting over who gets to hold Emmeline next. If she was a Shepherd they'd be leaving the hospital laden with balloons and flowers, pastel gift bags overflowing with tiny clothes and teddy bears.
But they're not. Oh, there are pink roses from Savvy and Weiss, along with the cutest little Burberry dress that Addison had squealed over and Savvy had said she'd bought the very day Addison announced she was having a girl. There's even a bouquet from Bizzy and the Captain - sent, no doubt, by Susan probably unbeknownst to Addison's parents - and a few things from co-workers, but it's not the same.
"She could be a Montgomery," Mark points out. "Nothing wrong with that."
"Everything is wrong with that. After the way my parents reacted when I told them I was pregnant I am not giving her their name. I don't want her to have anything to do with them!" she insists.
But the Shepherds? Oh, what she would give to have her daughter enveloped in the love that comes with all the chaos of that crazy family. A doting grandmother, aunts and uncles, over a dozen cousins - and the man she'd thought, once upon a time, would be the perfect father to their future children.
"You're hoping he comes back. You want him to come back," Mark says softly.
Her eyes are downcast, staring at the papers in her lap, but even from his position he knows they're glassy with unshed tears. "We were supposed to be a family. Two kids - one boy, one girl - a house with a picket fence and a dog in the yard. It's not easy to give that up after eleven years."
"Seems like it was pretty easy for him to give that up," he says before he can stop himself. He means it, but that doesn't mean he doesn't regret it. He does, because now the tears are falling, her hunched shoulders shaking with the sobs she tries to hold back. "Oh, come on, Red. Don't do that. I'm sorry." In three strides he's at her side and sits on the bed. "I didn't mean that. Shh," he croons into her neck as he wraps his free arm around her. "I'm sure he's miserable without you."
She sniffles and hiccups into his shoulder for a minute, then straightens up and takes her daughter from him. "He'll come back. Not for me," she says hastily because she's a lot of things, but she's no fool, "but for her. He'll want to be her father. How could he not?"
Mark knows the argument is over. Emmeline will be a Shepherd, and that's that. "He'd be an idiot not to."