Title: Variables
Chapter: Reverse (3/4)
Rating: T
Pairing: Addison/Alex
Summary: One visit. That is what Addison has told herself. Life, however, hardly runs on a plan, so when change shifts into the fourth gear a choice to look back may not seem so bad after all. AU 4x13 "Piece of My Heart"
Note: Enjoy.
"Dr. Montgomery!"
Outside of the bar, as she headed for the taxi diligently waiting to take her to the hotel, she heard Dr. Stevens calling her name.
"Yes, Dr. Stevens?" she looked to the anxious-sounding resident who jogged towards her from her own car.
Izzie stopped short when she reached Addison.
"Have you by any chance seen Alex--Dr. Karev?" she bit her lip, with a clear look of concern on her face. Aside from that, Addison noticed that a file that looked to be from the hospital, sticking out of Stevens' bag.
"Not since I left the hospital."
"Crap," Izzie muttered.
"Why?" Addison couldn't help but wonder.
Izzie froze for a second, and shrugged. "It's just some personal stuff. You know," she widened her eyes, "about girls. Girlfriends. Ex-girlfriends. Married girl--"
"Rebecca?" Addison interjected.
"Yeah," she chuckled, realizing she was already letting the matter slip.
Curiosity having possessed her at that point, Addison pointed to the file in Izzie's bag, she said," Is that…"
"What?" Izzie pulled the bag closer to her, although by then it was unnecessary because Addison was much too intrigued.
"What are you doing with a patient's file outside of the hospital, Dr. Stevens?" Addison asked in a chastising tone and then she tilted her head to catch the patient's name," with Rebecca Pope's files?"
"I--she's," the young doctor exhaled deeply and gulped.
"It's something that concerns Alex and…"
"Rebecca's pregnancy?"
Izzie furrowed her brows then and parted her mouth ever so slightly.
"Did she tell you she was pregnant?" she asked in a low, conspicuous voice.
"No," she nodded her head," but Alex did."
"Crap," Izzie muttered again.
"Stevens, is she alright? Her pregnancy, the fetus, her?"
Addison watched as Dr. Stevens bit her lip in deep contemplation, clearly trying to make a decision about…something. Then she tucked her hair behind her ears and flexed her hands nervously.
"She's fine. Perfect, in fact," she took a moment to reach into her bag," you can actually take a look at her lab results to prove that."
She handed the file to Addison, who wearily took it.
She eyed Izzie suspiciously while opening the file, and then turned her eyes to the papers therein. Carefully scanning over the labs, she felt herself constrict as she read over the file's contents, and upon reading the confirmation of the results of Rebecca's blood tests, her stomach churned.
Her mouth opened as she tried to make sense of what she was reading and of what Alex had told her--or rather, what his Ava had told him. She nodded her head in disbelief and whispered to herself," She's not pregnant."
Izzie, however, matched her tone of disbelief with a "yeah."
She shook her head and looked back down at the file, reading the lines of her blood test over again, promptly closed the file, and tucked it underneath her arm.
She looked up at Izzie and resolutely said," you need to find her. You need to tell her that you know, and you need to convince her to either tell Alex or to allow you to tell him. Do you have any idea where she may be staying?"
"No--and I've been trying to find Alex, but he won't answer his phone--"
"That's fan-freaking-tastic," she muttered underneath her breath.
Addison placed a hand on her hip and rubbed her temple with her other hand, deliberating a way to reach Rebecca.
"Have you tried beeping him?" she asked, it being the only thing she could think of. "If you're lucky, he may bring Rebecca with him. Or at the very least, he can tell you where she is."
"You don't think he may find that suspicious? Me beeping him, him coming, only to be asked of Rebecca's whereabouts? I mean, we might as well tell him that she's not--"
"It's against hospital policy," Addison stopped her.
"Right," Izzie nodded.
"I guess I'll just have to wait until I see him tomorrow…she'll probably stop by the hospital, too and--" but she stopped herself and looked at Addison with eyes that said that she had just had an idea.
With a mischievous smile, Izzie grinned, giving Addison the sense that she may not like what she was about to hear.
"I can't tell him--I'm her doctor. I work at Seattle Grace Hospital. I know him personally. But you…"
Addison laughed nervously," No-no, you cannot put me in that position. Plus, I'm leaving tomorrow. Very early."
But once an idea entered Dr. Isobel Stevens, it did not leave so easily.
"Well, you did mention beeping him."
--
He laid a hand on Ava's stomach (she would always be Ava, no matter the situation--or how undesirable said situation may be) and closed his eyes for a moment.
He opened his eyes, hand steady on her stomach. He was going to be a father. A father. A kid was going to call dad.
The fear, the nerves, the disbelief pierced him through the culmination of it all--seeped right into him.
But he could not let it get to him. He couldn't run off and destroy this kid's childhood without first attempting to just stand still and be there for them.
Ava did not speak a word while he touched her stomach, but after several minutes he did feel her hand creep over his.
It snapped him out of his thoughts, causing him to glance at her agitatedly. She smiled at him eagerly, but he was unable to muster any sort of smile up for her--he only ached to flinch his hand away from hers.
Impetuously, he caught her eyes, his chest feeling constrained at the prospect of sharing his life with her. That was not in his plans, definitely not at the moment anyway.
Choosing one woman, sharing a home in the suburbs, getting mail addressed to a Mr. and a Mrs. Having kids, driving them to school five times a week, getting home by six or seven or whatever every night for a typical, family dinner.
None of that. All of that was something he did not have plans for. But he did not have a choice anymore. A kid was coming, and after coming to grips wit a portion of that reality, he realized he did not want any child raised in a broken family.
There were the variety of options he had considered--Ava could stay with her husband and let them raise his kid. Or he could raise two kids, one not his own which also meant they would not be raised by their biological father. He had trouble coming to grips with both possibilities, but the former was the one that really made him stop.
But that same option made is very guts churn at the thought of settling down--of settling down with Ava. Something about that thought did not sit right.
Before he had to delve into the possible meanings of that gut feeling, though, his beeper went off and he did not hesitate to grab it.
"It's the hippie's baby," he muttered as he grabbed his coat and headed to the door without once glancing at her.
"Alex," she began in an exasperated tone.
"Look, we'll talk later, okay?" he said, once at the door.
She solely nodded unenthusiastically, but by the time she responded, Alex had already rushed out of the room.
--
He parked haphazardly and ran from the car to the hospital's entrance when he heard his name being called out.
"Alex!" her voice rang out from a corner of the entrance.
He turned in the direction of the voice and squinted out to make the shadow in the darkness.
"Addison?" he yelled in return after her voice registered with him.
They walked towards one another to meet half-way.
"The baby--Izzie paged me."
She cut him short with the wave of the hand and said," the baby's fine."
He furrowed his brows and his voice went up a notch," What the hell, then?"
"Karev," she warned him of his tempter.
He rolled his eyes in irritation but remained silent.
"I needed to talk to you, but you seemed to have disappeared. Fortunately I ran into Stevens who did me the favor of calling you in..."
"By beeping me? What, this couldn't wait another day?"
"I won't be here."
He smirked sourly, and in a callous character remarked, "Course not."
She ignored his snide remark however and decided to get down to the point.
"This is regarding Rebecca Pope--Ava. And her…condition," she breathed in acutely as he eyed her questionably.
"What about it?"
He brought his arms over his chest and directed an inquisitive gaze at her.
"I'm going to try to say this as lightly as possible, Alex, and I'm not going to say this as a doctor nor as a co-worker. Not exactly as a friend either, but maybe more as an acquaintance--"
Impatient, he stopped her rambling with a stern voice--"Addison."
"She had some blood tests taken and I inadvertently saw her charts and therefore her results. And…" she paused, reassuring herself she was doing the right thing.
"Yeah?" Alex prodded her on.
She eyed him for a second and then reached into her purse to pull out a file. She held it in hand for a second or two then extended her arm to hand him the file.
He took it cautiously, afraid of the information within the file, but he read it nonetheless.
Quickly enough, he reacted to the news, with a murmur of "fuck."
He slammed the file shut and rubbed his face with the palm of his hand.
"Fuck!" he said louder this time, with an even more exasperated tone.
"She--" he began but stopped himself.
"Dammit!" he shook his head and fell back a step.
Addison stood back, letting him react freely, allowing the news to settle in.
After two minutes, he eyed her.
"This is a breach of doctor-patient confidentiality--who told you?"
"No one told me, Alex, I simply saw--"
He scoffed and glanced at the file's label, where he could read the doctor's name. he half-smiled, half-grimaced when he saw the name. Of course it was Dr. Stevens--Izzie would never let one of her friends go down like that, their protests be damned. And at least this way, Izzie and the hospital were not completely set up for a lawsuit (although he doubted Ava would actually take action).
"Fuck, after everything she had me go through today! And it turns out she's not even pregnant!" he exclaimed harshly.
"Alex…" she tried cloaking her voice with her best comforting tone, although even she could hear that hint of aggravation that escaped her.
"Do you know how a scare like that feels, Addison? I was scared out of my effin mind!"
She saw him shudder for a second and his eyes were cold, angry, but above all hurt and disappointed.
"I thought I was going to have to raise a kid. That'd I'd have to completely change my life around, and spend it with not just this kid, but Ava too," he spoke in a low voice, nodding his head in disbelief.
"What is it that really scared you then, Alex? Knowing you were going to have a child? Or knowing you were going to share your life with someone? Is being alone really all that it's cracked up to be?"
"That's not the point," he spit out.
"Then what it? That for a brief moment, you got your act together? That you actually thought and planned on being there for someone other than yourself? That you were prepared to be unselfish?"
His nose twitched and he bit the inside of his lip as his eyes sought the concrete floor on which his feet shifted uneasily. Slowly he raised his head up to meet Addison's eyes that were steadily boring into him, attempting to convey what this whole scare did to him--for him.
"You have every right to be mad at her, but don't pretend that what happened did not affect you in one way or another."
This he already knew, but accepting it and making it a part of his history that he would use further down the road was an idea he was not too fond of. Somehow, that lie managed to infiltrate him in less than a day, and accepting it and changing his ways was something that would take more than just a day.
So he could only nod solemnly and let out a puff of air.
"This is gonna take some time," he admitted to her.
She smiled softly at him, understanding that the matter was too complicated to be resolved within ten minutes. She reached out her hand and placed her hand delicately on his forearm.
She couldn't conjure up a right way to acknowledge that yes it would take some time, but he had to take it, so she only kept up her smile and moved her rubbed her thumb under his bicep two times before letting the physical contact fall to the wayside.
"I have an early plane to catch," she began when the silence began to overwhelm their senses," so I better get going."
"You need a ride?" he offered.
"No, I've already got a taxi waiting for me," and she tilted her head to the right to point out the cab by the curb, "plus you have some things to take care of. But thanks--for the offer. That was an offer, right?"
He let out a breath of laughter and nodded. "Yeah."
"It's appreciated then. And um, good luck with everything Alex."
"Uh, yeah. Thanks…for all of this, Addison."
She shrugged. "It's the least I could do--you know, for you not being interested, making it clear that I'm not your girlfriend, and going after Rebecca Pope. If it weren't for you, I may still be in this God-forsaken hospital," she laughed.
He winced however, and said "right…sorry about that."
"I'm joking, Karev. I'd hardly give you that much credit," she winked.
He grinned at her, not entirely convinced she was joking, and a part of him did like to think he did mean something to her.
"Either way, sorry. Things I say sometimes just come out the wrong way."
She could only comprehend this excuse and apology partly, but at the moment she was taking what she could.
"That's…kind of nice to hear, but it's getting really late now."
He muttered something or another about understanding, at which she nodded and she began her walk to the cab while waving at him awkwardly.
As she approached it, though, he called out to her one last time.
"Yes?" she cocked an eyebrow at him.
"What time is your flight?" he asked.
"Eight-thirty AM. Why?"
Smirking, he responded, "Just curious."
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