Oh, finally, update! As, annoyingly enough, always, I have unfortunately forgotten everything I wanted to put in this A/N. Oh, except that for a while I pondered guest-starring either Addison's brother or parents, but decided against it because A) I don't think I can really write them and B) it's crowded enough with Sam guest-starring next chapter. As always, I apologise for any mistakes and welcome constructive criticism. Also, Sukie is a nickname for Susannah that one of my friends uses for her Sukie, and I thought it was cute so I worked that in.

Trigger warning for miscarriage, death, and stillbirth.

Unchained Melody

Chapter 9: Death And All His Friends

Lexie's surgery was a real life manifestation of Murphy's Law; every time she managed to close one bleeder, another three sprouted. By the time Addison finally pulled Baby Grey out of her mother's uterus, she was blue and not even the smallest of wheezy breaths would escape her pale lips.

Dr. Blythe closed up with assistance from Dr. Karev. Lexie's body seemed to finally cooperate now that the baby had been evacuated from the mother's body; BPM went up, breathing stabilised, and a little colour seemed to return to Lexie's face.

Unfortunately, the same did not go for Baby Grey.

While Blythe worked on Lexie, Addison worked on the baby – a little girl, as predicted. She did everything she could; she attempted tactile stimulation, she administered adrenaline and epinephrine, and then she performed chest compressions for what was certainly far longer than necessary.

She was still performing chest compressions when Lexie was wheeled out and the OR began to empty, and that was when somebody stopped her, and grabbed hold of her wrists to stop her from continuing.

It seemed Mark had made his reappearance. Except now, he was dressed in scrubs, and he looked worse than he did before because there were bags under his eyes and he looked haggard – haunting, under the glow of the surgical lights.

"Red," he said. "Red, stop. It's… she's gone."

He let go of her and she let her arms fall limp to her sides. "Time of death," she glanced at the clock, "5:47," she said, and then she spared the small baby on the surgical table a last glance as she stalked past Mark and towards the door.

Mark had his own, private goodbye with the baby, carefully stroking the palm of one of her tiny starfish hands, before he followed Addison. The baby obviously wasn't his – if the pigmentation of her skin wasn't a clue, the dark curls of her hair and her Bennet nose and what were probably Bennet eyes would have been substantial evidence of the baby's parentage.

Addison was scrubbing out when she was joined by Mark, and she was blinking back tears. It could have been hormones, or it could have been the persistent stabbing in her abdomen, which had increased – out of stress or anxiety, she expected – in severity since earlier in the morning.

But most likely, it was the baby, and Lexie.

Although she hadn't been aware of it at the time, Addison had likely played at least some part in the destruction of Lexie's marriage. She felt guilty about it, but there wasn't much she could do to fix what had happened.

However, the least of it could have been ensuring that Lexie's baby survived. The least of it could have been being a good enough a surgeon. Operating quickly enough. Finding a way to resuscitate the tiny infant who shouldn't have already being dead upon her introduction to the world outside her mother.

And she didn't. She wasn't.

She failed.

When he first joined her in scrubbing out, Mark didn't speak. That didn't last long – it rarely did, with Mark.

"So, when were you planning on telling me about my child that you're carrying?" Mark said conversationally, in a way that felt purely bitter and the almost downright malicious look in his eye was so foreign to the way he looked at her – at that Baby – in the OR just seconds ago that she found him hard to recognise. He looked betrayed, more than anything else.

She wasn't sure why she said it. Maybe she was just so set in her determination to forget there was a baby – beyond not drinking, and the like – until the next day's check-up with the OB, or maybe it was because it felt so horrible and disrespectful to talk about the baby she'd started referring to as Ella in her head when Mark's other child – biological or not – was a cold corpse on that table just a few feet away.

Whatever the reason, she gave him her best, coldest glare as she had many times in the past few weeks and said, "There is no baby Mark. You would have been a horrible father."

She regretted it the instant she said it.

In her head, she knew Mark had a lot of the potential to be an amazing father. The kind who barbecued and played catch with the kids. She knew it was stupid and unreasonable to tell him this, because what exactly would she tell him when se was six months pregnant and the bump couldn't be hidden anymore? She couldn't exactly hide the baby in the closet every time Mark happened to pass by their house.

But she did say it, and she saw Mark's face darken as he drew understanding of her words and interpreted them as to meaning that she had an abortion, and then he slammed out of the room so she was just left staring as the door swung shut.

She stayed like that for what felt like a long time, the water from the taps still running.

And then she was suddenly hit by a gut-wrenching pain in her abdomen which drew her to her knees with an alarmed whimper of pain, and perhaps this was karma, she thought as her consciousness faded and she saw the first drop of blood on her scrubs, because it certainly seemed the like the only possible explanation for such an ironic scenario.

Murphy's Law indeed.

Lexie's eyes were heavy. Why were Lexie's eyes heavy? They were hard to open, very hard to open.

She could only flutter them for a little while, in an attempt to keep them long enough to see anything except the hospital room she had grown all too accustomed to over the past few weeks.

Eventually, however, Lexie did manage to sluggishly open her eyes, and keep them that way.

"You're awake," Meredith stated. She was sat by Lexie's bedside with a pile of charts. "That's, uh, that's good. Here, have a drink."

She carefully held a plastic cup of water for Lexie long enough for the younger woman to take a few sips from the straw that was stood in it.

Lexie sat back in her bed, allowing her heavy eyelids to flutter closed again just for a second. Near-subconsciously, her hand drifted to rest on her stomach.

Her… flat – no, more like flatter – stomach.

It felt… weird. Deflated.

And it was probably the drugs, but it took a second for Lexie to react, to grab her stomach in alarm and then wince in pain – she must have had a c-section – and ask, "Mer? My baby? My baby? Is my baby okay? Is she okay?"

She knew the second she saw Meredith that her baby was not okay. It was all over Meredith's face. She'd put on that solemn face a doctor always wore when they went out to greet the parents and said, "I'm very sorry, but I have some bad news…" It was that kind of face.

"Lexie…" Meredith said gently, looking very much unsure if what she was doing but trying to comfort Lexie by taking hold of her hand anyway. "Lexie, I'm so, so sorry but the baby… she didn't make it."

"Oh," Lexie said in this very, very tiny voice.

She felt very, very tiny right now.

What did she do? What was she meant to do?

"Oh."

"They tried, they really did, Lexie, Dr. Montgomery attempted to revive her for far longer than anybody else would have, and even if she had survived she probably would have had learning difficulties, maybe cerebral palsy, severe brain damage…" Meredith continued to talk. She was trying to be comforting and sisterly, so Lexie didn't stop her, but she did allow her words to fade into background noise.

She remembered that part of last night, the panic of suddenly being on a stretcher and having an oxygen mask pressed against her face, all this warm liquid against her thighs… she asked for Dr. Montgomery, she remembered, instead of Dr. Blythe. She asked for the best.

It seemed even the best wasn't enough.

"Can I see my baby?" Lexie asked, interrupting Meredith.

Meredith bit her lip. "I mean… you probably shouldn't," Meredith said. "You just had major surgery and you were dead for a few minutes, actually, and you're supposed to be on bedrest but…"

"Meredith, my baby is dead."

"Well, wait a minute," Meredith decided. "I'll need to get George, to help. And a wheelchair. There's no way you'll manage to walk."

Lexie's baby was a pretty baby. She had this thick, dark hair and very soft, tanned skin. She had ten fingers, ten toes, twenty tiny digits in total, and a nose that was distinctly reminiscent of Sam.

She was perfect. She would have been a gorgeous kid. She would have been so, so loved.

"Do you have a name for her?" Meredith asked quietly. She was stood off to the side a little, to give Lexie space. Meredith was nice like that, even if she did sometimes end up being quite a bit awkward.

"Susannah," Lexie replied. "Susannah Elise Grey." Mark had already said he didn't want anything to do with the baby, multiple times, and she didn't suppose that had changed.

"I thought you wanted Pearl, for a middle name," Meredith said. "You were so set on it."

The reason she didn't, couldn't pick the name Pearl was because she was undeserving of granting her child that name. Pearl was supposed to be all about how this baby had been a precious treasure, safely ensconced within the swollen oyster of Lexie's stomach. It had sounded poetic and beautiful, inside her head.

Except Lexie hadn't been able to keep her baby safe. Susannah – Sukie – was no Pearl because if she was, Lexie would have been able to protect her somehow, to save her.

Of course, she didn't say this.

"I just… didn't like it," Lexie told Meredith. "And besides? Pearl Grey? It sounds like a brand of tea. She'd have gotten made fun of at school. I like Elise better." Privately, Elise was like her own alternative to Ella, but she didn't think she was going to ever share that with anyone – it felt more like Dr. Montgomery's name than it ever had her own.

Meredith left, and so did George, out of respect. They must have wanted to give Lexie space, although she was fairly sure at least one of them was stood right behind that door.

However, now that she was alone and it was just Lexie and Sukie, Lexie and her daughter, Lexie allowed ugly tears – the kind that made you turn red and resulted in snot bubbling in your nose - to spill from her eyes, and in a cracking tearful voice, she sang her baby a lullaby.

It was early morning. The sky was too bright outside, with no sun but not enough clouds. It wasn't raining at the moment, but according to weather forecasts it would in the afternoon.

Amelia, Callie, and Derek sat around a bed in the coma ward and ate their breakfast. The atmosphere was a lot more solemn than usual. It felt wrong with Mark's missing presence, and it seemed cruel to act joyful and happy when Mark's step(?)daughter had just died.

Earlier, when he met up with them at the hospital, Derek asked Callie where Addison was. The last they'd heard of her, she was operating on Lexie, but there was a possibility she'd been called in for another case or surgery since then, was the answer.

"New patient," Derek finally remarked to Amy, nodding to the little girl who had been moved into the bed at the other side of the room, nearest to the door and the nurses's station shortly outside it. She was dressed in Hello Kitty pajamas, instead of the typical hospital gown, and there was a teddy bear tucked next to her in bed, little pink bows dotting the frizzy and gravity-defying, yet at the same time by-now limp and somewhat greasy, hair on her head.

"Jessie McKee," Amelia told Derek. "She's eight. She was playing outside her house and some jerk with a bike plowed straight through her. Skull fractured in three different places, mass brain haemorrhage. It's a miracle she survived at all, but she isn't going to wake up – like, ever – and yet her dad keeps insisting that's it's possible, that it's gonna happen."

"That's sad," Derek said, swinging backwards on his chair. "Nothing happy ever happens anymore."

His words must have been true, because the page they received from Bailey in the following seconds sent him toppling off his chair and onto the floor.

She had a cholecystectomy in OR 4 and Stevens was assisting, which was the reason why the two of them entered the scrub room.

They stepped into something wet, and Bailey heard the tap running, and she wondered which one of those fools with scalpels left the taps running. It was hardly a surprise they couldn't afford new nurses if the water bills – and the costs for any water damage – were piling up.

And then she heard Stevens' sharp intake of breath, and she followed her gaze, and what she saw drew a gasp from her too.

At some point, the water overflowing with the sink merged with the blood pooling around Addison Montgomery and turned pink. She was pale and she looked clammy – possible hypovolemia, Bailey thought, already going into doctor mode – and if she hadn't known corpses as well as she did Bailey would have thought she was dead.

Stevens looked like she might throw up. She hadn't been working as long as Bailey, some five or six months at the most, probably wasn't used to ever seeing anything remotely resemblant of this.

"Go get help and a gurney," Bailey instructed her, and then she waded through the water over to Addison's side, her scrubs becoming wet and stained as she knelt there and began to take her stats. Montgomery was tachycardic, tachypneic.

It wasn't looking good.

Addison Montgomery was somebody Bailey would definitely consider a friend, and she had admittedly few of those. While they weren't as close as Montgomery was with Torres and the Shepherds, Bailey would hate to see the woman die, if only because it would give Sloan get more reasons to sulk and pout.

The gurney arrived. Girl-Shepherd too, a little while after that. She was panting for air, like she just ran there – which she probably did.

Bailey was giving out orders to the nurses when she arrived. "Shepherd and Torres not with you?" she asked. They were all usually to be found together, unless actually actively working, and even then had a habit of using each other for consults.

"Derek was swinging on his chair and fell. Cracked his head open. He and Callie had to leave to take care of it. They'll be here soon. How is she?"

"Bad," Bailey replied, not even trying to sugarcoat things. She took off along with the gurney, Stevens, and nurses towards an actual hospital room. Shepherd lagged on behind.

"Bailey!" Shepherd called after her. "Bailey, she's pregnant!"

Bailey's eyes widened, and she looked at Montgomery's flat midsection with sympathy. She was pregnant herself, in the second trimester now.

"Get me an ultrasound," she instructed Stevens, who nodded and followed the order. "Do you know how far along she is?"

"Twelve weeks, give or take a few days in either direction."

The ultrasound revealed what could have been a battle scene. Ruptured Fallopian tube, mass internal bleeding, no wonder she was hypovolemic…

She looked to Stevens for the actual diagnosis, because no matter the patient this was still a teaching hospital.

"Uh, treatment," Stevens stammered. "We'll need to do a laparotomy to gain access and then depending on the damage we'll have to do either a salpingostomy or a salpingectomy."

"And the diagnosis?"

"Ectopic pregnancy."

For the purpose of this story, let's just say that Cristina did have an abortion, and not an ectopic pregnancy, given she isn't that major a character here. I'm sorry! About the baby! I was so, so tempted to just have Ella live and I kept trying to convince myself it was a better plot twist than Ella not living and yet somehow this happened anyway. And also sorry if there are any medical/technical inaccuracies – there was only so much I could find out online, and I wasn't sure if it's only the surgeons who use the scrub room, or whether they use it last, or… well, yeah, let's just say that for the purpose of this story, things are that way.

Winter machine – I promised myself I would play this cool, but you're basically my favourite fanfiction writer ever, so I'm fangirling very hard right now because your praise means a lot to me. I think this story is probably very easy to miss if you're a Maddison fan, because Addison isn't mentioned until the end of the summary, whereas Lexie is mentioned in the very beginning – when you see it, if you're like me, you think 'ew, Lexie' and don't bother reading the rest of the summary. I'm glad you liked what you'd read so far and hope you liked everything else, too. Thanks for reviewing!

Scrittoreitaliano – thanks! That means a lot to me! I'm glad you were happy about the Maddison baby, and very, very sorry for getting rid of it.

Hushedgreylily - I'm glad you thought the portrayal of Mark was apt, because I was rather unsure of it, and also how Mark would react to this – on the show, we only ever really see him pining over Lexie, and the only indication I had as to how he react was the crash episode, where he was very much in love with her and not out of love with her, as he is here. I'm glad you're looking forward to more!

Irony-FLD – yeah, the last few chapters have been kinda busy. It's probably going to calm down soon. Lexie had her baby, and Mark found out about Addison's pregnancy… thank you for enjoying.

Patsy – a cliff indeed. Now that I'm seeing how some people reacted to the possibility of a Maddison baby, I'm starting to think it would have been a better cliff if Addison and the baby were actually fine, especially given the exact moment everything in Addison's pregnancy went to hell is incredibly convenient in irony and dramatic effect but… I kind of love the angst. I'm glad you're looking forward to more! :)

Guest – eso es genial! Gracias por revisar.

Alyssa - I'm so sorry, but it seems implantation cramps actually translates to 'in denial explanation for the sudden lower abdominal pain that Wikipedia has described to me' and the pregnancy went really, really wrong. Still, I hope this doesn't hurt your relationship with this story, because I do still plan on giving Mark and Addison some form of a happy ending (interpret that as you will, I try not to give out too many spoilers). Thanks for reviewing!

Addison-fan – given Lexie was at seven months or so, Sukie could have made it. She was going to, actually, but then I thought about whether I'd have Mark and Addison raise her (in this case, Lexie would have died) or whether the Greys Sr. would take her… and it lead me here. The baby died of perinatal asphyxiation (I'm fairly sure that's the term for it?), in case that isn't clear. The father of the baby is definitely evident, although I think Mark could have stepped up to love her and be her dad if he needed to, and they still shared some semblance of a connection. Elise is the closest I could get to Ella without it feeling wrong, in the end, and that's just a middle name. I'm sorry about what happened to the kiddo. Thanks for reviewing!

Kae – I read your review as I put the finishing touches to this chapter, and it broke my heart because you're so excited about the Maddison baby, but you don't know I killed off the Maddison baby. Lexie's baby was indeed mixed-race, although while delivering her Addison had to focus a little more on the fact that she was blue and dying than how it meant Mark may not be so bad after all, especially with what happened to Ella not long after… however, I do like to think that in this AU at least, Mark and Addison may finally be able to have their happily ever after. The falling off the bed didn't do any real harm I don't think, although now I'm also of the opinion that that could have been a brilliant plot twist… in this case, the most it could have done is been the trigger for the Fallopian tube to finally rupture that day. I'm very happy to hear that you liked last chapter and your review is a very uplifting one that made me smile a lot. :) I am so, so, so, so sorry about the Maddison baby. She would have been an amazing kid. And I really want Ella to have lived now. But there will hopefully be a tribute to Ella a lot further along in this story, if I can continue writing that long, and I quite like the idea of having an If/Then sort of chapter later on where she wasn't an ectopic pregnancy, so there will still be some opportunities to meet the original Maddison baby.

Oh Jesus, this A/N was ridiculously long and I feel kind of bad about that now. I think I might start reviewing to people who are logged in when they review through PMs now, if it continues to turn out this way. Thanks for all your support!