Chapter 11
MEREDITH GREY HOME
ONE WEEK LATER
Mark Sloane shook his head. "I'd say that next Thanksgiving is going to be awkward for your family, but I still remember how awkward the one time I attended was."
Lexi looked at her boyfriend. "How far back are we talking?"
"Ten years ago, I think," Derek said. "You were getting over last dumpster fire of a relationship, so Addison offered to have you come home for a homecooked meal. I don't think you realized you were doing us the favor."
Addison nodded. "It was one of the last ones Derek and I went too. Believe me, by that point the two of us had been to enough of them to know what shitshows they would be. Believe me, Derek and I were so desperate to avoid it both of us offered to get shifts at the ER Thanksgiving night."
"Was it bad as it sounded?" Jack asked.
"Ten people doing everything in their power to talk about how moist and delicious the turkey was," Mark said shaking his head. "Every time either of your parents opened their mouth, it was to ask me a question, not either of you."
"No, I'm relatively certain Bizzy asked me at least four times when I was going to save enough to give them grandchildren," Addison said sadly.
"And everyone pretending not to notice how many times Archer made a pass at whatever girl he'd picked up at a bar the night before," Derek shook his head. "Honestly back then, he could rival Mark for the number of one-night stands he had in the course of a year."
"God help me, I think at one point I said, 'you know how many things I pulled out of someone's rectum in my residency,' and I don't think your parents even batted an eye," Mark said.
"I think my father was too focused on trying to hit on Archer's 'girlfriend' every five minutes," Addison told them.
"And the weirdest part of all of this?" Izzie said. "Even with what you just told us about your mother, your parent issues still probably don't crack the top ten of the people in this room, much less the other survivors."
"Why do you think I decided to tell you guys first?" Addison asked.
Addison had arrived back in LA two days earlier. She was still on a leave of absence from the hospital, which suited her fine – she was doing a lot better, but she wasn't sure yet she was ready to go back to work. She was going to start seeing the head therapist at Seattle Grace but before she did that she knew she needed to share one of her biggest secrets with some of her closest friends and people who in their lives had to deal with far worse ones. That being said, she was still working on it so she had limited her first group to her fellow residents and attendings – with one minor exception.
"As far as you know the Captain hasn't fathered any children out of wedlock, has he?" Claire asked.
"Given everything I knew about him before this, it would not stun me if he had a string of bastards up and down the New England Coast," Derek said bluntly.
"Knowing my mother, she probably would have a scholarship fund set up for them," Addison said sadly. "Can't have any of those half-blood blue bloods having a possible future for them."
"All right, I admit it, this is pretty bad," Jack said. "Not as bad as our friends parents', of course, but this is the plot for a 90s soap."
"Not even worse than yours?" Addison wasn't sure how much she was kidding.
"I'm relatively sure that your parents love you," Jack pointed out. "They've raised you in an environment that goes beyond toxic but at least they never went out of their way to not support you or Archer in your endeavors. My father did love me, but I didn't realize that for sure until well after his death because he went out of his way to hide it. And even then, his secrets were manifold: I never learned he'd been having an affair, much less fathered a child until well after we got back to civilization."
"Need I remind you the only time I met my father was when he flew down to Sydney after the accident we were in?" Claire countered. "The only conversation we had that lasted more than five minutes, he told me he wanted to take my mother off life support. There's a reason I never knew his name until we came back to civilization."
"Okay, I admit that's worse by quite a bit," Addison acknowledged. "And I can see that it did a number on you at least until you came to work here."
"I think at the very least, my parents were relatively mild by comparison," Juliet said. "All they ever did was get divorced when I was ten. But given my relationship history until I got together with James, there's no proof that if your parents had gotten divorced…"
"I'd have been any less fucked up?" Addison asked.
"You knew who my first husband was and what a bastard he was," Juliet reminded them. "Even after our marriage ended, I couldn't get out from under his thumb. He had no problem carrying on his infidelities in front of me. Then I come to the island, and I literally become the Other woman. I sleep with a married man and stay with him even after his wife tells me she knows about the affair."
"On that, I do have you beat," Addison said. "I tried to stay with Mark for six months after Derek saw the two of us together, then I got pregnant and rather than try and build a family with Mark, I have an abortion, we have a fight, I run away to Seattle and try to reconcile with Derek who's fallen in love. He does the noble thing and tries to stick it out with me, even though he's clearly in love with Meredith…"
"…and I don't exactly help matter when I finally cross the country to try and get back together with you," Mark reminded her.
"I did try to stick it out another two months," Derek reminded her.
"You were more upset by Mer's dating mishaps than Sloane showing up," Alex reminded him.
Derek didn't bother to deny this.
"Finally, I think on the same night the two of us torpedo the marriage with the other person in our illicit relationships," Addison pointed out. "Let's face it; we made a lot of people unhappy trying to stay together, not just us."
Izzie had become quiet over the last few moments. Karev knew very well where her mind was going – how it could not? They'd been aware of all of this trauma, but in the middle of all this they'd been in a love triangle of their own, that had ended in heartbreak, ethical violations and finally a man going into cardiac arrest minutes after he had proposed to her.
Karev decided to both gently and not-so-gently change the subject. "When you started working here," he said to Juliet, "the cover story you gave to knowing Jack was that you'd had a thing for about five minutes a long time ago."
Juliet looked Alex in the eye. "I think the person you want to talk to about this first is Jack," she said.
Jack, to his credit, didn't deflect. "I did give it a fair amount of thought the first year I was here," he admitted. "And I'm not going to lie; I may have even pushed a little more even after you and James became an item."
"Had we world enough and time," Addison whispered to herself.
"Hell, in some alternate universe, I think the two of us could have been happy together," Jack said slowly. "Gotten married, had a kid or two, the whole happily ever after bit. But that is not how the world works and it's not how ours did." He turned to Claire. "That was the gossip when we came back to the beach, right? That Juliet had managed to turn me in the space of a couple of weeks?"
"Hurley said they must've used the Force on you," Claire told them. "The more serious minded thought you'd gotten caught in a honey-trap."
Most of the doctors looked blank. "That some kind of Aussie slang?" Lexi asked.
"Actually, it's Cold War talk. Russians used a beautiful woman to get American agents to fall in love with them, then once they revealed their true identities, they forced them to become double agents themselves," Claire said. "That was Sayid's theory anyway."
Jack looked at Juliet. "Knowing Ben's mindset, it would not have stunned me if he used you for just that reason."
"He'd really have to have faith in your talents beyond surgical," Meredith said simply. "A lot of people at this hospital have used sex for a lot of reasons – I'm no less guilty of it then any one – but I'm not sure anyone could use it that convincingly under that much of a time constraint."
"To try and figure out how Ben's corkscrew mind worked is something I don't think any of us can comprehend even now," Juliet returned the glance to Meredith. "From what I understand, he's been more honest with the three of you in the last few months than he was with me in three years."
"I wish I knew what he was thinking then," Jack told them. "When I saw his X-rays – when I knew for sure why he had abducted me – he made it pretty clear that Juliet was nothing more than a pawn, chosen almost entirely because of his resemblance to my ex-wife. For someone who was usually more subtle in his machinations, if he was being honest about why he chose her, it was way too crude for him."
"You're assuming he was being honest about anything," Juliet wasn't entirely kidding. "I saw your file; there was a resemblance."
"When I was in the first year of my residency, I spent a lot of time with another doctor named Charlotte King. We spent a lot of long stints on ER rotations together, did a lot of work on traumas together, we even had our share of drunken debauchery here and there." Jack looked at her. "I'm a little surprised her name didn't come up in those extensive files that Ben compiled for you. She was attractive and had much closer features to you than Sarah did. And all things considered, I probably spent more time in her presence the year we were in rotation together than the two full years between Sarah ending up in my ER and our getting divorced."
This was more detail than Jack had given on his residency than any of the people in this room – even Juliet and Claire – knew about.
"The point is, if Ben really was using your because of your physical resemblance to people I cared about once, then I don't think he was worthy of being the evil mastermind we thought he was," Jack said simply.
"That is…incredibly on point," Juliet said. "And actually gives me another reason to want to punch him in the face."
"He'll be back next week if you want me to set it up," Meredith said, only half in jest.
"All that being said," Jack said, changing his tone, "we cannot rule out the possibility that Ben was able to use you to manipulate me not because of some passing physical resemblance but from the very clear emotional connection that you had not only to me, but everyone else in the camp." He looked at Claire. "I may not have the military background Sayid does, but I read my share of Le Carre when I was growing up, and I know that when it comes to turning people, it is more important to have an emotional bond than a physical one."
Stevens turned to Juliet. "The videotape you showed Jack; the one where you were trying to make him do the surgery on Ben by telling him you'd help him kill him during the operation," she hesitated, "based on what happened during the procedure, it's pretty clear that you were lying about the need for regime change."
Juliet didn't deny it. "There was some grumbling among the rank and file, but at the time Ben still had Richard's support and everyone presumed he still had Jacob's. I might not have believed in Jacob, but everyone else did."
Addison still didn't know who Jacob was but decided to hold her tongue to focus on the part of the story she could comprehend. "And when Jack did make the incision in Ben's kidney not only did you do nothing to help him, but you also gave orders to have James and Kate brought back. Indeed, you were shocked – shocked! – when Jack ratted you out."
"Is there a question there?" Juliet asked with a small smile.
"It's pretty obvious at this point, but fine, I'll spell it out," Karev told her. "You seemed willing to turn on a dime if it served your own interests: not ten minutes after that Ben basically convinced you to help his friends escape on a promise to go home. You knew far better than anyone he never kept his word, but you went along with it anyway. Then it looked like you were going to be sentenced to death, but at the last minute Ben intervened because of Jack's support. You pretended to be handcuffed to Kate to win her trust; you blew that up when you needed to save both your lives. You convinced Jack that you were on his side when he brought you back to the camp, but you were lying to him about that too and then you betrayed your people and gotten of them killed. How much of that innocent smile betrayed the fact that you seemed willing to do whatever it took to get what you wanted?"
"In other words, how much was I really an Other?" Juliet aske softly.
"I think more highly of Ben then you might, but I'm well aware of his flaws," Meredith said. "And based on what you yourself said…"
Juliet turned her glance away from Meredith and the rest. Jack and Claire knew her well enough to know this wasn't because she was about to lie, but because she was genuinely ashamed. "Jack was right that I wanted to get off that island as badly as he did. He wasn't willing to admit to himself what I might be willing to do to get off it, and that meant doing whatever it took. He was right in saying I had the same desire as everyone in the camp, but in order to achieve it, well, Ben was right in saying I was still one of them."
"Which may be why Ben chose you and how he manipulated you," Jack said. "That's who he was. He knew your vulnerability and he used it to exploit you. The fact that he was basically only had to use the same carrot for both of us – that was an added bonus."
"As for me, I might have considered it briefly, but I was no more blind to reality than Jack was," Juliet said. "Ben had ordered Kate taken so he could manipulate Jack, and he had James taken so he could control Kate. The fact that Jack was willing to sacrifice his safety for Kate's freedom pretty much confirmed that Jack was totally in love with her, even if he was not willing to admit it at the time."
"Even though she'd ripped my heart out of my chest the night before?" Jack asked.
This time Meredith answered. "Everyone in this room can confirm that just because your heart gets stomped on the person you love, doesn't mean you stop loving them."
Everyone nodded excessively at this. "And that includes if you see them in the afterglow," Derek added.
Jack shook his head. "Did everybody in the camp know this before I did?" he asked Claire.
"If it's any consolation, I'm pretty sure Kate didn't know one way or another until you stopped chasing her," Claire pointed out.
"She pretty much threw herself at James as soon as it even looked like you were more interested in me," Juliet said with a small smile.
"Yep, it's not as much fun being just a leg of the triangle instead of the center of one," Addison said with a cynical smile.
"Amen to that," Karev said.
"I can't see James complaining that much," Jack said with an eyeroll.
"What man would?" Karev asked rhetorically. "Need I remind you he'd been chasing her and had been running in circles? It can get exhausting after a while."
There was just the slightest hint of pain under Alex's sarcastic cynicism. Izzie couldn't help but acknowledge that it must have been excruciating for him all those weeks she'd been falling in love with Denny. It must have galled him to be losing to a woman he must have thought he could have kept in a fair fight. Hell, all those weeks and months he could have blown the whistle to the fact she was falling in love with a patient – something everybody in the hospital was basically ignoring because Denny was dying. Hell, if he'd done it, it would have basically advanced his career because it was the ethical and moral thing to do. And he'd gone along with everything, even after she cut the wire to the L-vat. Alex would probably never have admitted it, even to himself, but that may have been the purest sign that he truly loved Izzie: even when being himself was the right thing to do, he wouldn't do it because he didn't want to hurt the woman he loved.
And then, even after Denny was in the ground, he'd still been the good guy. He'd kept his distance; he'd let Izzie heal. And then she'd made what was an even bigger mistake and had a one-night stand with her best friend and deluded herself into thinking she was in love with George. Her romantic mishaps just kept causing collateral damage wherever she went; had she even thought of Alex once during her obsession with George until, of course, he found out about it second hand? It might not have been quite as bad as seeing the woman you love in the arms of your romantic rival on a closed-circuit feed (in a polar bear cage, no less) but it must have been just as heartbreaking to learn.
Jack looked at Stevens, and while he didn't quite read her thoughts, he did get the gist. "I have little doubt that when I laid down the law for you in particular, you must have thought that I was something of a hypocrite." Before Izzy could offer a denial, he added: "You wouldn't have been entirely wrong; hypocrisy and self-righteousness have always been part of the Jack Shephard package, and they still hadn't entirely left by then. And they have often gotten in the way of being a good teacher. So now it's time for the million dollar question: let's say Denny survived his surgery, that he recovers, the two of you get married. Did you really believe that, outside the hospital, the two of you had a future?"
Izzie was about to open her mouth when she realized she didn't have an answer. She'd put so much time and effort in to saving his life because she was in love that she had never thought what that life might have been like.
"Let me give you an instructive example," Jack said. "Less than six months after I married Sarah, a man named Angelo Busconi comes to the hospital. He has a fatal tumor on his spine that will eventually kill him. He wants me to perform the exact same surgery I did on Sarah. And because he came to me and not my father, I said yes. Angelo has a daughter named Gabriela. I spent the next few months with the two of them to prepare them for the surgery. And not coincidentally, a lot less time with my wife. About two weeks before the surgery, she told me she took a pregnancy test and it came back negative. My automatic reaction is that's good. It's not the right time."
Juliet and Claire knew this story. None of the rest – not even Stevens and Karev – knew it. They knew Sarah had left him because she was having an affair, and that he'd never found out who the other man was. This part was new.
"The day of the surgery I remove the tumor, but Angelo ends up crashing and dies on the table. That night while leaving the hospital I ran into a weeping Gabriela. I comforted her, and we kissed."
Karev blinked. "So in a weird way, you're worse than Iz or me."
"I was, but that's not entirely the point. That night, I came home with plans to change my life, to be a better husband. That's when Sarah tells me she's leaving me and that's she having an affair. Her last words before she walked out the door that night were: 'You will always need something to fix.' And I can't deny that there was truth to that, certainly for the next few years."
Izzie looked at him. "You're saying that even if Denny had lived, our relationship would have had an expiration date?"
"I can't say that" Jack admitted. "The circumstances were different. But I married Sarah because I didn't want to disappoint her and she married me I had fixed her. I don't think love entered the equation one way or the other. I mean, I loved Sarah at one point but that wasn't the reason I married her. Sarah just figured it out before I did."
"And I admit I may be prejudiced on this, Iz, but there were going to be problems one way or the other," Alex said. "The entire hospital would have been willing to cover for you for a while, but if Denny and you got married, then Jack's right. Best case scenario, you would get fired. Worst case, maybe you do go to prison."
"He's not wrong," Meredith agreed. "And I know you, Iz. You're like me, you're not the kind of person who could only be a wife and mother. At some point, you would start to resent Denny. And he would know it. Your relationship would have kept going not because you still loved each other but because neither of you would want to believe you'd sacrificed so much to not stay in it. That's not a marriage; that's an obligation."
Izzie couldn't exactly argue the point. "So what is the difference between us?"
"Aside from the obvious?" Jack knew he might have gone too far because he rushed on. "What happened between me and Sarah was unethical. It wasn't criminal, to be sure, but there should have been some consequences for my actions. I didn't even get a visit from the medical board before the wedding, and I don't know why."
In fact Jack had a decent idea why. He was pretty sure that while his father may not have been able to say that he disapproved of what he was doing with Sarah, he didn't want his son's career to suffer and had no doubt used some of his credibility to smooth things over with the AMA. The fact that he'd never even told his son he'd done this was yet another example of how the Shephard men had never once been able to tell each other that they cared for each other – or that either was capable of listening if they did.
"The main difference is that you were able to move on," Jack said. "Yes, I know the circumstances were more extreme, but you did heal from it. After Sarah left me, I was so focused on knowing who the other man was that I became a paranoid wreck, assaulted my father at an AA meeting after he'd been sober for two months, pushed him off the wagon for good and ran off to Thailand for a month to try and get over it. And even when I was on vacation and trying to be happy, I still couldn't let go of my demons."
"Is that were you got those tattoos?" Sloane asked.
Jack nodded. "That's one I'd rather not talk about."
"We're actually fine with that," Claire said. "Nothing good happens from working with tattoos."
There was clearly some kind of pain associated with both of them but considering how much they'd shared already it would have been petty to ask for more. Addison decided to return to the business that started this. "Any suggestions how I deal with this?"
This time Derek spoke up. "Speaking not only as your ex-husband but as the only other person who knows your family that well, I think you have to follow the grand Forbes-Montgomery tradition and pretend you don't know anything."
Addison didn't seem surprised, and frankly neither did anyone else. Lexi, however, decided to push a little. "All the crap your parents put you through and you're just going to sweep it under the rug?"
"Sweeping it under the rug is exactly how your family deals with everything," Sloane reminded them. "From what Derek and you told me, the two of you spent years telling the Captain to knock off screwing other women under Bizzy's nose and you were speaking to deaf ears. Telling him that you were wrong all this time and that he's – and I can't believe I'm about to say this – the good guy in this relationship isn't gonna make anything better, considering he already knew he was."
"Her father's still disgusting. He has a reason to be, but he's still disgusting," Lexi said. "And if you told your mother you knew?"
"She'd make some excuse about appearances. Say that this was the life she had to live." Addison said sadly. "If I were to tell her that by living this lie she made her children utterly dysfunctional, she'd just shrug it off and say that Archer and I still had more opportunities than she ever did and to suck it up and be grateful."
"Seriously? Why the hell doesn't she just divorce him?" Juliet sounded a little exasperated. "Are appearances more important to her than anything resembling happiness?"
"All that mattered in our household was that you appeared happy rather than actually being it," Addison said sadly. "That seems to be a lesson they taught me so well it's taken me more than thirty years to un-learn it."
Meredith shook her head. "This is the final confirmation. Living in a home where your parents stay together is no more guarantee that you will get out any more functional than if one parents leaves the other."
"Divorced, married, widowed, single parent, you seem just as guaranteed dysfunction one way or the other," Jack agreed. "The best you can hope for is that at least one of your parents is capable of showing you love in the best way possible."
"There weren't a lot of people like that who survived our flight," Claire reminded them. "And based on what I've learned from the staff here, the only doctors who really seem to have come from a loving and supporting family is George and to an extent, Derek. Even then, there seems to be some tragedy baked in."
"All we can do is hope to learn from our parents' mistakes," Jack said. "Even then, there are no guarantees you will. It took a goddamn plane crash to get most of us on the right path and that's the kind of radical therapy I don't wish on anyone."
"It's not like some of us were doing a hell of a lot better without one," Meredith reminded him.
"You two went to a decent therapist," Claire pointed out. "Hugo was gentle enough to remind us that might have helped quite a few of us if we'd had the balls to see them."
"It depends on the person," Juliet paused. "And the therapist."
"We don't have the same excuses you do," Stevens acknowledged. "Most of us spent the first two years of our residency thinking psych was crap, remember?"
"Perhaps I should have pushed the issue more after they fished you of the river," Derek admitted.
"And when you told me you were seeing Denny, I just assumed that being crazy was part of the package," Alex acknowledged.
"Not your finest hour, Karev," Jack reminded him. "Not telling her to get a CAT scan I might overlook. Not telling her to go to psych immediately, that was unforgivable."
"Well, it worked out for us," Meredith said, changing the subject again. "What did Dr. Turner recommend regarding your parents?"
"She took the therapist mantra of "What do you should think you should do?'" Addison asked.
"She must be more traditional. Mine was willing to push me harder," Meredith said. "Granted I needed more pushing, and it looks like you don't."
"Sometimes I really wish therapists would just give you the answers," Jack told them.
"They're not like us. They charge by the hour," Sloane reminded her. "It's not in their financial interest to give us an instant fix."
"Violet danced around it in our last session, but I have an idea at least," Addison said. "They don't know about what happened to me yet."
"They didn't see the news?" Juliet asked with a raised eyebrow.
"I'm not even sure they know what hospital she's working at right now," Derek said grimly. "Honestly, when was the last time you even talked to either of them? Do they even know about their grandson yet?"
"I haven't talked to either of them since I told them I was pregnant," Addison said. "I could sense their judgment over the phone across the country."
"I know that dance," Jack said sadly. "Did you tell Archer at least?"
"I tried calling him a couple of times before it got pretty bad," Addison said. "Went straight to voicemail both times. Ladies and gentlemen, the Montgomery family. We're like cops. We only show up when you don't need us."
"And sometimes they don't even want you," Everyone looked at Jack. "Remind to tell you about the last time my wife tried to see her mother before she got on the plane. Let's just say her parental situation may be the most fucked up of us all."
"We all got a sense of it during her trial," Derek reminded them.
Claire shook her head. "There's a friendly debate among all of us as to who had the worst father. There's no question which of us had the worst mother. Even hearing about what yours did, Diane Janssen still has the title."
Stevens and Karev knew all the details about Kate's family but had no intention of spilling that secret without her permission. Everyone else was inclined to let this go until Kate gave the OK.
"Somehow I don't think I can let the circumstances prevail until something as drastic as what led to Kate resolving her issues happen," Addison said.
"I think it's safe to tell that Kate's mother was in as much denial as your parents are," Karev said carefully. "And if she was willing to take that position to her grave, I don't know if that bodes any better for your mom in a far less serious situation."
"Does that mean I should just let this go?" Addison was directing her questions more towards Jack and Claire now.
Jack thought for a moment. "Honestly, I think you have to make one last effort. For you and your son's sake if no one else's."
"I'm thinking of putting it in those exact terms," Addison said simply.
Lexi took this the wrong way. "Are you seriously thinking of holding seeing their grandson over their head?"
"Honestly, if I thought it would make a difference, I'd do it," Addison told her. "Giving how badly the two of them raised their children, they really have done nothing to make me think they'll do any better with Stanley, even from a distance."
"You make a move like this, you can't come back from it," Lexi said.
"I said 'if' I thought it would work," Addison told Lexi sadly. "I realize you're thinking in terms of Fletcher but as horrible as his drinking was, it's an easier habit to cure than a lifetime of lying to your children. The Captain might say the right things, but he wouldn't change and Bizzy would just keep denying it. I think I just have to put it to them very simply. I will have one last conversation with them. I'll tell them that I know all their secrets. That their marriage and the way they have raised me has basically destroyed any chance that their children might have a successful relationship with another person. I don't know if it's too late for me yet, but I do know that if my son is to have any chance of a better life than I did, he cannot live in a house built on lies and deception. If I were still on my own, I might be willing to give them one last chance. Now that I'm a mother, I won't dare risk it. I can't."
That was a bold move even for Addison. "Sun and Jin tell you to do this?" Claire asked.
Addison shook her head. "They would have told me to cut them off cold," she said. "Words will not do the job. They have to prove it. I'm going to tell them that the only way either of them gets to see me or my son again is if they get a divorce."
This was a pretty blunt action. "I'm the last person to advocate divorce as a solution to anything," Juliet said, "but in this case, it really seems it would be better for your parents to be apart. They'd certainly be happier."
"It really seems like this has been a marriage in name only, and it's not like children would be scarred for life by this," Jack said.
Derek looked at his wife. "You know, considering why you came to Seattle in the first place, I can't help but be amused by the irony of your position now."
"The difference being the two of us actually loved each other when we got married," Addison pointed out. "I at least had the decency to start my affair after seven years of relative connubial bliss. I'm pretty certain now Bizzy and the Captain spent their honeymoon in separate rooms, if not wings of their hotel."
"Depends on whether or not Bizzy invited Susan to come along," Sloane pointed out.
"You might be joking, but she might well have been there," Addison replied.
"If she was there, then yeah. Your parents desperately need to call it quits," Sloane said. "And if they truly believe a divorce would scandalize their friends, then their circle lives in a bigger bubble than your parents did."
Just then, Meredith's phone rang. "Could you hold on a second?" she said and walked off.
"When do you intend to talk to them?" Jack asked.
"Not for a while yet," Addison told them. "Right now, I need to get my own house in order before I worry about ripping theirs down. That means working out the terms of my probation with Weber, finishing my mandated therapy, and jumping through whatever hoops the board wants me to so I can go back to work."
"I can't say I wouldn't be relieved," Juliet told Addison. "I'm doing the best I can to carry the weight since you've been gone, but right now I need whatever help I can get."
"Fine, as long as you continue giving me more details on your side of whatever you can tell be about your time on the island," Addison said. "You know, the parts that your husband and your friends have a tendency to edit out or maybe even not know."
"You're assuming she knows more than they do even now," Izzie pointed out. "Karev and I have been talking to her about this for more than a year and it's clear there's a lot she's as much in the dark about as we are."
"She was one of 'them' for three years. You think she doesn't have secrets she might keeping to herself?" Addison pointed out.
Juliet's smile dimmed. "The secrets I do have are ones I wish I didn't know," she said sadly.
Just then Meredith walked in with a worried look on her face. "Izzie, can you get a hold of George? Ask him if he's free for lunch tomorrow?"
"Something wrong, Meredith?" Derek asked.
"Another chicken may be coming home," Meredith said sadly. "That was the other Kate Austin. She wants to have lunch with me, George and the two of you tomorrow and we're not supposed to tell anyone else."
Everyone looked at each other.
"I don't think she cares if you know," Meredith said generally. "All she cares about is that a certain person does not find out about it."
No one needed to draw a map then. Austin had been in two different surgeries with Christina Yang the last week. The fact that Austin wanted to talk with the four people who'd been part of the same group of residents that had entered Seattle Grace with Yang nearly three years earlier meant that she wanted to tell them something that she thought only they were capable of dealing with and talking to her about.
"Yang's self-centered, but she's not an idiot," Jack said. "She's going to notice that the four people she's closest to and the head of cardio aren't in the hospital at the same time."
"Bailey called in a favor," Meredith said. "Yang's flying to Tacoma tomorrow to pick up a kidney and liver that's part of a dual surgery. By the time she's get back, you'll be back in the hospital and Christina will be so busy glowing that she won't notice."
"Or care," Izzie said sadly.
"You have any idea whether she's giving advice or asking for it?" Derek wondered.
"Given everything she's seen and heard about Yang by now," Karev said, speaking for all of them, "I'm betting both."
"You have any idea what you can tell her if she asks?" Addison guessed.
"Honestly," Meredith said. "I'm not sure I know any more."
AUTHOR'S NOTES
The 90s soap reference by Jack is an inside joke – Matthew Fox, of course, started his career on Party of Five, which was a very good 90s soap for the record.
Yes, Jack thinking about being married to Juliet and having a kid or two is a flash-sideways reference. I couldn't help myself. And the reference to Charlotte King is another in-joke – for those of you who watched Private Practice, she was a regular on the series and I really liked her character. (She may even show up in this story, I haven't ruled it out.)
How serious was Juliet about trying to convince Jack to kill Ben during the surgery? It's pretty obvious no one wanted 'regime change' when it happened. I've always had question about Juliet's slippery nature throughout Season 3 – she did seem to switch loyalties on a dime; it's little wonder no one trusted her. I think Ben knew how badly she wanted off the island and was using that as a key to manipulate Jack by using him.
Okay, among my many problems with the Denny-Izzy story is why Alex, who would do anything to get ahead anywhere else and throughout the series was very devious, didn't do the obvious thing and rat out Izzie's attachment to Denny. It's the kind of thing that would have scored him point, and it was the rare occasion that it would have been the right thing to do. I actually think part of it was based on loving Izzy and wanting her to be happy? Too much?
I'm not sure whether Jack would have shared how his marriage broke up when he was sharing every other detail about his life. But the fact that his marriage was based on an ethical breach of his own and that he did damage based on a similar one, I honestly think he might now recognize his hypocrisy when it came to lecturing Izzy. Not to mention given how Jack and Sarah's marriage ended, I think it is a possibility Denny and Izzie might have had the same fate had Denny lived.
Yes, I'm doing the Lost thing and knocking 'Stranger in a Strange Land'. Aren't we all?
How much has Juliet told everybody about her time on the island? We do know a lot of it had to have been painful, so I wouldn't blame her for not sharing it.
Yes, the Christina Issue is becoming front and center. I think I'll end up dealing with it by the end of this fanfic. Though how remains to be seen.
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