Yes, this is now MADDISON centric. I'm not saying I don't own GA again. Nope, nope, nope, can't make me.
Undone
She had never quite gotten the hang of not getting involved. The thought of being surgical, of being detached from the person she was cutting open, the person who had put their entire life in her hands, was pleasant. Whimsical, even, but far too idealistic, even for her. Even after Richard's first lesson in patient relations, and every lesson that had followed, the truth was, she loved her patients.
That was the problem with being a doctor, especially one with a neonatal specialty. She had always been a sucker for babies. No such thing as an ugly baby, she'd told her mother when she was younger. Cute or ugly didn't matter in medicine. Cute or ugly didn't decide who lived and who died. That had been the hard part. It was hard to think that these helpless, adorable children wouldn't even get a chance to make something out of themselves.
But sometimes, in times like these, she thought that maybe it wasn't such a travesty after all.
She had lost a patient on the table. Not just the child, but the mother as well. A high-risk pregnancy. That's what they called it in the neonatal field. Actually, they called it something longer and more technical, with Latin roots, but that's how they said it when they were explaining things to patients. To patients' families.
Those patients were her least favorite. They were the ones that she was most likely to lose, and she didn't like to lose patients. She didn't like calling a time of death. She didn't like walking out into the waiting room in scrubs and explaining to a father who had, a few moments before, had the world at his feet and explaining that his baby was dead.
This baby had no father. The mother was young, barely seventeen, said that the dad didn't deserve a child. She understood that, better than this girl probably knew. This girl…this girl was Addison without the medical degree. And, once again, she had gotten too involved.
She died at 15:17.
And, at 15:27, Addison finds herself leaning against the wall in the hallway, thinking of the two blue lines that she had woken up to that morning and wondering how she'll tell this poor girl's mother that her daughter isn't breathing, simply because she tried to give an innocent life a chance.
Mark Sloan walks down the hallway and she quickly moves. She goes to tell a mother that he daughter isn't coming home, trying to pretend that she wasn't just on the verge of tears herself. Addison has a history of getting involved.
And, sometimes, she hates her job.
