A/N (05/18/15): Hello friends! As hard as it is to believe, it's been about two and a half years since I last updated one of my stories. My sincere apologies to all of my loyal readers for essentially dropping off the face of the earth, and thank you to everyone who kept reading, reviewing, and messaging me while I was lost in "real life", whatever that is!

I am working my way through this story, tweaking it slightly to take it in a direction that will better bring it to the conclusion I always intended it to reach. I'll be posting the updated versions of the existing chapters in batches until it's all caught up and we get back into new material. Most of the changes are minor in the first 15 or so chapters, but there are a few bigger changes in the later chapters of this new version. So even if you've read the story before, I encourage you to start at the beginning and work your way forward - I'll date all the updated chapters as they go up, so that it is clear what has been updated. Thank you all for your patience!

Addison let out a sigh of relief as she hung her coat in the entryway of her brownstone and immediately made her way up to the bedrooms at the top of the stairs. She stopped briefly outside of her daughter's room, pushing open the door just enough to make sure that the thirteen year old was sound asleep.

"You missed her by about twenty minutes."

Addison quietly shut the door again and turned to find her husband standing down the hall in the doorway of the master bedroom.

"I'm so sorry. The board meeting ran late. I don't know if it's the pressure or the season or what, but Derek was really off today."

"She's an understanding kid." Ryan stepped back to let his wife into the bedroom before closing the door behind them. "She's very excited about the fact that we're both actually off tomorrow for Thanksgiving, though, so you'd better not get sucked into the hospital vortex for that. Did you talk to Derek about coming over?"

"He said he'd try." Addison shook her head as she pulled her nightgown from the dresser drawer. "I wouldn't hold my breath, though. He's a little upset with me at the moment."

"Why?"

"You know that intern he fell in love with back in Seattle? The one he's been pining over all these years?"

"What about her?"

"I figured out who she is today, and he is not happy that I know. He thinks I'm going to try to do something with that information."

"Won't you? Ever since you started talking to him again after the divorce, you've been telling him to go after her, to at least try to reconnect if she meant that much to him. You've been threatening to find out her name and call her for years. What's changed?"

"Derek's intern is Meredith Grey."

"Meredith Grey," Ryan repeated in shock. "As in, the neurosurgeon? You're sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure."

"Well, that's quite the coincidence," he said. "But how does that change anything?"

"Because you and I may remember different things about our trip to Seattle, but what I remember tells me that while Derek may think he's in love with her, Meredith Grey was most definitely not sitting around waiting for him to back to her…"

"Ryan Marshall?" Meredith smiled as she set the chart down at the end of the hospital bed and extended her hand toward Ryan, who was lying in the bed. "I'm Dr. Grey, I'm the head of the clinical trial."

"Dr. Grey, thank you so much for seeing us," Ryan said, glancing down at his unmoving right hand. "I'd shake your hand, but this arm doesn't seem to want to play these days."

"Well, that's why we're here," Meredith said. "And you must be Mrs. Marshall?"

"Addison Montgomery." Addison extended her hand for Meredith to shake. "I'm his wife."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Montgomery."

"That's Dr. Montgomery," Ryan corrected, earning a swift swat on his shoulder by Addison.

"It doesn't really matter," she said quickly. "I'm so far out of my specialty at this point, I might as well not even be a doctor. My neonatal skills aren't even close to useful here."

"I know the feeling," Meredith said, offering Addison a reassuring smile. "I don't know how much you've been told about the procedure we'd like to perform as part of the clinical trial, but I'd be happy to walk you through as much or as little of it as you think you'll need to make a decision."

"I've seen so many doctors in the last two months, I can't remember who told me what," Ryan admitted. "I didn't even know there were that many neurosurgeons in Manhattan. I'm a cop, Dr. Grey, none of this medical mumbo-jumbo makes any sense to me at all. Maybe you could give it to me in baby terms?"

"I think I can do that." Meredith nodded. "Basically, what we're going to be doing is taking a virus and injecting it into your tumor."

"A live virus?" Addison asked skeptically.

"Yes, a live virus. We'll inject the virus into two sites on the tumor, and my colleague and I time our movements so that the virus reaches both sites at exactly the same time. We've been working closely together since the beginning of this project, and we've got the coordination down to an impressive level, if I do say so myself. If everything goes according to plan, the virus will then latch onto the tumor and begin to destroy it."

"This is still highly experimental, though, isn't it?" Addison asked nervously. "You hope the virus will attack the tumor, but there's a risk that it won't?"

Meredith nodded. "This is still a clinical trial, Dr. Montgomery. There's always a risk."

"Has it worked at all yet?" Ryan asked.

"We've had thirteen patients go through this surgery thus far," Meredith said. "I'll be honest, we've only had one survive, but her tumor is shrinking and she's on her way to a full recovery. It's a lot to consider, so if you'd like me to give you some time to talk through your options…"

"No," Ryan interrupted. "I want to have the surgery."

"Ryan, one out of thirteen," Addison protested. "Are you sure?"

"If I don't do this, I'll die, Addison."

"You could die doing this. What about the time we could have had?"

Ryan shook his head. "I don't want that time, Addie."

"What?" Addison's hurt and surprise was evident in her tone.

"I love you, Addison, but I don't want a few extra weeks hooked up to machines in a stupid hospital room while I slowly lose the ability to move or even function like a normal human being."

"What do you want? To die on an operating room table?"

"Damn it, Addie, I want what we planned on," Ryan insisted, placing his good hand over Addison's on her slightly rounded stomach. "I want to be able to hold your hand while you're in labor and I want to see the look in your eyes when we hear our daughter's first cry. I want to be there when she takes her first steps and I want to hold you when you cry on her first day of school. I want to threaten her boyfriends when she starts dating. I want to walk her down the aisle when she gets married and I want to dance with you at her wedding. I want to grow old with you, Addison, and spoil our grandkids and tease you about the gray in your hair."

Addison clamped her hand over her mouth as she started to cry.

"I don't want to die on an operating table, Addie, but if I don't have this surgery, I'll be dead before she's born anyway. And if our little girl has to grow up without a father, I don't want you to have to tell her that I wasted away in a hospital bed doing nothing. I want you to be able to tell her that her daddy died fighting for that lifetime with the two of you."

Addison nodded tearfully and looked up at Meredith, who was fighting back tears of her own. "Schedule the surgery, Dr. Grey."

"Shouldn't he be awake by now?" Addison asked nervously, a tight grasp on Ryan's limp hand as she sat at his bedside several days later. "I just spoke with my ex-husband, who happens to be a neurosurgeon, and he said that it shouldn't be taking this long, that he'd expect Ryan to be awake by now."

Meredith shook her head. "With all due respect to your ex-husband, Dr. Montgomery, he's not familiar with this procedure. The whole process is extremely taxing to the body, and it will take some time to get through that, so I wouldn't worry just yet about him not being awake."

"How can you be so sure?" Addison asked. "You're the one who told us this has only worked once before."

Meredith hesitated for a moment, but eventually smiled and motioned for Addison to follow her. "Come with me."

The two women made their way down the hall for a few minutes until Meredith stopped and opened the door of the imaging room.

"Technically, you're not supposed to be in here," Meredith said, pulling two scans from the files and placing them in front of the lighted glass. "But you're a physician, so I'm assuming you'll be able to see the difference in these images."

"Is that…are those Ryan's scans?" Addison took a step closer, carefully examining the two different views of her husband's brain.

Meredith nodded, grabbing a ruler and holding it up to the first scan. "This is your husband's tumor last night. And this…" Meredith moved the ruler to the second scan. "This is the scan we did about an hour ago."

"Oh my God." Addison gasped and clasped a hand to her mouth as she began to smile. "It's shrinking. The surgery worked?"

"Everything went exactly as we'd hoped," Meredith said. "He's not out of the woods yet, as you know. But I'd say we have every reason to be cautiously optimistic at this point."

"Thank you doesn't seem like enough, Dr. Grey."

Meredith shook her head as she turned off the light and led Addison back down the hall toward Ryan's room. "I was just doing my job, Dr. Montgomery."

"You know, I must give that line to my patients' families a dozen times a month," Addison said. "It doesn't seem to matter when you're on this side. Even if it is your job, my husband has a chance that he didn't have two weeks ago, and that's because of you."

"Well, I'm glad I was able to help," Meredith said, shifting her weight uncomfortably, looking for something to change the subject to. "Do you mind if I ask how far along you are?"

"Seven months," Addison said with a smile. "We, uh, actually did things a little backwards. We've only been married about four months."

"Hey, there'll be a ring on your finger when you give birth," Meredith pointed out. "If that's still doing things backwards, then I guess I've got big problems."

"Oh?" Addison's eyes immediately darted to the simple gold band on Meredith's left hand.

Meredith smiled and twirled the ring around her finger. "It'll be three years coming up in June," she said. "Our daughter turned four last week, and I have nine year old twins."

"Nine years old? You must have been, what? A second year resident when they were born?"

"Actually, I was an intern."

"Wow." Addison let out a low whistle. "Twins as an intern. I could barely manage a husband as an intern, let alone two babies. Their father must have been around a lot to help out."

"I had my friends," Meredith said. "I've never felt comfortable saying that I was a single mother, because I was never really doing it alone."

"But their father wasn't around much?"

"He made it quite clear to me that he didn't want anything to do with me, or with them," Meredith said. "So I respected his wishes. It wasn't easy, of course, but in the end, it all worked out alright for my girls. We're actually looking into having my husband adopt them now, just in case something were to happen to me."

"You don't think…" Ryan hesitated and shook his head.

"What?"

"Nothing. It's just, well, think about it…Derek's intern gave birth during her intern year?"

"You can't think…" Addison shook her head. "That's got to be a coincidence."

"I don't know, Addison, you know I don't really believe in coincidences."

"Meredith told me the twins' father didn't want them," Addison said.

"You two were still married at that point," Ryan pointed out.

"No," Addison said firmly. "I don't care what was going on in his life, Derek would never, ever do that. He always wanted to be a father, and you know he's the kind of guy who would step up no matter what. It has to be a coincidence, Ryan…married or not, there's no way in hell Derek would have ever walked away from his kids."

Meredith picked up her phone and stared at the blank screen, shaking her head before sighing and put it back on the table again.

"You could just call, you know."

Meredith shook her head and smiled. "You know I'm not going to do that, Evie."

"Just thought I'd put it out there." Evelyn shrugged and grabbed a soda from the refrigerator before taking a seat across the table from Meredith. "Who are you expecting to call, anyway? Cristina or Annie?"

"You know?"

"About Annie's ridiculous idea that she's going to have some sort of grand reunion with this Derek person? Yeah, she's mentioned it one or two thousand times recently. I told her it was stupid and hung up on her."

"I never understood how the two of you could be so completely different about this whole thing. You'd think you'd grown up with completely different families or something."

"You know Annie's always been too curious for her own good," Evelyn said. "She asks too many questions and then she shuts down when she doesn't like the answers."

"I'm surprised you haven't asked any questions at all."

Evelyn shrugged. "I didn't need to. I know the relationship you had with Thatcher when you were growing up."

Meredith frowned. "What does my father have to do with this?"

"I guess I just always assumed that if you did know who our biological father was, you wouldn't have kept us from him without at least telling him about us. Was I wrong?"

Meredith shook her head.

"Then that's all I need to know about him," Evelyn said. "Actions speak louder than words, Mom. Why would I want to bother with someone who couldn't be bothered to stick around for us? You always told us that there was more to family than DNA, and that's what I choose to believe."

"I didn't know you girls actually listened to me," Meredith said with a laugh.

"Only on occasion, but yes," Evelyn smiled.

Meredith shook her head and smiled, freezing when her phone began to ring.

"You better pick it up," Evelyn said.

"It's Cristina."

"Pick it up, Mom."

Meredith sighed and nodded, pressing a button and holding the phone up to her ear. "Hello?"

"We got damn lucky today."

"What do you mean? How did it go with Derek?"

"She said he wasn't there."

"He wasn't there?" Meredith didn't bother to disguise the relief in her voice. "Is she going back tomorrow?"

"Apparently his assistant said he left town for the holidays. He won't be back until after she's gone home to Chicago."

"Did she say what she was planning next? Is she coming back another time? Or has she not talked about that yet?"

"I asked her about that, and get this…she said she was going to think about it, but that maybe it just wasn't meant to be. I got the impression that she was starting to realize this might not be such a brilliant idea after all."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Go figure, right?"

"Right."

"Listen, I'll call you tomorrow so you've got an excuse to leave the room when Molly and Lexie goes all psycho-Thanksgiving on your kitchen. Right now, I gotta go, Annie stepped out and the kid's hungry…I want to give him ice cream or candy or something else she won't let him have before she comes back."

"You're terrible, you know that?"

"No, I'm fabulous, and I'm loads of fun."

"Whatever you say."

"Later."

"Bye, Cristina." Meredith frowned and set the phone back on the table.

"You should really look happier if she's not going to see him after all," Evelyn said.

"How did you know that?" Meredith asked in confusion.

Evelyn rolled her eyes. "Mom, you have the volume cranked up high enough on that thing that I could hear everything Cristina said. Don't worry, lots of old people do that."

"I am not old, Evelyn."

"Mom, you're going to be fifty next year. That's old."

"Someone is so not getting anything for Christmas this year."

"You're threatening my Christmas presents?" Evelyn laughed. "What am I, five years old?"

Meredith glared at her daughter.

"Okay, fine." Evelyn threw her hands up in defeat. "You are not old."

"That's better."

"Now, why are you not happy about Annie changing her mind?"

"Because it's Annie, that's why. She just doesn't do that. She's tenacious, she's stubborn, she's…"

"…A pain in the ass?" Evelyn filled in.

"Sometimes, yes…but then, so are you sometimes."

"I'm hurt."

"Get over it." Meredith rolled her eyes, mirroring Evelyn's earlier actions. "My point is, with something that Annie wanted this much, what are the odds she'd give up on it just because he was on vacation today?"

Evelyn frowned. "She wouldn't. So what does that mean?"

"I don't know." Meredith sighed and shook her head. "Whatever happened, though, I have a bad feeling about it."