Author's Note: And the journey continues. This chapter is somewhat transitional, with some seeds planted and maybe a little bit of good news.
what's left of the rain runs down my roof
Mark watches from the doorway of Webber's office as Addison pushes by them to the catwalk, calling Derek's name.
"They'll hold a hearing in three weeks," Webber says from a few feet away. "That's considered expedited-"
"It's not expedited enough for Annabel," Mark says tightly. "So it's not expedited at all."
"I'm sorry."
Mark meets the other man's eyes. He believes him – that he is sorry – believes that he cares about Addison and by extension Annabel – but it's hard in the moment not to let anger take over from the helplessness he feels.
"Thanks," Mark says shortly, his message clear. He notices a large blue vinyl binder on the chief's desk. "Are those the most updated NatMed regulations?"
"Yes. They send a new one every year. Do you –"
Mark's already lifted the heavy binder in one hand. "Thanks," he says, more sincerely this time.
Addison turns to him when he approaches her, her face set and grim. "He's gone," she says quietly. "They actually escorted him – he's gone."
"Addie," Mark says. "There'll be a hearing-"
"It will be too late." Addison turns away again to look over the catwalk, toward the front door. "Where's Max?" she asks suddenly.
"Playroom," Mark says. He touches her arm. "Addison, let's-"
"I want him to have the MRI." Her voice shakes slightly. "I do, as soon as we can. Can you – can you get him –"
"Sure. Of course." The timing feels sort of odd but also perhaps fortuitous. Control what they can control. When in doubt: medicine.
"I'm going to check on Annabel," she murmurs, her voice starting to grow stronger, "and then I'm going to talk to Richard again. We can figure out a way around this. We're not going to lose this window."
Her face is determined now; she kisses him quickly and they exchange the glance of keep me posted and walk away in different directions, each toward one of their children.
"What kind of a test?" Max looks up at him in interest as they walk hand in hand down the hall.
"They're going to use a special machine to take some pictures."
"Why do I have to sleep?"
"Because you have to lie very, very still, and that's really hard to do when you're awake."
"Yeah," Max agrees. "Can I play outside after?"
Mark smiles down at him even as his stomach clenches. Max shouldn't be spending every day in a hospital, even in the comparably cheerful playroom, he needs be outside, to run around, and instead they're going to sedate him while they check to see if his brain is hiding something as terrifying as his sister's.
"What are they gonna take a picture of?" Max tugs on his father's hand.
"Your … head," Mark ruffles sandy blond hair that's sticking up in the back. He just can't bring himself to say your brain. Not to Max.
"You are too a wild thing, that's how come your name is Max," Annabel teases, as Max wriggles his way next to her on their matching wooden stools in the yellow bathroom they share. "'Cause you roar your terrible roar and gnash your terrible teeth."
"My teeth are not terrible!" Max scowls, though it's less effective with toothpaste around his little mouth and his inescapably adorable sheep-patterned pajamas.
"No, they're not – so don't forget to brush up and down so they stay that way," Mark reminds his son with a wink. "And Bel, be nice."
"I am being nice," Annabel says insistently. "Max in the book is cool and so is my Max."
Max smiles at his sister, and Mark marvels at Annabel's vocabulary, then signals at Max's toothbrush. His son makes a few motions, then holds his little green toothbrush out to Mark. "Help me," he says cheerfully and Mark squats in front of him to take over brushing his teeth.
"Am I a wild thing?" Max asks with a mouthful of toothpaste.
"Only sometimes. Bel too," Mark turns him toward the sink. "Spit."
Max gargles some water with gusto, then turns back to Mark. "Is that why my name is Max?"
"Nah. Your mom and I just liked the name. And when we met you we just knew it fit. Max Archer Sloan, that's you." He taps his nose.
Max beams. "Archer," he says thoughtfully. "He's a wild thing sometimes too?"
Mark suppresses a smile. That's a story for another day. "Archer was Mommy's brother, remember?"
Max has heard this before but he's newly curious each time as he sorts out the details of his universe. "Mommy has a brother?"
"She had a big brother, like you have a big sister. Remember the picture we showed you, on the boat?"
"Where did he go?"
"He died before you were born," he reminds his son. He doesn't mention that it was three days before he was born, but they're not the type of parents who use euphemisms or say "in heaven."
"Why?"
Mark borrows Addison's phrasing; it's her story, really, one they've told the kids before. "He had a problem with his brain," Mark repeats now. They've already broken it down for the kids before; with two doctors for parents, they're used to blunt delivery and overhearing snatches of medical terms.
"Are you going to die?" Max looks up at Mark anxiously.
Mark draws him into the crook of his arm. "Not for a long, long time, not until you and Annabel are all grown up and living in your own houses with your own kids."
Annabel, who has been carefully examining one of her lower incisors in the mirror – she's been waiting for a loose tooth ever since one of her skating friends lost her first one – chimes in. "Not 'til you're really old, right?"
"Right." Mark tucks a lock of dark hair behind her ear with his free hand.
Max seems satisfied; Mark is about to change the subject when his son asks: "Why did he have a problem on his brain?"
"We don't know, buddy," Mark says as Max leans against him. "It just happens sometimes."
"What about my brain?"
"Absolutely not. Your brain is perfect. And Archer was a grown-up when he got sick, bud, much, much, older than you, and you don't have to think about this for a long time, okay?"
"Okay," Max says agreeably, opening his mouth for more toothbrushing, then moving his head out of reach.
"What is it?" he asks, ruffling Max's hair.
"When's Mommy coming home?"
Mark laughs. "Soon, but you're going to be asleep. She's delivering another mom and dad's wild thing right now. Now open up so I can brush those fangs."
It wasn't so long ago but it feels like another lifetime, that innocent arrogance of assuring their children that there were scores of years ahead of them before they got sick.
Max is cheerful when he sees Dr. Robbins, swinging his legs from the table, not shy with the pediatric anaesthesiologist and nurses. Even after the tumult of this week, the world is full of friends for him.
"Are you coming into the tube too?" He asks Dr. Robbins.
"Nope, but I'm going to be with you right up until you fall asleep, and Nurse Elise and Dr. Wade are going to be right by you looking in the window at you the whole time. And your dad will be right outside. Now, this medicine is going to make you sleep, buuuut," and Dr. Robbins draws the word out, making it sound almost like a treat … "it also tastes like bubblegum, so … even if you don't usually like naps, you just about break even."
"Here, look." She shows him everything she's holding. Mark's already met the pediatric radiologist, who seems gentle and efficient, and Max has been wide-eyed and quietly cooperative so far.
"That's for my blood pressure," Max points at the cuff.
"Oh, you already know a lot. You going to be a doctor when you grow up?" The anesthesiologist smiles at him.
"Maybe," Max says thoughtfully. "Or a dinosaur."
"Why not both?" Dr. Robbins beams at him.
Mark can't help smiling a little at her energy; Max responds so well to it.
Mark rests his hand on his son's head. "I'm gonna be right here when you wake up."
"Then can I sleep in Bel's room too?"
Mark swallows hard as something flickers in Dr. Robbins's eyes.
"You're going to wake up right down here," she assures Max. "Very soon. And then if your dad says it's okay you can go see your sister."
"Everything is going to be just fine," Dr. Robbins adds reassuringly, and Mark realizes she's talking to him as well.
He leans against the wall outside the screening room, as close as he can get, sends a quick text to let Addison know the test has started. No change, she writes back, about Annabel.
How many times have they done this, cell phones reassuringly pocketed? Annabel skating and Max at play gym; Annabel at school and Max at the park; Annabel reading quietly in Addison's office on a weekend and Max kicking a soccer ball with Mark. Now Addison is sitting upstairs in Annabel's room while Mark is down in radiology with Max. Healthy, vibrant Max. Then again, Annabel was healthy and vibrant all her life until a week ago.
He stands up immediately as they start wheeling him out, follows them to the recovery room. "It went fine, doctor," the pediatric anesthesiologist assures him.
Mark is holding his son's hand when he starts to rouse.
"Hey, buddy." He smooths Max's hair where the surface coil helmet matted it down. "How was your nap?"
Max blinks sleepily. "I'm hungry," he whispers.
Mark swallows a smile. So he's still himself. He holds Max on his lap while he nibbles on crackers and sips from a cup of juice.
"Where's Mommy?"
"With Bel. We'll go see them in a few minutes, okay?"
"Wanna walk," he wriggles in Mark's arms when they're able to leave the recovery room.
"Not yet, hospital rules." He kisses the side of Max's head.
Max settles down and Mark feels him start to doze as he carries him to the elevator, knows he'll be sleepy for a while after his sedation.
Addison leaps to her feet when she sees them. "How did it go?"
"He did great." Mark frees a hand to touch her arm as she strokes Max's head.
"Did they have any…"
Mark shakes his head. "They're reading it first thing." He nods toward Annabel's visitor chairs and, when Addison is seated in the chair by the window, gently detaches Max and places him on her lap. Max wakes long enough to fit a hand into the collar of her shirt, then snuggles close and dozes again.
"No change," he looks at the seizure clock on the wall.
"No change."
"I talked to Richard," she says quietly.
"And…"
She shakes her head, and her meaning is clear. "He can't reinstate his privileges without NatMed approval. He's black-marked all across NatMed now. No privileges here, no privileges anywhere."
"Did you-"
"I called Oosterhuis. And Lerner. They're sympathetic," and she pronounces the word sympathetic bitterly, "but they don't advise a surgical course and they still won't do it. Mark," she looks up at him and for a moment her eyes are just pools of naked pain. "We can't lose this window."
"Addison-"
"I need to think, I need to..." her voice trails off, and she smooths Max's hair. "But I just want to keep watching her," she murmurs and he nods in agreement.
"I didn't think you'd be happy –" she smiles back at him, but her eyes are still teary. "I'm just surprised, that's all."
She's holding the little blue and white onesie in her hand, rubbing it between her fingers. He couldn't believe how tiny it was when he bought it, when it folded up so small it fit right into the palm of one hand.
"You and me both." He brushes a tear away from her cheek. "I mean … aren't you on the pill? And aren't you … an OBGYN?"
She laughs through her tears. "Yeah, well. It's been a … hectic couple of weeks."
"You're telling me." He can't help smiling. In truth he hasn't been able to stop smiling since she told him this morning, in her office, and then of course she was paged before he could respond. "We'll talk tonight," she assured him but as he watched her walk away everything fell into place.
"Tell me what you need, Addison," he says now, hearing his own eager tone. "What I can do - no, don't tell me, I should figure it out, that's what the book says…"
"The book?"
He pulls his copy of "The Expectant Father's Survival Guide" out of his bag.
"Oh, Mark. You bought that already?"
"Well, yeah. I need to get some practice and the onesie won't cut it."
She squeezes his hand and inhales shakily. "Mark, we have to… we have to decide what to do."
"What to do – about what? Oh." He feels a squeezing sensation in his chest.
"I'm still married," she whispers.
"Technically." He avoids looking at the rings on her finger, except he can feel them on the hand that's holding his. "Except you haven't seen or spoken to your husband in … almost a month now?"
"I have papers." Her voice trembles slightly.
"Well they don't do much good unsigned. What are you waiting for? Just have him served."
"I don't know." Her voice trembles again. "I don't know anything anymore Mark, how are we supposed to bring a … a child into this? When we don't even know what we're doing?"
"That's an excuse," he says, his own voice shaking. Wasn't he the one who wanted to come clean weeks ago, before Derek walked in on them and changed the game completely?
He's certain he's never felt more certain about anything than this baby, than their being together, but she touches his collar, lightly, knowingly, with her free hand. "That's not my shade," she says softly.
He swallows hard. They're not in a relationship, isn't that what she's been saying since the night Derek left? In some ways they've done everything they can not to commit – yet here they are.
"Okay," he starts. "Maybe we didn't know, before, what we were doing but maybe now we know? I mean. I do know." He sets down the expectant father book and pulls her into his arms. He feels the need to hold her right now, to hold between them the child growing inside her – and yes, despite his medical training, his political beliefs, what's inside of her right now in this moment is a child. His child. Their child. "I do know what we're doing, Addison. So let's do it. Let's do it for real."
Blaring alarms pull him from his memory and as Annabel's little body convulses on the bed he grabs a hopefully still sleeping Max from Addison's lap, pressing his head into his shoulder, and bolts from the room. Everything moves too fast and too slowly all at once; an understanding nurse takes a dozing Max from his arms; by the time Mark strides back inside it's over, Annabel still once again, her bed surrounded by white coats and scrubs.
Addison is silent until she sees one of the nurses reset the seizure clock. The red numbers make it all too real and her cry is gut-wrenching.
"He could have done it! We missed the window!"
He grabs her as her legs start to give way, pulls her against him, but she's dead weight and slides to the floor anyway, still in his arms. Her breath is coming in quick desperate pants and he crouches behind her, trying to hold her up. She doesn't lose control like this in public, her breath sliding higher until he's afraid she's going to hyperventilate.
"Breathe. Making yourself sick isn't going to help," he mutters into her hair. "Addison. Please."
The others tactfully give them privacy and he manages to untangle her fingers from his shirt long enough to get them both to their feet and then, stumbling a little under her weight, both into the guest chair by the window. To the tune of Annabel's sleepy sedated breaths he rubs circles on her back with more strength than he feels. She's half on his lap, the only way to fit them both into the chair, face hot and damp in his neck. She breathes harshly, trying to get control of herself, and he just waits.
The reset clock on the wall mocks him: seven minutes seizure free. Then seventeen.
"We missed it," she says quietly into his neck. He can feel every exhausted muscle in her body against his when she speaks.
"We'll get another window. 23 more hours. We'll get another one."
"And if we don't?"
He doesn't answer.
"She looks so peaceful right now." Addison breaks the silence again; she's turned around now, facing away from him, one leg over his so they can keep sharing the chair and leaning her head back against the rubberized upholstery. Her eyes are ringed with red, swollen at the tops of her cheeks, but she's breathing normally. Almost calmly.
"If they … if he can't operate," Mark begins, and he feels her tense against him. They haven't been able to talk about this, not really. Not yet. "If he can't operate, do you want to ... take her home?"
"Excuse me."
Meredith Grey is standing in the room and Addison pushes herself to her feet without answering his question.
"I'm sorry," Dr. Grey starts gently, "but we're pulling the data from this seizure now and we're going to have more information. And even more when we run the four-hour scans."
Mark nods and looks at her, doesn't ask how does that help if no one can operate? But she answers anyway.
"We made some medication changes over the last twelve hours. I want to see if the med changes have done anything, and we'll have more data from this seizure. I'll be back as soon I know more."
They're seated next to each other, watching Annabel, and she speaks so quietly he almost doesn't hear her.
"I knew."
He turns to her; she's still looking at Annabel, avoiding his gaze.
"Knew what?"
"That he had questions, about her. I … overheard something. Before." Her face looks tight and miserable.
He doesn't understand completely but responds to the misery in her tone, taking her hand in his. "You couldn't have known he would do what he did."
"But I could have - you never had any questions," she interrupts herself to repeat it, slowly.
"No," he says firmly, shaking his head. "It's not just the timing, Addison. I didn't have any questions because I knew you would have told me if there were any chance that he-"
"Could you have forgiven me?" she interrupts him.
"I can't answer that, Addie, I don't want to say anything is unforgivable, but if I found out that you had kept Derek's child from him and made me complicit in that then I would have been forced to conclude that I don't know you at all, that all these years…" He feels his pulse speed up.
"I wouldn't have done that," she assures him.
"I know you wouldn't, I couldn't - I wouldn't have let you," the words flow out of him more vehemently than he intends, and then he can't stop himself. "To lose all that time, be deprived of your own child for no reason other than selfishness –" and he stops himself as his voice rises, breathing heavily.
"Mark," she touches his arm. "Why are you-"
He takes a deep breath. "I think we need to talk about the thing we've been waiting to talk about, Addison."
"No, I don't want to yet, not while Annabel…" she starts to pull away but he holds on to her hand.
"I understand that you don't want to, but I really think we need to."
She meets his eyes. They're a bottomless blue right now, the same shade as Annabel's. Slowly, she nods.
"Doctors!" Dr. Grey bursts in just as he's about to start talking.
"You're going to want to see this. Come with me."
They stare at the lightboard together in the room they stood in with Derek what seems like a lifetime ago. "Look," and Dr. Grey points them to a spot of light.
"The growth – it's not bidirectional anymore."
"The new meds…"
"They've bought us some time," she says gently. "And we'll have new four-hour scans, more information from the last seizure. I'm not going to tell you not to worry, but- but we've bought some time," she repeats herself.
"Thank you," Addison whispers.
"Now we just have to figure out how to get her into the OR."
"I've put calls in to everyone I can think of, everyone Derek suggested." Dr. Grey says. "Turabian at Cedars, Kovacs at Mayo - and Ginsberg had some choice words before she hung up, actually."
She seems to see their unspoken question. "If there were any way I could do it, I would do it. Other than assisting when Derek tried this years ago, it's far from my specialty. I've been focused on nerve sheath tumors, and I've taken very few surgical cases in the last year – since Thomas – I've only been picking up my schedule recently."
"I know."
"It's the combination of methods that makes it so dangerous – and also so effective. You know that, I know. The endoscope and the laser and the retractor – he used MRI guidance the last time but he needed two of us and with Annabel's tumor – we'd be safest with three."
"Three?"
"We could use someone who's willing to take on the risk and who has pediatric neuro experience – ideally 10 and under, because of the stage of brain development. But really what we need is -"
"You need Derek," Addison interrupts, and Dr. Grey nods.
"We need Derek."
"What about-"
She seems to read his mind. "He can't assist remotely because you need privileges for that; we've been doing a lot of remote consultation here and there's a hospital procedure. And we can't do a call chain because he needs real-time access to the MRI during the procedure and needs to be able to make split-second maneuvers."
"But if we can find a way…" she stops talking at the knock on the door.
"Dr. Robbins."
Addison freezes next to him but the other doctor is smiling widely, holding a blue folder in her hand. "Dr. Wade confirmed the reading and Max is absolutely fine," she smiles. "You have nothing to worry about."
Nothing to worry about.
For just a second, he lets himself pretend it's true.
Huge thank you to everyone who's reading and commenting. Reviews make my heart sing and my fingers fly! Goal: next chapter up within 24 hours. Wish me luck.
Title lyric from Emiliana Torrini's Nothing Brings Me Down.
Flashback allusions from Maurice Sendak's classic Where the Wild Things Are.