'Hi, Holly. I'm Dr Addison Montgomery. Do you know where you are?' Addison asked kindly, plastering a superficial smile on her face and trying to hide the tremor in her legs.
Holly ignored her, instead carefully folding the corner of her hospital gown over and over itself, obsessively checking each one was perfect before making the crease. Addison sighed and glanced at her watch, wishing her pager would alert her to her labs being back.
'Holly, do you know what happened?'
Again, no answer.
'Holly, sweetheart, I need you to look at me. You don't have to talk, ok? We can just do yes/no questions,' Addison tried again, barely falling short of begging with the woman to tell her what happened.
Holly turned her head to look at her, tears filling her eyes.
'Do you know what happened?' she repeated.
Holly nodded.
'Ok, that's good. Do I need to call the police?'
She nodded again.
'And do I need to... do an exam?' Addison hesitated at the last few words, forcing them out of her mouth and even then she still couldn't say that word.
Tears flowed down Holly's cheeks as she gave an almost-imperceptible nod.
Addison sighed. The last thing she wanted to do, the last thing she needed, was this. Then a thought occurred to her.
'Ok, do you mind if I get one of the nurses to do it? I just need to go and make a few calls and make sure we have all the appropriate measures in place.'
She felt bad, she really did, for leaving Holly when she needed her but Addison felt that she'd end up doing more harm than good. And besides, the nurses were more than competent, she just normally preferred to carry out the exams herself to make sure they were done efficiently and correctly.
Holly nodded and Addison smiled, carefully closing the door behind her and promising she'd come back while she went to find a nurse.
She'd called the police, and Holly's boyfriend who had come rushing into the hospital searching for her desperately. Her heart ached at that and she wished she had someone who would run into an ER, all guns blazing, to find her and protect her and make sure she was ok. But she didn't, so she just had to make do with getting her bloods back.
'Addie?'
For god's sake, why was Derek everywhere she turned today?
'Derek. How can I help?' Her tone was crisp, civil but not friendly, but Derek knew her better than that. His well-tuned ears detected the subtle wobble in her voice, the cold tone only designed to detract from it. He had to hand it to her; it worked on many people. But not him. Never him.
Despite all this, he almost flinched at her voice, the harshness of it almost offensive.
'I just wondered if everything was ok. You know, as friends, colleagues.'
Her eyes narrowed, but she remained silent.
'I'm not trying anything here, Addison. I genuinely just wanted to make sure you were ok.'
She was sceptical to say the least. What business did her ex-husband think he had, demanding to know what was going on in her life?
'Why now, Derek? Why do you care now? What about all those years you spent doing three double shifts in a row, just so you could snag the best surgeries as they came in? Why didn't you give a damn then?'
Derek didn't have an answer, so he stood in front of her and let her push past him when her pager beeped and she hurried off in the direction of the lab.
Addison slid down the wall of the on-call room, sighing in relief as she clutched the piece of paper to her chest. The drug was nothing sinister, just a mild sedative that had completely fogged her memory when combined with the alcohol, and she wasn't pregnant either. There were no traces of STDs either, or anything else that would suggest that she wasn't completely fine. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she closed her eyes, thankful that she could finally carry on as normal.
Not that things were normal, or probably ever would be again, but she could pretend they were.
She jumped as someone pounded on the door, jolting her out of her thoughts and back into the present.
'Dr Montgomery?'
It was the nurse that she'd left with Holly.
'Dr Montgomery? You weren't answering your pager and someone said they'd seen you come in here. I've finished examining Holly and she's asleep. Her boyfriend's asking for you, though.'
Addison sighed.
'I'll be out in a minute!' she called, stuffing the piece of paper into her coat pocket and straightening herself up, brushing herself down and combing her fingers through her hair.
'Hi, I'm Dr Montgomery.' She tiptoed into the room, unable to make eye contact with the boyfriend but offering her hand out for him to shake anyway, which he did firmly.
'Peter. What can you tell me about Holly's case? Is she going to be ok? Have you called the police?'
Crap, the police. She'd forgotten to do that.
'Erm, no, not yet. I was paged about an emergency, so I haven't had a chance but I was just about to,' she apologised clumsily.
Peter sighed, and Addison guessed she was about to get a complaint from him.
'No, it's fine. We don't need the police. I'm on the force, so I'll just call my guys in when she wakes up. We'll get the bastard, don't you worry.' He turned back to face Holly, a look of what Addison supposed was pain on his face, though it seemed unfamiliar.
'Oh, well it's standard protocol here to report it to the police ourselves. You know how it is, rules and regulations everywhere. I'll make the call just as soon as we're finished here.'
Peter didn't reply, instead sitting down in the chair next to his girlfriend's bed.
'Ok, so the exam confirms that Holly was attacked. She has a fractured wrist and significant bruising to the left side of her face, as well as to her wrists and chest.' Addison took a breath. 'And I'm really sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, because I'm sure this is really difficult to hear, but tests did confirm that Holly is pregnant. Now, of course we won't rush you into any decisions yet, but I'll have the nurse bring you some information on your options in just a second. Do you have any questions for the time being?'
She raised her gaze to watch how Peter reacted to the news of the baby, silently surprised that he wasn't more upset. Instead, a pensive look crossed his face.
'God, ok. Can you just give me a minute? I'm sorry, this is just so much to take in.'
He said all the right things, but Addison couldn't detect a trace of sincerity in his tone. She pushed the thought to the back of her mind though, for she knew that everyone handled these things differently, and she wasn't really one to judge how anyone did.
