3 or 4 weeks of pregnancy.
What was happening three or four weeks ago?
"If the date of my last menstrual period marked here was April 15th... and today's May 19th... the fertile days were 15, 16, 18... 28, 30... the last days of April?" Addison wondered aloud, looking at her agenda calendar over and over again.
She needed to find some marked clue that would help her determine exactly when it had happened.
She couldn't remember the last time she and Derek had been intimate enough to conceive a baby. In recent months, their encounters had been only a matter of routine, short and almost insignificant. Neither of them bothered to pleasure the other, there was no time. Between the hospital, the residents, the patients... the patients trying to sue the hospital... the lawsuit!
She remembered that on April 30th, she wrote in her agenda "call Savvy". In case she was sued by the patient's family who had just undergone a secret tubal ligation without her husband's knowledge, and upon learning of his wife's alleged "complication," he threatened to sue Addison and the hospital.
She was furious, disappointed, tired. She only wanted to get to the trailer, lie in bed, and drown her problems on Scottish whiskey. But Derek had other plans for the night.
"You wouldn't believe the day I had," Addison said as soon as she saw Derek enter through the trailer door. She held her drink in one hand and clumsily removed her fishnet stockings with the other. "I went out of my way to give a patient exactly what she wants, only to have it explode in my face. I mean, lawsuit, threats. Richard's pissed. Don't even get me started on Alex Karev…"
"Get in the shower" Derek interrupted her as he turned on the shower faucet.
"What?"
"Get in the shower with me."
"Honey, it's a very small shower."
"You want to have hot sex?" he said, standing naked in front of her.
"Thank you."
Addison quickly took off her blouse, giving Derek a privileged view of her breasts compressed by a black lace bra. She left her glass on the floor next to the bed and joined her husband's lips in a passionate kiss.
Derek pushed her against the bathroom door without releasing her mouth for a second, and in a quick twist, he pulled her under the hot water...
"There's no hot water in the shower" Derek said, opening the bathroom door.
"Uh?" Addison quickly let go of the pen in her hand and closed the agenda as soon as she heard Derek was in the room. For a moment, she forgot that she wasn't alone in the trailer.
"There's no more hot water, I'm sorry. If you want to take a shower today, you'll have to wait or go to the hospital bathrooms."
"Take a shower at the hospital? Do you think I'm a resident?"
"No, but..."
"I hate this trailer, Derek. I've told you countless times. It's inhumane to run out of hot water in the mornings, or for the hairdryer to run out of cord, or for the shower to be small and uncomfortable..."
"I thought you liked the shower, you know... You weren't very unhappy when..."
"Oh no, don't take that moment as an example of anything. I... that shower brought me enough surprises."
"Surprises?"
"Yeah, a surprise pregnancy."
"Forget it."
~•~
"Hey, you got a minute?" Derek called her attention as she climbed the stairs and she turned around.
"You're ready to talk?"
"Uh, my patient, Kendra Thomas. She's brain-dead. Her parents want to keep her alive to have the baby."
"So you want me to talk to the parents?" she replied with an annoyed voice and continued climbing.
"Well, I tried already, but I figured, you're neonatal. You might have a better shot at it than I do. "
"Okay..."
"It's just that you can give them a much more detailed picture…"
"I said I'd do it" She turned around angrily.
He always asked her to do the worst part. She always had to be there for him when he asked for favors, but he was never there for her. He didn't even take two seconds of his precious time to listen to her say that she was expecting his child.
They walked in silence until they reached the patient's room.
"Mr. and Mrs. Thomas, Dr. Shepherd asked me to talk to you about your daughter and her pregnancy."
"We've made up our mind. She's having the baby", the father of the girl replied.
"I know Kendra meant the world to you. And I know the terrible grief you must be going through right now. But from a medical standpoint, this is a very bad idea", Addison said with the utmost respect and tact.
"Well, if we wanted your opinion, miss, we'd ask for it", the father said rudely.
"It's just… We love our daughter. Please try to understand", the mother pleaded.
Addison couldn't even imagine what she would do if she was in the same position. They say losing a child is the greatest pain in the world, and even though she'd only been carrying her baby for a few days, the thought of losing it would shatter her into a thousand pieces. She hadn't even seen it yet, and she already loved it. She understood the suffering of those parents, asking her to let them keep the only thing they had left of their daughter, their grandchild.
"I do understand... I do. You think if you love her or her baby enough, that will keep her close to you, but... she's already gone. And if you move forward with this, you're risking… I mean, if Kendra were to contract an infection, she could pass it on to the fetus. It could cause brain damage..."
"We're taking our chances", the father said.
"Now they keep organ donors alive after they're… gone. Why not Kendra?" the mother asked.
"Organ donors aren't kept alive for six months. Your daughter is brain-dead. She can't regulate body temperature, or hormone output. These things are very important for a fetus."
"You guys can regulate that stuff, right?" the guy asked.
"We could try..."
"Well, then try, damn it! What the hell's the problem here?!" the father shouted.
Derek was surprised to hear the man yelling at his wife and put a hand on her waist to distance her a little.
"The problem here? As I see it, you want to use your daughter's corpse as an incubator. That's the problem!" Addison shouted.
"If it can be done, what's your problem with keeping her like this? It's my daughter, not yours! Our decision. We never asked for your opinion on the matter."
Tears immediately filled Addison's eyes. Damn hormones, she couldn't let them make her cry in front of patients. What kind of doctor bursts into tears in the middle of an argument?
"Okay. I'm sorry, would you excuse us?" Derek said, pulling Addison from her waist to leave the room.
"What are you doing, Derek? Leave me!"
"They've just lost their daughter."
"I know. That was my point, Derek. They need to face that. She's not coming back" she walked quickly down the hallway.
"A little sensitivity from you would be nice, okay?" he stopped her. "They love their daughter, they don't want to let her go. All right?"
"What they're doing is not about love, Derek. It's... it's... well, it's just like you!"
"Excuse me?"
"Like how you pretend to love me, but really, you're just using me to fill some need you have to be a good guy. But every time I try to talk to you about...
"This is not the time to talk about this," he interrupted her. "We'll talk about it later", he turned around abruptly without even looking her in the eyes.
"You walk away? That's all I get?" she shouted, following him.
"Just calm down, please" he said through his teeth, turning to face her.
"What? What? You're not going to yell at me? Call me names? Or I don't know, ignore me in an elevator?"
"What do you want from me, Addison?"
"I want you to care! I sleep with your best friend and you walk away. He comes here from New York and rubs it in your face, and still, you get a good night's sleep. What do I have to do? Oh, I know! Maybe what I should do is go out on a date with the vet. Because that seems to be something that sends you into a blind rage. Oh, but wait. That won't work either because I'm not Meredith Grey!" she shouted those last words in fury.
Both remained silent for a moment, realizing that everyone on the lower floor was watching them, including several interns, Meredith, and the chief. The latter was clearly not happy with the scene two of his surgeons were causing in the hospital hallway.
Derek turned around and left in silence, leaving her alone with all the people's gaze on her. Once again, Addison's eyes filled with tears and she ran to her office.
~•~
"Hey, are you okay?" Bailey asked, gently opening the door to her office. Addison was sitting on the couch with her legs curled up.
"I... did the whole hospital hear the argument?"
"Well, I don't know if your voice is loud enough to reach every corner of the hospital and therefore every person's ear in the establishment. It has multiple floors and hallways. But I think, cutting out the exaggeration, yes. A large part heard it."
"Oh god, I'm dying of embarrassment. I don't know how I'm going to leave this room" she cried again and Bailey became even more concerned for her.
She had never seen Addison Montgomery Shepherd cry in such a painful way. Not even when she had an allergic reaction to poison ivy had she cried with so much suffering.
"Are you okay?" she asked again, this time sitting next to her and wrapping her arm around her shoulders. She knew it was stupid to ask that when clearly she wasn't okay, but perhaps that gave Addison the little push she needed to vent.
Addison looked into her eyes as if she wanted to say something but couldn't. No words came out of her mouth, only tears cascaded down her face. At this point, she already had two black lines running down her cheeks from mascara. Next time she would need waterproof mascara...next time? she thought and cried even more.
"Hey, no, don't cry like that. You can tell me what's happening and we'll find a way to fix it. There's nothing in this life that doesn't have a solution except death, and nobody here is dead so..."
"I'm pregnant" she said quickly and almost in a whisper.
"Oh, and... don't you want to continue with the pregnancy? Derek doesn't want to continue?"
"No, no. Derek doesn't even know yet because I haven't found the right moment to tell him and I-I..." It was hard for her to speak while crying, as if she had a lump in her throat that tightened and blocked the words from properly coming out of her mouth. Bailey could sense that and wanted to cry for her seeing her so distressed.
"Hey, calm down" she whispered, softly rubbing her back up and down. "Are you happy with this news?"
"I... I guess so. I mean, I always wanted to have a baby with Derek, but I didn't think..."
"Well, you don't have to think anymore" she interrupted. "You're going to have a beautiful baby!"
"I… I am..."
"You should be celebrating this news! It's a new blessing coming into your life. You don't have to be here crying over a man when you have the love of your life growing in your uterus."
"But I love him, Miranda. And I can't do this alone, I need him by my side more than ever and he's only getting further away from me..."
"Of course, you can do this alone. You're an intelligent, determined, responsible woman. The head of two departments, globally certified in baby care. This is easy for you, I mean, you're surrounded by pregnant women and babies every day. I bet you can even deliver your own baby. You don't need a neurosurgeon to tell you how to do it, right?"
Addison smiled for the first time in that day. She knew Bailey was saying this to make her feel better.
"Listen," Bailey said, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. "You're in a marvelous moment of your life. Where everything is new, where everything feels much more intense. You have thousands of hormones running through your body, destabilizing you. I don't need to tell you all this, you know it better than I do. But if I can give you some mother-to-mother advice, it's not to worry and suffer before it's time. I don't know what's going on between you and Shepherd, but I'm pretty sure you'll work it out. You need to calm down and tell him before he finds out in another way."
"I still don't know how to tell him. I wanted to do something special but... I can't find the right moment and... I'm scared of his reaction..."
"Does he like kids? I mean, does he want to be a father?"
"Yes, he does. He always wanted to be a father. We talked a lot about this in the past but I wasn't ready... and now it happened. I don't know if I'm ready either, but at thirty-eight years old and..."
"Well, enough overthinking everything, you have to go and tell him. He'll be happy."
"Really?" she gave her a tiny smile.
"Yes. I can't wait to see Shepherd with a baby carrier, that'll be priceless" she laughed, imagining the scene in her head.
"Oh, I hadn't thought of that" she said laughing.
"McDreamy will be McDaddy with McBaby, ha!"
"Oh, stop it" she continued laughing.
"Addison?"
"Hmm?"
"You're going to be an incredible mom."