Saving Lives
Title: Saving Lives (18 - 19/32)
Author: citron_presse
Pairing: Mark/Meredith
Characters: Mark, Meredith, Derek, Addison, Cast
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I do not own Grey’s Anatomy or its characters
Summary: How Mark's and others' lives change when he receives bad news. Set post-Season 3.
Previous chapters here
( Chapters 1 - 4 )
( Chapters 5 - 6 )
( Chapters 7 - 8 )
( Chapters 9 - 10 )
( Chapters 11 - 14 )
( Chapters 15 - 17 )
Chapter 18, Five Weeks Later - Thursday Morning
It was 6:30 am and Meredith and Cristina had joined the line at the coffee cart. “Do you want to practice, Mer?” Cristina asked snarkily. “I’ll ask you what kind of coffee you’d like, and you’ll give me the answer that actually gets you the outcome you’d prefer.”
“Oh, just drop it!” Meredith said. “It was annoying a week ago and now it’s just old. I preferred that I was honest with him, and the outcome will take care of itself and be just fine.”
“Except that -- and forgive me, despite his great and undying passion for you -- he was getting physical with Satan yesterday.”
Meredith sighed. "I'm sure he has an explanation," she said patiently, adding, "What?!" when she saw Cristina's open-mouthed expression.
"Who the hell are you and what have you done with Meredith?" she asked.
"Meredith found her knight in shining whatever," she said and almost immediately regretted it. She didn't want her relationship with Mark to be anything like her relationship with Derek. But she'd said it now and she'd have to complete the thought if she wanted to deflect Cristina. "It's just that he's off fighting dragons right now."
Cristina raised her eyebrows dubiously. "Or screwing them."
Meredith made a sarcastic face -- trust Cristina to make use of her little metaphor to keep the subject going -- but said nothing.
“Yang!” Callie had spotted them and walked towards them. “Do you want in on a surgery?”
“Maybe,” Cristina said.
“It’s a very interesting case, with a very skilled attending,” Callie cajoled her and something in her smug manner made Cristina hope that she was being offered a procedure with Hahn.
“Okay,” she said and waited for more information.
Callie smirked wickedly. “Thank you. Go find Sloan. Karev's off sick. You’re doing a breast reduction on a guy.”
Cristina made a disgusted noise and said “Why don’t you send her?” indicating Meredith, who shook her head as Callie said “Can’t do that. He doesn’t want to work with her.”
Cristina looked questioningly at Meredith, who mouthed “It’s fine."
"So, Grey -- Hahn, Bailey or me?”
Meredith looked at Cristina and laughed slightly, but resisted the mischievous urge to choose Hahn. “What’s your surgery?” she asked Callie.
“Arthroplasty,“ she said. "For avascular necrosis of the hip and shoulder. The patient has lupus and she’s been over-prescribed steroids for, like, years.” She paused. “It’s probably going to be a really long surgery.”
“That’s fine,” said Meredith. She had a lot of energy and a lot of time to kill.
“So she gets avascular necrosis and I get . . . man boobs?” Cristina spluttered.
“Gynecomastia," Callie corrected her. "And I think he’s a 15 year old kid. It’s sad. Show some compassion, Yang!”
“And yet you smirk," Cristina replied as she walked away.
- - - - -
“Just in case you're in any doubt,” Cristina said. “I don’t want to do a plastics procedure and I don’t want to work with you.”
Mark scrutinized her disbelievingly. “Well that makes two of us,” he said dryly. “You know, I’m one of the US’s foremost plastic surgeons and your boss. Who are you exactly? And where do you get off talking to me like that?”
Surprisingly, he felt good this morning. Not sick, not hurting . . . well, not much, and optimistic. He was even reasonably confident that this gynecomastia case was straightforward enough that the surgery could really help the guy.
“I bought a house yesterday,” he said. He took enormous pleasure in telling people this.
Cristina gave him an incredulous glare. “And this is interesting, why?” she asked. “I have had one conversation with you in my life, which proved to be a complete waste of time. Can we just get on with whatever it is that you do?”
He sighed. “You’re not exactly my favorite person either, you know? You screwed up almost every relationship I have last week.”
“Oh, that's odd," she said. "Because I thought I told you how could fix your relationships and yourself. What you chose to do with the advice is not my problem."
“Your arrogance notwithstanding, Dr Yang,” Mark began sardonically, but then sighed again, "it might take a little more than your interference to do any of that.”
“Are you confiding in me?” she asked hostilely. “Because we are not friends.”
Ignoring the snark, Mark looked down awkwardly and asked, "How is she?"
“You mean Meredith?” Cristina asked. “Oh, Meredith’s 'fine!' How’s your girlfriend?”
“As in Addison, I take it?” he asked wearily.
Cristina raised a meaningful eyebrow. “You know, for a while, even I believed that you loved Meredith. And you certainly convinced her. But I guess once a manwhore--”
This conversation was threatening to ruin his unexpected good mood and he interrupted her. “You know, Yang, most people think you’re an unfeeling robot, does that make it true?” he asked, but added, "Does Meredith think I'm having sex with Addison?"
Cristina sighed. "Meredith doesn't think at all where you're concerned," she said. "You're her knight in shining whatever, apparently."
"I'm her what?"
"It's a compliment," Cristina said matter-of-factly. "I believe it means she loves you." She really had no idea why said this, other than that Sloan and Meredith seemed to be incapable of managing their own lives.
"Fuck! I never thought I'd be anybody's . . . " Mark began to say, but trailed off when he understood the meaning. Knights implied rescue, didn't they? He wasn't exactly in a position to rescue anybody right now. Anyway, he'd always kind of thought that Meredith was rescuing him.
Cristina sighed exaggeratedly, regaining Mark's attention.
“What you said . . . about traps, and Derek and . . . you know,” he said.
“Yes . . .”
“You were right,” he said. “I'm trying, Yang. I just have to--"
“Okay, that’s quite enough bonding,” she broke in, becoming uncomfortable and impatient. “Can we start being pretend surgeons now?”
“I’m waiting for the patient’s antibiotic shot to kick in,” he said. “You have to give an antibiotic about an hour before liposuction.”
Cristina easily reconciled the fact that she actually didn’t know this with her complete lack of interest in plastics.
“And, just so we’re clear,” Mark growled. “I’m the pretend surgeon; you’re just here to do what I tell you. By the way, how are you at fetching coffee?”
- - - - -
“Okay, people," Callie said to the OR staff. “That’s the hip taken care of. We’ll take a little break before we start on the shoulder. Five mintues?”
“Ortho’s very different.” Meredith said, making conversation.
"Separates the women from the girls, right?” Callie said. “Speaking of which, did you see Addison yet?”
Oh, you really got out on the wrong side of someone’s bed this morning! Meredith thought, steeling herself for whatever Callie might say next.
“So how’s it going with you and Mark?”
Meredith pretended not to understand the question, but Callie continued anyway.
“Because he spent the whole of yesterday afternoon with Addison looking at a house. Did you know he was buying a house?”
Meredith tried not think about what Cristina had said about ‘screwing dragons,' but her certainty was beginning to dissolve under Callie’s onslaught.
“Because, you know, Grey, men always do seem to return to what they know, don’t they? I mean, George has only known you and Stevens for, like, a year and you guys always come first with him. Mark’s known. . . been in love with Addison for, what . . .ever?” She shrugged. “I’m just saying.”
It had been one week and nearly two days since Meredith had last felt her heart sink and she had been enjoying the lack of that sensation. Callie was friends with Addison and, although part of her thought all this just sounded like bitterness, Meredith wondered if she knew something and was trying to let her know.
“So . . . “ Callie said in a louder voice. "Time to start up on the next four hour surgery, ladies and gentlemen! You ready, Grey?”
She nodded, thinking that she had never been less ready for anything in her life and wishing she could just go somewhere and . . . well, no, she couldn’t do that, because she had said she wouldn’t cry.
- - - - -
“What the hell is all that?” Mark asked, watching Addison stagger towards his table outside the hospital cafeteria weighed down by a thick folder of papers and a tray with her lunch on. “Did you get your old job back?”
“It’s research,” she said, nearly dropping it all as she sat down. “I got on the internet last night at my hotel,” she had deliberately avoided staying at the Archfield “and did research on non-operable duodenal cancer and immunotherapy.” She smiled at him, obviously delighted with herself.
He raised his eyebrows. “Do you want a girl scout badge?” he asked dryly.
She ignored him. “Well you probably know all this, but it’s fascinating. It’s all based on motivating the immune system to work differently and cause a massive build-up of cancer-defeating cells -- NK cells, T-regulatory cells. I never knew all this before! And then I got on the Seattle Grace intranet and looked up your clinical trial and it sounds great. I mean, it sounds . . . totally hopeful. I can’t wait to meet your oncologist. . .” She ran out of steam when she realized that he was just looking at her and trying not laugh.
“What?” she asked.
“Thank you,” he said. “You’re crazy. But it’s nice that you care.”
“Well, of course I do,” she said. “I already said that. Aren’t you eating lunch?” she asked, noticing that he only had coffee.
“No.”
“You should eat,“ she said. “You look like you lost weight.”
He sighed. “Did you research the side effects?” he asked.
“Well, yes,” she said, looking into her folder and trying to find the relevant printout.
“Then you’ll know that I’m planning on throwing up later,“ he said “I thought eating lunch would interfere with the purity of the whole experience.”
Addison blushed “God, I’m so sorry! I’m such an idiot!”
Mark grinned. “You’re a what?’ he teased her. “I’m not sure I heard that right. Would you mind saying it again?”
She rolled her eyes. “Just on this occasion. Not as a general rule.”
Taking a bite of her sandwich, she attempted a joke to cover her embarrassment. “I always thought Grey was anorexic. I was worried that maybe she was rubbing off on you.”
He just smirked at her.
“What now?” she asked. “Seriously . . . what? . . . Oh, that’s just disgusting! And about the woman you say you love! Men are pigs -- especially you!”
***
Chapter 19, Five Weeks Later - Thursday Afternoon
“So what are you going to do about Meredith?” Addison asked gently. She was sitting next to Mark on the bed, while the IV fed recombinant interleukin 2 into his bloodstream. At least, that was what Addison had told him, adding an incredulous ‘didn’t you read up on this?'
He was beginning to feel the first uncomfortable stirrings of nausea, which, given that he was only one hour into a three-hour treatment, was a seriously bad sign. He sighed. “You’re being very accommodating about her.” He didn’t want to answer her question, so decided to talk crap instead.
“Well, why wouldn’t I be?” she asked. “I think it’s great that you’re in love. Wow, I wish I was!” She paused and then understood. “You mean. . .because of us?” she ventured "Because, Mark, obviously, there is no us . . . not any more.” She smiled. “Except that we’re friends. And, as a friend, I’m telling you need to do something about her before she starts to doubt you. She really never seemed like the most secure person.”
As Addison said this he remembered Meredith saying, 'I don’t feel safe without you.'
“She said I made her feel secure,” he said, half to himself.
“Well, you’re pretty good at that,” Addison said and nudged him affectionately. “I remember when you made me feel that way.”
“You mean the five minutes after we fucked?” he asked nastily.
"No, Mark," she said, obviously hurt. "You made me feel secure when I . . . when I needed it. Why do you have to be so . . . such . . .”
"An ass?” he asked miserably. “I honestly have no fucking idea.” He covered his face with his hands and groaned. “I’m sorry, Addie,” he said, his voice catching. “But you made me so . . . unhappy . . . you made me doubt everything about myself . . . and it always seemed like you didn’t even care.”
Addison breathed in, but didn’t respond, because she didn’t want to interrupt him.
“And," he swallowed “it is about Derek. But it's not just that. It’s . . .“ He struggled to bring clarity to feelings that were almost too painful to recognize. “I can’t love her if it’s going to be the same thing,” he said “Because I think it would finish me.”
She put her hand on his arm and, to her surprise, he let her leave it there.
He sighed. “According to Yang, I’m Meredith’s ‘knight in shining whatever,' whatever the hell that means." He was still uncomfortable with this concept and still seriously doubted his ability to live up to it.
“It suppose it means that she loves you,” Addison said. “But don’t you think you should talk to Meredith rather than Yang or Callie?” she asked.
He was lost in his own thoughts and didn't respond. “You know, she said that she doesn’t mind me being screwed up,” he said.
“You actually had that much conversation with her?” Addison asked, making fun of him.
“Well, yeah,” he said, frowning slightly. "But nowhere near enough.”
“Mark,“ she said. "Listen to me. You love her. I meant it when I said screw Derek. And try to forget what I did to you.”
“What we did to each other,” he said very quietly.
“Okay . . . that’s . . . thank you for that,” she said and waited a few seconds to absorb the fact that she had been forgiven. She inhaled. "Anyway, forget that. Just tell her you love her and . . . well, love her.”
“Just like that?” he asked, teasing her “Because we’re both such experts at loving other people?”
“There’s always a first time,” she said. “Maybe if you can do it, then there’s hope for me. And, between you and me,” she said “I think you’re pretty good at it, when you’re not screwing stuff up, of course.”
“Just don't, would you?” he said. “Because I’m dangerously close to. . . " He sighed. Seriously, the crying shit was going to have to stop.
“You know, women like it when men can cry,” Addison said.
“You know,” he mimicked her “This is one time I don’t give a fuck what women like.”
- - - - -
As the afternoon had worn on, Mark had become increasingly subdued and Addison could tell he wasn't feeling well. Eventually he fell asleep, which gave her space to think.
She couldn’t understand how someone who was so confident about sex -- or at least, had been. She really hoped that she hadn’t made him doubt that, because well . . . Oh, for God’s sake, Addison, focus! she thought as she forced herself to cut off her inappropriately steamy memories -- could be so hopeless about just talking to someone that he loved. She reached a decision.
“It’s not me you want here,“ she said and got up and left the room. She found a nurse and asked her to tell Mark, if he woke up, that she would be back, and then walked up the hallway to the elevator. When it came, she got in and pushed the button for the surgical floor.
When the elevator doors opened again, Cristina Yang was waiting there. “Dr Yang,” Addison acknowledged her, as Cristina raised an eyebrow at her. She had intended to walk straight past her, but at the last minute asked “Do you happen to know where I can find Dr Grey?”
“Why?” Cristina asked rudely.
Addison tried to remain polite as she gave the obvious answer “Because I’d like to see her.”
From the look on her face, Yang appeared to be weighing up some kind of dilemma.
“Meredith’s my person.” she eventually said curtly
“Well, that’s good,” Addison said, although this made no sense to her. “Do you know where I--”
“She’s already been hurt by one of your little dramas,“ Cristina interrupted.
Addison was at first confused, then understood “Wow,” she said, stung by the description of the pain between her and Derek as a ‘little drama.' “Please, Yang,” she said, trying to recover herself, “Don’t hold back will you!” And she actually felt tears prickling her eyes. She had forgotten how much she hated Seattle Grace.
“You played with him the whole time you were here,” Cristina went on. “And now that Meredith wants him--” she finished off her sentence with a disgusted snort and glared at Addison.
“You’re talking about Mark now, I take it?” Addison faltered, thrown by the continued dispassionate précis of her emotional history.
Cristina’s only reply was to raise her eyebrows, disdainfully, again.
“Do you . . . does Meredith think. . .?” she asked. She could have kicked herself for being naïve enough to imagine that her former colleagues would think she had come for anything but sex, and for forgetting that gossip spread faster than STDs in this damn place.
She was also infuriated that this arrogant intern . . . resident now, she guessed, made her feel so powerless. She was Dr Addison Montgomery, renowned neonatal surgeon. Not that she’d gotten to cut anything lately, and not that she felt like that person any longer. But, nevertheless!
“You’re not screwing Sloan?” Yang asked her.
“No,” she said. “I just came because Derek told me. . . ” she sighed internally, knowing that the whole thing made it look like she hadn’t moved on at all “Mark was sick. I’m flying back to LA on Saturday.”
“And you don’t intend to?”
Addison shook her head.
Cristina's face betrayed a sequence of emotions that went beyond her habitual baseline contempt for whoever was standing in front of her. Disbelief, surprise and, Addison was astonished to see, embarrassment.
“Oh,” she said. “Meredith’s in OR3 with Torres." She turned her back on Addison without another word and pressed the button to recall the now departed elevator.
- - - - -
“Addison! Hey girl!” Callie called to her as she entered the OR, holding a mask to her face. “Shame you’re not a leading Ortho authority.” Callie sounded stressed. She had both hands inside the patient’s left shoulder cavity and appeared to be holding the woman’s shoulder together. “Patient’s muscle integrity is for shit,” she said “It didn’t show up in the tests. Grey!” she snapped. “Get your hand in here and press down on the prosthesis.”
Addison sought out Meredith’s eyes and smiled and raised her eyebrows encouragingly. She received a look in return that was something between surprise and resentment. Once again, she thought how much she hated Seattle Grace. Why did everything here have to be so damn complicated?
“Callie,” she said. “I can see . . . well, obviously you’re busy, but. . .” Callie, distracted, ignored her. “Dr Grey.” She felt ridiculously self-conscious. “I’m just going to leave my cell phone number in the scrub room. Do you think you could give me a call when you're finished here?”
Meredith was red in the face from exertion and seemed to be in a mood of mingled fury and freaking-out that Addison intimately understood. She briefly speculated whether this frame of mind was a consequence of being with Derek and then Mark, now that she saw and recognized it on the face of the only other woman who had done this, and wondered if she was really doing Meredith any favors by helping things along. ‘Cynicism,’ she remembered her mother’s annoying words, ‘is unbecoming to a lady.' She gave a snarky reply in her head and focused.
“Seriously,” she said encouragingly. “Please call me. It’s important.”
Meredith nodded suspiciously and said “Okay,” and Addison smiled at her. “I’ll just get out of your way now,” she said to Callie and left the OR.
- - - - -
“Well I never. . .” Addison sighed when Derek’s voice accosted her as she stepped into the hallway. He had on that surprised, hurt 'I’m the good guy; whatever did you do now?' expression. “I was wondering when I’d run into you.”
She rolled her eyes. “I know it’s difficult for you, Derek. But please try to remember that the only reason I’m here is because you called me.”
He gave a cold smile. “So you’re here to see Mark?” he asked. “Should I be humiliated that both the women I . . . loved," he emphasized the past tense “are fighting over him?”
Just be the grown-up, Addison! she exhorted herself and took a deep breath. “Derek” she said. “There probably are things that you should be humiliated by, in fact there definitely are but -- and try to understand this -- I’m not with Mark. Hell, I’m not with anyone!” She laughed a little wildly. “I think the two of you were enough for one lifetime.”
Derek actually looked slightly penitent and she thought she saw a glimmer of someone she used to know. She was taken aback.
“I. . . I . . .” she stammered uncertainly. “Listen, Derek. I have . . . stuff to do. But maybe we could grab a drink with me later? Joe’s? 8 pm’ish? I mean, you did call me.” She didn’t know how to continue.
His eyes registered confusion, but then softened slightly. “If you like," he said. “But not Joe’s.” And he gave her directions to the bar he had gone to with Mark what now seemed like an age ago.
- - - - -
“Hey” Addison said softly.
“I guess,” Mark muttered, recognizing that that didn’t make any sense. “I hate this fucking disease.” Because, once again, the immunotherapy had reduced him to a debilitated mess.
“Dr Lindstrom said you can go home,” she said.
He pulled himself up, painfully, into a sitting position and sighed. “You want to drive?” he asked.
Her eyes widened. “You want me to drive the Carrera?” she asked.
“I know you hate it. It’s just that. . . ” He shrugged, defeated by the requirement to express himself clearly.
“I can drive it,” she agreed uncertainly. “But you never let anyone drive it.”
“That was in the life where I had a body that worked right,” he said morosely. “By the way, you may have to pull over for me to puke, which will be gross and I’m sorry that you have to--”
“Really, Mark, I’ve seen worse things,” she interrupted, much more impatiently than she had intended. “I am a doctor!”
“Everything okay?” he asked.
She frowned slightly. “I saw Derek,” she said.
“Yeah . . . how’d that go?” he asked. “You tell him to go screw himself?”
She shook her head.
“Not that easy, is it, huh?”
Author: citron_presse
Pairing: Mark/Meredith
Characters: Mark, Meredith, Derek, Addison, Cast
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I do not own Grey’s Anatomy or its characters
Summary: How Mark's and others' lives change when he receives bad news. Set post-Season 3.
Previous chapters here
( Chapters 1 - 4 )
( Chapters 5 - 6 )
( Chapters 7 - 8 )
( Chapters 9 - 10 )
( Chapters 11 - 14 )
( Chapters 15 - 17 )
Chapter 18, Five Weeks Later - Thursday Morning
It was 6:30 am and Meredith and Cristina had joined the line at the coffee cart. “Do you want to practice, Mer?” Cristina asked snarkily. “I’ll ask you what kind of coffee you’d like, and you’ll give me the answer that actually gets you the outcome you’d prefer.”
“Oh, just drop it!” Meredith said. “It was annoying a week ago and now it’s just old. I preferred that I was honest with him, and the outcome will take care of itself and be just fine.”
“Except that -- and forgive me, despite his great and undying passion for you -- he was getting physical with Satan yesterday.”
Meredith sighed. "I'm sure he has an explanation," she said patiently, adding, "What?!" when she saw Cristina's open-mouthed expression.
"Who the hell are you and what have you done with Meredith?" she asked.
"Meredith found her knight in shining whatever," she said and almost immediately regretted it. She didn't want her relationship with Mark to be anything like her relationship with Derek. But she'd said it now and she'd have to complete the thought if she wanted to deflect Cristina. "It's just that he's off fighting dragons right now."
Cristina raised her eyebrows dubiously. "Or screwing them."
Meredith made a sarcastic face -- trust Cristina to make use of her little metaphor to keep the subject going -- but said nothing.
“Yang!” Callie had spotted them and walked towards them. “Do you want in on a surgery?”
“Maybe,” Cristina said.
“It’s a very interesting case, with a very skilled attending,” Callie cajoled her and something in her smug manner made Cristina hope that she was being offered a procedure with Hahn.
“Okay,” she said and waited for more information.
Callie smirked wickedly. “Thank you. Go find Sloan. Karev's off sick. You’re doing a breast reduction on a guy.”
Cristina made a disgusted noise and said “Why don’t you send her?” indicating Meredith, who shook her head as Callie said “Can’t do that. He doesn’t want to work with her.”
Cristina looked questioningly at Meredith, who mouthed “It’s fine."
"So, Grey -- Hahn, Bailey or me?”
Meredith looked at Cristina and laughed slightly, but resisted the mischievous urge to choose Hahn. “What’s your surgery?” she asked Callie.
“Arthroplasty,“ she said. "For avascular necrosis of the hip and shoulder. The patient has lupus and she’s been over-prescribed steroids for, like, years.” She paused. “It’s probably going to be a really long surgery.”
“That’s fine,” said Meredith. She had a lot of energy and a lot of time to kill.
“So she gets avascular necrosis and I get . . . man boobs?” Cristina spluttered.
“Gynecomastia," Callie corrected her. "And I think he’s a 15 year old kid. It’s sad. Show some compassion, Yang!”
“And yet you smirk," Cristina replied as she walked away.
- - - - -
“Just in case you're in any doubt,” Cristina said. “I don’t want to do a plastics procedure and I don’t want to work with you.”
Mark scrutinized her disbelievingly. “Well that makes two of us,” he said dryly. “You know, I’m one of the US’s foremost plastic surgeons and your boss. Who are you exactly? And where do you get off talking to me like that?”
Surprisingly, he felt good this morning. Not sick, not hurting . . . well, not much, and optimistic. He was even reasonably confident that this gynecomastia case was straightforward enough that the surgery could really help the guy.
“I bought a house yesterday,” he said. He took enormous pleasure in telling people this.
Cristina gave him an incredulous glare. “And this is interesting, why?” she asked. “I have had one conversation with you in my life, which proved to be a complete waste of time. Can we just get on with whatever it is that you do?”
He sighed. “You’re not exactly my favorite person either, you know? You screwed up almost every relationship I have last week.”
“Oh, that's odd," she said. "Because I thought I told you how could fix your relationships and yourself. What you chose to do with the advice is not my problem."
“Your arrogance notwithstanding, Dr Yang,” Mark began sardonically, but then sighed again, "it might take a little more than your interference to do any of that.”
“Are you confiding in me?” she asked hostilely. “Because we are not friends.”
Ignoring the snark, Mark looked down awkwardly and asked, "How is she?"
“You mean Meredith?” Cristina asked. “Oh, Meredith’s 'fine!' How’s your girlfriend?”
“As in Addison, I take it?” he asked wearily.
Cristina raised a meaningful eyebrow. “You know, for a while, even I believed that you loved Meredith. And you certainly convinced her. But I guess once a manwhore--”
This conversation was threatening to ruin his unexpected good mood and he interrupted her. “You know, Yang, most people think you’re an unfeeling robot, does that make it true?” he asked, but added, "Does Meredith think I'm having sex with Addison?"
Cristina sighed. "Meredith doesn't think at all where you're concerned," she said. "You're her knight in shining whatever, apparently."
"I'm her what?"
"It's a compliment," Cristina said matter-of-factly. "I believe it means she loves you." She really had no idea why said this, other than that Sloan and Meredith seemed to be incapable of managing their own lives.
"Fuck! I never thought I'd be anybody's . . . " Mark began to say, but trailed off when he understood the meaning. Knights implied rescue, didn't they? He wasn't exactly in a position to rescue anybody right now. Anyway, he'd always kind of thought that Meredith was rescuing him.
Cristina sighed exaggeratedly, regaining Mark's attention.
“What you said . . . about traps, and Derek and . . . you know,” he said.
“Yes . . .”
“You were right,” he said. “I'm trying, Yang. I just have to--"
“Okay, that’s quite enough bonding,” she broke in, becoming uncomfortable and impatient. “Can we start being pretend surgeons now?”
“I’m waiting for the patient’s antibiotic shot to kick in,” he said. “You have to give an antibiotic about an hour before liposuction.”
Cristina easily reconciled the fact that she actually didn’t know this with her complete lack of interest in plastics.
“And, just so we’re clear,” Mark growled. “I’m the pretend surgeon; you’re just here to do what I tell you. By the way, how are you at fetching coffee?”
- - - - -
“Okay, people," Callie said to the OR staff. “That’s the hip taken care of. We’ll take a little break before we start on the shoulder. Five mintues?”
“Ortho’s very different.” Meredith said, making conversation.
"Separates the women from the girls, right?” Callie said. “Speaking of which, did you see Addison yet?”
Oh, you really got out on the wrong side of someone’s bed this morning! Meredith thought, steeling herself for whatever Callie might say next.
“So how’s it going with you and Mark?”
Meredith pretended not to understand the question, but Callie continued anyway.
“Because he spent the whole of yesterday afternoon with Addison looking at a house. Did you know he was buying a house?”
Meredith tried not think about what Cristina had said about ‘screwing dragons,' but her certainty was beginning to dissolve under Callie’s onslaught.
“Because, you know, Grey, men always do seem to return to what they know, don’t they? I mean, George has only known you and Stevens for, like, a year and you guys always come first with him. Mark’s known. . . been in love with Addison for, what . . .ever?” She shrugged. “I’m just saying.”
It had been one week and nearly two days since Meredith had last felt her heart sink and she had been enjoying the lack of that sensation. Callie was friends with Addison and, although part of her thought all this just sounded like bitterness, Meredith wondered if she knew something and was trying to let her know.
“So . . . “ Callie said in a louder voice. "Time to start up on the next four hour surgery, ladies and gentlemen! You ready, Grey?”
She nodded, thinking that she had never been less ready for anything in her life and wishing she could just go somewhere and . . . well, no, she couldn’t do that, because she had said she wouldn’t cry.
- - - - -
“What the hell is all that?” Mark asked, watching Addison stagger towards his table outside the hospital cafeteria weighed down by a thick folder of papers and a tray with her lunch on. “Did you get your old job back?”
“It’s research,” she said, nearly dropping it all as she sat down. “I got on the internet last night at my hotel,” she had deliberately avoided staying at the Archfield “and did research on non-operable duodenal cancer and immunotherapy.” She smiled at him, obviously delighted with herself.
He raised his eyebrows. “Do you want a girl scout badge?” he asked dryly.
She ignored him. “Well you probably know all this, but it’s fascinating. It’s all based on motivating the immune system to work differently and cause a massive build-up of cancer-defeating cells -- NK cells, T-regulatory cells. I never knew all this before! And then I got on the Seattle Grace intranet and looked up your clinical trial and it sounds great. I mean, it sounds . . . totally hopeful. I can’t wait to meet your oncologist. . .” She ran out of steam when she realized that he was just looking at her and trying not laugh.
“What?” she asked.
“Thank you,” he said. “You’re crazy. But it’s nice that you care.”
“Well, of course I do,” she said. “I already said that. Aren’t you eating lunch?” she asked, noticing that he only had coffee.
“No.”
“You should eat,“ she said. “You look like you lost weight.”
He sighed. “Did you research the side effects?” he asked.
“Well, yes,” she said, looking into her folder and trying to find the relevant printout.
“Then you’ll know that I’m planning on throwing up later,“ he said “I thought eating lunch would interfere with the purity of the whole experience.”
Addison blushed “God, I’m so sorry! I’m such an idiot!”
Mark grinned. “You’re a what?’ he teased her. “I’m not sure I heard that right. Would you mind saying it again?”
She rolled her eyes. “Just on this occasion. Not as a general rule.”
Taking a bite of her sandwich, she attempted a joke to cover her embarrassment. “I always thought Grey was anorexic. I was worried that maybe she was rubbing off on you.”
He just smirked at her.
“What now?” she asked. “Seriously . . . what? . . . Oh, that’s just disgusting! And about the woman you say you love! Men are pigs -- especially you!”
***
Chapter 19, Five Weeks Later - Thursday Afternoon
“So what are you going to do about Meredith?” Addison asked gently. She was sitting next to Mark on the bed, while the IV fed recombinant interleukin 2 into his bloodstream. At least, that was what Addison had told him, adding an incredulous ‘didn’t you read up on this?'
He was beginning to feel the first uncomfortable stirrings of nausea, which, given that he was only one hour into a three-hour treatment, was a seriously bad sign. He sighed. “You’re being very accommodating about her.” He didn’t want to answer her question, so decided to talk crap instead.
“Well, why wouldn’t I be?” she asked. “I think it’s great that you’re in love. Wow, I wish I was!” She paused and then understood. “You mean. . .because of us?” she ventured "Because, Mark, obviously, there is no us . . . not any more.” She smiled. “Except that we’re friends. And, as a friend, I’m telling you need to do something about her before she starts to doubt you. She really never seemed like the most secure person.”
As Addison said this he remembered Meredith saying, 'I don’t feel safe without you.'
“She said I made her feel secure,” he said, half to himself.
“Well, you’re pretty good at that,” Addison said and nudged him affectionately. “I remember when you made me feel that way.”
“You mean the five minutes after we fucked?” he asked nastily.
"No, Mark," she said, obviously hurt. "You made me feel secure when I . . . when I needed it. Why do you have to be so . . . such . . .”
"An ass?” he asked miserably. “I honestly have no fucking idea.” He covered his face with his hands and groaned. “I’m sorry, Addie,” he said, his voice catching. “But you made me so . . . unhappy . . . you made me doubt everything about myself . . . and it always seemed like you didn’t even care.”
Addison breathed in, but didn’t respond, because she didn’t want to interrupt him.
“And," he swallowed “it is about Derek. But it's not just that. It’s . . .“ He struggled to bring clarity to feelings that were almost too painful to recognize. “I can’t love her if it’s going to be the same thing,” he said “Because I think it would finish me.”
She put her hand on his arm and, to her surprise, he let her leave it there.
He sighed. “According to Yang, I’m Meredith’s ‘knight in shining whatever,' whatever the hell that means." He was still uncomfortable with this concept and still seriously doubted his ability to live up to it.
“It suppose it means that she loves you,” Addison said. “But don’t you think you should talk to Meredith rather than Yang or Callie?” she asked.
He was lost in his own thoughts and didn't respond. “You know, she said that she doesn’t mind me being screwed up,” he said.
“You actually had that much conversation with her?” Addison asked, making fun of him.
“Well, yeah,” he said, frowning slightly. "But nowhere near enough.”
“Mark,“ she said. "Listen to me. You love her. I meant it when I said screw Derek. And try to forget what I did to you.”
“What we did to each other,” he said very quietly.
“Okay . . . that’s . . . thank you for that,” she said and waited a few seconds to absorb the fact that she had been forgiven. She inhaled. "Anyway, forget that. Just tell her you love her and . . . well, love her.”
“Just like that?” he asked, teasing her “Because we’re both such experts at loving other people?”
“There’s always a first time,” she said. “Maybe if you can do it, then there’s hope for me. And, between you and me,” she said “I think you’re pretty good at it, when you’re not screwing stuff up, of course.”
“Just don't, would you?” he said. “Because I’m dangerously close to. . . " He sighed. Seriously, the crying shit was going to have to stop.
“You know, women like it when men can cry,” Addison said.
“You know,” he mimicked her “This is one time I don’t give a fuck what women like.”
- - - - -
As the afternoon had worn on, Mark had become increasingly subdued and Addison could tell he wasn't feeling well. Eventually he fell asleep, which gave her space to think.
She couldn’t understand how someone who was so confident about sex -- or at least, had been. She really hoped that she hadn’t made him doubt that, because well . . . Oh, for God’s sake, Addison, focus! she thought as she forced herself to cut off her inappropriately steamy memories -- could be so hopeless about just talking to someone that he loved. She reached a decision.
“It’s not me you want here,“ she said and got up and left the room. She found a nurse and asked her to tell Mark, if he woke up, that she would be back, and then walked up the hallway to the elevator. When it came, she got in and pushed the button for the surgical floor.
When the elevator doors opened again, Cristina Yang was waiting there. “Dr Yang,” Addison acknowledged her, as Cristina raised an eyebrow at her. She had intended to walk straight past her, but at the last minute asked “Do you happen to know where I can find Dr Grey?”
“Why?” Cristina asked rudely.
Addison tried to remain polite as she gave the obvious answer “Because I’d like to see her.”
From the look on her face, Yang appeared to be weighing up some kind of dilemma.
“Meredith’s my person.” she eventually said curtly
“Well, that’s good,” Addison said, although this made no sense to her. “Do you know where I--”
“She’s already been hurt by one of your little dramas,“ Cristina interrupted.
Addison was at first confused, then understood “Wow,” she said, stung by the description of the pain between her and Derek as a ‘little drama.' “Please, Yang,” she said, trying to recover herself, “Don’t hold back will you!” And she actually felt tears prickling her eyes. She had forgotten how much she hated Seattle Grace.
“You played with him the whole time you were here,” Cristina went on. “And now that Meredith wants him--” she finished off her sentence with a disgusted snort and glared at Addison.
“You’re talking about Mark now, I take it?” Addison faltered, thrown by the continued dispassionate précis of her emotional history.
Cristina’s only reply was to raise her eyebrows, disdainfully, again.
“Do you . . . does Meredith think. . .?” she asked. She could have kicked herself for being naïve enough to imagine that her former colleagues would think she had come for anything but sex, and for forgetting that gossip spread faster than STDs in this damn place.
She was also infuriated that this arrogant intern . . . resident now, she guessed, made her feel so powerless. She was Dr Addison Montgomery, renowned neonatal surgeon. Not that she’d gotten to cut anything lately, and not that she felt like that person any longer. But, nevertheless!
“You’re not screwing Sloan?” Yang asked her.
“No,” she said. “I just came because Derek told me. . . ” she sighed internally, knowing that the whole thing made it look like she hadn’t moved on at all “Mark was sick. I’m flying back to LA on Saturday.”
“And you don’t intend to?”
Addison shook her head.
Cristina's face betrayed a sequence of emotions that went beyond her habitual baseline contempt for whoever was standing in front of her. Disbelief, surprise and, Addison was astonished to see, embarrassment.
“Oh,” she said. “Meredith’s in OR3 with Torres." She turned her back on Addison without another word and pressed the button to recall the now departed elevator.
- - - - -
“Addison! Hey girl!” Callie called to her as she entered the OR, holding a mask to her face. “Shame you’re not a leading Ortho authority.” Callie sounded stressed. She had both hands inside the patient’s left shoulder cavity and appeared to be holding the woman’s shoulder together. “Patient’s muscle integrity is for shit,” she said “It didn’t show up in the tests. Grey!” she snapped. “Get your hand in here and press down on the prosthesis.”
Addison sought out Meredith’s eyes and smiled and raised her eyebrows encouragingly. She received a look in return that was something between surprise and resentment. Once again, she thought how much she hated Seattle Grace. Why did everything here have to be so damn complicated?
“Callie,” she said. “I can see . . . well, obviously you’re busy, but. . .” Callie, distracted, ignored her. “Dr Grey.” She felt ridiculously self-conscious. “I’m just going to leave my cell phone number in the scrub room. Do you think you could give me a call when you're finished here?”
Meredith was red in the face from exertion and seemed to be in a mood of mingled fury and freaking-out that Addison intimately understood. She briefly speculated whether this frame of mind was a consequence of being with Derek and then Mark, now that she saw and recognized it on the face of the only other woman who had done this, and wondered if she was really doing Meredith any favors by helping things along. ‘Cynicism,’ she remembered her mother’s annoying words, ‘is unbecoming to a lady.' She gave a snarky reply in her head and focused.
“Seriously,” she said encouragingly. “Please call me. It’s important.”
Meredith nodded suspiciously and said “Okay,” and Addison smiled at her. “I’ll just get out of your way now,” she said to Callie and left the OR.
- - - - -
“Well I never. . .” Addison sighed when Derek’s voice accosted her as she stepped into the hallway. He had on that surprised, hurt 'I’m the good guy; whatever did you do now?' expression. “I was wondering when I’d run into you.”
She rolled her eyes. “I know it’s difficult for you, Derek. But please try to remember that the only reason I’m here is because you called me.”
He gave a cold smile. “So you’re here to see Mark?” he asked. “Should I be humiliated that both the women I . . . loved," he emphasized the past tense “are fighting over him?”
Just be the grown-up, Addison! she exhorted herself and took a deep breath. “Derek” she said. “There probably are things that you should be humiliated by, in fact there definitely are but -- and try to understand this -- I’m not with Mark. Hell, I’m not with anyone!” She laughed a little wildly. “I think the two of you were enough for one lifetime.”
Derek actually looked slightly penitent and she thought she saw a glimmer of someone she used to know. She was taken aback.
“I. . . I . . .” she stammered uncertainly. “Listen, Derek. I have . . . stuff to do. But maybe we could grab a drink with me later? Joe’s? 8 pm’ish? I mean, you did call me.” She didn’t know how to continue.
His eyes registered confusion, but then softened slightly. “If you like," he said. “But not Joe’s.” And he gave her directions to the bar he had gone to with Mark what now seemed like an age ago.
- - - - -
“Hey” Addison said softly.
“I guess,” Mark muttered, recognizing that that didn’t make any sense. “I hate this fucking disease.” Because, once again, the immunotherapy had reduced him to a debilitated mess.
“Dr Lindstrom said you can go home,” she said.
He pulled himself up, painfully, into a sitting position and sighed. “You want to drive?” he asked.
Her eyes widened. “You want me to drive the Carrera?” she asked.
“I know you hate it. It’s just that. . . ” He shrugged, defeated by the requirement to express himself clearly.
“I can drive it,” she agreed uncertainly. “But you never let anyone drive it.”
“That was in the life where I had a body that worked right,” he said morosely. “By the way, you may have to pull over for me to puke, which will be gross and I’m sorry that you have to--”
“Really, Mark, I’ve seen worse things,” she interrupted, much more impatiently than she had intended. “I am a doctor!”
“Everything okay?” he asked.
She frowned slightly. “I saw Derek,” she said.
“Yeah . . . how’d that go?” he asked. “You tell him to go screw himself?”
She shook her head.
“Not that easy, is it, huh?”