(no subject)
This is based on a video I did, and I felt like I wanted to do a written version of it, or something like it, so here they both are...
This is the link to the Addison-video "Not me, not I" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tJf5d4XMFw
Not me, not I
*****
“I want you to care. I sleep with your best friend, and you walk away. Then he comes out here from New York and rubs it in your face, and you still 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 blinding rage. Oh, but wait. That won't work either because I'm not Meredith Grey!”
"All I want is Seattle. I want Seattle and want never to see you again”
"Why don't you pick a floor and stay on it and I'll pick a floor and stay on that because I really need a moment or two without you. Your face pops up in my head and your panties show up in my husband's pocket, really, you're everywhere, and I need a moment or two without you."
"Our marriage is over."
"Did you know about the slutty sex your slutty friend had with my super slutty husband?"
“Oh God”, she whispered as the tears ran down her cheeks and ended up on her white lab coat. The crying came from her throat, she couldn’t stop it, she screamed out and tried to catch her breath, she was going to dehydrate, she couldn’t make it stop, even if she tried hard, the feeling in her throat was too horrible and she sobbed, needed to let it all out.
What had she done? She had found Meredith’s panties… over four months ago. Why did it all come back to haunt her now? Her marriage was over, she was a divorced woman, she had moved on with Mark, used him, then moved on to Alex, trying to find something to replace the emptiness in her heart, but everything around her was just… foggy, like the morning she got poison oak, it had been spring, she had walked Doc, and it had been foggy in the forest.
She was sitting on the floor, in a booth, in the restroom on the fourth fifth floor. No-one ever came her, so she got to cry out everything, without having to wonder who might have heard her little break-down.
Her knees shook as she sat there with a piece of toilet paper to dry her tears. When was it going to stop? She had already started crying once in the bathroom, Callie had helped her up then, and that’s when it should have stopped. But no. What goes around comes around, this was what she got. Why couldn’t there be a button to push? Or a remote, something that could make her stop crying.
Time passed by. The feeling in her throat, had changed, and she grabbed her hair, and the next thing she knew was that she was throwing up into the toilet, then she went on crying again.
“Jesus, I’m pure evil”, she mumbled as she thought about everything she had done. Cheating on Derek, making him stay with her, sleeping with Mark again as soon as she found out he had slept with Meredith, hurting Mark even though he loved her, playing around with Alex, using him… Why had she become this monster she didn’t want to be?
Maybe because she needed love. Maybe because she caught men every single time they lied.
She wiped a few tears away and looked at the booth wall in front of her. White and clean. Her conscience wasn’t that, not white and clean. What she did didn’t feel like anything anymore. She remembered a story she had heard when she was a child.
She had a star inside her chest, a sharp one. Every time she did something wrong, something she knew was wrong, the star spun and tore deep wounds into her chest and her heart. But every time the star spun a little piece of every point broke off. That way it didn’t hurt as much when she chose the wrong way again.
That’s why she didn’t feel anything anymore. Or did she? She felt furious and sorry when she looked at Derek, she felt uncomfortable and special when she looked at Mark and she felt wanted and horny when she looked at Alex. She felt all that.
But it wasn’t enough, not for her.
“Damn it”, she mumbled and wiped some of her ruined mascara away. Maybe she needed a therapist, a shrink… that psychology-guy from psych was nice, the one with the black hair and the brown eyes. What was she thinking about?! Here she was, crying, and she was thinking about the guy from psych?!
“Addison?” a familiar voice mumbled somewhere, and Addison closed her eyes.
“Yeah?” she said and tried to sound okay, but the feeling of vomit in her throat made her grab her hair again and lean into the toilet.
“You good?”
“Yeah, Miranda, everything’s…” That did it, she gasped her breath and vomited into the toilet again, then wiped her face with some toilet paper and flushed. Her legs were shaking a lot more when she tried to stand up, but she finally got back on her feet and opened the door. “Everything’s okay… now, thank you.”
Bailey shook her head, looked at Addison’s white face with her dark eyes, then smiled. “Hell, girl, you look like you need some good sleep.”
“I could really use some, yes”, she said as she started washing her hands.
“Wanna talk about it?” Bailey wasn’t the caring-type, but Addison and here had grown very close after the whole giving-birth-to-William and poison-oak-thing, and now Bailey sensed that Addison needed to talk even though she tried to hide the shape she was in.
“No, not really, but maybe I should.” She dried her hands. “I’m think I need a shrink.”
“Why?” Bailey had thought that Derek and Addison’s marriage-counseling had been enough for both of them.
“Because I have problems.”
“Well you can discuss your problems with me or the ortho-chick, anyway you want it, Gyno, or you can start talking about your goddamn love-problems before I’m going to the bathroom, so come on, now.”
Addison opened her mouth, closed it, rubbed her temples, and then opened her mouth again. “I seem to have some serious trouble with myself. Uh…” She saw Bailey’s face, full of care. Or maybe it wasn’t care, nobody cared about Addison Montgomery, except for Mark and Callie… “I just can’t get it out of my system that I am this… woman who’s divorced and lusting after her intern.”
“Which intern?”
“What?”
“Which intern are you *lusting* after, because if it’s one of mine then I’m so gonna kick your ass because my interns have been through hell over this last year, not to mention all the damn rumors that go around here like -”
“Not *your* intern, don’t worry”, Addison lied. “Anyways, I just realized what I’ve done. I mean, I cheated on Derek, he cheated on me, we got divorced, but then I started sleeping with Mark again…”
“Not so nice images in my head of you and Mr. Scalpel”, Bailey mumbled.
“… and then I got this crush on Ka… one of the interns in this hospital, but I kept on sleeping with Mark and now he’s all I love you and I just can’t take that, we even have this goddamn bet that we won’t have sex in sixty days, which was my idea, by the way…”
“Honey, you have sex-addiction”, Bailey laughed and took a look at her hair in the mirror. “You lost Derek to Meredith and you’re trying to feel good by sleeping with a bunch of guys… doctors… but no matter how good they make you feel they can’t repair that tear in your heart. You need to understand that before you go ahead and get HIV or… poison oak.”
“Uh, uh, that’s *so not* funny”, Addison said and shook her head.
“I think it is”, Bailey said and smiled. She turned around to face Addison, who actually was a head taller. “Look, you know what to do.”
“I don’t. I really, really don’t, I am… empty. I’m throwing up in here, crying, feeling so miserable that I think every baby in the nursery is going to start crying when I walk in!”
“Stop with the self pity!” Bailey snapped and hit Addison a little on her arm.
“Hey!” Addison snapped back and took a step to the side to avoid any more of Bailey’s arms.
“Don’t be such a baby, Addison, you can’t be Derek or Burke, you can’t be another attending going after an intern. You’re a woman, I hope, and that would just be tacky!”
“But -”
“And you don’t wanna hurt this interns reputation?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“He doesn’t have a good reputation, does he?”
“Uh, well, I don’t -”
“It’s Karev.”
“No, I just, … what?”
“You are SO horny for Alex Karev”, Bailey said and shook her head while biting her teeth together, trying to keep herself from hitting Addison as hard as she could. She would take her down in a second, that was for sure, because she was Miranda Bailey.
“No. No, no and no, not Alex Karev.”
“Yes it is. O’Malley’s married to ortho now, and besides, he’s not your type. But now that I think about it, Karev kinda reminds me of Mark Sloan, right? They both have this bad boy style, right?”
“Right?”
“Right. So let me tell you something here, Addison, and I know you’re not gonna like this, but I’m gonna say it anyway -”
“Just be gentle with me, Miranda”, Addison begged and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ve been crying my eyes out for the last hour, vomiting, too, so just be gentle.”
“You need to grow up”, Bailey said quickly and headed for one of the doors to a booth.
“What? What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that this isn’t high school! You can’t pretend like what you do here doesn’t matter in the younger ones’ eyes, it’s not that simple. You’re gonna be McHot sleeping with Karev if you’re determined to take care of that lusting of yours“, she mumbled.
Addison couldn’t get a word out, and Bailey continued.
“You lost your husband to Grey, okay? And they you started screwing Sloan to fill that empty void of yours, and I’ll tell you and I’ll tell you right now; it’s not gonna happen! You can’t find happiness by sleeping around, not with anyone, not even Sloan or… Karev. And, you keep your hands of off my intern, you get that?!”
“Yes”, Addison swallowed and nodded.
“Good. Now would you excuse me.” Bailey disappeared inside one of the booths and Addison turned around to face the mirror, panicked. She didn’t feel like crying anymore, now she felt like drinking, but she was on duty. Duty, duty, duty, work, that was all she had. Work. She was a workaholic with some kind of… sex-addiction? Hell no.
*****
“So you actually pull the woman’s face off?” Alex mumbled.
“I actually pull the woman’s face off, yes”, Mark said, as they both walked down the hall near the board on the surgical floor. “I’m surprised you stayed with Addison even though you’ve showed a lot of interest in plastics…”
Alex clenched his jaw and wondered if Mark wanted him to say something. Maybe he knew. Maybe Addison had told him. Shit. Okay, they hadn’t done anything, really, she had just kissed him, they had kissed, at Joe’s, no big deal. Or…?
“Yeah, I mean, you know, I remember what you said the day Shepherd hit you in the face. You said I should consider a transfer to L.A or New York, cos I wasn’t gonna see anything up here, but dude… You know, the kids bring out some good sides in me.”
“Hmm, so you chose the soft sides instead of the scalpel?” Mark mumbled as they passed the nurses’ station.
“It’s still surgical”, Alex insisted and looked at Mark. “You know, the C-sections…”
“Well, that’s all the heat there is, isn’t it?” Mark laughed and looked around to see if Addison was anywhere near them. “That’s probably why she chose the neonatal-field.”
“Who?” Alex pretended not to know.
“Addison”, Mark answered, and Alex could almost here the softness in his voice as he said her name out loud. “She would have made a good plastic-surgeon, she’s got it all, but no, she had to be the soft one and choose… babies.”
“Maybe that’s, you know, her.”
“I don’t think so”, Mark said quickly and shook his head and put his hands into his lab coat pockets. “Cos you know, I’ve know her for a long time, and I know how she deals with her career. She’s hardcore, cold like ice on the inside, but she keeps this whole rich-prada-bitch-thing up, so that people won’t see her for who she really is. I think it’s kind of… interesting, fascinating, but that’s just me.”
“Yeah, well…” Alex felt the anger start to rise up inside of him. Sloan was all wrong, he was sure of it, Addison was certainly not cold. Never. “I think she wanted to do something a little less… shallow.” The moment he said it he regretted it.
“Excuse me?” Mark said and stopped. So did Alex.
Addison came around the corner, with a folder in her arms, when she saw Alex and Mark standing by room 2113, not with happy faces. She looked around, made sure Bailey wasn’t around to shout at her, and then she took a deep breath and a few steps towards them.
“Hello, boys”, she said normally and took a quick look at both of them. “You two don’t look too good, bad surgery?”
“No, we were actually discussing you”, Mark answered and cocked his head towards Alex. “Karev here has some interesting views about you.”
“Is that so?” Addison mumbled, and felt the knot in her stomach tighten.
“Yes.” Alex swallowed, looked at a determined Mark, then back at a curious Addison. “Well, Doctor Sloan here thinks you would have made a great plastic surgeon, Doctor Montgomery, but I think you chose pediatrics and neonatal surgery because you wanted something less shallow than scalpels combined with face-lifts.”
Alex had no idea what to expect. He saw the muscles on Addison’s cheeks clench, then he saw here draw in a quick breath, as if she was… pleased?
“You should listen to him more, Mark”, Addison said and closed her folder. “The boy’s got a point.”
Mark dropped his jaw and Alex had some serious trouble, trying to hide his cocky smile. He looked at Addison with his dreamy eyes, and Addison looked back, with her head down but her gaze meeting his. Neither of them cared that Mark was right there, looking at both of them, seeing the excitement between them.
But then Addison remembered Bailey’s words; she was supposed to keep her hands away from Alex Karev, and now she was having eye-sex with him. Well, she wasn’t doing anything wrong, but standing there, having him look at her like that, with that dark shade in his eyes… it made her want to gasp for air, and she moved her gaze over to Mark, who looked HURT.
“Dr. Karev, I have hysterectomy at 4pm, care to scrub in?” she mumbled, just to see Mark’s face.
“Hell, yeah”, Alex breathed out, and Mark and Addison both looked at him. “I mean, yes, I’m there.”
“See you then, and Mark…”, she started as she was passing him by. “Try not to look so sad, you knew all along it was just good fucking.” With that, she kept going, walking through the corridor, leaving Mark there with his mouth open and eyes as big as snowballs.
Alex looked at Mark, who closed his mouth and tried to regain his act. He was after all Doctor Sloan… Who got whomever he wanted. But he couldn’t get Addison, not like this he couldn’t. Good fucking? Hell no, it had been more, at least he had thought so.
*****
“… but I think you chose pediatrics and neonatal surgery because you wanted something less shallow than scalpels combined with face-lifts.”
Addison was resting on the couch in her small office. She didn’t have much: a few plants, a desk, a very uncomfortable chair, more chairs, diplomas, and the couch, which was here favorite furniture in the room. She had pulled a quilt over here, she was resting her eyes for a bit, thinking about Alex’s words. She didn’t want shallow, she wanted full, loved, something that mattered.
Something like real love.
Derek. Mark. Alex. It was too much. She should have had a rule, something like NEVER GO OUT WITH CO-WORKERS. But no, this was apparently her life, and it sucked. Really sucked.
She was half-sleeping, already dreaming, about work, about her failed marriage, which had come back to haunt her… and Alex Karev. And Mark Sloan. And Derek, her ex-husband.
She had been asking herself a lot of questions lately, but never finding any answers. Everything was a haze. Her whole life had been hazy for a long time now, ever since she had called Mark and he had come back to Seattle - for her.
Questions. Where does it all go, how do you like it, which one might do it better, how could Derek hurt me like I hurt him, why is this so fucking hard, I feel like I’m drowning inside, someone catch me, I’m falling through this haze, it’s all bittersweet faith, I can’t…!
She opened her eyes, staring at the ceiling, breathing hard, it felt like she was flying through the air. When she realized she was in her own office, alone, in the dark, where no one could hear her sobbing, she closed her eyes again and drifted away. What do you want?
I don’t know. I don’t know, I feel nauseous.
Which one do you want?
I can’t pick.
Which one of them loves you?
Mark. Mark loves me.
Was it Mark or Alex behind her? Could have been either one, but the hands were soft, Mark’s hands were rough, it had to be Alex. Was she dreaming? Hell, yeah, she probably was, but did she want to wake up? Maybe this dream would help her get through the rest of her miserable life in Seattle, maybe she would know which one to give herself too… completely.
Addison wasn’t dreaming about Alex Karev anymore, she couldn’t feel his hands on her back, on her chest, on her thighs, on her face, she couldn’t feel the softness of his lips against her neck and on her mouth, on her lips, everywhere… Not this way, he was gone, and she was falling through space, planets disappearing behind her, just speeding up, falling…
She wasn’t falling anymore, she was drowning. She could see the sun, but she was beneath the surface, the sunshine was moving in front of her but she couldn’t reach up or swim up, through the surface, breaking the water… Her feet couldn’t move, she was barefoot, her shoes were gone, she was in her blue scrubs, not in her dress, and she realized she was drowning in surgery, the scalpel had taken its toll…
She kept kicking, her clothes were pulling her down, the stripes of the sun looked so clear in the light blue water, but she couldn’t bring herself to get up, get higher, get air… Maybe she should have let herself drown? In her dream. It would all have ended… would she die in real life if she died in her dream? She could. No one knew. It was a myth. If someone really, really wanted to die the body would give up…
But her body wasn’t the one choosing the battle this time, it was the air over the surface. She couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t up to her anymore,… time had come today, it was time for her to drown… just like… Meredith almost had. Was this some kind of déjà vu? Hardly. The water was so cold, she gasped for air but only got water into her mouth. It would all be over in a second if she let herself die.
Breathe in. Breathe in. Then comes death. She can feel it coming.
She breathed in. Did it come? Yes, death did come. The beautiful, light blue around her started turning into a deeper shade of gray, then black around the edges of her vision… and then the darkness came.
“Addison?” Alex screamed and shook her shoulders, his scream barely overtaking hers. “Doctor Montgomery, wake up, you’re having nightmares!”
He was down on his knees in front of the couch, shaking her hard, trying to wake her up, because she was clenching her jaw, screaming even though her mouth was practically closed, and her hands were gripping the quilt she had pulled over herself.
“Addison!” Alex screamed again and considered hitting her hard.
Beneath the surface everything is clearer, it’s easier to live there because the end is so close that you have to except it.
“Please, wake up, now!”
It’s a matter of a few minutes. Seconds. 120 Seconds. Then the darkness would come again, she wouldn’t be saved this time.
“Addison, wake up, for fuck’s sake!” Alex screamed and slapped her cheek, but she didn’t wake up, but her scream disappeared and now she was gasping for air.
You can feel it coming through the waves, now. It’s there, only a few seconds and it will close its arms around you and stop your breathing, making you go to sleep.
Forever.
“WAKE UP!” Alex screamed, pulled the quilt off of Addison and hit her other cheek.
You burst into memories. There’s nothing left.
“Jesus, is she crashing?” he mumbled as he tried to find her pulse, but he couldn’t. She had stopped gasping for air, stopped moving, she just… was there in his arms, her forehead covered in sweat.
Drowning at the edge of the ocean, nothing but darkness under her feet.
There was no code blue button in the room, he was desperately trying to find her pulse.
No strength to fight against it anymore. Over.
Did he feel it?
Just explode into blue water drops in the ocean - forever.
No heartbeat.