Yay for long-ass fic!
Or at least, yay for the longest fic I've ever posted, which is not really saying much, considering the feeble number of fics I've actually completed. Still, this deserves a celebration. Two, in fact, for getting me out of my lazy, unproductive stump and for being crackfic. Woo!
Title: Printed in my Pocket
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy/Gilmore Girls crossover
Pairing: Addison/Lorelai
Rating: G. Cause making it PG would be too much of a stretch. Holy crap, my longest fic ever is G-rated. I am officially 80 years old.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to their respective owners. The only thing I own is the insanely convoluted way of bringing them together.
Spoilers: References to episode 3.15 of GA and to episodes 7.07, 7.12 and 7.13 of GG.
Note: This was supposed to be much much shorter and part of a bigger fic I wanted to call something like "Five women Addison might have fallen in love with." But then I started writing this one and it turned into a freaking epic and it just kept on going and wouldn't stop, so now each of the five will be a stand-alone fic. If I can remain in this productive mindset that long, that is.
“Excuse me? Um, hi. I don’t know if you’re even the right person I should be talking to… I mean, you look like a doctor; you have the scrubs and the cap and everything. Unless there’s some weird tradition here in Seattle where civilians get to dress up and walk through the hospitals pretending to be doctors once a year, in which case, man, did my father ever pick the worst time and place to have a heart attack…”
Addison had been on her way to an emergency C-section when the woman approached her. Her dark hair was wet; no doubt an out-of-towner who ignored that it rains in Seattle like the sun shines in California. Her face tried to conceal the anxiety in her voice with a weak smile, but what really gave it away were her eyes. They were light blue, and Addison was sure that, on a good day, they could sparkle like a swimming pool under the sun, but at that moment they were so smothered with worry that they merged with the rest of her face, shaded and somber and almost black in color.
“I’m very sorry about your father. When was he admitted?” Addison asked, retracing her steps and guiding the woman back to the nurses’ station. She had only about fifteen minutes to spare, but the corridor in which they had had the chance to meet was deserted, and Addison predicted that, with the woman as wired and lost as she seemed, she would end up walking into her father’s very OR if she didn’t receive assistance soon.
“Um… this afternoon, I think? He was here with my mother. Not here here at the hospital, at least not originally, but here in Seattle. Which is weird, you know, because how many times have my parents traveled together anywhere that wasn’t Europe? Especially not the West Coast, they don’t do the West Coast. That should have been a sign!”
Addison laid a hand on the woman’s shoulder and felt her tremble slightly. She would surely end up catching something if she didn’t change into some dry clothes soon, and that momentary thought shot a pang of helplessness through Addison’s stomach.
“Well, I’m sure anyone here will be able to tell you where you can find your father,” Addison said once they had reached the nurses’ station. “I’m sorry, I’m due in surgery in ten minutes.”
“Oh, no, I’m sorry. Please, go. Don’t let me keep you from, you know, saving a life or bringing someone new into the world.”
Addison couldn’t stop a smile at the involuntary prophecy. “I hope your father is OK, Ms…”
“Gilmore, Lorelai Gilmore.” The woman smiled too, her eyes faintly lighting up to an almost dusky blue. “And thank you, Dr… Montgomery.”
“Addison,” she returned the intimacy, before giving her a quick nod and rushing up the lobby stairs.
When Addison came out of surgery, sometime around midnight, Lorelai was still in the waiting room. Nurse Olivia reported that she had drunk almost the entire coffee vending machine in ten-minute intervals and had refused both an offer for a ride to a hotel and even a pair of dry scrubs to prevent her from catching pneumonia.
“Hi,” Addison said, approaching Lorelai just as she was about to start on a fresh new cup of coffee. “I don’t think you should drink any more of that.”
“Oh no,” Lorelai replied, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Trust me, this is way within my normal dose of caffeine. Now I just need a slice of pie to balance everything out. Although that could be hard, because there are no diners around here, and the hospital cafeteria only has tiny muffins and chocolate pudding which, I’m sorry, is totally not doing you guys any favors in terms of breaking all those bad hospital food stereotypes.”
Addison smiled, because trying to disentangle the meaning behind each of Lorelai’s convoluted phrases kept her mind away from the OR and the blood on her gloves and the monitors with their malicious beeping that were still haunting her head like a ghostly echo. “Well, we do have a bar right across the street, although it’s probably not a trustworthy source of pie. I’d offer you a tour, but at this time of night it’s most likely already filled with drunken interns bitching about how much they hate medicine, so I wouldn’t call that ‘ambiance’. Besides, you could probably use some rest.”
“Actually, that sounds like a good idea. My father has been in surgery for about an hour now and I have to call my daughter to give her the update anyway and it would probably be better if I did it from somewhere with a little bit of happiness in the background. Not to mention my mother is going to be here screaming about my father’s pillows in about eight hours, five if you add the jet-lag, so if I could have enough alcohol in me to pass out through the whole of it, that would be great.”
Addison wondered if the addition of alcohol into Lorelai’s already high-strung, caffeinated organism was as good an idea as she was making it out to be. It was barely a flicker, however, because after spending the past three hours air-bagging a baby Addison wasn’t even sure would make it through the night, the thought of going back to her empty hotel room suddenly seemed unbearable. Plus, she’d make sure Lorelai at least had a soda.
Half an hour later, when Addison returned to their booth at Joe’s with their two glasses, Lorelai was already in mid-conversation with whom Addison assumed to be her daughter.
“I’m telling you, it’s a hit waiting to happen. ‘Luke’s Diner: Your friendly neighborhood dining establishment by day, med school hangout bar by night’. I should pitch it to Luke when I get home, I can practically hear him being militantly opposed to it… Are you doubting my PR skills? I do run an inn, you know. Making the unappealing appealing is part of my job description… Of course I’ll think about you. In fact, I’m already signing you up as the star waitress for Tank Top Thursdays…” Lorelai’s expression suddenly softened until her eyes almost glistened as she tilted her head slightly to the left. “I know, sweetie, me too. But it’s OK; your grandma has done nothing but sing praises for this Dr. Burke who’s performing the surgery, so unless she’s basing her opinion on hearsay, and you know Emily Gilmore would rather be caught shopping at Wal-Mart during their spring sale than basing her opinions on hearsay, your grandfather is in good hands… I will, especially if I get to wake you at an ungodly hour again… Bye, hon. Sorry about that,” she added as she put her phone away. She took a sip of her glass. “And thanks for this.”
“No problem,” Addison replied. “And, you know, your mother is right about Dr. Burke. He is the best surgeon at Seattle Grace that could be operating on your father right now.” For some reason, she felt it would be slightly more reassuring if it came from her and not just because Addison actually knew Burke.
“I’m glad to hear that, especially on Dr. Burke’s behalf. If he were any less my mother would be demanding to see each and every one of his credentials until she found a flaw in them. Just to give you an idea, the worst possible ones include being a Harvard graduate.”
“I’m pretty sure Dr. Burke didn’t go to Harvard, so if that’s any consolation…” Addison replied with a chuckle.
“Oh, it is, it is. Now if you could just tell me he went to Yale, it wouldn’t stop my mother from fussing and making a scene and giving us East Coasters a bad name but at least the fussing would be more garden-variety Emily Gilmore, which is relatively harmless.”
“I see. Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you with that particular bit of information, but your mother can rest assured that your father is still in very good hands. Really,” Addison added after a pause, a new layer of seriousness in her voice, because Lorelai’s smile had faltered slightly with those last few words, as if suddenly reminded by them of her own fear.
Realizing it had been a good idea after all to take Lorelai physically out of that waiting room, Addison decided it was prudent to stir Lorelai’s mind away from it as well. “So you’re from the East Coast, then?”
Lorelai cleared her throat. A smaller, subtler smile that almost erased the weariness in her face crawled slowly back to her lips. “Yeah, though I’m sorry to disappoint you, it’s no New York or Boston. Just a monumentally weird town in Connecticut named like something out of Star Trek: Small-Town Edition.”
“Really?” Addison laughed again. She was getting used to that as her default reaction to anything coming out of Lorelai’s mouth. “Well, no disappointment here. I used to live in New York and it can get a little smothering sometimes. You’re probably better off in Connecticut.” It was an admission she had never made to anyone before and the bitterness in her own voice surprised her. Addison wondered if maybe Derek and Mark and virtually everything encompassed in the last ten years or so of her life had all of a sudden ruined the appeal the city once had to her, and she tried to feel angry, but could only muster a feeble pang of melancholy.
“Is that why you came to Seattle?” Lorelai asked.
“Not exactly. The chief of surgery at Seattle Grace called me for a consult. I shouldn’t even have accepted, especially knowing that this was where my ex-husband relocated to after leaving New York on account of me cheating on him.” At this, Lorelai’s eyes widened in inoffensive amusement and it was all Addison needed to continue. “And then, one thing led to another and all of a sudden I had moved into his trailer, foolish enough to have believed he was actually willing to give us another chance.”
“What happened?”
“He cheated on me. With a first year surgical intern and the love of his life, apparently.” Addison paused. “Talk about ‘eye for an eye’, huh?” she added with a chuckle, because sometime in the past few months it had finally stopped being pathetic and she had been overcome by the irony of it all.
Lorelai smiled too, a candid smile devoid of judgment, scorn or even pity, and it warmed Addison’s chest in a way she vaguely remembered. “Anyway,” Addison continued, shaking herself out of the vortex the topic of her failed marriage had become with a forceful tilt of her glass. “Sorry for the drama overdose. I’m sure your personal life is a lot healthier than mine.” Her tone was casual, intending only to maintain the ping-pong of the conversation, but the smile slipped from Addison’s face when she caught sight of Lorelai’s expression.
A flash of a shadow obscured her face so quickly that, for a moment, Addison thought she had imagined it. But there was an exaggerated cheeriness in Lorelai’s voice when she spoke again that said everything her words didn’t. “Oh I don’t know. I mean, sure, I recently married my daughter’s father, in Paris of all places, and with not even my daughter herself to witness it. But I guess that’s probably a good thing because, well, if I didn’t end up marrying him of all people I might as well just have locked myself in my room and recommenced the age-old tradition of eating my hair.”
The mildly frantic sound of her voice made Addison lift her head from her glass to meet Lorelai’s eyes. They were eager, urgent, as if forcing Addison to somehow turn her words around and take the spotlight away from her. Before Addison could oblige, however, the sudden, thick silence was pierced by the shriek of a cell phone.
It was Lorelai’s, but she took one look at it and turned it off with a nearly trembling hand. “It’s my husband,” she answered the unasked question, and Addison thought she heard in that simple phrase the imperceptible crack of something finally breaking within Lorelai. “He took off. Because he doesn’t understand that a character reference is just that, a character reference. I know Luke, I was engaged to him, yes, but I’ve also known him for a very long time. He has been there for me and for my daughter when Christopher wasn’t, doesn’t it make sense that he’d ask me for a character reference for his court case? And in spite of all that, all that history, I chose Christopher, I married him. This is ridiculous! I’m on the other side of the country telling the story of my life to someone I didn’t know twelve hours ago, in a bar surrounded by medical interns and he has no idea because he wasn’t there when my mother called me. He wasn’t there to tell me he would run out to get muffins and donuts and sit with me by the phone all night long and stop me from doing something as crazy and stupid as flying across the country just to see my father. And he wasn’t there because he was too busy sulking over a stupid piece of paper. So he doesn’t get to call me right now and try to act like my husband. He lost his chance.”
Addison softly placed a hand on top of Lorelai’s. It was a reassurance she wasn’t asking for, but that sprang out before Addison could control it because, in an almost out-of-body way, she saw herself in the broken mirror of Lorelai’s voice, pleading and desperate, being practically torn apart by the man that had sworn to love her in sickness and health.
Lorelai gently removed her hand from underneath and lifted it in an apologetic gesture, meeting Addison’s eyes with a weak smile. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for dumping all this on you. You’re probably thinking I forgot to take my crazy pills or whatever the medical term for that is.”
“Oh no, I’ve seen crazy. You nowhere near qualify,” Addison replied with a chuckle, immensely glad to return to a rapport that felt familiar and less hurtful. “And, I know I’m not exactly the best person for this, what with the cheating and the ruining my marriage, but you should tell all that to your husband. It sounds like something out of a self-help book but, unfortunately, it’s true, communication is very important,” she added, encouraged by a particularly big gulp from her glass.
“Is that why you cheated?” Lorelai asked. Addison prepared herself to wince, to answer the question with the all-too familiar arrow of guilt through her throat. But it never came, because Lorelai’s tone was soft and harbored no secret agenda or hidden meaning, genuinely curious yet respectfully detached. Addison had forgotten what it was like to talk to someone who wasn’t directly involved in the soap opera her life had become, and it felt oddly soothing and almost encouraging.
“I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, I hate to be that woman but I guess I was lonely. And even if Derek and I had actually talked to each other more, he would eventually have found his way towards Meredith Grey anyway. I don’t think he ever loved me that much to begin with.”
Catching Lorelai’s eye, Addison rolled her eyes slightly at herself. “And now I’ve officially gotten the pity party started so I say we drink to, uh, something.”
“To Seattle, which is officially cooler than Frasier ever made it out to be,” Lorelai chimed in, raising her glass.
“Well, in that case, who am I to dissuade you?” Addison’s eyes glinted slightly in a half-smile as she clicked her glass with Lorelai’s. Their eyes met over the blurred cascade of crystal and, for the briefest moment, Addison thought she knew the reason behind Lorelai’s sudden burst of love for Seattle. She also knew she had most likely imagined it, but she still let that strange, bubbling feeling of unspoken recognition imprint itself on every inch of her body before it scurried out of her like those last drops of whiskey passing through her throat and was forgotten forever.
Unfortunately, they were interrupted once again by Lorelai’s cell phone, and this time her expression morphed so quickly into a look of pointed horror that, for an excruciatingly long moment, Addison thought the worst.
“Mom?” Lorelai answered, her grimace only becoming more pronounced. “Uh, yeah, I’m, uh, not at the hospital right now… No, I’m out drinking myself to sleep, actually. There’s a bar right across the street, you wanna join me? I could probably score you an elderly discount… No, I’m sorry, you are absolutely right, that wasn’t funny at all… I’ll be right there. In fact, I will get there so fast that my sudden appearance will make you fall backwards in shock, so you might want to make sure there’s a chair nearb…” She stared briefly at the phone, barely suppressing a chuckle. “She hung up. Her screams have already reached the barrier between human range and supersonic, though, so I can’t blow her off or else I might not make it to tomorrow in one piece.”
The amusement in Lorelai’s face slowly darkened to a barely visible but still impassable shade of regret. “I’m sorry…”
“Hey, no problem. The last thing you need right now is to lose a part of your body.” Addison couldn’t understand why her stomach suddenly felt as if she had accidentally swallowed a boulder in another sip of her drink.
Lorelai stood up. She opened her mouth, but could barely get out the slightest breath of a word before her cell phone rang again, burning and evil. Instead of answering, she glared at it before just giving Addison a quick, faint wave, the strange wistfulness in her eyes saying much more than the insistent ringing would ever let her. Then she hurried towards the door. Addison barely had time to notice Lorelai’s timid backward glance as she reached the threshold before the door swung and she was gone.
All through the following morning, Addison found herself glancing repeatedly towards the waiting room whenever she passed the nurses’ station. She wasn’t exactly sure what she expected or wanted to find there, but her chest contracted slightly every time she caught sight of an empty chair.
Shortly after lunch, however, Miranda Bailey approached her as she came out of her pregnant 17-year-old’s exam room, an icing of indignation enhancing Miranda’s traditionally stern face.
“Addison, I’ve been looking for you. A hyperactive brunette with a serious case of verbal diarrhea ambushed me outside of my interns’ locker room this morning. She said she was leaving or she had to go or, hell if I know, I didn’t understand a word she said, but apparently she wanted me to give you this.” She held out a folded piece of paper. Addison took it, the frown in her face slowly sliding into a complicit smile, too subtle even for Miranda to notice. “If you know her, and I damn sure hope you don’t, the woman is a portable migraine, you should tell her to stay the hell away from restricted hospital areas. It’s enough that those pesky suck-ups that like to call themselves interns can’t even tell where the bathroom is sometimes, I shouldn’t have to chaperone perfect strangers too.”
“Of course, will do. And sorry for the inconvenience, Miranda,” Addison replied, an extra edge of politeness in her voice to make up for indirectly contributing to what seemed like an already rough day.
After Miranda turned her back on her with a curt nod, Addison let her previous smile reach its full-blown size as she carefully unfolded the small paper in her hands. It was a horoscope, Virgo to be precise, most likely ripped from the Horoscope page of that day’s Times. In black ink, right below the “Virgo” title at the top, Lorelai had written, “(you look like a Virgo, anyway)” And below that, stamped all over the actual printed forecast:
“You will help a crazy stranger in a moment of need and she will be forever grateful. In return, she’d like to tell you to smile. You’re better off without your husband.”
Two days later, in the midst of one of the largest and deadliest ferry accidents ever to flood the floors of Seattle Grace, Addison stood watching her faceless, kinless, pregnant Jane Doe. As her head swam and her chest pounded in borrowed anxiety, the fear of being lost forever, forgotten and unnoticed like the woman before her eyes, beginning to jam her airways ever so slightly, Addison casually slid a hand inside the right pocket of her scrubs and felt the rough piece of paper, small and compact, almost crumpled into oblivion. As if a jolt of electricity had suddenly brought her back to her senses, she shook her head at no one in particular, took a deep breath and, feeling Lorelai’s swimming pool blue eyes boring into her ubiquitously, Addison did what she was told: she smiled.
Title: Printed in my Pocket
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy/Gilmore Girls crossover
Pairing: Addison/Lorelai
Rating: G. Cause making it PG would be too much of a stretch. Holy crap, my longest fic ever is G-rated. I am officially 80 years old.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to their respective owners. The only thing I own is the insanely convoluted way of bringing them together.
Spoilers: References to episode 3.15 of GA and to episodes 7.07, 7.12 and 7.13 of GG.
Note: This was supposed to be much much shorter and part of a bigger fic I wanted to call something like "Five women Addison might have fallen in love with." But then I started writing this one and it turned into a freaking epic and it just kept on going and wouldn't stop, so now each of the five will be a stand-alone fic. If I can remain in this productive mindset that long, that is.
“Excuse me? Um, hi. I don’t know if you’re even the right person I should be talking to… I mean, you look like a doctor; you have the scrubs and the cap and everything. Unless there’s some weird tradition here in Seattle where civilians get to dress up and walk through the hospitals pretending to be doctors once a year, in which case, man, did my father ever pick the worst time and place to have a heart attack…”
Addison had been on her way to an emergency C-section when the woman approached her. Her dark hair was wet; no doubt an out-of-towner who ignored that it rains in Seattle like the sun shines in California. Her face tried to conceal the anxiety in her voice with a weak smile, but what really gave it away were her eyes. They were light blue, and Addison was sure that, on a good day, they could sparkle like a swimming pool under the sun, but at that moment they were so smothered with worry that they merged with the rest of her face, shaded and somber and almost black in color.
“I’m very sorry about your father. When was he admitted?” Addison asked, retracing her steps and guiding the woman back to the nurses’ station. She had only about fifteen minutes to spare, but the corridor in which they had had the chance to meet was deserted, and Addison predicted that, with the woman as wired and lost as she seemed, she would end up walking into her father’s very OR if she didn’t receive assistance soon.
“Um… this afternoon, I think? He was here with my mother. Not here here at the hospital, at least not originally, but here in Seattle. Which is weird, you know, because how many times have my parents traveled together anywhere that wasn’t Europe? Especially not the West Coast, they don’t do the West Coast. That should have been a sign!”
Addison laid a hand on the woman’s shoulder and felt her tremble slightly. She would surely end up catching something if she didn’t change into some dry clothes soon, and that momentary thought shot a pang of helplessness through Addison’s stomach.
“Well, I’m sure anyone here will be able to tell you where you can find your father,” Addison said once they had reached the nurses’ station. “I’m sorry, I’m due in surgery in ten minutes.”
“Oh, no, I’m sorry. Please, go. Don’t let me keep you from, you know, saving a life or bringing someone new into the world.”
Addison couldn’t stop a smile at the involuntary prophecy. “I hope your father is OK, Ms…”
“Gilmore, Lorelai Gilmore.” The woman smiled too, her eyes faintly lighting up to an almost dusky blue. “And thank you, Dr… Montgomery.”
“Addison,” she returned the intimacy, before giving her a quick nod and rushing up the lobby stairs.
When Addison came out of surgery, sometime around midnight, Lorelai was still in the waiting room. Nurse Olivia reported that she had drunk almost the entire coffee vending machine in ten-minute intervals and had refused both an offer for a ride to a hotel and even a pair of dry scrubs to prevent her from catching pneumonia.
“Hi,” Addison said, approaching Lorelai just as she was about to start on a fresh new cup of coffee. “I don’t think you should drink any more of that.”
“Oh no,” Lorelai replied, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Trust me, this is way within my normal dose of caffeine. Now I just need a slice of pie to balance everything out. Although that could be hard, because there are no diners around here, and the hospital cafeteria only has tiny muffins and chocolate pudding which, I’m sorry, is totally not doing you guys any favors in terms of breaking all those bad hospital food stereotypes.”
Addison smiled, because trying to disentangle the meaning behind each of Lorelai’s convoluted phrases kept her mind away from the OR and the blood on her gloves and the monitors with their malicious beeping that were still haunting her head like a ghostly echo. “Well, we do have a bar right across the street, although it’s probably not a trustworthy source of pie. I’d offer you a tour, but at this time of night it’s most likely already filled with drunken interns bitching about how much they hate medicine, so I wouldn’t call that ‘ambiance’. Besides, you could probably use some rest.”
“Actually, that sounds like a good idea. My father has been in surgery for about an hour now and I have to call my daughter to give her the update anyway and it would probably be better if I did it from somewhere with a little bit of happiness in the background. Not to mention my mother is going to be here screaming about my father’s pillows in about eight hours, five if you add the jet-lag, so if I could have enough alcohol in me to pass out through the whole of it, that would be great.”
Addison wondered if the addition of alcohol into Lorelai’s already high-strung, caffeinated organism was as good an idea as she was making it out to be. It was barely a flicker, however, because after spending the past three hours air-bagging a baby Addison wasn’t even sure would make it through the night, the thought of going back to her empty hotel room suddenly seemed unbearable. Plus, she’d make sure Lorelai at least had a soda.
Half an hour later, when Addison returned to their booth at Joe’s with their two glasses, Lorelai was already in mid-conversation with whom Addison assumed to be her daughter.
“I’m telling you, it’s a hit waiting to happen. ‘Luke’s Diner: Your friendly neighborhood dining establishment by day, med school hangout bar by night’. I should pitch it to Luke when I get home, I can practically hear him being militantly opposed to it… Are you doubting my PR skills? I do run an inn, you know. Making the unappealing appealing is part of my job description… Of course I’ll think about you. In fact, I’m already signing you up as the star waitress for Tank Top Thursdays…” Lorelai’s expression suddenly softened until her eyes almost glistened as she tilted her head slightly to the left. “I know, sweetie, me too. But it’s OK; your grandma has done nothing but sing praises for this Dr. Burke who’s performing the surgery, so unless she’s basing her opinion on hearsay, and you know Emily Gilmore would rather be caught shopping at Wal-Mart during their spring sale than basing her opinions on hearsay, your grandfather is in good hands… I will, especially if I get to wake you at an ungodly hour again… Bye, hon. Sorry about that,” she added as she put her phone away. She took a sip of her glass. “And thanks for this.”
“No problem,” Addison replied. “And, you know, your mother is right about Dr. Burke. He is the best surgeon at Seattle Grace that could be operating on your father right now.” For some reason, she felt it would be slightly more reassuring if it came from her and not just because Addison actually knew Burke.
“I’m glad to hear that, especially on Dr. Burke’s behalf. If he were any less my mother would be demanding to see each and every one of his credentials until she found a flaw in them. Just to give you an idea, the worst possible ones include being a Harvard graduate.”
“I’m pretty sure Dr. Burke didn’t go to Harvard, so if that’s any consolation…” Addison replied with a chuckle.
“Oh, it is, it is. Now if you could just tell me he went to Yale, it wouldn’t stop my mother from fussing and making a scene and giving us East Coasters a bad name but at least the fussing would be more garden-variety Emily Gilmore, which is relatively harmless.”
“I see. Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you with that particular bit of information, but your mother can rest assured that your father is still in very good hands. Really,” Addison added after a pause, a new layer of seriousness in her voice, because Lorelai’s smile had faltered slightly with those last few words, as if suddenly reminded by them of her own fear.
Realizing it had been a good idea after all to take Lorelai physically out of that waiting room, Addison decided it was prudent to stir Lorelai’s mind away from it as well. “So you’re from the East Coast, then?”
Lorelai cleared her throat. A smaller, subtler smile that almost erased the weariness in her face crawled slowly back to her lips. “Yeah, though I’m sorry to disappoint you, it’s no New York or Boston. Just a monumentally weird town in Connecticut named like something out of Star Trek: Small-Town Edition.”
“Really?” Addison laughed again. She was getting used to that as her default reaction to anything coming out of Lorelai’s mouth. “Well, no disappointment here. I used to live in New York and it can get a little smothering sometimes. You’re probably better off in Connecticut.” It was an admission she had never made to anyone before and the bitterness in her own voice surprised her. Addison wondered if maybe Derek and Mark and virtually everything encompassed in the last ten years or so of her life had all of a sudden ruined the appeal the city once had to her, and she tried to feel angry, but could only muster a feeble pang of melancholy.
“Is that why you came to Seattle?” Lorelai asked.
“Not exactly. The chief of surgery at Seattle Grace called me for a consult. I shouldn’t even have accepted, especially knowing that this was where my ex-husband relocated to after leaving New York on account of me cheating on him.” At this, Lorelai’s eyes widened in inoffensive amusement and it was all Addison needed to continue. “And then, one thing led to another and all of a sudden I had moved into his trailer, foolish enough to have believed he was actually willing to give us another chance.”
“What happened?”
“He cheated on me. With a first year surgical intern and the love of his life, apparently.” Addison paused. “Talk about ‘eye for an eye’, huh?” she added with a chuckle, because sometime in the past few months it had finally stopped being pathetic and she had been overcome by the irony of it all.
Lorelai smiled too, a candid smile devoid of judgment, scorn or even pity, and it warmed Addison’s chest in a way she vaguely remembered. “Anyway,” Addison continued, shaking herself out of the vortex the topic of her failed marriage had become with a forceful tilt of her glass. “Sorry for the drama overdose. I’m sure your personal life is a lot healthier than mine.” Her tone was casual, intending only to maintain the ping-pong of the conversation, but the smile slipped from Addison’s face when she caught sight of Lorelai’s expression.
A flash of a shadow obscured her face so quickly that, for a moment, Addison thought she had imagined it. But there was an exaggerated cheeriness in Lorelai’s voice when she spoke again that said everything her words didn’t. “Oh I don’t know. I mean, sure, I recently married my daughter’s father, in Paris of all places, and with not even my daughter herself to witness it. But I guess that’s probably a good thing because, well, if I didn’t end up marrying him of all people I might as well just have locked myself in my room and recommenced the age-old tradition of eating my hair.”
The mildly frantic sound of her voice made Addison lift her head from her glass to meet Lorelai’s eyes. They were eager, urgent, as if forcing Addison to somehow turn her words around and take the spotlight away from her. Before Addison could oblige, however, the sudden, thick silence was pierced by the shriek of a cell phone.
It was Lorelai’s, but she took one look at it and turned it off with a nearly trembling hand. “It’s my husband,” she answered the unasked question, and Addison thought she heard in that simple phrase the imperceptible crack of something finally breaking within Lorelai. “He took off. Because he doesn’t understand that a character reference is just that, a character reference. I know Luke, I was engaged to him, yes, but I’ve also known him for a very long time. He has been there for me and for my daughter when Christopher wasn’t, doesn’t it make sense that he’d ask me for a character reference for his court case? And in spite of all that, all that history, I chose Christopher, I married him. This is ridiculous! I’m on the other side of the country telling the story of my life to someone I didn’t know twelve hours ago, in a bar surrounded by medical interns and he has no idea because he wasn’t there when my mother called me. He wasn’t there to tell me he would run out to get muffins and donuts and sit with me by the phone all night long and stop me from doing something as crazy and stupid as flying across the country just to see my father. And he wasn’t there because he was too busy sulking over a stupid piece of paper. So he doesn’t get to call me right now and try to act like my husband. He lost his chance.”
Addison softly placed a hand on top of Lorelai’s. It was a reassurance she wasn’t asking for, but that sprang out before Addison could control it because, in an almost out-of-body way, she saw herself in the broken mirror of Lorelai’s voice, pleading and desperate, being practically torn apart by the man that had sworn to love her in sickness and health.
Lorelai gently removed her hand from underneath and lifted it in an apologetic gesture, meeting Addison’s eyes with a weak smile. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for dumping all this on you. You’re probably thinking I forgot to take my crazy pills or whatever the medical term for that is.”
“Oh no, I’ve seen crazy. You nowhere near qualify,” Addison replied with a chuckle, immensely glad to return to a rapport that felt familiar and less hurtful. “And, I know I’m not exactly the best person for this, what with the cheating and the ruining my marriage, but you should tell all that to your husband. It sounds like something out of a self-help book but, unfortunately, it’s true, communication is very important,” she added, encouraged by a particularly big gulp from her glass.
“Is that why you cheated?” Lorelai asked. Addison prepared herself to wince, to answer the question with the all-too familiar arrow of guilt through her throat. But it never came, because Lorelai’s tone was soft and harbored no secret agenda or hidden meaning, genuinely curious yet respectfully detached. Addison had forgotten what it was like to talk to someone who wasn’t directly involved in the soap opera her life had become, and it felt oddly soothing and almost encouraging.
“I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, I hate to be that woman but I guess I was lonely. And even if Derek and I had actually talked to each other more, he would eventually have found his way towards Meredith Grey anyway. I don’t think he ever loved me that much to begin with.”
Catching Lorelai’s eye, Addison rolled her eyes slightly at herself. “And now I’ve officially gotten the pity party started so I say we drink to, uh, something.”
“To Seattle, which is officially cooler than Frasier ever made it out to be,” Lorelai chimed in, raising her glass.
“Well, in that case, who am I to dissuade you?” Addison’s eyes glinted slightly in a half-smile as she clicked her glass with Lorelai’s. Their eyes met over the blurred cascade of crystal and, for the briefest moment, Addison thought she knew the reason behind Lorelai’s sudden burst of love for Seattle. She also knew she had most likely imagined it, but she still let that strange, bubbling feeling of unspoken recognition imprint itself on every inch of her body before it scurried out of her like those last drops of whiskey passing through her throat and was forgotten forever.
Unfortunately, they were interrupted once again by Lorelai’s cell phone, and this time her expression morphed so quickly into a look of pointed horror that, for an excruciatingly long moment, Addison thought the worst.
“Mom?” Lorelai answered, her grimace only becoming more pronounced. “Uh, yeah, I’m, uh, not at the hospital right now… No, I’m out drinking myself to sleep, actually. There’s a bar right across the street, you wanna join me? I could probably score you an elderly discount… No, I’m sorry, you are absolutely right, that wasn’t funny at all… I’ll be right there. In fact, I will get there so fast that my sudden appearance will make you fall backwards in shock, so you might want to make sure there’s a chair nearb…” She stared briefly at the phone, barely suppressing a chuckle. “She hung up. Her screams have already reached the barrier between human range and supersonic, though, so I can’t blow her off or else I might not make it to tomorrow in one piece.”
The amusement in Lorelai’s face slowly darkened to a barely visible but still impassable shade of regret. “I’m sorry…”
“Hey, no problem. The last thing you need right now is to lose a part of your body.” Addison couldn’t understand why her stomach suddenly felt as if she had accidentally swallowed a boulder in another sip of her drink.
Lorelai stood up. She opened her mouth, but could barely get out the slightest breath of a word before her cell phone rang again, burning and evil. Instead of answering, she glared at it before just giving Addison a quick, faint wave, the strange wistfulness in her eyes saying much more than the insistent ringing would ever let her. Then she hurried towards the door. Addison barely had time to notice Lorelai’s timid backward glance as she reached the threshold before the door swung and she was gone.
All through the following morning, Addison found herself glancing repeatedly towards the waiting room whenever she passed the nurses’ station. She wasn’t exactly sure what she expected or wanted to find there, but her chest contracted slightly every time she caught sight of an empty chair.
Shortly after lunch, however, Miranda Bailey approached her as she came out of her pregnant 17-year-old’s exam room, an icing of indignation enhancing Miranda’s traditionally stern face.
“Addison, I’ve been looking for you. A hyperactive brunette with a serious case of verbal diarrhea ambushed me outside of my interns’ locker room this morning. She said she was leaving or she had to go or, hell if I know, I didn’t understand a word she said, but apparently she wanted me to give you this.” She held out a folded piece of paper. Addison took it, the frown in her face slowly sliding into a complicit smile, too subtle even for Miranda to notice. “If you know her, and I damn sure hope you don’t, the woman is a portable migraine, you should tell her to stay the hell away from restricted hospital areas. It’s enough that those pesky suck-ups that like to call themselves interns can’t even tell where the bathroom is sometimes, I shouldn’t have to chaperone perfect strangers too.”
“Of course, will do. And sorry for the inconvenience, Miranda,” Addison replied, an extra edge of politeness in her voice to make up for indirectly contributing to what seemed like an already rough day.
After Miranda turned her back on her with a curt nod, Addison let her previous smile reach its full-blown size as she carefully unfolded the small paper in her hands. It was a horoscope, Virgo to be precise, most likely ripped from the Horoscope page of that day’s Times. In black ink, right below the “Virgo” title at the top, Lorelai had written, “(you look like a Virgo, anyway)” And below that, stamped all over the actual printed forecast:
“You will help a crazy stranger in a moment of need and she will be forever grateful. In return, she’d like to tell you to smile. You’re better off without your husband.”
Two days later, in the midst of one of the largest and deadliest ferry accidents ever to flood the floors of Seattle Grace, Addison stood watching her faceless, kinless, pregnant Jane Doe. As her head swam and her chest pounded in borrowed anxiety, the fear of being lost forever, forgotten and unnoticed like the woman before her eyes, beginning to jam her airways ever so slightly, Addison casually slid a hand inside the right pocket of her scrubs and felt the rough piece of paper, small and compact, almost crumpled into oblivion. As if a jolt of electricity had suddenly brought her back to her senses, she shook her head at no one in particular, took a deep breath and, feeling Lorelai’s swimming pool blue eyes boring into her ubiquitously, Addison did what she was told: she smiled.