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Karma, Chapters 4-5
Sorry about the slow pace of reposting. I've recently gotten obsessed with House and have been frantically reading everyone else's fanfic. But I know I have to keep going and finish up some of these neverending stories. Same disclaimer as always; comments are always welcome.



Chapter 4

“Dr. Montgomery.”

“Yes?”

Addison looked up in the scrub room and saw Callie Torres, an orthopedics surgeon whom she’d never really had reason to interact with before, standing in the doorway.

Callie recalled walking in on the aftermath of the sexual escapades of Derek and Meredith; she had heard about Addison’s announced name change; and she just couldn’t help herself from stopping when she saw the redheaded neonatal attending scrubbing for surgery while Callie was on her way back from a knee replacement.

“Look, I don’t really know you, and this really isn’t my place, but well I’ve never been good at knowing my place. . . . I just wanted to say. . . .”

“Yes?” Addison raised an eyebrow to emphasize her questioning tone.

“Way to go,” Callie told herself that she would want to hear what she had to say if she was Addison. “No one deserves to be treated the way Derek Shepherd treated you. I was thrilled to hear you dumped him. You deserve better.”

With that, Callie turned to leave.

“Dr. Torres?”

She turned back around at the sound of Addison’s voice.

“Thanks. Believe it or not, it means a lot.”

Callie nodded and turned to leave again.

“Dr. Torres?” Callie turned back again. “If you don’t have plans this evening, Miranda Bailey and I are going out for drinks to celebrate my independence or mourn my marriage, I’m not really sure which -- or maybe both. Anyway, if you are interested, I’d love it if you’d join us.”

***

“So I stopped by to see you last night before I left the hospital, but you were otherwise occupied.”

“Christina was here. . . . Finally.”

“Yes, she was.”

“I understand you had quite the busy night last night yourself.” Burke’s tone was even, nonjudgmental, not revealing how much he wished he could just get up and shake some sense into Derek Shepherd. Well, sadly, it was too late for sense.

“Gossip really travels in this hospital.”

“Derek, you have turned your life into something worse than a soap opera. Everyone in this hospital waits and watches to see what idiotic thing you’re going to do next. The nurses. The orderlies. The doctors. Joe. Heck, even the patients. -- So, yes, when you not so discretely follow Meredith into an exam room, come out disheveled, and then your wife announces quite publicly that she’s dumped you, it doesn’t take long for news to travel.”

“Well, since we’ve covered what a failure I am as a husband, perhaps we should instead focus on me as a doctor. Or you as a patient. How does your hand feel? Any pain? Any problems with motion?”

Burke paused for a minute, decided to let Derek’s personal failings go and focus on himself.

“It feels fine,” Burke hesitated.

“But?” Derek prompted, as he looked up from Burke’s chart at the hesitation he sensed in his colleague's voice.

“There have been trembles.”

“How often?”

“Not constant. But sometimes. When I try to focus on controlling the hand, making it still.”

“Show me.”

Burke raised the hand, and then as he and Derek both stared at it, the trembles came. Derek reached out and felt the hand, then turned it over and examined it.

“OK. There is no reason to panic. I’m going to order a few tests, and we’ll see what we’re dealing with it. . . . There is every reason to think that this is just temporary and will resolve itself without any further surgery. So try not to let the worry consume you.”

“Derek.”

“Yes?”

“What am I going to do if I can’t be a surgeon?”

“Don’t think like that. You know as well as I do that there is a very good chance that this is just your hand healing as it should, or at most a small speed bump on the road to recovery. And I am going to make it my mission in life to see you back in an OR.”

Preston looked Derek in the eye, and finally he nodded his acknowledgment.

“If you need to distract yourself, feel free to think about the badly written soap that is my life,” Derek advised his patient. “If you come up with any good ways for me to redeem myself, I could use all the help I can get.”

“Who exactly are you trying to redeem yourself with? The general viewing public?”

“No. I have an all important audience of one – my wife.”

Preston stared at Derek in astonishment.

“We all know that I’m the most brilliant surgeon on staff, but that’s an operation that even I cannot perform, Derek. I’m afraid the diagnosis for your marriage is terminal.”

“Don’t you believe in miracles, Dr. Burke?”

“Not this one, Dr. Shepherd.”

****

“Hello, Ellis.”

“Meredith. How are you today? Your patients?”

“My patients are fine. I’m working on a neonatal case, but I was able to sneak away for a few minutes to see you since everything’s under control workwise. . . . But I’m afraid I’m not so good otherwise.” Meredith confided, ironically enough, in her mother.

One dirty mistress to another.

Maybe her mother, stuck as she was in the time when she was Richard Webber’s dirty mistress as well as a dirty cheater on her own husband, would have some advice for her. Yeah. Irony.

“What’s wrong?”

“I made a huge mistake yesterday. A gargantuan mistake. There isn’t even a word big enough for the size of the mistake I made.”

“A medical mistake?”

“No. A life mistake.”

“I have a few minutes before I have to be in the OR; I’m waiting on test results. So let’s grab some coffee and you can tell me about it. . . . Maybe I can help.”

Meredith found it sometimes difficult to comprehend that after years of being ignored by her mother, the unwanted daughter, it was only now that her mother had Alzheimer’s that Ellis wanted to be there for Meredith.

Of course, it no doubt helped that Ellis now saw Meredith as a colleague who merely shared a name with the five-year-old she had once actually been, not as the child at home playing who was making unwanted demands on the talented up-and-coming surgeon’s time. Or as the adult daughter Meredith actually was.

“Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“Of course not,” Ellis replied. “This is what coffee breaks with your mentor are for. It’s kind of de rigueur for surgeons to have screwed up personal lives and to confer with each other about just how screwed up they are.”

Meredith’s stomach twisted as she was reminded of her mother’s state of mind – or lack thereof. She nodded her assent.

“Well, there was this guy. We had a romance. I didn’t know he was married until his wife showed up one day from the other end of the country. She offered him a divorce, but he chose to stay with her, even though I begged him to choose me. . . .”

“But while he stayed with her, he kept flirting with me,” Meredith sat on the edge of her hospital bed, but kept her eyes down. She couldn’t even look her mother – another dirty mistress – in the eye. “Meanwhile, I sort of, against my will and my better judgment, became friends with her – the wife. Then, yesterday, I slept with him. The whole hospital knows it. She knows it. And she dumped him.”

“Do you love him?”

“Once upon a time, I thought I did. . . . I was sure I did. . . . But now,” Meredith shook her head. “What kind of man turns a woman into his dirty mistress? . . . There’s this other guy, too. After I slept with the cheater, I chose to go home instead with my date – that fabulous guy who wants to be there for me.”

“Meredith.”

“Wait. There’s one more thing. After Derek – the guy – had sex with me yesterday and practically forced me to choose between him and the new guy, and after his wife dumped him, he’s now going around the hospital talking about how miserable he is because he lost her – his wife. Not me. . . . He told lots of people, and the news has spread.”

“Meanwhile, I have to work with her – the wife – and she hates me. Not that she isn’t right. I would hate me, too. Sometimes I think I do hate me. After all, I make all the wrong choices. It’s like I don’t even want myself to be happy.”

“How pathetic am I?” Meredith finished. “Or maybe despicable’s the right word?”

“You’re not pathetic, Meredith, or despicable, at least no more than the rest of us. . . . We all make mistakes in life and in love. I – I’ve made mistakes. I think I’m probably making one now – and I just can’t help myself. . . . Sometimes you just have to play the hand you’re dealt – because you can’t help who you love, who you’re obsessed with, even if you know that he doesn’t love you the way you should be loved, even if you know that what you’re doing together is wrong, even if you know there’s someone else out there who loves you better.”

“Life,” Ellis continued, “life isn’t easy; it isn’t neat; it isn’t clean. It’s not like surgery. There are no right or wrong answers. All you can do is live with the choices you’ve made. You own them. And you deal with the consequences – both the good and the bad – however you can. And you hope you can survive the guilt for those you hurt along the way.”

“You feel guilty?” Meredith couldn’t help but seek insight into her own mother as well as herself. Did her mother feel guilty for hurting her father? For ignoring her? For Adele? What?

“Yes. I – I’m afraid my way of dealing with emotions is to pour them, and myself, into my work. I know I’m good at work. I’m smart. I’m capable. I am a fabulous surgeon. . . . it’s my refuge, my survival skill. You have to find your own way to survive – to deal. I may be a lousy person, a lousy wife, a lousy mother, a lousy friend, but I am an excellent surgeon. You can be one, too.”

“Just make a choice.”

****

“Addison. Addison.”

Derek called out to his wife as he chased her down the hallway. He finally caught up with her just outside the neonatal unit. He had had a difficult time finding the guts to come up here at all, but he had to talk to his wife.

He had to explain. Apologize. Beg.

Whatever was necessary.

“Derek,” Addison finally turned and when she saw the look in his eye, she regretted it. “I have nothing to say to you.”

Derek grabbed her arm as she turned to leave.

“Then just listen.”

“You really want to make a scene here?” The emphasis on “here” made Derek wince. “Haven’t we made enough scenes – fueled enough of this hospital’s gossip for one day – heck for one millennium?”

“You had your say last night. I let you. I think as your husband I’m entitled to one conversation.”

“Soon to be ex-husband. You’ve had your say for six months, Derek. ‘Meredith won’t be a problem.’ ‘Let it pass.’ ‘I’m working on it.’ ‘Do you want to go to the Prom?' . . . All lies. . . . So, after all that, just think how lucky you are, you no longer have to live with Satan. You no longer are obliged to pretend to have forgiven me, to care about me. You finally got what you wanted – you could have had it so much earlier, had you only been willing to tell the truth.”

Addison turned, but Derek refused to let go and she was forced to stay. He noted that they had gathered an audience, and he knew that it was more than fine -- it was necessary. It was his turn to make a fool of himself, to make a scene for her the way she had made so many for him since she had come to Seattle.

It would only be a first step, but it was necessary.

“Addison, I am sorry. I screwed up. I know that I hurt you badly; maybe I’m the only other person who can understand how badly. And I didn’t do it intentionally, but I did it. I wasn’t thinking. I was so obsessed with Meredith, with the fact that we hadn’t finished whatever it was we had and that I wasn’t ready yet to let go, that I lost sight of who I loved, who I wanted beside me for the rest of my life.”

“And I know that you hate me right now, and that you deserve to hate me,” Derek continued, “and that I deserve to be hated. But I love you. I love you, Addison Forbes Montgomery Shepherd. Maybe it took losing you, you walking away last night for me to realize it, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I love you. You are my soul mate. This time, I’m not giving up without a fight.”

Addison stood there speechless for a moment, unable to believe that Derek had the gall – particularly after what he had done the night before -- to declare his love for her in front of half the neonatal staff and other assorted people in the hallway. Finally, she mustered enough coherent thought to respond.

“Derek, you lost the right to love me last night. . . . This time, Dr. Shepherd, this time, I’m the sink with the open drain. So why don’t you go find your precious intern?”

“Maybe she still thinks you’re McDreamy. I know better.”





Chapter 5

"Bourbon and water, please."

Miranda Bailey looked at Addison Shepherd with concern.

"What?" The redhead returned her gaze. "After the day I've had – the week I've had – I deserve to get smashed. I made sure I wasn't on call tonight. You're here to drive me home – to your home at that. Given my emotional state, I think I'm acting very responsibly."

"A glass of Chardonnay." Miranda Bailey's only response was directed at the bartender of Toi, a hot new Seattle bar with the chief advantage of being far away from Seattle Grace. Addison had not needed to specify that she wanted her drunken night out to be far from the prying eyes of interns, nurses, etc.

"Hey. Sorry, I'm late. My last knee replacement took a turn for the complicated. . . . Damn skiers."

Addison nodded at Callie, as she took her drink from the bartender and went over to secure a table by the windows. Bailey took her drink and followed. Callie ordered a Long Island Iced Tea before joining them.

"Here," Addison said, raising her already partially consumed drink to make a toast, "is to devilishly handsome husbands who lead you on for months with promises, lies, and half-truths before sleeping with their wafer-thin blond girlfriends . . . at the ****ing Prom. . . .”

“Do you know -- I think most people get to leave behind their awful Prom experiences by the time they reach their 30s,” Addie continued. “I wonder if I could make the Guinness Book of World Records – Worst Prom Experience by a Woman in her 30s."

Miranda and Callie exchanged glances.

"What, you don't want to toast with me?" Addison asked rhetorically, taking another large sip from her glass. "You know, I really should find friends who agree with me that men are scum. Why is it that my best friend in Seattle has to be happily married to the perfect guy, and my newest friend is happily dating my nemesis's best friend – at least best male friend and roommate – who happens to be a genuinely nice guy from everything I can see? You really are the wrong crowd for this occasion."

"Tucker's hardly perfect." Bailey said, perusing the menu in search of some appetizers in a perhaps hopeless effort to dilute the alcohol going into Addison's system.

"You really want to go there, while your husband's home baby-sitting so you can take me out to get smashed?"

"Look, I don't get the fascination with Meredith Grey, either," Callie interjected, saving Bailey from the need to answer. "After what she did to George, by all rights, he should hate her. What kind of woman sleeps with a man that she knows is in *love* with her when she has no interest in him and then bursts into tears during the deed? And what kind of man forgives her for that? Worse, he expects me – the person who loves him, even though he won't say it back – to forgive her for it and to be nice to her. . . . I guess that’s the same kind of woman who sleeps with a married man at the Prom and then goes home with yet another man."

Addison took another healthy swig from her glass and then nodded at Callie.

"See, that's why I invited you. I knew you had good perspective," Addison pointed out, as Bailey took a moment to order a smorgasbord of appetizers. "Smart. Wise. Funny. . . . I like you, Callie. And I've decided that – since I'm stuck by contract in Seattle – I need friends in this city. Consider yourself drafted."

"I'm honored," Callie said. "I need friends myself. . . . I feel like everyone just looks at me like the weird ortho resident who popped up out of nowhere. . . . Had I realized Seattle Grace was like high school, I never would have transferred from Mercy West.”

“And George,” Callie continued, “I mean, he's great but he comes with this package of women I can't stand. I'm trying, but it's not like they're all that interested in being friends with me. We've worked up from loathing to grudging tolerance – but only for George's sake."

Addison took a few peanuts from the bowl already on the table and another sip from her drink before she reverted back to the main topic of conversation.

"She apologized to me today."

"Who?" Bailey asked, returning to the table.

"Meredith. . . . She said, 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sleep with your husband. I couldn't help it. But I don't really want him, so everything's OK, right?'"

"She didn't?" Callie almost gasped in horror.

"What did you tell her?" Bailey asked.

"I told her to go jump in the ocean, preferably with very heavy rocks attached to her skinny little body."

"Really?" Callie smiled at the thought.

"No. I told her she could have my husband, but not my forgiveness. Then I told her to act like a grown-up and do her job." Addison signaled the bartender for another round, and Bailey prayed for them to hurry with the food.

"Apparently your husband doesn't want her. . . . Considering the public spectacle he made of himself declaring his love for you outside the neo-natal unit," Bailey observed.

"So you heard about that, huh?"

"I am the Nazi. I know all. I see all. Even when I’m not actually present, I’m all knowing and all seeing. Ask my interns. . . . Or my husband."

"Well, I don't. So fill me in. I must have missed out while I was in surgery," Callie observed.

"All day Derek's been going around the hospital telling people how much he loves Addison. How devastated he is to have lost her. That he didn't realize his destructive course until too late. . . . As if it takes a brain surgeon to figure out that sleeping with your ex-girlfriend is not a good idea if you want to keep your marriage," Bailey relayed the gossip. "He told me. The Chief. Burke. Who knows who else? And then he decided to tell Addison."

"You are kidding me?" Callie asked rhetorically. "That man has some nerve."

"Yeah. He told me that I'm his soul mate, that he loves me, and that he wants a future with me." Addison polished off her second drink and signaled the bartender for another before continuing. "Derek doesn't have a clue what he wants. . . . No, that's not quite true. He wants whatever he doesn't have. He's the opposite of that old saying about birds and bushes. He thinks the woman he's got is always less than the one out there, just outside his grasp."

"Well, Meredith said no. Then you walked out." Callie observed. "At the moment, at least the way I see it, he doesn't have any women."

****

Derek Shepherd sat outside his trailer in a lawn chair. He had a partially consumed bottle of Jack Daniels and an unopened bag of pretzels.

He was a wood-chopping, flannel-wearing fisherman alone in his refuge.

Which – when one didn't choose to be there alone – was not so much of a refuge.

More of a prison. An emotional prison, where he was tortured with memories.

Everywhere he looked around his so-called refuge he saw Addison.

She had been sitting right in this very spot the night she told him that if he wasn't done hurting her, she would have to order a thicker skin. The night they had "ripped the stitches." Had found solace in each other again for the first time in eons.

In this trailer, they had laughed together – like on the morning of the boring sex. Then he had ravaged her that night in the shower.

They had fought – like when Addison yelled at him for cooking trout in the house.

They had cried – like the night after Mark had come to town.

Now, no matter where he looked Derek saw Addison, as he had been unable to see her while she was actually present.

He saw her patience. He saw her courage. He saw her love.

Derek wanted his Addie back.

His words rang in his ear – in her voice as she had repeated them to him today.

"Meredith won't be a problem," Derek had assured the therapist.

"I'm working on it," Derek had promised Addison while lying on their bed in the trailer.

"Do you want to go to the Prom?" Derek had asked her at the hospital when she was looking for reassurance about their marriage.

"All lies." Addison had pronounced. Three promises that his wife believed were lies. And, to be fair, history supported her.

She was right, Derek thought to himself as he continued to drain the Jack Daniels, and she was wrong.

Those particular statements – Derek hadn't meant them to be lies. He had intended to work things out with his wife. He just gotten sidetracked, obsessed with Meredith, obsessed with what could have been with a fresh start with someone else. Jealous and insane and delusional.

But now, now that Addie was gone, he realized just how hollow his relationship with Meredith was.

When he placed the two failed relationships side by side, it was clear that Meredith was a knock-off, a pale imitation of Addison. Ten years younger and blonder and less self-confident, but otherwise a flawed copy of the Addison he had fallen for a long, long time ago. Their relationship – could it even really be called a relationship? – lacked the depth and gravitas that came from being together for a decade and a half.

It wasn’t that Meredith and Derek didn’t have potential, it was that they had nothing but potential.

And how could potential stack up against the memories –the life – he shared with Addison? He had explained it all to Meredith back when he refused to sign the divorce papers. Addison was his wife; she was his family; she was 12 years of shared memories, both the good and the bad; Addie was the one who knew him better than he knew himself. His life and love with Addison had texture, the wrinkles and folds and flaws that came from a life lived together.

But then he had promptly forgotten every word he said. How he had felt when faced with the divorce papers, with the prospect of truly having a life without Addie.

Derek blinked sleepily when he realized that he had almost emptied the bottle of Jack. Then, he shrugged. He wasn’t on call, and at this point, what’s done was done.

He fell asleep, still outside on the lawn chair, dreaming of ways to convince Addison that he had finally remembered. That he saw her.

That Derek loved Addie.

***

“Hey, George. Where’s Callie?”

Meredith was standing at the island as Finn worked at the stove, when she called out that greeting to her roommate.

“She’s out for drinks with friends. How’s Izzie?”

“The same. She’s lying there in a flannel shirt that must have been Denny’s. I tried to talk to her, to convince her to come downstairs, but she just grunted. Maybe you’ll have better luck. . . . Finn’s a great cook, so I thought maybe good smells and good food would tempt her. She needs food – and a shower.”

“Hey Finn.” George could not believe that Meredith was just going on with Finn, pretending that nothing had happened with McNightmare at the Prom the night before.

“Hey George.”

George grabbed a beer. “I’ll wait until the food’s ready and then take some up to Izzie.”

“What are we going to do to get her reinstated? I mean, we can’t let her just quit.”

“I don’t know,” George admitted that while Meredith was an unbelievably lousy love interest, she could be a good friend. “I mean, she confessed so I’m not sure if they’d even let her back into the surgery program. What she did – it could have cost the hospital its transplant accreditation.”

“What about another program?”

“Maybe we could persuade Addison – I mean maybe some of us could persuade Addison Montgomery to go to bat for her in obstetrics and gynecology.”

“Is Addison Montgomery the same person as Addison Shepherd?” Finn asked. “Because she seems like a kind and reasonable person, the kind who would help Izzie.”

Finn watched George and Meredith exchange a long look. He had thought there had been something weird in recent days about the relationship between Meredith and Derek Shepherd and he couldn’t help but wonder about the name change. It was one thing for her to be scary and damaged – another for her to be deliberately deceitful.

“Yeah, they’re the same person. Montgomery was her name before she married Derek Shepherd,” George interjected. “She liked working with Izzie, offered a long time ago to teach her – of course, that was before all this craziness. . . . Obviously you can’t, so I’ll talk to her tomorrow if we can’t get Izzie to get up to deal with her life herself. Or maybe I’ll see what Callie thinks, since she and Bailey and Montgomery are all friendly.”

“Thanks, George.” He nodded and took the two plates of food that Finn had put on a tray and left the room.

“Why can’t you talk to Addison? . . . I think it’s time for you to be straight with me.”

***

“So George says, 'I’m not going to tell you that I love you now, because then I’d just be saying it to say it, because you said it first. . . . When I say it, I want to mean it.'”

“Awww.” Addison sighed, and even Bailey cracked a smile at the thought that she had at least one good intern. “That’s a good man. . . . I mean, I know that hurts now, but in the long run, once he says it, you’ll be happy you know he means it.“

“Why can’t I find a man like that?” Addie continued. “Why do I have to love Derek?”

“Do you still?” Callie asked.

Addison lay her head on the table, to see if it would make the room stop spinning. She had long since stopped counting her drinks and she was feeling no pain, but a bit of dizziness.

“Yes. . . . Don’t you think I’ve tried to stop? I hate women like me – women who stand by their man while he treats them like crap. I saw the signs. I saw Derek and Meredith flirting in the elevator every other minute. I knew they were taking walks with Doc. I knew. I just lived in denial. Derek enabled my denial a little, gave me just enough false hope to maintain my happy little delusional world where Derek loved me and was just friends with Meredith.”

“Yet even now, even given what he pulled yesterday, I can’t help it. . . . I love him. I hate him, and I don’t forgive him, but I love him. . . . I’ve loved him for 15 years, and I just don’t know how to stop. I think about who I want to be with 10 years from now, and I imagine Derek there. I know it’s not going to happen, but that doesn’t stop it from being my dream, doesn’t stop Derek McJerk Shepherd from being the love of my life.”

“Maybe it’ll pass.” Bailey observed.

“I don’t think so,” Addie raised her head to shake it, but regretted the motion. “Don’t you think if my love for Derek could go away it would have done so already? It’s not like I was as blind as I pretended to be. You all saw me melt down at the hospital. And yesterday was pretty dramatic – that should have broken my love as well as my heart. But I’m just going to have to find a way to live without love. Because anyone else would be a poor substitute – I’ll just be one of those people whose career is her life. I’ll get a cat.”

“There was a part of me today, when I listened to him make that speech in front of half the hospital, that wanted to forgive him instantly, to take him in my arms and take him back, and love him forever. I didn’t. I know better. But that doesn’t mean it was easy.”

“Why do you love him?” Callie asked.

“Why is the sky blue? Why am I drunk as a skunk? Some things just are. I love Derek. The sky is blue. And I am drunk. These are facts,” Addie laughed at her own drunken logic. “I realize that he doesn’t love me. And I realize that he doesn’t treat me well anymore. I know all these things in my head.”

“But in my heart, in my dreams, Derek is still that man who loved me when I was the redheaded nerd starting med school, who magically appeared with a latte whenever I needed one during our residencies, and who was standing at the end of that aisle when I walked down it and pledged to love and honor and cherish him forever.”

“Don’t tell him, but even as angry and as hurt and as wrecked as I am, I don’t know how to break that particular vow.”