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You are Addison Montgomery, a world-class neonatal surgeon who, for all intents and purposes, is every bit as human as everybody is, one who’s more than prone and designed to make mistakes, to fuck up, and in your case; infidelity. You spent the better half of your life studying medicine; science, its concepts and beliefs and nothing but, yet you also spent it alongside Derek Shepherd. The love of your life, your husband who had been in love with surgery more than life itself, and quite clearly, more than you. Eventually, disregarding the jealousy you had for his ever burgeoning career, you’ve grown to accept coming off second-best in Derek’s list of priorities, maybe even third or last if you’re really being honest with yourself. Capitulating and resigning to his wants and needs had been written in your duties as his pliant, persuadable wife, and you’ve learned to focus your undivided attention to your own career, because in that area, in your OR, you were second to no-one. And for some time, you used to think that your current mode of conduct was okay.
That being said, it’s not like your own parents were adduced as a precedent for the best married couple documented in the history for you to follow through. If anything, they were doomed to failure in your books. Hence, you were misguided, yes, and you thought what you and Derek had was healthy, non-toxic, when really it was all but that.
And after years of falling into the same rhythm of succumbing into this meek, pathetic woman that you’ve become in the hands of him, you reflected, was this really the life you wanted for yourself? Was this it ? How long are you going to submit to the likes of him? To the likes of a man who was in love with himself? It was ridiculous, you concluded strongly with indignation and rage boiling within you because it’s as though you’ve forgotten who you were before him, before wedlock, before you’ve been so lowly reduced to Mrs. Shepherd instead of Doctor as waves of memories from your past soared in high tides, its staccato of billows ambushing you and issuing a remembrance of who you once were, who you are ; a renowned surgeon. Expectant mothers come flying thousands of miles to have you as their doctor, and you’re one of the ⅛ surgeons in the world who can perform OB/GYN, perinatology, and neonatology on a world-class level, and by the same token, you’re beautiful, even more so desirable.
Who wouldn’t want to have you? To be you ?
And yet, Derek takes you for granted like you’re always going to be there, and perhaps you’ve presented yourself as the scapegoat for this, for never failing to be by his side, perhaps you’re partly to blame for what you’ve become, but what you do know for sure is that your relationship with him now lived off life support—gone was the wedded bliss, gone was the vows you took in the holy matrimony you shared with your friends and family in front of a God you barely had a connection with, a clout with. Gone was everything you knew for the last third of your life.
So you did it, you pulled the plug, or rather you allowed Mark Sloan to do the honours that earned you the nom de plume of adulterous wife, a title you hadn’t expected to be used while referring to you, and at a fresh re-evaluation, you surmises that maybe the sexual dalliance was out of spite or had simply been a cry for attention, but what’s done is done and you feel guilty; you feel guilty that your marriage ended through an affair with his manwhore of a best friend, and you feel angry at yourself, mostly, for letting him sway you just as easily as one would dangle a piece of candy to a child. You curse at the universe for using you as a toy in its ludicrous game called life. But you also feel grateful, somehow, in a way that probably makes you shameless and impenitent at any rate if it weren’t for the fact that you feel… free .
Above everything else, you feel free. You finally feel the semblance of normalcy that had been stripped away from you, a semblance of control in your life—for a good moment, that is. Derek was your prison warden inside a jail in the form of what was supposedly the comfort of your home in New York where you were convicted of a crime you had wrongfully committed, a crime you ploughed on in leaps and bounds albeit ill-advised.
You weren’t warned that your husband, a good man, a great man would turn out to be a narcissist—perchance a narcissist from the very beginning. You weren’t warned that his best friend would come sweep you off your feet as if he’s some prince charming in rescue of a damsel in distress, you weren’t warned that you’d wind up outside of your own house, tears running down your cheeks with rain pouring down hard against your skin like bullets—and it might as well have been—after your husband tersely kicked you out while you, once again, stooped so low as to beg for his affections, for his forgiveness, for a second chance at lifetime incarceration, but what was even more disappointing is that you hadn’t expected Mark to be a warden himself.
It appears that he was just the next level of the game you still continued to partake in despite your lack of direction, aimless as you are, and again, forging ahead without reading the instructions, you found out he was only but a mere hammer that you used to lightly rattle the padlock from your cell, and by extension, the key to Derek’s freedom—freedom from you, the now jilted wife.
Because shortly after knowing, your husband left you to fend for yourself.
So you stay behind the metal bars for two months with Mark Sloan as your warden, wishing and hoping he’d provide you the same catharsis as he did for Derek.
Richard Webber, the Chief of Surgery at Seattle Grace Hospital, a constant friend and an admittedly eminent figure in your life as far as mentoring and molding you into a decent doctor goes, called to see how you were doing which, frankly, you find just a tad unlikely and likely at the same time after a small eternity of no contact, but you suppose it’s only a very Richard thing to do as a man of inevitability, and apparently, a man of ulterior motives as well as you learn about his true intent a couple of laughs later. A twin-twin transfusion syndrome case. That’s right, by and large, he knows in terms of such that you remain unrivaled, the finest, top-tier neonatal surgeon he could find that makes you mourn anew at Derek’s lack of awareness in this, that you’re more than a mere extension of his excellence on the grounds of his vanity and reality-deprived disposition.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, Richard delivers you additional news that had you reeling as you wade through every last ounce of this vital information and you try to keep your head above the water, ultimately leading to you drowning because how can you swim knowing that behind the power, prestige and glory of you, the Addison Montgomery, hid a timid bone in your body, stemmed in years of negligence, indifference and alienation from your own husband who’s allegedly sleeping with another woman. And you scoff at how you phrased it because it’s not alleged, it’s real; as real as the fact that you’re getting divorced sooner rather than later.
It’s fitting, you think, to get cheated on by Mark Sloan. You knew deep down you were never capable of changing him and his wayward habits, standing in the way of his extracurricular activities to some extent felt like delaying the inevitable and was tiring at best as the man’s true nature seems to rudimentarily orbit around surgery and women, but now you don’t know how to feel at the knowledge that Derek had been doing the same the entire time. You sound like a hypocrite, you know, but come on . It’s revenge, an avengement for the ego you bruised, and for good measure, an attempt to trump you, to trump Mark, especially.
You hurt him, he hurt you, suddenly all is right in the world.
It’s his mindset and you vividly recognize his brain’s mechanism, his line of thinking that’s heedless of any bearing it holds so long as it’s for his advantage then none of the rest matters. You’re a hundred percent positive that if no one pulls his head out of his ass, he’ll persevere, diving head first into the water which is utterly disenchanting for a neurosurgeon as he can be brainless and sometimes—all the time—dense.
That’s why Richard called you.
Years with him had taught you that when all is said and done, he’d launch a retaliation cut from the same cloth as yours, you just hadn’t expected it to arrive so early and with an intern no less. You struggle to make sense of it with your stellar reputation scathed and insulted because what could she possibly have that you don’t? Was it her youth?
Sure, you’re not perfect, but neither was he and most definitely not the intern he shacked up with—is shacking up with. It’s a bit callous of you to judge, and you’re no better than a Karen when it comes to judging a character. You have no right to do that after the things you’ve done yourself, you don’t get to be on a high freaking horse but you can’t help it. You’re mad, you’re hurt, and you feel the uproar of jealousy flare in the bounds of the bottomless chasm between self-control and the outright loss of it. You want to call him, yell at him through the phone for the pain and misery you’d been subjected through, yet you did none of those and you miss him instead. Damn you and your stupid brain along with your stupid feelings. You’re a victim of Stockholm syndrome is what you fucking are, held captive after he paralyzed you by nicking a nerve in your spine, and regardless, you still love him. You never stopped, you thought you did when you fell in love with Mark, and even that was the sheer structure of deceit. You loved the idea of him.
Because Mark was there when he wasn’t.
Mark stayed when he didn’t.
But was it really staying when he fucked every woman he laid his eyes on when he knew you weren’t looking?
With that said, against all odds and logicality, you came to Seattle and accepted Richard’s request with one objective in mind; take back what’s truly yours. Irrespective of Mark’s pleas and best efforts to persuade you to stay, you stand your ground and clutched to your decision firmly, the thing you should have done with Derek. But you’re done with should haves , and you had a plan, a flawless strategy to get him back and salvage what was left of a decade’s worth of marriage.
You strut along the vestibule of the hospital, donning an all black outfit, eager and equipped for the funeral of Derek’s manhood and the demise of his not-so flawless integrity altogether. You wore a distinct confidence on your sleeves that you knew, on no account, would falter. Chin held high and chest puffed out, you possessed the hubris of a celebrated surgeon worldwide. You’re the best; you remind yourself, and as fate would have it, you see your husband helping a woman with her coat. The scene alone assumed the shape of a fist that sent three consecutive jabs to your face which then opened to clench around your throat, then your heart, squeezing it as tight as it could that it might burst. You swallowed the pungent taste in your mouth at the recognition, the familiarity that he used to do that to you, not to anyone else, but you . Now you think he’d do that to anyone else but you. Still, you don’t allow this to shatter your resolve, you didn’t balk nor cower like a child in need of protection.
You’re Addison Montgomery.
Without a moment’s hesitation, you advance towards them the same instant Derek pivoted on his heel. Your scarlet lips quirked mischievously to one side when he blanched at the sight of you identical to seeing a ghost, and perhaps you are, a ghost from the past he had fled from. You vaguely hear him slip a half-baked apology, haphazardly and alarmed when the blonde took on a look akin to that of a deer in headlights.
That’s right, Derek. Squirm.
He immediately accosts you with a question laced in venom of which could solely be retrieved from a poisonous snake that is Derek Shepherd. You impress yourself for handling it with an unfailing presence of mind and elegance as it was your middle name.
You turn to her, the other fucking woman your husband went head over heels for like he’s some hormonal teenager at the peak of his puberty. Offering your hand, she takes it without second thoughts. “Hi, I’m Addison Shepherd.” You clasp her hand in yours, automatically taking note of how they had fit as though they were specifically sculpted for each other. Realizing what you had been thinking, you banish the thought at once, remembering that she was the catalyst of your insecurities cloaked in the stature of smooth alabaster skin and dirty blonde tresses. She parroted your surname dumbly as you gladly supplied with confirmation. “And you must be the woman who’s been screwing my husband.
She stills for several beats, blinks for several times, and you took pride in knowing you had rendered her immobile until you registered the fact that, fucking hell, she didn’t know . She genuinely, truthfully, didn’t know and the seething aggression you once had originally zeroed in on her now transposed to Derek, and him alone. You wanted to pummel him right then and there, but you figured you’d pass the torch at this juncture to the woman who had been so unfairly imposed on the full force of anarchy Derek dragged out from New York to Seattle as she mumbled something under her breath, something you suspect was of another language and she raised her bag, hell hath no fury, and begun hammering your husband with it.
You stood amusedly at the hilarity of the situation, watching the whole scene play out in front of you like it’s from one of those clichéd movies except better, awfully satisfying, and much, much more entertaining you almost bought yourself some popcorn as Derek continues to get harassed by a hundred and twenty pounds of the blonde, bones and all. Meredith . He finally says her name.
“Ineffectual fists my ass.” He mutters to himself as he calls out for her, a resounding bellow to showcase the desperation you had shown once upon a time in broad, pathetic display in the public domain. “Meredith, just wait. We should discuss this. I know how you feel.”
“Here’s a thought; no . Quit following me, and the whole knowing my feelings thing? Somehow I doubt that, because if you did, you would shut up, and you would turn around, and go back to your leggy and fabulous wife because you would realize that I’m this close to getting in my car and running you down in the parking lot!”
Derek, God don’t bless him, had the audacity to look stunned, awestricken by the cunningly sharp words from her ex-dirty mistress, if not, soon-to-be, because after today, you’re more than sure she’d want nothing to do with him. You might not have delivered your paroxysm of tirade that you had spent an ample time thoroughly rehearsing in front of the mirror, but you had managed to sabotage their relationship and you’d call that a big success nonetheless. You inadvertently caught her eye, and Meredith, the intern you decided you despised shortly after knowing about her plain existence, offered you an apologetic look, a muted concession of guilt. She almost… sympathized with you if that remotely ever made sense, and you suddenly felt a massive weight pressing down on you had the truth reached its complete exposure as you found yourself mirroring her expression.
She’d hate you in the long run. You know she would.
However, maybe a clear-sighted reappraisal of her wouldn’t hurt you as much as you had already hurt yourself. She deserves at least that. She deserves more than that.
After all, you’re at the stage where your masochism is as high and as self-destructive as it can get.
You request her on your service the next morning because, as it turns out, your masochistic tendencies could increase just a tad bit as Derek’s narcissism when she came in highly recommended by a well-trusted resident—who you’re admittedly kinda scared of—along with a fellow intern whose affinity for cardio dissuades you from choosing her instead. Since you’re making an impression and tackling a case of great importance, your tolerance for complaints hung by a piece of thread. Plus, anyone would want to keep the dirty mistress away from the even dirtier husband, won’t they?
As you would with testing a hypothesis, you abandoned your mind’s effort to discourage you from walking into this hollow pit filled with stakes and staves and everything detrimental to your tenacity as you found yourself getting beckoned towards the woman who stole your husband’s heart and from that point forward, came your morale’s free-falling when you’ve gathered just how exquisitely charming the younger woman was—minus all the moving and thrashing from yesterday’s interplay—in close-up picturesque detail of her doll-like features. This was suicide, you mused, it really fucking was and it backfired in a deadly haste when your parachute stopped working and the missile took a u-turn heading straight to your face and blowing up just like that.
But even with this grand idiocy, you’re not actually a total freakin’ idiot, at least not yet, as you opened a second parachute that relatively stalled your imminent doom and stood in front of her. It’s a public service she’s a couple inches shorter than you and is a mere intern. “Meredith Grey ,” her name rolls off your tongue effortlessly and she looks up at you with those cobalt eyes, two pools of cluttering puzzlement and inward turmoil like she’s plotting an escape out the tiger’s den you flew her into in first class. “Any relations?”
She visibly scowled, a trace of exasperation clouding her veneer of composure. “Ellis Grey is my mother,” she articulates the word mother as if it was a profane oath.
You humm in amusement. “Mmm, a legacy in my wake. How very quaint.” Crossing your arms, she mimics you in a relentless stance of defiance with so much affectivity hidden behind her collected poise that lightly marred the existential depth of repose from such innocence she lets on. You realized you had likely struck a sensitive nerve by asking, and a deduction of strained familial bond came to light, you’d know a thing or two about that for sure.
In a surgeon’s perspective, Ellis Grey was the embodiment of value and prowess, the conceptualization of women empowerment and the first surgeon to ever win not one, but two of the single most fundamental awards in medical history that defines where a surgeon stood in the pecking order of the surgical hierarchy, a milestone you could bank your entire career on once earned rightfully so. It wouldn’t surprise you if she was neglectful.
“I’m assuming she’s passed on guidance and some of her finest techniques along to you?” You tacked on; God, you’re a horrible person.
“Yeah, sure.” She replies curtly, not giving so much interest in the conversation.
You smile, the Ruler of All That is Evil style. “Alright then, let’s see what you’re made of.”
“Cells, skin, fat, bones, and a heap of stupidity,” she whispers to herself.
“Not very much fat in there, Grey.” You quipped back, taking her off guard and mortification made her withdraw a few steps away from you. “I have good hearing.”
She simply nods at you before dropping her gaze down to the floor you’re almost convinced had more appeal than you ever had. You lowered your head a bit and caught a kiss of pink fusing with the tan-coloured specks of freckles that spanned her cheeks. She really was fucking beautiful, sassy and inarguably sarcastic, but sweet all things considered. The more you interact with her, the more apparent his reason for choosing her became and you envied how everything is still at its best to her, raw and pristine just like herself. She still has a lot to learn, yet simultaneously plenty to give while you, on the other hand, progressively withered in the unvarying area you’ve been stuck in for the past decade or so, just waiting for something new to transpire. It’s the downside of being the best.
It didn’t take a genius to know why Derek had been so enamoured of her, she was a student and he liked being a mentor, he liked having been able to somewhat control and alter someone who’s eclipsed by their prime naivety and youth which was so contradictory to you. It’s true what they say, arrogant men can’t handle strong women who speak their mind. Your insides churn, he really had to do that—pick someone who’s distantly correspondent to what makes you, you .
The Anti-Addison .
It’s to starve his own guilt-ridden conscience for deliberately masking the truth, fucking pathetic. It makes you question why you still loved him.
Meredith Grey was feeling the repercussions of yours and Derek’s fallout, she didn’t deserve that, but you suppose all three of you were way past the point of who deserves it or not, nevertheless she had been irrevocably caught up in the mayhem and madness of a loveless marriage and she’s going to take a piece of it wherever she went; a remnant of a bad decision, for sleeping with a married man, not to mention an attending, and you, you who claim to be sage and mature, you who should have known better than to misplace your anger at her shouldn’t have bitten her head off when she failed to give you an answer within the fraction of a second. You were dipping down the lowest of the lows because Meredith may have been intimidated by you, but she’s great, she was no doubt the one to look out for, and you refuse to accept that.
She confronted you, telling you she could have answered it had you given her the chance, had you not acted immature , you chastised yourself, and from that, you should have stopped, but even then you came up with a rebuttal of newfound pettiness. “Chin up, Grey. I’m this tough on anyone, not just the women my husband sleeps with.”
The blonde appeared contrite that propelled you to apologize—in your head. God knows it’d take a lot more than puppy dog eyes to weather your storm. What’s your problem? What’s Derek motherfucking Shepherd’s problem? It’s almost a shame to avail yourself of his surname, a shame to have taken it in the first place, to have nearly agreed to completely discard the notion of hyphenating yours with his because if you had, you would’ve been kaput. It was the only time you were gladdened by Bizzy's unrelenting need to exercise the Forbes-Montgomery’s superiority complex extravaganza.
Not that you’re just discovering it now, but Jesus Christ, were you a glutton for punishment. There’s no evidence on earth could refute that statement as you spent the better part of the day studying her as you would with the serious case at hand. Meredith Grey fosters loyalty far and wide, high and low, you watched her consort with the comfort of her friends and saw how they have tacitly reached an agreement and safeguarded her as you pass by them like you might devour their sweet friend anytime soon. You saw how her resident shifted into full on defensive mode whenever you mentioned her name. And most importantly, you see the way Derek pines for her while Meredith dodged him at every turn she could and you silently thanked her for that.
Time and again, when Derek no longer receives the same amount of attention from a certain number of people, he turns to you, or rather turns against you that compels you to waste your energy on another pointless dispute with your, yet again, pointless husband and this is no different than any other. Apparently, requesting his beloved intern was out of line and quote, took you a lot of nerve , which it didn’t, you were genuinely curious with what the recommendations and being Ellis Grey’s daughter and all, you retaliated. Your argument took a standstill when said beloved intern intervened and you don’t know whether to laugh, fume, or bleed for the hopeless case that is Derek when he responded with such anticipation when Meredith called for Dr. Shepherd .
“ Montgomery-Shepherd .” She emphasized and began informing you of the abnormalities distinguished from your patient’s labs, and you wanted to kiss her for pulling you out of this begrimed mud.
Hold up, that didn’t sound right.
Derek pleads with her again. “Meredith.”
Her neatly trimmed eyebrows met in a perfect V. “Dr. Derek Shepherd, I aspire to be many things, many great things and being convicted of first degree murder and serving time in jail are not it. So, kindly shut up. You’re a surgeon who works with brains, read the freakin’ room.” After throwing a temper tantrum, she stalked off, literally stomped her way beyond the limits of the two hateful married couple.
Derek glared at you with conviction and you smiled cynically as you felt the chagrin on his behalf. You casually shrugged it off, you were on thin ice anyway. He finds you responsible for corrupting his perfect twelve-year old within that short amount of time, of course, blaming everybody else but him in the situation.
You expect yourself to feel conflicted, torn apart by the overwhelming fright of adding fuel to the already blazing fire and the overwhelming mirth of having known that Meredith took your side—barring the revelation of truth—willingly and unprompted. You surprise yourself though, when you didn’t care about him for the first time in a long while, and God has it been long. You found yourself floating on cloud nine that this time had been different as opposed to normal circumstances that you’d be athirst for his approval and you’d make it your top priority to appease him.
All thanks to Meredith Grey for showing you that he’s not as indestructible and irresistible as he makes himself out to be.
Upon further inspection, you realized that she’s not what you bargained for, not even virtually adjacent to the skanky, slutty, uncultivated mistress nor the spoiled, rich, brat from being royally inbred your mind had abysmally conjured up by itself. You don’t see her riding on her mother’s coattails, in the slipstream of the clear benefits it gleans by simply having Grey attached at the end of her name. You realized she had wanted to earn the respect she’d get, actually shed blood, sweat, and tears for it, which you could only imagine was taking a turn for the worst considering you’ve just delivered a vessel of problems that would prevent her from earning it. It was evident you had made her life harder by showing up which should have you ecstatic, it’s what you came for, but for some odd reason, you’re not.
You should probably focus your sole attention on the procedure you’re currently conducting, but you can feel her digging holes into your deep, dark soul and before you can stop yourself from, you don’t know, maybe shutting the hell up for once as you’ve given her enough humiliation to last her a lifetime, a question slips out from your mouth, surprisingly put together undeterred by the vacillation beneath. “How you doing there, Grey?”
She responds with a superficially calm good , yet you can palpably sense the fleeting panic by the slight uplilt of her tone. After that, you did cut her some slack and left her alone, for the meantime , and when the surgery finished, you were finally granted a moment of breath; the thought of your bed, a hot bath with a wine in hand, and being able to relax after an emotionally draining day sounds just as good as bacon cheeseburgers and you suddenly can’t wait to go home, even if home was at a obnoxiously high-priced hotel.
But the universe just hates you, it made you jump boldly on Meredith’s defense when your patient had crudely misjudged her, and you didn’t know defending her would be so… debilitating, yet concurrently soothing.
Honestly, you’d give a leg to get away from Meredith right now, the embodiment of everything you’re not. Obviously you weren’t thinking straight when you requested her on your service earlier—you weren’t thinking at all, period. And it bit you in the ass, it’s still biting you and the second parachute you were so proud to have hadn’t done its part by rights which is to supposedly land you safely, unscathed through the peril, yet you came down with a fucking fractured dignity, defiled self-esteem and all the more demolished walls of resilience.
You’re done, that was it. Coming to Seattle was a great idea.
You abandon the idea of heading straight to your hotel room in the interest of trying out the bar from right across the street in a vain effort to drown your sorrows with alcohol which didn’t work because again, the universe has some transcendental beef with you, and two, Meredith was also there with someone… Yang, was it? The cardio enthusiast. Meredith was wearing a gray Dartmouth sweatshirt and you took a gander of their morose, defeated aura, similar as yours, and they were talking about something that made Meredith’s eyes sparkle against the dim lights of the bar and you briefly wonder how good it would feel to induce such bright luminosity, and how good it would be to have her clung onto you like she was doing with Yang who had yet to provide any emotion besides melancholy. You’d be grateful if you were her, to just have the warmth of someone who gives a shit about you.
You’re so fucking lonely, it’s embarrassing.
Half an hour went by and you decided to go home and retain your alcohol-soaked night in the confines of your own room in preparation for the stupid shit you’ll most likely make. Grey and Yang had also left minutes ago, and you were thankful she hadn’t seen you because the least you wanted was to be the receiving end of her pity, but it seems as though that’s not the case, because as you were paying for your drinks, Joe, the bartender tells you it’s already been paid for by someone who had opted to cleave to anonymity.
Unbidden, an uncharacteristic smile formed on your face and it stayed there for the rest of the evening knowing it was her.