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Addison's in the middle of preparing for another night of pasta, wine, and shitty reality tv when her phone rings. She rests it between her ear and her shoulder as she answers, using her free hands to open the bottle of red wine she's been thinking about all day. At first all she hears silence, but then a quiet voice speaks up and Addison can barely make out who it is.
“Amelia? Is that you?” There’s a sniffle and the line goes silent and for a second Addison thinks she must be imagining things, but then there’s a sob and Addison’s already putting her food in the fridge and preparing to leave the house.
What’s happening? Are you ok?” There’s another moment of silence before Amelia takes a deep breath and speaks up with a shaky voice.
“Addison, I made a mistake. I’m sorry…I don’t want to die anymore.” Amelia’s voice cracks at the end and Addison’s heart breaks for the young girl on the other end of the phone. Her voice is quiet and shaky, and all Addison can think is she sounds exhausted, broken.
Arriving at the Shepherd’s her heart is racing, her hands shaking as she unlocks the door and it welcomed to a silent house. Too silent. She heard for Amelia’s bedroom first, her heart pounding harder with each step up the stairs and towards the bedroom. The girl is slumped agains the dresser, her arms slick with blood that is soaked into her clothes and dripping onto the carpet. For a second, Addison is frozen in place as she takes in the sight in front of her, the dripping of the blood replaced by her own heartbeat. Her flight or fight instinct takes over and rushes towards the girl, her medical training kicking in to slow the bleeding before dialling 911.
She pulls off her jumper and wraps it around the girl’s left arm, tightening it as much as possible. She grabs the nearest item of clothing left on the floor and wraps it around the other arm in the same fashion as she did before.
“You can’t die today, Amelia. You won’t.” Addison holds the girl’s hand all the way from her bedroom floor to arriving at the hospital in the ambulance, only letting go when she’s not allowed to go any further.
“Is that my sister?” Addison turns sharply at the voice behind her, he rushes to Addison with a angry look when he spots her. “Addison what the hell happened?”
“Let’s go somewhere else to talk.” Addison tries to lead him somewhere else but Derek shakes her hand off his arm and takes a few steps closer to the room. Knowing he won’t listen to her and go to another room, Addison sighs and prepares herself for his reaction. “She called me…I think she tried to commit suicide.”
“No. She wouldn’t do that.” Addison lets Derek wrap his mind around the fact that his youngest sister is depressed and apparently suicidal.
Suddenly Amelia’s vitals crash and Derek’s rushing into the room to start performing CPR, Addison can see his body language change as he begins treating his sister - he’s no longer a brother watching his sister in hospital, he’s a doctor and she’s his patient. For three, excruciating minutes Addison watched Derek apply compression to his sister’s chest until someone comes in with the defibrillator and they manage to shock her heart into beating on its own.
Addison slowly makes her way to Derek, letting the man collapse into his girlfriend’s arms while the doctors figure out why an apparently stable patient’s vitals suddenly plummeted. The word narcotics is thrown into the mix and Addison feels Derek stiffen up in her arms.
“Just got the results from the tox screen, you were right - oxy.” Addison pulls Derek out of the room and into an on call room before he can react. Derek lets her, his mind too focused on what he heard to let himself resist Addison’s pull.
“You need to let the others do their jobs now, Derek, they know what they’re doing. Right now we need to call your mum.” Addison keeps her tone direct and stern, but Derek is still focused on their previous conversation.
“What happened?” Addison tries to brush off his question, not wanting to cause the man more pain by thinking of his sister in so much pain that she resorted to attempting suicide, but Derek is insistent. “You said she called you, what did she say. What did you do?” Addison resists the urge to brush Derek’s questions off again, instead slowly going over the details of the call she received and how she found Amelia, letting him ask the questions he needed to.
“You’re sure you didn’t see any drugs?” Addison furrows her eyebrows at Derek’s accusatory tone, as far as she knows Amelia doesn’t do drugs.
“I didn’t think to look for that sort of thing.” Derek sighs and runs a hand through his hair, turning around and walking a few steps away from Addison before turning to face her again. His hand in his hair tugging on a few strands.
“My mum didn’t want anyone to know…but there was an incident a couple weeks ago. She disappeared from the house and mum didn’t know where she was so she called the cops…they found Amy high out of her mind at some party. She’s fifteen, Addie.” Addison opens her arms and lets Derek collapse into them, burying his teary eyes into her shoulder. She tries not think about opening the door on the bubbly girl she’d gotten to know bleeding out from self-inflicted wounds, instead she tries to comfort her boyfriend.
“Don’t think about things that have happened, you can’t change them. Instead, you need to be there for Amelia right not. Make sure she knows how much you love her, that you’re always going to be there for her, you’re her big brother.” Derek nods and Addison leaves him to make the phone call to his mother and sisters while she goes and sits with the young girl, watching her chest rise and fall to reassure her own mind the girl was alive.
“Addison?” Addison looks up at the small cry, her hand instantly finding a small one to hold. She gives it a squeeze and grabs a cup of water with a straw to offer the girl.
“I’m here, it’s okay. Take a sip of water, yeah?” The girl does as told before looking up at the redhead with tear-rimmed eyes. Addison just wants to give her a hug and tell her everything’s going to be okay, but she knows they wouldn’t do anything to heal whatever is going on in the girl’s head that drove her to almost committing suicide.
“I was going to call you, I swear! I don’t know what happened, I felt so guilty for taking the pills because I know my mum was so upset last time. I knew everyone would be so disappointed in me.” Amelia’s tone is rushed and frantic, and Addison shushes her gently.
“I’m not disappointed in you.” Amelia looks up at Addison with teary eyes and a trembling lip, and all Addison can do is lean forward and give the girl a tight hug. When she leans back and brushes a strand of hair out of Amelia’s face the girl continues to tell her story.
“I didn’t not want to kill myself when I did it.” Amelia’s voice is slow, and Addison’s stomach drops when she realises what Amelia just said. “A couple weeks ago, I got high at a friend’s party and made my way onto the roof and I was so close to jumping off it. I didn’t do it, and the firemen came and brought me down to the police. If my mum didn’t call and report me missing, and they didn’t come find me…I think I would’ve done it.”
Amelia isn’t looking Addison in the eye, instead she’s staring at the blanket in front of her as she speaks with a monotone voice. Addison doesn’t respond, just continues holding the girl’s hand as she pieces together what she wants to say next in her mind.
“And then tonight, when I took those pills after promising my mum I would stop - granted it was a half assed promise I made when I was still coming down from the night before - all I could think about was how disappointed she’d be in me if she found out. All my life I’ve been trying to figure out how to not be a disappointment, and I just realised I will never be enough. So I thought what’s the point. And I found a knife in the kitchen and I said my goodbyes and I made the cuts.”
“What made you want to go back?” Addison keeps her tone soft, not wanting to upset the girl and cause her to close in on herself again.
“I realised that if I die today I’ll never get to be a better neurosurgeon than Derek.” The sad expression the girl had had been replaced by a cheeky grin and Addison couldn’t help but smile back at the brunette. She wasn’t okay, she was far from it. But maybe one day she’ll get there.