Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟲𝟯 addison and derek (reprise)

She felt as though she was waiting to go into a principals office, about to hear all of the issues that Beth had caused at school.

The problem was that she'd never been Beth's first call when it came to things like that. 

It had always been Archer who'd been called over state-lines to boarding school (mostly because their parents were always out of the country on their separate vacations, busy not giving a damn about their kids). 

This felt wrong, this felt ominous and it felt like things were about to go very wrong.

The thought of opening that file exhausted her. Why had she agreed to this? She didn't want to do this, be here, know these things. 

But then there had been the tone of Derek's voice, the relief when he'd seen her arrive and the way that he'd agreed to let her work here without hesitation. 

She'd sat in his office and he'd had everything ready so quickly--

Addison found herself staring over his shoulder, out of the window. 

She didn't like that, if she strained, she could almost hear footsteps approaching his office with such anger and determination. She sensed that it was coming, like an oncoming storm cloud or an incoming ambulance; it was as if, from the moment Addison had opened that medical record, she'd trigger something catastrophic in the universe.

"Have a look," Derek breathed, jerking his chin down at the file in between them. 

She hesitated. Like her, he seemed to be uncomfortable, unable to stay still. She wasn't sure whether it was the phenomenon of having her here in this office or the fact that this was definitely not legal. Addison hesitated. 

"See what you find..."

If someone were to peer into this office, they would have thought nothing of this conversation: two doctors and a medical file. It was a normal situation. 

It was a normal situation in concept. But there was nothing normal about estranged divorced adults sitting in an office like this with a file like that-- it wasn't just a medical file. It was family.

"What am I looking for?" Addison frowned. 

He hadn't told her what was going on. She'd entered this office blindly and oblivious to what she'd find. It filled her with the nauseous sort of anxiety, the type that made her want to leave the room immediately. But she didn't leave, she just pressed her palm against the folder and very, very slowly slid it closer to herself.

Derek paused. It was as if he was thinking long and hard. He watched her fingers brush across the cover of the medical file. 

Absently, Addison traced the outline of her name; the E, the L, the I, the...

He shrugged. "You'll know it when you see it."

Derek was so nonchalant, filling the space where his panic had been on the phone. It unsettled her. 

She stared at the name, at the letters that were slowly embedding themselves into her brain. He watched her as she sunk into the silence, deep in thought. She was thinking about all of the times she'd said that name... thought that name...

"Did you know that Archer and I named her?"

Addison's comment made Derek tilt his chin upwards, eyebrows raising. She hadn't even realised that she'd spoken. The question was completely innocent, a thought that appeared candidly and off-handedly. 

When Addison looked up from the medical file and saw Derek's expected expression, she realised that he was waiting for her to continue.

"Beth. Our parents kind of just... just let us choose whatever we wanted. I think they, uh, kind of gave up on the third kid. Probably ran out of names that started with 'A'... Just left it up to an eight year old and an eleven year old." She paused and smiled dimly. "Elizabeth was my favourite character from this kids book. I used to obsess over it... It was about a princess and a dragon... and then the... the princess saves this prince from the evil monster and realises her prince is a tool so she decides to just ride off into the sunset on her own..." Another beat. "Beth's like that. She's the princess that tells the prince to go screw himself and rides off on her own to Canada... into the sunset."