Out of the Darkness

Chapter 17

The bright sun slowly snuck in a corner of the plastic blinds that hung on the large hospital window. It quickly spread warm sunshine throughout the room, erasing traces of the long dark sleepless night. Meredith had tossed and turned for hours. She didn't think she'd slept for more than five minutes at a time. She had been haunted with bits and pieces of memories all night that hadn't made any sense to her.

A lot of the memories had been from her childhood. She had been left with feelings of loneliness and dejection. As the memories advanced in her dreams, she was sure things had changed. There was a time she was happy. She was sure of it. And she was sure it had to do with the hospital she found herself lying in. She was now certain that everyone knew something she didn't. She just had to figure out what that was.

She didn't let herself think about Derek all night. Everything that had happened yesterday was just too much to contemplate. When she let her mind wander to the dreamy doctor and the surprising connection he had shared with her daughter, her head started to buzz in a strangely familiar way. It made her dizzy and scared, and so she had decided to just not think of him.

Meredith laid her head back and squeezed her eyes shut trying to remember the last memory that had played through her mind. She couldn't recall it, but remembered the way it made her palms sweat and her heart break. What could it have been? She remembered it was something she hadn't been suspecting, but she felt it was something big. Something that would cause her life to spin out of control and turn her into a dark and twisty mess.

She was taking out her frustration on her flat pillow that refused to fluff, when a soft knock came at the door. She called for whoever it was to come in, not paying much attention, busying her self with her pillows and blankets in an impossible effort to get comfortable.

"Is everything okay?" came the concerned female's voice from her door way.

Meredith abandoned her efforts and turned to the unexpected visitor. "Addison? Oh, I'm sorry, I mean, Dr. Montgomery - Sloan."

Addison smiled easily and took off her glasses, carefully putting them in the small pocket of her lab coat. "It's all right, I told you to call me Addison."

Meredith nodded and stared carefully at the beautiful red head that stood before her. Her hair was perfect, not a strand out of place. Her smooth skin was even and she wore a hint of pink lip gloss that coordinated perfectly with her silk blouse. The black skirt she wore stopped short of her knees, showing flawless legs that went on forever. She finished out her outfit with a perfect pair of designer heels. Meredith couldn't help but shrink down in her bed feeling incredibly inferior to the goddess who stared back with a concerned look on her face.

Meredith didn't know what to say so she sat silently, waiting for her visitor to speak first.

Addison suddenly realized she really didn't have a good excuse to be in Meredith's room, besides the fact she truly did care about the young woman and wanted to make sure she was doing okay. "Oh, um... Have you seen Dr. Shepherd? I needed him for a consult... and they said he might be in here?"

Meredith shook her head and searched the woman's face. Her first encounter with this doctor had gone rather similarly. She had come in one of the first nights of Meredith's stay, "looking" for Dr. Stevens. Meredith had fallen for the excuse the first few times, but when Addison's husband Mark had stumbled in one day with the same pretext, she couldn't ignore her gut that they weren't being completely honest with her.

Addison shifted from one heel to the next, uncomfortable under Meredith's scrutinizing stare. "Well, okay. I'm so sorry to have bothered you. I'll, uh, see you later." Addison turned to leave but Meredith's soft voice stopped her.