In My Blood

Chapter 1

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Addison Montgomery's Point of View

Current Time December 2010

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I sit on the window seat of my brownstone, watching the snowflakes fall. There are children playing outside. They live in the brownstone across the way and are rolling up the accumulated snow into large snowballs, attempting to build a snowman. Their mother is watching them from her own brownstone window, sipping coffee or some other hot beverage. I can hear the happy shrieks of the children and laughter through the window. I pull my knees up to my chest and rest my head on them, sitting in silence and watching the busy New York Street. For such a prestigious neighborhood our street is active, alive. I'm losing track of time. How long has it been? Days? Weeks? Months? All the days blur together now that she's no longer here. The only indicator of the time passing is the changing of the seasons and the rotating plates of food I never eat that keep appearing on the coffee table near where I am sitting.

Mark is doing the best he can, I know he is. The truth though is that he's just as lost without her as I am. She was our entire world, our miracle. I always try to find something to blame. Neither of us were raised in an environment in which emotional outpour was a safe, or acceptable thing to do. Neither of us learned healthy coping skills to deal with the crippling feeling of grief. I drink, and Mark...well...he's Mark. My heart breaks when I think of what this must be doing to him. I've completely fallen apart and he's holding so much inside, because the thought of us both falling apart at the same time is exorbitant. He has thrown himself into work and staying out of the house as much as possible. I often wonder if he is stronger than me, or if he's masking because I've given him no other choice. How is it that everyone's lives have seemingly continued without a hitch while mine halted the moment that I got the news my four-year-old daughter had been shot. When the doctors found me and told me that there was nothing they could do, she was already too far gone. How can my life go on when the most important person in my life is buried six feet beneath the earth, protected only by the marble tombstone sculpted like an angel that Mark had placed above her grave. How can I move forward when it feels like I am suffocating under the weight of my grief? How can he even function? How can he go to work each day and pretend like everything's fine? Everything's not fine.

This window seat was her favorite place in our brownstone. She loved to invent stories of the people as they passed by. Her favorite stories were those of families, who they were and where they were going. Usually in her mind they were off on some grand adventure, it was always something spectacular. Her stories were so much better than the mundane truth that they were probably just off to work, and the kids off the school or daycare. I find myself falling back to this game when my mind wanders during the long hours in this position. It's soothing. I am drawn out of my thoughts as one of the children hits the other with a snowball. The child who was hit shoves her brother, and he slips and falls. Within a few moments their mother is outside, comforting the child who had fallen. These children are older than Heavenly was, already in Elementary school around seven and nine if I had to guess. It's the hardest when parents walk past with their little girls. I always mentally wish them well, but often my heart shatters. They remind me of her. Heavenly was my everything. She not only saved my life, but she was my whole existence. She is the reason that I am who I am today. She is my reason I'm alive. Nothing makes sense anymore. The world is dark, it's confusing and it's cold. The sun just doesn't shine the same now that she isn't here to share its beauty and its warmth with me.

I'm not well. I tried to end my life the night she was taken off life support. I couldn't fathom living if it meant that I had to spend the rest of my life without her. It's selfish, but I know that in death we could be together again. It's not fair, to Mark or anyone else, but that night was hands down the worst of my life. No parent should have to make the decision to discontinue life support on their child. It's unnatural for a parent to have to bury their baby. It wasn't the first time that I've tried something like that, but it was the closest I've ever come. I silently curse myself for naming my daughter Heavenly. Mark wanted to name her something more practical like Ella, or Linda, or Mary. I won out with the justification that the person giving birth should be given the final say in the naming process. Maybe he did eventually come to like the name Heavenly after all, because he didn't fight with me about it again after that. She truly was a miracle after years of infertility when I was married to Derek. She was a gift from the heavens above.