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Angst warning...
When she was seven, Addison chased a ball into her grandfather's garage. He'd been building a new shelf for her grandmother's
teapot collection, but had gone inside to grab a cool drink. Addie knew the she wasn't supposed to go near the heavy wood
piece, and she had not wanted to disobey, but the ball stopped right beside it, and her grandfather had not come back, and
she really, really wanted to get back to practicing wall ball.
She took tentative steps that moved her closer to her longed for lost possession. Then she bent over carefully and tried
to roll the ball away from the shelf. When she lost her balance and tipped forward, little Addison barely had time to think
about screaming before the heavy wood fell over top of her, her small, curled up body molding into the open space between
the middle-placed shelf and the bottom of the furniture piece.
The crash of her new prison against the cement floor made Addison cry out, and she curled into herself more as the blackness
created by the tight seal began to terrify her. Her chest hurt, partly from the exertion of her pounding heart and partly
from breathing that was speeding toward hyperventilation.
Her grandfather would tell her, after he had rescued her, pulling the shelf up, after he held her for nearly an hour while
trying to soothe her, that he'd come out the second he heard the wood hit the floor and that she'd only been under the shelf
a few moments. But Addison always remembered that feeling of utter terror and panic and helplessness as an eternity. For
those dark, harrowing seconds, she had felt like her life was literally being ripped away from her and all she could do was
lay there and wait for it to happen.
Thirty-one years later, Addison was standing in an elevator at Seattle Grace all alone, but the space around her may as
well have been nonexistent because grown-up, big girl Addison was once again trapped in a box, gasping for air that couldn't
seem to quite make it to her lungs and her heart was threatening to explode because she felt like her life was literally being
ripped away from her and all she could do was stand there and wait for it to happen.
One time too many, one more lingering look than she could endure. She'd almost turned away reflexively, the habit firm
from all the times before when she had chosen to ignore in the hope that it might someday matter. But the pain cut too deeply
this time, and she really, really needed the hurting to stop... now. So Addison took tentative steps and moved closer to
Derek, breaking his gaze by stepping between him and the view of Meredith that he was fixated on.
And then she lost her balance.
[i]"Did you ever stop and think what that does to me? Do you care at all that knowing I'm invisible to you when
you can't get enough of looking at her is shredding me inside, Derek, and pretty soon there won't be anything left for you
to tear apart? Please, just do me a favor and go while I can still feel anything at all."[/i]
How she managed to walk away, Addison didn't know. But somehow she'd made it to the elevator and God had smiled on her
at least enough to provide an empty car for her to move into, the doors giving her a momentary safe haven.
He would leave now. She had told him to, and he would go. And as her heart pounded and her breathing grew more and more
panicked, Addison backed into the corner of the elevator and began to sink to the floor. She realized now that this moment
of agony was far worse than her childhood terror because even though she could move and there was light, this time, her life
actually was being ripped away. Life as Addison knew it, as she needed it to be, would end.
The bell above her let out its unmistakable "ding" and Addison felt the elevator slowing. She could feel tears
on her face and her body was shaking and she had no clue how she was supposed to stand up and walk out of this elevator with
anything amounting to a scrap of pride when she couldn't even make her lungs draw in oxygen. But her fingers wrapped around
the guardrail on either side of her and her heels dug into the floor, and Addison was standing on her own two feet when the
doors parted enough for a group of nurses to enter. She moved past them quickly, giving herself no time to pause and fall
further apart in public view.
There had been no grandfather to pull her to safety and soothe her cries this time, but Addison was out of the box that
had trapped her once again. And even though the air outside burned her overworked lungs and her heart protested at the further
exertion of her fast-paced steps, Addison knew that despite the hurt and the fear, she had truly freed herself.
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