Chapter Twelve: Bright Lights On A Cold Night.

The coloured lights are blurred; obscured against the dark background which laps against the pier. It's cold; your breath is misty white on black. You watch as she tucks her hair behind her ears and leans against the railing, exhaling dramatically and shoving her hands into her pockets.

"How'd we get here?" she whispers, after minutes of silence.

To the non-observant observer, someone watching without watching, you might look like strangers. But you stand too close; the sleeve of your coat brushes against hers when you lean into her instead of offering a suitable answer. This meeting was an accident and neither of you spoke to greet the other. You've been standing for five minutes staring out over the lights of Seattle reflected in its water and neither of you has spoken until just now.

There was an unspoken agreement that the silence was not to be disturbed for trivial things like polite conversation. You recognised her as soon as you saw her and when she met your eyes seconds later, you both knew the other was here to think, not necessarily to be alone because God knows, aloneness isn't something you desire anymore, but to be free of the suffocating restrictions of social custom, the obligation to respond when someone speaks to you, the constant bustle beneath fluorescent lights that is your day job. You came here to be quiet without silence because an empty hotel room on the twenty-second floor is deaf to any noise from outside.

You look at her and you struggle to rearrange the thousands of tiny pieces in your mind, scrambling fragmented recollections and insignificant details stored in your memory to be neat and chronological but upon finishing, they're just as chaotic as before. You search to answer her question and see her in three different places in time, her mouth forming the same words.

"How'd we get here?" she asks, staring into the empty OR in wonder, her hands still dripping over the scrub room sink.

"Four years of med school, one year of internship and ten hellish months of residency?" you quirk an eyebrow at her incredulously and smile a little at her unamused reaction.

You watch as she shakes her hands dry and pass her a paper towel. You both stare through each other's reflection and into the dark room in front of you. She reaches up to unpin her wedding rings from the salmon scrubs and sighs, "But aren't you still amazed that this is happening to you; that you're standing there and there's someone living and breathing with a beating heart lying on the table in front of you?"

She slaps your arm as the sides of your mouth curl upwards into a smile.

"Don't laugh at me," she chides, "I've dreamt about this since I was a kid."

"I know," you say simply, "You were great in there. You've got steady hands."

"I was so scared," she confesses, holding them out in front of her and staring. Her left pinkie trembles slightly, "I'm still slightly right-hand dominant."

You reach out and curl your fingers around her wrist, thumb trailing along her forearm, and feel her tense beneath your touch. She inhales sharply and watches as you grip her slender wrists.

"Relax," you tell her, "You're trying too hard to keep it still."

Her hand is perfectly still so you release her wrist and she exhales in a rush.

She breathes again and slumps forward against the railing. You watch her hair, raspberry in the light, dangle toward the calm ocean. The water is swirling like black ink in the dark; a distorted mirror image stares back at the both of you.

"How'd we get here?" she asks, eyes still rimmed with tears, "He... we were so in love Mark, how'd that all change? I still feel like I'm wearing that stupid white dress with the fairytale skirt, dancing with a glass of champagne in my hand and yet, all of a sudden it's dark and cold and I'm lonely, all the time."

You sigh and cover her bare shoulder with your warm hand, squeezing lightly.

"Seriously, how did this happen? Ten years ago we were all so happy; Derek loved me and you were his best friend and we had a good-natured hatred for each other and..." she trails off, "How did we get here? To this?"

You slip your jacket from your shoulders and throw it over hers, "We grew up," you offer, "We became adults, whenever that happened, and suddenly we were obsessed with eating right and working out and saving money and investing for our retirements and getting ahead and being boring," you crease your mouth in disgust, "And being everything we promised we wouldn't be."

"How do we make it stop?" she sighs, leaning against you and resting her head on your shoulder.

You run your hands along the cold concrete steps the hospital and shrug slightly, "We can't."

She straightens. You reach out and pull the hair from her eyes, pulling it over her shoulder and watching as the wind whips it out from beneath your fingers, a cloud of red billowing out behind her.

"How'd we get here?" she asks, breathless, lips swollen, the skin around her mouth wet and pink. You reach up to brush her hair from her face, the back of your palm brushing against her cheek.

"In the usual way I imagine," you remark lightly as she shifts against the sheets, the rustle of paper accompanying the labs marked 'positive and consistent with four weeks'.

She laughs a little and falls back against the pillows, her hair a sharp contrast to your white sheets, "Two months ago, I never would have thought you'd be happy."

You smile at her and let your chin rest against the warm curve of her stomach. She clasps her hands behind your neck as your brush your lips against her skin and say, "Things change."

"I don't know," you say, because you don't.

She sighs at your honesty, "I know. I can't figure it out myself."

"Addison," you begin, but she shakes her head, "Mark, I've been thinking..."

You steel yourself because you know what's coming.

"I just," she digs her fingernails into her arms; you watch as the manicure catches on the fabric of her coat, "I'm afraid all the time. I know... I know everything is different but it's not, not really. I want it to be but," she shakes her hands free for emphasis, "Now I'm rambling. The point is I just need some time. I need to figure out who I am. I need to be on my own because for so long I haven't been, for so long I've needed someone, I just don't think I can do it anymore. I can't... "

You hold up a hand to stop her, "Addison."

She looks up, seemingly surprised that you're actually there. You let her blink at you while you fight back a vague, distracted but still irrepressible grin, just at the sides of your mouth. Your eyes aren't behind it. You don't actually feel the sentiment it belies; it's just force of habit, your brain remembering the fondness that usually fills you up inside falling down behind your lungs into the pit of your peritoneal cavity. It has always happened when she loses herself in her thoughts. You love her mind that makes her sentences run together because it runs faster than her mouth. It reminds you of your own.

When you are silent she is surprised, thinking you interrupted because you have something to interject but you don't. You just recognise how her anxiety speeds up her halting sentences and you don't want her to feel that; trepidation at this moment should be your feeling alone.

You try to swallow but your mouth is dry, "Go on."

She sighs, all her words forgotten, "I. That's it. I have to ... put some distance between myself and all this mess. I have to think. I have to."

And there she stops, lost in her thoughts again and forgetting you can't hear them or maybe just not wanting you to know what passes through her mind in the intervening silent seconds.

You curl your gloved hands against the icy metal of the railing separating you and her from the coloured reflection of the city swirling below. You might as well be drowning at this point, you think; you've forgotten the last time you breathed.

"Mark," she begins again, eyes searching yours but somehow flat with resolve and a lifelessness that demonstrates the finality of her decision, "I'm moving to LA."

You look at her, "Addison."

"I know," she blinks suddenly, eyes wet though you can't tell if it's from the sting of a sudden wind or your own emotions mirrored in her.

"Please," she holds up her hand, "Don't make this hard."

You nod, wanting to reach for her but busying your hands in your pockets instead hoping to honour her request, "It's ok."

But you don't want to make this easy.

She breathes. Mist rises between you while she pauses, uncertain of how the scene ends. You have always felt a sense of perpetual motion around her so maybe she feels the same inertia, unable to walk away.

You step forward, nudging her toes until she looks up at you then catch her chin in your thumb and forefinger, "Have a safe trip."

"Oh Mark," she presses her face into your shoulder then, tightening her arms around you in a somewhat desperate embrace and you get a sense of what she means by needing to distance herself now. She's clinging to you, a buoy in the sea of the familiar. If you're honest you don't want her to hold on for that reason any more.

You kiss her temple and pull away, squeezing her palms before dropping her hands, "Goodbye Addison."

She doesn't bother with a fake 'promise me you'll call' which some part of you hopes for, because given the chance between her friendship or nothing you'd still take someone who knows you, someone who has watched your hair thin out and face crease as collagen degrades. She doesn't return the words either: her lips are pressed together as though she doesn't trust herself to speak. Gripping at her elbows she turns, walks into the darkness then pauses, turning to meet your eyes as you watch her go.

She surprises you, even in the end.

You used to think it was all biochemistry. She was just a little bit like a drug and it was just the damn monoamines. And that, you thought, was a good thing because it wouldn't last; unlike most things in life, if you ignored it, it would eventually go away. The only flaw in the science is that it hasn't yet.

Fin.