When faced with the decision of quitting or making a come back it's in most people's nature to quit.  To retreat into the life that they knew once before because they are scared of the unknown.  It's just like in chemistry we learn about chemical reactions.  A chemical reaction is a process in which one or more substances, also called reactants, are converted to one or more different substances also known as products.  

-

"Is that your phone or mine?" Alison woke up to the deep morning voice of the New Yorker as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

During her shift the other day she had ended things between she and Anthony.  They just weren't working out for the couple at the end of the day and she was tired of it.  They ended on good terms and wished each other well, promising to still be friends if the other ever needed anything.

"Oh, it's mine," the blonde told Mark as he sat up further in bed.

"Is it your ex?"

"No," she shook her head.  "It's Derek.  Apparently he ended things with Meredith," she told him as she brought the sheet up to not expose her bare chest.

"So what's the deal with them anyway?  I mean I witnessed his relationship and marriage to Addison and he's never fought for her the way he did with Meredith."

"Everyone but Derek knows that he loves her but I can tell he's afraid of getting hurt again," she tells the New Yorker and then realizes what she said.  "Sorry."

"It's alright," he brought a hand up to her cheek as he caresses it with his thumb.  

Alison could tell that Mark was wanting to be a better man and a better friend.  After their talk at Joe's the night before - it made her see him in a new light.  That maybe she let Derek's thoughts consume her too much until they were her own without really knowing the situation.  

"How much time do we have?" He asked as he furrowed his eyebrows.

"Well, all of the residents don't have to be in until later for the M&M conference. . ." 

He pinned her underneath him as she let out a squeal and wrapped her arms around his neck as she let out a laugh.  

"Think we have time for another round?" He grinned mischievously.

Instead of speaking, she captured hips lips with her own.

*

"Callie," Alison and the Latina doctor heard her name being called by the intern.  "Wait up."

"I'll save you a seat," Alison smiled at the Latina and went in.

She spotted Mark as he had turned around just as she was walking into the auditorium room, giving her a small smile as his blue eyes sparkled.  Not wanting to draw attention to what happened last night, she grabbed a seat rows behind him and made sure to save one for Callie as Clair saved a seat next to her for Alison.

Alison and especially Clair didn't have to be here like the others but they wanted to see what was going to be discussed in this conference.  So far Clair enjoyed her time at Seattle Grace.  Callie came in moments later and took a seat next to Alison.

"Okay people," Webber started off.  "Let's begin.  Patient number three-four-nine-eight-six died last month from complications following a heart transplant.  Doctor Burke will present."

"That's Denny," Alison murmured more to herself as she sucked in a deep breath.

"Who?" Clair leaned into the Ped's surgeon confused who they were talking about, obviously it was a patient that many doctors knew at this hospital.  

Alison didn't answer Clair though.  Instead, she was fixed on what Burke will be saying, anxiously.  She couldn't help but think of Denny constantly.  What he would be doing right now if he had survived after the surgery.  He would probably be married to Izzie right now and she would still be an intern because no one would know all of the turn of events that happened that night.

Preston starts to give the report of how Denny died and after he was done a lot of hands went up for questioning.

"So the company line is that he died of CVA?" One asked the cardiologist.

"There's no company line.  That's what he died of."

It was true.  Unfortunately, he died of a stroke.  Not because of Izzie.  Or the fact that she cut his LVAD wires.  Or the fact that there were so many things that went wrong that night.  It was truly a heartbreaking moment that none of them imagined happening.  Especially Doctor Burke getting shot.

Others raised their hand, apparently Denny's case was really popularly known and widespread.  Burke picked on someone else.

"Uh, yes," another doctor started and put on his glasses.  "Let's get back to this patient's need for an emergency transplant.  You're saying that his left ventricle had been weakened by the LVAD malfunction?"

"His left ventricle was weakened by the fact that he suffered from congested heart failure."

"Come on, Doctor Burke," the doctor from earlier complained.  "We all know that the LVAD was cut by an intern."

"Actually, the events remain unclear," Burke told the doctor.

"It remains unclear because you were in the ER with a gun shot wound," at that comment Alison flinched.  Why aren't we hearing from Doctor Bailey?  She was the senior physician on the case..."

"I am the attendant on record," Burke answered back professionally, not wanting Bailey to go through this.

"Yes," Bailey answered afterwards and then stood up.  "I was the resident in charge," she then looked to Burke and he nodded his head finally and allowed Bailey to go up to the podium and speak.  "Doctor Burke has summarized the medical facts of this case.  Are there any questions for me?" 

At that comment all the hands were raised and Alison had never wanted to sink further into her chair then at this moment.

*

"How was the conference?" Addison asked Alison once it was over and she was now on the Ped's floor.

"As well as it could be," she sighed.  "They talked about Denny."

"Oh," Addison let out a breath.

"And the other doctors then grilled Bailey for what seemed to be almost an hour.  I felt bad for her."

"Bailey spoke?" She sounded surprised.  "I just thought Burke would have."

"Oh he did," Alison nodded her head.  "But no one wanted to hear from Burke.  They wanted to hear from Bailey.  I felt bad for her."

"Doctor Montgomery-Shepherd," Meredith greeted Addison from her pager.

"Doctor Grey," Addison greeted the blonde first.  "Welcome back.  And uh it's just Montgomery now."

"What?" Meredith asked, not sure if she heard her right.

"My name.  The divorce was finalized this morning."

"You guys divorced?" Alison asked, shocked that Derek went through with it and didn't tell her.

"It happened this morning," Addison let out a sigh as she continued to walk and the two blondes followed her.  "I'm surprised he didn't tell you yet," Addison told Alison knowing how close the peds surgeon and neuro surgeon were.

"Yeah, me too," the blonde murmured.  

"See you two later," Alison told them as she went off to her patients with Smith who happened to be one of her favorite interns other than O'Malley.

"What do we have here, Smith?" Alison asked the intern as they just looked over their patient whose name was John Davis.  He was fourteen and was a track runner in middle school."

"A case of heat exhaustion, Doctor Anderson," Smith told her resident as well as the teenager and his parents.

"Good.  How do we want to go about with treatment?"

"Stay inside and rest in a cool place.  Drink lots of fluids and take a break from running until you get to feeling better.  Try taking a cold shower or cool bath.  I know it might not be bearable but it is paramount to you feeling better.  Also make sure to wear loose clothing.  Should be cleared up in twenty-four to forty-eight hours."

It was an easy case for right now, thankfully.  It seemed that lately all Alison had been having lately were hard cases or surgery.  Not that she was complaining but she liked to have easy days too.  With John, Alison and Morgan Smith had ran a blood test on the patient, a urine test, muscle function as well as an x-ray.  The patient had come in with symptoms such as general muscle weakness, sudden excessive sweating, nausea and vomiting and he had fainted once before his parents brought him to the hospital.

"Thankfully it's the start of the weekend as well so you have no excuse but to rest."

"Thank you doctors," the mother tells Alison and Morgan.  "I keep telling Johnny to drink plenty of water before practice but he sometimes never listens."

"Your welcome," Alison told her with a smile.  "If it helps, I always bring a Yeti or Hydroflask with me to work.  It's so hot outside and humid that you really need to drink more water, John.  I remember when I ran track I drank twice as much water as I do now."

"You ran track?" He asks a little interested now.

"Yep, one hundred meter sprint.  Ran all through middle school and high school.  Had to stop in college though.  What do you run?"

"I do the hurdles and four hundred meter dash."

"I'm sure you're amazing but just make sure to take time to rest and let your body heal.  And make sure to drink plenty of water."

*

"Oh, Izzie, your back," she stammered, unsure of what to say to the blonde as she and Addison shared a look.

"Welcome back," Addison told the blonde as well.

"I'm fine.  I'm just not back."

"Oh," Alison shifted awkwardly.

"Hey, you're Doctor Addison Montgomery-Shepherd.  That's a lot of names a lot of rich sounding names.  Your probably rich, right?  That's rude.  That's a rude question, I'm sorry," Izzie told Addison to which she and Alison laughed at that.  "It's just - I'm rich now too."

"You're not rich until you deposit the check," George pointed out as he was writing in the charts.  

"Do either of you feel guilty?"

"I'm sorry?" The two Ped's doctors said at the same time.

"Being rich.  Because I have all this money now and I don't really feel like I did anything to deserve it.  But I can't really talk to my friends about it because they are all so poor," she whispered the last part which Alison laughed at.

"Standing right here," George commented, making Addison laugh.

"Deposit the check, Stevens.  Just start there, okay?  And um, the guilt will work itself out," Addison told the blonde.

"Or you could wait," Alison commented, making the others look at the blonde Ped surgeon.  "To see what you could put the money towards.  Maybe something good will come out of it."

"I think I'll do what you said, Doctor Anderson.  Thank you two and I'm sorry things didn't work out.  Well, I should probably go."

"We are too.  You would have been a great Pediatric doctor," Alison told the blonde before the two Ped's Queen's left.  "I was really rooting for you."

Izzie walked away from talking to the two with George - a smile painted on her face.  She finally knew what she was going to do with the check.  

*

"So you end things with Meredith and divorce Addison.  Why did you end things with Meredith?" Alison asked her best friend and he ignored her at first as they walked in the hallways.

"She deserves to be happy," he let out an exhausted sigh.  "And Finn is a good guy."

"But she doesn't love Finn.  She loves you!"

"It doesn't matter, Alison.  Let it go and move on.  It's what I'm trying to do," he told her as he then went in the elevator to escape anymore questioning but didn't realize that the blonde he was trying to avoid most was in the elevator with him.

It was too late to try and get out of the elevator as the doors had already closed and it started going up.

*

"I just felt so bad for Bailey this morning," Alison told Callie as they were eating lunch outside.

"I know, me too.  She didn't deserve that.  I know Bailey's tough but she's still human."

"I agree," Alison took a sip of her water.  "Are you going to eat those?" She asked, pointing to the fries on Callie's plate.

Callie raises her brows but lets Alison take them nonetheless.  The orthopedic doctor had never seen someone so excited about fries before but who was she to judge?  Callie knew right away how much Alison loved fries.

*

After seeing close to fifteen patients, Alison had heard about the patients that Addison was working with alongside Grey and Yang.  Apparently they were married before, got a divorce, the ex-wife got remarried but yet they had an affair and got caught on each other during sex because he had his penis pierced.  Alison chuckled when she heard the story and now she was in the gallery watching the surgery for the ex-husband as he had a heart attack.

Alison wondered how Burke would do seeing as this was his first surgery since he's been back.

All of a sudden she sees that Yang fills in for Burke and does a running whip stitch on the patient's heart and that's when it hits her.

Doctor Burke still has troubles with his hand.

*

Mark opened the door to the office that Derek was in to speak to him.

"She told you," he commented to his former best-friend as Derek went back to typing on his laptop.  "I've known you my whole life.  I grew up with you so I know what you're thinking.  That there is a year of your life wasted.  Trying to make it work with Addison when you could have been with Meredith.  That you could be happy right now.  That all this, everything, that you and Meredith could have had a real chance.  Still," he stood up and crossed his arms.  "I thought you should know the truth.  About Addison and I.  As a friend."

Right now wasn't the time to tell him that he slept with Alison.  He knew it was a lot to keep it a secret from Derek but given everything that he had gone through today and trying to figure out what it all meant with Alison, he knew they needed their own time.  

"You're not my friend," Derek told him, shutting his laptop and then walking out of the room.

Hours later when it was now past midnight, Alison saw the Plastic surgeon walk towards the entrance doors of the hospital to leave as well with a serious look on his face.

"Hey," he greeted her as his blue eyes lit up a bit momentarily.  "Good day?"

"No surgeries today, so I'd say so.  You?"

"The worst."

And just like that the Ped's surgeon and the Plastic's surgeon walked out of Seattle Grace Hospital talking about their day as they made it to the hotel he was staying at.

And sometimes when the truth comes out - it hurts.  It feels as though you've been punched in the gut because you never saw it coming.  You might think that person needs to hear the truth for closure but really it can sometimes damage the person further.  Push them further and further away until they figure that everything they've ever known was a complete lie.  Where do you go when everything you thought was once real ended up not being real anymore?  Where do you go when the person who you thought was your home isn't your home anymore?  

--

I'm really sorry to those who loved Anthony but let's be honest they were never going to end up together.  I figured ten chapters was enough to have them be together.  

Also I wanted to let you know that my book will be different from the show for Mark and Addison from here on out if you couldn't tell.  I wanted to update sooner and I hope you all love this chapter.

What do you think of Mark and Alison together?  When and how do you think Derek will find out?  What will his reaction be?