THE OTHER MONTGOMERY GIRL

Strange how one chance encounter can spark a row that stretches decades, families, and women. And how illness brings people together.

There was two years between them, two years of struggling with Ariel and creating Addison. Two years that meant nothing in kindergarten, everything in middle school, nothing when they both went to high school and everything again when Ariel left for college. Two years that would mean nothing again now, if they still spoke to one another.

They were like any two sisters, really. Playing and fighting but never meaning anything – there was only one difference. They never seemed to have the hatred for one another that some sisters did in themidst of arguments. They would sometimes be screaming at each other, Addison with a wide grin on her face, Ariel bursting into laughter. Maybe I should have seen it then, that this was the calm before the storm, that this just fuelled the passion of their quarrel years later.

And this time there was no conciliatory reunion, no dry-eyed reconciliation that put my heart at ease. I never saw them hold each other and cry together over their own stupidity again. I saw Ariel break down into tears when she suffered a horrific loss – Addison should have been there to hold her but she wasn’t. I watched Addison’s graduation from Yale medical school, where for just a second her eyes darted into the crowd, searching for a face she had forbidden the invitation of. I saw Ariel’s children christened and grow, without the name Aunt Addison ever even gracing their lips. I saw Addison crumple to the floor when the weight of her divorce finally hit her – but nothing anyone could say would comfort her. The only one with similar experience hadn’t laid eyes on her sister for thirteen years.

They were never similar children – Ariel was dainty, determined, industrious; Addison effortless, brilliant, beautiful. And I, and they, could never see their faults. Addison could not see Ariel was selfish, bad tempered and petulant, and Ariel could never see Addison was arrogant, self absorbed and had a superiority complex. If I try to think about it hard enough, firstly I think Ariel was the unlucky one. It can’t have been easy growing up with a little sister prettier and smarter than you. But Ariel had fight, and determination and the power to choose difference that Addison struggled with. The younger sister was filled with the need to please. But they were both stubborn. Even as toddlers, if they didn’t want to go to bed, to drink their milk, to eat their mashed cabbage – they were the same in that respect. So when their eyes were finally opened to those faults and others the stubbornness set in and both refused to break. Both refused to see, speak, or even think of the other for fourteen years.

Ariel and Addison Forbes Montgomery were no longer Ariel and Addison Forbes Montgomery. They were Ariel Forbes Montgomery-Marsh and Addison Forbes Montgomery-Shepherd. Separate entities.

Who were about to be thrown together by fate.

Something I would have given everything to see.

Addison ran her hand through her hair, trying not to make herself look as tired as she really was. She wondered to herself if she was getting old. She’d only been back in Seattle for two days for a conjoined twins procedure, and already she was exhausted with surgery and hospital work. Perhaps turning to the practice and Oceanside had turned her soft, and she couldn’t deal with the pressures of being the world class neonatal surgeon she prided herself on being. She was 39 now, nearly forty, which had sounded so old when she was young, and maybe she was beginning to feel the effects of it all. Maybe she should put down her scalpel for good and resign herself to being the obstetrician gynaecologist at Oceanside and leave the surgical procedures to Charlotte King and her staff…

The very thought of giving up surgery almost turned her stomach. She had been determined to do it from the age of about five, worked her ass of for it throughout high-school, college and Yale, regardless of reputation and popularity, fought through one of the toughest internships available in New York, let her own marriage suffer…

No. There was no way she would forget this job, this way of life. She, more than anyone she knew, thrived on the adrenaline of holding a scalpel, clamps and someone’s life in your hands. Maybe that was partly what had led to the not so conventional choice to go neonatal – pink and squishy. The fact that she could have two lives in her hands, or three or four or five, all in one go. The increased responsibility, the power and strength and difference she could make with one cut.

So, even though she was so tired she could genuinely fall asleep on her feet, she’d spent the whole day running in and out of storage rooms pretending to look for things to avoid three men and their respective girlfriends, she wasn’t giving this up in a hurry. Because for the first time in almost a year she had woken up and had been almost unable to wait to get to work. That was what Oceanside couldn’t give her. That longing, that rush, that high. She was and always would be a surgeon first and foremost.

“Dr Montgomery-Shepherd?” she heard a small, high pitched voice. That was a name she hadn’t heard in a long time. She spun round. The young nurse in front of her was wall with cropped blonde hair, little blue eyes and a nervous expression.

“It’s just Dr Montgomery.” She said stiffly. “Can I help you?”

She girl shifted from foot to foot. “Dr Stevens has a patient…”

Addison raised an eyebrow, “And that has to do with me?”

“She won’t even be examined until she’s seen you.”

Addison rolled her eyes. “Tell her that Dr Stevens is extremely highly qualified and trained under me. She will be perfectly capable of handling whatever it is.”

The nurse looked at her feet, clothed in tennis shoes. “She says it’s a personal matter. She asked specifically for Dr Montgomery Shepherd.”

Addison looked at the girl. “Well, that’s not me, is it? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.” She started to walk down the corridor, the only sound in her ears the click-clack of Jimmy Choos on linoleum floor.

“She told me to tell you her name is Maggie Forbes!” the girl called after her.

Addison stopped dead in her tracks, and cliché as it was, cold washed over her. Slowly she rotated on one of her heels to face the nurse, who was looking up at her sheepishly.

“Ariel.” Addison breathed, and without a word, tore off down the corridor towards the gynaecology wing.

Dr Stevens looked nervously across at her patient. “Ms Forbes, are you sure you won’t just let me examine you? I promise I won’t do anything until Dr Montgomery gets here.”

The woman on the bed shook her head tiredly. “Dr Stevens, I appreciate your competence and am sure you would do my procedures perfectly successfully – I just need to speak to Addison.”

“Right.” Izzie said, and looked pointedly down at her chart. There was something strangely familiar about the woman in the bed in front of her. She was tall, and bordering on painfully thin. She was probably about 40, but she had an elegance rather than an awkwardness about her. She only looked old in her eyes – sad and desperate. She had hair that Izzie could imagine was usually beautiful – long and thick and auburn. But it was tied loosely up, without a second’s thought, in the woman’s tiredness and resentment. Her skin was pale, and her face shape was striking – the triangular chin, the pretty blue eyes. There were few wrinkles collecting around her eyes, and up until the onset of illness Maggie Forbes seemed to have aged well.

In a second, someone came bursting through the door like a hurricane. Addison Montgomery stood there, the nurse Izzie had sent to find her standing sheepishly behind.

The woman in the bed and the usually calm, in control doctor at the door stared at each other for a moment or two. Then, when Addison finally spoke, her voice was cracked and small.

“Dr Stevens, please could you give us a minute or two?”

Izzie nodded and walked out, closing the door behind her and the nurse.

‘Maggie Forbes’ stared at Addison.

“Addie?” she said in a thin voice. The red head said nothing to her, just walked over and lifted her chart, reading through the details of the diagnosis and suggested treatment. She went gradually whiter and then looked the other woman in the eye.

“Ariel.” She said, her voice cold.

“Addison, I-” Ariel began, but Addison cut her off.

“This changes nothing. Don’t try. Do the children know you’re here having your breasts, ovaries and uterus cut out?”

She shook her head, tears coming to her eyes. “They’re staying with Brett. And Andrew thinks I’m away on business. A cardiology convention.”

Addison raised her eyebrows at the name, but said nothing. She skimmed over the chart again. “It’s a complicated procedure.”

“Will you do it?”

“Of course.”

“But you-”

“You’re my sister.”

Ok, this is the beginning of an epic, I think. Let me know what you think. The title is stolen from the Other Boleyn Girl, but other than that there are no similarities. Will be probably slightly Maddison (because I can’t help myself) but mostly about Addison and Ariel and their relationship, past and future.

Please leave a review.

xxx