Hi, you've reached the private line of Addison Montgomery. If you're trying to reach me at my office, please hang up and dial (212) 305-2500, extension 5555. If not, leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as my schedule and the baby allow. Thanks.

Hello, you've reached Dr. Addison Forbes Montgomery. If it's an emergency, please hang up and call 911. If you're trying to make an appointment and it can't wait, please press 1. This will direct you to the New York Presbyterian Neo-Natal Front Desk. Otherwise, please leave a message that includes your name, the date and time you called, and a number I can reach you at. I'll get back to you as soon as possible. Thanks!

Addison paced the waiting room of the pediatrician's office at New York Presbyterian. She'd been kicked out of the room because Ben wouldn't calm down until she did, and she knew she wasn't going to any time soon. She shouldn't be acting like this, she's seen babies more sick than Ben before, but none of them have ever been hers. She fishes through her purse for her phone and shakily dials, leaning against the wall.

When she hears the "Hello?" on the other end, she breathes a sigh of relief.

"M-Martha?"

Last minute staff meeting. Hate these.

This brownstone holds some haunting memories.

My family is a mess in general, but if you sit us down around a table and have us talk about politics...it gets even worse.

Mom is a Republican, through-and-through. Money is the force behind everything she does, and unless it has to do with guns (she's afraid of them), she believes everything that comes out of John McCain's mouth. And she thinks Sarah Palin is "just so cute".

The rest of us? We range from bleeding heart liberals (Jevon) to Green Party supporters (Bea) to just short of Republican (Liz). As far as I go? I suppose you could say I'm a Democrat.

My biggest thing, and the one Liz and I disagree on the most, is Women's Reproductive Rights. As a doctor, I feel as if the Republican party is trying to take away my right as a doctor to support women who feel the need to have an abortion, and my right as a woman to have an abortion. I mean, I know that's what they're trying to do. And I don't like it. I'm not about to let a gun-weilding 72-year-old man who would hate my brother because he's gay tell me whether or not I can support my patient. I have every right to offer someone services for an abortion. (We don't perform them at Oceanside, but we will direct you somewhere that does.) Liz just can't understand why I would want to help women kill their babies. I've tried to tell her before, and I'll say it here again, until a certain point, it's just a mass of cells. I'm a scientist, I don't look at things the same way that she does, and unless someone is trying to abort a child in their third trimester, I'm not going to stop them.

Maybe it's because I've done it. Maybe it's because I was able to have an abortion without anyone stopping me that I feel this way. Maybe if I'd walked into that clinic through a protest, or grown up in my mother's time I would understand, but as of right now? No one can tell me what to do with my body, and no one can tell my patients, either.

My parents. Oh boy.

When I was little, my mother and I were best friends. Our red hair matched and we liked the same colors. When my sister Lizzie was born, she was Daddy's girl, so I still had Mom all to myself. I was six when the twins were born, and Mom and Dad had to devote a lot of their time to them. When I was nine was when things really changed. Lizzie was six, the twins were three, and Mom and Dad hired a second Nanny and started drinking more. I still remember walking in to my mothers bedroom after a nightmare and when I started coughing she handed me a cup of water, which turned out to be vodka. I've never been able to drink vodka.

On my thirteenth birthday, my mother stumbled in to my sleepover and threw up all over Mary-Sue Johnson's brand new sleeping bag. That's when our relationship changed. Mary-Sue was the most popular girl in school, and she told everyone that my mother was a drunk. It's not that it wasn't true, it just ruined my junior high career.

High school was worse. My parents continued to fight, Dad sometimes drank himself into such a stupor that the men he drank with at the country club actually cut him off.

I guess I should clarify something. My parents didn't drink at home; they drank with their friends at the country club and at parties. It was a social thing, it just went a bit too far.

My mother missed my high school graduation because there was a sale at Nordstrom's the same day and she got side-tracked. At that point I didn't care anymore; all of the drinking and the fighting was too much for me. I spent the summer in Europe, went to Columbia in the fall, and never came back.

Christmas' became something I did for my siblings. Lizzie and the twins would get on a train and come up to New York as soon as their break started and we would have our very own Christmas. My parents didn't even notice.

When Jevon came out after he graduated, Mom and Dad closed his trust fund and forbid Lizzie, Bea and I from helping him. Lizzie and I followed orders; we were both in school and needed the money. Bea didn't, her trust fund was closed too, the money that came from Bea and Jevon split between Liz and I.

On Jevon and Bea's twenty-first birthday, Dad was driving home from the country club, smashed, and drove off the side of the road. He didn't survive the crash. Liz and I brought the money that had come from the twins' trust funds to the funeral; we'd saved it, figuring they would need it. They did; neither of them were in the will.

I do miss him. I miss the him that was around when I was little; the one that loved us so much, the one that was happy. I don't really understand what happened to him.

Mom is still living in the big house in Connecticut. She still attends the same parties, still drinks the same drinks, still sends me checks for my birthday, as if I'm nineteen. She still won't speak to Jevon or Bea, but I don't think either of them minds. They've got each other, and that's all that seems to matter to them.

My relationship with my parents hasn't been good since I was very young. But you know, I wouldn't be who I am today if it hadn't been so bad. So maybe that's ok.