Snowmageddon 2/?
Title: Snowmageddon 2/?
Rating: R, for now.
Pairing: Well. Eventually Callie and Arizona. Eventually.
Summary: At Chief's orders, everyone's asked to stay overnight at the hospital due to an incoming blizzard. But what's this mean for Callie, who has been trying to avoid Arizona like the plague? Set after 7X10.
A/N: Well, this is another thank you to brittlovesher who prompted me to write this. She's so inspiring, huh? :D Also I am spoiler free. Anything that happens in the weeks to follow is coincidence.
A/N II: I realize Lexie is involved in all these flashbacks, but it seemed plausible to me.
Chapter one: http://community.livejournal.com/roughian_fics/3918.html
Chapter 2:
Several hours later, the pile up has yielded two fatalities from the car that collided with Audrey’s family’s Jetta. The little girl was still in a booster seat and sustained the least amount of injuries. Her grandfather is critical, but expected to pull through. And her mother will likely not make it through the night, something that no one is prepared to tell Audrey Greene, who has just selected a pink cast for her thrice broken wrist. Callie preps her tiny arm, making sure that it’s clean and laceration free. As she’s doing this, Arizona steps into the room, waiting in the corner as Callie works on the patient, barely making a sound except for breathing.
Which is a conscious effort. The tension in the room feels thick enough to choke her.
Audrey is a little dazed from everything, and is currently on a steady drip of Motrin. She finally looks away from the television after she groggily realizes that her arm is being wrapped.
"You have really pretty hair, Mrs. Doctor Torres."
Callie smiles at the little one, eyeing her wispy blond ringlets, crusted with dried blood.
"Why, thank you, Audrey. So do you. It is so bright it’s almost like the sun!"
The child giggles which sends Arizona into an unconscious smile which snaps back to a thin line when she realizes she’s just staring at Calliope Torres. Staring. That shoulder length hair, the contrast with her white coat, the purple thermal rolled up underneath the sleeves of said coat...
Callie finishes the cast, and starts snapping off her latex gloves. "That should be okay. If it’s itchy, don’t stick anything weird down there. It might get stuck, and then it might be a little gross, she grins as Audrey wrinkles her nose. "Try scratching your hand instead, or your foot. It tricks your brain sometimes."
Arizona walks over to the girl, tucking a strand of blond behind her ear. "Let me just have a quick look in your eyes there, sweet pea."
She and Callie only share one full second of eye contact before both are skittering away.
Sweet pea. Callie melts. No. She doesn’t melt. It was just...nice. And sweet. Sweet. Yep, sweet.
The pager on her hip has never been more welcome as it beeps its urgency into the quiet room. Callie glances down at it, seeing that she’s needed in O.R. 4, probably to help Hunt and
Kepner.
"I’ll leave you to it, Dr. Robbins," Callie smiles tersely to the woman and wiggles her fingers in a playful wave at Audrey.
"Call-"
"I really like her hair," Audrey reminds the doctor before she has the pen light shined in her eyes.
"Me, too," Arizona sighs. "Me, too."
====
Callie’s prior assumptions were correct. She was needed in the O.R. with Hunt and Kepner. So she stands, trying to operate on the lacerated femoral artery guy who was driving the vehicle that crashed into Audrey Greene’s grandfather’s car. But instead of feeling all that sympathetic, she’s upset after learning his blood alcohol levels are off the charts. He’s killed his brother’s girlfriend and his own brother by driving impaired and nearly taken out little Audrey Greene’s mom and grandfather. April is deep into the man’s thigh, Callie and Owen hunt overseeing her, ready to jump in at any time.
"Suction, damnit." Hunt continues, and Callie realizes that the guy is--no, he’s coding.
"Find the bleed, Kepner," he says tersely while she meticulously looks for it, each second overshadowed by the onslaught of excessive bleeding.
"Losing him," Callie reminds them both.
"I know, Dr. Torres!" Kepner says with a tinge of frustration. She huffs and then nearly squeals, but maintains. "Got it. Found it."
His BP is still dropping still. Before Hunt or Callie can look to see where the bleed was, Kepner’s already excised most of the artery and is harvesting nearby tissue to funnel in for a graft. The scrub nurse to her left wipes her brow of sweat as she continues. And as peppy and annoying as Callie usually finds her, she’s mighty impressed with the way she just handled that trauma.
Hunt almost smiles, but continues focusing. Callie thinks she got lucky, but is happy none the less.
"Nice work, Dr. Kepner," Hunt says, before they begin closing him up. "Nice work."
"Yeah. Good job. Doesn’t help he’s bleeding like crazy due to all the alcohol in his blood stream," Callie grumbles and Hunt eyes her severely.
"You can go now, Dr. Torres,” Hunt says as flatly as humanly possible. "I think we’re finished here."
=====
After Callie scrubs out and deposits her bloody scrubs into the bin, she saunters down into the attendings’ lounge. They worked on Adam Morris for nearly thirty one minutes. Just going and going and going. And he lived. Everyone else in the car died. He killed his brother, brother’s girlfriend, and, in the time since his emergency surgery, his own fiancée. Callie wonders why this is as she plunks sixty five cents into the vending machine to get a bag of pretzels. It’s now 6:33 in the morning. There are two feet of snow outside. Her brain is too sleepy to debate the existentiality of this situation.
She wants to go to sleep, and she plans on it after these sourdough nuggets. She’s going to sleep so hard that she doesn’t even know what hit her.
“Mmm,” she mumbles appreciatively to the baked, salty treat as she chews it over, feet shuffling to the attendings' lounge.
There no longer is a need to hide out in on-call rooms. There’s no person to meet, no one to snuggle with. And in truth, all they’ve been doing for the brunette is making her way too sad.
Way, way too sad.
====
Arizona leans against the nurse’s station in Pediatrics, glancing into Audrey Greene’s room. Finally the little girl has fallen asleep. Her casted arm is resting in a foam stabilizer, so she doesn’t move it too much during the night. Arizona’s going to wake her up in an hour to check on her. After finding she has a mild concussion, Arizona hopes that it won’t get worse. The poor thing’s had enough for one night. Miraculously, though, the mother and grandfather are both stable. Elisa Greene wasn’t expected to make it through the night, but is now probably going to pull through.
What her mental state will be like after all that trauma, is another thing coming.
"Stewing?" Comes the voice of Teddy Altman, which startles Arizona.
"What are you doing up on Peds?" Arizona asks, eyeing the woman.
"I have an eight year old lung transplant recipient, just making sure he’s accepting his new lungs. He is, though. So, that’s good."
Arizona smiles.
Teddy does the same.
"Talked to her much, yet?" Teddy asks, while both women now stare into Audrey’s room, watching the peaceful child.
"Nope," Arizona replies wistfully.
Teddy sighs. "She just needs some time, then?"
Conventionalities and clichés were all that Teddy could produce at almost seven in the morning. She was supposed to be at home four hours ago.
"Maybe so," Arizona chews the inside of her cheek. A new habit since Malawi.
"My car’s buried...like, tragically so," Teddy muses. "I have no idea how I’m going to dig it out."
"I miss her," Arizona sighs, appreciating Teddy’s attempts at keeping her mind from Callie.
“I miss her so much. And today she was wearing the purple thermal and I just. I love the purple thermal. It’s beautiful. She looks so good in everything. Everything. And it hurts my heart to look at her, but it’s a good hurt. A hurt that reminds me of what I gave up. Of what an idiot--"
"Never say that you’re an idiot. A little pathetic right now. But an idiot? No. Malawi needed you," Teddy reaffirms, cutting the blonde off. "It was honorable of you to respond to the need."
"She needed me." Arizona argues. "And instead I left and she ... jumps into that manwhore’s arms.”
Teddy’s silent after that, thinking for a moment...
Teddy holds the ice against the first three knuckles of Arizona’s hand while she gets her to sip water from a bottle of Aquafina. The blonde’s crying so much that Teddy’s almost afraid she’ll choke on her water. Her hand is swollen, caked with dried blood, but not broken.
“How... how could she fuck him?" Arizona hiccups, trying to drink the water. "Seriously. How?"
She’s drunk. Joe called and Teddy went to pick her up, and she stunk like booze. Like whisky. Lexie Grey had been drinking that night, too. Digesting the news that her on-again boyfriend had told her.
"We had sex, but it was nothing, it’s Callie..." He’d explained to the brunette, who relayed the message to Arizona. Who almost threw up that Jack Daniels all over the bar.
Who punched the bathroom wall. Who almost broke her hand. Who had to be escorted out by the cardiothoracic surgeon, who was wondering why Arizona had left Africa in the first place.
Teddy’s shaken from her reverie when she notices Arizona staring at her.
"Do you think she wanted it all along?"
"No," Teddy replies firmly. “She loves you. She just… well, she needed comfort I think.”
Arizona swallows hard and blinks rapidly.
"Talk to her," Teddy urges. "Talk to her soberly, not drunkenly. We’re all stuck here. Until the plow trucks come..." She finishes lamely with a, "And dig out my car."
====
Callie gets halfway through the bag of pretzels before she’s snoring on the attending-lounge couch. Owen Hunt rests a few feet away, dozed completely in an arm chair. Callie finds comfort in the fact that someone else is in the room. She can focus on Owen’s breathing over her own self-destructive thoughts. It’s nice.
The door swings open, and neither Owen nor Callie budge. Arizona takes the moment to stare at Callie, how peaceful she looks curled up on the lumpy sofa.
"Callie." She says softly at first.
No dice.
"Calliope," A little louder this time.
Nope.
"Calliope Iphigenia Torres," The loudest of them all, accompanied with a shake of the woman’s shoulder.
"Nnnyep? I’m up. I’m sorry. I..." She blinks, drowsily, then looks up at the blond. "Oh. You should leave."
"I’m not leaving. We have to talk."
"Talk?" Callie yawns. That was the most sleep she’d gotten in three days and she lets her eyes drift closed again. "Too tired to talk to you about Africa or airports."
"Too bad," Arizona’s voice wavers and Owen stirs, but doesn’t appear to awaken, continuously breathing evenly.
"You don’t have rights to this anymore," Callie says as she sits up suddenly. Arizona notices there are granules of pretzel salt in her hair.
Arizona is tired of being the bad guy. She’s tired of being Callie’s whipping boy. The hospital’s whipping boy. The brunette rouses from her makeshift bed and folds up the blanket she’s taken from the linen closet and tosses the pretzels in the garbage. Callie’s just as culpable. She’s done wrong here, too. She’s poisoned the well, and Arizona intends to rectify it.
"I think I have some," Arizona says as her hands slip into her coat’s pockets. "I think I have some explanations, and so do you."
"Me?" Callie laughs in disbelief. "I didn’t leave you crying in some airport after making the largest freaking scene on earth."
"And I didn’t sleep with my best friend because of it," Arizona strikes, and Callie recoils.
The feeling hits Callie like a freight train. She didn’t realize Arizona knew that. Didn’t realize she’d have to tell her that. But she wasn’t about to give in that easily, no way. What was that saying?
Can’t taste the honey without the sting of the bee.
"That’s right, Arizona. Deflect the argument, come in here guns blazing, trying to make it okay for you--"
"Calliope, please, that’s not what I was trying to do!" Arizona urgently puts a hand on Callie’s shoulder, which she considers shrugging off, but instead is nearly crippled by the tingles it leaves in its wake.
Callie sighs and swallows the lump in her throat. She knows she’s not innocent here, but she’s a bull headed one. Torres means towers. Towers. Guardians. Calliope isn’t one to budge easily, and Arizona knows this. "Okay, look, I just-"
Arizona jumps as her pager vibrates and beeps against her hip. She unclips it from its holster. "It’s Audrey Greene… 911."
"I’m coming with you," Callie nods, and the pair make it out the door.
Owen Hunt’s eyes shoot open after he no longer has to feign sleep.
He shakes his head very slowly, almost tasting the disappointment left in the air after the exes scurry down the hall.