The floors of Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital shook as thunder rocked the sky, and the sounds of disasters mixed with the ringing of a misplaced cell phone. It sat on the floor of the on call room, ringing out in an attempt to pierce the air and drown out the sounds of two blonde women together on a cot.
It was minutes later when their breathing finally slowed. Arizona gazed at the woman with her, and all she could do was keep attempting to convince herself that it was okay to lose control. But the body next to her, with a bright smile, blonde hair, and porcelain skin, felt alien to her. She had tried and failed to reach for the curves of the woman she loved, instead catching air in her palms.
And her eyes had stayed shut almost the whole time, but when she had made the mistake of opening them after the other woman's fingers had slipped inside of her, the hazel eyes that gazed back at her with such lust and emotion made her gasp. She couldn't help but desperately wish that they had been the deep, loving brown ones that she saw every night before she went to sleep and every morning as she awoke. But it was her own mistake. It was her own fault that she was in the situation. And she knew that, as much as she wanted to blame it on a certain visiting surgeon.
A soft voice pushed her away from her wandering thoughts and back to the uncomfortable on-call bed she laid on. "Are you okay?" Lauren asked, and Arizona winced. She wished the other woman hadn't sounded so caring, and more than anything she hated herself for liking that. Callie was caring. Callie was all of the things Lauren was, and more. Yet Arizona couldn't shake the feeling that Lauren was someone she could have loved, in any other circumstances. Instead, her wife was somewhere in the vicinity, probably wondering if she was okay.
The blonde knew that she wasn't, but it had nothing to do with the heavy storm that matched the one going on in her head. And suddenly she was angry. Furiously, uncontrollably angry, that Lauren was there with her. Her head whipped around to glare at the doctor. "In what world would this ever be okay? I married Callie because I loved her. I promised her everything and have broken almost every single one of my vows just now, because you told me it was okay to lose control. Sleeping with my colleague is not the same thing as letting someone close on my surgery, Lauren." The name slipped off Arizona's tongue like hot coals.
"Control is something I've worked to have. When we moved around every year because of my dad, I had no control. When my brother died fighting for our country, I had no control. When I lost my leg in the plane crash, I had no control. I am not a control freak because I want everything to be perfect. I'm a control freak because I can hold the most important things together, like what's left of my family. Callie was my family…. Is my family," she corrected. "Sophia…my daughter…what's she going to think when she grows up in one of the many families who couldn't stay together? We're supposed to be better people than that. I'm supposed to be a better person than that. I was raised to be a good man in a storm, but now…" Her rambling came to a sudden halt. "This was a mistake."
Arizona stood up with tears in her eyes, forcing her scrubs back on and pocketing the phone she'd yet to check. "It was a pleasure working with you, Dr. Boswell," she forced out, and turned on her heels, leaving a stunned woman in her path.
Xx
"Dr. Robbins, we paged you an hour ago, there's a boy in here-"a nurse called out.
"Is it an emergency?"
"…What?"
"Do you need me right now? Is it so pressing that he'll die in the next few minutes if I don't get there? Because I'm pretty sure if it was, he'd be dead by now. So page me again in another hour and if I don't respond, find someone else," Arizona snapped. Her pink and white sneakers squeaked against the linoleum as she raced down the hallways, searching frantically for her wife to no prevail. "Come on Callie…you have to be around here somewhere…" she whispered to herself.
Alex watched his boss skid by him, wondering briefly what had happened before shrugging and continuing on towards the Ped's unit, until he felt a rough tug against his scrubs sleeve. He turned, and Arizona was suddenly there in front of him, looking slightly crazed as her eyes darted back and forth. "Karev. Have you seen Calliope?" she choked out, running a hand through her wild hair.
After a pause, Alex chose wisely not to ask any questions. "Yeah, uh… I think I saw her setting up two hospital beds together. She told me to tell you that she'd decided that you two would stay here until the worse of the storm was over.." his words were cut off by a quick and quiet thank you, and suddenly Arizona was gone, racing up the stairs instead of impatiently waiting for the elevator.
Too soon, blue eyes caught sight of black hair moving around the empty room Karev had mentioned, and as she saw her wife since the first time since…the on call room, she realized she had no idea what she could possibly say to her to make it better. The first breath she had taken since reaching her destination caught in her throat, and the pain she had known would come shot through her, making her clench her stomach.
You have to do this, Arizona. You have to tell her. The last thing you can be is a liar. The woman's own thoughts calmed her enough to allow her to find the handle to the door.
Callie looked up as she heard the click of the doorknob, and smiled widely. "Hey! There you are. Look, I set up two beds for us so we can sleep here but still sleep together, because I know we're here because we're going to get a ton of surgical flow but if we get time off you won't be able to sleep without me, since you're afraid of the lightening, and…." The brunette's mind suddenly registered the look that she was receiving. "Arizona? Are you okay?"
Arizona almost nodded, but it turned into a shake of the head at the last second, and she dropped down to the floor after she shut the door behind her. "Calliope…" Her voice broke, and it tore at Callie's heart.
"Did something happen? Did a doctor get hurt? Oh god, are you… you're not bleeding or anything, right?" Callie reached at Arizona, making quick work of checking her skin for any abrasions. When she didn't find anything, she gasped. "Is it Sofia?" The blonde's arm pulled away from the touch. "I'm…not injured," she chose her words wisely. "And Sofia's okay."
"Then why do you look like you just got in a wrestling match with a bear?" Her voice took on a joking tone that just made Arizona sigh, so she let her body slide down next to her wife, and wrapped an arm around her shaking shoulders. "Is it the storm? We can stay here together until you get paged.." Callie mumbled, but Arizona's hand just grabbed the other woman's, connecting the shades of skin that felt more right than anything she had experienced with Lauren. She had ruined what they had, after promising Callie that she'd never hurt her again, and somehow, she already felt deep in her bones that there was no way Callie would forgive her. But she still deserved to know. And so the words that spilled from Arizona's still swollen lips proceeded to cut through the stale air of the bare room.
"I slept with Lauren."