Bedtime.
Authors Note: Ok so this is a one-shot that I had an idea for seen as how the next episode may not have much or any Calzona in it. These characters obviously don't belong to me I'm just having some fun with their story. Hope you like it, reviews are lovely if you do!
She was exhausted. Exhausted didn't even come close. She'd been called in at 6am and it was now after midnight. She would've loved to have stopped at Joe's and had a quick drink but she couldn't. The guilt she carried around with her all day every day, bubbling just below the surface stopped her doing anything for herself it felt like. So that was why she was slowly dragging her tired, aching feet towards her apartment. She looked almost lovingly over at the apartment door opposite her own as if it was almost mocking her. She missed him. She missed his hugs, she missed his smile and she missed his advice. She just missed her best friend. He was always there for her and now, at a time when she felt so out of her depth and alone she missed him even more. More than Mark however, she missed her wife. Things were marginally better these last two weeks since Arizona had been fitted with her initial prosthetic and started working with David. There was a lot less yelling, less anger but they still barely talked in sentences. Callie had stopped sleeping at Mark's again and was back on the sofa but tonight she looked at his apartment door and just thought she wouldn't make it to the morning without a decent sleep. The emotional aspect of the day had nearly overwhelmed her as it had nearly everyone in that OR. Tonight she just needed to sleep in a bed and try and forget the hell they were all trying to muddle through. Yes she thought. I'll just grab a few bits and pieces, Sofia's monitor and slip across the hall. Mind made up she slowly let herself into her apartment.
On entering the living room she immediately noticed there was a light coming from her bedroom. She corrected the thought in her head, there was a light coming from Arizona's bedroom. It hadn't been hers in what felt like such a very long time. Inwardly hoping that her wife was actually asleep she tentatively made her way towards the door. Her exhaustion returning to the forefront of her mind and she knew she just couldn't do it tonight. She couldn't have another fight, or cope with another one of their painful silences. She slowly and quietly opened the bedroom door and the sight that greeted her made her stop dead in her tracks, she inhaled sharply and the breath caught her in her throat. She grasped the doorframe for some support as involuntary tears sprang to her eyes.
Arizona who was sitting up in bed, reading a book looked up and saw her wife in the doorway, well she saw a shadow of her wife in the doorway. Suddenly this olive branch she was trying to extend felt like a colossal mistake.
"I'm sorry Callie, I should've asked you first."
Callie just stared at her. Arizona continued, "I..I thought it would be good..I mean a good step forward. If you excuse the pun." She smiled, a half hearted smile.
Callie found her voice but it was small and hoarse "Did you just make a joke?"
"Yeh I think I tried."
Callie just stood there staring again. So many times she'd come home to find Arizona in exactly this position, waiting for her wife to get home from a hellish day, passing the time by reading a book before letting her wife take a load off and them both snuggling down and drifting off to sleep in each others arms.
"When did you…erm?"
"I phoned yesterday. Asked them to deliver it back today and it arrived this morning before my session with David."
They were having an actual conversation, the importance of which was lost of neither.
"And the um, other?"
"I..erm.. didn't know exactly where you got it from so I got the storage guys to take it away, they just switched them basically. I'm sorry if you don't you know… if you didn't want me to. You don't have to if you don't want to, stay here. With me."
Callie was still staring at her wife, in her favourite pjs, sitting up in their bed, reading a book and waiting for her wife to get home. She couldn't process this new development all at once.
"I need to have a shower, I had the day from…I just…I need to shower."
Arizona nodded slightly and watched Callie grab some clothes to sleep in and head towards their en suite. "I'll be here when you're done."
Callie's eyes met Arizona's and knew her wife wasn't talking literally, she was trying to tell her that when she came out of the shower she wouldn't have reverted back to the screaming or silent monster she had recently become.
When Callie finally eventually emerged from the bathroom her heart sank, Arizona wasn't in bed anymore, there was just a big empty bed. She sat down on what 4 months ago had been her side of the bed and sighed. Before she could even process the sudden pain in heart she heard a thud thud thud heading towards her. She looked up and found Arizona on her crutches making her way back towards the bed struggling to balance a little as she held a wine glass in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other while balancing on her crutches. Catching Callie's defeated look she tried to smile again, "I thought you might like a glass of red. I heard about the accident today."
Callie smiled back the pain in her heart evaporating as quickly as it had appeared. "Yeh that'd be nice."
Arizona handed Callie the bottle and the glass as she got herself situated back in bed, Callie climbed in and held onto her glass tightly, terrified she might say or do something wrong and Monster Arizona would return and kick her out of her bed. Her bed, it felt like home. Different, like you've not been home for a long time but when you finally do it feels 100 times better than you ever remembered and she really, really didn't want to have to leave her bed again so soon.
"I heard about it on the radio."
"Oh"
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"I don't think I can."
"Oh." Callie wanted to clarify "Not because I don't want to I just, that was the second worst time in an OR in my life today. I feel more guilty than I did this morning which I didn't think was possible, I'm just…I can't." Silent tears made their way down Callie's face. She fiddled with the bed sheets willing herself not to break down.
Arizona knew she was playing with fire but seeing Callie so broken, defeated and clearly distraught was too much. She felt like suddenly she was just seeing everything she had done to her wonderful wife over the last few months and she wanted to start making it up to her right now. She took a deep breath and reached out for her wife's right hand, silently thanking God that she didn't resist. Gently squeezing her wife's hand she continued "I know I've been a horrible monster and I cannot apologise and everything be ok again in one night but I am going to make it up to you one day at a time. The past few days have been important for me and my physical recovery and now I vow to try like hell to make things right with us. I know tonight isn't the night to start on this sort of discussion but if you want to pretend that I'm just your wife and tell me about your obviously really shitty day then I'd like that but if you just want to go to sleep that's ok too. You've taken care of me for so long.." Her voice cracked and she took another deep breath. "It's my turn."
Callie slowly turned her head to look at the woman who was also occupying her bed and she nearly stopped breathing. Looking back at her wasn't the shell with all the Arizona scooped out that she'd been living with these past few months, the eyes that were locked on hers belonged to her wife. Callie smiled through the tears cascading down her cheeks, "I'd like that."
Hands linked, Callie started to tell the story of her day and how her day was already awful before an emotional and frantic Meredith Grey arrived in the ER trying to save a woman who had been trapped under a car. As she listened to the events of the day unfold Arizona, couldn't comfort her distraught tormented wife with only a hand hold. She didn't think when she opened her arms and pulled Callie towards her. Her own issues surrounding her residual limb were improving day by day and the thought that her wife might touch or come into contact with it seemed suddenly irrelevant at this time. They naturally found themselves wrapped in an old comforting embrace that neither woman wanted to leave.
"She just couldn't see that this woman wasn't Lexie. That saving or not saving her wouldn't change anything."
"She hasn't accepted it yet has she?"
Callie shook her head and then dropped it, pulling away slightly from Arizona's embrace.
"What is it?"
"I was jealous. Of them. Of Meredith and Derek. I've been so caught up in my anger and pain that I was jealous of them. It was as if they didn't know the absolute hell I, we have been living in. If we were them would we be so broken? If I'd been on that plane I would've understood and we could be ok and I wouldn't have had to promise you not to take your leg and I wouldn't have had to botch up Derek's surgery and tell Alex to cut of your leg. I wouldn't feel like a single parent and I could cope with loosing my best friend if I just understood what it was like! She only lost her sister and he only lost his best friend! They are fine, he's teaching and saying he's just glad he's alive and she's doing Mrs Impossible tumour removing surgeries and I'm fucking drowning all day long!" Callie screamed the last sentence in hysterical anger and sobbed into her wife's chest. Arizona just held her not quite sure if Callie was finished. She started again but barely whispering.
"And then today…today she lost it. She suddenly realised that she'll never see her sister again. That wild animals ate her sisters' remains as she sat shivering and listening. Today she let it all overwhelm her and made a mistake while elbow deep in some poor woman's abdomen. Today, because she couldn't process the hell in the woods, her career might be over…"
The exhaustion hit Callie like a truck had come out of nowhere. She was exhausted but felt like that suffocating weight that bore down on her every minute of every day had lifted, that she'd finally voiced what she'd been scared of even thinking.
Arizona reached for Callie's hand and placed it over her heart "Apologies are for another day but please believe when I tell you Callie that even the monster that I have been for months never once wished you had been with me on that flight. If you had been with me I wouldn't be here. I fought so hard to stay alive so that I could see yours and Sofia's faces even just one more time. The four of us that survived those four days will never be the same and I wouldn't wish my worst enemy to share those memories and certainly not my wife, who I love more than life."
Arizona was surprised how good it felt to hold her wife in her arms. After being terrified for so long it just felt right.
"I don't want to go to sleep."
"It's ok honey, I'll be here when you wake up."
"Will you? This you?" Callie looked up.
"Yes. I'm done running Callie, I didn't know how to tell you or show you to make you believe. That's why I got our bed back, I thought it would help show you and I dragged David over here to help me make it up."
"David knew?"
"Yeh he kinda called me on my behaviour towards you the first week I met him and told me I needed to let you in. I might've reminded him of his advice today and he graciously came over and helped me out. He's taught me a lot Callie, made me see that I need help to do stuff sometimes now and it's ok to accept help from those close to me."
Callie just snuggled in closer and took her wife's left hand in her and kissed her wedding band, her one symbol of hope through these few months that was always present. They lay there for a few minutes, just happy in each others company, finally an easy silence between them.
"Ok how about we get some sleep?" Arizona looked down at her wife sleeping soundly in her arms. She smiled and reached over and switched the lamp off. She kissed the top of her wife's head and whispered, "I love you Calliope" before having the best nights sleep she could ever remember.
