The night after Alex Karev cuts off Arizona Robbins' leg, he curls up on a bunk in a deserted on-call room and cries himself to sleep. It was the right thing to do, the only way to save his mentor and friend's life, but it still gnaws at him like the infection that ate away at Arizona's leg. He avoids her afterwards, knowing she must hate him even more, but he would much rather she be alive to hate him instead of dead.
A month later, he orders a pair of Heelys off the internet in his size. He resolves to learn how to use them, and to start wearing them at Hopkins. When he's not working, keeping a sharp eye over the peds department for Arizona, he's deep in the basement of the hospital, practicing. Soon he can fly down the empty halls as easily as his mentor once did, can stop and start on a dime, turn corners like a pro. He wonders if you have to be all sunshine and rainbows and crap to pull off Heelys as an adult, if he can be kind of surly and rude and still speed down a corridor on ridiculous shoes. He decides that it doesn't matter. This is for Robbins. For him. For the kids, because they always laughed and smiled when she'd show up in their rooms or rolled by their doors. Screw everyone else.
When he decides to stay at Seattle Grace, he debates wearing the shoes. Here, people know what he's doing. Honoring, channeling, respecting Arizona Robbins. Here, Heelys aren't just a dorky pair of sneakers with wheels and an excellent method of injuring oneself, they're a statement about a great doctor, a great person, his person even if she won't speak with him anymore, someone who changed everything in his life and gave him direction. But Robbins deserves the honor. Maybe if she hadn't shown up, taken him under her wing, he would have ended up in trauma or plastics or maybe neonatal, but it's peds that he loves, that he excels at. Arizona Robbins made him and he took her leg from her. To save her life, yes, but now, even with the most advanced prosthetic, the fine ankle control is not quite enough to give her back her beloved wheelie sneaks. Amputation means a lifetime of careful time and energy management as a surgeon, wife, and mother, a different way of navigating the world, stares from strangers, having to remember to put on your leg before you can soothe your child's cries in the middle of the night. Ironic that his first solo surgery was an amputation, and it was another amputation that changed his life yet again, reminded him that Seattle Grace has become home.
On the first day of his peds fellowship, he stashes his heelys in his bag and walks tall into the hospital, looking around like things should be different. But they aren't. No one seems to notice him slipping on his odd shoes as he changes into attending scrubs and a lab coat with a Ninja Turtle patch over his name. When he reaches the double doors that mark the pediatric department he takes a deep breath. Opening them, he grins a little and kicks off, rolling down the hall.