All The Things Left Unsaid:
Callie Torres shifted in the stiff and disagreeable chair next to her wife's bed. Not their bed. Arizona's hospital bed. The bed she had been lying in for a nearly a week. The bed she had yet to wake up in. The bed that held her still battered and beaten body.
It had been over a week since Callie and everyone else at Seattle Grace Mercy West had learned of the plane crash that severely injured three of their doctors and cost Lexie Grey her life. Of the victims, Cristina and Meredith had suffered the least, injury wise. Mark, Derek, and Arizona? They had returned to their loved ones broken. Mark and Arizona had not been conscious when Search and Rescue had found the remains of the plane and Derek had been lost to delirium.
Now, a week later, the doctors of SGMW were slowly beginning to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives and move on. Meredith was attempting to accept the loss of her sister, but the process would never truly be over. As much as she desired to move on and focus on her own life and career, Meredith knew the death of Lexie would never be something she would accept.
Derek, though unable to use his hand, was doing his best to come to terms with what the loss of such mobility meant for him and his career, while also consoling his wife.
Cristina, however, was no more or no less distant than she had been before the plane crash. She barely spoke to anyone, except Meredith, and avoided most conversations unless they pertained to her career. She and Owen, though having spoken, were no closer to a reconciliation. As far as anyone knew, Cristina still had plans to move.
Callie brushed her fingers across Arizona's brow. The dark discoloration of bruises still marred an, otherwise, flawless face. The cuts and scraps and burns tore away at Callie's soul every time she saw them. They were a constant reminder of everything she had lost in her life recently and everything she still stood a chance of losing. Arizona had nearly died. She had nearly taken her last breath, alone in the woods, surrounded by doctors who viewed her as more of a colleague instead of a friend.
Though Arizona and Mark had grown closer since Sofia's birth, Callie still often wondered how much of that friendship was genuine and how much of it was amicability to a situation she could not change. There was no denying that Mark and Arizona had each developed a deeper. yet grudging, respect for one another, but Callie knew it was one born of necessity rather than desire.
To think that Arizona could have taken her last breath so far away from her, so far away from someone who unconditionally loved her, hurt Callie every time the thought entered her mind. Arizona wasn't even supposed to be on that damn plane! She was supposed to have been at home with Sofia. She was supposed to have been spending time with Nick and letting Callie console her. She wasn't supposed to have been a victim in a plane crash! She wasn't supposed to have nearly cracked her femur in two and had a punctured lung that caused her to spit up blood and slowly slip away in some forgotten stretch of forest.
It wasn't fair. Still, after a week, Callie could not accept that there was a possibility that Arizona would not wake up. That she could be forced, at some undetermined point in the future, to make a decision to amputate her wife's leg.
Since returning home, Arizona had stabilized as much as her body was going to. She had been unconscious, since her rescue. The doctors in Boise had repaired her punctured lung and flushed her body with antibiotics to stave off infection. They had set her leg and cleaned the area and done everything else that was medically possible at the time.
Still, Arizona had remained unconscious. Now, her body still battered and bruised but not nearly as broken, Arizona laid in a hospital bed with her left leg elevated and in a steel brace. Tubes and IVs monitored and regulated severely stunned and dismayed systems. The constant beep of the heart monitor was the only confirmation Callie had that her wife was still among the living.
According to Owen and Bailey, Arizona had undergone a severe trauma. Her body was still, according to them, attempting to recover, both mentally and physically. There was nothing else they could do, save amputating Arizona's leg, and that carried with it no promise that she would wake up any sooner. As an orthopedic surgeon, Callie was adamant that she could save her wife's leg. She was determined to do everything in her power to make sure Arizona kept her leg. But, if matters took a turn for the worst and she was forced to make a decision, she would feel better knowing she did all that was possible to salvage the limb.
"Arizona..."Callie whispered the name like a prayer. Her voice was quavering. "I need for you to wake up. Please. I know you're still in there, okay? I'm here, baby. I'm here and Sofia's here and we miss you. We need you. I need you...so much."
The hush that followed her plea was stifling. Callie exhaled heavily and scooted closer to Arizona's bedside. Her fingers trailed down her wife's bruised cheek while her thumb brushed across her lips.
"Arizona, I can't be here when you're not. I've tried to be strong, but I can't. Not without you. I just...I just need a sign. Anything. We can handle the rest together, but right now I need you to give me something. Please, baby."
Leaning forward, Callie kissed Arizona's temple. "Just open your eyes. I know you were scared out there all alone, but you're not alone now. I'm here and when you open your eyes, I'll be what you see. Not the plane crash and not the trees. It'll be me. "
Again, her heart felt imploration was met with only silence.
Callie leaned her head against Arizona's and closed her eyes. Tears fell down her cheeks.
"Arizona..." she whispered.
The sound of the door opening behind her barely registered. She sniffled, her eyes still closed, and rubbed her forehead against her wife's cheek in a desperate search for comfort. Footsteps grew louder behind her as someone approached.
"Callie?"
Callie shook her head, her throat tightening. She didn't want to deal with anything else. She couldn't. All she wanted was Arizona. Her wife. Her friend. Her source of strength and hope. The hand she had on Arizona's cheek moved and grabbed a fistful of the other woman's hospital gown.
"Callie? I came to tell you that there's been no change in Mark."
Miranda Bailey's voice cut into her thoughts.
Mark.
With everything going on with Arizona, Callie had been unable to see him as often as she wanted. She had tried, right after the accident, to split her time between checking in on him and watching over Arizona, but as time had progressed and both had shown no signs of improvement, Callie had realized that her priority was Arizona.
As much as it pained her to admit it, she had overlooked her wife in the past in favor of her friend. Though she wanted to be there for both of them equally, she knew she couldn't. She still visited Mark and checked on him and made sure she had regular updates on any and all changes concerning him, but her main priority was her wife.
It was she whom Callie sat beside nearly every waking minute of the day. If Arizona woke up, Callie wanted to be the first thing she saw. She didn't want to have to tell Arizona that she had been with Mark instead of sitting by her bedside.
Perhaps some hurts really did die hard, she thought. It had been over a year since Sofia had been born and she and Arizona had gotten married, but she was still aware of the insecurity issues Arizona dealt with on a day to day basis concerning Mark. She didn't believe it was something that would ever go away for the blonde though they had been in a far better place the past year, Callie didn't want Arizona to wonder where she was when(and if) she woke up.
She wanted to be with Arizona. It was as simple as that.
"Thank you," Callie said in response to Bailey's statement. Her eyes scanned Arizona' face. She mindlessly adjusted her wife's sheets, her hand accidentally grazing over the simple chain that rested on her chest.
How the heart-shaped pendant had survived the plane crash, Callie didn't know. She liked to think it was a testament to their love. To their commitment to one another.
"How you holding up, Torres?" Bailey asked, stepping closer.
Callie shook her head blankly. "I haven't heard my wife's voice in over week. I haven't seen her eyes or felt her touch or watched her play with our daughter. The father of my baby is a few doors down and he may very well not ever wake up. I survived a car crash only so the two closest people in my life could die in a plane crash. How crazy is that?"
Callie looked up at Miranda when she came to stand next to Arizona's bed. Tears were heavy in her dark brown eyes.
"Nothing in my world makes sense. I just want my wife."
At the words, Callie's face contorted as a sob was ripped from her throat. She tried to pull herself together, tried to control the onslaught of tears and the outpouring of emotion, but it was useless. She felt so alone and the only person who could make her feel safe was lying in a hospital bed fighting for her life.
"I know you do, honey," Bailey said. She placed a hand on Callie's shoulder and tried to comfort her.
Callie sniffed back her tears and wiped away at her eyelids.
"The sad thing? I don't think Arizona even knows how much I love her. I'm not sure I ever expressed it enough."
Bailey shook her head. "That's nonsense. The way you two are always sneaking off and giving each other the googly eyes, everyone in the damn hospital knows how you feel about her."
Callie smirked at Bailey's attempt to cheer her up.
"I'm serious, Miranda. We were out of touch for so long. We broke up over babies, survived a crazed gunman, and got back together. We had only begun to reconnect when Arizona won that grant. Then she returned from Africa and I had done the one thing she was always afraid of-slept with Mark again. Yet, somehow, she still loved me. She still wanted to be with me, even knowing I was having a child with Mark."
Bailey sat on the edge of Arizona's bed. It was obvious by Callie's tone that she was needing someone to listen.
"Things weren't easy for us. I still blamed her for leaving me. I chose Mark over her time and time again because he was safe. Still, she persisted. I was treating her like crap, barely giving her any affection and holding a grudge against her for leaving me, and she stayed around. And then the car crash happened. It took me nearly dying to finally see how much Arizona meant to me and how much of the past I was allowing to dictate our relationship."
Callie took a deep breath and returned her touch to Arizona's battered face. Her fingers trailed down a pale jaw and neck before dipping to feel the slow pulse beating beneath pallid skin.
"We were both wrong, you know?" Callie continued as her eyes focused on the movements of her fingers on her wife's skin. "We lived in this happy place for so long where real world troubles didn't touch us...until they did. Until life happened. She hurt me so much when she walked away in that airport. She was the one who was supposed to stay, who was going to choose me always over everything else, who loved me like no other. Yet she left, too. Just walked away and chose freaking Africa like it was so much better than me. I wanted to hate her for a long time, but I couldn't and that made me feel worse.
"She had left me, you know? I wasn't perfect, but I was willing to fight for us and she...s-she wasn't. It was like I didn't matter, like what we had shared and built was worth nothing. So I sought to feel something, to feel needed and wanted and desired. That was my mistake. I knew sleeping with Mark would hurt her if she ever found out and I...I wanted her to hurt. I was drunk that night and I thought I'd never see her again, but I took solace in knowing she'd hurt if she ever found out."
Bailey could do nothing but stand and listen to her friend pour her heart out. She knew snippets of what Callie was telling her, but the deeper and darker intentions and feelings that had helped to shape those long ago decisions were news to her. She pulled up another chair that sat by a nearby table and let her eyes speak of her desire for Callie to continue. Miranda Bailey couldn't do much for any of her friends who'd suffered the plane crash, but she could listen to Callie Torres.
"How is that love?" Callie asked, her eyes long since lost their focus and her fingers on Arizona's throat now still. "How is wanting someone to hurt love? But I did, Miranda. I wanted her to hurt because I felt so lost and confused. She was...she was my everything and she left me. So I slept with Mark and then...then she was back and she was crying and she was wanting me back.
"I didn't know how to respond. I felt guilty for sleeping with Mark. Here was the love of my life, the woman who had left me, coming and telling me she'd given up her dream because she couldn't stand to be away from me, and I'd been sleeping with the one person she always feared. God, how fucked up we were."
Callie swallowed the painful lump that had formed in her throat at the memories she was speaking of. Her eyes regained their focus on Arizona's still form and her features softened.
"I wanted her, Bailey. I wanted her to fix me, to pick up the pieces of my life that she had broken, but I couldn't. How could I ever trust her again? How could I tell her I loved her, and in the same breath tell her I'd slept with Mark so soon after she'd left me. She wouldn't trust me and she didn't. So there we were," Callie laughed a humorless laugh, "both being in love, but neither trusting the other. But she chased me, Bailey. She pursued me with earnest, and I enjoyed seeing how far she would go to win me back. It wasn't a game, but I needed to know how in she was, how sincere she was, before I allowed there to be an us again.
"Then I found out I was pregnant and I knew without a doubt that there would never be an Arizona and Callie again. So I lashed out at her. I pulled away even more. I turned to Mark again and I shut her out...or I tried to. I couldn't stand to have her hurt me again when I told her of the pregnancy, so I tried to use anger as a buffer, but she still persisted. Damn her, she still persisted."
Callie laughed again, the sound once again containing no joy or mirth. She shifted in her seat by Arizona's bed and scooted closer so she could brush her thumb across her wife's lips. Fresh tears collected in her dark eyes.
"God, we suck." Another laugh. "We got back together and tried to be exactly who we'd been before. Neither of us talked much about our fears or of Mark. I expected her leave because the situation was too much, and I know she was waiting for me to fall into Mark's arms again and have him complete my dream. We were a wreck waiting to happen. And you know what?"
Callie looked over her shoulder at Bailey's sympathetic face. "We did happen." The words were said in a whisper. "That crash and burn we'd been trying to avoid and overlook happened. Damn car crash...it shocked my senses into remembering how much I loved this woman. How much I needed her."
"Callie," Miranda started, "this isn't your fault. You two have been through hell, but Arizona knows how much you love her."
Sniffing back tears and shaking her head, Callie inhaled sharply a few times before collecting herself. "I've been blind to so much of what she needs, Miranda. I get caught up in my own life and my own wants that I can't see hers." Callie looked back at Arizona.
"But, I tried, After the wedding, I tried to show her how much she meant to me. I wooed her and put her before Mark, before everything, and the sex-"
"O-okay, Torres. I'll take your word on that."
Callie smiled softly, the gesture almost touching her eyes. "The sex was so much more than sex," she whispered, overlooking Bailey's protest of the subject. Talking was good. She felt better venting out loud instead of holding everything inside. "It was..."
Bailey waited for Callie to continue. Her eyes were studying the delicate fingers of Arizona's hand where she tenderly touched the skin found there.
"It was what, Callie?"
"It was," Callie paused again and a sad smile graced her face, "spiritual. Unlike anything else I'd ever experienced with her or anyone else. We had no barriers anymore. There were no pretenses, no pink bubbles, no fronts. There was just us. Me. Her. I couldn't get enough of her. I made her the center of my world...her and Sofia. And for what?"
The last sentence was forced over Callie's lips with a trembling exhale that contorted her pretty features into a grimace. The tears she'd been holding back finally slipped from her eyes and trailed down her cheeks.
"For...for this, Bailey? For a freaking plane to fall out of the sky? For my wife to fight for her life only to come back to me like this? What if she never wakes up? What if I have to make the call to take her leg? She would never forgive me. Never. All of the uphill battles we've faced this last year would mean nothing, because this would shatter her. I can't go back to the pretenses, Bailey. I can't. It's taken me years to get behind the walls she's built and I can't-"
"Can't what?" Bailey interrupted. "Can't fight for her again? Can't be supportive of your wife? You listen to me, Callie Torres: this sucks and I'm sorry. It's an awful situation and I wish like hell you and Arizona weren't a part of it, but you are. She is. She didn't survive a plane crash and four days in the woods to have you give up on her."
"What?" I'm not-"
"You are, and I get it, honey. I do. It's hard and it's painful, but she needs you, Callie. You can do this. Together, you two can do this. You both survived a hospital shooting, an airport separation, an unplanned baby, a car crash, and Mark Sloan's incessant need to be in your relationship."
The part about Mark made Callie chuckle.
"You can survive this, too, Callie. All you have to ask yourself is if she's worth it."
Callie's head whipped around to regard her friend. Miranda had on her "nazi" face.
"Of course she's worth it. She's worth everything. She is everything."
"Then you can this."
Callie took another deep breath and allowed her fingers to play with the heart-shaped necklace resting on Arizona's light chest. "What if she hates me?" she whispered and closed her eyes.
"Then you let her hate you. You let her be angry. You let her cry, but you be there with her, for her. It might not be pretty, Torres, but if she's worth it you'll handle it. That woman loves you," Miranda said pointing to Arizona's prone form. "She loves you like I've never seen anyone love another person. Everyone in this damn hospital is all about acts of gratuity. They all sleep around for the few moments it allows them to forget how awful their lives are, but not her. Not with you. She worships you, Callie. Anyone with eyes can see that. What other kind of person would stay and raise a baby that wasn't hers biologically with the real father living across the hall and working in the same hospital?
"That takes a special kind of person and a special kind of love. If you have to take her leg to save her life, she'll be angry for a long time, but she'll still love you and the two of you will rebuild. That's what love is, what a marriage is: constantly rebuilding the foundation so that it's stronger and better."
Callie allowed Miranda's words to sink in, their profound wisdom and truth resounding inside her skull for several minutes. Her fingers continued to lightly stroke across Arizona's soft skin and the simple act served to ground Callie.
After long and quiet moments, Callie finally spoke again. "I just want my wife to wake up," she pleaded. "Even if I have to amputate her leg, and even if she hates me afterward, I just want to see her eyes and hear her voice. I just want-"
"Her," Bailey finished. "I know, honey. She'll wake up when she's ready, when her body's had time to heal, but she will wake up."
"How do you know?"
"Because she loves you, Callie. She didn't survive everything she's been through just to die in a hospital bed with you by her side. She knows you're here. Just give it time."
At that moment, Bailey's pager sounded and shattered the silence of the room. Callie barely registered the sound, her head now laying softly against her wife's shoulder.
"I have to go. You'll be okay here, Torres?"
Callie nodded and watched Miranda walk to the door. "Thank-you, Bailey," she said when the smaller woman's hand reached the door handle.
"Anytime," Bailey said and left.
Callie sniffled and sat back up. She readjusted the blanket covering Arizona and brushed her fingers through the blonde's messy hair. Machines sounded in the room and added to the uneasy and uncomfortable atmosphere, their chimes and beeps doing nothing more than innocently monitoring Arizona's vitals.
All was silent as Callie looked at her wife. She could feel her heart sluggishly continuing to beat in her chest. Releasing a shaky breath, she leaned forward and let her lips linger on Arizona's forehead in a reverent kiss. Her right hand came up and cupped the blonde's cheek and jaw while her thumb grazed her skin. For long moments that is how the two women remained.
"I love you, baby. Oh, Arizona, I love you so much," Callie whispered while still keeping her lips lightly pressed to her love's forehead. "I need to go check on Mark, but I'll come right back, okay? Just...open your eyes for me when I get back. Please, just let me know you're still in there."
Callie kissed Arizona's forehead one more time before placing a kiss on her nose and finally on her lips. She pulled away and stood up, her hand holding Arizona's as long as she could maintain contact, before she turned around and left the room.
A small twitch touched Arizona's lips a moment later, a small flicker of activity. The fingers of her left hand flexed briefly and her eyes blinked once, twice, before she fell still once more.
The monitors in her room did not notice these small movements, as they happened so quickly. Arizona did not move again. She returned to her previous state, but somewhere deep inside of her she felt Callie's love. She knew her wife needed her.
Soon.
Soon.
Soon.