Chapter 1
It was barely 9am and Dr. Callie Torres began to feel the onset of what would likely be a monster tension headache come noon. She sat with eyes trained on Dr. Jackson Avery as he went on about some financial issue that she knew she should be paying attention to, but couldn't manage to care about in the moment. Out of the corner of right eye she could see her wife, Dr. Arizona Robbins, three seats away from her, sitting ram straight and sporting a similar forced and empty stare on her face. Gone were the days when they would sit through morning meetings leaning up against one another in seats pushed close, whispering jokes and picking at a shared muffin. It had been over a month since she found out her wife had cheated on her with a visiting Dr. Lauren Boswell, and the contours of her daily life had now changed to include perfecting a placid look of deep interest in whatever was being said in front of her, all the while trying to avoid any accidental eye contact with her wife.
It had been a little over a month and the intense pain and anger had finally gone down to a dull roar inside her head and heart; ever-present but manageable enough to allow her to get through the day without looking like she might crack at any second. In the days following her wife's vitriol infused confession, she wanted to rage her way through life. She wanted to kick over tables, destroy million-dollar life-saving equipment, break bones with her bare hands, and fall in a crying heap on her office floor. More than anything, she wanted to scream invective at Lauren Boswell and then punch her in that pretty little face of hers. Of course, she did none of that. At the end of the day, there simply wasn't anything Callie could say or do to Lauren Boswell that could ever encompass the enormity of what she had done; what she had helped destroy. It all seemed so futile to Callie in the face of her wife's anger, resentment and obvious deep-seated hatred of her. So she did the only she could possibly do. She steeled her spine and she walked tall.
Walk tall Torres.
It wasn't the first time, nor would it be the last, that she wished for the presence of Dr. Mark Sloan. The gaping hole his death had left in her life only seemed to get exponentially bigger over the last month. To say she missed him was an understatement. She wished him present to see their daughter chattering away in both Spanish and English. She wished him present to help her through this mess – to get her drunk and let her cry on his shoulder. And, yes, she wished him present for the comfort of his body, however way he would offer it to her. She knew that it was wrong to miss him like that because it was part of the many complications that undermined the stability of her marriage, but she was human and she missed the utterly uncomplicated comfort that only Mark could give her in the face of heartbreak.
Sensing the subtle shift of bodies around her, Callie came back to reality as the meeting drew to a close. As she stood up, ready to make a bee-line to the nearest coffee cart, she was stopped by Dr. Avery.
"Torres, a word?"
"Sure. What's up?" She winced at the sound of her too-excited voice. When will everything be back to normal?
"We have a reporter from the Seattle Times coming in next week. They want to do an exposé on the hospital for the Sunday magazine. You know…new hospital…doctors owning the hospital…etc. etc. I thought it would be good press for us. They're going to run a few different story angles. They wanted to start by interviewing and maybe shadowing one of the surgeons. I suggested you."
"Me? I don't get it. We have Dr. Derek "Million Dollar Hands and Perfect Hair" Shepherd here, so why me? "
"Well, you may not have as perfect hair, but you are Dr. Callie "saved the million dollar hands and doing groundbreaking cartilage research which I just delivered a Ted Talk on" Torres. That's all pretty impressive. And, well, Derek's still technically on paternity leave."
"Ah. So I'm sloppy seconds? Now I get it."
"Come on, Callie. You've done some amazing work this year. You deserve the accolades and attention. Try to enjoy it."
There. She saw it. Pity. It was brief, but she saw it pass through Avery's eyes. She needed to get out of there before she did something she would regret.
"Fine. Whatever. I'll clear my Tuesday schedule. Tell them to be at my office at 9am."
Callie barely heard Avery call out "Thanks" as she headed out the door and to the coffee cart. As she was paying for her giant latte, she felt the kinetic energy of one Dr. Cristina Yang at her side.
"Joe's tonight. You and me." Callie almost laughed at the way Cristina made it a statement rather than a question.
"I can't. I have Sofia."
"What about the one-legged artist formerly known as Rollergirl?"
"Cristina!"
"Oh come on. She hurt you. She deserves a little dished out her way."
"I know, but not the leg! I mean, that's kind of God-smote-you worthy. Not to mention she is still the mother of my child and your friend."
"Meh. I'm an atheist. And, let's face it, I talk like that about and to my friends"
"True." Callie laughed.
"So. Joe's. You, me, tequila. It's happening. Gotta run. See you at 9!"
"Fine" Callie called out with a smirk. She had to admit that drinks sounded enticing. She hadn't so much as had an adult conversation that didn't have do with work in a month. She deserved a break and some companionship. Yes, yes I do. She thought as she pulled her phone out to look for the sitter's number.
"Here's the thing. I am a brilliant surgeon! A brilliant HEART surgeon." Cristina Yang was several shots of tequila into her night and currently holding court with Callie at the corner of the bar. "I don't need that kind of validation. I know what I am. A brilliant fucking surgeon! And you? Look at you! I mean, who in this world actually MAKES cartilage?"
"Me! That's who. I make cartilage!" Callie yelled. Ever aware that she would be woken up not long after dawn by her energetic toddler, Callie had forgone the tequila (minus one beginning of the night shot) in favor of wine. Although she wasn't as far gone as Yang, she was floating on the edges of happy drunkenness. She kept a pace that would keep herself exactly at that place and not any further into the drunkenness that opens the floodgates to despair.
"Exactly! You make cartilage! That's unbelievable. And I save hearts. Actual hearts. I bring them back to beating! I'm awesome!"
"Mmhmm. You are!"
"And, let's face it. I have the ass of an 18 yr old stripper. And I am nasty in bed too. Like really nasty. I'll do anything!"
Callie's head dropped into her hands, howling with laughter.
"And you're like a Cuban Jessica Rabbit. Look at you! No, I don't even think they could draw someone who looks like you! It would break censorship codes. If I were into women, I would be all up into you! We'd be breaking beds in the on-call rooms!"
"Ok. Ok. Yang!" Callie choked out, "I think I get the picture. We might be crossing some boundaries here."
"Well. Whatever. It needed to said." Cristina laughed and knocked back the shot sitting in front of her on the bar.
Callie picked up her wine, nodded and smiled the first real smile she had felt in over a month.
It was 10am on a Saturday morning and Arizona Robbins was standing outside of the apartment she once shared with her wife and daughter for the first time since she walked out of it with only the essentials of her life in her hand. Well, not all of the essentials. The two biggest essentials lived in that apartment and were no longer with her.
In the direct aftermath of confessing her affair to her wife, Arizona found herself couch surfing at the house of her colleague, Dr. Alex Karev. She had nowhere else to go. After screaming at Callie that she'd cut her leg off to even the score, she knew returning back to their home was simply not an option, nor was moving in across the hall into the vacant apartment of her wife's dead best friend and father of her child. It would have been easy but oh so complicated. Lauren Boswell had offered to share her fancy hotel room, but Arizona couldn't bring herself to do that, no matter how tempting she found the offer.
Even after she told Callie what happened in the on-call room during the storm, Arizona found herself drawn to Lauren in a sort of addictive way. It was clear that Lauren wanted to make some kind of go of it, and Arizona had just enough need to feel something (anything) and just enough recklessness left in her to actually try for a bit. They went on a couple of dinners, followed by couple of quick couplings (once in the back of Arizona's car and another time up against the door of Lauren's hotel room) but Arizona could never really muster up the energy to get beyond the excitement and illicitness of the flirting and the sex. Once the cat was out of the bag, Arizona found that she wasn't really interested in putting forth the energy it took to make a relationship. She didn't have any desire to tell Lauren about herself. She didn't want to tell her about adapting to new schools every other year as her marine dad moved the family all over the world; about being a closeted baby lesbian living on a military base; about losing her brother Tim; and certainly not about almost losing Callie and Sofia in the car crash. So Lauren quickly grew tired of chasing a mirage and off she went to her next assignment somewhere on the other side of the country. And Arizona was left to wonder how someone who set her life off course with the bang of Fourth of July fireworks could exit it so quietly in the darkness of night.
So Alex took her in. She was bruised and battered and full of self-loathing and that was a state Alex knew well. But, of course, Alex was now in love with his intern Jo and Arizona was quickly feeling like a third wheel. Watching two people kissy-face their way through the first throes of love was not ideal for someone who just set off a Molotov cocktail in her marriage. Not to mention, couch surfing was not an ideal situation for someone who needed to co-parent a daughter. She was failing Sofia and that was something she never wanted to do no matter how much anger she had toward Callie. Alex finally told her to get her ass off the couch and stop being the kind of parent he grew up with. He was right. So, she found an apartment with two bedrooms a few blocks from the hospital and asked Callie for some extended time with Sofia. And now here she was; about to pick up Sofia from her old home to take her to the zoo and then to her new home for a night of homemade pizza's and Disney movies. She was more excited than she had been in weeks at the idea of spending the day and night with Sofia and more than a little scared of facing Callie for the first time outside of the neutral buffer zone of the hospital.
Seconds after she rang the doorbell, she heard the approaching footsteps of her wife and felt her heart beat a little faster; a little harder. Callie swung the door open quickly and, for a second, Arizona lost the ability to breathe. For the last month, she had only seen her wife at work. She had only seen her focused on her job, intense and aloof and wholly utilitarian looking in her dark blue scrubs. Now Callie was before her looking slightly flustered and worried and wholly gorgeous in low slung yoga pants, a tank top, no makeup and her shoulder length black hair tied loosely at her neck. It was one of Arizona's most favorite looks on her wife and her stomach did a little Pavlovian flip at the sight. She also couldn't help but notice that Callie was thinner and more drawn, with darkish circles marring the skin under her eyes. She felt the familiar combination of anger and guilt beginning to percolate under her skin.
Before Arizona could get a word in, a little flurry of dark-haired energy came running toward her, wrapping itself around her legs and screaming, "Mama!"
Arizona picked her daughter up and nuzzled into daughters neck, drinking in the scent she had missed so much. Her eyes welled with tears and as she pulled away from her daughter's neck, she saw her wife hastily brushing at her own eyes.
"Come on in," Callie said, "We're just trying to get everything together for you guys. And you need to brush those teeth little lady and get any stuffed animals you want to take with you." She finished, as she pointed to her daughter.
Sofia dutifully slipped out of Arizona's arms and went racing to the bathroom as Arizona hesitantly walked further in to the house that she had once called home.
Callie was going through the bag she had packed for Sofia, mumbling her mental list of Sofia's necessities to herself in Spanish.
"What are you up to today?" Arizona asked, hoping the question came out in a lighter tone than she was feeling.
"Oh, not much. I am off to a yoga class right now and then I thought I would spend the day actually reading a book for fun." Callie half-smiled and then hesitantly added, "Um, can I phone later? I won't be checking in or anything, I just want to hear her voice before I go to sleep."
"Of course you can. I…I think that would be good."
Callie nodded and then started to look intently around the kitchen countertops where she was standing. Arizona almost laughed when she realized Callie was hunting for her keys. Callie's inability to keep track of her keys had been a running nuisance throughout the entirety of their marriage. Arizona had gone full-on commando on the subject. She hung a key rack by the door that went unnoticed, and then placed a key bowl on the table in the front entrance and plastered the area with signs that stated "Keys Here" followed by directional arrows pointing to the bowl. Still, Callie never managed to put her keys anywhere that could be found without, at least, a 15 minute expletive filled hunt. Arizona actually once found Callie's keys in the ice tray in the freezer. Watching her wife search the kitchen with a growing sense of frustration, Arizona drifted over to the couch and nonchalantly picked up a throw pillow.
"Here," she said, holding out the keys she found under the pillow to her wife.
"Thanks." Callie replied. As Callie reached for the keys, Arizona saw the quickest flash of the deepest sorrow flash over her wife's eyes and she suddenly wished she had just left Callie to find them on her own after she and Sofia had left.
Before she could dwell too long, Sofia walked into the living room, carrying her backpack filled to the brim with stuffed animals. Arizona, needing to get out of the presence of her wife and her old home, urged her daughter to say her goodbyes as she picked up the bags to head out the door. Sofia clung to Callie and looked like she might be on the verge of tears, but after a minute she grabbed Arizona's hand and walked out the door with her, turning toward Callie to blow her a kiss as she crossed over the threshold of the door.
As the door closed, both women took a deep breath, shaking breath. It has been awkward and stilted and horrible, but they had managed for the sake of their daughter. The whole encounter made them feel like intimate strangers and it hurt them both, but it was the first step in them coming together to form their new normal.