Disclaimer: Grey's Anatomy belongs to Shonda Rhimes, ABC, and anyone else involved with the show. Some scenes and quotes from the show are used in this work of fiction, in no way am I claiming to have written those.
Summary: After her separation with Callie and then her daughter Sofia moving halfway across the country she felt like a part of her died and was gone forever. She thought she had love and lost it. Enter Eliza Minnick, new education consultant at Grey's Sloan Memorial. Will Arizona find love again and get back the part of her she thought she lost forever?
PHOENIX
Chapter 1
The alarm blares through the room at exactly 6.30.
Without even cracking her eyes open she puts her hands on either side of the thick pillow and crushes it around her head. The sound gets effectively cut out from reaching her ears. Opening her eyes up a tiny bit she squints at the harsh daylight. She can faintly hear the rain thrumming the roof as she lay in her bed, in the city where it apparently never stops raining.
Padding down the hallway she runs her hands through her hair, tousling it and letting it slip through her fingers. She stretches her arms and yawns as she walks to the large windows in her new apartment, showing a open view of Seattle. As she sees the panoramic view in front of her she squints her eyes inspecting the scenery. Rain keeps pouring down on. Following the rain she can see it filling the streets with rainwater. It flows down the street and ends up running down into the various manholes on the roads. She crosses her arms and sighs gloomily. Out of all the cities in America she chose this one? At least the view is great.
Taking one last look up at the murky sky she sighs once again and starts to turn around. However, a thing or more specifically a person catches her eyes. All the streets are empty, except for a woman who jumps out of her car with a newspaper over her head. As she sprints down the street the newspaper gets immediately soaked by the Seattle rain.
Nice blonde hair, it's a shame she'll get soaked by the rain.
Eliza snickers and turns around trying to come up with what she's going to eat before she starts her first day at Grey's Sloan Memorial...
...Did she forget to mention that?
Arizona harrumphs as she inspects the tendril of wet hair between her fingers. A puddle of water starts to form right beneath her feet the second she enters the hospital. Just her luck to forget her umbrella, an essential really in the city of Seattle. She had a backup plan with the old newspaper, but that was thrown out the window as soon as she ran out of the car. It completely dissolved right above her head. The newspaper mush is probably still there somewhere down Centennial Drive. It really wasn't her fault either, someone had taken her assigned parking space and she couldn't find any other space to park in.
"New look, Robbins?", recognizing the teasing voice Arizona shakes her head and looks up at none other than a smirking Alex Karev.
Today wasn't really her day.
"Shut up, Karev," the blonde surgeon rebuffs as she wipes her hands down her thighs and tries to flick some water of her coat, "someone took my damn parking space, and I could only find one down the street, and then it started raining and-", she stops her rant and showcases her current state distraughtly. Karev looks guiltily at her and starts scratching the back of his head as he averts his eyes to look anywhere but at Arizona. A light bulb flicks on in Arizona's head at his guilty appearance. Karev.
Seeing the recognition in Arizona's eyes, Alex puts his hands up in surrender, "Now before you start-"
"Really Alex, you have your own freaking parking space!" she exclaims, flailing her arms at Karev.
"There was this kid-" he starts to explain but gets instantly cut off by his mentor.
"Oh don't do that, don't bring the tiny humans into this." Alex knows her soft spots for the tiny humans. By bringing them into this he's trying to guilt her for being upset.
"I got paged!" Karev wails and tries to explain where he's coming from, "He was bradycard-"
"Fine Alex!" she yells and stops his rant, "I get it. Just next time remember to move your car when you're done saving lives"
*Bee-Beep*
The sound of a pager going of makes them both stop up in their conversation. Inspecting their pagers the person being paged turns out to be Alex.
"Looks like I've got to go save another kid's life", Alex boasts whilst inspecting his pager. He looks up and then points to the dripping blonde, "You look like a mess, you should get that fixed"
Arizona chuckles incredulously at his comment and sarcastically answers, "Thanks, Alex".
"You're welcome", Karev laughs humorously and waves a hand nonchalantly at her answer as he hurries off.
Of course it had to be Karev who took her parking space. He did make her life more difficult, but also a lot more interesting. And to be completely honest, she did look like a mess standing here. Exhaling loudly she squeakingly makes her way to the elevators and clicks the up button. While looking up at the changing floor numbers above the elevator she chuckles and ponders on how she ended up in this situation.
The day could only get better, right?
The walls in the overfilled room reverberate the rumbling small talk coming from the large crowd. Resident upon resident as far as the eye can see, but Eliza isn't intimidated. She's in her right element.
Let's do this
Bringing her hands up she claps them loudly. The small talk in the room gets cut short and all the confused eyes in the room divert to her. Taking one last calming breath she confidently starts speaking.
"So, I work with attending surgeons. I train attendings to train you, simple as that," she explains, "and the best way I know how to do that is to hear from you about them."
She waits on a response, but to her surprise: Not a word. Just ... crickets. She exhales deeply, feeling slightly disappointed at the silence from the residents.
"I would love to just get a clear picture of the hours, the instructors, who you love, who you hate," she lists off and casually walks along the short end of the table, "I want to hear it all."
A seated brunette raises her hand hesitantly. "Shoot!" Eliza points at her instantly before the resident can back out.
"No offence," the brunette starts off hesitantly, "but you're here for two days, we have to work with them", she states with a sceptical look at the education consultant.
"I get that"-Eliza sighs-"Just think about what you want to get out of your education. Don't worry about what is said, this room is a vault. Nothing you say leaves these walls."
After a beat of silence all hands shoot up. A smile lights up her face as she goes about listening to the first answer. She got through to them.
Out of the corner of her eye she sees a group of probably attendings standing at the nurses station by the window pane. They look suspiciously at her, almost like their following her every move. Eliza shakes her head, not minding them at all as she listens on and writes down some surgeon names to remember. One of them is Jackson Avery, apparently Harper Avery's grandson and kind of a grump sometimes. Another is April Kepner, surprisingly a perky princess gone badass soldier. Then a cardiothoracic surgeon named Maggie Pierce. A genius surgeon, but a really bad teacher and-
*bing*
She whips her head up to see where the sound came from. Looking through the glass window to the group of attendings from before, she sees a doctor that wasn't present, blonde wet hair up in a bun. Part of her hair is sideswept to perfectly frame her face, while baby blue eyes stare right back at her. The blonde does look familiar, but she can't put her finger on it.
Wait.
Isn't that the woman who ran from the rain this morning?
As Eliza looks wonderingly at the woman she sees the person in question's blue eyes widen. She sees the woman's mouth move panicky and then sees the group of attendings break up and go running in all directions. Catching a last glimpse of the wet haired beauty Minnick smirks as she absentmindedly listens to the residents. The blonde was kind of cute. She could have some fun with her.
For Richard to lose his job to this Eliza Minnick woman that Bailey hired was completely absurd. First she takes Richard's job and then she walks around like she owns the place. Who does she think she is? To top it off, she then makes this list to rank the attendings and doesn't even put her name on the stupid list.
Does it mean that she thinks I'm a bad surgeon?
That can't be it. She raises great surgeons, and she's a damn well good teacher. Alex is a textbook example on what she can accomplish as a teacher. On her way to her next patient she grumbls on about this Minnick person. She did have to admit, she had this sexy something, something going on. From what she saw through the window she was pretty confident of herself, and she doesn't doubt that those intense eyes could make any of the residents speak. As she daydreams on, by some cruel fate, she's met by the sight of the woman in one of the elevators.
She looks like she's lost, should I help her?
Arizona mulls over what to do, she decides to throw caution to the wind. It's not like the others will ever know, and it's not like she's condoning anything. She was raised to be a good man in a storm and if that meant helping the enemy, so be it.
"Are you lost or something?" she asks the new surgeon trying to sound as unbothered as possible. She cringes at herself for the attempt.
'Or something'? Jeez, Robbins. What a lame attempt at sounding disinterested.
"Bailey's office, fourth floor?" Minnick inquires and waits expectantly for an answer.
"Right of the catwalk" Arizona confirms and nods her head. Without waiting for an answer she starts walking away, but stops herself in the last second. Right before the elevator doors are about to close she sticks her arm through it, stopping it from closing. She needed answers, screw being unbothered.
"Why did you leave my name out of the list?" she blurts out. Her question startles the raven haired woman who wasn't expecting a reappearance from the blue eyed surgeon.
"What list?" she asks, her eyebrows creasing as she tilts her head wonderingly.
"The list from your meeting with the residents, you left it there" Arizona states like it's the most obvious thing in the world. A look of recognition passes Minnicks face.
"Oh that list," she chuckles and shakes her head, "that's just for me to remember all the attendings names"
To say that Arizona feels like an idiot, is to say the least. How dumb could she be to believe that Minnick was ranking them. And it looks like she isn't even interesting enough to remember, she didn't even put her name on the list.
"Great, so you don't remember my name" she quips and laughs sardonically.
However, the consultant's lips pull up into a smirk as her eyes get a more playfully look to them.
"Arizona Robbins?" Minnick inquires, crossing her arms and leaning a bit forward, "that face attached to that name? It's not one you forget."
The person in question just stares back, as if the words or obvious flirtation hasn't registered yet.
She does look cuter up close.
"Next time, don't forget your umbrella" Eliza teases, making the blue eyed beauty's mouth open wide in shock, almost comically.
"Night", she adds with a flirtatious wink as she disappears behind the closed elevator door.
Rendered speechless, Arizona is left standing there opening and closing her mouth like an idiot.
Damn it!
She was not going to get an upper hand over her. Arizona Robbins renders woman speechless, not the other way around. She was not going to let Eliza Minnick win.
TBC
A/N
Fun fact if you didn't know: Centennial Drive is the name of the street in which the hospital is located at.
I actually have no clue if Alex has a car or even drives to work (just came back to the fandom after nearly 2 years of not watching the show), thought it would be fun to explore why Eliza had such a wondering gaze when she saw Arizona. I will follow some scenes that are canon to the Elizona/Ariliza/Mibbins story, but mostly I'll write off canon from both the pairing and show.
If you're still reading this, thanks for the read :)