Thank you for all of the amazing reviews, follows, and favorites.
I was asked by a few readers if this would be a Brallie. I did contemplate making this a Brallie fic, but after thinking about it I decided that after everything Callie went through she should have the Adams Fosters to depend on. I think she needs a family more than a boyfriend right now. She's nowhere near ready for a relationship with anyone, even Brandon. So to answer that question, there will be some Brallie moments later on but definitely more on the side of friendship and sibling love rather than romantic love.
Also, I was asked about Callie's physical state after her attack. I probably should have gone into further detail in the last chapter about the extent of her injuries. This chapter will explore that further. I didn't mention it in the last chapter, but this is the first time Callie has been fully conscious since she was brought to the hospital. She doesn't even fully know the extent of her injuries herself yet. Just so you know, I'll be going into extreme detail of her injuries and sexual assault. I figured I would warn anyone that gets easily bothered by those kinds of topics.
"Callie, if you don't mind, I really have to check out your injuries to make sure you didn't damage anything else," Doctor Barron stated as he came toward Callie.
"No! I don't want any more guys touching me!" Callie exclaimed as she shot back up from the bed.
"Baby calm down," Stef tried to calm Callie down before she jumped out of her bed again. "Doctor Barron isn't going to hurt you. He's trying to help you."
"Stef, I don't want him near me! I don't want to be touched by any guys, ever again!" Callie cried out.
Stef and Lena shared a look of concern with each other. It wasn't just Doctor Barron that Callie would have a problem with. It was all men.
"Okay, Callie, we're not going to let anyone touch you that you don't want to touch you. Okay, this is completely up to you. You have a choice here, love," Stef assured Callie.
"But, honey, you do have a lot of injuries that still need to be treated. You just woke up for the first time and you have to be examined by a doctor," Lena added gently.
"I just want to go home," Callie cried.
It broke both moms' hearts to see Callie in such an emotional state. Usually she tried to at least put up a strong front. Her walls were starting to come down, but she still had the tough girl persona.
"I know baby, but you can't go home until you're all better. You still have a lot of healing to do before we can take you home," Stef told Callie gently.
"But, what if we were to get you another doctor?" Lena asked hopefully. "We could ask Doctor Barron to assign a female doctor to your case instead."
"Yeah, I can have a female resident assigned to the case and make sure that any doctors working on your case are female," Doctor Barron told Callie, careful to keep a distance between him and Callie. He was aware of Callie's situation and completely understood why Callie wouldn't want any men near her.
Callie started to relax into Stef, who had her arm wrapped around her, trying to keep her in bed.
"What do you think of that idea love?" Stef asked Callie.
"Yeah, that would be okay," Callie responds quietly.
"Okay, I'll go and page someone right now. Moms, could I talk to you for a second outside?"
"Why!? What is it!?" Callie exclaimed from her bed, now clearly worried and anxious that her moms would be leaving her.
"I just have some paperwork for your moms to sign," Doctor Barron told Callie in an attempt to keep Callie calm.
Stef could tell by the look on Doctor Barron's face that he was just lying for Callie's benefit. He wanted to discuss something with them. Something that he knew might upset Callie.
"We'll be right back love. I promise," Stef told Callie as she kissed her forehead, careful to avoid any cuts or bruises.
Both moms followed Doctor Barron into the hall and shut the door behind them as Doctor Barron faced them. "Now, I already discussed Callie's injuries with you when we got her stabilized the night she was brought in. As of right now, it's a waiting game. Callie's eye socket is broken and will need surgery. However, that's going to have to wait until the swelling comes down. I'll make a note in the chart that we'll need a female plastic surgeon to take a look at Callie's eye. The plastic surgeon will be down probably sometime today just to get a look at what she's dealing with. I'm a trauma surgeon, but from experience I can tell you that the plastic surgeon will probably tell you the same thing. In order to perform surgery on a broken eye socket this severe, they usually wait for the swelling to subside."
"Could this affect her vision out of that eye?" Lena asked concerned.
"She may experience decreased or blurry vision as well as double vision. She might not be able to move her eye on her own. That could mean that one of the eye muscles has become trapped in the fracture sight. If that's the case, a trapped eye muscle is what usually leads to double vision. The plastic surgeon would be able to free any trapped eye muscles in surgery, which would eliminate any vision problems. Right now, Callie isn't able to open her left eye so we won't know the extent of any vison problems, if there even are any. The plastic surgeon will be specialized in treating eye injuries so she'll be able to determine whether or not any of Callie's vision problems could be a cause for concern. If so, she'll probably bring an ophthalmologist on with her. On another note, Callie is going to need her stitches checked regularly for the first few days."
"Okay, I don't see that being a problem," Stef responded confused as to why that would be a concern. Callie had received several stitches on some of the injuries to her face. Her lip had been busted open so that required four stitches. She also had three lacerations, one on her right cheek, one on the left side of her neck and the other on the right side of her forehead. They were both deep cuts and bled profusely. Each one took about five stitches to close up.
"No, Ms. Adams Foster I'm referring to the stitches we had to perform due to her sexual assault. We treated her with the standard protocol. HIV cocktail, morning after pill, and STD prophylaxis. However, Callie also had a lot of vaginal tearing that required stiches. The stitches will dissolve on their own, but until then we still have to perform regular checks to make sure everything is healing correctly."
"You've got to be kidding me," Lena stated sadly. "You seriously think Callie is going to want anyone to touch her after what she just went through?"
"I understand the difficulty of this, believe me I do. But, unfortunately if we don't monitor how everything is healing we could risk her getting an infection."
Stef was listening to everything that the doctor was telling her, but it didn't seem real. None of this seemed real. A couple of days ago their biggest problems included hiding a birthday cake from Brandon and trying to find a way to adopt Callie. Now she was listening to the details of all of the horrible things that happened to her daughter. The horrible things that she had to watch happen to her daughter. She just wanted to go back. Back to a couple of days ago, before any of this happened. She kept thinking about all of her encounters with Wyatt. Not once did she detect that he was capable of something like this. She couldn't get over the fact that she had failed to protect her family. She had failed to protect Callie.
Flashback to 2 days ago…
Stef and Lena were both finally sitting in Callie's room. It had taken a while for both moms to be able to see their daughter. Callie had flat lined in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. They were able to bring her back before making it to the hospital, but that just showed the doctors how severe Callie's injuries were. They knew that they had no time to waste so as soon as they arrived at the hospital, Callie was taken back to be examined right away, leaving Stef and Lena wondering how she was doing.
"Hi, I'm Doctor Barron," Doctor Barron introduced himself as he came into Callie's hospital room. "Do you think I could speak with you about Callie's condition?"
"Of course," Stef replied quietly. She knew Callie was sedated and couldn't wake up right now, but she didn't want to risk disturbing her daughter's sleep. She knew she was exhausted. "Could we talk in the hall? I don't know if she can hear us, but I don't want to risk it."
"Absolutely," Doctor Barron responded quickly.
Lena and Stef both left Callie's room and closed the door behind them.
"I was the lead trauma surgeon assigned to Callie's case when she got here. I just want to say I'm very sorry for everything that Callie and your family went through. It's unimaginable."
"Thank you," Lena responds for the both of them.
"Callie's injuries were very severe. She experienced a lot of blood loss. I know you already know that Callie was sexually assaulted."
"Yes, we know," Stef responded, finally able to find her voice.
"The assault left behind a lot of vaginal tearing, so she was experiencing a lot of blood loss from both the lacerations to her face and forehead as well as the vaginal tears. Just so you know she received the entire protocol for sexual assault victims."
Stef and Lena couldn't stand hearing this. Stef especially because she had watched it happen right in front of her. She could only imagine the pain that Callie was going through when it was happening.
"After we stitched up Callie's cuts and got the bleeding under control. We ordered a CT and everything came back normal, so there's no internal bleeding to be concerned about. However, with the CT we were able to confirm that she has three broken ribs and her eye socket is broken as well. Her ribs will heal on their own, but Callie's eye socket is going to require reconstructive surgery."
Stef could feel the bile in her stomach, threatening to come up.
"Her wrist is broken and she also has two broken fingers. We're going to be getting a cast on her as soon as possible."
"Were the broken ribs from the attack or the CPR?" Stef managed to get out.
"It's possible that it could have been a combination of the two. Callie's ribs could have been broken already before the CPR, but it's not uncommon for a few ribs to crack in the process of CPR."
Callie's ribs cracked. It could have been from Wyatt. She had a broken wrist, two broken fingers, three broken ribs and that bastard hit her so hard that her eye socket was broken. She had cuts everywhere, even inside of her. That was it. Stef couldn't take it anymore. She had to let it out.
"I need a trashcan! Now!" Stef told the doctor as she put her hand up to her mouth.
Doctor Barron quickly grabbed a bucket on a nearby cart and brought it back to Stef. As soon as Stef had the bucket she threw up. The thought of the pain that Callie had felt made her sick to her stomach. She remembered being shot and the beating Callie went through sounded a hell of a lot worse to her. She couldn't bear the thought of her baby being in that kind of agonizing pain. It made her heart hurt, knowing that she couldn't stop it.
I hope the medical terminology sounded as realistic as possible. I took an Anatomy and Physiology class, but we didn't get the chance to discuss serious injuries like these.
As always all feedback is greatly appreciated and if anyone has any ideas or anything they would like to see happen in the story, please let me know.
If you read All of the Stars, I'm planning on updating that tonight. Hopefully, Fight too but we'll see.
Thanks for reading :)
