Chapter 3 – Reasons and Dreams
Title: Help – Reasons and Dreams
AN: Thank you to ljuser Itsallcomealive who beta'd this for me. I really cannot thank you enough. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
She rolled over and looked at her pager immediately. Nothing. Then what woke her up? Why was she awake? There was a loud bang and for a moment she went through all the things in her apartment she could use as a weapon, before realising that it was someone knocking on the front door and it was 9 o'clock in the morning. She rolled off the couch and made her way to the door, wiping the sleep from her eyes and stretching a little. Before she opened the door she plastered a smile on her face.
She opened the door and without thinking the smile left her face and her thoughts.
She watched as the uniformed officer before her grimaced before he spoke and she knew the words he was going to say. She had done this once before, two years ago with news of her parents. She knew what it meant.
"Matthew?"
The officer nodded sadly.
It was that moment that she knew she was absolutely alone in the world.
"Arizona?"
"Yeah."
"You said you were a doctor right?"
"A long time ago."
"Can you take a look at my back?"
"What's the matter?"
"I um, I think I have an infection."
"Here I'll take a look."
The brunette did not need to hear words, when the blonde gasped she knew that it wasn't good.
"This is a gun-shot wound."
"I was shot."
"I can see that Calliope. Do you have bandages or anything with you?"
"No."
"We have to get out of here, this is really inflamed. It's looking really angry."
"Yeah, I'm still meant to be on meds, but I was only meant to be out here two days, so… I only brought what I needed."
"I need to go get help."
"How? You can barely stand, let alone walk. I don't have enough energy to help you up out of here."
"Calliope. This is bad." She ran her fingers by the gunshot wound.
"I was going to be doing a appendectomy on a little girl… Ruby. Her appendix was about to explode and I was giving her painkillers. I heard the door creak a little, and I turn around and there is a man standing by the door with a gun. I offered him some bandages and told him to leave the floor. That it was the paediatric floor and that there were only children. I thought he had left, when I turned back to comfort Ruby who was crying for her Mom, he shot me." Looking around Arizona realised she had nothing to help, so she secured the gauze back and pulled Callie's shirt back down.
"But you are Ortho? Why were you even there?"
"There has no one to cover peds since Dr Kinley died. No one ever came, I know that Webber couldn't get anyone. None of the residents could do the job."
"Webber? Richard Webber – this is Seattle Grace we are talking about?"
"Seattle Grace – Mercy West."
"You work there?"
"I work there."
"I – I was offered… I was going to start as an attending… Richard Webber offered me a job four years ago. I came to Washington, but never made it to Seattle."
"You're a surgeon?"
"I used to be, well, I was never actually an official surgeon. I finished my peds fellowship at Hopkins."
"… you were supposed to… be with me..."
Arizona looked closely at Callie and saw that more sweat had accumulated over her face and neck and her brown eyes were now closed. All she could do was stroke her cheek and pray that they would both get out of this, pray that she could get to know her more, pray that Callie's family would not have to deal with an officer knocking on their front door.
"He is crashing!"
She felt the life fade from under her fingertips, she felt like angel of death. She tried to find the problem, but she knew there wasn't one that she could solve. So while she tried her hardest and fought the hardest fight she could, she knew that it was one she wasn't going to win.
She'd been his doctor from the start, during her residency he was bought in and his smile was probably one of the reasons she had been so adamant about her specialty. She had worked with him and his family over the passed four years and now she was watching his life disappear.
It killed her because the light in his eyes, his hair even his cheeky little smirk had reminded her of Matthew. So she fought for this little boy because she was never given the opportunity to fight for her brother. As she felt him slip away she knew that this was the last straw, the last wound her heart could take.
She felt a hand on her shoulder.
"Arizona"
She kept going, kept pushing.
"Dr Robbins, call it."
She looked around and they had all stepped away from the table. They were all looking over at her. She realised that her eyes were the only part of her face they could see, and therefore they could all see the tears that were about to fall.
"Time of Death : Three forty eight." She yelled angrily. Snapping her gloves off and throwing them in the biohazard bin before stalking out of the room. Walking away from the last connection she felt with the world.
"Arizona?"
"Yep?"
"I just had a dream."
"Really… was it a good dream or a bad dream?"
"Neither."
"Oh. Well what happened?"
"You had my little girl. You got the chance."
"Really? Sounds like a nightmare." She tried to laugh a little, but knew that the situation was serious and what Callie was trying to say. Arizona felt awkward, the words had thrown her.
"I'm tired. You know? Like that tired you get when you are waiting for something that never happens you know?" The blonde nodded. "I've been waiting for something to happen for years. I'm so tired. I thought that if I told someone, if I told Bailey I was tired that something would happen. It would break the monotony of my life, but nothing happened. Nothing. I just kept on going. I did my research and developed something new and exciting and nothing happened. I won a Harper Avery… and then nothing happened. I'm so tired of nothing happening. I'm so over nothing happening."
"I know how that is."
"Yeah?"
"Before I left my job I had a lot of things happening. I was tired of things happening. I was scarred because of all these things happening. I wished they wouldn't so I packed up and headed out to the woods, where nothing would happen. At first I liked it. I still do, some days but…I'm waiting for that spark, for that something."
"What happened to you, before?" She asked tentatively.
"For me to come here?"
"Yes."
"I lost everything."
"Everything?"
"Everything."
"Did you have a partner or kid or something?"
"No. I was always too busy with work to build a family of my own, but I lost my family unit. My parents and then a couple of years later, my brother… then I lost a patient, an important patient. And I just… I lost all my connections in the world. I lost it all."
"But you had friends right? People that could help you?"
"I'm an awesome friend, but sometimes being a good friend doesn't mean that you have good friends, or that you can let people be good friends for you."
"So you shut people out?"
"Yeah, I shut people out."
"Do you regret it?"
"I'm sitting here in front of a beautiful woman what's to regret?" She smiled.
"Now I know I'm still dreaming, because there is no way you just hit on me." She said with a laugh that set her off into a groan.
"I didn't hit on you."
"You did."
"Yeah ok, a little bit."
"I get that a lot you know, injured in the woods, beautiful women throwing themselves at me… happens all the time."
"I bet it does." She smiled. She watched as Callie's expression changed from a smile to a frown. She was about to ask what was wrong, Callie interrupting her.
"I think I'm going to be sick."
Arizona crawled over to the brunette and helped her sit up, pulling the black locks behind Callie's shoulders, rubbing her back.
"Shhhh, it's ok."
"Argh. I don't know how I can be sick like this - I haven't eaten in days."
Arizona just sat and watched and kept running her hand over Callie's back, avoiding the wound that had caused this sickness, hoping that the she was in some way comforting her. There was little she could do and she knew that Callie was getting worse. She could see the signs. When she was confident that the sickness had passed, she pulled the Latina into her chest and rocked her, a little, hoping to lull her to sleep.
"I always thought I'd have this great love affair." Callie murmured into Arizona's embrace
"Hmmm?"
"When I was a kid, or even as an adult I always thought that I was destined to have this great love affair. You know the kind you read about in novels. I thought with George it was it… it was so whirlwind and quick and I was so infatuated. Then it crumpled before my eyes. Even after that I still thought I would get my love… But now."
"You'll get your love affair. Your chance meeting. You'll overcome some great obstacle. You'll get that. You'll get you're happily ever after"
"Arizona, I can barely move. I've been out here for six days, and now I'm trapped. I am not really optimistic about leaving here."
"Well you don't need to be optimistic, I'm optimistic enough for the both of us." She smiled, hoping to instill some sort of positiveity in her companion. She's given up hope and optimism, until this moment. She hadn't bought into her ideas of rainbows, miracles and fairydust for years, but now... in this moment, she desperately clung to them. Hoping they were enough to get the woman in her arms out of danger, out of here alive. "Why don't you tell me about your imaginary daughter?"
"What do you want me to tell you?"
"Anything."
"I imagined her 6th birthday. She's been begging me for a pony. For months. She's just lost her front tooth and she's using her smile against me. Her blue eyes," She pauses before smiling "because they have to be blue, shine and she's pouting this very convincing pout. She even drew a picture of the pony at school, so that I would know which one to get. I have to sit her down and talk to her about how we can't have a pony and how our backyard is too cramped and that it will make the pony sad. And when I tell her that the pony will be sad, she gets tears in her eyes, because even if she wants this pony, even if she's already in love with this pony, she doesn't want it to be sad. She doesn't want to be the reason it's sad. So when I'm done explaining that to her, and she understands why she can't have a pony to keep, that's when I show her the petting zoo I hired for her birthday that is out the back. When she sees the pony her eyes pop and I hear her giggle and it's the sound I live for."
"So she'll be spoilt just like you were then?"
"Yep, because she and her mother are my world."
"Her mother?"
"My great love affair. Remember?"
"Yeah."
"Did you ever dream of a great love?"
"I hoped for it, I may be optimistic, but I also tend to be realistic in terms of my love life. I guess I'd be happy with someone I'm comfortable with."
"Comfortable?"
"Yeah, someone I could cry in front of and not worry what they think, I could tell them my faults and they would take them in their stride. Someone who I can yell at and they could tell instantly that I was scared and not angry. Comfortable. Comforting. Love."
"You'd be happy with comfortable?"
"I'd be happy with comfortable love. I'd be happy with forever."
"Yeah forever would be nice." She smiled and closed her eyes as the blonde stroked her hair.
