Author's Note: Hey! Again, thank you all for your continued support. You all are the best! So there's some medical drama in this chapter! Excuse my lack of medical knowledge, please. :) Anyway, enjoy!
"Thank you for everything. You're incredible," the attorney said unable to take her eyes off the blonde.
"Anytime," the blonde said with a dimpled grin.
XXX
Callie Torres was quite certain she could have lived a complete and happy life without ever once going hiking. It was simply not something she wanted to do. Callie, at one point in her life, might not have hated camping, a steamy trip during undergrad with a very attractive, outdoorsy classmate coming to mind, but it was something she couldn't see herself doing ever again. It was years later, and the brunette appreciated the luxuries of a life lived in civilization, and had no desire, whatsoever, to sleep in a tent ever again, let alone try her hand at hiking.
"This is a precursor to camping, Arizona," Callie whined in the cutest way possible, as Arizona dragged the brunette to her Acura SUV, which was parked in the garage under Arizona's apartment building.
"Calliope, this is hiking, not camping. It's just a super-invigorating walk. Besides, I hate camping." The blonde sweetly replied, holding the passenger door open for her attorney.
Callie gave her a smile that did little to hide the death glare she couldn't shake.
This all started during their lovely, peaceful lunch at a cafe down the block from Arizona's apartment. The two were enjoying their salads when Callie mentioned she hadn't exercised in much too long. She usually ran a few miles every morning around whatever city she was working in, or went to the gym. It was something that became very important to her after she lost a lot of weight in college. It was how she took care of herself and kept in shape. But Arizona took this as an opportunity to suggest they explore one of the hiking trails right outside Seattle with positively the most adorable dimpled grin on the planet, which Callie found herself impervious to. Plus, seeing Arizona in leggings and a tight Under Armour top was quite the treat.
"If you hate camping," Callie began as Arizona got into the driver's seat, "why do you like hiking?"
Arizona shrugged. "Fresh air, good exercise, and hot ladies in leggings, I guess," she replied with a mischievous smile.
Callie raised an eyebrow. "Are you telling me that you're going to be staring at hot ladies' asses while you're on a date with me?"
"Asses and thighs, Calliope," the blonde clarified with a playful glint in her eyes. "Anyway, Is this even a date?"
Callie laughed lightly. "I made you breakfast, you paid for lunch and you held the car door for me when I am perfectly capable of opening and closing it myself," the brunette explained. "Plus, if it's not a date, I wore my favorite pair of Lululemon leggings for nothing."
Arizona could only laugh in response. Callie did look very good in her overpriced activewear. She had on maroon cropped leggings that hugged her every perfect curve and a tight black tank top that offered a lot of cleavage. When the lawyer leaned across the console, a sliver of her stomach was bared, and Arizona suddenly felt like the heat rising inside her could warm the entire car. Callie smirked as she caught Arizona staring at her body, hovering over the blonde's lips. She brought a hand over to toy with Arizona's perfect braid, using her hair as leverage to push their lips together for a slow, languid, exploratory kiss, and then pulled away.
"If this weren't a date, I wouldn't be doing that either," Callie murmured, staring at Arizona's slightly parted pink lips.
"Then it's absolutely a date," Arizona whispered, bringing her hands up to tangle in Callie's high ponytail. She pulled Callie into a more demanding kiss, with tongue, lips, and teeth working furiously against each other. It left a burning in the pits of both of their stomachs. The blonde pulled away, breathless, grinning again. "You should keep your hair up more often," she murmured, fastening her seatbelt. "It's super hot," she said, grinning wickedly at the sight of Callie looking flushed, her lips kiss-swollen, and her perfect ponytail in a state of disarray.
As Arizona exited the garage, Callie pulled down the visor and opened the mirror, attempting to get her hair back under control.
After a few moments of driving in silence, Callie mused aloud. "I should get one of my cars brought up here. I think I have two in Los Angeles right now. LA to Seattle is driveable, right?"
Arizona glanced at the brunette, perplexed, before returning her gaze to the road before her. "If you want to sit in the car for eighteen hours, it's driveable," She replied, rolling her eyes. "But I thought you lived in Miami?"
"In my defense, it's not my coast. I just assumed Seattle is closer to LA, I guess," Callie said. "And I do mainly live in Miami," Callie supplied. "But I have cars at some of my other houses and apartments. It's useful, and I really, really like cars." The brunette wore a quirky smile.
"How many cars do you have?" Arizona asked, incredulous. "And how do you drive around with your terrible geography skills?" That question was more teasing.
"I use a GPS, Arizona," Callie said as if it were obvious. "And I guess I have a few cars. Before my parents disowned me, they bought me a 1957 sky blue Ford Thunderbird for my college graduation. It's my baby, and it lives with me in Miami. It's not the most practical so I have a Mercedes G-Wagon in Miami, too. I keep my BMW in DC, I have a Porsche in New York, and I have an Audi in Los Angeles. I have a Lexus somewhere, too. I think I had it brought to LA, but I'm not positive."
Arizona laughed awkwardly. "Are you serious? Six cars, Calliope?"
Callie just shrugged. "I travel a lot, and I really like cars."
The blonde rolled her eyes. "If I'm ever in Miami, I want to take your Thunderbird out for a spin."
Callie laughed. "The only other person who's ever driven my baby is Mark, and he only got to in an empty parking lot after I lost a bet. Besides, can you even drive stick?"
It was Arizona's turn to laugh now. "I am the daughter of a Marine, Calliope. My dad spent years making sure I can drive any vehicle you put in front of me."
"But it's my baby, Arizona," Callie said softly, a smile tugging at her lips. Arizona raised a disapproving eyebrow while her eyes focused on the road. "But you're my- ...well, we're dating, and that means you totally get to drive my baby if you want. Just very carefully, because it is a classic in perfect condition and I intend to keep it that way," Callie attempted to amend. She wasn't sure what to call her relationship with Arizona.
"Awesome," Arizona said with a smirk. "I bought myself this Acura when I made head of peds," she explained. "It's the nicest car I've ever driven. Not my favorite car, but the fanciest."
Callie smiled at the idea of Arizona's excitement as she bought the car. "It's a beautiful car. I mean, it's an odd shade of purple, but it's a very nice."
Arizona glanced at Callie, looking outraged. "It's dark gray!"
"Purple," Callie insisted with a quirky smile. "It's a lovely shade of lavender."
"The dealer said it's gray," Arizona clarified. "But if you insist on being wrong…"
Callie just chuckled. "So what was your favorite car?"
Arizona turned into the state park's parking lot, trying to find a suitable parking space. "As I mentioned before, we didn't have a whole lot of extra money growing up. My brother was only eighteen months older than me, and when he was seventeen and I was turning sixteen, we pooled our money from summer jobs and birthdays, and asked our family to help instead of presents for our birthdays and christmas, and we bought a silver Jeep Wrangler." Arizona remembered this with a sad smile, turning off the engine. "That was my favorite car."
Callie smiled, and got out of the car before Arizona could protest, going around to open the driver's door for Arizona. She found the blonde grinning, as she pulled Callie into a kiss by the straps of her tank top.
The two soon began hiking up the mountain, Callie grumbling and complaining on occasion in that adorable way that never failed to make Arizona grin. They didn't talk a lot, just enjoyed the scenery and took in the fresh air. At least, until a bug flew into Arizona and she shrieked. It took a few minutes for Callie to stop laughing at the blonde's bug phobia, while Arizona started to grumble about how it's not nice to make fun of your date.
After forty-five minutes or so, the two women made it to the top of the mountain, and they admired the view as they rehydrated. Arizona pulled an arm around Callie's waist, tugging her closer and turning them so the view of Seattle was to their backs.
"What are you doing?" Callie asked, watching Arizona pull her phone out.
"We're taking a selfie," the blonde explained, smiling as she opened the camera app. Callie tried to move out of the frame.
"I don't selfie," Callie explained, trying to wriggle out of Arizona's hold.
"You do for me," Arizona said, determined. She found her most adorable dimpled grin.
"Fine," Callie grumbled, posing for the picture with her perfect smile. "But this doesn't get posted anywhere or sent to anyone."
Arizona snapped a few shots, and suddenly turned her head, snapping one when she planted a kiss on Callie's cheek, which made the brunette blush.
"I make no promises!" Arizona exclaimed, putting her phone away before Callie could protest. She leaned up and softly kissed the attorney. "Thank you for making an exception for me, Calliope," Arizona murmured.
Callie just rolled her eyes, pulling Arizona into a deeper kiss by her waist.
After a moment spent lost in a passionate kiss, Arizona pushed back with a hand on Callie's chest. "I love kissing you. I really do, but we're not exactly alone," she murmured, gesturing to the hikers scattered around.
Callie nodded in understanding, and the two collected their things.
"Race you down!" Arizona exclaimed, starting back down the path, Callie trailing close behind. After a few moments, with Callie and Arizona neck and neck, they heard a blood-curdling scream coming from not far off the path. The two looked at each other, nodded, and swiftly followed the noise.
Standing over an embankment, Arizona and Callie found a frazzled looking couple.
"Ryan! Ryan, baby! Are you okay?" The woman screamed, and as Callie and Arizona approached they realized that someone must have fallen.
Arizona turned to the couple. "Can you tell me what happened?" She asked, using her professional calm.
The woman was sobbing, clearly panicking, so the equally-distressed but more focused man replied. "My son. He-he fell. My wife and I took him hiking, and he didn't want to go. He was staring at his phone and he just slipped…" The horror was evident in the man's voice, as he wrapped his arms around his wife.
"Sir, Ma'am, I am a doctor. I think I can help," Arizona began, voice steady. "Your son, how old is he? What's his name?"
"R-Ryan," the woman stuttered between sobs. "He's fifteen. He's only fifteen," she exclaimed, clearly beyond hysterical.
"My name is Arizona Robbins, and I'm a pediatric surgeon, and-" Arizona began, turning to introduce Callie, but her companion was nowhere to be found. She looked down the embankment and saw that somehow Callie was already approaching the boy as he lay over rocks and plants. Arizona looked up at the parents again. "That's Callie. She's a doctor who specialized in orthopedics," Arizona provided, pointing down at the woman approaching their son. She wasn't sure how to explain Callie's unconventional credentials, but the parents seemed satisfied with what the blonde told them. "I'm going to go down and help Ryan. I need for you, ma'am, to call for help. Can you do that?"
The woman was still hysterical but nodded, pulling out her phone. A simple task was probably the best thing for her at this point.
Arizona then turned to the woman's husband, holding out her car keys. "Sir, you need to go to the parking lot and find my car. It's a gray Acura, but it looks light purple. It's hard to miss," the surgeon described, remembering her earlier conversation with Callie. "In the trunk I have a big, red first aid kit. You need to bring it to me. I'm going to go help your son now."
Before either parent could protest, Arizona ran along the side of the embankment to a point where it was least steep, carefully yet quickly making her way over to Callie who was kneeling beside the injured boy.
"Can you tell me your name?" Callie asked, but received no answer.
"Ryan," Arizona breathlessly provided, coming up beside Callie.
"Ryan," Callie spoke clearly, "can you hear me?"
The boy nodded weakly in response.
Arizona immediately went around Ryan's the other side to hold his head still. "I need you not to move your neck, Ryan," she said calmly, knowing that his spine needed to be stabilized. There was no telling what kind of paralysis could amount from a fall like this.
The boy just blinked weakly, clearly in a lot of pain.
Callie came closer to Arizona, leaning in to whisper into her ear so Ryan couldn't hear. The last thing he needed was to hear the gory details of his injuries. "I think he landed mainly on his right leg," She murmured. "It looks like a shattered tibia and fibula, and he has a nasty open femur fracture. He has a head lac and definitely broke his left arm, but there's massive blood loss from the femur and I'm worried that the bone sliced the femoral artery. I'm going to have to reduce it here. He's lost too much blood already. You need to hold his head still." Arizona's eyes went wide as she saw the boy's mangled leg, but she nodded in understanding.
Callie suddenly pulled her tank top over her head, using all of her strength to rip through it, making a long enough tear so that she could tie it tightly around Ryan's leg as a tourniquet, so it slowed the blood flow to the leg, minimizing future blood loss.
Arizona just looked down at the boy, who was clearly terrified. "She's going to fix your leg," Arizona murmured softly, trying to calm him. "Everyone says Dr. Torres is one of the best orthopedic surgeons they've ever met," Arizona explained, which wasn't entirely untrue from what Addison, Mark, and Derek said about her abilities.
Callie was clearly not rusty at all, as she quickly managed to reduce the fracture. Arizona just held Ryan's head steady as he screamed in pain.
XXX
About forty-five minutes later, Ryan Grady arrived at Seattle Grace Hospital via ambulance. During the ride Arizona called Owen Hunt, Head of Trauma, letting him know what to expect, and Derek Shepherd, Mark Sloan, Alex Karev, and Teddy Altman were waiting with him in the ambulance bay.
As the doors opened, Callie came out of the ambulance with Arizona and Ryan, his parents following frantically. Callie began speaking quickly, entering the ER as if she'd done in a million times. She looked like she was truly in her element, handling the situation with professionalism. Her eyes were shining in a way Arizona hadn't witnessed before. "Ryan Grady, 15, fell off an embankment while hiking. He's hypertensive and pulse is thready. He had an open femur fracture, which I reduced, but he lost a lot of blood. We need to hang a liter O-negative and he needs IV antibiotics stat. He has a head lac, so he also needs a head and spinal CT before we can get working on his leg. Mark, the leg is going to need quite a bit of debridement."
Derek, Mark, Callie, and Owen immediately entered the trauma room with Ryan, nurses ushering his parents into the waiting room.
Callie was wearing only leggings and a sports bra, sweaty and covered in blood, but she still, somehow, looked like a perfectly sculpted tan goddess. Of course, these were not the circumstances under which Arizona wanted to see Callie in her bra, but she wasn't going to complain when her date's soft, voluptuous curves were in view. The attorney was positively glowing, and Arizona wondered if everyone else could see that, or if Callie glowed exclusively for her. Teddy and Alex came up beside Arizona, staring at the woman who just turned every head in the ER with her mere presence.
"Who is the hot brunette?" Alex asked first, staring at her bottom as she leaned over the gurney to inspect Ryan's leg wound.
Arizona rolled her eyes, grabbing a trauma gown, and slipping into the trauma room to hand it to Callie. Callie smiled, and let Arizona tie the gown for her in the back. Not wanting be a distraction or find herself in trouble with the chief, Arizona quickly left the trauma room to rejoin Alex and Teddy, crossing her arms over her chest. It was weird to be back at the hospital, especially while her privileges were still suspended.
"She's my attorney," Arizona provided, trying not to seem affected by Alex's greedy eyes on Callie.
"Attorney? Why is she in the trauma room? And why are you hiking with your attorney?" Teddy inquired in rapid fire.
"She's an attorney now but she was an ortho resident with Addie, Derek, and Mark until her hand was crushed. And we were just getting to know each other…" Arizona supplied, not wanting to go into too much detail.
"They're dating," Addison Montgomery chimed in, walking up to the trio.
"Damn, Robbins, she's hot," Alex Karev said. Arizona loved her fellow most of the time, but right now she wanted to hit him upside the head, possibly with a brick.
"You're dating?" Teddy asked excitedly. "I want to meet her. What's her name? What's she like? How many dates have you gone on?"
Arizona didn't answer for a moment, so Addison took the opportunity to talk to Arizona's other best friend directly. "Her name is Callie Torres, but Arizona calls her Calliope," Addison said, mimicking Arizona's voice on the last word. "She's complicated but she's totally into Arizona, and Arizona feels the same way. They've been on two dates, I think, if you count today as one. They haven't had sex yet, at least as of this morning," Addison relayed, which earned her a sharp swat on the arm from Arizona. "Ouch!"
"There's a boy in there who is very hurt. Is this really the time and place to discuss my sex life?" Arizona reprimanded. That effectively quieted her friends.
XXX
An hour later, Callie found Arizona waiting in the hallway. The attorney was clearly beyond furious. "He just wanted to amputate!" Callie exclaimed. She quickly switched to Spanish, and Arizona wasn't sure if she even realized she'd changed languages. Regardless, Callie's angry Spanish rants were hot. The attorney began to pace. "El morón llama a sí mismo un cirujano, pero es demasiado perezoso para tener en cuenta la posibilidad de que la pierna del niño podría ser salvado. ¡Sólo quiere amputar! ¿Qué tipo de cirujano hace eso? ¡No le importa! ¡Él sólo se corta buenas extremidades debido a que no quiere trabajar duro!" [The moron calls himself a surgeon, but he is too lazy to consider the possibility that the boy's leg could be saved. He just wants to amputate it! What kind of surgeon does that? He doesn't care! He just cuts off good limbs because he doesn't want to work hard!]
Arizona put a hand on Callie's arm, trying to stop her movement. She understood a word or two of Callie's rant from her years of high school Spanish, but the attorney was speaking very quickly. "Calliope, honey, calm down." The blonde internally berated herself for using the pet name, but it just slipped out. The brunette seemed too agitated to notice.
"The head of ortho wanted to amputate Ryan's leg, Arizona!" Callie exclaimed in outrage. "When I said that I could come up with a plan to save it, he just went off on me. Yelled at me for questioning his authority, told me I had no right or qualifications, and called me a burn out. Then Mark gave it back to him, saying I was a better orthopedic surgeon in my one year of residency than he is. The chief overruled him, and Mark, Derek, and I came up with a plan, but I can't imagine what would have happened if I weren't there. I can't imagine how many people lost limbs because of that lazy idiot."
Arizona understood Callie's frustration. The head of orthopedics, Dr. Fox, was an awful doctor, who honestly only cared about prestige and money. Everyone had to push him to agree to the more difficult courses of treatment that would help the patients more in the long run. The blonde's voice was soft and understanding. "I'm sorry, Calliope. I know he's awful. He's a complete asshole. But I'm so glad you were able to find a way to fix Ryan's leg."
Callie smiled softly, but the light in her eyes suddenly went out. "Mark and Derek are going into surgery with Dr. Fox to make sure he sticks to plan. It should work. I has a similar case my intern year. Ryan's leg may never be the same, but it should be pretty functional. He should lead a normal life if Dr. Fox doesn't screw it up." Callie tried to sound excited, but the blonde could see right through it.
Arizona smiled at Callie. "That's really awesome, Calliope," she said. When Callie just seemed morose, Arizona cupped her cheek, pulling Callie's gaze to her bright blue eyes. "Are you okay?"
"I really miss surgery," Callie said, voice hoarse with emotion.
Arizona pulled the lawyer into her arms, holding her tight. "Me too," she murmured into Callie's neck.