Title: Extraordinary Measures
Author: J.M. Flowers
Rating: M
AN: I don't know that this chapter has even been looked at it as much as it needs to be, but a sweet little Penguin was sad today and she deserves to smile. (And I feel too sick tonight to even give a poop.) From the messages I've been getting throughout the fan community, it finally makes sense and y'all are digging it, so now it gets fun. Enjoy the ride! xoxo Giraffe
Multum in parvo
Much in little
"You followed us?" I ask softly, leaning against the old brick wall in the warehouse district as Senna fumbles with the padlock. Arizona stands several feet away, still shaking but angrily pulling away at every form of contact.
"You ran out," Senna grunts, pushing the key hard into the rusted lock. "I wanted to make sure you were okay."
I take the key from her hand, twisting it with more force than she has yet. It clicks, popping open to reveal bright, untouched metal. It's been years since anyone's been here.
"He told me," she whispers, dropping her head.
"Well?" Arizona interrupts, surging forward with her arms crossed.
Senna unhooks the padlock from the chain, tugging the loops of rusted metal out of the door handle. She tugs the door open, gesturing for us to go inside.
I freeze in the entryway, breathing in wildly familiar smells: air chilled and dampened by cement; the rubber that he once told me was manufactured here, decades before he bought the building; the musty scent of rain pooling on the floor, growing mold. He's barely touched the place in this reality - the stairs aren't recovered like they were the last time I was here.
"He keeps it on the third floor," Senna directs, already taking the steps two at a time. Arizona follows close behind her, leaving me alone to count them slowly. Twenty four stairs; the number of days it had been since her death, the very first time I came here.
When I get to the third floor, Senna's already dragged a white sheet off the machine. It's a cruder hunk of metal than I remember, lacking all the sheen and finishings I've so associated it with (sticky, leather covered seat, polished metal, attached surgical tray). It looks wildly unimpressive.
Arizona scoffs. "Nice science experiment," she mutters, already turning to leave.
"Wait!" Senna interrupts, flicking switches. The machine hums to life. She tugs a paramedic's heart monitor from a bag beneath the chair, a small jar of clear liquid. "Everything's here," she swears. "You can try it."
"How do you -" I murmur, awestruck. She's younger than Dr. Lewis, fewer lines around her eyes, but she touches the equipment with the same ease he always did. She moves with it, understands it. She's used it before.
"My father taught me, a month before he got sick. He said... He told me that someone was going to need it, after he was gone. He said someone was coming back."
I step closer to it, running my hand along the lights poised above the chair, glowing a faint blue. How had he known? Had he used the machine, too? Had he made a change? Had his visits affected what he knew in his new reality, too?
"Does it hurt?" Arizona whispers, tentative.
"No," Senna and I say at the same time. I look to her, startled.
"It doesn't hurt," Senna continues. "It's like... floating away. In a really big, buoyant sea until finally you're exactly where you want to be again and everything's right there. You touch the person you're so desperately missing and it's like you've never been away from them."
Arizona steps closer, her eyes dancing over the machine almost wistfully.
"Where do you want to go?" Senna asks.
Just like Dr. Lewis had. Where will you go, Callie? To the night I first told her I loved her.
"The last time I was with my brother, before he was deployed."
Arizona lowers herself into the chair, letting Senna attach the monitors to her heart. She slowly wraps the wires around her head, wispy blonde hairs curling around the reds and blues. Senna rips a syringe from a sealed package, pushing it into the jar with the clear liquid before pulling the plunger back. The syringe fills.
She swipes alcohol across the inner curve of Arizona's elbow and then pushes the needle into the vein. Slowly, the clear liquid disappears and we watch as Arizona's bright blue eyes tip backwards into her skull.
I release a breath I didn't know I was holding.
#
Arizona seems almost lifeless in the chair. It doesn't even look like she's dreaming: her eyelids don't flutter, her fingers don't twitch. If not for the incessant beeping of the heart monitor...
Senna looks to the watch on her wrist. "If she's going to convulse at all, she'll start soon. I only gave her enough for half an hour, it should be wearing off in the next few minutes."
I nod, standing up from my seated position in one of the wide window sills. "What do you need me to do?" I ask softly, my fingers shaking as Denia's face comes rushing back at me - that day I convulsed so severely she had to strap me to the chair, when Dr. Lewis told me it was almost time to say goodbye. I've seen people have seizures before, but this feels different. I'm not sure I can handle this.
"It's okay," Senna soothes, "I just need you to hold her hand. Just squeeze her hand and it'll help to bring her back. The touching - it releases endorphins, helps to stabilize..."
"He fixed that," I whisper. "Anti-depressants."
Senna smiles, dropping her gaze back to Arizona, her hands just starting to twitch.
I grab Arizona's other hand, squeezing tightly. She moans, her head pushing backwards into the chair at the same time her feet kick at the air. I flinch, trying not to turn away.
Senna throws an arm over Arizona's thighs, stilling her. "Talk to her," she tells me.
Like Denia did. Welcome back, Dr. Torres. Shhh, it's okay.
I lean close to her. "It's okay, Arizona," I whisper, "You're okay. You're coming back."
Her jaw clenches, her legs kicking at the chair one more time before her eyes flutter open. She glances around, disoriented, until her eyes find mine.
And then she's crying, tears tumbling down her cheeks unabated. "I saw him," she chokes out, her voice scratching its way out of her inevitably dry throat. Senna pushes the mouth of a water bottle against her lips.
We give her a minute, both of us watching as she thirstily drinks from the bottle I had tucked in my bag. She lets Senna take it away, turning back to me, her hands grabbing at my jacket.
"I saw him, Callie," she murmurs. "I saw Tim, just like that day in the field. I hugged him. I felt... I felt him kiss my cheek. He was real, Callie."
I nod, forcefully swallowing past the lump in my throat.
"I believe you, Callie," she swears. "It's real."
#
Her fingers on my skin are like some distant memory, a slow burn that I can't fathom into reality. They ghost over my arms as a summer wind - all warmth and comfort. Like coming home; sitting on the beach and drinking sangrias and hearing her laughter louder than the crashing waves. Her eyes are the colour of the curl beneath them, the blue that swallows me as the water smacks against my chest, tossing me below the surface in a mess of limbs.
I'm drowning in her.
She presses an urgent kiss against my lips, tongue peeking out to swipe across my mouth. I open myself up to her, let her run her tongue along the backs of my teeth. My heart beats faster, my whole body entranced by her and the way her hands slip beneath my shirt, wandering up my spine towards my bra. She takes the eyes out of the hooks, my breasts falling from their constraints.
Her nails dig into the flesh of my hips, pulling me with her as she stumbles backwards through the doorway between our bedroom and our bathroom, pushing my shirt up to reveal my abdomen as soon as her heels hit the tile. Her hands leave my skin just long enough to flick the light switch, a warm glow filling the room. She stills, watching me, my own feet frozen in the doorway, my hands lifting my shirt over my head.
Her bottom lip disappears between her teeth when my bra hits the floor, my nipples tightening at the onslaught of cold air. I can feel her eyes dance across them as clearly as I tasted her breath and the sensation sends a rush through my stomach. It lands at the apex of my thighs in wet heat.
My hands wander to her hips, pulling her tight against my naked chest. We both groan as my breasts squish between our bodies, her own skin still hidden under her shirt. Moans are swallowed as our mouths reconnect, slower this time. Gentler. Less urgent.
She whimpers, tugging away from me to undo the buttons of her top; her sternum appearing first, then her abdominal muscles and, finally, the curves of her iliac crests. I set a thumb in the hollow above her hip joint as her shirt tumbles to our feet. She stands before me in her bra and a pair of pink underwear, her eyes silently pleading: touch me, please touch me.
My thigh slips between her legs instinctively, a fire erupting in my belly as she lowers herself to grind against it. The warmth of her center stills me, my mind racing backwards of its own accord - kicking away the sheets and guiding her down on top of me, my leg bending upwards between hers. The instinctive grinding of her hips coating my skin with her wetness, eliciting a moan. The personal emergency. Being very late for work.
I choke on the thoughts, stepping away from her in an attempt to right myself. To ground myself in the present, in the reality. Arizona is here. She loves me. She's not dead, she's not leaving. We're okay. I'm okay.
Her eyes flutter open at the loss of friction, her bottom lip sucked into her mouth. "Take off your pants," she murmurs. She disappears into the shower stall, her bra and panties tossed out behind her. The water turns on, filling the bathroom with the sounds of an artificial downpour. A summer storm.
I push my yoga pants quickly down my legs, kicking my feet out of them and my underwear all at once so I can follow her. She presses herself against me as soon as I step in, pushing me back against the glass and burying her tongue in my mouth. She nips at my lips, jutting her chin forward to apply an extra pressure. The sensation makes me weak in the knees.
"I missed you so much," I whisper, my voice falling back into my throat as she slides one of her fingers through my folds.
"I missed you, too," she answers, "I'm so glad you're back."
"Me too," I murmur, my focus drifting as she rubs circles around my clitoris. "Me, too."
