I pushed through the obnoxious writer's block and was able to get this chapter out. Still struggling with what comes next though :-/ I know what I want to happen. I just don't know how to do it. It's frustrating. Ugh.
Anyways, enough of me whining. Thanks for your reviews on the last chapter.
Enjoy.
I don't own Grey's or any books/movies/cultural references/drugs/surgical techniques/etc. that are mentioned in this chapter.
After a pleasant lunch at a downtown café, Arizona and Callie returned to the hospital to prepare for their surgeries. Before parting and going to their respective floors, the couple dropped Sofia back at daycare and Callie got to watch with a grin as Arizona kissed and tickled her daughter, causing the infant to burst out in squeals of laughter. With that happy noise still in their ears, they shared a wordless kiss and a flirty grin before Arizona stepped out of the elevator on her floor, leaving Callie in the elevator car to ride up the remaining three floors to ortho.
With a couple hours remaining until the surgery she was supervising, Arizona rounded on her patients that she'd missed during her four day sick leave. Making a lap around the peds ward, she finished in her favorite patient's room. It had been a week since Abbie's surgery and the little girl looked better than Arizona could have ever imagined. The blonde knew that she hadn't looked this good a week after her amputation. Granted, she'd had a major infection, had barely survived the surgery, and ended up committed to psych…so maybe Arizona shouldn't compare Abbie's recovery to her own. "Hey kiddo." Arizona leaned on the doorframe, a big smile plastered on her face.
Her head snapped up from the book she was reading. "Arizona, you're back!"
The blonde chuckled and walked further into the room, nodding a greeting to Abbie's parents. "I'm back."
"Do you feel better?" She dog eared the page she had been reading and set the book on the bedside table.
"Much." Her eyes traveled to the book that Abbie had placed beside her, her eyebrows shooting up. "The Count of Monte Cristo. Wow, I don't think I read that until I was in 11th grade. You must be really smart!" Her hand went to the yellow lever on the back of the bed. "Let me check your incisions."
The brunette giggled as Arizona laid down the head of her bed. "I like to read…I have a lot of time to read now." She tilted her chin down to her chest and tried to watch what her doctor was doing. "Did you read a lot when you were recovering?"
The stitches in the girl's face had come out the day before and her abdomen was healing well. "No…" Arizona pulled back the covers and checked the sutures that ran along the bottom of Abbie's leg before tucking the girl back in and raising her back to a seated position. "I was too sick to do much of anything for a long time. I spent about two months in the hospital."
Abbie's eyebrows shot up. "Am I going to have to spend two months here?"
Arizona raised her eyebrows too to mimic her patient. "Well are you sick?" She asked playfully, placing her hands on her hips.
"No." The girl said with a little laugh.
The blonde scrunched up her nose and gave a little laugh too. "I didn't think so. No. You'll spend maybe another week here. And that's only because of the surgery we did on your belly. Everything looks great Abbie." She looked up towards the girl's parents who were watching the interaction. "She's going to be walking in no time. Kids…" She looked back at Abbie and smiled again, "Sorry, young adults," she corrected herself, "learn how to use a prosthetic limb much quicker than adults do. They're more agile, better balance, and all that. They can usually relearn almost everything in half the time it takes someone my age."
"How long did it take you?" Abbie asked curiously.
"About five months just to walk unaided." Arizona nodded her head at the shocked look on the girl's face. "But remember, I said I was really sick."
"Why were you so sick?" The patient quickly countered.
Arizona's brow furrowed at the question and her jaw tensed. They were coming a little too close to that 'jar of worms' that the blonde had shoved in the back of her mental closet.
"Abbie, sweetheart…" Her father started gently. "I think that's something private for Dr. Robbins."
"But I was just curious." She said innocently.
Arizona sighed softly, she could recognize genuine child curiosity when she heard it and this was it. There was no malice or judgment hidden behind Abbie's question, just the desire to know how a broken leg can make someone so sick. "It's okay." She said softly. "Remember how I told you I was in a plane crash?" She saw the girl's head bob up and down. "No one found me for four days and I had an open femur fracture. Sitting outside those four days, in the dirt and the rain…I got a blood infection."
"Oh." Came Abbie's quiet reply.
Arizona could feel the girl's parents looking at her in horror. She cleared her throat and scrunched up her face. "But let's not talk about that." She plastered a smile on her face. "Why don't you focus on you. And focus on getting better." She tapped the girl's nose. "I'm going to have Dr. Moore come talk to you okay? He's the prosthetist. And we will work on getting you up and walking." She picked up the paperback off of the nightstand and held it out to her young patient. "You enjoy that book Miss Abbie. I have to go start getting ready for surgery but I'll see you again soon okay?"
Arizona was met with that brilliant grin again from her young patient. "Okay!" Abbie opened her book up before looking back up at the blonde. "Thank you Arizona. I hope your surgery goes well."
With a genuine smile Arizona nodded her head as she backed out of the room. "Thanks." She gave a little wave and with that she was back in the hall, walking towards her office. The grin was wiped off her face when a twinge of pain suddenly shot from her thigh up to her hip. "Ow." She whispered as her steps faltered. She grabbed and squeezed at the back of her thigh just above the socket before taking another step, deciding to bypass her office and head for the elevator. Punching in the floor for ortho she leaned back against the wall as she continued to squeeze at her aching leg.
By the time the doors slid open, the pain had mostly abated and her breathing had normalized. Wiping the sweat off her forehead, she stepped out of the car and headed down the hall, seeking out her girlfriend. Able to forget her pain at the sight of Calliope Torres, another grin spread on her face as she saw the brunette at the end of the hall, discussing a chart with one of the interns. She waited until the chart was closed and handed back to the junior doctor before she slid up beside Callie. Placing a hand on the small of the taller woman's back, Arizona felt Callie automatically lean into her. "Hi pretty lady."
Brown eyes flashed to blue and a smile spread on Callie's face as she turned and grasped Arizona's hand in her own. She gently pulled the blonde back down the hall towards her office, shutting the door once they were both inside. The brunette grinned when she saw Arizona looking expectantly up at her. "I had a great time at lunch today Arizona." She brought her hand up and played with one of the loose blonde curls that had spilled out of Arizona ponytail.
"Me too." Arizona grinned as she wrapped her arms around the brunette, holding her loosely at the waist.
Callie's smile took on a serious edge as she dropped her hand from Arizona's hair to her upper arm. "Are we going to talk about the lawsuit?" Arizona had mentioned it in the attendings' lounge and again briefly at the café but when Callie had asked a follow up question the topic was quickly changed. She was concerned about how this would affect her girlfriend.
"Mmm…nope." Arizona pressed her lips to Callie's, pulling the brunette up against her. Once they parted, Arizona looked back up at the ortho surgeon. "Not today." A mild twinge of pain shot into her leg and she shook her head to dispel it, continuing on, "Today Mark did something nice for us. I got to see Sofia, who I found out you named after me. I got to go on a date with you. Karev is doing his first solo surgery. I get to spend the night in your apartment…so nope. Today is a good day." She moved her hands from Callie's waist to grab the lapels of her lab coat before pulling her down for another kiss.
Breathless when they parted, Callie looked down at the petite blonde, grinning at pink lips that were swollen from Callie's teeth. "Today is a very good day." She reached up to tuck that errant curl of blonde hair behind Arizona's ear. "I love you."
"I love you too."
Arizona shifted her weight as she watched Karev make the opening incision on his first solo patient. Once he had cut through the flesh shell, she found her eyes wandering up to the gallery where she saw Mark Sloan staring down into the OR.
Catching his eye, she looked at Lexie who was cauterizing the superficial bleeders as Alex cut, before looking back up at the plastic surgeon. She sighed when she saw him shake his head and gave him a look that she hoped could express sympathy even through a surgical mask before turning back to observe her resident's surgery.
After an hour of standing and observing Alex and Lexie work, Arizona felt another twinge of pain shoot through her thigh. She clamped down on her tongue to keep from letting out a whimper as her hand flew to the back of her thigh and squeezed at the burning muscle. Why was this happening! She shut her eyes, trying to breathe through the unexpected pain, only opening them when it had dissipated. Her pain normally had an emotional trigger. But today was a good day…except for the stress from the impending talk with her parents…
She focused back on the surgery once the pain was gone, trying to dispel it from her mind. Shifting her weight between her prosthetic and her foot she clenched and unclenched her muscles to try and prevent another pain surge. Her technique was successful for another half an hour until pain shot into a foot that was no longer there. "Aah!" She couldn't help the pained gasp that escaped her lips as she grabbed onto the wall to keep her legs from bucking under her. It felt like someone had plunged a knife into the top of her foot.
Her behavior didn't go unnoticed by the two operating surgeons or by the rest of the surgical staff as the operation paused and every set of eyes turned to look at her. "Hey Robbins, are you okay?" That was Karev, who was looking worriedly at his boss over his surgical mask, his tools frozen in midair.
"Yep. Yeah…" Came the blonde's pained reply, her eyes squeezed shut as she felt the knife rip through her ankle and into her calf. Taking all the weight off her prosthetic she collapsed into the wall, holding herself up with her good leg.
"Somebody fricken' do something." Alex commanded as he looked at the rest of the surgical staff. "Get her a chair."
Arizona shook her head before yelping as the pain surged again and the knife plunged into the back of her knee, slicing all the way through and plowing into the back of her phantom knee cap. As she started to hyperventilate she was vaguely aware of Lexie stripping off her gloves and rushing to her side, pulling a chair over as the OR door flew open and Mark ran in. The blonde tried to push herself back off the wall so that she could stand and pivot into the chair when the knife suddenly did a 360 and took her phantom leg off at the knee. Even though it was a leg that wasn't there, even though it was a leg that was replaced by metal, Arizona felt everything from the knee down of her amputated leg fall away and go completely numb. Despite the fact that she still had the support of her artificial limb, her knees, real and fake, buckled as the intense pain caused her vision to swim.
Bracing for impact she had a brief moment of surprise when strong arms surrounded her, preventing her from hitting the floor, before her eyes rolled back in her head and everything went black.
A lot of you asked for a return of the phantom pain and a stressor such as the lawsuit which she really doesn't want to deal with is a perfect catalyst for that. This is going to force her and Callie to rip the bandage off as it were and really get to some of the nitty gritty that is preventing them from achieving complete intimacy.
Please please please let me know what you think. It makes my day :-)
-MaybeIShouldGetACat
