A/N: Firstly! Happy new year to y' fanfiction and reading fanfiction made the last six months go by so fast! I'm so grateful to all for loving this story and supporting me and my journey in this new fandom!
I'm so happy that I discovered Calzona in 2020 and I wish I could forget them just so that I can see their relationship evolving all over again. But oh well! Station 19 was awesome too. Like I never liked Carina when she was with Arizona, but damn Carina and Maya! Just wow! Not Calzona wow, but still!
Alright, I'll wrap up my rant! Enjoy! And once again, happy new year!
Chapter 33: Arizona
Present Day
I felt happy.
If I thought that I was happy before, I was clearly wrong. This is what happiness felt like and nothing compared to it or even held a candle to it. Sure, if I would have described to my younger self that this was my definition of joy, I would have thought that I've lost some nuts and bolts upstairs or well indulged in some lesbian gratitude cookies.
This is what 'happy' was, watching a movie in the prosthetics lab with my back pressed against Callie's front with her arm wrapped around me. We had decided that we would watch a movie to kill some time and so far it was going good.
In the past hour or so, Callie had checked her phone maybe four times and each time she would lock it and put it beside her before returning back to our movie, as she snuggled into me.
I can't believe Callie didn't change her password. I didn't even think to ask her if I could unlock her phone. It didn't matter before, but it did now. It was our wedding date. Callie had this idea to change our passwords. I was never one of the sentimental types, but she was clearly excited about it. Now with newer phones and finger scanners and FaceIds, I never had to put in my password to unlock my phone, but yeah, just like Callie's my password is our wedding date as well.
Never changed it and I probably never will.
Honestly, my arm was getting a little tired of holding my phone up, but if it meant that Callie would occasionally kiss my head as her fingers lightly traced my shoulder or when she ran them through the ends of my hair, it was a fair deal.
Just then her phone starts ringing, so I shift forward so she could unwrap her hand from around me.
"It's my dad!" Callie says before she gets off the bed and answers the phone.
She has a huge smile on her face as she talks to Carlos. I never knew that she too was facing some PTSD and it was far more severe than mine.
Sure, Callie likes to pretend that she's a badass chick with a black leather jacket that she usually dons, but inside, she's really… warm.
I was raised by a Marine and he had raised me to be a strong and confident woman who looked adversity in the eyes and said 'Not today! Not ever!' somewhere along the way I lost that part of me. I became a little vulnerable and a little scared.
I remember when Tim took off on his first tour, I was still teasing him about the short buzz cut he had gotten. We were literally being so playful with each other that up until the last moment he just hugged me tightly before saying 'See you in a couple of months Arizona' before he left.
He kept his promise... but only for his first two tours.
I guess that's when I lost to adversity, when I had to deal with grief and exist in a world where my brother no longer did.
Being an army brat, I was used to change, I was used to moving around. I just didn't realize what would happen if I stayed. Callie gave me a reason to stay, but then she left too. She left, when she promised me that she wouldn't.
I looked up and saw that Callie had finished her call and was walking back towards me.
"So?"
"He just landed and they are taxing on the runway, his flight went great there was no turbulence, in fact they landed a couple of minutes early so that's great. Even though I don't really trust this airlines I-"
Callie was going on and on so I pulled her towards me and sealed her lips by my own. She immediately responded by grabbing my head as she climbed back on the examination table. I gently nibbled on her bottom lip hopping that she would part her lips so that I could put my tongue in her mouth. But before we could take it any further, I felt Callie pulling away.
"Wow, what was that for?" she asked breathlessly.
"You were happy and you were kind of rambling on so…"
"You decided to shut me up?"
"By doing what I do best"
"Dr. Arizona Robbins, trust me there are way more things that you do better than… just kissing" she said as she winked.
God, I was so turned on, but I didn't have my leg on. I was still not used to being intimate with anyone without my leg.
"Maybe on our date, you could keep talking and I could figure out different ways to… um shut you up" I replied as I smirked.
Callie chuckled as she took my hand in hers and kissed it. Suddenly, I saw frown lines appearing on her face.
"Did you have lunch?" Callie asked. Is she asking what I think she's asking? "No, that's not what I-god you and your dirty mind. Did you eat anything today?" she asked again.
"I don't think I had anything after breakfast" which was an obvious lie, I had an emergency surgery because of which I got called in early. That surgery lasted about five hours and I had my appointment soon after so nope, I didn't have breakfast either.
"So coffee? That's it?" she asked.
Oh yeah, that's the only thing I had and that too I couldn't really finish it.
"Yup, I was paged for an emergency surgery," I replied.
Callie had an annoyed expression on her face.
A couple of years ago, Callie would usually get me snacks or baked goods between surgeries on days when I didn't have time to sit down for a meal. Even then, I was so choosy and picky about everything she got me. I appreciated the gesture, I just wished that the gesture didn't have pumpkin in it.
"Arizona…"
"I know I know, but I didn't really have time"
"So? You knew I was in the building. You could have texted me and I would have gotten you something"
I could have done that and she was right, I knew she was working today. But I don't think we are there yet. Asking her to get me snacks felt too… intimate.
"I… I don't know, it felt a little… weird, if you know what I mean?"
Callie paused for a while, probably trying to comprehend what I just told her. Peds had always been hectic and children always got priority over every surgery. Callie had a pretty laidback schedule unless she was paged to the pit. No, she had a very scheduled schedule, she knew what surgeries she had to do even before her day began. When I transitioned to Fetal, my schedule just got worse but I was grateful that even through the separation, Callie still left me snacks to munch on in between surgeries. She'd put a protein bar in the pocket of my coat or leave a muffin in my locker, just so she didn't have to hand it to me personally, but yeah, I was grateful that she did that.
"From now on, whenever you have a busy day, you tell me and I'll make sure that you're well fed. Together or not, in the middle of the fight or even if I'm not at the hospital, you tell me okay?" she said as she cupped my face.
"Okay, just nothing with…"
"Pumpkin, sunflower seeds, plain bagels with plain cream cheese, no long johns just the regular donuts… hmmm is there anything I'm missing?" Callie paused for a while as she thought about all of my dietary restrictions, or well tantrums "Oh Papaya! Yes, I remember all of your weird food habits. Unless there are any other foods that you have added to your no-no list"
"Nope, you got it all" I said as I smiled. I wanted to add coffee without enough sugar to the list but I'm sure she knows that.
She has mocked me a million times about my sweet tooth and my inclination towards pound cakes and well everything with excessive amounts of sugar in it.
This felt nice. Sitting here and talking about us, well not exactly us but, you know the happy parts, the fun parts. It was light breezy compared to our usual heated and disruptive conversations.
"Okay then, it would take some time for my dad to get here. So, would you like to have lunch with Finn and I?" Callie asked as she got off the bed and grabbed her lab coat and put it back on.
I had changed earlier before my appointment into some comfy sweats. Damn, I must look so horrible right now. I had a pair of grey sweatshirt and sweatpants on, my hair was tightly pulled back into a ponytail and probably greasy from all the exercises Dr. Kim made me do when he was testing my leg.
"Sure, do we need to go somewhere to pick him up?" I asked.
"Nope, he's here at the day care center"
Wait what? Finn was here? At the hospital's daycare center? No no no no! Please let him be somewhere else but here! Please!
"The hospital's daycare center?" I asked before she could sense something wrong. Who am I kidding she could probably see that I was starting to freak out a bit.
"Yeah why?" she asked.
"Sofia's there too"
That's why!
The dinner wasn't exactly a success. Callie and I almost fought, Finn and Sofia never stopped fighting, but the only reason it didn't get out of hand was because I was there to calm Sofia down and Callie scolded Finn every time he mocked Sofia. It was a controlled environment, but the daycare center was not my house!
"What! Oh god!" Callie exclaimed as her hand flew to her mouth.
Clearly she had the same thought too. Finn or Sofia weren't violent or from the way I saw Finn interacting with Callie, I could tell that his first instinct wasn't to start throwing punches. He liked to run away, which I'm not sure if it's much better than fighting it out, but for Sofia's sake, yeah! It's best that he doesn't give away free punches to anyone or anything.
"Yeah! See, why I'm worried" I replied.
It's not like we are discouraging feelings, or at least I'm not. But we really want them to like each other or at least be comfortable spending time with each other because… because Callie and I clearly like each other again and there is no point in giving us a shot if our kids don't get along.
For me, Sofia comes first, no matter what. Sure, there are issues that Callie and I haven't talked about yet, or rather are too afraid to bring up because things are going so great between us. But no matter what, Sofia came first!
Even if we managed to put all of our history in the past without actually strangling each other to death. I wanted what was best for Sofia, even if it means that Callie would no longer be something more than my ex-spouse and a co-parent to me. I can learn to deal with that if that will make my child happy.
"Alright, you get your leg back on, in the meantime I'll pray that they don't burn down the hospital" Callie says.
So, I reach forward and grab my leg. Wait, is she actually praying. Nope, that was a joke. God sometimes her jokes don't really make a lot of sense to me and then she mocks me for being the unfunny one. Also, I don't think she understood what she said about a fire.
"I know its been awhile since you were at Grey-Sloan, but I really wouldn't be saying things like that here"
"A fire here? Oh right! Yes I remember that. It's just that so much more traumatic stuff has happened here that the fire just… slipped out of my mind" she asked.
"It slipped out of your mind?"
What does she mean by she didn't remember the fire? It was a huge deal an entire floor was burned off, a resident almost died and there was a criminal loose around the hospital.
"I meant… the shooting was well, it's stuck with me. Whenever I feel like something crazy is going to happen in the hospital, I just-it can never be as bad as that! I mean I looked at the man who had a gun in hand and handed him gauze to patch himself so that he could what? Continue his killing spree? That was so stupid!"
I… I never thought of it that way. For me the hospital felt safe, even after everything that went down here, it was my home. The people here were my family.
"You weren't being stupid, you were strong and your saved my life and that child's life. I was being stupid, I froze up and I could even move… I thought that any minute now… any minute and I'd feel the bullet-"
"I would have never let that happen, okay? I would body blocked it"
No! She's kidding. There's one thing saying that she would have taken a bullet for me, but if my memory serves right, we were fighting with each other all day, would she have still taken it for me?
"Calliope…"
"Hey, let's hope we never have to find out okay, besides if it was me or you that got shot that day. I would have gladly taken that bullet"
"What? Why?"
"Because you operated on that child without an OR and took her appendix out, you would have found a way to get the bullet out and keep me alive as well" oh wow, she trusted me with her life, I guess she still does "Besides, I know I can tolerate the pain, you would have just passed out from all of it"
I swatted Callie on her shoulder, no matter how much she was enjoying this hypothetical scenario, I am a badass too, I would have totally survived if the bullet didn't hit any of my vital organs.
"All right, could you turn around so I can get my leg back on and then lets see if the daycare center survived"
"Sure, I'll just be outside, waiting for you"
A/N: I guess the drama continues, trust me they will talk but I need to put in some fluff for my own good. Also, I'm going to have to change the rating for this story soon, so stay tuned. Well, I still haven't decided on it so… yeah let's just see what happens.
