Chapter 2 - Malawi
It had now been three years since Arizona had made the most difficult decision of her life: follow her dream by going to work in Malawi. To do this, she had to end her relationship with Callie. She had several times hesitated to come back to Seattle to try to win her back. But even though her heart wanted to be with her again, her mind was taking control of her. So, she decided to stay in this country that was not hers.
Nevertheless, after three years in Africa, her contract had come to an end. She was about to move back to Seattle and get her job back.
Of course, she had received many offers from prestigious and renowned hospitals, but she had turned them all down. She had instead called Dr. Hunt, the new chief of surgery, who had immediately agreed to give her job back. Indeed, the service that Arizona had previously headed had suffered from her departure.
The closer the day of her departure came, the more she felt a strange feeling, a kind of mixture between an intense sadness to leave this place where she had lived for three years and an immense joy to return to her country and her life in Seattle.
On the eve of her departure, she invited at her place different people she had met during the last three years. She had truly met some extraordinary people, generous souls, and she knew that she would miss them deeply. The dinner was joyful and at the end of the meal, her friends hugged her to wish her good luck before they all went home. They had obviously offered to accompany her to the airport the next morning, but she had immediately refused their offer. She knew that if she saw them at the airport, she would cry. But she wanted her trip to Malawi to end in a happy and enthusiastic mood.
Once all her friends had left, she sat down on the balcony of her apartment to have one last look at the lights of this land. She was very quickly joined by Jen, her housemate who was also working as a nurse in the same hospital as her. Jen sat down next to her, a glass of beer in her hand.
"It's going to feel weird living and working here without you!" Jen said, her voice obviously full of emotion. "Since we have been living together, you've become almost like my sister. You actually know me better than my own sister."
"Don't worry," Arizona replied to comfort her, "you'll probably find someone else to replace me both at the hospital and in this apartment! The hospital has probably already found another great surgeon to fill my shoes."
"Whoever this new surgeon is, he or she will never be as good a surgeon, as good a boss or as good a roommate as you, Arizona."
"You could go back to the States too! That way, we could still be roommates and we could still operate next to each other."
"The idea is indeed quite tempting but my time here in Malawi is not over yet."
"Anyway, I know I'll really miss this place as well as the people I've met here so I'll probably come back to see you."
"Perhaps I will decide to move back to the States because this place is not the same without you! I mean, I have never lived here without you since you are the one who recruited me here. It's because of you that I discovered this place."
"I clearly remember the day we first met! I had just started my work here and we did a job interview through Skype!"
"I was so stressed that day."
"As stressed as you were, you were pretty impressive that day. You had the best references and were the most motivated to get the job."
"I was mostly motivated by the idea of being able to work by your side."
"It was a pleasure to work with you. I don't think I would have been able to set up as many things if you hadn't joined me here and I wouldn't have enjoyed my life here as much either if I hadn't been lucky enough to have you as a roommate."
"By the way," Jen announced, pulling a paper out of her pocket, "the kids at the clinic made you a drawing as a goodbye to you."
"Will you thank them for me?" She asked Jen.
"Of course!" Jen agreed, holding her friends in her arms. "I guess you don't want me to go with you to the airport either, right?"
"No, that would make me too sad!"
"In that case, goodbye!" She concluded before wishing her a good night.
Once she was lying in bed, Arizona began to review everything that she had experienced during those three years, which were full of emotions.
The first few months had been hard to live. She had only one thing in mind: going back to Seattle to be with the woman she was in love with. She felt like she had an open wound in her heart that would not stop bleeding; the pain was just unbearable.
Over time, the wound in his heart had finally healed, not completely but enough to allow her to stop thinking about Callie at certain points in the day. Nevertheless, she could no longer look at a picture of the woman she loved without crying. It was too painful to picture what her life would have been like if she had stayed in Seattle. She didn't want to hear from her either, because if she knew about anything, her only desire would have been to live those things by her side.
She had also disconnected from her former colleagues. Thus, she had no idea what the atmosphere was going to be like in the hospital where she would be back in a few days.
The morning of her departure, she got up at dawn, checked one last time that she had not forgotten anything in her apartment and then took a cab to the airport. Even though she was sad to leave this job and to end the extraordinary adventure that these three years had been, she did not want to miss her plane home.
After three hours of waiting, she boarded a small plane. She sat by the window and watched Malawi drift away as the plane took off.
She had always loved flying, so she ordered a glass of wine and spent the flight looking at the pictures she had taken in Malawi. It had been a great time in her life and the experience had allowed her to grow impressively in her career. Nevertheless, she was now ready to open a new chapter in her life and this chapter would take place in Seattle.