Nothing is going right today. Literally nothing. Callie sleeps through her alarm, which means that Sofia sleeps through her alarm, which means that they're both half an hour late and very, very grumpy. And there's no time for grumpiness.
Callie wishes that Sofia had inherited Mark's morning person genes. Unfortunately, Mark died before he was able to pass them on— and the idea of Arizona passing on anything close to morning person genes makes Callie snort. Not to mention her own general dislike of any time before noon.
"Sof!" she yells from the bathroom. She's throwing her hair into a haphazard up-do that she already knows won't hold. "Come on, baby, we gotta go!"
Sofia yells back something unintelligible and irritable from her bedroom. It's not looking good.
Callie hears the doorbell ring, breathing a sigh of relief. She rushes to the door, dangling one earring from her pinky while she tries to finneagle the other into her piercing, simultaneously unlocking and opening it.
"Arizona," Callie says, a real smile growing on her face. She balances against the doorframe as she threads the other earring through. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," she pulls Arizona arms first into the apartment. "I can't tell you how much this is gonna help."
Arizona steps away from Callie and rubs her hands against her thighs nervously. "Don't worry about it. I will be using this against you the next time you decide to sue me, though."
She laughs, a birdlike, thin tittering. Callie doesn't. The shape of Arizona's laugh freezes on her lips, her eyes darting around the living room desperately for Sofia.
They stare at each other for a minute, each quietly evaluating whether or not a fight is worth it. Callie clears her throat.
"You should go." Callie says because they promised to make this work.
Arizona nods. She's still holding true to that same smile, but it isn't convincing. Her eyes always give her away. "I should go," Arizona echoes. She raises her eyebrows expectantly. "Sofia?"
"Right." Callie turns to the back half of the apartment and yells, "Sofia!" at the top of her lungs. Sofia comes stumbling out of her bedroom, still pulling one shoe onto her foot.
"Hey little miss!" Arizona calls. "A birdie told me that you need a ride to school."
Their daughter looks between them suspiciously, because she's old enough to pick up on the fact that they kind of hate each other now. Or— not hate, exactly, not ever really hate, but— it's complicated. It's too complicated for it not to be painful and Sofia is too smart for it not to be noticed. She squints at her mothers, looking so much like Arizona. "Breakfast, mama. I can't go to school without breakfast."
Holding back a groan, Callie shoves two pieces of bread into the toaster and stands at the kitchen counter, tapping the toe of her shoe against the linoleum as if her impatience will make the bread into toast faster.
She feels Arizona coming up beside her before she actually sees her, and her stomach twists uncomfortably when Arizona's arm— warm, soft, smelling faintly of vanilla— brushes against hers. Arizona leans against the counter and Callie is just grateful to no longer be able to feel the heat of her. Even if she's still standing too close.
There's an apology in her expression when Callie looks up, but she opens her mouth and says: "She needs to eat breakfast, you should know that."
"Arizona, I swear to God," Callie whispers, dangerous and low-voiced. She peeks behind her to make sure that Sofia isn't listening. "You're making this really difficult."
"Damnit, Callie, do you think I don't— I can't seem to—" Arizona winces, tipping her voice into a whisper too. "Stop." she finishes lamely. It's not enough, not nearly enough, but Callie understands where she's coming from. She can't seem to stop, either. Doesn't make her any less pissed off.
"Yeah, well, figure it out because I'm not doing this with you anymore," Callie hisses and the toaster pings. She burns her fingers while grabbing the toast because of course she does, and Arizona looks guilty because clearly that's the only emotion she can actually express.
Callie doesn't say anything to her ex-wife as she butters the toast, or when she hands Sofia her breakfast on a paper towel, or when she ushers them out the door with a kiss to Sofia's forehead.
Arizona takes Sofia's hand. "Tell your mama thank you, Chicken," she says, and Sofia dutifully repeats thank you. Apparently Arizona is still using that God-awful nickname.
Callie will not roll her eyes at Arizona in front of their daughter. She will not. She will not.
But she does as soon as they leave.
Callie storms into the hospital in the worst mood. She can't believe she'd thought— for even a second— that Arizona would ever get over the custody battle. What, did she think one half decent conversation would fix everything? That a few years not having to speak to each other would make them better at communicating?
She misses when Arizona lived in Seattle and Callie only had to think about her when she was regretting her life choices. Which, to be fair, was often.
Gloria pulls the door open for her and they fall into step naturally. As they walk, Gloria holds out her own coffee for Callie to take, offering only a sidelong glance and a shrug in explanation. Callie grimaces but takes it.
"That bad, huh?" Gloria asks.
"You may have been right about the whole maybe it's a bad idea to ship your ex-wife across the country so you guys can co-parent in person thing. Arizona being here… it's weird, and it's bad, and I kind of want to knock her out, throw her in a white van, and drive her back to Seattle. Or off a cliff," Callie sniffs.
"Co-parenting is overrated. Ask my ex."
Callie hums, taking a sip of the coffee. It tastes terrible but she's not about to complain. "No U-Haul joke? Come on, I basically set that one up for you."
"Find someone else to make stereotypical jokes about your ex with, it's homophobic when I do it." Gloria scrunches up her nose dramatically, her path splitting from Callie's at the same spot it does every morning. It's routine at this point. Gloria heads for peds, an extra chocolate chip muffin wrapped in a napkin in her purse; Callie heads for ortho, running on stolen caffeine and sheer force of will.
"Yeah, well, you're the only person who still likes me in this city," Callie complains as she starts heading in the opposite direction from her friend.
"Awh, don't be so hard on yourself," Gloria says, walking backwards for a second. "Sofia likes you. Occasionally."
Callie chuckles as Gloria disappears down the hallway, turning the to-go cup in her hands. The edges of the heat protector are already torn ragged, and Callie can just imagine Gloria's flight-risk fingers pulling at the corners as she waited for Callie to show up in the lobby. It's their little ritual, meeting here in the morning. It's grounding.
She tells herself they both need it. Gloria might just need it a little more. Maybe.
Callie has a full day of surgeries, something rare and beautiful and she's sure as hell not going to let Arizona, of all people, ruin it for her. She's got her hands wrapped around her patient's hip fracture when Dr. Jones comes in, holding Callie's phone to her chest.
"Hey, Dr. Torres," her resident nervously extends the 'y' of the hey. It reminds Callie a little of George. "So, I know you told me to screen your calls today and, quote, deal with it myself, but your ex called."
Callie rolls her neck. Huffs. "What's up, Andrea?"
"She said that, uh, Sofia told her about Gia's birthday party? And that apparently it's tonight, and it's a sleepover? And she also said that she doesn't want to say yes without checking in with you, because it's your week, but her voice kind of indicated to me that you'd be a monster for saying no."
"Of course she did." Callie twists the hip replacement into place. "Alright, fine. Give her the go-ahead. Whatever."
Andrea winces. "Are you okay, Dr. Torres?"
"Me? Oh, yeah, I'm great," she says, screwing in the attachments that will hold the replacement to the rest of the bone. "I'm awesome."
"Good, because you've got Ava Gale's cap realignment next and I know how much you've been looking forward to it. Wouldn't want you to miss out on all the excitement," she reminds her.
Callie throws her a tight smile. "Thank you, Andrea."
Andy scurries out, still clutching Callie's phone like a lifeline. Callie hopes she's extra annoying to Arizona when she calls her back.
It's frustrating to be just outside of Arizona's good graces. They're barely civil— and when they do manage civil, it somehow feels worse than when they argue constantly— and the tension never stops. The fact that Callie was hoping that enough time had passed for them to actually be friends only makes it worse.
Except Callie and Arizona had never been friends. They don't know how to. They'd loved each other too much and for too long to ever be friends. It wasn't really friendship that Callie had wanted from Arizona, ever, not when they'd met, and not when Arizona decided to move to New York. The part of her that pretended to want friendship is still the same small voice that ruined her relationship with Penny.
I would've done hard with Arizona.
She had meant it.
Callie knew it, and Penny knew it, and Arizona could't ever. Because Callie and Arizona are barely pulling off terse conversations about childcare, and all of that frantic hope Callie still cannot acknowledge, even to herself, is frantically shoving rocks in her pockets and shoving her at a river.
She has to convince herself into hopelessness. Arizona has this way of getting under Callie's skin, still, that no one else can. It's easy to get annoyed with her, to snap and forget how excited Callie was about the chance to be close again. Arizona is salted earth. A burned bridge.
There's that hopelessness she was hoping for.
Callie drops by Ava's room about noon to check in before their surgery today, and finds Gloria alone, blind-eyed, staring into space. The bed is empty and it has been for a while. Somebody's fixed it, smoothed out the lines of the scratchy hospital blankets in the time that Ava has no longer been in it. There's an uneaten chocolate chip muffin on the bedside table, half squished from the chaos of paperwork and patient charts Gloria keeps in her purse.
It's clear that she's been there for hours.
"Hey, hey, what happened?" Callie's heart pounds as she kneels next to the other woman and takes her hand. Her friend just shakes her head. "Tell me. Please."
"She had a complication," Gloria waves her other hand in the air weakly, gesturing. "I don't know, it never ends. She's in surgery now, but they say she should be fine. She'll be fine."
Callie sighs in relief. She rises to her feet before circling back to her usual chair in the corner of the room, parallel from where Gloria always sits. "Autoimmune disorders in kids can be tricky, you know that as well as I do. As long as her peds specialist says she'll be fine… we'll have to put off her slipped cap surgery but…" Callie trails off.
"It'll be months before she's strong enough for another surgery and you know it," Gloria snaps. Callie sucks in a breath. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just— I feel so—" she chokes down a sob. "I'm useless to her. I'm a doctor, a surgeon. I'm one of the best surgeons in this hospital!" she claws at her legs through her jeans in a violent motion that sets Callie's teeth on edge but does no real damage.
"I'm her mother. I should do something," Gloria's voice seems to crack into two jagged-edged pieces here. "But there's nothing wrong with her heart."
"They wouldn't let you operate on her if there was," Callie gently reminds her.
Gloria's body folds in on itself, her shoulders crumpling. She presses one shaking hand to her forehead. "What am I supposed to do? Can't you just tell me what to do?"
Callie doesn't know what to do. This is the type of fear that eclipses everything else, desperate and irrational.
"Sofia nearly died," Callie blurts out. Glances at Gloria for permission to keep going. Her friend lifts her chin slightly and says nothing, waiting. "I was pregnant, and I wasn't wearing a seatbelt, and we got into a crash. They had to deliver her sixteen weeks early. And she was so small— so small— it was like at any moment she could disappear and take me with her. I finally understood what people meant when they said their heart lived outside their body." Callie closes her eyes to shut out the pounding fluorescence. "And my heart was dying."
Gloria leans her head back, staring straight up at those same fluorescent lights. She's such an irreverent thing. "Yeah. Yeah."
"I'm not, I don't want you to think I'm saying this to— I wanted you to know that I know what it feels like. I want you to know you're not alone in this, especially this."
Callie holds her hand out from the chair opposite Gloria's. It's her chair now. Her place at her friend's side. Not incidental, not just the empty chair that Gloria happens to never sit in. Callie's. Gloria takes her hand, and their locked fingers swing in the gap between them.
"You're a good friend, Calliope Torres," Gloria says.
She tightens her grip. "Tell me something I don't know."
They sit together for nearly an hour before Ava gets wheeled back in by a bored-looking nurse, a pale tint layered over her brown skin. She's awake but her eyes are barely open— she's fighting the anesthetic with everything she has.
Ava looks for Gloria first, because she's her mother, because she's the person who makes Ava feel safest in the world. But she doesn't quite relax when she sees her. Her heavy eyelids stay open, and Callie pushes out of her chair to stand in Ava's line of sight.
"I'm here, too," Callie says. Gives an awkward, uncertain wave.
Ava smiles without her teeth. "Good," her eyes flutter closed. "Wanted to see you guys before… fell asleep again. Good."
The apartment always feels empty when Sofia is gone. A bit less like a home and a bit more like a mausoleum. Something about how the air sits still doesn't feel right, feels oppressive and heady. Callie kind of hates it that Sofia is getting to the age where she spends more and more time at birthday parties and sleepovers, and then she feels guilty. Sofia is healthy. That's everything, that's the only thing.
She just never thought she'd live alone again, is the other thing.
Actually, the first time she thought she'd never be alone again was George. That's the whole point of marriage. You pick a person that's good and kind, that you love enough, maybe even that you love a little too much, and you start laying down foundations. Making a choice and never questioning again if it was the right choice— that's marriage. Or that was marriage to George.
He always made her feel better, though, no matter what. He'd sit next to her and suddenly, for the first time in her life, a person wanted to sit next to her.
Once, right after George left her— and it does still sting a bit that George left her— Callie flew down to Miami for a weekend to visit her parents. She was looking for her father's shoulder to cry on, time to grieve, love and support. Instead, she got her mother, warmer than Callie had ever known her before.
Callie and Lucia stood in the kitchen, swaying, wine-drunk. Hardly visible in the low-light. It had been a celebration of a weekend. Her mother said that now Callie understood something that Aria didn't get yet— that sometimes men just leave. It made Callie glow a little to understand something about their mother that Aria couldn't. It felt special and precious to be a divorcee.
Her mother stumbled as she tried to top off their glasses, and for a second Callie was hit with the image of broken glass shooting across the floor between them. Like stars. "And, God, the loneliness. Don't even get me started on that part," Lucia groaned. "Divorce is Hell." She successfully refilled their drinks without shattering anything and Callie softened the hand she held around the stem of her glass.
"I don't think I get lonely," Callie frowned, thinking very seriously.
Lucia laughed and tipped her wine glass in Callie's direction haphazardly, dripping it along the stone floor. "Calliope, you were always lonely. You're so painfully misunderstood," her mother took a haughty, mocking tone. She pulled another long swig of wine. "Think about it."
Callie stopped to consider it, really consider it, for the first time. What the experience of loneliness would be, how it would sit in her body. The emptiness, the restlessness. The ache.
"Oh." she said.
Lucia slammed her glass down on the kitchen counter for the maids to find in the morning. "I think I'm done for the night," she patted Callie on the shoulder clumsily, brushing past her. "Don't stay up too late, sweetheart."
Callie didn't answer. There wasn't really anything to say.
After that, she was dragged, kicking and screaming, into self-awareness. She couldn't go back, she knew now. After that, it never ended.
And there was Mark, and then Erica, and then Mark-and-Erica, and anything to keep her hands busy in her free time. Even after her divorce from Arizona, she managed to find herself in that weird, platonic triad domestic hell situation with Meredith and Derek. She hates a silent house and a cold bed. She hates going back to that feeling. She hates that she has a name for it now.
Yet another reason to never speak to her mother again.
Callie sighs, reaching for her computer before she can even fully process what she's about to do.
It's unhealthy and it only makes her feel worse in the end, but damnit she has an itch that only one thing can scratch.
Before she knows it the humane society's homepage is welcoming her back in and she's seriously considering the adoption fees of a four year old shiba inu. Oh, but look at that pitbull… look at his little smile…
Technically her building allows for up to two pets…
Callie copies the link for the pitbull, switching over to her messages. She opens up her texts with Arizona, shooting off the link along with a series of sad-eyed emojis and the words How pissed would you be if I adopted him for Sofia.
Arizona responds less than a minute later with a photo of her most judgmental Arizona face and a text that reads: Right. So you're looking at rescue dogs at 10pm for Sofia's sake?
Callie types and deletes a response no less than ten times— pathetic— before Arizona gets tired of pretending to not see the bubble pop up and disappear and Callie receives a second text saying That's what I thought.
Callie just sends back the thumbs down emoji and opens up the selfie. It's a live photo because Arizona doesn't know how to turn off live photos, because of course she doesn't know how to turn off live photos. Callie feels a strange sense of guilt as she holds her thumb down on the photo to activate it, like she's prying into Arizona's personal life by doing this. She does it anyway.
Photo-Arizona flips her hair over her shoulder before leaning into the camera and Callie's throat gets tight because that movement is Arizona. So completely her. Callie could recognize her by her hands alone. She lifts her thumb before pressing it down again, resetting the cycle. Again. Again.
Maybe Callie needs to be alone for a while.
Notes: Reviews are so important to me as a writer :) come talk to me pearlcages on Tumblr!