Notes: I've been getting a couple of comments here and there, so I just want to clarify that this is still Calzona endgame. It's about the journey, and conflict is a natural part of that in this story!
As she's spat out of yet another useless, expensive cab onto the sidewalk outside Langone— because in a city with a walkability score of 98, Arizona still only has one leg— Arizona has a series of revelations about herself: first, foremost, she likes her life. She likes her job. She loves her country, and kids, and her daughter most of all.
And she fucking hates lawyers.
Lawyers remind her of lawsuits. Lawsuits remind her of plane crashes. Plane crashes— well, it speaks for itself. And the heavy metal thing she has strapped to her thigh where a leg used to be.
Staring up at the hospital, Arizona can't help but think that she's being punished for something. Probably Boswell.
She's frazzled when she enters the lobby, desperate to get this meeting with Langone's legal team out of the way as fast as possible. She's already running late. Part of that is definitely the fact that she does not want to be here.
There's a clear shot from where she's standing to the elevator, and Arizona thinks she can slip between two nurses clocking out from the night shift.
She misjudges, slamming bodily into someone coming the other direction. Arizona feels her knees buckle and she knows, immediately, that she's about to hit the ground.
Two hands grab her around each elbow, holding her steady as the person she ran into spins, yells, and then disappears down a hallway. Arizona instinctually grips her savior's shoulders to stay upright, pulled close and tight and looking into the dark eyes of— her ex-wife.
"Arizona, hey. Are you here to see Ava?" Callie asks. Her fingers are digging into Arizona's skin. Arizona thinks briefly of a farm animal being branded.
"Huh?" Arizona blinks up at her. Frowns. "Oh, uh. No."
She untangles herself from Callie, staring longingly at the elevator across the lobby. If she starts moving now she might be able to jump in on the next one. But she needs to get away from Callie first.
"Then why…?" Callie seems surprised at the way Arizona is looking past her, and then annoyed. One of her eyebrows lifts. Arizona doesn't notice, craning her neck to see past her ex-wife.
Arizona starts to hedge around Callie, tries to remove herself from the situation politely. "I'm sorry, I don't have time for this."
"Oh, okay," Callie cuts her off. Runs her tongue along the ridges of her teeth in an irritated motion that Arizona recognizes immediately. "Of course. You would."
Arizona's eyes bounce between Callie and the elevator. "I would what?"
"Bail, Arizona. You're bailing like you always do. I ask you for one thing and you can't even do that right," Callie scoffs. She's angry, but Arizona doesn't really know how they got to this point in the first place. A ping; the elevator arriving. Arizona's attention is split, and Callie is still talking, and she has no idea what to do. "I should've seen this coming."
"Okay, now I really don't have time for this." Arizona holds up a palm, skirts around Callie and heads towards her exit. Callie takes a sharp, audible breath.
"Sure, run away. It's what you're good at."
"Wow," Arizona spins around on her. Blood rises in her cheeks and she feels bright red. People are staring. "You know what? I don't have to put up with this. I hate to break it to you, but I'm doing you a favor, one that you practically begged me to do in the first place. Newsflash, Calliope—" Callie flinches at the subconscious Calliope "—but the world doesn't revolve around you. My life doesn't revolve around you." Arizona catches herself, pulls back. "I have a meeting."
She takes maybe two steps before rounding on Callie again. "And I do not bail."
Then she walks away.
The elevator came and went while Callie was busy making her life harder, so she has to wait for the next one for another three minutes. It's completely anticlimactic. By the time the gray metal doors slide open, the inside of her skull feels like holding a palm to the screen of an old t.v. set.
Somehow, Arizona finds her way to the conference room. Pushes her way inside by forcing the door open with her shoulder and the full weight of her body.
The Center's lawyer is already there, seated, and unhappy. Lawyers are almost always unhappy in Arizona's experience, but hers seems unusually pissed.
"Dr. Robbins! Thank you for joining us," the smarmy Langone lawyer-lady rises from her seat, reaching across the table to shake Arizona's hand. Her palms are cold. Arizona retracts her arm as quickly as she can while still being polite.
"Thank you for having me?" she says, glancing nervously at the Center's lawyer, Jodi. Jodi scowls.
"Please, doctor, take a seat," lawyer-lady indicates to an empty chair. "Now, about annual compensation."
Jodi takes a sharp breath, leans forward with her hands braced against the table. Arizona's eyes get wide. "My clients have been very clear with regards to price. You won't gouge us."
"Hm. We'll see about that." Langone's lawyer pushes her pen forward with the tip of her index finger. The movement itself is somehow condescending.
Arizona forces a smile. "I'm sorry, what seems to be the issue here?"
"The price of renting our ORs. We were thinking of something more in this range," Langone's lawyer slides a folded piece of paper across the table to Arizona, who opens it immediately. Her jaw drops. The proposed amount is so high it's laughable. This has got to be some kind of weird, un-funny New Yorker joke.
"That seems," Arizona folds the paper closed, "unreasonable."
"I'm not sure you understand the terms of this contract."
"Dr. Robbins, do not respond to that," her lawyer mutters without turning her head, speaking out of the corner of her mouth.
Arizona scoffs. "I'm not sure you understand maternal-fetal medicine."
"Goddamnit, Robbins."
"Touché."
"With all due respect, ma'am, this contract is fair," Arizona makes clean, even eye-contact with the woman across from her. She behaves like a woman who knows her way around a courtroom. She hates lawyers, she fucking hates lawyers, but she also knows lawyers. "We won't be changing our terms."
"I can't sign off on anything under our asking price." Langone's lawyer says.
Arizona, shocked, giggles. "Are you serious? Oh my God, you're actually serious."
"I'm acting under orders." She shrugs. Faux-apologetic. Arizona starts to get the uneasy feeling that this meeting is going exactly like the woman wants it to. "Look, Arizona— may I call you Arizona?" Arizona scrunches her nose in disgust and shakes her head. The lawyer ignores her. "Arizona, you have your line in the sand, we have ours. Maybe this partnership is just… incompatible."
With a shock of clarity, Arizona remembers her conversation with Langone's Chief of Surgery last month. His plans to launch a Maternal-Fetal Department of his own. His stupid, classless attempt to buy her off of Nicole.
"You're weeding out the competition," Arizona says slowly.
"We're prioritizing the best interests of our investors."
Arizona leans back in her chair, really considering Langone's lawyer for the first time in this conversation. Her eyeshadow has started to separate from the skin of her eyelid, the sleeves of her blazer slightly too long for her arms and rolled up to her wrists. She's overworked but resolute. They won't be getting anywhere today.
Arizona stands, smoothing her hands down the length of her work skirt. "This isn't over."
Langone's lawyer smirks. "I'm sure it isn't."
It's all a little too much, so she finds an on-call room to cry in. Sinks into the thin mattress and buries her face in her hands and prays for a minute, a minute, where nobody hates her.
She's made a mistake. She should've stayed in Seattle where everything was at least bearable. Things were okay in Seattle. She was comfortable, she had a life that was familiar and easy. She had Carina, who was fun. Good. Made her come really hard. She misses Carina. Fun, good Carina who didn't hurt to look at or jeopardize Arizona's career. Every time Arizona reaches for more she ends up with burned hands.
A cut of light bursts into the room as the door opens, the person who opened it back-lit in fluorescence. She's short, brown skinned with a riot of dark curls pulled back into a tight bun. She has the keenest eyes Arizona has ever seen.
"Sorry," she says, hovering in the doorway. "I didn't realize anyone was in here."
Arizona palms the tears from her eyes roughly, shaking her head. "No, please. I was just—" she cuts herself off. It's obvious what she had just been doing. "I needed a minute."
"Yeah. Me too," the woman says. She steps into the on-call room and closes the door behind her instead of leaving. "Are you okay?"
"It's fine. It's nothing, I'm fine, I'm okay." Arizona bites down on her bottom lip to keep it from wobbling. The woman just nods, sits on the other bed. She looks at Arizona like she's observing her, and Arizona gets the uncomfortable sense of being witnessed. Not seen but witnessed. Understood.
"Arizona, right?" she holds out her hand and Arizona shakes it, completely taken by surprise. "I'm Gloria, Ava's mother."
"I'm so sorry, I didn't realize—"
"How could you?" Gloria laughs a little, shrugging slightly to show she isn't bothered. "I only— I've seen photos of you. Around Callie's apartment."
This raises Arizona's eyebrows a little, makes her sit up straighter. She hadn't realized they were close. Or that Callie had photos of Arizona in her apartment. Two deeply alarming ideas hit her at once. "Oh, so, you and Callie… you're…"
"Friends." Again, the sensation of being a puzzle that is a little too easy. "She's probably my best friend, if I'm honest."
Arizona hums. "That's, that's good. It's good that she has friends."
Gloria gives her the smallest, most indulgent smile, leaning onto the palms of her hands. She rolls her head back, aiming her far-seeking eyes away from Arizona.
"You can talk about it, you know," Gloria speaks up to the cheap ceiling tiles. It makes Arizona less uneasy about being caught crying in an on-call room, and Arizona thinks Gloria, somehow, knows that. "If you want to. I won't say anything."
"For some reason, I actually believe you," Arizona says. She takes out her phone. "But, no, I'm, I'm okay."
She slides open her camera, uses the pad of her index finger to smudge away the mascara clumped in the faint lines of her crows feet. Then she narrows her eyes playfully at her reflection. Chasing away the bad emotions, because now there's someone here to see them.
"Sofia does that too, you know. The squinty thing," Gloria clarifies, pointing at her own eyes.
"Really?" Arizona gives her a bright smile. "Huh. That, uh, I suppose that kind of does make sense."
"You're her mom." Gloria says carefully.
"I am," Arizona nods. She's grateful that Gloria only seems to be watching her when Arizona isn't looking. "I'm her mom."
Gloria stands, groaning and creaking. Arizona understands the feeling. Gloria holds out her hand to Arizona without judgment, and Arizona takes it without thought. It doesn't feel the way it does when Callie offers to help her. It feels like camaraderie. Arizona is forced to consider the idea that Gloria has fit together all her loose puzzle pieces, and now knows how to approach her inoffensively. Which is usually, in and of itself, offensive.
It's not, though. Sometimes Arizona needs to be seen, despite how much she hates it. She needs a stranger's palm pressed against her own and the uncanny feeling of being noticed. Even as she does her best to hide the things she doesn't like about herself.
"Would you like to meet Ava?" Gloria asks after tugging Arizona to her feet.
"Sure," Arizona blinks, dazed. "Lead the way."
Ava looks up when they come in, holding a textbook in one hand and a highlighter in the other. She must be doing a distanced curriculum so she doesn't fall too far behind. Arizona shifts uncomfortably when Gloria slips past her, pressing a kiss into her daughter's forehead before settling into the chair closest to Ava's bed.
"Are you Dr. Robbins?" Ava asks. She rubs the back of her wrist against her forehead to smudge off Gloria's lipstick.
"Like Baskins," Arizona jokes, bouncing a little. Ava stares back blankly like she doesn't know if she's actually supposed to laugh. "Oh, come on. That joke kills with the Hell's Angels."
Ava perks up. She sits forward, leaning into her own lap, eyes bright with interest. "You can ride a motorcycle?"
She looks so much like Sofia when she smiles, like she's got mischief under her tongue. Stupidly, irrationally, it makes Arizona wish that Callie were here. She wants someone she wouldn't have to explain this to.
"Sure, let's go with that," Arizona says, stepping into the room. "It's not true, but let's go with it."
Arizona comes up to the bed, scanning what she can see of Ava's body quickly. She's still healing from her last emergency surgery. There are probably still stitches somewhere, although Arizona can't see them. "Ava, how would you feel about me giving you a quick examination? Hm?"
Ava nods slightly, handing her textbook off to her mother who sets it on the bedside table. Arizona reaches for Ava's right hand, holding her fingers to Ava's pulse to get an idea of her resting heart rate. Then she moves to listen to Ava's lungs. Ava just stares out the window.
"Can I see the incision site from your last surgery?" Arizona asks, and Ava nods again without taking her eyes off the clouds. Arizona very carefully lifts Ava's shirt above her lower abdomen, gently tapping the sutures with her fingers. Ava flinches and Arizona notes that the site is still tender weeks after surgery. It's red and irritated, but not infected. Still— it looks painful.
Gloria picks up a magazine from the side table, flipping through it until she lands on the right page. Arizona glances up from what she's doing, catching a glimpse of a familiar face.
"Oh, Cristina's article. She's totally brilliant, right?" Arizona gives Gloria a brief smile before focusing back on her patient.
Gloria's head snaps up. "Cristina? You know Cristina Yang?"
"Uh, yeah," Arizona laughs awkwardly. The question Do you know Cristina Yang? feels a bit ridiculous. Cristina Yang has picked flies out of Arizona's bone marrow. "She's Sofia's Godmother and one of Callie's best friends. Or, she was. I don't know anymore."
"Callie knows Cristina Yang?" Gloria screeches. "Oh, she is dead. She's so dead."
Arizona checks in on Ava quietly before moving on to examining her hip joint. Ava seems relieved that Arizona has moved on from her stomach. "Honestly, I can't believe she didn't mention it," Arizona hums, noticing some slight muscle atrophy in Ava's leg.
"What did I not mention?"
It takes everything in her for Arizona to not jump at the sound of Callie's voice.
Callie is leaned up against the doorframe, one leg crossed in front of the other and both arms crossed in front of her chest. Arizona's cheeks burn. She regrets wishing, even for a second, even to herself, that Callie would show up. Think of the Devil…
"Yang." Arizona grimaces apologetically, eyes darting to Gloria.
Gloria rolls up the magazine like a flyswatter and gestures angrily with it. "I can't believe you know Cristina Yang."
"Ooh, that. Yeah." Callie has the decency to look sheepish for once in her life, like maybe she's capable of considering that she's done something wrong. Or maybe Arizona's reading into it. "After you spent two hours talking about how she's, uh, changing the face of medicine, mentioning it seemed… braggey."
"You are unbelievable," Gloria shakes her head in disbelief.
"I couldn't agree more," Arizona mutters under her breath, clicking her pen as she picks up Ava's most recent chart. She adds the scar sensitivity and muscle atrophy to the notes. The tips of Callie's ears go pink.
Callie coughs. "Dr. Robbins, could I speak with you in my office?"
"Mmm, sure, Dr. Torres. That shouldn't be a problem," Arizona cocks her head. She keeps her expression compliant and open. Professional. Maybe a little passive aggressive, but Callie started all this in the first place. So.
Callie and Arizona instinctually take the same positions as the last time they were here: Callie behind her desk, her fingers locked and her elbows digging into the mahogany; Arizona with her best, most confident posture sitting in a guest chair so uncomfortable that it's obvious Callie doesn't get a lot of visitors.
"Thank you for coming out here. Today." Callie says. She looks genuinely remorseful, like at some point in the last few hours she realized that she'd overreacted. It's as close to an apology as Arizona is going to get. It's also a bit like pulling teeth.
"I made a promise," Arizona responds. She lifts her eyebrows and forces a bright smile because she knows it'll annoy the living hell out of her ex. "I keep my promises."
"About that, Arizona—" Callie starts, but Arizona waves her off.
"Look," she sighs. "I know you don't think very much of me. Sometimes, honestly, it really feels like you hate me. But the version of me you've got constructed in your head, that isn't me. Not actually. And I'd appreciate it if you at least tried to get that."
It feels like begging to be understood. It feels humiliating to ask Callie to see her. After all of these years, after everything they've done, who is she to ask to be seen? How many times does Callie need to prove that Arizona means nothing to her before Arizona finally gets the hint?
"I don't hate you," Callie admits.
"You don't?" Arizona asks genuinely. She really doesn't know the answer.
"No. No, I never did," Callie smiles, self-deprecating, like not hating Arizona is somehow a failure. Which, ouch, but okay. It's more than Arizona ever expected from her. "I've tried to hate you, but I never… it never stuck. You know."
"Yeah. I, I do know. I don't hate you either, for the record. Just…" she flounders. It's a little pathetic. "Putting it out there."
"Oh. Well, good, I guess. Right?" Callie visibly cringes at herself.
Neither of them are very good at this. It's almost sweet, the way I don't hate you is as close to a grand declaration as they can get. How momentous— Arizona and Callie do not hate each other. And they admitted it. Arizona feels lightheaded.
"Right."
Callie's mouth snaps shut and she looks thoughtful. Then she opens her desk drawer, takes out two pieces of paper and looks at them for a long second. She's holding them so that Arizona can't see what they are, and Arizona has to fight the impulse to crane her neck.
"I think you should have these," Callie says. She passes one of them to Arizona with a small smile, her shoulders drawn up against her neck. Uncomfortable and tentative in her own kindness. Arizona takes it with shaky hands. "Sofia made the first one when she was with me last year."
Arizona looks down at the drawing. It's a ratty little thing with a crease down the middle and the words My Family written across the top. Two dark haired stick figures are holding hands in the middle and there's a trail of lopsided red hearts leading from them to a blonde stick figure in the top right corner. Arizona runs her finger along the edge.
Callie slides the other drawing across the desk. "And this one… she did this one yesterday."
It's of all three of them holding hands with one big heart circling the whole thing. Sofia had taken the time to draw smiles on all of their faces where the other one had just been blank. Arizona's eyes sting.
"We're doing it," Arizona sounds awe-struck at the idea. "I didn't really think we would pull it off."
Callie's mouth pulls into that fluttering, insecure thing she does when she feels like she's done something wrong. Trembling like a butterfly. Struggling, pinned wings.
Insecurity never really did it for Arizona, honestly. Never. But Callie has always done it so sweetly; in moments like these, everything about her is charming.
"Huh," Callie chuckles. She jokes, "When did I become the optimist here?"
Folding the drawings into her purse, Arizona stands to leave. She brushes her hair out of her eyes before looking to Callie. "I don't know."
The corners of Callie's mouth twitch again, tugged down by some emotion Arizona no longer knows her well enough to understand. She doesn't offer to walk Arizona out.
Arizona knocks on the door of Nicole's office that evening exhausted. She clings to the handle as she steps inside, humiliated by how her wrist shakes from the weight of her body.
Drew and Nicole are sitting across from each other at Nicole's desk, shuffling bits of paperwork back and forth in their usual little rhythm. Drew will read the documents out loud, make notes where Nicole tells him to, and then hand them back to her for filing. It's peaceful to watch. The ease of muscle memory hits at something tender in Arizona.
"I think I lost the Langone contract," Arizona says, and the room stops breathing. "Also I saw Callie."
Nicole clears her throat. Then she gathers all the stray papers into a pile with a few broad, searching motions and taps them into a clean stack. "Go ahead and head home for the night, Andrew. We'll finish this tomorrow."
He nods, already slipping out of his chair and past Arizona without a word. Arizona steps back to give him more room. He smiles at her, lop-sided, awkward and encouraging all at once. It's supposed to make her feel better. She grimaces back.
"Sit down, Robbins," Nicole orders. Arizona decides to lay flat on her back on the couch instead of replacing Drew at the desk, staring straight up at the ceiling. "Alright, tell me about Langone first," her friend says.
Arizona bites down on her bottom lip. She takes a deep breath. "They were never gonna sign with us. It was a waste of time, it was all a waste of time."
"Why?"
"Probably because I'm being karmically punished for cheating on my wife," Arizona giggles and then covers her mouth with both hands. There's a cobweb swinging from the ceiling right above her head, and even that feels fitting.
Nicole scoffs. She looks vaguely in Arizona's direction with open derision. "My ex-husband cheated on me and he's doing just fine." She shakes her head. "The universe isn't punishing you for screwing around on your wife. The universe doesn't care. You care. You're the only person who gives a crap about this anymore."
"And Callie," Arizona whispers to the spider, who doesn't seem to notice. And Nicole.
For a second she thinks that Nicole didn't hear her. Then, "Is that what you want? For Callie to stop caring?"
Arizona rolls onto her side, resting her cheek against the flat of her own hand. Her head suddenly feels very heavy. "I want me to stop caring.
"You want my advice?" Nicole asks and Arizona hums a quiet yes . "Pick a more realistic goal."
"Wow, thank you. That's really helpful, I wish I'd thought of that one." Arizona screws up her face, sarcastic and irritable. Her friend laughs.
"I'm serious! God, you try to do someone a favor," she complains. Nicole picks up the stack of papers again, opens the top drawer of her desk and places them carefully inside. It's clear that this conversation is coming to an end. "Give it a shot, treat her the way you would if you weren't still in love with her."
Arizona shoots upright. "I'm not in love with Callie."
Nicole pushes the drawer shut with a click, turning away from Arizona dismissively. Almost like she knows Arizona is lying, which Arizona is.
"Whatever helps you sleep at night," she says. Then her face softens into genuine affection. And pity. There's pity there too. "Look, I'll take care of the Langone thing."
Arizona pulls her knees up to her chest like a child. "Really?"
The other woman stands. Reaches for her cane. "I went to med school with their Chief of Surgery. He may be a chauvinist pig, but he's a manageable chauvinist pig."
"Thank you." She means it.
"Think about what I said. Next time you see Callie, just treat her like any other person. It might help."
"I don't even know what that means," Arizona responds, still clinging to her own legs.
Nicole shrugs like maybe the answer should be obvious. "You're a friendly person, Robbins. Try being nice to her," she pauses, looking horrified. "Nice but… professional. Don't, uh, you know. Sleep with her. Or do, I don't care."
Arizona gasps in outrage and considers throwing one of the decorative pillows at Nicole. Pillows that Arizona had bought her as a gift, by the way. "Uh, shut up!"
"I'm just saying!" Nicole raises one of her hands defensively like she can feel Arizona thinking about hitting her.
"Don't! Don't just say anything else."
Her friend starts heading towards the door. Arizona follows after her.
"Don't shoot the messenger," Nicole says and Arizona rolls her eyes. Then Nicole turns back to her, grasping for Arizona's arm. "Are you gonna be okay tonight? Do I have to worry about you?"
"I'm fine," Arizona forces a smile that won't help her case at all. "It's… I'm fine."
Nicole nods once, letting go of Arizona's arm. "Okay. I'll see you tomorrow, then."
"You'll see me tomorrow."
That night, Arizona sticks both of Sofia's drawings to the fridge with tacky, brightly colored magnets and misses her so much it hurts. She misses waking up every morning to her daughter in her house. Her life now is not enough.
Wanting things scares the hell out of her, so she doesn't do that. She doesn't want.
But she does hang her kid's stick figure family on the fridge.
End Notes: We've reached a turning point! I promise they'll be nicer to each other from now on.
As usual reviews are always welcomed, and if you'd like to have a conversation please come find me at pearcages on both Tumblr and Twitter.