Apologies for the massive delay in updating this! I've been so busy with going back to school and to be honest I wasn't quite sure how to write this. Anyway, hope you enjoy and thank you to everyone for your kind reviews :)
'Are you ok?' Addison asked her friend sympathetically once Arizona was safely out of earshot. The dejected look on Callie's face, however, told her otherwise and so she wrapped an arm around her anyway.
'I get it. Losing patients is hard, especially kids, but sometimes I just wish she'd let me in, you know?' Callie sighed dejectedly. 'You're a neonatal surgeon, what do you think?'
Addison considered her answer carefully. 'I think, from what I've seen- and I know it's not nearly as much as you see- but I think she's struggling more than she's letting on. It's not that she isn't suited to her job, but I just think that she takes it too personally, lets herself get too close to the kids, and that's why it hurts her so much when she loses one. It is ten times harder to lose a child than it is to lose an adult, but there comes a point when you have to accept it, and I'm not sure that she has reached that point yet.'
'Great,' Callie whispered.
'No, don't be like that. The best thing you can do is what you are doing, she will confide in you sooner or later- she has to. Just be there for her, ok?'
Callie nodded, knowing the older woman was right. At that moment, both of their pagers went off. Callie reached into her back pocket reluctantly.
'Crap. They need me in the Pit, 911.'
Addison nodded as she looked at her pager too, noticing she was needed in the exact same place. The pair hurried to the elevator, arriving in the ER in time to hear two interns calling over to Owen for help.
'Arizona Robbins, 36-year-old female, found unconscious in the car park with severe head injuries, signs of strangulation and a possible broken wrist.'
'ARIZONA!' Callie yelled, lunging towards her girlfriend who lay on the gurney, deathly pale against the crimson blood stained her face.
Addison grabbed her around the waist, holding her back so Hunt could get Arizona into one of the trauma rooms. 'For God's sake, who paged her? She's her girlfriend, she's in no fit state to treat her. Someone page Shepherd and Sloan, and book an OR!' she berated the interns fiercely.
'Dr Montgomery, this is my ER and this is my patient,' Owen told her sternly, displeased that this stranger thought she could handle the situation better than he could.
'Not anymore she isn't. Those interns must possess at least one brain cell between the pair of them because they paged me and the minute Mark gets down here to take care of Callie, I will take care of Arizona, ok?' Addison snapped, grunting as Callie continued to fight her tight grasp. 'Callie, I need you to stop fighting me. You can't go in there, there are too many people already and you're not capable of making any reasonable decisions right now. Ok? So, Mark's going to come and wait with you while Derek, Hunt and I treat Arizona, all right? I'll let you know that she's ok as soon as I can. I promise it's all going to be ok.'
Addison wasn't entirely sure if Callie heard her, but she did stop struggling against her, which she took as a good sign. Within seconds, Mark stepped out of the elevator, racing ahead of Derek when he saw the state Callie was in.
'Torres? Addie, what's going on?' he asked, immediately taking the crying woman in his arms, stroking her head reassuringly while he looked to the redhead for an answer.
'It's Arizona. She's hurt and she needs Derek and I to treat her while you stay with Callie, ok?' she answered quickly, pausing to pull her hair into a messy ponytail and take off her jacket before stepping into the trauma room.
In her chosen specialism, Addison rarely saw the inside of a trauma room, and each time that she did she was surprised by just how chaotic it was. Arizona had been connected to a heart monitor, which was screaming in protest as Dr Hunt inserted a chest tube.
'She's got a hemopneumothorax, someone page Cardio!' he yelled to one of the interns, who scrambled away to do what was asked.
Addison, Derek and Owen watched the monitor anxiously, breathing a collective sigh of relief as Arizona stabilized.
'Ok, what have we got?' Derek asked.
Owen looked towards Addison. 'It's Arizona, she was found in the car park with a head injury, a broken wrist and someone said it looked as though she could have been strangled,' she told him.
'She was,' Dr Hunt confirmed, 'I checked before she crashed. There doesn't seem to be any severe damage done, she'll just be in pain for a few days.'
'Thank you. Right, let's send her for a chest CT, and a full-body x-ray just in case, once Derek's done his exam,' Addison decided.
Derek swapped places with Owen, taking out a small torch from his pocket to examine Arizona.
'Looks good, but I'd like to send her for a CT just in case, seeing as she's one of us. Let me know when you get the scans back, please.'
'Ok, can you take her up, please?' Hunt asked a nervous-looking intern hovering by the door who nodded.
…
Addison left Callie with Mark, who immediately took her in his arms and kissed the top of her head, stroking her hair soothingly while maintaining a tight grip on her so she couldn't burst into the exam room.
'She's gonna be fine, Torres. Roller skate girl will be fine, I promise,' he whispered.
Callie ignored him, or maybe she just couldn't hear him, and kept struggling, clawing at his arms in a desperate attempt to escape his hold.
'Who the hell hurt her? Why would anyone hurt her? I swear to God Mark, if you don't let me go right now….' she trailed off, the sobs catching in her throat.
'I don't know, Torres. I don't know,' Mark answered sadly.