AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Hi everyone! Thank you for all of your amazing and thoughtful reviews on the last chapter. Some of you asked to see more of how Sofia is affected by Briley's current condition, so I touched upon that in this next chapter.

I hope you enjoy it!

Chapter 9

"Wake up, Sof, it's time to start getting ready for school," Arizona gently nudged her sleeping daughter.

Sofia rolled over onto her side and covered her face with her pillow. She had definitely inherited her Mama Callie's sleeping habits.

"I'm not getting up," she replied. Arizona rolled her eyes.

"Yes, you are. Because your mother and I have to be at work in an hour, so that means you have to catch the bus," Arizona reminded her.

"I'm not going," Sofia repeated, making herself very clear.

"Sofia, I am not messing around-" Arizona began, feeling her blood pressure rise.

"Up! Now!" Callie scolded as she stuck her head into Sofia's bedroom.

"Ugh! I don't want to go to school if Briley can't go!" Sofia yelled back, throwing her pillow across the room.

Even though it had been a few months since Briley had last been in school with her, it hadn't affected her until now. At least, she never let on that it did. But now, Sofia was standing her ground, adamant that she would not be getting on the yellow school bus today.

"You're out of here in twenty minutes! I don't care if you are ready or not- you are getting on that bus!" Callie called as she went down the stairs.

Sofia groaned and got out of bed as Arizona left her room.

"You didn't have to do that, you know," Arizona said, following Callie into their bedroom. "I was handling the situation. She was getting on board."

"Yeah, well at this point, she doesn't have to be on board. She has to be getting ready to go to school, and you should be getting ready for work!" Callie said, throwing a pair of scrubs to Arizona, who caught them mid-air.

Normally, they would wear street clothes to work, and change into their navy blue scrubs when they got there, but today they were running late.

"Now I have to swoop in and be the bad cop because apparently that's the only way anything gets done around here!" Callie said, pulling her scrub top over her head and adjusting her silver heart necklace.

"She's going through a tough time, Callie. We should show her a little compassion. She's-"

"She'll be fine. You and I feel the same way, and you don't see us throwing a fit about having to go to work!"

"Calliope."

"Arizona. We can not treat her like a toddler. If we let her stay home this time, what will she do when she's an adult in the workforce? Refuse to get out of bed because she doesn't feel like it?! This is a life lesson that she needs to learn," Callie said sternly, tying her hair up in a ponytail. "Sulking won't do her any good."

Arizona took a deep breath and bit her lip. She hated to admit it, but Callie had a point. Maybe she was coddling her a little.

…

"Hey, what's going on? How is she?" Arizona asked as the couple approached Alex in the hospital's lobby.

He shook his head.

"She was touch and go all night. It was rough, I'm gonna be honest. She's strong as hell, though. She's fighting," Alex replied.

Arizona and Callie exchanged a glance. That was not the update that they had been hoping for.

"How are the parents holding up?" Callie asked, laying a protective hand around her wife's waist. Arizona leaned into her.

"Uh… I've seen worse. But they're definitely frazzled," Alex informed her.

"I'm gonna make a mental note to stop by there later today after my first surgery. Check up on 'em," Callie told Arizona. Arizona nodded.

Just then, Alex's pager buzzed. He read the message on the screen before shoving his pager in his lab coat pocket.

"You might wanna check up on them right now. 911. It's Briley," he said with a worried look on his face.

The three surgeons sprinted up the closest set of stairs, not bothering to wait for the elevator. They dodged visitors and other members of the hospital staff as they raced towards the peds floor.

When they reached Briley's room, they were hardly out of breath.

"What happened?!" Alex asked the nurse that was attending to the beeping machines.

"She was alert, albeit tired, a second ago, then she passed out," the nurse reported. "Mom hit the call button, so I came in and felt her pulse. It's very weak."

Immediately knowing which duties to take on, the adrenaline coursing through their veins allowed Alex, Callie and Arizona to work in harmony, even after the cardio workout they just had.

Briley's frail body shook as she began to seize. Her eyes rolled back in her head.

"Torres, get that airway!" Alex called, handing her an intubation kit.

"On it!" Callie said as she used the laryngoscope for better vision as she guided the endotracheal tube down Briley's throat.

"Hey, Chandler, Nicole, I know this is scary, but we've got this. We've got her. Just stand against the wall for me," Arizona nodded, pushing them back away from the bed so that the doctors and nurses had room to get the situation under control.

"Temp's 104. Serum lactate is 6. She's crashing!" Alex called out her stats to the nurses. "Get her on triple antibiotics, pressors, everything!"

Nurses rushed about the room, all attending to different, but equally as important, duties. The machines in the hospital room continued to sound loudly as they worked.

"Ventilator's on!" Callie said, using medical tape to secure the tube to Briley's ghostly pale face.

All of a sudden, the machines stopped blaring and returned to their normal periodic beeps and blips.

"Heart rate's down. BP is 70 over 40 and rising," Arizona announced as she read the numbers off of the machines.

Everybody in the room took a collective relieved deep breath as a sense of calmness fell over the room. That was a close one.

"What happened?!" Nicole asked, a tear streaming down her face. She had never been more scared than she just was, watching her baby seize right before her eyes.

"Her organs are beginning to shut down as a result of the sepsis. We've hooked her up to life support machines, specifically this ventilator to help her breathe," Alex explained.

"The infection is getting worse instead of better, despite all of the medications we have her on," Arizona said, trying to keep her brave face while sharing this heartbreaking news with her friends.

"So… This is the end?" Chandler asked with a quiver to his voice.

Callie furrowed her eyebrows and closed her eyes, before nodding her head with a sigh.

"I'm afraid we've done all that we can do."

Callie, Arizona and Alex watched as the Lockes embraced one another as they broke down. This was it. The harsh effects of pediatric cancer were about to take their one and only child.

The doctors left the room to give the family some privacy. Glancing at her watch, Callie groaned as she kissed her wife on the cheek.

"Their prepping for my 10:30 surgery. I have to go. I love you. Call me if anything happens," she instructed as she headed for the elevators.

Arizona nodded as she watched her wife leave. As the elevator doors, closed, Arizona rested her elbows on the countertop of the charting station, and bent down to cover her face with her hands.

Alex saw her body shake as she silently sobbed. He rubbed her back to help calm her down. A minute later, Arizona straightened herself out, wiping the tears away from her eyes. She was on duty, she couldn't let herself be affected by this. She had moms and babies to save.

"Damn it," she said under her breath as she and Alex watched the Lockes through the window. "I wish they hadn't had to see her like that. That'll be imprinted on their minds forever."

Alex was silent as he stood next to Arizona. He tried to gather his thoughts before he turned to her, unsure of how she was going to react to what he was about to say.

"You looked exactly like that. When you crashed. I had just come to deliver you a piece of Chunky Stu's pizza when all of a sudden your eyes rolled back and you started seizing. Your everything was through the roof, and Callie was in surgery, and I thought we were gonna freakin' lose you. You almost died right in my arms."

Arizona switched her gaze from Briley's parents to Alex's face. She had been in that exact same situation as Briley, and never even realized it. Arizona had never heard this story before, and she had certainly not known how it had affected Alex.

"I…" she didn't even know how to respond. What do you say to something like that? "Thank you. For saving me."

It had taken her an extremely long time to come to terms with her life after the plane crash. She had thought that her life was over. But looking back on it now, a new chapter was just beginning. And she had Alex to thank for that.

"No. Don't do that. We don't have to do this. It was a long time ago, and we've both moved on…" Alex shook his head.

Arizona smiled. She smiled a real smile for the first time in a long time. Her dimples popped in her cheeks as she beamed up at Alex.

But the happiness that had washed over her left as quickly as it came, and she turned her attention back to watching the Lockes grieve over Briley's current state. Chandler stroked his daughter's hair and kissed her forehead as Nicole held her hand.

"Hey, I've got nothing scheduled in my department today, so please just load me up with any peds cases you don't want. I'll be your scut monkey, I don't care. I just need to keep my mind off of… this," Arizona said.

Without hesitation, Alex handed her a pile of patient charts.

"That should do it!" he said as he walked off to go meet his first patient of the day in pre-op.

Arizona could barely see over the stack of charts in her arms. She was relieved to have this many different outlets to invest her time and mind into today so that she wasn't constantly worrying about the Locke family. It was going to be a long, uninteresting day, but she was ready to attack it head on.

…

After scrubbing out of her double hip replacement surgery, Callie realized that it was nearly 6 PM. Almost an entire day had passed since she had left Arizona and Alex outside of Briley's hospital room, and she still hadn't heard any updates from them.

Tossing her hand towel in the waste bin, Callie texted her wife, wondering what she had been up to all day. They always texted each other updates throughout the day, and it was a very rare occurrence when they didn't. Today happened to be one of those days.

Hey. Just left the OR. Where R U?

Callie texted Arizona a quick message before returning her phone to her pocket. She figured that if Arizona had had such a busy day that she hadn't heard from her, she must have been paged to the emergency room. So, that's exactly where Callie headed.

When she reached the ER, Callie looked around but didn't see the shorter blonde anywhere. She checked each trauma room, each bed, and the ER board. Nothing.

Callie got a sort of uneasy feeling in her stomach. Where could she be? She decided to go check the OR board to see if her name was on any of the schedules. She made her way across the hospital to the surgery ward, with still no sign of Arizona.

As Callie was studying the surgical schedule, Alex turned the corner with his head down looking at his cell phone.

"Karev!" Callie called, jogging over to him. "Have you heard from my wife?"

Alex looked up from his phone and shook his head.

"Not since this morning. She told me to bury her in peds cases because her day was super light. She's probably up there in Pediatrics," Alex said, shrugging and returning his gaze back towards his phone's screen.

Callie groaned as she turned on her heel and went back in the direction she came from. Between her run up to Briley's room this morning and her wild goose chase around the hospital looking for Arizona, she really was getting a cardio workout in today!

Just after she pressed the call button for the elevator, her phone buzzed in her pocket. Taking it out, she read the message on the screen:

Attending's lounge on 4.

Callie nodded to herself as she stepped in the elevator and pressed the button for the 4th floor. When the elevator arrived on the floor, she made her way towards the closed door of the lounge, but upon entering it, she found it to be empty.

"Arizona?" Callie called out, closing the door behind her.

"Callie?" came a weak reply from the direction of the closed bathroom door.

"Arizona! Are you okay? Can I come in?" Callie asked with panic in her voice as she rushed over to the door.

When there was no reply, she opened the door anyway. There, she found Arizona kneeling on the floor, her head in the toilet, violently throwing up.

"Oh my God! What happened? Did you fall? Are you okay?" Callie asked, bending down and placing a hand on her wife's back.

She didn't get a reply as Arizona continued to empty the contents of her stomach into the toilet bowl.

Turning to the sink next to her, Callie opened the cabinet and reached in to retrieve the temporal artery thermometer that was stored there. She turned the device on and ran it across Arizona's forehead until she heard the beep. Callie sighed as she read the numbers out loud.

"101. It's low grade, but it's still a fever. Do you think you caught it while working on peds?"

Arizona shook her head.

"I was doing Alex's post-op scut all day. I have barely had a chance to catch my breath," Arizona managed to whisper before doubling over the toilet bowl again.

"Sweetie…" Callie breathed as she tied Arizona's hair back in a bun so that she wouldn't get it dirty. "I think you overdid it today."

For the last seventeen years since the plane crash, Arizona had always made sure she had ample breaks in her schedule and she was always careful not to become too overwhelmed while working. Amputation is extremely hard on a body, and the associated physiological changes make it much easier for an amputee to become run-down. Up until now, she had never become violently ill due to overtaxing herself at work, but she overdid it today in an attempt to keep her mind off of Briley's condition.

Arizona continued to throw up for a couple more minutes before she leaned away from the toilet bowl and rested her back up against the wall, closing her eyes.

"You done?" Callie asked apprehensively as Arizona nodded.

Callie stood up and flushed the toilet before going back out into the lounge and clearing off the couch. She laid out a pillow and a blanket before returning to the bathroom to help Arizona up. She put her arm around her wife's waist and took the majority of her weight as Arizona limped over to the couch.

Helping her lay down, Callie covered her with the blanket and went to the kitchen area to grab her a glass of water and some Tylenol to bring her fever down. She also brought over a bowl to set next to her, just in case she got sick again. After handing Arizona the medicine to swallow, Callie sat beside Arizona on the couch and stroked her hair, knowing she likes to have that done to her when she's sick.

"How's Bri?" Arizona asked. "I want to go see her."

Callie shook her head.

"Nope. You are going to stay right here and sleep. The only way to get rid of this sickness is to rest," Callie reminded her. "And I don't know how Briley is. I haven't seen her or heard any updates since this morning. I've been in back-to-back surgeries all day."

"Will you go see her for me? Go sit by her bedside and relieve Chandler and Nicole, would you? They need to go down to the caf to get something to eat. I bet they haven't left that tiny room all day," Arizona said, looking up at Callie with those bright blue eyes of hers.

Callie nodded without hesitation. Arizona was always putting her patients- and their parents- first, even when she was sick herself.

Standing up, Callie kissed Arizona's forehead before leaving Arizona to rest and heading out the door.

Callie lost herself in her thoughts as she made her way up to peds. She was startled out of her daydreams by her cell phone ringing. It was an unfamiliar number on the caller ID, but she decided to answer anyways.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Mrs. Torres?"

"It's actually Dr. Torres, but yes, how can I help you?" Callie replied.

"My apologies, Dr. Torres. This is Anna Richard calling, I'm Sofia's guidance counselor at school. How are you?" the woman on the other end of the phone said.

"I'm fine. Is there something wrong with Sofia? Is she okay?" Callie asked, confused at why the school guidance counselor was calling outside of school hours.

"She is fine. I am just calling to tell you that Sofia failed three tests today. I was wondering if there was something going on at home that could have caused this? She is normally a great student with stellar grades, which is why her teachers contacted me," the counselor explained.

Callie felt her heart sink. Maybe she should have let Sofia take a mental health break from school today. Evidently, Briley's deterioration was affecting Sofia more than Callie had realized.

"Um, yes, well, Sofia is very close friends with Briley Locke. She's been having a very rough time coming to terms with Briley's condition lately," Callie told her.

"Ah, yes. I've heard about poor Briley. So sad. If you could just talk to Sofia about her schoolwork, I'm sure her teachers would be more than willing to let her re-take her tests when she is prepared," the guidance counselor said.

"Thank you," Callie replied, stepping off the elevator on the PICU floor.

"No problem. It was so nice speaking with you. Have a great rest of your day," the counselor replied.

"I'll try," Callie said before hanging up.

Callie approached the familiar PICU room and she knocked on the closed door to Briley's room before entering. Just as Arizona had suspected, Nicole and Chandler were in nearly the exact same positions as they were in this morning when she saw them last. Callie noticed that both of their faces were tear stained and puffy when they looked over at her as she entered the room.

"Hi Callie," Nicole greeted her with a small smile.

"Hey. How are you guys? Is there anything I can do?" Callie asked as she put her comforting hand on Nicole's arm.

Nicole shook her head.

"We're hanging in there," Chandler answered sadly.

"Have you guys had anything to eat?" Callie asked them, showing that she was concerned not only for Briley, but for them as well.

Chandler and Nicole looked at one another before shaking their heads. They hadn't realized how much time had passed. They hadn't been hungry enough to eat.

"Go down to the cafeteria and get yourselves something to eat. Or some coffee at least. I'll stay here with Briley," Callie offered.

Reluctantly, Nicole and Chandler both stood up from where they were seated and headed for the door. Callie took a seat where Nicole had been sitting and picked up Briley's hand and held it in hers.

"Thank you, Callie. You have no idea how much we appreciate this," Chandler turned to her and said before they exited the room.

As Callie held Briley's hand, she reminisced on all of the good times Sofia had shared with her over the years. When Briley assisted Sofia's first goal in soccer when they were seven. When they had pulled out an old tarp and ran hose water all over it turning it into a slip and slide on a hot summer day. When both Briley and Sofia made the honor roll their first semester of high school…

Callie took all of those memories and compared it to the girl that was before her now. A girl who was bald, missing a leg, and hooked up to a ventilator. Childhood cancer was so, so cruel.

It was in that moment that Callie decided that those happy memories and stories are how she will remember Briley when she leaves her earthly home. She was going to choose to remember her infectious giggle and her silly personality rather than her blood curdling screams as the radioactive chemotherapy ravaged through her teenage body.

Callie had seen enough cancer patients throughout her years in the medical field to know that Briley's time was near. She hoped with all of her heart that she wasn't in any pain. Though the prescribed painkillers were supposed to be keeping her comfortable, Callie knew that there was only so much a morphine drip could do for someone during a time like this.

Callie did the only thing she knew to do when things were out of her control. Pray.

Jesus, please guide this baby girl right into your loving arms when the time is right. Please release her from her hurting body here on Earth and end her suffering, Callie prayed as she held Briley's hand to her lips and closed her eyes.

An overwhelming wave of sadness fell over Callie as she kept vigil at Briley's bedside. She bent down in her seat, resting her arms and her head down on the bed, shielding her face. Callie felt her shoulders begin to shake as she sobbed silently, but uncontrollably.

"Torres?"

Callie's head shot up and she wiped the tears off of her cheeks as she saw Alex standing in the doorway. His face softened and his eyes looked so concerned.

"You okay?"

Callie shook her head.

Alex walked over to her and pulled a rolling stool up next to where she was seated. He put his arms around her shoulders and rested his head on top of hers. He wasn't asking her to reveal why she was suddenly breaking down, he was just there so that she could have the silent support of a friend during her time of need.

"Briley's dying," Callie stated the obvious.

"I know."

"Arizona's sick. And Sofia's failing classes. And my life doesn't feel like my life anymore. I just want to wake up from this nightmare!" Callie cried as she leaned into Alex's embrace.

"I know. I know, Cal. Shh. I've got you," Alex whispered as he rubbed her shoulder.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

Both Alex and Callie jumped up from their seats, ready to attend to Briley's needs.

"Where is it coming from?!" Callie asked, darting her eyes to and from every machine Briley was hooked up to, trying to find the source of the alarms.

"I don't know!" Alex said, doing the same thing.

Just then, both Callie's and Alex's hearts stopped as the erratic and irregular beeping turned into a dreaded long, continuous one.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

Ooooh. A cliffhanger. And another rough chapter.

Please leave all of your reviews on this update and this story in general below for me to read! I'd love to read your thoughts.

xoxo Arizona Robbins MD