The First Time Ever chapter eight
Hi guys! I'm not so sure about this chapter. It was hard to write but I think I did okay. It's also short, and I'm sorry, but it needed to be if this is how I wanted to end it. So please enjoy!
CALLIE'S POV (a few hours ago)
"Heeeeey Caaaaalliiiiieee?" Arizona dragged her words as she came up behind me at the nurse's station I was signing charts at. I smiled when I recognised her voice before I turned around to see her smiling up at me.
"Yeeees?"
"There's an on call room right over there…"
To say that Arizona and I's sex life had been healthy was an understatement. Apparently all of the built up tension from the past seven months made for some really great, um, activities.
"Who wants to guess what Callie has just been up to?" Addison asked sarcastically as I sat down at the lunch table in the cafeteria an hour later, a smile on my face and spring in my step.
"She's humming. Callie Torres does not hum." Mark observed. I raised my eyebrows in amusement.
"Callie Torres is right here and Callie Torres can hear you." I said to him and he rolled his eyes.
"We know. But at least make it less obvious when you've just had sex. We don't all need to know." Addison said, twirling her salad around on her fork.
"Unless you wanna share the details, then by all means go ahead." Mark said with a sly grin and I hit him round the back of the head.
"You're disgusting. And is it not reassuring to know that I have a healthy sex life?"
"Fabulous." Addison nodded sarcastically. "Just keep it to yourself."
To be a doctor was to be perpetually busy. It was an unwritten rule that no matter how quiet your pager remained, there was always something or someone in the busy halls of the hospital that needed your attention. I didn't mind it though- being a doctor had given me the ability to focus on one task at a time, and perform that task well because there were no other stray thoughts cavorting around my brain demanding attention.
"And finally, I'll take the opposite end of the nerve and join it to your patella- your kneecap." I concluded my run down of the ACL reconstruction I was performing on 25 year old soccer player Thomas Wishart. It was very rarely that patients didn't want to know what their surgery would consist of, and I knew that to be because knowing what was going to happen gave them a peace of mind- it made all of the things they didn't know less scary.
The usual hustle and bustle of the hospital seemed indifferent to me as I made my way through the day. The soft beeping of the heart monitors that terrified some people was a sound that my ears were accustomed to. There was nothing happening so far today, in my opinion, to suggest that anything out of the ordinary was going to happen.
Until Mark came walking over to me with a strained smile on his face.
"You look constipated. Spit it out." I said, looking up at him in amusement.
"Promise you won't freak out? Psycho Torres is the last thing we need."
I frowned, immediately dropping the chart I was filling in. My mind immediately jumped to Arizona. Surely there was nothing wrong with her. "Telling me not to freak out improves the chances of me freaking out by about 70 times, you know that. What's going on?"
"So I was just casually flirting with Nurse Heather from radiology…"
"Pick up the pace, Sloan."
"I may or may not have seen a man who very closely resembles your father heading in the direction of the peds ward." He said quickly, making my eyebrows raise in shock and my thoughts stop dead in their tracks. "Promise not to go psycho bitch!" He called after me as I shoved past him and made my way towards the peds ward, hoping that I may run into my father before Arizona did. I loved my father, I truly did, but he was an intimidating and headstrong man who could easily scare the crap out of my beautiful girlfriend. Also, up until now, apparently, my father had no idea that I had a girlfriend- or that I was dating women- so whatever he heard was not from me and I knew my life was on the line for keeping something like this from him.
The other contributing factor to my disarray at Mark's information was that I was raised in a strictly conservative, highly Catholic home. Although the subject of women dating women and men dating men rarely came up in our household, I would never assume that my father would take it well- especially without warning.
I sighed in resignation, however, as I burst through the double doors of the entrance to Arizona's department only to see her smiling politely at my dad, who was staring her up and down, a stoic expression on his face.
"Daddy! What're you doing here?" I asked in shock as I embraced my father in a tight hug, shooting a questioning look at Arizona over his shoulder. However all she could supply to my wondering was a smile shrug and an indifferent expression.
"I came to see you of course, hija. However I was curious to meet this Arizona Robbins person who you've been dating."
"Okay, well, just try not to burn a hole through her head with that look." I warned him, turning to face Arizona who lifted up a chart carefully.
"Not to be unbearably rude or anything, but I actually have a surgery scheduled in five minutes, so I have to run. But I'll see you later?" She asked me, giving me a light peck on the cheek while my father watched on.
"Sure. Be a rock star!" I called after her, watching with a smile as she rounded the corner before turning back to my father.
"What're you doing here?"
"You're dating women now."
"Not just any women. The most amazing woman."
"And you never cared enough to call?"
"You think it was easy? But how am I supposed to call you and say, 'hey, by the way, I'm dating women now!'"
I quickly realised that in the middle of the paediatric ward was not a sensible place to be having this conversation, so without a further word and gestured for my dad to follow me as I went off with the intention of finding an empty conference room. Once I had located one, just around the corner from the exit of the peds department, I walked in and shut the door firmly, turning to face my father with a 'well then?' expression.
"I want you to come home, Calliope." He said in a strict, commanding tone that I heard him use several times as a child, normally when I was being punished. What confused me this time, however, was that I had done nothing to be punished for.
"Why?" I asked in bewilderment. Although it was true that I missed Miami with the sandy beaches and the beautiful sunshine, I loved Seattle every bit as much. I had found friends here, a family. I had found Arizona here and I was happier than I had ever been.
"You used to call me every Sunday and you'd tell me everything. You haven't called in two weeks and you never once mentioned this woman. Clearly, I have not been making sure that your best interests have been met. This… Lifestyle is not what is best for you."
That sparked anger in my chest. "How would you know what's best for me? You've seen nothing of my life here! You haven't even seen how happy I am here!" I exclaimed, trying my best to keep from shouting. Shouting, I knew, would only make this situation worse.
"I've seen enough. This… Woman is not what's best for you. You've somehow got it into you head that this okay, that this is natural, and you need to get away from it." He said, slowly and evenly.
"Oh, so it's about the 'dating women' thing. What's so wrong with that? Is it that I'm in love? Or is it that I'm unbelievably happy?" I spat, my heart sinking into my stomach. My father was a hard man to argue with, but I was going to try like hell.
"Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination." He recited and I rolled my eyes. The amount of time I had heard someone play the Leviticus card was more than I could keep count of.
"We're turning to Leviticus now? You know as well as I do that if we followed everything that was written in Leviticus then half of us would be in prison!" I exclaimed in exasperation.
"Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them." He continued to rattle of Bible verse after Bible verse, but he didn't know that I could just as easily play the very same game.
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God."
"Marriage should be honoured by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral."
"Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you!"
"If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads."
I took a step back and let what my father had just repeated to me sink in. 'They are to be put to death'…
"So I should be put to death? Is that what you're saying? That I'm going to Hell for loving someone who is not who you envisioned? Is that really what you want to say to me?" I asked tearfully, the damage of his words sinking in and hitting my heart.
"Calliope, you are my daughter. I only want what's best for you!"
"Telling me that I'm going to Hell is a great way of showing it."
He continued to look at me closely, examining every detail of my face. Looking me straight in the eye, he said slowly: "I want you to come home."
I sighed heavily and wiped my tears with the sleeve of my lab coat. I took a deep breath. "'Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven.' That's what you used to tell me, daddy, when people at school gave me a hard time. That's what you told me when my first boyfriend ended it with me. And I don't know what's so wrong with you that you can't see that I'm still the same person who you told that to. I'm happy, daddy, and you need to see that because I'm staying where I am."
I spoke clearly but tearfully, choking back sobs the whole time. As I finished speaking I gave him one last look before turning away from him and walking out of the room.