Disclaimer: I don't own Grey's Anatomy, I just borrowed the name of the characters for entertaining, no intention to violate any copyrights.
A/N : to my dearest reader who is about to undergo a surgery. First of all, good luck with your surgery and I hope you well. Thanks for your support and I'l glad that you like my story. You didn't leave me any contact so I tried to reach you out on tumblr but it seems you're not there. I have this chapter ready but my beloved beta friend is busy for the moment. But for you, here's the unbeta'd chapter.
All mistakes are mine, sorry about that.
Oh, this chapter is the shortest among the others because... I think we'll need a little break after what happened between the two in this chapter.
Chapter 64
Mark was watching his best friend fixedly, willing her to look at him. But Callie just stared at the Seattle skyline, oblivious to the man sitting on the other side of the table. The only motion she had was bringing the bottle of vodka to her lips from time to time.
"Do you want to talk about it?" After hours of silence between them, Mark tried again after seeing the brunette took another gulp of the liquor. Callie shook her head with purse lips, sat back and rested her legs on top of the cooler on the ground in front of her.
"You don't have to be in here, Mark." Callie finally opened her mouth. "Go home."
"Lexie is still in surgery. I don't need to go." The man reached out a hand gesturing Callie to give him the bottle. He took a sip before looked around their surrounding. "You drove me here, remember? How am I supposed to leave?"
"I didn't ask you to come." Callie gave the smirking man a sidelong glare. "Just take my car. I don't need a babysitter."
That was right, she didn't ask Mark to accompany her.
Being one of the biggest gossipers in the scuttlebutt, it didn't take long for Mark to catch up with the hottest news in the hospital that the most promising resident just lost a patient. He found his friend in time while the brunette ran toward the parking lot in the middle of her shift still wearing the light blue scrubs. Quickly followed and without further question, he jumped in the car and here he was, in the middle of nowhere.
"I know you don't need a babysitter. I'm just here... to drink with you." He passed the bottle back to Callie. And she took it for another long gulp.
Another long, pregnant silence went by, not any word exchanged except the bottle. Suddenly a head light came to their direction. It stopped before them abruptly, a slim silhouette got out of the car with the engine still on.
"Seriously? Derek's trailer?" Arizona shut the door with force. "You don't even bother to tell me that you moved into Derek's trailer? I had to call Cristina to know where you are!"
Mark looked between the two women bug-eyed. He thought they had made up at noon and why wouldn't Robbins knew that Callie had lived in this tin can for 2 days already?
Callie just blinked slowly, staring at the dark sky as if the raging blonde was not even there.
"You are doctors! How the hell didn't anyone of your answering your phone?" Blue eyes glared between the two sitting there. Arizona stood right in front of the brunette with hands on her hips. "I looked everywhere for you! Do you know how worried I was? When they told me you checked out of the hotel, I thought you ran away, again!"
"Not a bad idea." The brunette murmured into the bottle. 2 sets of blue eyes stared at her in shock.
"Not a... Not a bad idea? Are you freaking kidding me?" Arizona stepped on the deck, her voice trembling with anger. "You lost a patient, I am sorry about that, but that give you no right to disappear without a word! I am your fiancée!"
Callie snorted her contempt but said nothing.
"We all had tough losses but you've never seen me hiding in the wood or clinging onto a bottle of..." The blonde flung her arm toward her fiancée. "whatever you're drinking! We've all been there! We show up the next day, and we try to save the next life!"
"It's enough, Arizona. You're being a bit too..." Mark jumped up from the chair trying to stop the blonde. But the angry woman was in a roll.
"A bit too what? Worried? Hurt? If she has a slight sense of how much I worried..."
"I am your fiancée... I am worried about you... You don't mean any of that!" Callie dropped the bottle on the metal table with a loud thud, made both Arizona and Mark jumped.
"What...?" Blue eyes widened and mouth slightly agape.
"You are my fiancée and I needed you! I needed you and where were you?" The brunette retracted her legs and sitting straight in the chair. The fire in the usually warm and loving brown eyes made Arizona shuttered.
"I was..."
"You were with your family! You were with the people that you truly care about! You were with the people that you love!" Callie spat out between gritted teeth while reaching for the bottle again. "Why would you give a damn of where the hell I am?"
"This is not true!" The blonde swallowed hard seeing her fiancée downed the heavy liquor like water. "I..."
"Did you get my page?" Callie asked. She watched the face in front of her went paler and hesitated to get out for an answer, nothing more needed to be said. She murmured sarcastically. "That's what I thought."
"I got your page and then... things happened." Arizona wetted her lips nervously, recalling the moment she put away the pager. "I was distracted and... and... I scrubbed in a surgery..."
"It's never me, isn't it?" Caramel face broke into a bitter smile. "It's always someone else comes first. What am I to you, Arizona?"
"This is not fair! We are surgeons!" Frustrated hands threw in the air, the blonde exclaimed firmly. "We save lives! We help the ones in need!"
"I was in need! I needed you!" Callie shot up from the chair, shouting back before strode to the other end of the deck with the bottle in hand.
"I helped you through crisis after crisis, Callie!" Angry blue eyes followed the furious woman's every step. Her heart ached from imagining the brunette had to deal with it on her own, but she was just too angry and exhausted to back down. "Your father, your mother, got your life back together... For once! For once I wasn't there and then... what? You're gonna vanish on me like when you left Miami? Or New York?
"Arizona, maybe... give her some time. You both are tired and tonight is not the night to have this conversation." Mark quickly pulled the blonde's arm trying to make her stop, before anyone of them said something's that they'd regret later. "You both need to calm down first."
"No Mark! I am sick of it!" Arizona flung off the hand on her arm and turned to face the man. "I am sorry that she lost a patient but do you have any idea how I felt when I couldn't find her anywhere? I was hurt! And I was angry because I thought she was gone!"
"I didn't just lose a patient, Arizona! I killed a man!" Callie yelled from the top of her lungs. She could not help the tears rolling down her face. "I gave the man blood thinners when he was bleeding internally! I helped him bled faster! I killed him!"
"I didn't know..." The blonde turned to Mark, who bit his lips to a thin line giving her a single nod implied an affirmation.
"I told his wife that he was fine. It was a simple surgery and he could walk as fast as a young guy without pain." The distressed brunette tossed the now empty bottle to the side. It bounced on the glass and rolled away slowly. "Instead, he's lying in the morgue because I'm not a good enough doctor to know that he had internal bleeding."
"You... You're a resident, a trainee." Indignation subsided quickly. Arizona took a few steps closer, putting her hands on Callie's upper arms looking deeply into the tearful brown eyes. "You are allowed to make mistake and that's how you learn."
"In what world does that make it okay?" Callie asked incredulously, the hard glare made the blonde speechless.
"No, it's not okay but..."
"There's no but, Arizona!" Scrunched up her face, the irritated Latina shook off the hands on her and stepped back. "It's a life! An actual, human life and it ended because of me!"
"We'll go over the charts together, okay? We... we... We'll check everything and we'll talk to the chief. He will understand and..." The blonde followed forward, but Callie extended the distance by taking a few backward steps.
"And what? Let me get back there and kill someone else? No, I can't!"
"You made a mistake. One mistake..." Arizona tried again, but that just irritated her fiancée more.
"It wasn't a mistake! I was being careless! I have blood in my hands, Arizona!" Callie stared at her open palms as if seeing the dark red blood on them again. "I've been pictured his face, his dying face over and over again. I can't handle another life depends on me. I just... can't."
"What are you saying?" The blonde took in a large gulp of air trying to ease the tightness in her chest. Her heart clenched from see the brunette in such anguished, and she was afraid of what was about to get out from the woman. "Are you going to quit? Are you telling me that you're going to quit being a doctor?"
"Yeah, I am all done with that." Another giant tear rolled down the tanned cheek as Callie nodded her head slowly. "I can not go back to the hospital."
"No... no...!" Arizona pursed her lips staring dead into the crying face. "You can't just walk away! After all these, you can't just quit when things get hard!"
"Can you just try to understand..." The brunette sighed wearily, but her words choked in her throat when strong hands grasped her arms tightly.
"You don't think I know how it feels losing a patient? You don't think I get that? I have lost tons of patients in my career! You know I see the tiny coffins in my sleep all the time!" Arizona's voice quivered with emotion, but the steady gaze never left the tan face. "But I have never, for once, thought about quitting my job! This is what we do! We turn our backs on the patient we lost, and facing forward to the next one!"
"You are stronger than me, okay? You're a better doctor! You're a better person than I am, alright?" Callie pushed off the blonde and walking to the metal table, opened another bottle of vodka as she talked. "I am fried, Arizona! I am exhausted and I am distracted. Do you know what I was doing before I stepped in the OR? I was thinking how did I end up living in a trailer? I don't even like the woods!"
"You don't have to if you have talked to me! You don't tell me anything!" The furious woman took the 2 steps getting closer. "You have never told me that you have problem of me taking care of Ruthie and Nick! You've never told me that you didn't want to sleep in Mark's couch! You bottled up everything until it blew up and now I am the bad guy?"
"I did everything for you, Arizona!" Still had her back to the blonde, Callie gulped down another mouthful of vodka. The strong liquor burnt her throat but it didn't stop her tear. "I give and I give... Have you ever stopped for a second, think about what do I want?"
"I am sorry, Callie! I am sorry that I am busy! I don't even have time to think about myself!" Arizona stood a few feet behind her fiancée. A faint sound of her phone going off from her car but she just couldn't deal with it yet. Mark ran over to the car answering it for her. "But I do know you want to be a surgeon! This is your dream! You walked away from it once! I won't let you giving up on it again! I won't allow it!"
"This is my choice! This is my life!" The Latina spun around rapidly, unsteady movement knocked down a couple of empty beer cans on the ground.
"This is not just your life! We are going to get married and that makes it our life together!" Angry hands gestured between the two. "I don't want to see you regret making such a rash decision just because you feel bad over a... mishap!"
"You know what? I can make it easier for you!" Without taking her eyes off of the blue ones before her, Callie slid the engagement ring off her finger.
"What are you doing?" Arizona gasped involuntarily. "Don't..."
The rest of the sentence died in the blonde's throat when the symbol of her love to her fiancée got thrown into the dark Seattle sky.
"There! You don't have to worry my life dragging you down!" Callie reached behind her neck trying to unhook the other present that was given by the blonde the day she started her internship, but her vodka soaked brain wasn't coordinated with the shaky fingers. Wrapped her hand around the heart-shape pendant, she was about to yank it off but Arizona grasped her wrist quickly.
"Calliope Torres, you are drunk!" Arizona stared at the brunette with a scowl. "You are drunk and you are angry! You are angry that I wasn't there for you and I get that! But I am here now! I am here for you and we can get through this together!"
"You're here now!" Callie snorted with a shake of head. She saw Mark walking back toward them with Arizona's phone in hand. "You're here until you're needed somewhere else! You promised me you'll do better! Yet, you have proved to me that I mean nothing to you!"
"I..." The blonde was going to defend herself, but Mark cut her off.
"Uh... Arizona? Your mom called, she said Ruthie's out of surgery."
Arizona was distracted and the gripe on the wrist loosened up a bit. Before she knew it, Callie tugged the necklace and the fine chain was broken with a soft clang.
"Go, go to your family. Go back to your life." The brunette dropped the necklace on the ground. She walked pass the frozen woman and heading to the door of the trailer.
"No! You don't get to quit on us!" Arizona turned around to the woman who was about to enter the trailer, red-rimmed eyes were on the edge of tears. "If you get in there, if you don't talk to me and sort this out, we are done! Do you hear me? We are over!"
"We are standing in the middle of nowhere, screaming at each other, we're already over." Callie closed the door without a backward glance.