"Kina pumzi." Arizona grimaced at the gargle that entered her ears while she moved her stethoscope over her patient's chest – his lungs did not sound clear. She repeated her instructions again, moving the cold instrument to his back – same gargle.

Removing the stethoscope from her ears, she signaled for Azibo. Over the course of the last few weeks, the man had taught her a few key phrases to help her communicate with her patients to streamline the treatment process, but anything more complicated than simple commands like 'deep breath' were better left to an apt translator. Explaining bronchitis in their native tongue was definitely beyond her skill level. Thankfully, through Azibo's voice, she was able to reassure the boy and his father of the treatment plan and the firm handshake and bright smile was rewarded with warmed her heart. She was making medical baby steps, but in a country like this, they were giant strides toward a better standard of living.

Her attention was quickly grabbed by a volunteer struggling to start an IV. Suppressing a sigh she would normally exaggerate in front of Seattle Grace interns, she guided the hands of the young man until the needle had been properly inserted. Some of the workers were more competent than others, but she could hardly complain about the number of people who had agreed to help from all of the connected villages. These were the people making her dream possible and they would be the ones to keep it alive when she and Callie finally returned home.

Callie.

Arizona looked across the clinic, catching a glimpse of her girlfriend through the window as she spoke with one of the builders of her long since finished surgical "room". It had been two long months since the incident by the water filter. Two months since she had confronted the fiery Latina and two months since they had pretended to convince themselves that nothing was wrong.

The celebration with the tribe had been uncomfortable as it only acted to delay an argument both knew would boil over the moment they were alone in their hut. Callie had somehow slipped past her and was nowhere to be found once the fire had been doused. Really? She couldn't even stick around to walk her girlfriend back to the home they shared? What the Hell…

Determined footsteps brought Arizona to the threshold of their front door and after a quick, deep breath to subdue her blinding frustration, she made her way into the dwelling. Callie was scurrying about, her back to the PEDs surgeon, but it was obvious from her aimless wandering and flailing hands that she was simply trying to act busy.

"Callie…"

The call did not still the Latina and so Arizona moved forward, ducking around the frantic woman to block her path. Their eyes met and for a moment it seemed as if the taller surgeon was finally looking at her instead of through her, but it only lasted for a second.

"Callie, stop." The quiet plea slowly sunk in. "Just, talk to me… please."

A sigh fell from the younger surgeon's lips as her shoulders slumped in defeat. The blonde felt her heart sink as she took in the dejected form of the woman she loved. What on Earth happened? More than ever she was determined to force the stubborn beauty to speak instead of run - she had to know no matter what it was. Reaching out a tentative pale hand, Arizona brushed ebony hair away from fallen amber eyes, letting the soft digits linger along the jawline she had traced countless times.

"Don't run away from me, Calliope." Try as she might, she couldn't keep her voice from cracking. "I can't do this without you."

The sound of held back tears seemed to snap the Latina from her trance as she immediately enveloped Arizona in a tight hug. Her strong arms wrapped around her smaller frame, blanketing her in their familiar warmth. No more words were spoken - they held each other in weighted silence, comforting one other with a language only they could speak as they simply existed in each other's arms.

Callie had written off her attitude as being the result of stress after a long day, of missing the life they had back home where they could be together in the open. The PEDs surgeon knew there was more beneath the surface of that excuse, but she didn't push - the thought of driving her lover away with too many prying questions silenced Arizona into submission. They had tip-toed around each other for a few days after that until whatever had gripped the younger surgeon so violently fell away. She had awoken to the feel of soft lips traveling over pale skin roads they knew so well and the spark she found in the dark eyes that greeted her made her realize that maybe they could get away with pretending. In the weeks that had followed, it seemed like ignorance was bliss, though Arizona couldn't help but feel like they were slowly walking toward the edge.

"Mssada!"

The blonde whirled around, startled by the sudden cry for help from the entrance of the clinic. A man in his late twenties ran swiftly into the room with a crying child in his arms. His eyes locked with Arizona's and a sense of recognition overcame them both. She knew him - he was one of the men who had helped Callie expand the clinic. Her girlfriend was only a few paces behind him and was frantically pulling her hair into a low hanging ponytail as she directed the running man to the surgical wing.

"Arizona!" The PEDs surgeon quickly fell into step with the orthopedic surgeon. "We have an open left femur, one inch protrusion, with a possible nicked femoral artery. I tied a tourniquet to slow the bleed, but we need to get in there fast."

Shit.

The child was laid down, screaming on the gurney. He fought against Callie as the younger surgeon began to gingerly peel away the blood-stained shift that had been wrapped around his leg. When the last bit of cloth had been removed, tattered skin, trails of blood and the tell-tale ivory of a femur bone were left in its wake. Arizona signaled for the young woman she had been mentoring that week to stay with the child and hook him up to a heart monitor as the two surgeons silently rushed to the jug of filtered water that had been set up in the far corner. They scrubbed their hands clean with bars of soap, knowing it wouldn't be as sterile as they were used to but that is was the best they could do.

"I need you to handle the bleeding while I try to reduce the fracture as much as possible."

The blonde nodded in agreement, mentally stepping aside to let Callie take the lead. ""Intermedullary rods?"

The brunette smiled at her girlfriend's knowledge of her specialty as they helped each other snap on gloves, surgical masks, scrub caps, and drapes. "Without an x-ray, I won't know until I see the displacement."

They swiftly made their way back to the table as Azibo entered the room and prepared himself much as they had without a sound. This was it. They had a pediatric open femoral fracture in the middle of the desert with no anesthesia - this was why Arizona was here. Taking a hint from the expressions on the surgeons' faces, their female helper pushed the frightened older man who had brought in the child out of the room. A few moments later, the sound of drapes being drawn echoed as a sign that they were now in a "sterile" OR. All that was left was to somehow render their patient unconscious…

Azibo approached the table and, as if he could hear the silent question of his colleagues, places two fingers against a pressure point on the boy's chest. The sounds of his pained cries soon fell away as his eyes slipped shut - it was not a deep sleep and would not buy them much time, but it was all they were given.

Smiling a quiet thank you to their tribal companion, Callie took a deep breath, pressed her fingers around the wound and grimaced. "Damn, this is a bad break."

That was all that was said before Arizona began to shower the leg and their surgical tools with alcohol. She handed Callie a sterilized scalpel and the pair got to work, opening the wound to further expose the damaged bone. The older surgeon searched the adjacent tissue as she irrigated with a squirt bottle of water. Her expert eye quickly spotted the femoral artery and a sigh of relief escaped her lips.

"Artery's intact – I'm going to release the tourniquet."

The Latina nodded, her eyes still fixed on the severed bone. "I can't set this correctly by hand. I'll reduce it well enough for a rod and – "

"Rod?"

Oh damn.

Arizona picked her head up, fixing Azibo with a startled gaze. "Titanium rods – there should have been a set in one of the packages I sent you."

The tribal man shook his head solemnly. "We never saw any."

"You've got to be kidding me!" Callie looked frantically between the two doctors at her side. "I have a kid's leg cut open on a hardly sterile table and you're telling me I have to cripple him because you lost a box? Shit! God, why didn't I check that sooner? Why –"

"Calliope!" Arizona stern voice drew frightened eyes to lock in a steady gaze with her own uneasy stare. "We can figure this out. So we don't have the rods you're used to… is there anything else you can use?"

The younger surgeon paused for a moment, drinking in the calming aura of her lover's expression to clear her head. "I wouldn't trust putting another metal in his body… there has to be…"

She silently scanned the village in her mind's eyes, searching for something, anything that could possibly be made of the titanium she needed. There!"Pots! Cooking pots! Azibo, I need a handle from one of the communal frying pans… and nails! There should be long silver looking nails in the tool kit the builders used. Bring me four and a sturdy hammer."

The man stood frozen. "You're going to put a pot handle in his body?"

"Azibo! I don't have a choice, now move!"

Arizona waited for their friend to scurry from the room before she moved closer to Callie in a silent act of support. She could feel the rapid pounding of the woman's heart near her ear as she drank in her comforting scent. It wasn't much, but the blonde hoped it would be enough to help her girlfriend deal with what they were experiencing. She knew Callie well enough to know that there was a voice going off in her head, making her feel like a butcher – that putting kitchenware in a body, even if it would be removed later and would give the boy a fighting chance at walking normally, was something she would struggle to convince herself was right.

"You can do this, Calliope."

"Should I?" Brown eyes met blue in a pleading question. "I could reduce the fraction and stitch him up without the rod."

"Would he walk?"

The Latina sighed, her eyes falling shut. "With displacement this bad… probably not."

"So then your pot handle is his best shot at a normal life."

Their eyes met again with a renewed sense of assurance. "It's his best shot."

Azibo returned shortly with what Callie had requested, though his hands were shaking as he handed them to the surgeon. He watched as she submerged the handle, nails, and hammer head into the nearby bowl of alcohol in a feeble attempt to clean them. A smile etched across her face as she noticed holes on both ends of the handle that could act as a way for her to insert the nails without needing to shear the metal. This might actually work.

Arizona held the metal pieces as Callie moved her hands to the broken bone. "I'm going to snap the bone back and I need you to place the rod so that it's flush against parts above and below the break. I'll hammer it in place, okay?"

"Got it."

Glancing at the child's sleeping face, Callie sent a silent prayer that she wasn't about to ruin his hardly lived life. "Azibo, I need you to soak a cloth in alcohol and hold it up to his nose in case he wakes up. The smell should overload his senses and keep him from freaking out too much until he passes out from the pain."

The man quickly obeyed as he kept his eyes trained on open wound. "Ready when you are, doctors."

One…

Two…

Three…

SNAP!

A guttural cry emanated from the young boy as Callie pressed the bone fragments together. She pinned her arms against his abdomen and shin to keep him steady as Arizona slipped the handle in place. They paused, both unwilling to begin hammering into bone until the boy had slipped out of consciousness. It only took a matter of seconds before the screams stopped and the boy went limp. Wordlessly, Arizona moved to give her partner space while still keeping the metal against the bone.

One by one, she hammered the nails in to secure a healthy track for the bone to heal. It wasn't ideal in a child this young to use a rigid rod, but it was certainly better than nothing and so far, everything was going smoothly. The minutes ticked by until the fracture was secured; Callie gave Arizona the go ahead to irrigate and begin stitching up the wound while she kept her eyes glued to the heart monitor.

He was holding steady.

They had actually done it.

Arizona found her behind the clinic, sitting on the steps with her arms folded across her knees. She sat down beside her, peering at the far away expression plaguing tanned features, and waited. She had made sure the young boy's brother had been informed of their successful surgery and that their patient had been set up for a long term stay in the clinic – now, her priority was attending to her girlfriend. They weren't entirely alone, but she hoped the few villagers passing by wouldn't bat an eye toward them as she placed a comforting hand on her lover's thigh.

Callie glanced down at the hand briefly before returning her gaze forward as a small smile graced her lips. "I screwed a pot handle into a seven-year-old's leg today."

The blonde smiled and leaned in. "You saved his life."

"Or I just crippled him or opened him up to God knows how many infections or –"

"Stop it." Arizona's tone left little room for argument. "We're not in Seattle. We don't have access to things we're so used to having at our finger tips in the OR – you know that, you've done this before. So we adjust. You adjusted beautifully. You figured out a substitute for a titanium rod and you managed to put his leg back together. You were awesome."

"This is nuts." The Latina bowed her head. "I've just never been the one holding the knife in a scenario like this, you know? I saw it when I was in Botswana, but actually being the one at the table? It's absolutely insane…"

"No, what's insane is the fact that that little boy would have died from an injury kids bounce back from every day in the US if you hadn't been there. That's why we're here, Calliope."

The younger surgeon sighed as she turned to face her girlfriend. "Yeah. We're making a difference."

Arizona smiled warmly at her. "Yes, we are."

"Is he all set?"

She nodded, squeezing the woman's thigh gently. "Yup, I had Azibo update the brother and we've got the little one all set up for a week stay at the clinic with a team of volunteers watching him around the clock. Then we'll send him home until the fracture heals well enough for you to remove the kitchenware and hand him back his life."

Callie chucked softly. "One medical victory…"

"One of many."

The brunette's smile widened as she continued to stare into the eyes she had fallen in love with each day for so many years. "Can we go lie down? I just… I want to be close to you."

A wave of love for this amazing woman before her crashed over Arizona and painlessly drowned her as she slowly stood, reaching out a hand. "No matter where we are, you never need to ask me if that's okay."

Arizona smiled as she awoke surrounded by a familiar scent. Ever since their first surgery in the clinic, she and Callie had been inseparable at night and they had quickly found that simply waking up together was enough to help them get through their day. It was a semblance of their life back home that they held onto in the privacy of their temporary dwelling. The terrifying experience of operating in a third world country had brought them closer together, but had also motivated them to work harder at hiding their relationship – after seeing how desperately they were needed, neither were willing to run the risk of getting them thrown out of the village.

They had lost a few patients over the months to illnesses they couldn't treat, but they had yet to lose a single villager in their surgical unit. That was something Arizona took the most pride in as they neared their six month mark. Chisulo, their open femoral fracture case, had been the confidence boost they both needed to find their groove in the clinic and also the reputation builder that made even the most skeptical of villagers willing to approach them for help. The young boy had been back to see them several times over the course of his recovery. The pot handle had not been as sturdy as they had hoped, so Callie had been forced to realign the fracture multiple times to guide the bones back into place. That had kept him bedridden for weeks, but eventually, she had been able to replace the handle in his leg with a medical titanium rod when the newly ordered shipment had arrived. It was only a matter of days now before she could remove all of the hardware from their first surgical miracle.

She couldn't keep the smile off her lips as she gazed at Callie's beautiful face. A pale hand traced lightly over a tanned cheek as the older surgeon simply drank in her lover's peaceful, sleep-induced expression. It amazed her still how innovative the Latina had been when Chisulo has first been rushed into the clinic and it made her even more grateful that the woman next to her had agreed to join her on this adventure. She wasn't sure where she would have been without her. They had always made an amazing surgical team, but this? This was something else entirely and it was fantastic.

"I can feel you staring at me."

Arizona jumped. "Ah! Callie! Don't do that!"

The brunette grinned sheepishly as she opened her eyes, running a handle through soft, blonde locks. "You're the one watching me sleep."

She moved in closer, her lips on a breath away from her newly awakened lover. "I can't help it – I can't stop looking at you."

"Sweet talker."

"You love it." She made her point with a chaste kiss against full lips.

"Mmm… yes, I do." Callie drew her back in, deepening the kiss almost immediately after it begun.

She swallowed the moan that escaped Arizona's lips as her tongue fought for dominance in a familiar mouth. Unwilling to break apart just yet, she rolled them over and pressed the smaller woman into the mattress. They melded together – lips, breasts, and hips. Their legs entangled in a heated dance that complemented the tango played out by the fingers that dove into black and blonde hair. Made bold by Arizona's eagerness, Callie tore her lips away and began a trail down the pale neck before her.

She tilted her head back, giving her lover more room to explore with lips laying sweet kisses along their path. They should stop, she knew that, but she couldn't bring herself to push Callie away. A tantalizing pull against her pulse point was enough for her to throw caution to the wind. She bucked her hips up, searching desperately for friction that her lover denied with an amused snicker. Before she could voice her frustration, she felt a palm against her breast and –

SLAM!

"Doctors!"

They both froze, their eyes wide and faces flushed, as they were met with the horrifying sight of Azibo who stood shocked, jaw-dropped, in their doorway.

Fuck.

A/N: Ha! Don't kill me! You knew it was going to happen eventually! Moving right along, a HUGE thank you to everyone who commented on my last chapter. Your encouragment was truly inspiring! I really appreciate it. Next, let me make it clear that I'm a PhD student, not a medical student - though, ironically enough, I do my research at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (Arizona pride!). Anyway, I'm basing my medical knowledge off papers that I dug up in medical journals. Hopefully that wasn't too far from the truth, but hey, this is a work of fiction, so cut me some slack if I bent the rules a tad ;). And yes, the jumping timeline has been done on purpose because I don't intend for this to be a ridiculously long fic, so I apologize for that if people aren't happy with me skipping over stuff.