A/N: thankyou so much for all bearing with me - life happened. Here's the next chapter! Thanks for all of your constructive criticism and support :)
She checked her watch. Still twelve hours of her shift left. She sighed. Catching the attention of a nurse, Arizona smiled. "I'm going to try and get some sleep. All my patients are stable but page me if you need to." When the nurse nodded in confirmation, she headed off to find an on-call room. Today had already been longer than she'd have liked.
Arizona slipped into the first unlocked on-call room she came across, lost in her thoughts. Despite the successes she'd had with patients, she couldn't help dwelling upon her argument with Callie. The look in her eyes had scared her. For the first time, she was truly scared that Callie might hate her.
A cough drew her attention to the bed. Realising the room wasn't unoccupied, she took a step backwards. "I'm sorry – I didn't realise anybody was in here," she apologised profusely. The room was dark. She froze as she heard a mocking laugh. "Of course you didn't."
Crap.
She continued stepping backwards until she felt the cold door handle under her palm. "Okay. I'm gonna go now… Sorry to have disturbed you."
Arizona jumped as Callie pushed herself into a sitting position, pushing the hair from her eyes. "Oh, what, you're sorry? And that's meant to make it okay?" She laughed scornfully, shaking her head. "You're unbelievable. Really. Unbelievable."
The blonde bit the inside of her lip. "We're not talking about the on-call room, are we?"
Callie laughed again, disbelieving but with a bitter edge. "No, Arizona, we're not. Although I do appreciate the skill you have for being exactly where I am all of a sudden. It's great, really. Is it a recent discovery? Not something you could've tried, oh, ten years ago, maybe?"
Arizona winced, back flat against the door. "I deserved that," she whispered, looking down at the floor. "I deserved that." She raised her head a little higher, looked Callie in the eyes. "I should've found you. I should've written or phoned or – I should've come back for you." Tears pooled in her eyes. "But I was scared."
Callie shook her head. "Poor you," she rolled her eyes. "Poor you. It must've been so hard. Harder even than being left by the love of your life, who moved across the world and forgot you ever existed."
"I never forgot you –" Arizona protested, but Callie wasn't listening. She was pushing herself to her feet, sliding her feet back into her trainers, crossing the room. She reached behind Arizona to grab the door handle and Arizona could smell the coconut of her hair, see the faint spray of freckles around her nose that she always used to tease her about, and she felt her knees about to buckle. She stumbled out of the way and then Callie was gone, the door slamming behind her. Arizona sank to her knees.
She drummed her fingers impatiently on the desk of the nurses' station. "Come on, come on," she intoned under her breath, looking around in search of Mark. She'd changed out of her scrubs into a pair of blue jeans and Converse, brushed her hair back into a low ponytail and reapplied the make-up she'd cried off earlier. It hadn't been a great day and stood right here, she was just asking to be a target of the next installment of the Seattle Grace Mercy West show.
Taking out her phone, she fired off a text to Mark. Where are you?
"Dr Robbins," she jumped upon hearing a gruff voice behind her. Shoving her phone back into her pocket, she turned round guiltily, plastering a smile onto her face. She couldn't help the momentary look of confusion that flickered across her face upon seeing Alex Karev. He was the resident she'd worked with most since her arrival, but the two of them were hardly friends – barely even acquaintances, beyond a professional respect for one another. She wondered briefly whether she'd forgotten to check on a patient before getting ready to leave, but dismissed that thought. She'd checked, double checked, triple checked: her personal life may well be a mess, but that wasn't going to affect her professionalism.
Karev shuffled his feet slightly nervously. "I, um, about you and Torres. I'm sorry. Whatever." He shrugged before scurrying off.
Arizona stared after him, confused. This hospital had just been one surprise after another. Clearly news of their confrontation in the corridor earlier had spread far and wide, but for the life of her she couldn't work out why Karev cared. She couldn't help wondering what he'd meant by "you and Torres." She supposed from an outsiders' perspective, there had to be more to the story than was apparent. She wondered if anybody had come close to guessing right.
At precisely that moment Mark walked up, bag slung over his shoulder and keys jangling in his hand. "What did he want?" he scoffed, shooting Karev's back a distasteful look.
"I don't know…" Arizona shook her head, still puzzled.
"Whatever." Mark put his arm round her, steering her in the direction of the exit. "Come on, Robbins. Your carriage awaits."
"I just – I really loved her. Really really," Arizona lamented, scrunching her eyes up to peer into the bottom of the empty tequila bottle. "And I thought – I thought we could be us again."
Mark propped himself up on one elbow on the couch, contemplating her over the rim of his glass of whiskey. "You can't change the past, Robbins."
"I know," she bit her lip, placing the bottle on the table and flopping back onto the floor. "But I lost her once and I thought maybe this was my do-over, my chance to make this okay."
"What does she think?"
Arizona laughed wryly. "She thinks I'm a bitch. I walked away. And now she's walking away, because she's moved on. And she should, because I – I am a mess." She sat up again, reaching for another bottle. "I'm a one-woman wrecking ball."
Mark sighed. "Arizona, look at me. Did you ever stop to think that maybe you're a one-woman wrecking ball because of her?" He sat up properly, counting on his fingers. "One, you're young and fall hopelessly in love. Two, you very nobly – but stupidly – leave said girl because you think she deserves better than, what, a long-distance relationship and dates over a phone line. Three, you try to forget but you can't, because every other woman reminds you of her. Am I right?"
He watched as Arizona's bottom lip wobbled. She clutched the tequila like it was a life belt. "Go and see her, Robbins. Go. And make her see."
It was a stupid idea. A stupid, hopeless, alcohol-fuelled idea, and she hated herself for the hope that sprang up in her chest when Callie agreed to meet her. With every footstep she took closer to that damn park bench, she hated herself a tiny bit more.
"How did you even get my number?" Callie asked, pulling her jacket tighter around herself. She looked hostile, but at least she wasn't slamming any doors, Callie thought. She sounded less angry. More curious. Sad.
Arizona looked shifty. "Mark asked Addison." At the murderous look on Callie's face, she quickly continued: "She took a lot of convincing. He was very… convincing…" She shut up, realising she wasn't making the situation any better.
"So you got to my best friend too, huh?"
Arizona flinched as if struck. "No. She just…" She stopped short of explaining to Callie that actually, Addison had only agreed to giving them the number because Arizona had burst into tears. She wasn't a woman who cried. Then again, she hadn't thought she was a woman who cared. She was having to admit a lot of things to herself lately. "Do you remember, Calliope?" she asked softly. "Do you remember when I had to leave and we spent the weekend together, just drove?" Her eyes were wet and she tried not to cry. "I love you, I have always loved you, it has always been you, Calliope."
The brunette raised red-rimmed eyes to look at her. "You never wrote, Arizona. You never answered the phone, you never replied to any of my messages. You just disappeared."
"I… I didn't believe in long distance relationships. I was stupid, okay? I thought we had to let each other go." Arizona bit her lip, internally cursing the stupid mindset that had let the woman in front of her out of her life.
Callie shook her head. "You gave up on me. I wrote and I hoped and I prayed and I didn't listen to my parents when they told me I was better off without you, because I knew better. And then on high school graduation day, I finally realised you were never coming back. Not for me, not for anything. And I had to let you go."
Arizona's breath caught as Callie stood up.
"I can't do this, Arizona," she said, shaking her head and looking at her sadly. "I can't. I'm with George."
As Arizona watched her walk away for the second time that day, she couldn't stop the tears falling from her eyes.