Being Arizona chapter eighteen
Hey guys, so I'm sorry it's late, and on the shorter side, but it's less than a month's now until prelims and I have thirteen rehearsals for music in the space of 3 days. Plus I'm currently going through a breakup, it's my sister and best friend's birthday and it's nearly Christmas!
But you'll be happy (or you might not care) to know that I'm working on something else! I'm not uploading it until I've written all of it, just to avoid late updates as much as I can.
Who else is excited for Christmas?
I stared down at the row of teeny, tiny baby onesies that were all neatly hung up in a row on the racks of the store. I sighed as I traced over the picture of the giraffe on the one in my hand. I must have looked quite strange, standing there in the middle of the aisle, completely frozen and deep in thought. But this aisle was relatively empty- so were all of the aisles. Because it was pretty much the middle of the night.
"Ma'am, can I help you?" A voice said from behind me and I wheeled around to see a relatively young boy with a friendly face and glasses standing behind me. I forced a smile and nodded my head reassuringly.
"Yeah, I'm fine… Just deciding." I said.
Deciding what to do.
Deciding what kind of person I wanted to be.
Deciding whether to stay.
"Okay. Take your time." He smiled genuinely and I smiled back before going back into my land of contemplation.
Of course I was mad at Callie, and for good reason. She slept with Mark. After all of those times I'd worried and she'd assured me that she had no feelings for him, that he was her best friend, and everything that had happened between them was history, she had slept with him. And now he was going to be the father of the child that I could or could not accept- in approximately seven months.
But then again, I'd gone to Africa. I'd just ditched Callie in the middle of the airport without looking back. Then I'd waltzed right back again expecting her to forgive me, which in retrospect I realise was a presumptuous presumption. So did I really have a right to me mad, considering what I was mad about was caused by the hurt that I'd caused her?
I snapped myself back into reality and turned my attention again into the soft white onesie with the cutest little animals on in. I pictured it for a moment, a little tiny Calliope wearing it. A little kid running around our apartment, laughing the sweet baby laugh. I saw murals on nursery walls and a house with a swing set. And most of all, I saw Callie and I.
But then I saw Mark. I liked Mark, but this was not the way I'd imagined him being in my life. I was just starting to cope with the fact that he was a big part of Callie's life and so he would be a big part of mine, but this definitely was not the way I planned it. People got to know each other by going to lunch, or having conversations at work over coffee, not raising a child together.
But then the image of the tiny Calliope came back into my head and it confused me. How could I run? How could I just give up and bail, when there was a future in this? If despite all of the difficulties, we could make this work? I couldn't give up on that.
Once I got home I had planned to keep unpacking all of these boxes into my apartment that I'd got back, but the exhaustion and all of the emotions of the last day and a half suddenly caught up to me and I collapsed not even slightly gracefully onto the couch. I tilted my head back a breathed deeply, letting a few tears escape from my eyes as I let it all overcome me.
I picked up my phone that was lying on the table, turning the cool metal of the device over and over in my hands as I thought over what I could do.
I needed Timothy right now. He gave me the best advice when he was still here and that advice had helped me through some of the toughest times in my life. I felt several more tears roll down my face when I realised that that wasn't an option here, and I seemed to be left this dark, cold pool of thought until I made the decision which was completely mine.
Before I could stop myself I dialled my mom's number, seeking the warm motherly tone of her voice which was sure to calm me down.
"Mom?" I choked out when I heard the line pick up at the other end.
"Hello? Arizona? What's wrong, sweetie?" She said, concern laced through her voice and I could almost hear her frowning through the phone.
"C-Callie's pregnant." I wept. "She s-slept with M-Mark and she's p-pregnant and I-I don't know what to do."
It was silent for a moment as she thought through my words, "Oh, Arizona." She sighed sadly, her voice full of sympathy. But I didn't need her sympathy. I needed her advice.
"What do I do, mom? I love her. But I don't know what to do."
It was silent for a considerably longer time. I listened to the soft crackling of the other line and her steady breathing as she thought. I thought of all of the times we'd done this before, when my residency got hard or when I first moved here and was having trouble coping. No matter what happened I'd always phone her on a Sunday night.
"You need to be a good man in a storm."
I almost rolled my eyes for a minute, having heard this many times as I grew up, it being applied to whatever I did in my life. But I stopped as I realised what I was going to do. I was going to be a good man in a storm.
Not long after I hung up with my mom and I'd calmed down a considerable amount, I was sitting on the couch just thinking about how I was going to go about this when Callie walked in, all warm and beautiful.
"You ready to talk now?" She said carefully from behind me.
"I wanna say some really not nice things, and I want you to listen without saying that our relationship is over or walking out." I warned her, because although I was in, and I wasn't planning on leaving, and I loved her more than anything, I was still angry.
"Okay?" She said uncertainly, closing the door gently behind her and taking a step forward.
"I'm mad that you slept with someone else, and I know that we were broken up, but still, you slept with someone else. And I'm even madder that that person has a penis, and I know that you're bisexual, I know that, but still-"
"Would you rather I slept with a busty redhead, because-"She started to cut over me which made me just a little bit more pissed off. Okay a lot. She wasn't even going to let me explain myself?
"You have to give me a chance to process this, okay? I'm processing." I exclaimed fiercely.
"I didn't plan this. Okay?" She said forcefully, walking over so that I could see her. "I didn't plan any of this. But there's a... Mighty Oak, or whatever, showing up in our lives in about seven months, so… Now I have to plan. And I don't know how long I can wait for you to process."
While she was speaking I realised what she was saying. I didn't plan this, but neither did she. I didn't have time to process it, and neither did she. But she didn't have a choice. She needed to plan and she needed to know if I was going to ditch her. I sighed as the cogs in my head started spinning all over the place.
"But, I… I want you in my plan. I want you to be a part of my plan." She said, looking me straight in the eye. "So are you in, or are you out?"
In that moment, I knew all of the uncertainties and issues that we would face. I could think of a hundred reasons why I should run, just get up and leave.
But I could think of a thousand reasons to stay.
"I'm in." I said and she smiled really wide. "But I'm just… I'm still so mad, and I just need a minute to process… Because I'm still so mad at you, and you need to let me..."
She nodded understandingly and stood up. "I'll be at the hospital if you need me."
The steady swoosh-swoosh-swoosh of the familiar sound of an unborn babies heartbeat filled the room. I stared disbelievingly at the screen where this baby- our baby- was, and I smiled.
The first day of co-parenting and adjusting to this pregnancy thing had been hectic. I'd been paged more than once because Callie was convinced she was miscarrying, and it terrified me each time. She confided in me her deepest fears that she thought I was going to run, and even though I'd reassured her time and time again that I wasn't going to bail because I loved her that she wasn't quite certain yet.
I'd even been unsure about it all myself- until now. As I studied the blurry background and the tiny white blob that represented a human life, an image which I'd constantly looked to as someone else's baby,- just a ball of dividing cells- I realised.
This wasn't just a ball of dividing cells. This wasn't just another out of focus blob on an ultrasound screen.
This was my baby. Our baby.
"Oh."