Title: Extraordinary Measures

Author: J.M. Flowers

Rating: M

AN: Wow, it has been a long time! Sorry about that; I took a bit of a break for the holiday season, and then it just kept going. I haven't stopped writing, I just wanted to get to a point where it would be a smooth transition into the second, and final, half of the story. As currently planned, there's about 13 more chapters to go, and I'll try to keep updates as regular as possible. Thanks for your maintained interest in my work! Enjoy xxx


Exitus acta probat

The result validates the deeds

I can feel the crack of my voice before I even open my mouth, the sharp hitting of a note beyond my range as poignant as metal against glass.

Shattering glass, erupting across the console of that old Mazda and sticking daggers in her beautiful face and spilling blood thick with the smell of copper.

She smells like coconut - dropping right off the tree, hitting the ground, and cracking open with a thud.

The thud of her head against the dashboard as she rolled off the side of the airbag, her body flailing with the heave of the car.

I heaved in the lounge, the taste of parmesan stabbing at the back of my throat, and once before, in a different three months, when she'd been dead and my stomach contents had wrapped themselves around old chop suey.

The seatbelt wrapped around her abdomen and wreaked havoc on her insides, filled the peritoneum with thick, arterial blood.

Like the blood on her face and in her hair and all over the operating room floor.

I sliced a scalpel through her skin.

"Arizona?"

But she lived.

"Calliope?" she repeats, stumbling towards me, limbs heavy with exhaustion. She was sleeping in our bed. "What's wrong?"

Nothing.

I wipe stubbornly at the tears coating my cheeks, something somewhere between a strangled sob and a choked-back laugh falling loudly off my lips. It startles her, halts her movement before she rushes forward and drops to her knees in front of me.

"Why are you crying?" she whispers, a pale hand reaching up to stroke my cheek. I flinch before her fingers meet my skin, another pitch of laughter exulting into the space between us.

Us.

Not me, not her - us. Both of us, together, in the same room. Alive and breathing.

I grab her face, a hand on either side of her jaw - mandible - my thumbs hooking on the patches of skin that dimple in her smile, where they used to fit in the seconds before I kissed her.

I want to kiss her.

I want to flick my tongue against the insides of her teeth and bite her bottom lip and feel the rush of a quickening pulse beneath my palms. I want to taste her breath and bury my nose in the coconut of her hair, feel the warmth of her skin on my fingertips. I want the electricity of touching her, the fireworks of pressing my lips against her own. I want it all, everything.

Her.

"Callie?" she says, blue eyes dancing back and forth across my face. "Are you okay?"

I shake my head, entranced by her. The three freckles on the right side of her nose; the way her mouth tilts upwards a little more on the left; the mole that sits in the dip of her cleavage, on display in the over-sized t-shirt she's wearing. One of mine, I think. The blue of her eyes as clear as the curve beneath a white capped wave, crashing into the shore and bursting apart. Waves I used to leap through as a child, a colour I still lose myself in after all these years.

I'm not sure I ever told her that.

I'm not sure I ever told her how much I love her.

"I love you," I say now, "And I will always love you, and nothing's ever going to take you away from me and I used to dive through your eyes when I was little and-"

"Callie," she cuts me off, shaking her head, "I love you, too."

I lean forward quickly, catching her lips with my own, pushing hard and with all the vigor I can muster. She pulls away when I open my mouth to run my tongue along her lips, begging for something deeper. Something louder, more concrete.

"What happened?" she asks, stroking my hair back off my face.

I shake my head again, surging forward for another kiss, but she leans away, grabbing onto my shoulders to slow me down.

"Did you have the dream again?" she whispers, her brows as furrowed and worried as Mark's were when he asked the same thing. You can't keep doing this to yourself.

What dream?

"Callie," she soothes, swiping her thumb across my cheek to collect another tear that's made its escape. "You can't keep doing this to yourself."

I drop my hands from her face.

"It's been three months since the accident."

I recoil, pulling away from her quickly and jumping to my feet, dashing across the apartment for... something. Anything.

Three months.

The night Teddy and I sat in Joe's drinking tequila, wiping our eyes with cocktail napkins and busying our hands with beer nuts. Talking about the rain on the road and the right of way and how stupid it was to think that one idiot drove drunk through Seattle a week before St. Patrick's Day. That people drank before driving at all.

"We need to talk about it eventually, Calliope," she swears, on her feet as well and clicking the lock into place.

The lock that clicked shut behind Mark, after a banging garbage can lid silenced our argument, three months after the accident.

The accident.

"I'm alive, Calliope," she promises, "I'm not dying. I'm right here."

"But you did die," I whisper, a shuddering breath filling my chest, "I did lose you."

Arizona shakes her head, stepping in front of me and wrapping her hands around the nape of my neck. She tugs me close, our foreheads resting against each other. "It was just a dream," she murmurs. "It was all just a dream. I'm alive, I'm right here."

Forever.

#

I wake up shaking, shivering between the sheets even though there's sunlight pouring across my body, the curtains thrown open. I never open the curtains in the morning, Arizona always -

Arizona.

I remember like a hurricane, full force winds slamming against my chest and ripping the air from my lungs. Because my bed is empty. I've woken up alone, when I swear I kissed her lips and held her hand and felt her slip her leg in the space between my own before I fell asleep. I swear it happened, realer than the first - first, first - day of the accident, when she hastily pressed her thumb against my clit and moaned along with me as I came beneath her fingertips.

I kissed her last night, in our apartment. I brought her back. I saved her.

I leap from the bed, storming across the room to the closed door, throwing it open. She's not in the bathroom, analyzing her face in the mirror or perched atop the toilet seat. In the kitchen, the tap drips, an empty mug left on the counter. A half pot of coffee sits in the percolator, warm or cold I'm not sure, I'm too busy screaming in my head.

And then out loud. "Arizona? Arizona!"

But she's gone. She's not here, and I'm crazy. I dreamed her back and it wasn't real and I thought it was real, I thought I'd saved her and she'd promised me forever again and everything was going to be okay, everything was going to -

The door opens.

I choke on the lump in my throat.

Blonde hair swishes.

The door clicks shut.

"Good morning," she singsongs, floating across the apartment like a cloud. Depositing a box on the counter, the Krispy Kreme logo easily giving its contents away; a tray with two coffees; the morning paper. "How did you sleep?"

I turn slowly, watching her, my feet glued to the floor beside the couch, trying desperately to remember a morning when she brought me donuts and wore the ugliest blue track pants and had her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail and not a stitch of makeup on her face.

I can't remember a single time she's looked more beautiful. Not a single morning just like this one.

"What day is it?" I whisper.

She looks to the ceiling for a moment, thinking, humming as she bites into a sprinkled mess. "Wednesday?"

"What day?" I repeat, still unmoving.

She finally looks at me, her brow furrowing slightly. "Callie?" she asks, "What's wrong?"

"What day is it?" I say again, voice harder. She flinches a little at my tone, sets down her donut and moves around the counter towards me.

"The tenth," she answers, tentatively reaching a hand out to me.

I lean away from her touch. "Of June?" I whisper.

She nods.

The tenth of June.

Three months.

I collapse into her, crushing her against me, burying my face in her neck.

Because she's real. She's back. It's been three months, but I saved her.

I saved her.