Title: Extraordinary Measures
Author: J.M. Flowers
Rating: M
AN: I'm completely for serious this time when I say the end is in sight. Turns out, my shoulder injury (strained trapezius, tendonitis in the bicep) was a bit of a saving grace. While not allowed to work, I've spent my time with Extraordinary Measures! As it stands, I have the rest of the chapters written except for one, which I'll hopefully finish in the next few days. I've worked out a schedule that concludes this piece one year from when it started - on my birthday! That means twenty-five days to the end. Ahhhh/woooooo! xoxo
Thanks again, to all of you, for taking time to read this. I appreciate it more than you will ever know.
Causa latet, vis est notissima
The cause is hidden, but the result is well known
"Callie," she whispers, stroking hair off my forehead. My skin has cooled, the sweat of fever chilling while I slept. But the sun is shining now, bright rays bursting in from around the edges of the curtains, and she is lying beside me in our bed. Blonde hair glowing in the morning light and bright blue eyes dancing across my face and it feels like falling in love with her all over again.
I can't help but smile.
"Good morning," she murmurs, her hand stroking down my cheek. "Are you feeling better?"
I don't want to break this spell she's got me under. I don't want to do anything except look at her; beautiful Arizona in all her glory. The creases around her eyes, the curve of her mouth. I want to kiss trails down the sharp path of her mandible, lose my tongue in the hollow above her clavicle.
I roll us over, pinning her beneath me. She laughs, letting my hands wind into her curls. "I love you," I promise, lowering my mouth to press against hers. And everything is right again: just her and I, here, in this moment.
#
"Dr. Hamilton!" Arizona calls as soon as she spots Senna on the pathway ahead of us. There's a surge of people around us, the beginning of the morning shift at the hospital, but Senna stops at the sound of her voice, turning to greet us cheerfully.
"Good morning, Dr. Robbins. Dr. Torres, how are you feeling today?"
I flush self consciously, tugging Arizona's hand in front of my body. "Much better, thank you."
Arizona squeezes my fingers, attention shifting to my face. "Why don't you go on ahead, Calliope?" she whispers, kissing my cheek softly. "I'll see you for lunch, okay?"
And if it had been a different time, I would have understood walking away from Arizona so she could talk to a resident. I would not have been worried about whether or not I'd see her at lunch. Even if today feels different - better, somehow - there's a rush of insecurity that fills my chest as I stumble towards the hospital doors. There's no time to dwell on it, though, when there are rounds to complete and residents to teach and surgeries to perform.
My day fills with bones, casting, charts. By noon I've completely forgotten how it felt to leave her side. Instead, I'm strolling to the doctor's lounge to meet her and thinking about kissing her lips and holding her hand and reminding her just how much she means to me.
But the sight of her, hunched over a table reading, sends it all rushing back. I recognize the leather bound journals, the tight lines of handwritten passages. I feel his presence in the room as irrevocable as hers. "What are you doing?" I ask softly.
She looks up, startled, her face paling.
"Those are his..." I continue, my arms crossing over my chest.
"Callie -" she tries to begin.
"What are you doing, Arizona?"
She shakes her head, standing and stepping closer. She reaches a hand out to touch me and instinctively I pull away. Because this is wrong. This all feels really, really wrong.
"I asked Senna for his journals. I had to... I had to read what he wrote, Callie. About the effects of the machine. I had to know. I had to be sure that you'd be okay..."
I still, my hands dropping to my sides. The look on her face, the tip of her brows, is enough to make me want to tuck her under the curve of my arms and run screaming from the room all at once.
"Arizona -" I beg.
"I think... I think we should run some tests."
And so we do; a needle pushed into my vein, a syringe filled with blood. The tourniquet pinches at my skin, holding me roughly to this piece of reality I do not want. To the reality of an answer I'm not desperate to search for.
But she is. She needs to know, needs to see.
I know the truth in my heart before it's ever written on the page, as truthful in my mind as patients who know it's cancer the minute they walk through emergency room doors. I know the ache within me as inexplicably as I know her eyes, her breath. I know the look before I ever touch the page.
Then it's all in dark ink, beneath my fingertips. Permanent, unquestionable. The printed proof of what is already happening in my body. What lies ahead.
She lowers herself into a chair beside me, shivering. More shaken than I, who expected the awful truth of this. Who never wanted the certainty. It is she who is uncertain now, unprepared for this hurdle placed in our path.
Maybe we can jump it - for a time - or maybe it can destroy us. Destroy me.
"Callie," she whispers.
"Don't," I plead, "I don't - I can't - hear it. Don't say it out loud."
"The journals -" she tries again, but that's a thousand times worse and suddenly I feel like I'm suffocating from the weight of two different lives. Two lives that could never be the perfect I searched so desperately for. The forever we so rightfully deserved.
The tears start unabated, rolling down my cheeks of their own accord. Dripping off my chin, slapping loudly against the paper in my hands.
She drops to her knees in front of me, tugged from her own emotional reverie. "Oh, Callie," she murmurs, pulling me into her arms.
But she can't fix it now; the machine has done its damage. I have done mine.
#
It's hours later, in the safety net of our apartment, before she tries again. "The journals..." she says, her voice strong. I sense the quiver beneath the surface, the clenching of her diaphragm as she desperately tries to keep it together. "He wrote about the other layers, Callie. About being healthy in the first one, where he hadn't made a change."
I shrug, focused on the vegetables I'm cutting. Clinging to some semblance of our former normalcy - making dinner in the kitchen, eating on the couch, crawling into bed and making love in the moonlight. I need that back, I need all of it back. I need this to be okay.
But she says the words that take it all away. Again. "I think you should go back, Callie."
The knife tumbles from my hand, clattering loudly on the counter before skittering off and to the floor. "Don't you dare," I choke out, the tears starting anew. Even now, a whole lifetime away from where this all began, my emotions escape from me like a leaky faucet. I can't turn it off, I can't stop the drip. I feel a wreck; a mess.
"Don't you dare say that to me like it is easy, Arizona. You have no idea. You have absolutely no idea what it was..." My voice cracks, more tears tumbling free. I swipe at my cheeks angrily, craving the haughty indifference I was once capable of. Before all of this. Before love and accidents and rain.
"You think this is easy for me?" she sobs. It turns me on the spot, finally taking her in, startled by the tears already pouring down her face, too. "Calliope, you know. You know what it was like to-" She bends, gasping for air. "Don't make me go through that, too. Don't make me watch this happen to you." She rights herself, staring me down. The strength has returned, the quiver pushed far below her surface. "You can... you can go back, to before. You can be healthy and you can do good and we can..."
"I'll never see you again."
Another sob wracks through her, sharp and loud. I can't ignore it, can't ignore her. The red-rim of her blue eyes, the puff of her cheeks. This is killing her, too. This is killing us both. "We can have our memories."
I shake my head. "I only want you, Arizona."
