"Have you and Arizona ever talked about those 4 days after the crash?" Barbara asks me.
"No not really, when she came home she didn't want to discuss it. Then after the amputation she barely spoke to me. Once things started to get better I was afraid to bring it up . I never wanted her to go back to that darkness." I tell her.
"My daughter is very much like her father that way, avoid and then move on like nothing happened. Loving them can be the most frustrating thing in the world." She says with a slight chuckle.
"Tell me about it" I say.
"One night around 2 in the morning our phone rang, it was Arizona. It was before the amputation. She couldn't sleep and wanted to talk to her dad. I guess she figured he would understand how she was feeling since he dealt with a lot of people that faced life altering situations. " Barbara says.
"I'm glad she had someone to talk to, I wish it could have been me." I tell her.
"I know you do dear. Anyway, she told him the things that happened in those 4 days. It is something you would not wish on your worse enemy let alone your own child. Daniel doesn't cry often but that night he cried like I never seen him before, even when Tim died. He wouldn't tell me everything she told him but he told me enough. From the moment she knew the plane was going to crash all she could do is think of you and Sofia. The first day she knew her leg was bad but she focused in Mark. She needed him to stay alive for you and Sof. She knew how much you loved him. As the days went on she thought that was how she was going to die, in the woods alone from a opened femur wound. Gods final joke on her , married to the best orthopedic surgeon in the country and dieing from a broken bone. "
"I failed her." I say as tears are running down my cheeks.
Barbara takes her my hand in hers and says, " you did not fail her Callie, you saved her and her father and I can not thank you enough for that."
Tears are now falling down both our cheeks.
Barbara clears her throat and continues." The only thing that kept her alive out there and not give up was you and Sofia. You two are her world. She fought so hard not to die from that damn leg then the first thing the doctors in Idaho wanted to do was cut it off. To her it was a symbol of her surviving ...of the strength it took to make it back alive. She did not give up. She was determined not to lose it because that would mean she gave up."
"That's why she begged me not to take it, not to give up on her. She thought if I took the leg that I gave up on her, on us." I say.
" I know it does not make a lot of sense but during that time she wasn't thinking rashly. She knows now that life and leg are two different things but then the were one. The leg was symbolic of the fight to live, by taking the the leg the fight to live was taken to." She tells me.
"I tried. I really tried to save it. I had a plan that I had to fight our Cheif to let me try. I should have never even been involved from a doctors stand point but I begged him to let me try and he finally gave in. I went over everything with her surgeon, exactly what should be done and when, but the infection was so bad and her body was in such bad shape it just couldn't fight it off. I was in surgery when she coded, Alex came in and told me he tried everything and she kept coding. I didn't know what to, I couldn't leave the surgery so I gave her the only chance I knew and told him to take the leg. I killed me to even say the words, but I swear to you I never gave up on her."
"Oh Callie, we know you didn't " Barbara says.
"I will never forget the look in her eyes when she woke from surgery and I had to tell her, It broke me that I caused that pain."
"We would have made the same decision even if that meant she hated us, at least she would be alive." Barbara says.
"Yeah, but I don't think she ever forgave me...Not really"
"She forgave you, she just never forgave herself and I don't think you ever forgave yourself either." Barbara says.