Chapter 4 - Follow
Present day
Arizona breathed a deep sigh as she stared up at the facade of her new place of work, fidgeting with the rectangular box in her purse and twisting it around in her hand. She had stopped by a corner store on her commute after realizing that she was having trouble getting a full breath in. It was like someone was stepping on her chest, not enough to choke her, but enough that the sensation induced that sense of dread that only fueled its growth. A lot of times, she was able to breathe the sensation away using techniques and mindfulness, or better yet, it would fade on its own after a while. This was not one of those times.
Before she had even recognized what she was doing just twenty minutes ago, she had already begun looking for signs for convenience stores. Luckily, she'd found one just in her eyeline. She had all but dashed across the street when the walk sign turned, and felt immediate relief as she stepped into the building, the door jingling above her. She was intimately familiar with this cycle of hers, enough that when she handed the cashier a ten, it was clear her mind had gone on autopilot and forgotten how high the tobacco tax was in her new city, and had to dig back through her purse for a bigger bill.
The box of cigarettes comforted her, even the smell of them relaxed her in a way she could never really explain to anyone, given that she wasn't even a full-time smoker. It helped Arizona to know that they were there if the panic set in. She hoped she didn't need them, though.
She removed her hand from the pack, steadying herself, and made her way into the building.
Upon entering the lobby, she saw a familiar angular face with deep brown hair, and almond eyes looked up from some papers to greet her. Dr. Polly Preston crossed the lobby in her white coat, embroidered over her heart in fine black thread with the words "Chief of Pediatric Surgery".
"Dr. Preston, or should I say Chief Preston, it's so good to see you!" Arizona beamed, approaching the younger woman and morphing their handshake into a quick hug. She really had been a great candidate for the peds fellowship when they met, and Arizona still felt slightly bad about using the talented surgeon's resume to entice Karev into staying with her in Seattle. She'll never feel bad about him staying, though.
"It's good to see you, too, Dr. Robbins," Chief Preston said with a warm smile. "How have you been liking the city so far?"
"Still getting settled, but so far so good!" Arizona said, nodding and looking around the interior of her new home away from home.
Knowing what the future held, Arizona realized she wouldn't be seeing all that much of her actual neighborhood these next few months anyway. She was going to be working at Mount Sinai, but that was just going to be a temporary position while she and Dr. Herman nailed down the details of their women's health center.
"Well, I'll show you up to the attendings' lockers and have one of our fellows show you around. I wanted to greet you, but we're a pretty busy ward, and it only seems to be getting busier since I've taken over the department," said the younger woman, walking over to one of the elevators with Arizona following behind.
She got her toiletry bag and some changes of clothes settled into her locker before being led to HR to fill out some remaining paperwork. They gave her a pager, coat, and a few sets of scrubs, and she began to take a tour of the pediatric surgery floor with the fellow, making mental notes each time they passed an on-call room.
After a while, she had seen all of the ORs, the attendings' break room, pre-op, post-op, and everything in between. The wealth of the facilities here far exceeded those of Grey Sloan Memorial, even as widely known and well-funded as it was. At this Arizona found she was a bit jealous, despite the fact that this was now her hospital, and would likely be for at least the next several months. Chief Preston had passed by in the middle of the tour and made a point of showing Arizona where they kept the nuclear protein machines, laughing at the sheepish look on the blonde's face as she remembered the day she showed young Polly around years before.
Arizona mostly spent the day acclimating to the new environment, rounded on some patients, had a consult, and before she realized it, her first day was over. She was thankful she had been able to leave before night fell, and was just walking out the doors when her phone started ringing. She checked the caller ID and smiled, answering.
"Hey, I'm just leaving the hospital. Which property are we checking first?"
Arizona walked alongside Dr. Herman and Pickle, her chocolate Labrador guide dog, down Brooklyn streets to the first on their list of office spaces for their new medical center. The sun was just beginning to hang low in the sky, and the street was painted with a deep orange glow that reflected from the warped glass windows of the surrounding buildings. All of the ones they passed were in various states of mild disrepair, though none entirely abandoned it seemed.
The two women walked up the steps to one of the more squat building's doors, following behind a real estate agent. The shorter man with a full head of white hair stepped up and unlocked the doors, allowing the two women past him to enter into the main lobby area.
"So, this entry could be very easily converted into your waiting room or reception area. Just knock this wall down, add some desks and chairs, et voila!" the perky man said as he made his way through the dimly lit space. That's a bit optimistic, Arizona thought to herself as she walked through this first room.
There was almost no light, although there were plenty of fluorescent light boxes on the ceiling, almost none of them were lit. Arizona could see in the frosted glass that many of the boxes were filled with a black dust, and a few were home to long dead flies. The dusty teal carpet had lifted and bubbled in many spots, the woven backing frayed along the baseboards. The walls looked like they had just been repainted to cover graffiti, bright pops of color still peeking through beneath the off-white like flecks of confetti.
The agent cheerily led the two of them down a darkened hall to the exam rooms, some still containing patient exam tables that had sat derelict for long enough that the yellow foam inside the cushions was both visible and discolored, stained around the edges. The cabinets were all a pale yellow that competed with mint green and white checkered tile floors, and the veneer was peeling in a few corners to reveal pulpy plywood. Everything about each of the rooms felt uncanny in the dark, and it was hard for Arizona to imagine a clinic here after seeing this place.
"There's a kitchenette in here, I believe this would have been the break room," said the agent, and he wasn't wrong. It was about ten square feet of countertop, a four-burner electric stove and gas oven, a sink, and exactly two cupboards. Across the room stood an old refrigerator, dark stains on the floors surrounding it on each side, creating a kind of shadow that flowed out from it. Arizona had to suppress a shiver looking at the stain. It had long since dried, but the deep brown felt like it was creeping toward her and she would be swallowed if she looked away. She felt the pressure on her chest starting to make its return.
The agent quietly excused himself to allow them to look around and talk it over.
"Well, Robbins? Thoughts? Comments, questions, concerns?" Dr. Herman asked, leaning against one of the walls that Pickle had guided her to.
"It's small," Arizona stated, matter-of-factly. She walked over to a row of lockers and popped one open, noting the rust forming on the hinges and unpainted edges of the metal. She ran her finger along the jagged edges, suppressing a yelp when her finger caught on it and she felt it slice into her. It wasn't enough to alarm, but it drew blood that pooled into a perfect sphere on the tip before she wrapped a napkin from her purse around the tiny wound.
"That was just as descriptive as I was hoping for. Thank you for that, Dr. Robbins. I can really picture it all now," Dr. Herman said, rolling her eyes before looking towards Arizona's voice. "Can you tell me literally anything else?"
"Sorry, um, yeah. It looks kind of run down, but maybe with the grant money we'll be able to fix it up. There's twelve exam rooms and six procedure rooms, an office space both near reception and by procedure rooms, and then this one," said Arizona, thoughtlessly repeating the list of rooms in chronological order from when they first entered the building up until now. She was finding it more and more difficult to breathe as they continued to stand near those stains. The brown was starting to look less like old water damage and more like dried blood by the second.
"I could hear the agent talking, you know that, right? I'm asking for your opinion, Robbins. What do you think?" Dr. Herman pressed. As she spoke, she could hear Arizona's breathing change, speeding up, and what sounded like her rummaging through her bag. She could tell something wasn't right with the younger woman.
"What's going on? Is everything ok with you and Torres? With Sofia?"
She reached out aimlessly to try to steady Arizona and her hand landed on her arm as it was moving slightly. She heard the ragged breathing slow down slightly, but it was still clearly shaky.
Arizona felt herself on the very cliff's edge of breaking. Her head swam with thoughts of Callie's hand gripping her waist, holding her hand, the overwhelming, maddening tenderness of such simple gestures. Her mind landed on the gut wrenching realization that all she wanted to do in that moment, until the end of time, was be held by this woman who she could not begin to understand anymore. And then her mind fell on that pained expression on Callie's face, the way her brown eyes had looked away and through her unseeing as she wept.
Arizona was intimately and acutely familiar with Callie's crying face, but the expression she'd seen at the park, the one that haunted her last night, she had never known. She knew it was a mistake to have gotten her hopes so high, but she thought she might at least be able to see Arizona as a friend. There was nothing she could do to shake the crushing weight of this disappointment sitting on her lungs, but she forced herself to swallow her feelings and shook her head.
"Everything's fine. Callie is... we're all fine," Arizona finally answered, a shuddering breath escaping between the words as she flipped the cigarette box covertly.
"Robbins, that woman is making you stupid. It's like déjà vu. I don't even need to see the look on your face to know that."
"Mind your own damn business, why don't you?" Arizona snapped, her shaking voice betraying more pain than anger. She absolutely did not want to hear it. Certainly not from one of the only people who was there for her during the dying breaths of her marriage.
She regretted it almost immediately as her mentor's eyebrows fell, and her expression hardened. Dr. Herman paused for a long moment to put together the words she needed Arizona to hear. They sat in the silence that clotted the air, trying to regain and maintain composure respectively. The hardness slowly faded from Dr. Herman's expression and she pursed her lips in thought before finally speaking.
"I don't know if you remember tackling me in my invalid's bed just a few weeks ago, but that was a handshake," said Dr. Herman. Hearing nothing in response from Arizona, she heaved a great sigh of frustration and continued.
"We made an agreement. We are partners. That makes you my business. You don't get to sidestep this, like a child, and then expect me to trust your judgment. And I definitely can't trust your judgment if you won't even say it."
A weight settled in the pit of Arizona's stomach as she listened to her, knowing in her gut that she was right. This project they were undertaking, it was bigger than the both of them combined, bigger than anything she had ever done. The lofty goals she had, all starting with the obstetrical cart, and now with the even loftier goals to change the face of maternal fetal medicine across the country, to make maternal mortality a thing of the past. She couldn't afford to think about anything, or anyone, else.
"I'm sorry, " Arizona breathed, letting her head fall into her hands. She promised herself she wouldn't cry, but she wasn't sure anymore how well she could hold herself to that as the edges of her vision blurred.
"Don't be sorry, I can't do anything with that. Be here," Dr. Herman scoffed, smiling slightly. She let her hand run up Arizona's arm to land on her shoulder, and gave her a small squeeze before letting it drop back to her side. "Now, listen, do you actually think the place looks fixable? Because I genuinely can't do anything without your opinion on it."
Arizona chuckled and sniffled, dabbing the corners of her eyes. "Honestly? It looks like an abandoned institution, but maybe that's your style," she said, letting herself laugh out loud as she dodged a few wide swings from the woman she admired more than anyone.
"Say something else, Robbins, I need to know where to pop you!"
Arizona, ever the respectful student, grabbed Dr. Herman's runaway fist and guided it back to her shoulder, accepting the firm but gentle punch. Dr. Herman gave Pickle a command and he began to lead her out, Arizona following close behind.
"Alright, well, thank God we have a few more on the list for today," said Dr. Herman, "Let's get out of here."
Callie finished the day filled with relief. The chief and the board had been impressed with her progress on the research, or really, the progress her interns and residents had made. She really needed to treat all of them to coffee or something to make up for how hard they've worked in taking things off her plate. She stood before her locker as she changed into her plainclothes and grabbed her purse. A quick check of the time told her that Sofia was just about to be finished up at school, so she shut her locker and headed out.
"Mama!" Sofia shouted, running full pelt out of the school building. Realistically, the school she went to was close enough to Callie's apartment that she was able to walk home in a group of kids, and their parents rotated in meeting them at the school to walk with them, but today all Callie wanted to do was be alone with her baby. She greeted one of the parents to make sure the other kids in her neighborhood had an adult to walk with them before she left with Sofia.
"Hi, mi amor," she said, pressing a kiss to the top of Sofia's head. She grabbed her daughter's hand and they began the short walk back home. Sofia was really excited to talk about her day, which was a great comfort after so many months of Sofia downright hating school. Apparently, her class had been discussing different places to learn about US history in the city, and the teacher had brought up the many different history museums around town. He had assigned each of the students to pick one, take a look around the exhibits, and write a short report about what they learned. Sofia produced a list from her backpack and passed it up to Callie. Scanning the paper, she saw one circled. The Intrepid.
"It's a battleship! I told them Mommy's name is from a battleship, too," Sofia beamed.
Callie smiled before she could think to stop herself. Arizona knew everything there was to know about the history of her namesake, but she also knew a fair bit of military history beyond that. It was an interest she had been encouraged in as a child, and she had cultivated even as she became an adult, because she knew how proud it made her father.
Callie remembered Arizona reading all kinds of books on different wars throughout history, talking her ear off when she read something particularly interesting. She loved the way her face lit up when she would talk about the strategies they used, how a smaller army outsmarted a larger one, the ways they would sabotage one another in the night by routing enemy supply lines or setting tents ablaze. Callie had never actively bothered with remembering any of the details, but after hearing about it enough, she found herself retaining more and being able to reference the information Arizona had rambled excitedly, and it had actually been a bit fun to talk about something that was challenging, but not as life-and-death challenging as their work.
However, her smile slowly fell when she thought back to the events of Arizona's arrival. She hadn't gotten so much as a text from Arizona since then, almost a week ago, except for a confirmation on her Google Calendar about their custody schedule. The guilt she felt about crying on her ex-wife after she'd spent so much time and energy making this move ate at her. It couldn't have been easy for her. She felt especially bad knowing how much they had been talking and texting leading up to the move. She had been so excited to see Arizona, but that excitement was hard to separate from her anxiety and dread, they all pooled together and tangled to the point of being indistinguishable from one another.
Callie had only really felt like herself in those moments seeing her screen light up with Arizona's name, so when she had to pretend to be like herself for longer than an hour, in front of someone who knew her every vulnerability, who could read every expression on her face, it felt like wearing someone else's skin and praying she wouldn't be found out. She knew she had to make it right, and she had an idea as she looked down at Sofia conspiratorially.
"Should we surprise Mommy with a trip to the museum?"
The clean white walls and low pile plastic carpet in this building were the best Arizona had seen out of all three of the buildings she and Dr. Herman had been through so far. There were sleek, dark wooden cabinets in each of the exam and procedure rooms, and the tile floors in each had held up with no obvious chipping since the previous owners had vacated. The overhead fluorescent lights were still pretty dim from disuse, but there were large windows that spanned one wall of most of the exam rooms that showed a view of the street below and let in a good amount of the light for only being on the fourth floor. Arizona was taking some notes down when she heard a muffled chime from her purse.
She pulled her phone out to see a message from Callie. She frowned, wondering if her schedule had changed suddenly and she already needed to switch things around. She unlocked her phone to read.
Hey, Sof has a school project. Are you free this weekend to help her with it? Together?
Arizona bit down hard on her lip to keep a smile from spreading across her face, as if Dr. Herman would see and scold her for it. God, I am so fucked, she thought to herself as she felt her heart shoot up from rock bottom to cloud nine in a matter of seconds. The weight in the pit of her stomach burst into a million butterflies that held her to the spot and threatened to shoot up into her throat, and she choked back a giggle. A giggle for Christ sake.
Unfortunately for her, Dr. Herman knew everything, whether or not she could see her.
"Tell her I said 'hi'," Dr. Herman teased.
"I will tell no one nothing!" Arizona insisted, unable to hide the sound of her smile in her voice.