Herman comes to her in a daze, and she knows it's time, though she begins to fight it. She is not ready yet, she knows this. Yet the woman's vision is blurred and she steadies herself with her hands against the wall. Amelia takes her hand and leads her for a scan.
And she knows by the scan that it's time. It's time, despite anything she wants to do now, any last minute preparations that she had in mind. Any last consults. It no longer matters now. It's time.
As if on cue, Arizona comes to her hastily, demanding Herman, reprimanding Amelia for her silence, for her stoicism in that moment.
But Arizona understands when she looks, and Amelia can feel her gaze boring into her.
"Are you ready?"
Sure, she must say. She has to be.
"Amelia…" she warns, or maybe asks, maybe pleads. She can't absorb the sound.
Unsure of what she asks, she tells her yes anyway and goes to prepare the OR. This moment is Arizona's now. She is only the surgeon.
But she has to stop at the restroom. She doesn't really need to use it, or maybe she does, but first, she draws herself to the mirror, she walks to it and stares at herself. Her gaze wanders to everywhere but her eyes. She looks to her neck and finds a fading bite that Arizona left not too long ago. It was once red against her skin, now existing only as a bruise that begins to disappear. She wishes to sustain it.
She traces it with the tip of her finger, as though she can still feel the teeth marks, a symbol of something real, something that could be felt. A keepsake, from her. She looks at it and feels it and relishes it, savoring all that it means in this moment.
She wonders if Arizona will still be hers if she fails.
She shrugs the thought away, lifting her shoulders as if to hasten the departure. She will not fail.
She notices a wrinkle, newly formed, just beside her mouth. She wonders when it happened. She wonders if it's because she's been smiling too much, because she's been too happy, too confident.
She looks at her eyes now - tired and bright, glistening brightly. She looks in the mirror, and thinks about how much she's slept. Not much.
All her time has been spent with a tumor and Arizona.
Now she can feel it. It's a rush in her chest that rises to her throat. She leans over and clutches the sink. The glistening in her eyes become tears.
And now she cries. She has to. She doesn't want to break her pride.
She doesn't want to break Arizona.
She has something good. She doesn't want to lose it.
She doesn't want to lose.
So she cries. And she takes a breath and stands before the mirror and looks proud, despite her watering eyes. She draws back and straightens her posture, and with two hands on her hips and her chin pointed upward, she takes a deep breath and revels in the everything in her life.
"Superhero."
She watches from afar as Arizona escorts Herman's gurney down the hall. She seems to be speaking frantically, looking up sporadically, before looking down again to, it seems, reproach Nicole's pessimism. She doesn't look at Amelia as Herman's gurney is turned, and Amelia fails to look at her, too. Because they both know.
"Let's get you inside."
The next time she sees her, it is only to nod. Only to admire. Only to transfer confidence, to applaud bravery.
"Go save that baby."
Arizona turns to leave her, and then she is gone. She stands with Edwards, and they both bask in their heroism, in what they can do now.
It happens faster than she expects it to, and now she opens up Nicole's skull with Stephanie beside her and a sea of doctors peering down at her.
No pressure, she thinks.
She looks up only briefly, and notices the people she expects. The surgeons that are in rotation, stopping by before their next big surgery. April. Jackson. Meredith.
Callie.
Do you have any help?
The second hour, she begins to wonder, to wonder if she does have help, and she looks up, and finds that Arizona is not there, and realizes that she shouldn't be there, anyway.
She knows that she will not see her, that she will not see her for a while, or perhaps not at all in the days to come if she were to fail in this moment. Arizona would not blame her, she knows, but she also knows better than to allow herself to fall for the charm of romance over reality.
Reality wins, always. And it's always conquered her.
So she will not let the charm overtake her, though she almost did, though somehow, she always does. And yet, being with her feels right.
She feels good.
She knows that she can thrive with her if she allows herself to. If she allows herself to not fail, to be better than she is now.
But a part of her is afraid to acknowledge what is already there, sinking into her slowly. She knows it's there, just like she knew that the attraction was there from the start.
But just like the attraction, she knows, also, that she can save Herman. That confidence was there from the start. The startling revelation that ushered her into a whirlwind romance.
She smiles to herself, chucking at her own thoughts. Whirlwind romance. She wonders how far in she is. She can feel Edwards' gaze boring into her as she inquires. "What's funny?"
"Me," Amelia tells her. "Edwards, isn't the glow of this tumor beautiful?"
"Astounding," she agrees, almost skeptically.
"Do you think I'm losing it?"
"Sometimes," Edwards considers. "But that's what makes you brilliant."
Brilliant.
She raises her voice. She knows everyone listens.
But she asks, anyway.
"Can someone update me on Robbins' surgery?"
"She and Doctor Bailey are feuding at the moment," someone informs her. "Karev is being called in."
"For what?"
"Consult."
"Keep me updated."
She knows Stephanie wants to berate her, for asking about her girlfriend, for not being fully attentive, though she is, though she's clearly hit a road block with this tumor, though she is beginning to doubt herself and she knows it's being sensed. As though people always knew her.
The sixth hour, Meredith reports Arizona's success, and Amelia grins and basks in her brilliance, in her endurance.
She is relieved, for a while.
The tumor gets worse. Her strategies are failing. Everyone has sensed it now. Stephanie inquires. The balcony is muted.
Arizona does not show.
The eighth hour, she remembers the hesitation. She remembers how she felt when Callie challenged her, how her simple words opened up a world of chaos inside of her.
She remembers how it left her doubtful. How she called Addison only to receive more doubts.
"Robbins?" she asked, incredulously. "You can't be serious."
She heard the harshness in her tone, the muffle of the phone connection somehow accentuating the effect. "What do you mean?"
"I don't believe you," she said, sharply.
Amelia scoffed. "What, Addie?" she asked. "What don't you believe?"
"It's…" Addison started, at a loss for words, it seemed, "quite a change."
Something about it infuriated her. Maybe it was the tone. Maybe it was everyone else's doubts. She was always defending herself.
"What, that I like a woman? This is real. Do you know how many girls I flirted with when-"
"Of course, Amy. That's not what I meant." Addison cut her off. "I remember. I was there for that," she said pointedly. "I was there for everything."
The last of her words brought Amelia back to another time, so far away, yet somehow undeniably close. The turmoil inside of her.
"Right," she said. "So what's the problem with this?"
"She just got divorced," Addison pointed out again.
"It's been some time," Amelia retorted.
She heard muffling in the background, a child's bantering. Henry in the background, her godson, her little troublemaker. She toned herself down just then, and tried to become more reasonable.
"So she's serious about you?"
"Can you quit basing this off Torres?" she defended, despite Addison not asking about Callie, though she told her of the incident during her presentation, which ultimately prompted the phone call. Upon remembering, she tried to draw herself back into the point. "Besides, I called to talk about the surgery, not this."
"What is 'this' that you keep talking about?"
"Huh?"
"You keep saying 'this,' but I'm not sure what you know what it means."
She heard Henry again. Heard his muffled voice, asking his mother for something. "Stop treating me like a child."
"I'm just worried about you, Amelia. Will you be okay with all of this?"
"I'll be fine," she said. "I don't need my brother."
"I didn't even say that."
"But you're thinking it, aren't you?" she knew.
"Amelia..
"I'm fine with this surgery. Honestly," Amelia told her. "Listen, I wanted you to help her if I end up screwing Herman up" she explained, "but if she is that untrustworthy to you, then forget it."
"Of course not!" Addison exclaimed. "She is renowned. People fly across the country just for her."
Somehow, despite the conversation, despite the murmuring of reassurances, despite everything, she placed her trust in Addison.
And Arizona ended up being her girlfriend, anyway. Despite everything.
The tenth hour, she falters and makes a call to Addison. She leaves a voicemail. Frantic, unheard even to herself.
She begins to lose herself.
There is a call some hours later, but she can no longer tell the hours. She is informed that Addison is flying in.
The tumor glows brightly.
It becomes too difficult. She sweats. Stephanie attempts to groom her confidence. She has to laugh. She begins to laugh it off.
The way she does. The way she did all the time.
And now she remembers Derek, and his esteem and how it's always chased her, through life, and through med school, and even now, years later. It took his word to get here. It took his word to conquer him.
He swoops in for her, all the time. He is always the one that ends up saving her.
She can never save herself. She can't save anyone, she realizes.
She pulls aside, now, and asks for Richard.
But he refuses to call Derek.
Who are you doing this for, he asks her, and she wonders at it. Saving one life equates to saving many.
She did this for herself.
And then it became so much larger.
Life is so vast, she realizes.
And now she does it for everyone. For herself.
For Arizona.
Somehow, she returns revitalized. And she looks up and finds Addison's bright eyes looking at her in awe and admiration.
On some unknown hour, she is looking for her, in this OR that she knows is vacant of her. She knows what she searches for is futile. Still, she looks for her in everything that she sees. At the blur of scrub nurses that hastily cater to her needs, at the drab blue walls that enclose the space she works in, at the open skull of the woman lying before her, at the catastrophic tumor that glows in its malignancy, daring her to continue, daring to consume, to win. She doesn't bother looking up to the balcony and at the sea of people watching her, with their probing eyes cast down on her. She knows she will not find Arizona there.
In actuality, she doesn't need her to be there. She just needs to feel her.
They are in bed, sleeping and studying, but mostly wound up warmly against each other, listening to medical podcasts. Amelia's surgery is mentioned.
"Publicity, much?" Arizona teases.
"It's huge."
"I know."
"I'll be really fucked if I fail."
She feels a caress against her arm as Arizona runs her fingertips smoothly across her skin. The kiss against her forehead is light.
"The tumor is relentless," Arizona acknowledges, "but so are you."
She doesn't call Derek, and somehow, it works.
It works with her hand, her exposed hand against the tumor, and Owen's barking echoing in the OR.
She's never realized how loud his voice can get.
She finds her way out of the OR, she finds herself solitary despite the voices chasing after her, praising her, asking questions, wondering, wondering.
She finds the hallway and slides against the wall and releases her breath.
And then she cries.
"You weren't there," she tells her. She feels her more than she sees her, and this has been happening more, all the time, it seems, and she wants to know what it is. Why she can feel her so strongly. How she knows she's there before she's even there, and it makes her wonder. She rests herself hard against her seat.
She found her in the backyard, on the deck that overlooks Seattle at the McDreamy palace. She looks over to her now and it takes a moment for Arizona to draw her eyes to the cigarette in her hand.
"She's not awake," Amelia tells her, feeling her chest fill up. It's heavy with disappointment. Heavy with commitment.
"I wasn't there," Arizona tells her, walking to her, taking a seat across from her. "Callie tried to get me to come, but I didn't. So she left."
"She's not awake yet."
"But she's alive," Arizona tells her.
"She could be corked."
"She's alive."
"What will you do?"
"I don't know," Arizona says, and draws a cigarette from the pack on the table.
"You smoke?"
"Not really," she says.
She lights up despite that, and coughs for a moment before taking a deeper drag, and Amelia watches as her face scrunches up, as she crinkles her nose in the usual way that she does, in a gesture that Amelia finds herself in awe at.
She finds herself staring.
Arizona finds her staring. "What?"
"You know," Amelia starts, "I've been stuck with this thought."
She is sure now.
"What thought?"
"That maybe I didn't want to do this," she explains, and gestures a hand between them, "us."
She hesitates as she watches Arizona's expression fall, but she continues, "or maybe it wasn't that I didn't want to, but that this wouldn't be good for me."
"So it's not…" Arizona starts, her voice beginning to falter, the stress in her tone evident now.
"I always run away from the good things," Amelia interjects. "But now it's the only thing I want to do."
"What?" Arizona asks, though she seems to know.
"Be with you," Amelia tells her. "It's the only thing I want now."
Maybe ever, she wants to add.
But she knows that it's already said, it's already known, and she knows that by the way Arizona pulls her into her arms, she knows by the way she kisses her tenderly, asking, wanting, and in a way…
Loving.
But not in love.
No, not that, she thinks.
Despite falling into her.
Despite falling for her.
She's definitely not in love.