This is a double update. Read the previous chapter before this one.
He is a friend loosely connected from California, from her teenage years in New York, somehow still known, a rugged man still encapsulated by the disjointed, wide-spanning world. His name is James, but he isn't her James, he's not that James, not the James she left behind, the James she abandoned in her fright.
She stops for a moment, and wonders if she's doing that to Arizona. She probably is.
The flask is shiny in her grasp, and it looks rather beautiful in this moment, in this darkened room, under the vivid colored lights shining over her. Her jaw trembles and she feels jittery and so, so disoriented.
The lights are beautiful. She feels euphoric when she looks at them, when she does not submit to her thoughts. She thinks about all the love in the world. The lights remind her of that.
She can't see it very well, though, because her vision is fucked and she is sure that maybe she is too old to have taken bumps of a drug so young, so pure, so filthy in her stomach that it caused her to puke two times before the powder rolled in cigarette paper finally dissolved inside of her.
"Kinda surprised," he says to her, looking at her, and she can see him and hear him, but she knows he's not really there, nor is she. But he continues, "Thought you'd quit."
"You always come back," she tells him. Meaning to correct herself, she rephrases, "I always come back."
"Right on," he applauds, grinning, and she can see the gleam of his incisors and thinks about the times that Arizona has bitten her on the neck, and on the thigh, and everywhere. She feels the love.
"You know, Doctor MD," he snorts, observing the flask in her hand, slipping it out from her grasp, "mixing alchy with MD ain't a good choice. Kills the high."
He knows about killing the high. He knows about Ryan, too. Knew. Someone etched in another world. Like her, but unlike her - she, who is constantly in between two.
"I know," Amelia tells him, "but fuck it."
He misunderstands. "I'm down."
Now she snorts.
"I have a girlfriend."
"Yeah?"
"Well," Amelia murmurs, taking the flask back. "Maybe not anymore."
"She doesn't roll?" he asks. Amelia only shakes her head. "Is she a doctor too?"
"She's not a part of this world," Amelia considers. "Neither am I."
"But you're here, aren't you?"
"No," she says, "not really."
"Jeez, Amy," he groans. "That brother of yours still fucking with your head?"
She laughs at the thought that Derek would be anything of a rival now, anything remarkable in that regard, rather than something, or someone that has just been absorbed into history, solidified in the past's unbreakable linearity.
"No," she laughs, and she remembers how she prevailed, she remembers how she is now the head of Neuro, she remembers how she extended Herman's life, and she laughs hard at the irony of her situation now.
She laughs so hard, he has to hit her back and pass her a bottle of water. She opens the cap and consumes the hot tap water in gulps, and almost downs half the bottle before he pulls it away.
"Fuck!" he says. "Chill! You're gonna over-"
She knows she could die if she drinks too much water. Dilutional hyponatremia. One of her friends died from it. Derek told her the cause. It's all in the brain.
Always in the fucking brain, she thinks.
"He's dead."
"What?"
"My brother is dead. He's dead. So no," she says. "A truck hit him. Square. He's dead. I saw his body. Kind of busted. A fucking truck," she laughs. "Fucking truck."
James looks at her, as if snapped out of his own high. She wonders what he feels in this moment, as though he's never been hit with the reality of death while elated. "Amy, you shouldn't…"
"He's still fucking with my life," she considers, drinking a gulp from her flask. It burns in her throat. But it feels good. So fucking good. "Just haunting it now."
"How's Arizona?" he asked her first. Simply. Nicely. Enthused.
She grinned, as though he had just announced their relationship to the entire OR.
"She's good."
April smiled at her through her mask, working impeccably on the trauma beneath them.
The plane hadn't crashed yet.
"Moved in yet?"
She laughed and told him no, and instead, he began to tell her his plans. His plans for what was to come, the flight he would catch, the shortcut he would take to get there. Some hill over a mountain. Something like that, she knew. Her brother was invisible on the road.
She loved Arizona that day. Her thoughts were fully on her. Seeking her out, loving her. She shut her out. And then she let her in. She'd always let her in, she told her. She loved her that night, too.
She was on top of the world. She was in love.
But it only took a day.
It only took a day and then Owen came into her OR and told her.
Who died, she asked him. Simply. Quietly. She thought it was Arizona. It was only in her mind to think so. The thing she loves the most always dies. Always.
Derek, he told her.
Derek was the one who died.
She doesn't consider doing it again. She thinks it unrivaled to alcohol, to maybe oxy too, though she still hasn't done that, and perhaps she is far too old to roll, and now the comedown has overtaken her and indifference consumes her a little better this time.
She is glad that drugs do that to her. Zaps the serotonin. She has nothing left to give, anyway. She is glad that drugs make her indifferent. Everyone complains about the depression that comes after a good high, but she never gets that. All she gets is numbness.
She likes that better.
It makes her not care.
And she doesn't, she thinks, smiling, chugging the bottle of whiskey in her hand.
She doesn't give a fuck.
Arizona did not come to her in alarm, but with caution. She came to her slowly, and took her hand, and Amelia only pulled it away and looked at her coldly.
Arizona looked at her with wide, blue eyes. Careful eyes. Eyes that suggested that she would break at any moment.
"Don't you dare," she told her at once. "Don't you dare pity me."
"Amelia."
"He's dead, Derek's dead," she told her, turning her back. Not letting her touch her. She'd break if she let her touch her. "And life goes on."
Meredith left one day, and she didn't know when. It was only a day later, and then she was gone.
Amelia had been doing fine until she saw all of the lights on in the house, and cars parked around. Owen's. Richard's. Callie's.
Arizona's wasn't there.
She decided to drift over to the lake where her brother usually fished, but she found Arizona waiting at her car.
"Amelia."
"Stop."
"Where are you going?"
"I really just want to be by myself."
"Meredith left."
"I know. She wants to be by herself," she continued. Why wasn't she getting it? She felt so numb, so useless. She just wanted to be anywhere else. The way her brother had been. She considered this. "Just give me a minute to be by myself."
She doesn't get fired, because no one knows she's been using. Addison showed up for the funeral, but she only dismissed her, insisting that she was fine.
And she is. She smiles at Arizona when the blonde corners her in the hallway, telling her she needs more time, telling her that she's too busy, telling her that she doesn't really want the intimacy anymore, that it only distracts her, that that's all it's ever done, distract her from becoming renowned like Derek was, and what's the point of detaining success? Anyone could die in the snap of a finger, in a single night, the way her dear brother did, and that's why she should continue to focus on her career.
Arizona doesn't believe her though, and decides to tell her what she needs. She doesn't say it like that, though, and Amelia doesn't really hear anything she says, anyway.
"Didn't you do that with Callie?" Amelia asks. "That's why your marriage failed."
Arizona flinches, and regards her eyes which may have looked cold, and then she walks away from her as though they'd been nothing after all.
Derek's forgotten luggage arrives one day, along with his discarded phone. It is in-tact despite the slight cracks it has on the corners. She laughs at the sight of it, laughs at this lucky item, the only item that wasn't crushed into pieces like the car her brother was in.
She drinks some more, but no one knows, and she doesn't go to work drunk, because she knows she isn't that fucked up, though when she feels like she's falling off into a binge, she calls and makes sure that she won't be in that day.
Lately, it's been more frequent. Like today.
But the house is hers. And so, she enjoys curling up in the couch, listening to the blaring of the television, focusing on nothing in particular. The television blares all day and all night, because she needs noise. Always.
There is a knock on the door. She ignores it. The knock continues for a while, and then her phone rings, but she considers the noise just to be more noise in the background, blaring out her blurry thoughts, until she finally drinks too much and finds herself asleep.
She wakes up disheveled, and with a headache, and considers running out to the store to get more cigarettes and alcohol.
And when she opens the door, she finds donuts at her doorstep.
She returns to find Arizona on the porch, waiting for her impatiently. She sits up quickly as she sees her, though her expression drops, noticing the way she looks.
She hasn't looked in the mirror in days. Arizona eyes the bag in her hand, but says nothing.
"You haven't called me," she starts.
Amelia notices the box of donuts in her hand.
"Was that you this morning?" she asks. "With the donuts?"
"Yes," Arizona says, eyeing her skeptically. "You're drinking."
"How did you know?"
"Addison told me."
"Oh."
"When my brother died," Arizona offers, "I ate a lot of donuts."
Amelia laughs. It's mocking. Hard. She's never laughed so rigidly before. "Donuts?"
"It helped."
"Nothing helps."
"Let me help."
"You can't fucking help."
Arizona doesn't move even as she opens the door and slams it behind her.
She cries that night, cries at her behavior, cries at the shitty way tequila makes her feel, and vows to never buy it again.
It's Meredith's favorite drink, and she wonders if she's drinking it right now, wherever she is.
She wonders if Derek is drinking it right now, wherever he is. She wonders if Arizona could die, too. Just like that. Just vanish from her life. Simply, quickly.
Just like that.
She loves her so bad, she thinks, clutching the neck of the bottle, curling up tightly against the couch.
But she doesn't know how to be.
One day, she remembers.
"There was a plane crash," she told her.
Callie looked at her for a brief moment, her eyes concerned. She turned her back and continued what she had been doing.
"I know," Callie said.
"Where is Arizona?"
"Shouldn't you know that?"
"Callie, please," she said, the tone of her voice surprising her.
"It's not my business."
"But you would know, wouldn't you?"
"I wouldn't," Callie considered. "I still don't. Probably not ever."
Another part of Arizona she doesn't know. Maybe will never know.
Amelia turned around to leave, realizing that Callie wouldn't help her, but her strong voice called out to her.
"But you should."
"What?"
"You should know. You should be taking care of her. If she's making you happy, you should be doing the same."
She gets a lot of phone calls, many from Arizona, many from Maggie, many from Richard, many from Owen, a few even from Callie and Alex.
There used to be more knocks on the door, but the only one that persists each day is Arizona's knock.
She ignores it each day, curled up in the couch, drinking and listening to the blaring. She doesn't know if it's been weeks or months, but surely not long enough. They haven't had the audacity to fire her yet.
She finds it ridiculous.
She breaks a bottle against the wall one day, when the television stops blaring, remembering that no one has paid the cable bill this month. She curses her luck, and listens to the quietness of the house.
The silence envelops her. She crosses her arms, as if to defend herself.
And then she hears the knock.
"Amelia?" she hears. "Amelia? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," she calls out, but she is alarmed by the sound of her own voice, the cracking of it. She hasn't realized that she's been crying this entire time.
They wait, and she hears the knock again. "Amelia, please open the door."
The crying persists. She can't stop it. She clutches herself and falls on her knees. She can't respond to her.
"I'm going to try for you. I'm not going to stop, Amelia. Ever. I want you to know that. I will never give up on you. I will never leave you."
She tries to breath, but she has to breathe with her mouth. She is surprised by the sound of her voice.
"But I need you to try too," Arizona calls out, and she can hear the strain in her own voice. She wants to hold her, suddenly. "I can't take this silence. I can't take not knowing how you are."
Arizona leaves after a while, and she hears the sound of her car's engine as she drives away slowly, perhaps hoping that Amelia will come out.
People leave. Quickly, quietly.
She does come out after a while. She comes out every night.
She finds donuts at her doorstep and wants to stomp on them.
But she can't.
She can't.
So she leaves them in the cold night.
They're there every night.
And gone every morning.