That Thing Before You, Chapter 2
Arizona bolted from the elevator as soon as the doors opened to the ER. "Peds!" She announced to the resident in light blue scrubs. "You paged me?"
Another resident with a boyish face ran up to her. "I paged!" He played with his wrists nervously. "We've still got him in the backbrace and ventilated." He updated her on the boy's condition while leading her to Trauma Bay 1. "Scans show a fracture in C5. I've called for an ortho consult for it."
Arizona spoke as her eyes watched the boy's monitor. "Something's not right. Did anyone see what happened? Are his parents here?"
"I can go check, Dr.-" She caught him trying to read her lab coat.
"Robbins," She answered his unasked question. "Page Dixon in cardio. This may be more than a broken neck."
Another man ran into the room wearing navy blue attending's scrubs. "Someone paged neuro?"
"Broken neck, Dr. Shepherd, but not sure whether the cord is broken." Robbins read the new incoming vitals.
"O'Malley?"
The young resident rushed back into the room. "Dixon's on her way. OR 3 is prepped."
"Good work."
Shepherd eyed the serious look on the Peds surgeon's face. "You don't think that this is about a broken neck."
Arizona's head tilted a bit as she turned toward him. "I'm sure the broken neck isn't helping, but I can't rule out that the broken neck is the result of a serious condition rather than the serious condition itself. Which came first the tackle or the fall? I'm thinking this kid is having a heart attack, and we're going to have to treat it without jarring the spinal cord."
Dr. Dixon and a resident whom Arizona knew as Cristina soon supported her theory and raced the bed into the operating room with the blond slightly behind them.
"Hey!" Colleen caught up with her before she could reach the scrub room. "Chang's not going to be able to do it. Do you mind if Torres works on the C5?"
"Not at all," Arizona tried to focus. "But tell Torres to wait. Kid's with cardio getting his ventricle repaired."
Colleen nodded and kissed the surgeon on the cheek. "Good luck."
"Thanks." Robbins smiled and pushed the scrub door open.
``````````
"Do you even have a home?" The nurse behind the OR station teased Dr. Robbins as she shuffled down the hallway after the surgery. "I'm starting to think your car is a decorative piece on the lot."
"Shut up, Olivia," she feigned offense. Arizona yawned and rubbed her eyes while forcing her feet toward the door of the nearest on-call room. She pushed the door open in a haze, but the image of a man's backside in mid-thrust woke her from her stupor. "Dammit, Sloan!" She escaped the room with her eyes clenched shut.
"Occupied!" A deep voice laughed.
"Mark, I need sleep!"
"Just returning the favor from the other day, Blondie!" He called out. She heard a woman's voice whispering to him in a nervous panic.
"Hey, I didn't ask to join in like you did!" Arizona growled threateningly. "Peds is my territory! If you would stay in plastics, we'd stop walking in on each other!"
"And the other on-call rooms?" He sounded annoyed. "What do we do with them?"
"Sleep in them!" Robbins nearly burst into tears.
"What about supply rooms?"
"Sloan!"
"Find another room, Robbins!"
She stumbled toward the ER on-call room in defeat. Usually, she hated trying to sleep with the hustle and bustle of the Pit in the background, but she was too tired to care and soon found herself dreaming of tiny coffins.
Her phone danced in her pocket as it vibrated the news of an incoming phone call. She scrunched her face and yawned fumbling with her pocket.
"Hello?" She yawned into her mobile.
"Where are you? Cindy says they haven't seen you back since the football kid."
Arizona looked at her watch. "Sorry, crashed in the ER on-call. Did Peds need anything?"
Colleen's voice was soothing over the phone. "No, I was curious. That's all. Just coming out of the ortho bit."
"How'd he do?"
"We we're able to stabilize the C5, but Torres wants to go in again when he's stronger to repair it. Cord's still intact though. Kid might walk."
"Amazing."
She heard Colleen laugh. "It was! So..."
"Hmm?"
"Want some company?"
Arizona rolled onto her side balancing the phone with her ear. "That would be awesome." Her eyes closed again heavy with sleep.
A little while later, she felt the cot rustle, and the familiar smell told her that Colleen had crawled in next to her. "Hey." She groaned.
"Go back to sleep," the nurse whispered.
"Not when I have a pretty lady in my bed." Arizona chuckled and rolled over. "Plus, I want to show you how much of a rockstar I am. These fingers are skilled."
Colleen leaned her head back and laughed. "That skilled?"
"Mmhmm," Robbins barely managed a reply as she straddled the nurse and pulled the scrub top over her head. Her lips locked onto the brunette's as the nurse allowed the surgeon between her legs. The shrill beeping of her pager interrupted Arizona in the middle of her 'skills lab' with Colleen's back arched and the brunette whimpering into a pillow trying to be quiet. Arizona swore as she picked the device and read the 911 page from Bailey. "Crap!" Colleen glared at her with annoyance and agitation. "It's Jackson!" She apologized while hopping around trying to pull her scrubs back on. In a matter of minutes, she ran out into the hallway pulling her bed head blond locks into a messy ponytail. Her mind was racing with options. Jackson was still down on the waiting list if he coded now. She could put him on a bypass. She mentally manipulated the poor child's intestines and liver as she tried to come up with a Plan B while running down the dark hospital hallways.
"I'm up! I'm here. What's going on?" She fixed her coat when she rounded the corner saw Bailey standing stoically by Jackson's window. Where was the crash cart? Her mind instantly went to the worst case scenario.
"Jackson's BP is down..."
All of a sudden, Arizona wanted to strangle the normally competent woman in front of her. "Dr. Bailey, y-you paged me 911...at 2:30 in the morning...to chat?" She couldn't believe it and managed to not rip off Bailey's head when she stormed away telling the resident to "get some sleep." With enough energy and an excess of anger, she finally made it to the lockers and changed out of her scrubs. She threw the dirty, dark navy blue scrubs in the bin and walked to the hospital exit in her jeans and plain purple coat.
Her car stood alone in the back of the staff parking lot as the crisp winter air swirled around her. It looked so lonely, and then she felt lonely. Like her car, she too felt left alone in parking lot full of cars. She allowed herself to feel lonely. Lonely enough to walk across the street to a shabby looking establishment called Emerald City Bar.
"Last call's in ten." The bartender pointed to the clock above him as she walked into the cozy pub.
She nodded with a smile and walked to the bar recognizing many of the hospital staff in passing. "Tequila."
The large bartender chuckled. "You a new surgeon?"
Arizona furrowed her brows in confusion. "How did you know?"
The man grinned and generously poured the amber liquid into the tumbler. "You're going to fit right in." He garnished the drink with a slice of lime. "How long have you been here?"
She relaxed. "Only a couple weeks."
"From?"
"Just finished my residency over in Baltimore. Came out here with five suitcases and am still living out of them."
The bartender laughed genuinely and held out his hand. "I'm Joe. It's nice to meet you."
"Arizona." She shook his hand and felt herself fighting off tears. "Nice to meet you too."
He must have read something of her expression, because he patted her hand. "They're a good bunch of people over there. Good hearts in all of them."
She didn't know what to say. So she nodded and sipped her drink slowly as Joe yelled for last call. She tried to reason with herself that loneliness was a fleeting feeling; that it was better than heartbreak or regret. Getting attached made people crazy and miserable. She thought of Bailey. The woman lost her professional distance with Jackson. She was too close and too attached. Getting attached guaranteed heartbreak. She then remembered Colleen's embrace.
"I hope you don't mind me eavesdropping." A strong, feminine voice said as a woman with brown hair and large brown eyes sat on the stool next to her. "So you're a surgeon at Seattle Grace?"
Arizona sipped her tequila and nodded. "Did you hear my name too?"
The brunette looked down sheepishly and grinned. "Like the State?"
"Or Battleship." Arizona faked a smile. "And who might you be, or would you rather me listen in as you tell someone else?"
The other woman laughed and finished the last of her wine. "Julie."
"Work at the hospital?"
The younger woman looked back at her empty glass. "My dad's in there."
Instantly, Arizona felt like an ass.
"It's fine." Julie waved her hand. "He's being treated for a hepatoblastoma. He'll be fine, but they're keeping him a few extra days for observation. Normally, you'd find me over on 4th Street moonlighting as a paralegal."
"You live here?" Arizona felt the effects of her tequila kick in.
"Born and raised."
"Gay?"
Julie's winked. "Want to get out of here?"
The blonde downed the rest of her tumbler and grabbed her purse.
`````````
She arrived back at the hospital in time for her noon shift. She was tired but the good type of tired. She felt relaxed and content as she smiled walking to the attendings' locker room. Pulling her laundered lab coat over her clean scrubs, she made her way to the lounge for a cup of coffee. Jackson would hopefully get a liver and intestines today, and the sick kid would have a shot at being a normal kid. She let herself dwell on thoughts of Jackson playing baseball and eating a burger instead of the tiny coffins that normally floated in her subconscious. She had mixed two packets of sugar into her coffee when Bailey marched into the lounge and shattered her moment of happiness.
"Ok, I made a list of the best pediatric GIs in the country..."
What was wrong with this woman? She wanted Arizona to pull a favor from her colleagues at Hopkins to do a TIPS for a kid with a shot liver and intestines. She narrowed her eyes with disgust. "Doing a TIPS on a kid who needs a new liver? That's like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound."
"You have a better idea?" Bailey replied defensively.
"I do." Arizona had several, but most of them involved her coffee and the shorter woman's head. However, she fought back her natural sarcasm. "Waiting for UNOS; trusting the process. Why can't you do that?"
That was the wrong answer as Bailey exploded in her sleep-deprived state. She lashed out at the new attending. "I'm tired of waiting...the only one who is happy to sit around on her ass and twiddle her thumbs and wait is you!"
"Whoa! I've been patient..." Arizona snapped and launched into a diatribe at Bailey that would have escalated if it weren't for Karev announcing that UNOS found Jackson a donor.
Arizona cheered, and Bailey muttered a prayer of praise at the news. "Come on!" The blond ordered Karev as she pulled the hospital coats off the hook and grabbed two red Igloo coolers.
It wasn't until she was up in the plane that she realized how much she was floundering since her move to Seattle. She felt passionate about her work, but in the plane next to Alex she felt hollow. Something was missing. Was it the things she feared? Marriage? Being chained to one person seemed like a huge mistake. The transient nature of her relationships, if they could be called that, kept things fresh and exciting, and cutting the line early kept people from getting hurt. Commitments? Rings? It seemed unreasonable to promise that to someone. Like promising to never change the bouquet of fresh flowers in a vase. Beauty was a temporary enjoyment. The prime example sat next to her as she nervously gripped the chair. Izzie was a pretty girl, intelligent and charming, and Alex was miserable.
Maybe she was missing a baby in her life? She took one look at the red Igloo cooler and threw that idea out. Kids demand attachment, and kids get sick. Kids have tiny coffins, and mothers have broken hearts. Distance, she rationalized, everyone needs distance, and then we can all be happy.
She maintained her distance walking past the dead child by focusing on her vision of Jackson with his baseball bat and burger. The intestines gently settled into the container, Karev snapped the cooler closed. Arizona saw the change of his expression and gripped the cooler with the liver in it a little tighter. He was thinking about the kid on the gurney and not on the kid in Seattle.
"So...ah...Valentine's Day..." She had to get both of their minds away from tiny coffins, but he called her on it.
"What is wrong with you?"
For second, she thought of a couple things. She thought of another Valentine's Day with trite gifts from lovers. The over-romanticized dinner and overtures. Passionate, yet meaningless sex... "What?"
"We just took a liver and an intestine from a little kid. A dead little kid. And you don't even care! You're talking about rainbows and relationships and crap! What the hell is wrong with you?"
He missed what really bothered her, and she was grateful. "You don't think that I know that they just pulled a plug on a kid? You don't think I get that?" He would start to have the dreams of tiny coffins that she knew all too well. "...You make plans, Karev. You turn your back on the tiny coffins and face forward...to the next kid."
It came easy to her in a way. Her parents moved from base to base, and she had to start her life over every year and a half. There was nothing to be done about the past, so she left it in the past and focused on what she could change. Turn your back on the tiny coffins, the complicated relationships, the difficult people, and face forward.
They rode the rest of the flight in silence. The mood lightened when they radioed the hospital to prepare an OR for the transplant as they boarded the hospital helicopter. Arizona thought of Jackson eating a burger, and the thought made her smile. She wanted to celebrate that night with a bottle of good wine and a hot bath.
The helicopter landing jostled her from her thoughts. Soon she and Karev were moving quickly and carefully to the operating room with organs ready. Colleen stretched outside of the OR scrub room to see the blond purposefully walking with the red container.
"Where's Karev going?" Callie Torres asked stepping out of the scrub room and pulling off her scrub cap.
"Bailey's kid got organs," Colleen replied.
"Thank God," Torres smiled.
"Everything ok, Dr. Torres?" Colleen asked with genuine concern.
"It's fine. Fine! Why wouldn't it be?"
The other brunette shrugged and let the subject drop. Listening to the conversation between Torres and Sloan in the OR had been uncomfortable to say the least.
`````````
Inside Jackson's operating room, triumph had spiraled into a nightmare.
"These organs are dead, Dr. Bailey!" Chief Webber finally stated the obvious as Arizona watched Bailey try to contain her emotions.
"Maybe we can try a portacaval shunt. It'll keep the circulation going and bypass the liver," she offered. Webber quickly agreed and watched as Bailey cut through the sutures she had painstakingly set into place. The hours of surgery ended with a sedated boy with an empty abdominal cavity and less than twenty-four hours to live.
"I'll stay." Robbins offered as day shift faded into the night shift. She struggled to maintain her distance.
"Go home and get some rest, Dr. Robbins," Webber said gravely.
Instead of her wine and hot bath, Arizona huddled against the wall of the pediatric on-call room stuck between not wanting anyone and not wanting to be alone. Jackson was dying. They all were, but Jackson was dying tomorrow, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She was helpless. That last time she had felt this helpless was when Tim... A cry lurched from her throat and she bit her arm to cover the noise.
"Dr. Robbins?" A gentle voice called from the other side of the door. Colleen pushed open the door to see the distraught blonde on the floor. "Arizona?" The blond's blue eyes stared at her in a mixture of anger and pain. Mostly pain. Arizona studied the woman like a predator to prey as the nurse sat on the bottom bunk next to the woman on the floor. "Just heard about Jackson. I'm so sorry. Is there any chance?"
Arizona stood up and pushed the woman gently onto the bed. Colleen didn't fight and embraced the hurt surgeon.
"I need you," Arizona whispered fighting back tears. "I need you." Her kisses became desperate and hungry.
"I'm here."
What happened between them on that cot was sex, needy and raw. Arizona fought for control and won, and Colleen winced and grunted in reaction to movements faster and rougher than she was expecting. The orgasm of which resulted in a primal scream into a pillow and lines from nails dotted in blood down Colleen's back.
"Arizona?" The nurse gulped and continued to catch her breath. She leaned up resting her weight on her elbows while watching the partially clothed woman shake on top of her. A loud sob from the blonde shook the nurse out of her post-coital bliss, and Colleen finally met Arizona's bloodshot eyes. Without hesitation, she gathered the surgeon to her chest in a tight embrace and kissed her temple in effort to calm her. Arizona felt herself in the embrace and hated her body for reacting to it. This was not distance, but it felt right. She leaned into it and returned the embrace.
"What is this?" Colleen couldn't stand the uncertainty any longer.
"What?" The surgeon sniffed and wiped away the last of her tears.
"This. What is this? What are we?" She looked down to emphasize the embrace. "I know you said you didn't want a relationship and this was just fun and stress relief. But-" Colleen looked at the floor unable to bear the expression from the bright blue eyes. "I want more."
Arizona stiffened and backed out of the embrace. It felt like a snare.
"Arizona," Colleen sensed the blond's panic. "I'm not saying that we're getting married next week."
It was the wrong thing to say. Robbins pulled her scrub pants back on and mashed her feet into socks.
"We can take it slow, but can we be exclusive?" Colleen tried not to beg. "It's killing me knowing that you see Meg in supply room. Can't I be enough? Even if only for a little while? Can it be only me for a bit?"
The blond woman felt the walls closing in and ran from the room slamming the door behind her.