Scar Tissue (Part Two) -- Chapter 31
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Scar Tissue (Part Two)
Chapter 31
Authors: kennedysbitch & livelovelearneg
Beta'd by englishstrawbie
Rating: NC-17 [Depictions of violence, PTSD, Language, Sexual Content]
Pairing: Callie/Arizona
Disclaimer
Scar Tissue [masterpost]
Summary: When Arizona Robbins’ brother dies in Iraq, her life takes off in a completely different direction. Now a highly-rated trauma surgeon with the United States Marine Corps, she spends the three years following his death serving their country overseas - until an insurgent attack leaves her with debilitating injuries. Traveling to Seattle at her father’s request, she falls under the care of orthopedic surgeon Dr. Calliope Torres. Damaged emotionally and physically, Arizona tries to start the healing process with the help of a headstrong woman she never saw coming.
Part Two: Now free from the confines of a hospital bed for the first time
in almost five months, Arizona begins her physical and emotional recovery while
navigating a budding yet rocky relationship with Callie Torres.
Warnings: Depictions of violence, PTSD, Language, Sexual Content
---
Despite all the hype it had received, Arizona’s first day on the job was relatively uneventful. She spent most of it in her new office - first with IT, then with Webber, and later by herself reviewing files on how the emergency management system had been run over the last five years. It was a bigger headache than she had originally thought but nothing she couldn’t handle given time and a large amount of patience from the Board. A lot of money had to be shuffled around and she had her work cut out for her in convincing them to spend more for long-term gain. They had promised her as much when she’d first signed on, but of course when it came to pulling out the chequebook, they were hesitant.
While the chaos Dr. Bailey had described at the staff meeting wasn’t quite as prevalent as she’d made it out to be, the residents could definitely do with some attitude adjustments. Arizona met most of the surgical residents on staff in the first three days and more than a few had already landed themselves on her watch list. They were cocky, irritating and overly confident - by definition, your average surgeon - and yet she wasn’t sure she would leave any of them alone with her patients just yet.
At the end of a very long and headache-inducing first shift, she stole away to the skills lab just so she could feel like she did something more productive than shuffle papers around and shake hands. Callie was right - her patience was being tested. All she wanted to do was jump right back into the thick of things. Staying true to her word, she stuck to the slow and careful approach they had planned out, but it was torture. She did it for Callie’s sake - and, to a lesser extent, her own.
The whole week went by in relatively the same manner. She didn’t deal directly with patients, instead keeping herself up to date with incoming traumas and paying attention to how they were run from start to finish. The system in place wasn’t bad but they were short-staffed and had more undertrained residents on hand than attendings. Arizona put in a request to run mandatory trauma exercises with every fourth year resident and under, regardless of their chosen specialty. Not only would it help in the ER, but if there was ever a major disaster, teams sent to the field would be better prepared. She knew firsthand how messy it could get when doctors became overwhelmed.
When the initial onslaught of paperwork and bureaucracy slowed down, Arizona threw herself into research and practice mode. She spent a good chunk of time in the far corner of the skills lab, alternating between a computer-generated surgical training program and the variety of dummies available for a more hands-on experience. To most of her colleagues it probably seemed silly and unnecessary, but Arizona wouldn’t take any chances before she got back into working with patients. Ten months off the job and getting her brain rattled around her skull in Iraq made her extra cautious; she had to trust herself beyond any doubt before she stepped back into the OR. There were quite a few precision techniques she used that not many residents would be familiar with, so it was imperative that she felt like she was on the ball before she got back to teaching.
Even with the daily headaches and stiffness in her limbs, Arizona’s time in the lab became progressively longer - she was in by seven a.m., out just after eight. Large portions of her day were spent sitting still, though her leg still throbbed by the time she got home. Nothing would have felt better than a hot bath after a long shift, only by that point she was too tired to actually take one. For the most part Arizona climbed straight into bed and fell asleep before Callie could even join her. Callie seemed resigned to their lack of time together but, to her credit, she was nothing short of understanding and supportive.
It helped that there had been no drastic impact on her symptoms since she started work. Just as Arizona had suspected, having a regular schedule again and something to focus on other than the crippling nightmares made it easier to cope. They didn’t disappear; she still woke up in a cold sweat at least once a night, but nothing had been bad enough to disturb Callie’s slumber. Most nights she was able to roll over and go back to sleep after a while. It made for some tired mornings, but Arizona held out hope that her old Energizer Bunny stamina would be kicking in any day now.
During her second Friday on shift, she was locked away in the corner of an empty lab, pouring over the latest research on pediatric cardiovascular penetrating trauma and several cases where new methods were employed in the field. It was already 7:30pm, twelve and a half hours after she had walked in the door, and the lines on the page were starting to blur. Arizona was preoccupied with re-reading the same paragraph over and over again, and didn’t notice anyone enter the room until a pair of arms enveloped her waist from behind. She jumped; though right away the faint scent of Callie’s shampoo and a pair of lips brushing against her neck calmed her down.
“You scared me,” she chided, automatically leaning into the embrace.
“Hi,” Callie chuckled, placing an apologetic kiss below her ear. “I knocked.”
Arizona felt goosebumps ripple underneath her skin. “Not complaining; this is a nice surprise,” she said. “Feels like I haven’t seen you in days.”
“I was beginning to wonder if you’d locked yourself in here by mistake,” Callie mused. “Came to see if I needed to break down the door and rescue you.” She nuzzled the side of Arizona’s neck affectionately, feeling the woman’s spine give out and more weight settle against her body.
“No, definitely not by mistake,” Arizona said through a yawn. “It’s voluntary. Though at this rate, my eyes will fall out of my head before I so much as put in a central line.” She wrinkled her nose. “You think they’ll be okay with a blind surgeon so long as she kicks ass?”
Callie squeezed Arizona’s middle before releasing her and sitting down. “You’ve been going at it pretty hard lately,” she pointed out, taking in the large amount of work material spread around the table. “Why don’t you come home with me tonight? I can cook you dinner.”
Arizona considered her options. “I should really get through this last stack of papers. It’s one less thing to do tomorrow. Plus, I need to make another phone call about that trauma course I want to do with the residents next month. I need it to be mandatory and there are some more hoops to jump through first.”
Callie could see that she would be fighting an uphill battle tonight. She admired Arizona’s iron-clad work ethic, but she wanted an evening alone with her girlfriend. Those had been scarce in recent weeks.
“Hm,” she hummed, narrow her eyes as she considered her options. “I’m upping my offer to ‘I’ll cook you dinner in my underwear’, but only if you come home with me now. No take-backs.” She cocked an eyebrow and tilted her head suggestively.
That put a smile on Arizona’s face. “Oh, playing hard ball, are we?” she teased. “You’re making it awfully hard to say no.”
“Then my plan is working.” Callie smirked and dropped her eyes to her girlfriend’s leg. “How’re you feeling, anyway?”
Arizona followed her gaze and stretched it out, flexing her knee within the confines of the brace. “I have callouses growing in strange places, thigh chaffing, and sometimes I forget how to walk in a straight line, but other than that, pretty darn good.” She was only partially joking - the brace worked fantastically, it was the long hours that were really putting a strain on her body. Her eyes were completely bloodshot by now and she was pretty sure she hadn’t washed her hair in two days; but hey, at least she was working again. Nothing short of another bomb would keep her from coming in.
Underneath the table, Arizona lightly rapped her knuckles against the wood grain. It occurred to her that she was the last person who should tempt the fates.
Callie’s concern was evident in her frown and hardly needed to be vocalized. “I’m going to be fine,” Arizona assured her for the hundredth time. “This is all a part of the process. I’m getting used to a schedule again, which is why I’ve been taking it easy.”
“This is your version of ‘easy?” Callie asked skeptically.
The corner of Arizona’s mouth twitched. “Remember our agreement?”
“The one in which I threatened to hold out on you if you so much as look sideways at an OR?”
That made Arizona laugh. “Yeah, that’s the one. But it also states that as long as I’m not putting myself in danger, you’re not allowed to hover.”
“I know,” Callie relented. “You’re doing great, I just miss you, that’s all.”
“This won’t be forever, I promise,” Arizona said. She reached over and gave Callie’s lab coat an affectionate tug. “I think I’m going to spend Monday in the ER, though. The new schedule rotation seems to be working okay but I’d rather see it for myself. And I’m starting to think the others are wondering why I’m here at all if I’m not doing my job.”
“No one is thinking that,” Callie said immediately. “They all know your situation and everyone I’ve talked to is happy you’re here. A few weeks in the grand scheme of your career is nothing to complain about. Besides, you’re getting our trauma centre back up and running, those bastards had better be grateful.”
Leave it to Callie to be direct and to the point. “Still, I want to start showing my face on the surface now that I’ve got some refreshers under my belt,” Arizona continued. “So far it doesn’t seem like anything was jarred loose up here, so that’s a bonus.” She tapped the side of her head with an index finger.
Callie rolled her eyes. “You are as brilliant as you are beautiful, Arizona. Not even an explosive concussion can take that away.”
The sentiment made Arizona grin, but for the longest time she had been paranoid that it had. The concussion she sustained had been pretty severe and it took a while to heal. There was a lot of brain fog after the incident and she had been nervous about how well she could focus on the medicine again when the time came. So far, so good. Med school and residency hadn’t been completely knocked out of her skull.
Arizona swiveled back to the table, bracing herself for one last push to end the day, but as hard as she tried, all she could do was stare helplessly at the mountain of paperwork in front of her. Now that her concentration had been broken, she didn’t know where to pick up and restart.
Callie quirked an eyebrow when Arizona failed to make any further movements. “Something wrong?”
Arizona’s shoulders dipped. “I think I forgot how to read,” she whined, suddenly aware of the sluggishness seeping into her bones. That was never a good sign.
“Okay, I’m taking you home,” Callie laughed, sliding from her stool and grabbing Arizona by the waist. She pulled until the blonde got to her feet, seeing the exhaustion etched into her features. “You’ll thank me in the morning when you don’t wake up dead.”
Arizona resigned herself to an evening of relaxation and pajama pants, gathering up the reading materials. “I don’t remember being this tired before,” she admitted, closing her laptop and stuffing it in her bag. “When I was in Iraq, we hardly ever slept and it just seemed...normal. This place has air conditioning and a distinct lack of violence and I’m zonked. This must be what getting old feels like.” She looked perplexed at the very idea.
“Hey, older women are hot,” Callie shot back, grinning when Arizona glared at her. “What? Your birthday is next month and I totally plan on sexing you up in celebration. Even if you’re sore and broken down and close to retirement.”
Arizona smacked her in the gut. “Jerk,” she mused, slinging her briefcase over one shoulder. She always appreciated how Callie never let her wallow for too long. It was that kind of attitude that had helped pull her out of her perma-funk in the first place.
Callie slipped an arm around her back and guided her towards the exit, leaving no room for Arizona to change her mind. “You’re gonna be sexy when you’re eighty, Arizona. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
Once again, Arizona grinned in a way that only Callie could bring out of her. “Nice recovery, Torres. I’ll remember that one for the future.”
***
Callie made the mistake of thinking that her anxiety problems were over after Arizona spent two weeks in a relatively safe, stable environment. There were no threats beyond exhaustion and sleep deprivation in a laboratory setting. Then Monday morning rolled around, the day Arizona would be right back in the middle of a chaotic ER, and suddenly she was a train wreck of nerves all over again.
The theory behind the practice was sound - Arizona was back on her feet and managing her time correctly. Of course she wanted to be back in action, that was where a trauma surgeon thrived. Callie even looked forward to sharing cases, knowing that one day they would be standing across an OR table from each other. This chapter of her life combined the two things she loved most in the world - Arizona and her job as a surgeon - but she just couldn’t seem to curb that pesky instinct to wrap the blonde in pillows and hide her away from danger. Unfortunately for Callie’s blood pressure, she was deeply attracted to an independent and motivated woman. It was a conflicting issue that would only go away with time and exposure on her part. Arizona was doing this, there was no way around it.
A lack of sleep the night before left Callie scrambling and late for work on Monday, cursing under her breath as she breezed through the apartment and gathered up her things. She was on edge. Triggers, physical setbacks, emotional repercussions; all of these things weighed on her mind. Every possible thing that could go wrong did in her dreams, right down to an asteroid hitting the Pacific Northwest and Seattle becoming the forefront of a major disaster - which Arizona had the unfortunate responsibility of cleaning up.
No, Callie wasn’t doing herself any favours. Sometimes she wished she had a less active imagination.
“Where’s the other one?” she demanded, hopping around on one leg while trying to put the shoe she did have on the wrong foot. Callie caught the mistake and reversed direction, stumbling into the wall as Arizona appeared.
Arizona looked tentatively amused as she handed over the missing one. “You okay? You seem really stressed out this morning.”
Callie snatched the sneaker away and shoved it on her foot. “I’m fine,” she said stiffly, casting a look at her watch and swearing. “Damn it, I’m going to be late.”
“Your patient can wait ten minutes without dying, so don’t go running into traffic, okay?” Arizona joked. Callie had clearly woken up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, she just didn’t know why.
Despite her irritation at a day that had barely begun, Callie checked her attitude at the door and took a moment to skim over Arizona’s physique. She wasn’t going in until noon, so chances were they wouldn’t see much of each other today, barring any emergency cases that required ortho to step in. Arizona did look pretty good right now; tired, but good. She wasn’t favouring her right side too much, so that boded well.
“Take it easy out there, okay?” Callie asked. “Don’t be afraid to page for help if you need it.”
Arizona fought the urge to roll her eyes. “Thanks, mom.”
Callie pursed her lips. “Come on, I was only-“
“I am perfectly capable of standing on my own two feet for a few hours,” Arizona cut in. “You don’t need to keep-”
Callie held up a hand. “Yeah, I know, ‘shut up Torres’, I get it,” she grumbled, pulling her hair into a messy ponytail before stooping over to grab her purse. “I’m sorry, just…be careful. Don’t rush yourself.”
It was hard not to feel annoyed when those kind of comments sounded about as supportive as a wet noodle. Today was already going to be stressful enough without the added pressure of her girlfriend’s expectations and the worried looks constantly being thrown her way. Arizona had to remind herself that Callie had good intentions, even if the guilt trips were getting old. She couldn’t really be mad.
Well, maybe just a little bit.
“I will see you when I get there,” Arizona reiterated, holding the door open with a polite smile wedged in place.
Callie knew she was being pushed out of the apartment, though she couldn’t really blame Arizona at this point. She would have kicked herself out, too. “Right, going now. Bye.”
Arizona’s expression softened. “Bye.”
Callie stepped in for a quick kiss and then booked it down the hallway.
Arizona locked up after her, sighing with relief, and shuffled into the kitchen. She loved Callie, but this morning she was like a grumpy bear, and not in a cute way.
The jangle of nerves in her belly took away her appetite for breakfast. A quick look in the fridge told her they didn’t have much more than cheese, beer and some hot sauce, anyway. None of those things spoke to her stomach, so she closed the fridge and leaned against the counter instead.
Arizona was confident going into this while still feeling nervous as hell, even if she didn’t say as much to Callie. Getting back to treating patients had a lot of implications, many of which she hardly understood herself. For starters, the last patient she had seen literally blew up in front of her - so hopefully today would end on a better note.
Even with Cristina gone and the place to herself for a few hours, she went into the bedroom to relax. There was a more noticeable hitch in her step when she walked without the brace, something she only did at home for the time being. It took longer to get around but hopefully, with lots of practice, one day she would be able to walk with a more normal gait. Arizona still swam twice a week in an effort to keep up her conditioning, although she had only made it out once since she started working. The one day she had taken off in the last few weeks, she’d slept for fourteen hours and then gone back to the lab in the evening. She realized she would need to create some kind of schedule so her physical therapy didn’t fall by the wayside while she got her career back on track.
With or without the brace, there was always pain on some level; it was something she was just learning to live with. The pain was her gauge for how she was doing - if she could walk without collapsing into a pile of spent bones, it was usually considered a good day. So long as the good outnumbered the bad, she was happy, and that seemed to be the trend.
Her cellphone was buzzing across the side table when she entered the bedroom and Arizona automatically assumed it was Callie calling to remind her of something else. She hurried to catch it in time but her right foot caught on a discarded pair of jeans and she stumbled forward. Mid-trip, she somehow managed to grab the phone on its last ring, smacking her knee against the bed frame in the process.
“Ow - hello,” she answered, her voice strained as the not-so-funny bone in her kneecap caused everything below it to go numb. For a very precise surgeon, she was kind of a klutz in every other aspect of her life.
“Good morning,” came the Sergeant’s cheery reply. “Did I wake you?”
Arizona sat down and massaged the fresh injury. “No, not at all, I was just seeing Calliope off to work.” When the tingling subsided, she slid back and reclined on the mattress. “How are you? It feels like we haven’t talked in ages.”
“I didn’t want to bother you while you were getting settled,” Daniel replied. “How are things at work?”
“They’re great, actually,” she said. “Exhausting in that ‘is it the weekend yet?’ kind of way, but other than that, I can’t really complain. It’s nice having a life again.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” He covered the mouthpiece and Arizona could hear him talking to someone in the background, followed by a couple of loud barks from the puppies before he came back on. “Any chance we’ll get to see you at group this week? It’s been a while.”
Arizona winced. “I wouldn’t count on it, sorry. I’m working Thursday. I promise I’ll try and come to a meeting soon.”
“You’d think you were someone important, like a doctor or something,” Daniel joked. “Anyway, I didn’t call to harass you, I know you’re busy. But I do have a proposition, if you’re open to it.”
“Sounds cryptic. Should I be worried?”
“Only time will tell. Are you working right now?”.
“Not for a few hours.” Arizona listened to him explain his thoughts and eventually sat up again. She checked the clock and factored in travel time to when she had to be at work. “Sure, I can meet you at nine. Need me to come over there?”
“You’re the one doing me the favour. I’ll come to you.”
***
“Did you ask Cristina?” Callie said into the phone, pinning it between her ear and shoulder while she filled out a prescription.
“I haven’t seen her in four days, I was hoping to catch her at work.”
Arizona was making her way down a busy sidewalk while they chatted, still two blocks from the hospital. A heavy rain had fallen that morning and left the sidewalks slick with puddles. She dodged around them to avoid soaking her feet, figuring that mold-infested padding would ruin all of Callie’s hard work. To keep her hands free, she had strapped her cane to the side of her backpack, knowing Callie would berate her if she left it at home. The brace was fit snugly around her leg but a throb of discomfort welled up with every slow, lumbering step that she took.
Given the lengthy day she had ahead, she planned on icing the joint when she got to work. It wasn’t an ideal way to start the afternoon, but chronic pain was inevitable. There was no use in working Callie up about something neither of them could control, so she had kept it to herself.
A skateboarder suddenly zipped by, too busy texting to notice Arizona as he came within an inch of knocking her into traffic. She balked, momentarily distracted from the conversation, and glared as he weaved around some other pedestrians. There were more than a few scathing looks thrown his way, though the teenager remained oblivious. At one point, he dipped around a mother and child, dropping from the curb and shooting out between parked cars. Arizona bit her tongue to keep from yelling after the boy - she was already one step away from ‘get off my lawn’ on the best of days; there was no need to age herself any further.
“Still there?” Callie asked after an extended period of silence.
“Yeah, I’m here.” Arizona switched the phone to her other ear. “Cristina will probably just think one of her dirty dishes grew legs and learned how to walk; I’m not too worried about it.” A car horn sounded a sharp warning in the background, almost blocking out her girlfriend’s response.
Callie was laughing at the image that painted in her head. “I wouldn’t be surprised. One of these days she’s going to have to start naming them and forking out for vet bills.” She distinctly remembered a smell coming from Cristina’s room back when they had first moved in together, and she had gone on to discover a forgotten spaghetti plate growing green things underneath the bed. Since then, Cristina had been a tiny bit more careful, though Callie could never be too sure.
“If she has a problem with it, I can work something else out,” Arizona added as she came to the crosswalk and pressed the button.
“Nah, you’re probably good,” Callie agreed. “Karev has slept on our couch before, so has Meredith. We’re used to waking up to that sort of thing.” She covered the receiver and quickly mouthed some instructions to an ICU nurse. “She’s in for a hell of a surprise either way. I think she was headed home to get some sleep; probably left already.”
Arizona winced as she waited for the pedestrian light to change. “Oops. Guess I should’ve left a note on the door, huh?”
***
It wasn’t long after Arizona had left for the day that Cristina shouldered through the front door with an unceremonious bang, balancing take-out in one hand and a bunch of stolen cardiothoracic files in the other. With Altman in surgery all day, she had helped herself to a stack of confidential research material, with plans to go through it all and get it back in the right drawer before her boss noticed it was missing. There was a complicated valve replacement on the menu in two weeks and she needed all of the prep work she could get. Technically it was Alex’s case, but whatever - shame was for losers. Cristina thought herself very much a winner, which was why she was planning on swiping this surgery away without Alex ever realizing it.
With her headphones blaring, she danced into the living room and dumped her bags on the floor, whipping out a carton of noodles and cracking a pair of wooden chopsticks in half. She sprawled out on the couch and shoveled a healthy portion of chow mein into her mouth, still bobbing in time with the music.
Given that her roommates were working and no one else lived in the apartment with them, Cristina couldn’t be faulted for screaming when something small and furry suddenly landed on her back. Dinner went airborne and she nearly fell off the couch, twisting around to get a good look at whatever it was that attacked her.
Tank crouched over the cushions, situated right above his newfound friend, and fixated on her dinner. The rapid tail wagging churned up a small breeze that Cristina could feel from where she was sitting.
“Who the hell are you?” she demanded, ripping the headphones from her ears. The chihuahua yipped and jumped down to occupy the spot next to her.
Okay, she was pretty sure no one had ever bought a dog. That was something she definitely would have remembered. “Uh, Callie?” Cristina called out, receiving only an indignant woof in their otherwise quiet surroundings. Tank stepped closer and she recoiled, sheltering her dinner from the miniature werewolf slowly encroaching on her space.
The dog sat on his haunches and looked expectantly at the carton of Chinese food, failing to take the hint, or perhaps just ignoring it. His giant, bat-like ears rotated in a semi-circle as he listened to her speak. A lack of speed on Cristina’s part made him bark again, louder this time, and he leaned forward to sniff at the air.
Cristina distanced herself another inch or two. “No. Bad. Mine,” she scolded. A quick jab at the dog’s face with her chopsticks did nothing to scare him off.
Tank snuffled quietly and started to whine, glancing between her and the food again. To his credit, he didn’t lunge for it, intent on seeing his guilt trip through to the end.
Cristina looked at the chow mein, then back at him. “No. Shoo,” she repeated. “Bad dog. Go on!”
The chihuahua’s tail picked up speed and he lowered himself into a submissive, belly-down position, turning his big brown eyes up at her from beneath his eyelashes.
Even Cristina, who prided herself on her emotional distancing skills, paused for the first time that encounter. She was still stuck on the part where there was a dog living in their apartment, because absent or not lately, this was kind of a big thing for her to miss. It was kind of cute, though, in a slobbery, mangy mutt kind of way.
With a very slow, deliberate movement, she plucked a small portion of noodles with her chopsticks and extended them outward, letting them dangle freely above the little creature’s forehead.
Tank lunged forward to gobble the meal down in a quick series of bites. Cristina raised her arm higher and he danced around on his hind legs to reach the noodles, several of them tugging loose and landing on his snout.
Amused, Cristina shook her head and gave the next portion to herself. “I have no idea who you are, but if you’re gonna throw that up, make sure you do it in Torres’ bed.”
***
It was shortly after she hung up with Callie that Arizona reached the set of lights across from the hospital. The pedestrian signal had yet to change, so she took the opportunity to stoop down and fiddle with the ankle attachment fit snugly into her shoe. It had the tendency to rub when she walked, and in her rush to leave the house she’d forgotten to apply a layer of mole skin to prevent blistering. That was just one more thing to add to the list of crap she had to take care of before she could even start her day. This stupid leg of hers was turning out to be incredibly high-maintenance. For now, all she could do was bunch up the sock to provide some padding until she got to work.
Her mind was already set on the hours to come, so much so that, as she stood up again, she nearly missed the screech of tires off to her right. The crash that followed would have been impossible to ignore; glass splintered, people began shouting, and the scent of burning rubber suddenly permeated the air.
By the time Arizona zeroed in on the noise, a crowd had begun to form around the scene. A large tow truck had slid diagonally across the white lines on the pavement and come to a stop thirty feet past the intersection. Arizona noticed skid marks trailing behind it. A chorus of panicked voices rose up just as her view was obscured by the flurry of people arriving to gawk.
The crosswalk signal changed in front of her but she was already backtracking towards the accident. When she got closer, she saw that the tow truck had plowed into the back of a parked car. Scattered bits of glass and broken material lay strewn around the pavement, while the back of the car was crunched inward - this wasn’t just a fender bender. A man clambered out of the truck cab and stumbled around the front of his vehicle.
Arizona picked up her pace, shouldering through the crowded sidewalk with a couple of curt ‘move!’s to get them out of her way. When she reached the pick-up, all she noticed were a bunch of shaken and confused faces swarming the streets. There was no immediately identifiable cause that she could see.
“I’m a doctor, what happened?” she demanded. She threw her backpack to the ground and grabbed the driver by the shoulder to get a good look at him.
The man was shaking, the whites of his eyes prominent as he scanned the area. “H-he just flew out in front of me, I couldn’t stop. I think he fell or something; I didn’t see him until-”
“He?” Arizona interrupted. “He who? Where is he?”
“I-I don’t know…maybe I missed him?” The man spun in a circle, confused. “I tried to get out of the way, but I hit that car, and then…” Perspiration dotted his forehead and he seemed really disoriented; whether from shock or a head injury Arizona wasn’t sure, so she led him to the curb and got him to sit down.
“There was a kid,” one of the bystanders called out. “On his skateboard. He darted out and kind of fell into the street.”
Of the ten or so people standing immediately around them, no one looked like they had just been hit by a car. Arizona got up and did a quick check of the front of the vehicle, where it had collided with the one parked. “There’s blood on the grill,” she mumbled to herself. It would have been pretty hard to miss had someone flown over the truck itself on impact. A quick glance behind it and she noticed what looked like faint streaks of blood on the pavement.
In her experience, that was never a good sign.
Kneeling was a slow process in her condition, but it allowed Arizona to hear a faint murmur before she looked under the vehicle. A strangled cry followed and she dropped flat on her stomach to get a good look. “He’s under here!” she yelled over her shoulder. “Somebody call an ambulance!”
Knowing that at least one person in the crowd would be taking care of it, she focused on the skateboarder that had nearly plowed into her before, and came to the grim realization that he was trapped within the tow truck’s chassis. There was too much blood to see the extent of the damage, but right now she was going to go with ‘bad’ - there was more of him stuck to the bottom of the truck than actually touching the pavement. His left leg alone was jammed into the back axel.
The teenager was shaking uncontrollably, which for now meant that he was still alive. For how long, Arizona couldn’t tell. She shifted around the side of the truck to get a better look.
“Can you hear me?” She thought he was unconscious until his eyes rolled in her direction. It was the only part of him she had seen move voluntarily in the last thirty seconds. “Listen, I’m a doctor at the hospital across the street and I’m going to get you out of here, but I need you to hold really still, okay?”
“Hel…” It came out more of a croak, barely audible, and a gurgle of blood kept the teen from finishing. He ignored her advice, or possibly not didn’t understand it in his condition, and tried to move his head in her direction.
“No-no, I need you to stay still,” Arizona repeated, only louder this time. She held back a grimace as she flattened out on her stomach and slowly inched under the car. Broken glass dug into her forearms, while dirt and other debris stuck to her skin thanks to the rain from earlier. At one point she banged her head on the underbelly of the truck and had to force herself to get as low as she possibly could. The kid was wearing a helmet himself, which gave him a better chance of surviving this, but that didn’t do a whole lot of good for the rest of his body.
When she was a kid, her father had hit a deer on the highway with his truck. They were going on a family trip to the mountains and the animal had just darted out in front of them. It had become trapped under their large pick-up rather than being plowed out of the way or up into the windshield. Good for them, bad for the deer. They had dragged it about thirty yards before coming to a stop, and the mess it had made between the mechanical underside and the pavement was pretty gruesome. The deer had ended up partially skinned by the time her dad peeled it off and she would forever remember the amount of blood that had swirled into the drain at the car wash later that day.
The teenager wasn’t in much better shape. He was mangled into the truck mechanics with at least two points of contact that she could see - his right arm was caught and extended back above his head, and his left leg was crushed around the axel. Part of his shoulder had been ripped open and was bleeding freely through his shirt, while the impact and drag force had shredded other areas of exposed skin. It was hard to tell just how bad it all was, though a growing pool of blood beneath the boy gave her a pretty good idea. Among other things, she could see bone splintering through his shin where it was broken in at least two places. They needed to get him to the ER as soon as humanly possible, and all without causing further injuries during extraction.
“Hold still,” Arizona reiterated. She struggled to get closer and put a hand underneath his head, hoping to support his neck until he could be stabilized.
“Oh, god.” The driver had reappeared and was crouching down behind her. “I didn’t see him, he just flew out and fell in front of me. I didn’t see him!”
“Not important right now,” Arizona said through a hard breath. She knew her crosswalk light had been on, so the car had probably hit the kid on a green light. Somehow she didn’t think that pointing out how traffic flowed would reassure the teenager at this very moment. If she got him to the OR in one piece and he made it through, there would be plenty of time for life lessons later.
“What’s your name?” Arizona tried to squirm closer but scraped her head on something metal again. She swore under her breath and shuffled around until she could hold his head and neck in place without breaking her own.
There was a delay while he registered the question. “Kevin,” he murmured weakly. “I’m not…”
“Kevin, I’m Dr. Robbins. Can you wiggle your fingers for me? Carefully now.” Arizona didn’t want him moving until he was stabilized, but she needed to know how likely a spinal cord injury was. He gave an incoherent moan and tried to shift his body again, so she did her best to keep him still. “No, don’t move around, just try and wiggle your fingertips.”
“Can’t se…” The words faded and his eyelids began to flutter.
“Stay with me, buddy, we’re gonna get you out of here,” Arizona said in a loud voice. With a grunt, she forced her body forward a couple of more inches. It was a tight fit underneath the truck and she was starting to feel mildly claustrophobic. “Hear those sirens? They’ll be here in under a minute.”
An ambulance was the first to arrive and shortly after it the fire department. Arizona stayed beneath the vehicle and worked with the paramedics to get a C-collar on the patient. Once it was in place, she shifted over to let one of them crawl in next to her and moved down to get a better look at his leg. It was jammed in there pretty good and she couldn’t see a way to work it out without using power tools.
“We need to cut him loose,” she called back to the nearest firefighter. “Get a blade that can cut through steel. You’ll also need something to take the weight of the vehicle and push it up - but slowly. I can’t get in here to stabilize him.”
The fireman that was kneeling by her legs looked skeptical. “You should move back, ma’am, let us take care of this.”
“I’m a military doctor, I’ve done this before,” she snapped. “There is no way you or your men can fit under here. We don’t have time for chivalry.”
He didn’t exactly look convinced, but Arizona’s words rang true. She had barely squeezed underneath the car herself and she was a lot less bulky than multiple men in full gear.
“Get me some air bags,” the fireman yelled to his crew. He dipped down to get a better view of the truck’s underbelly. “Do you see any fuel leaking?”
Arizona craned her neck around and breathed in deeply in a couple of times. “I don’t think so; but the pavement’s pretty slick.” All of the rain water and blood made it hard to distinguish if there was gasoline on the ground as well. She didn’t smell anything or see any active streams flowing from a broken fuel line.
The firefighter nodded. “We’ll pump this up as much as you think we can and get a circular saw to cut through here and here.” He pointed out two spots on the back axel. “The hand should be a bit easier to untangle, they’ll work on that with the Jaws at the same time.”
Arizona nodded. “Good.” They would just have to wait and see about the rest of Kevin. The paramedics were doing their best to stem the flow of blood from the open wound on his chest in the meantime, while Arizona’s biggest concern was his internal injuries, and making sure he could breathe once he was free.
“You okay in there a bit longer?” the fireman asked. “It’ll take them a minute to get everything set up.”
“I’m good,” Arizona said curtly. Her neck was starting to seize up with the awkward angle she was jammed under the vehicle in, but not much could be done about that until the teenager was free.
The other paramedic handed her some gauze padding and she used what she could for a temporary pressure pad. “I need shears,” she called back. Someone brought over a pair and the guy behind her extended them under the car. It took some twisting and careful maneuvering, but Arizona managed to prop herself against the hard ground and cut away part of his pants. Once that was finished and she had packed the wound as carefully as she could around the mechanics, she rested her cheek on the mucky pavement, away from the blood. Every muscle in her body was screaming and she worked to gulp down enough air to trigger her second wind. Today was going to be a tough one to get through.
A group of Seattle Fire Department guys arrived with the airbags and started to set up. The paramedics were readying a backboard and make-shift platform to keep the boy elevated until he could be freed. The extraction was going to be a very delicate balance between the two and a single slip could open up an artery.
The firefighter that had been assisting her reappeared a minute later while his men shored up the air bags. “So, army doctor, huh? Do this kind of thing often?”
“More than you’d think,” Arizona said with a small smirk, rolling her eyes in his direction while keeping her head down. “Two tours in Baghdad and a lot of vehicle extractions.”
“Sounds intense.”
“Yeah,” Arizona panted, working mentally to slow her heart rate down. “Mind you, never thought I’d be doing the same thing in downtown Seattle, but…” A drop of sweat rolled down her forehead and she tried to shake it off. Her core temperature was hovering somewhere around a million degrees right now.
The firefighter seemed impressed, like he wanted to ask more question, but his team called out that they were ready. “You’ll have to move until we can get him free.”
“Not yet.” Arizona craned her head around to double check the wound. “Make sure you go slowly; I don’t want him tearing free.”
“We’ve got this, I promise.” He stooped lower and stretched his hand out. “Here, let me help.”
Arizona was reluctant to leave the kid, but he was barely conscious and they were running out of time. The last thing she wanted was to get in the way and slow things down.
She took the firefighter’s glove and started to wiggle herself out from under the car. He helped her back up carefully and used his other hand to keep her head from smacking the car again.
“One of you needs to keep him stable and make sure there’s no further damage to the limb. If he nicks an artery, he won’t make it across the street,” she ordered as her body finally cleared the truck.
The firefighter repeated the orders to his men and guided Arizona to her feet. She stumbled into him, a side effect of her legs being locked in position for almost half an hour.
“Easy,” he grinned, steadying her with a hand on her back. His eyes dropped to where her jeans had ridden up and hooked onto part of her leg brace. “Souvenir?”
“Huh?” Arizona scrunched her brow and looked down. “Oh, that. Yeah,” she puffed, pushing sweat-soaked hair from her forehead and smearing car grease and mud in the process. “You could say that.”
Again, he seemed curious about the woman that had just wedged herself beneath a car voluntarily, but they both had a job to do. “Wait here. We’ll take care of him.”
Arizona stood back and let his team get to work on extracting the patient, taking the opportunity to catch her breath. It wasn’t exactly a hot summer day, but she was drenched in sweat and had little cuts covering the exposed part of her forearms and wrists. While SFD did their thing, she grabbed a towel from the ambulance and hurriedly tried to clean herself up.
It was hard not to jump in and help stabilize the kid while the grinding of power tools filled the air, but the fire department was taking her instructions to heart. For the longest time she was used to doing part of that job herself - with the Marines and the Navy, it was all hands on deck. Waiting patiently was not her strong suit, especially since she had the tendency to believe other people would screw it up without her supervision. But the rescue crew was fast and efficient; they knew what they were doing.
The truck gradually rose, several inches at a time, and one of the medics remained underneath to ensure the patient was cut loose in the most stable way possible. Arizona couldn’t see what was being done and it drove her nuts, but she stayed out of their way. As soon as the kid was free, EMS and the team of firefighters extracted him from under the truck on a backboard. They hoisted him onto the waiting gurney and Arizona immediately jumped back into the fray. Scattered applause erupted from the crowd.
The situation was far from over. His airway was clear for now and his circulation weak but flowing, so she assessed the leg wound while the paramedics packed his chest. She stabilized the two main breaks the best she could until they got to the ER.
“Decreased breath sounds on the right,” the female paramedic told her. “Pneumothorax?”
Arizona left the compression packing in place and felt around his chest, tapping her fingers to try and get some good acoustics in return. With all the noise on the street, it was hard to tell if they were dealing with blood or air in the chest cavity. “Hand me that 14 gauge,” she ordered.
By now she was on auto-pilot. There wasn’t an ounce of hesitation as Arizona picked her spot and plunged the needle into the patient’s chest. Instead of air, a spurt of blood jetted from the syringe.
“Fuck,” she growled. “He’s got a hemo. We need to get him to the ER; he’ll need a tube and intubation.”
“I’ll drive.” The other medic rounded the cab and jumped into the driver’s seat.
“Tell them we’re three minutes out,” Arizona barked after him. The fireman from earlier stepped up and helped them load the gurney into the back of the ambulance. Arizona had trouble climbing in after it, stumbling twice, so he helped her up.
Once she was in, he grabbed both doors before pausing. “Good luck,” he said to Arizona, watching her work.
She glanced up while putting in an IV. “Thanks for the hand. You guys are good.”
“Not so bad yourself.” He met her gaze and flashed her a crooked smile, then closed the doors and banged on the back.
As the ambulance started to pull away, Arizona realized that, in all of the chaos and confusion, she had forgotten to ask his name.
***
Callie may or may not have planned her ER visit for when Arizona was due on shift. It wasn’t necessarily the only reason she went down there, but she found a couple of excuses to stick around for a lot longer than she normally would have. The last thing she wanted was to go all psycho-stalker on Arizona, but she would feel better if she knew how her girlfriend was doing. Most of her time was spent hiding behind the admin desk, coming up with an array of excuses as to why she was not hovering and had every reason to be there, just in case Arizona asked.
When the clock reached 12:38 and one of the residents inquired as to when Dr. Robbins would be arriving, noting that she wasn’t in her office, Callie started to get worried. They had just talked when Arizona was half a block away; there was no reason for her to be almost half an hour late.
Several phone calls went unanswered and Callie started to panic. “Come on, pick up,” she muttered under her breath, re-dialing yet again as she stepped out into the ambulance bay. Callie was self-aware enough to know that she was probably over-thinking things, but then again that was all she did these days. Arizona was used to it by now.
Bailey was waiting with a team of residents for the arrival of an incoming trauma. “Torres, you filling in for Robbins? She was supposed to be here by noon.” She did not sound too impressed, as usual, and neither Callie nor Arizona could figure out why the blonde had incurred her wrath to begin with.
Callie just shook her head, distracted by another voice recording in her ear. “I’m trying to find out where she is,” she explained. “She was just a couple of blocks away.”
Bailey merely pursed her lips and said nothing as an ambulance turned into the bay and roared up to the waiting cluster of doctors.
Callie stepped back, thinking she should go somewhere quieter, when the doors burst open and Arizona practically fell out of the back. The unexpected discovery shocked Callie into a stunned silence. Arizona was already calling out vitals and information to the residents who received the gurney, working with the paramedics to get the patient on the ground.
‘You have reached Dr. Arizona Robbins, Chief of Trauma Surgery at Seattle Grace Hospital. I am unavailable right now, but please leave a-‘
Callie canceled the call and just about tripped over her own feet in a rush to get to the ambulance. “What the hell happened?”
“Kevin Reed, auto-versus-pedestrian, I was at the scene,” Arizona called out above the initial flurry of activity. “Fire department pulled him from under the vehicle. We’re gonna need you Torres; his left leg’s in pretty bad shape, pelvis might be fractured, and possibly his shoulder.”
“For starters,” Bailey commented, checking under the gauze packing that had been applied en-route.
“He lost consciousness at the scene, and a lot of blood. Intubated, diagnosed hemo in the field, he needs a chest tube STAT. At least he’s wearing a helmet.” Arizona took the gurney’s right side as a mixture of medics and doctors jogged the patient through the sliding doors and into the waiting trauma room at the back.
“I guess it’s no use asking why you were late, huh?” Callie said as she paused to pull on a trauma gown by the doorway.
Arizona nearly smiled as she discarded her latex gloves from the ambulance and let a nurse gown and re-glove her as well. “Hell of a day,” she replied.
“He’s in v-fib,” Bailey said loudly as soon as the patient was hooked up to the cardiac monitor. She hurried to cut away the remnants of his shirt.
“Push one of epi and charge to 200,” Arizona ordered. She strode to the opposite side of the gurney from Callie and took the paddles that were handed over. “Clear.”
A single shock and no results. Arizona waited while they repeated the epi and atropine shots, then called for 260. Another shock and they had a rhythm.
Now that his chest was exposed, she squirted iodine on his ribcage and cut in for the chest tube. A gush of blood escaped the vacuum and ended up all over her shoes, but it restored equal pressure in his pleural cavity. At the same time, she noticed an abnormality in the chest wall. A quick examination confirmed her suspicions.
“Flail chest on his right; watch compressions if he goes down again,” she told the room.
“OR 2 is prepped and waiting,” a nurse said as she hung up the phone.
“Excellent.” Arizona looked at Callie. “How’s it looking, Torres?”
Callie glanced up from his legs. “He’ll need an EFD,” she confirmed - an external fixation device. “I should be able to take care of it while Bailey repairs the rest. There might be a crack in his pelvis but I don’t think it’s as bad as the rest. Nothing dislocated, which is surprising, considering.”
“Good. That’s really good.” Arizona switched to the other attending in the room. “Bailey, grab me the portable ultrasound.”
Bailey switched places with a resident and brought the machine over. Arizona rolled the wand across his flank, taking a few seconds to narrow in on what she was looking for.
“Splenic rupture,” she confirmed, spotting it on the monitor. “We need to get him in the OR right now.”
Callie looked up sharply, hesitant to question Arizona in front of the others. “Uh, Dr. Robbins, don’t you think you should…?”
Arizona spared her a brief glance, caught up in the flow of things, and passed the ultrasound back across the patient before moving the around to grab a table saw.
Callie bit her tongue as Arizona very carefully cut the helmet off of the boy, forging a precise incision down the middle before cracking both sides open and handing it off to a trauma nurse for disposal.
“Pupils equal and reactive,” Arizona confirmed, glad to see that hadn’t changed since the field. “Good thing you were wearing a helmet, Kevin.” She called for a shot of morphine and instructed the nurses on what to start in his IV.
Callie stepped closer and lowered her voice. “Arizona,” she spoke softly, waiting until she had the blonde’s attention before dropping her eyes down to her leg.
Arizona felt an immediate stab of annoyance, though it had less to do with Callie and more with the fact that she hated this whole situation. “I know, I know; Bailey can take care of this and I’ll page Teddy to meet her in the OR,” she said begrudgingly.
It wasn’t hard to see how much that pissed Arizona off, but to her credit, she didn’t try and fight their agreement. That pleased Callie, even if she felt awful for having to play the bad cop.
“Get ready to roll,” Bailey announced to the room while the three attendings flipped up the side rails.
Arizona triple checked that nothing was amiss before reluctantly stepping away. The residents swooped in and pushed the patient from the room.
Callie hung back in the doorway while the trauma team rushed out. “Are you okay?” she asked now that they were alone.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Arizona mumbled. She felt sweaty and gross, and was covered in various bodily fluids, but she would live. Hopefully they could say the same thing for Kevin in a couple of hours.
Callie offered her a tiny smile. “You totally kicked ass today, you know,” she said quietly. “You’ll be back in the OR in no time. I can feel it.”
Despite the mixed feelings over being left out of this case, the sentiment made Arizona return the smile. “Thanks, Callie. I’ll be okay, I promise.” She broke eye contact to start pulling off her gloves. “Go on. I’ll head to the gallery once I’ve cleaned myself up.”
Callie continued to hover. “Are you sure-”
“Calliope, go,” Arizona urged her girlfriend. “I will feel better knowing you’re in there with him. Send me an update whenever you get the chance.”
Finally, Callie nodded and backed out the door. “Okay. See you shortly.”
“Yeah, shortly,” Arizona echoed. She watched her disappear and suddenly found herself alone in the trauma room. Compared to moments before, it was deadly silent.
The whole thing was a mess; blood and various supplies littered every surface, including the floor. A clean-up crew had already arrived and were waiting outside the doorway for her to finish. Arizona didn’t budge just yet. It was the first time since witnessing the accident that she had actually been able to stand still and let the last forty-five minutes sink in.
Hell of a way to start the day.
Arizona methodically peeled off her scrub gown and gloves, stuffing them into the medical waste bin nearby, willing her heart rate to slow down. She traced a hand across her forehead and inhaled a deep breath, then looked down at the state she was in. Her newest pair of shoes were ruined, saturated through with blood from the chest tube, and she highly doubted her jeans would make it through the wash anything short of orange.
It didn’t matter how much she told herself that the bloody clothing was the cause of her frustration; at the heart of the matter Arizona knew she wanted to be in that OR more than anything. The fact that she was stuck out here sent a stab of resentment through her entire body, and with it an outward explosion of anger.
“Damn it,” Arizona snapped to the empty room, twisting around and kicking the plastic garbage bin as hard as she possibly could. The impact caused a sharp pain to shoot up her right leg, an unwanted reminder that no matter how much she wanted it, it was way too soon to be back in the OR. Her leg would never cope with a lengthy surgery at this stage. That just made her feel even worse.
Releasing a frustrated growl, Arizona looked down at her filthy clothes again and resigned herself to the fact that she needed a hot shower and a fresh pair of scrubs. Kevin had a team of world class surgeons by his side, headed by Callie and Bailey, so she took comfort in knowing he would be well taken care of - even if she wished more than anything that it was her in that OR instead.
---
Scar Tissue (Part Two)
Chapter 31
Authors: kennedysbitch & livelovelearneg
Beta'd by englishstrawbie
Rating: NC-17 [Depictions of violence, PTSD, Language, Sexual Content]
Pairing: Callie/Arizona
Disclaimer
Scar Tissue [masterpost]
Summary: When Arizona Robbins’ brother dies in Iraq, her life takes off in a completely different direction. Now a highly-rated trauma surgeon with the United States Marine Corps, she spends the three years following his death serving their country overseas - until an insurgent attack leaves her with debilitating injuries. Traveling to Seattle at her father’s request, she falls under the care of orthopedic surgeon Dr. Calliope Torres. Damaged emotionally and physically, Arizona tries to start the healing process with the help of a headstrong woman she never saw coming.
Part Two: Now free from the confines of a hospital bed for the first time
in almost five months, Arizona begins her physical and emotional recovery while
navigating a budding yet rocky relationship with Callie Torres.
Warnings: Depictions of violence, PTSD, Language, Sexual Content
---
Despite all the hype it had received, Arizona’s first day on the job was relatively uneventful. She spent most of it in her new office - first with IT, then with Webber, and later by herself reviewing files on how the emergency management system had been run over the last five years. It was a bigger headache than she had originally thought but nothing she couldn’t handle given time and a large amount of patience from the Board. A lot of money had to be shuffled around and she had her work cut out for her in convincing them to spend more for long-term gain. They had promised her as much when she’d first signed on, but of course when it came to pulling out the chequebook, they were hesitant.
While the chaos Dr. Bailey had described at the staff meeting wasn’t quite as prevalent as she’d made it out to be, the residents could definitely do with some attitude adjustments. Arizona met most of the surgical residents on staff in the first three days and more than a few had already landed themselves on her watch list. They were cocky, irritating and overly confident - by definition, your average surgeon - and yet she wasn’t sure she would leave any of them alone with her patients just yet.
At the end of a very long and headache-inducing first shift, she stole away to the skills lab just so she could feel like she did something more productive than shuffle papers around and shake hands. Callie was right - her patience was being tested. All she wanted to do was jump right back into the thick of things. Staying true to her word, she stuck to the slow and careful approach they had planned out, but it was torture. She did it for Callie’s sake - and, to a lesser extent, her own.
The whole week went by in relatively the same manner. She didn’t deal directly with patients, instead keeping herself up to date with incoming traumas and paying attention to how they were run from start to finish. The system in place wasn’t bad but they were short-staffed and had more undertrained residents on hand than attendings. Arizona put in a request to run mandatory trauma exercises with every fourth year resident and under, regardless of their chosen specialty. Not only would it help in the ER, but if there was ever a major disaster, teams sent to the field would be better prepared. She knew firsthand how messy it could get when doctors became overwhelmed.
When the initial onslaught of paperwork and bureaucracy slowed down, Arizona threw herself into research and practice mode. She spent a good chunk of time in the far corner of the skills lab, alternating between a computer-generated surgical training program and the variety of dummies available for a more hands-on experience. To most of her colleagues it probably seemed silly and unnecessary, but Arizona wouldn’t take any chances before she got back into working with patients. Ten months off the job and getting her brain rattled around her skull in Iraq made her extra cautious; she had to trust herself beyond any doubt before she stepped back into the OR. There were quite a few precision techniques she used that not many residents would be familiar with, so it was imperative that she felt like she was on the ball before she got back to teaching.
Even with the daily headaches and stiffness in her limbs, Arizona’s time in the lab became progressively longer - she was in by seven a.m., out just after eight. Large portions of her day were spent sitting still, though her leg still throbbed by the time she got home. Nothing would have felt better than a hot bath after a long shift, only by that point she was too tired to actually take one. For the most part Arizona climbed straight into bed and fell asleep before Callie could even join her. Callie seemed resigned to their lack of time together but, to her credit, she was nothing short of understanding and supportive.
It helped that there had been no drastic impact on her symptoms since she started work. Just as Arizona had suspected, having a regular schedule again and something to focus on other than the crippling nightmares made it easier to cope. They didn’t disappear; she still woke up in a cold sweat at least once a night, but nothing had been bad enough to disturb Callie’s slumber. Most nights she was able to roll over and go back to sleep after a while. It made for some tired mornings, but Arizona held out hope that her old Energizer Bunny stamina would be kicking in any day now.
During her second Friday on shift, she was locked away in the corner of an empty lab, pouring over the latest research on pediatric cardiovascular penetrating trauma and several cases where new methods were employed in the field. It was already 7:30pm, twelve and a half hours after she had walked in the door, and the lines on the page were starting to blur. Arizona was preoccupied with re-reading the same paragraph over and over again, and didn’t notice anyone enter the room until a pair of arms enveloped her waist from behind. She jumped; though right away the faint scent of Callie’s shampoo and a pair of lips brushing against her neck calmed her down.
“You scared me,” she chided, automatically leaning into the embrace.
“Hi,” Callie chuckled, placing an apologetic kiss below her ear. “I knocked.”
Arizona felt goosebumps ripple underneath her skin. “Not complaining; this is a nice surprise,” she said. “Feels like I haven’t seen you in days.”
“I was beginning to wonder if you’d locked yourself in here by mistake,” Callie mused. “Came to see if I needed to break down the door and rescue you.” She nuzzled the side of Arizona’s neck affectionately, feeling the woman’s spine give out and more weight settle against her body.
“No, definitely not by mistake,” Arizona said through a yawn. “It’s voluntary. Though at this rate, my eyes will fall out of my head before I so much as put in a central line.” She wrinkled her nose. “You think they’ll be okay with a blind surgeon so long as she kicks ass?”
Callie squeezed Arizona’s middle before releasing her and sitting down. “You’ve been going at it pretty hard lately,” she pointed out, taking in the large amount of work material spread around the table. “Why don’t you come home with me tonight? I can cook you dinner.”
Arizona considered her options. “I should really get through this last stack of papers. It’s one less thing to do tomorrow. Plus, I need to make another phone call about that trauma course I want to do with the residents next month. I need it to be mandatory and there are some more hoops to jump through first.”
Callie could see that she would be fighting an uphill battle tonight. She admired Arizona’s iron-clad work ethic, but she wanted an evening alone with her girlfriend. Those had been scarce in recent weeks.
“Hm,” she hummed, narrow her eyes as she considered her options. “I’m upping my offer to ‘I’ll cook you dinner in my underwear’, but only if you come home with me now. No take-backs.” She cocked an eyebrow and tilted her head suggestively.
That put a smile on Arizona’s face. “Oh, playing hard ball, are we?” she teased. “You’re making it awfully hard to say no.”
“Then my plan is working.” Callie smirked and dropped her eyes to her girlfriend’s leg. “How’re you feeling, anyway?”
Arizona followed her gaze and stretched it out, flexing her knee within the confines of the brace. “I have callouses growing in strange places, thigh chaffing, and sometimes I forget how to walk in a straight line, but other than that, pretty darn good.” She was only partially joking - the brace worked fantastically, it was the long hours that were really putting a strain on her body. Her eyes were completely bloodshot by now and she was pretty sure she hadn’t washed her hair in two days; but hey, at least she was working again. Nothing short of another bomb would keep her from coming in.
Underneath the table, Arizona lightly rapped her knuckles against the wood grain. It occurred to her that she was the last person who should tempt the fates.
Callie’s concern was evident in her frown and hardly needed to be vocalized. “I’m going to be fine,” Arizona assured her for the hundredth time. “This is all a part of the process. I’m getting used to a schedule again, which is why I’ve been taking it easy.”
“This is your version of ‘easy?” Callie asked skeptically.
The corner of Arizona’s mouth twitched. “Remember our agreement?”
“The one in which I threatened to hold out on you if you so much as look sideways at an OR?”
That made Arizona laugh. “Yeah, that’s the one. But it also states that as long as I’m not putting myself in danger, you’re not allowed to hover.”
“I know,” Callie relented. “You’re doing great, I just miss you, that’s all.”
“This won’t be forever, I promise,” Arizona said. She reached over and gave Callie’s lab coat an affectionate tug. “I think I’m going to spend Monday in the ER, though. The new schedule rotation seems to be working okay but I’d rather see it for myself. And I’m starting to think the others are wondering why I’m here at all if I’m not doing my job.”
“No one is thinking that,” Callie said immediately. “They all know your situation and everyone I’ve talked to is happy you’re here. A few weeks in the grand scheme of your career is nothing to complain about. Besides, you’re getting our trauma centre back up and running, those bastards had better be grateful.”
Leave it to Callie to be direct and to the point. “Still, I want to start showing my face on the surface now that I’ve got some refreshers under my belt,” Arizona continued. “So far it doesn’t seem like anything was jarred loose up here, so that’s a bonus.” She tapped the side of her head with an index finger.
Callie rolled her eyes. “You are as brilliant as you are beautiful, Arizona. Not even an explosive concussion can take that away.”
The sentiment made Arizona grin, but for the longest time she had been paranoid that it had. The concussion she sustained had been pretty severe and it took a while to heal. There was a lot of brain fog after the incident and she had been nervous about how well she could focus on the medicine again when the time came. So far, so good. Med school and residency hadn’t been completely knocked out of her skull.
Arizona swiveled back to the table, bracing herself for one last push to end the day, but as hard as she tried, all she could do was stare helplessly at the mountain of paperwork in front of her. Now that her concentration had been broken, she didn’t know where to pick up and restart.
Callie quirked an eyebrow when Arizona failed to make any further movements. “Something wrong?”
Arizona’s shoulders dipped. “I think I forgot how to read,” she whined, suddenly aware of the sluggishness seeping into her bones. That was never a good sign.
“Okay, I’m taking you home,” Callie laughed, sliding from her stool and grabbing Arizona by the waist. She pulled until the blonde got to her feet, seeing the exhaustion etched into her features. “You’ll thank me in the morning when you don’t wake up dead.”
Arizona resigned herself to an evening of relaxation and pajama pants, gathering up the reading materials. “I don’t remember being this tired before,” she admitted, closing her laptop and stuffing it in her bag. “When I was in Iraq, we hardly ever slept and it just seemed...normal. This place has air conditioning and a distinct lack of violence and I’m zonked. This must be what getting old feels like.” She looked perplexed at the very idea.
“Hey, older women are hot,” Callie shot back, grinning when Arizona glared at her. “What? Your birthday is next month and I totally plan on sexing you up in celebration. Even if you’re sore and broken down and close to retirement.”
Arizona smacked her in the gut. “Jerk,” she mused, slinging her briefcase over one shoulder. She always appreciated how Callie never let her wallow for too long. It was that kind of attitude that had helped pull her out of her perma-funk in the first place.
Callie slipped an arm around her back and guided her towards the exit, leaving no room for Arizona to change her mind. “You’re gonna be sexy when you’re eighty, Arizona. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
Once again, Arizona grinned in a way that only Callie could bring out of her. “Nice recovery, Torres. I’ll remember that one for the future.”
***
Callie made the mistake of thinking that her anxiety problems were over after Arizona spent two weeks in a relatively safe, stable environment. There were no threats beyond exhaustion and sleep deprivation in a laboratory setting. Then Monday morning rolled around, the day Arizona would be right back in the middle of a chaotic ER, and suddenly she was a train wreck of nerves all over again.
The theory behind the practice was sound - Arizona was back on her feet and managing her time correctly. Of course she wanted to be back in action, that was where a trauma surgeon thrived. Callie even looked forward to sharing cases, knowing that one day they would be standing across an OR table from each other. This chapter of her life combined the two things she loved most in the world - Arizona and her job as a surgeon - but she just couldn’t seem to curb that pesky instinct to wrap the blonde in pillows and hide her away from danger. Unfortunately for Callie’s blood pressure, she was deeply attracted to an independent and motivated woman. It was a conflicting issue that would only go away with time and exposure on her part. Arizona was doing this, there was no way around it.
A lack of sleep the night before left Callie scrambling and late for work on Monday, cursing under her breath as she breezed through the apartment and gathered up her things. She was on edge. Triggers, physical setbacks, emotional repercussions; all of these things weighed on her mind. Every possible thing that could go wrong did in her dreams, right down to an asteroid hitting the Pacific Northwest and Seattle becoming the forefront of a major disaster - which Arizona had the unfortunate responsibility of cleaning up.
No, Callie wasn’t doing herself any favours. Sometimes she wished she had a less active imagination.
“Where’s the other one?” she demanded, hopping around on one leg while trying to put the shoe she did have on the wrong foot. Callie caught the mistake and reversed direction, stumbling into the wall as Arizona appeared.
Arizona looked tentatively amused as she handed over the missing one. “You okay? You seem really stressed out this morning.”
Callie snatched the sneaker away and shoved it on her foot. “I’m fine,” she said stiffly, casting a look at her watch and swearing. “Damn it, I’m going to be late.”
“Your patient can wait ten minutes without dying, so don’t go running into traffic, okay?” Arizona joked. Callie had clearly woken up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, she just didn’t know why.
Despite her irritation at a day that had barely begun, Callie checked her attitude at the door and took a moment to skim over Arizona’s physique. She wasn’t going in until noon, so chances were they wouldn’t see much of each other today, barring any emergency cases that required ortho to step in. Arizona did look pretty good right now; tired, but good. She wasn’t favouring her right side too much, so that boded well.
“Take it easy out there, okay?” Callie asked. “Don’t be afraid to page for help if you need it.”
Arizona fought the urge to roll her eyes. “Thanks, mom.”
Callie pursed her lips. “Come on, I was only-“
“I am perfectly capable of standing on my own two feet for a few hours,” Arizona cut in. “You don’t need to keep-”
Callie held up a hand. “Yeah, I know, ‘shut up Torres’, I get it,” she grumbled, pulling her hair into a messy ponytail before stooping over to grab her purse. “I’m sorry, just…be careful. Don’t rush yourself.”
It was hard not to feel annoyed when those kind of comments sounded about as supportive as a wet noodle. Today was already going to be stressful enough without the added pressure of her girlfriend’s expectations and the worried looks constantly being thrown her way. Arizona had to remind herself that Callie had good intentions, even if the guilt trips were getting old. She couldn’t really be mad.
Well, maybe just a little bit.
“I will see you when I get there,” Arizona reiterated, holding the door open with a polite smile wedged in place.
Callie knew she was being pushed out of the apartment, though she couldn’t really blame Arizona at this point. She would have kicked herself out, too. “Right, going now. Bye.”
Arizona’s expression softened. “Bye.”
Callie stepped in for a quick kiss and then booked it down the hallway.
Arizona locked up after her, sighing with relief, and shuffled into the kitchen. She loved Callie, but this morning she was like a grumpy bear, and not in a cute way.
The jangle of nerves in her belly took away her appetite for breakfast. A quick look in the fridge told her they didn’t have much more than cheese, beer and some hot sauce, anyway. None of those things spoke to her stomach, so she closed the fridge and leaned against the counter instead.
Arizona was confident going into this while still feeling nervous as hell, even if she didn’t say as much to Callie. Getting back to treating patients had a lot of implications, many of which she hardly understood herself. For starters, the last patient she had seen literally blew up in front of her - so hopefully today would end on a better note.
Even with Cristina gone and the place to herself for a few hours, she went into the bedroom to relax. There was a more noticeable hitch in her step when she walked without the brace, something she only did at home for the time being. It took longer to get around but hopefully, with lots of practice, one day she would be able to walk with a more normal gait. Arizona still swam twice a week in an effort to keep up her conditioning, although she had only made it out once since she started working. The one day she had taken off in the last few weeks, she’d slept for fourteen hours and then gone back to the lab in the evening. She realized she would need to create some kind of schedule so her physical therapy didn’t fall by the wayside while she got her career back on track.
With or without the brace, there was always pain on some level; it was something she was just learning to live with. The pain was her gauge for how she was doing - if she could walk without collapsing into a pile of spent bones, it was usually considered a good day. So long as the good outnumbered the bad, she was happy, and that seemed to be the trend.
Her cellphone was buzzing across the side table when she entered the bedroom and Arizona automatically assumed it was Callie calling to remind her of something else. She hurried to catch it in time but her right foot caught on a discarded pair of jeans and she stumbled forward. Mid-trip, she somehow managed to grab the phone on its last ring, smacking her knee against the bed frame in the process.
“Ow - hello,” she answered, her voice strained as the not-so-funny bone in her kneecap caused everything below it to go numb. For a very precise surgeon, she was kind of a klutz in every other aspect of her life.
“Good morning,” came the Sergeant’s cheery reply. “Did I wake you?”
Arizona sat down and massaged the fresh injury. “No, not at all, I was just seeing Calliope off to work.” When the tingling subsided, she slid back and reclined on the mattress. “How are you? It feels like we haven’t talked in ages.”
“I didn’t want to bother you while you were getting settled,” Daniel replied. “How are things at work?”
“They’re great, actually,” she said. “Exhausting in that ‘is it the weekend yet?’ kind of way, but other than that, I can’t really complain. It’s nice having a life again.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” He covered the mouthpiece and Arizona could hear him talking to someone in the background, followed by a couple of loud barks from the puppies before he came back on. “Any chance we’ll get to see you at group this week? It’s been a while.”
Arizona winced. “I wouldn’t count on it, sorry. I’m working Thursday. I promise I’ll try and come to a meeting soon.”
“You’d think you were someone important, like a doctor or something,” Daniel joked. “Anyway, I didn’t call to harass you, I know you’re busy. But I do have a proposition, if you’re open to it.”
“Sounds cryptic. Should I be worried?”
“Only time will tell. Are you working right now?”.
“Not for a few hours.” Arizona listened to him explain his thoughts and eventually sat up again. She checked the clock and factored in travel time to when she had to be at work. “Sure, I can meet you at nine. Need me to come over there?”
“You’re the one doing me the favour. I’ll come to you.”
***
“Did you ask Cristina?” Callie said into the phone, pinning it between her ear and shoulder while she filled out a prescription.
“I haven’t seen her in four days, I was hoping to catch her at work.”
Arizona was making her way down a busy sidewalk while they chatted, still two blocks from the hospital. A heavy rain had fallen that morning and left the sidewalks slick with puddles. She dodged around them to avoid soaking her feet, figuring that mold-infested padding would ruin all of Callie’s hard work. To keep her hands free, she had strapped her cane to the side of her backpack, knowing Callie would berate her if she left it at home. The brace was fit snugly around her leg but a throb of discomfort welled up with every slow, lumbering step that she took.
Given the lengthy day she had ahead, she planned on icing the joint when she got to work. It wasn’t an ideal way to start the afternoon, but chronic pain was inevitable. There was no use in working Callie up about something neither of them could control, so she had kept it to herself.
A skateboarder suddenly zipped by, too busy texting to notice Arizona as he came within an inch of knocking her into traffic. She balked, momentarily distracted from the conversation, and glared as he weaved around some other pedestrians. There were more than a few scathing looks thrown his way, though the teenager remained oblivious. At one point, he dipped around a mother and child, dropping from the curb and shooting out between parked cars. Arizona bit her tongue to keep from yelling after the boy - she was already one step away from ‘get off my lawn’ on the best of days; there was no need to age herself any further.
“Still there?” Callie asked after an extended period of silence.
“Yeah, I’m here.” Arizona switched the phone to her other ear. “Cristina will probably just think one of her dirty dishes grew legs and learned how to walk; I’m not too worried about it.” A car horn sounded a sharp warning in the background, almost blocking out her girlfriend’s response.
Callie was laughing at the image that painted in her head. “I wouldn’t be surprised. One of these days she’s going to have to start naming them and forking out for vet bills.” She distinctly remembered a smell coming from Cristina’s room back when they had first moved in together, and she had gone on to discover a forgotten spaghetti plate growing green things underneath the bed. Since then, Cristina had been a tiny bit more careful, though Callie could never be too sure.
“If she has a problem with it, I can work something else out,” Arizona added as she came to the crosswalk and pressed the button.
“Nah, you’re probably good,” Callie agreed. “Karev has slept on our couch before, so has Meredith. We’re used to waking up to that sort of thing.” She covered the receiver and quickly mouthed some instructions to an ICU nurse. “She’s in for a hell of a surprise either way. I think she was headed home to get some sleep; probably left already.”
Arizona winced as she waited for the pedestrian light to change. “Oops. Guess I should’ve left a note on the door, huh?”
***
It wasn’t long after Arizona had left for the day that Cristina shouldered through the front door with an unceremonious bang, balancing take-out in one hand and a bunch of stolen cardiothoracic files in the other. With Altman in surgery all day, she had helped herself to a stack of confidential research material, with plans to go through it all and get it back in the right drawer before her boss noticed it was missing. There was a complicated valve replacement on the menu in two weeks and she needed all of the prep work she could get. Technically it was Alex’s case, but whatever - shame was for losers. Cristina thought herself very much a winner, which was why she was planning on swiping this surgery away without Alex ever realizing it.
With her headphones blaring, she danced into the living room and dumped her bags on the floor, whipping out a carton of noodles and cracking a pair of wooden chopsticks in half. She sprawled out on the couch and shoveled a healthy portion of chow mein into her mouth, still bobbing in time with the music.
Given that her roommates were working and no one else lived in the apartment with them, Cristina couldn’t be faulted for screaming when something small and furry suddenly landed on her back. Dinner went airborne and she nearly fell off the couch, twisting around to get a good look at whatever it was that attacked her.
Tank crouched over the cushions, situated right above his newfound friend, and fixated on her dinner. The rapid tail wagging churned up a small breeze that Cristina could feel from where she was sitting.
“Who the hell are you?” she demanded, ripping the headphones from her ears. The chihuahua yipped and jumped down to occupy the spot next to her.
Okay, she was pretty sure no one had ever bought a dog. That was something she definitely would have remembered. “Uh, Callie?” Cristina called out, receiving only an indignant woof in their otherwise quiet surroundings. Tank stepped closer and she recoiled, sheltering her dinner from the miniature werewolf slowly encroaching on her space.
The dog sat on his haunches and looked expectantly at the carton of Chinese food, failing to take the hint, or perhaps just ignoring it. His giant, bat-like ears rotated in a semi-circle as he listened to her speak. A lack of speed on Cristina’s part made him bark again, louder this time, and he leaned forward to sniff at the air.
Cristina distanced herself another inch or two. “No. Bad. Mine,” she scolded. A quick jab at the dog’s face with her chopsticks did nothing to scare him off.
Tank snuffled quietly and started to whine, glancing between her and the food again. To his credit, he didn’t lunge for it, intent on seeing his guilt trip through to the end.
Cristina looked at the chow mein, then back at him. “No. Shoo,” she repeated. “Bad dog. Go on!”
The chihuahua’s tail picked up speed and he lowered himself into a submissive, belly-down position, turning his big brown eyes up at her from beneath his eyelashes.
Even Cristina, who prided herself on her emotional distancing skills, paused for the first time that encounter. She was still stuck on the part where there was a dog living in their apartment, because absent or not lately, this was kind of a big thing for her to miss. It was kind of cute, though, in a slobbery, mangy mutt kind of way.
With a very slow, deliberate movement, she plucked a small portion of noodles with her chopsticks and extended them outward, letting them dangle freely above the little creature’s forehead.
Tank lunged forward to gobble the meal down in a quick series of bites. Cristina raised her arm higher and he danced around on his hind legs to reach the noodles, several of them tugging loose and landing on his snout.
Amused, Cristina shook her head and gave the next portion to herself. “I have no idea who you are, but if you’re gonna throw that up, make sure you do it in Torres’ bed.”
***
It was shortly after she hung up with Callie that Arizona reached the set of lights across from the hospital. The pedestrian signal had yet to change, so she took the opportunity to stoop down and fiddle with the ankle attachment fit snugly into her shoe. It had the tendency to rub when she walked, and in her rush to leave the house she’d forgotten to apply a layer of mole skin to prevent blistering. That was just one more thing to add to the list of crap she had to take care of before she could even start her day. This stupid leg of hers was turning out to be incredibly high-maintenance. For now, all she could do was bunch up the sock to provide some padding until she got to work.
Her mind was already set on the hours to come, so much so that, as she stood up again, she nearly missed the screech of tires off to her right. The crash that followed would have been impossible to ignore; glass splintered, people began shouting, and the scent of burning rubber suddenly permeated the air.
By the time Arizona zeroed in on the noise, a crowd had begun to form around the scene. A large tow truck had slid diagonally across the white lines on the pavement and come to a stop thirty feet past the intersection. Arizona noticed skid marks trailing behind it. A chorus of panicked voices rose up just as her view was obscured by the flurry of people arriving to gawk.
The crosswalk signal changed in front of her but she was already backtracking towards the accident. When she got closer, she saw that the tow truck had plowed into the back of a parked car. Scattered bits of glass and broken material lay strewn around the pavement, while the back of the car was crunched inward - this wasn’t just a fender bender. A man clambered out of the truck cab and stumbled around the front of his vehicle.
Arizona picked up her pace, shouldering through the crowded sidewalk with a couple of curt ‘move!’s to get them out of her way. When she reached the pick-up, all she noticed were a bunch of shaken and confused faces swarming the streets. There was no immediately identifiable cause that she could see.
“I’m a doctor, what happened?” she demanded. She threw her backpack to the ground and grabbed the driver by the shoulder to get a good look at him.
The man was shaking, the whites of his eyes prominent as he scanned the area. “H-he just flew out in front of me, I couldn’t stop. I think he fell or something; I didn’t see him until-”
“He?” Arizona interrupted. “He who? Where is he?”
“I-I don’t know…maybe I missed him?” The man spun in a circle, confused. “I tried to get out of the way, but I hit that car, and then…” Perspiration dotted his forehead and he seemed really disoriented; whether from shock or a head injury Arizona wasn’t sure, so she led him to the curb and got him to sit down.
“There was a kid,” one of the bystanders called out. “On his skateboard. He darted out and kind of fell into the street.”
Of the ten or so people standing immediately around them, no one looked like they had just been hit by a car. Arizona got up and did a quick check of the front of the vehicle, where it had collided with the one parked. “There’s blood on the grill,” she mumbled to herself. It would have been pretty hard to miss had someone flown over the truck itself on impact. A quick glance behind it and she noticed what looked like faint streaks of blood on the pavement.
In her experience, that was never a good sign.
Kneeling was a slow process in her condition, but it allowed Arizona to hear a faint murmur before she looked under the vehicle. A strangled cry followed and she dropped flat on her stomach to get a good look. “He’s under here!” she yelled over her shoulder. “Somebody call an ambulance!”
Knowing that at least one person in the crowd would be taking care of it, she focused on the skateboarder that had nearly plowed into her before, and came to the grim realization that he was trapped within the tow truck’s chassis. There was too much blood to see the extent of the damage, but right now she was going to go with ‘bad’ - there was more of him stuck to the bottom of the truck than actually touching the pavement. His left leg alone was jammed into the back axel.
The teenager was shaking uncontrollably, which for now meant that he was still alive. For how long, Arizona couldn’t tell. She shifted around the side of the truck to get a better look.
“Can you hear me?” She thought he was unconscious until his eyes rolled in her direction. It was the only part of him she had seen move voluntarily in the last thirty seconds. “Listen, I’m a doctor at the hospital across the street and I’m going to get you out of here, but I need you to hold really still, okay?”
“Hel…” It came out more of a croak, barely audible, and a gurgle of blood kept the teen from finishing. He ignored her advice, or possibly not didn’t understand it in his condition, and tried to move his head in her direction.
“No-no, I need you to stay still,” Arizona repeated, only louder this time. She held back a grimace as she flattened out on her stomach and slowly inched under the car. Broken glass dug into her forearms, while dirt and other debris stuck to her skin thanks to the rain from earlier. At one point she banged her head on the underbelly of the truck and had to force herself to get as low as she possibly could. The kid was wearing a helmet himself, which gave him a better chance of surviving this, but that didn’t do a whole lot of good for the rest of his body.
When she was a kid, her father had hit a deer on the highway with his truck. They were going on a family trip to the mountains and the animal had just darted out in front of them. It had become trapped under their large pick-up rather than being plowed out of the way or up into the windshield. Good for them, bad for the deer. They had dragged it about thirty yards before coming to a stop, and the mess it had made between the mechanical underside and the pavement was pretty gruesome. The deer had ended up partially skinned by the time her dad peeled it off and she would forever remember the amount of blood that had swirled into the drain at the car wash later that day.
The teenager wasn’t in much better shape. He was mangled into the truck mechanics with at least two points of contact that she could see - his right arm was caught and extended back above his head, and his left leg was crushed around the axel. Part of his shoulder had been ripped open and was bleeding freely through his shirt, while the impact and drag force had shredded other areas of exposed skin. It was hard to tell just how bad it all was, though a growing pool of blood beneath the boy gave her a pretty good idea. Among other things, she could see bone splintering through his shin where it was broken in at least two places. They needed to get him to the ER as soon as humanly possible, and all without causing further injuries during extraction.
“Hold still,” Arizona reiterated. She struggled to get closer and put a hand underneath his head, hoping to support his neck until he could be stabilized.
“Oh, god.” The driver had reappeared and was crouching down behind her. “I didn’t see him, he just flew out and fell in front of me. I didn’t see him!”
“Not important right now,” Arizona said through a hard breath. She knew her crosswalk light had been on, so the car had probably hit the kid on a green light. Somehow she didn’t think that pointing out how traffic flowed would reassure the teenager at this very moment. If she got him to the OR in one piece and he made it through, there would be plenty of time for life lessons later.
“What’s your name?” Arizona tried to squirm closer but scraped her head on something metal again. She swore under her breath and shuffled around until she could hold his head and neck in place without breaking her own.
There was a delay while he registered the question. “Kevin,” he murmured weakly. “I’m not…”
“Kevin, I’m Dr. Robbins. Can you wiggle your fingers for me? Carefully now.” Arizona didn’t want him moving until he was stabilized, but she needed to know how likely a spinal cord injury was. He gave an incoherent moan and tried to shift his body again, so she did her best to keep him still. “No, don’t move around, just try and wiggle your fingertips.”
“Can’t se…” The words faded and his eyelids began to flutter.
“Stay with me, buddy, we’re gonna get you out of here,” Arizona said in a loud voice. With a grunt, she forced her body forward a couple of more inches. It was a tight fit underneath the truck and she was starting to feel mildly claustrophobic. “Hear those sirens? They’ll be here in under a minute.”
An ambulance was the first to arrive and shortly after it the fire department. Arizona stayed beneath the vehicle and worked with the paramedics to get a C-collar on the patient. Once it was in place, she shifted over to let one of them crawl in next to her and moved down to get a better look at his leg. It was jammed in there pretty good and she couldn’t see a way to work it out without using power tools.
“We need to cut him loose,” she called back to the nearest firefighter. “Get a blade that can cut through steel. You’ll also need something to take the weight of the vehicle and push it up - but slowly. I can’t get in here to stabilize him.”
The fireman that was kneeling by her legs looked skeptical. “You should move back, ma’am, let us take care of this.”
“I’m a military doctor, I’ve done this before,” she snapped. “There is no way you or your men can fit under here. We don’t have time for chivalry.”
He didn’t exactly look convinced, but Arizona’s words rang true. She had barely squeezed underneath the car herself and she was a lot less bulky than multiple men in full gear.
“Get me some air bags,” the fireman yelled to his crew. He dipped down to get a better view of the truck’s underbelly. “Do you see any fuel leaking?”
Arizona craned her neck around and breathed in deeply in a couple of times. “I don’t think so; but the pavement’s pretty slick.” All of the rain water and blood made it hard to distinguish if there was gasoline on the ground as well. She didn’t smell anything or see any active streams flowing from a broken fuel line.
The firefighter nodded. “We’ll pump this up as much as you think we can and get a circular saw to cut through here and here.” He pointed out two spots on the back axel. “The hand should be a bit easier to untangle, they’ll work on that with the Jaws at the same time.”
Arizona nodded. “Good.” They would just have to wait and see about the rest of Kevin. The paramedics were doing their best to stem the flow of blood from the open wound on his chest in the meantime, while Arizona’s biggest concern was his internal injuries, and making sure he could breathe once he was free.
“You okay in there a bit longer?” the fireman asked. “It’ll take them a minute to get everything set up.”
“I’m good,” Arizona said curtly. Her neck was starting to seize up with the awkward angle she was jammed under the vehicle in, but not much could be done about that until the teenager was free.
The other paramedic handed her some gauze padding and she used what she could for a temporary pressure pad. “I need shears,” she called back. Someone brought over a pair and the guy behind her extended them under the car. It took some twisting and careful maneuvering, but Arizona managed to prop herself against the hard ground and cut away part of his pants. Once that was finished and she had packed the wound as carefully as she could around the mechanics, she rested her cheek on the mucky pavement, away from the blood. Every muscle in her body was screaming and she worked to gulp down enough air to trigger her second wind. Today was going to be a tough one to get through.
A group of Seattle Fire Department guys arrived with the airbags and started to set up. The paramedics were readying a backboard and make-shift platform to keep the boy elevated until he could be freed. The extraction was going to be a very delicate balance between the two and a single slip could open up an artery.
The firefighter that had been assisting her reappeared a minute later while his men shored up the air bags. “So, army doctor, huh? Do this kind of thing often?”
“More than you’d think,” Arizona said with a small smirk, rolling her eyes in his direction while keeping her head down. “Two tours in Baghdad and a lot of vehicle extractions.”
“Sounds intense.”
“Yeah,” Arizona panted, working mentally to slow her heart rate down. “Mind you, never thought I’d be doing the same thing in downtown Seattle, but…” A drop of sweat rolled down her forehead and she tried to shake it off. Her core temperature was hovering somewhere around a million degrees right now.
The firefighter seemed impressed, like he wanted to ask more question, but his team called out that they were ready. “You’ll have to move until we can get him free.”
“Not yet.” Arizona craned her head around to double check the wound. “Make sure you go slowly; I don’t want him tearing free.”
“We’ve got this, I promise.” He stooped lower and stretched his hand out. “Here, let me help.”
Arizona was reluctant to leave the kid, but he was barely conscious and they were running out of time. The last thing she wanted was to get in the way and slow things down.
She took the firefighter’s glove and started to wiggle herself out from under the car. He helped her back up carefully and used his other hand to keep her head from smacking the car again.
“One of you needs to keep him stable and make sure there’s no further damage to the limb. If he nicks an artery, he won’t make it across the street,” she ordered as her body finally cleared the truck.
The firefighter repeated the orders to his men and guided Arizona to her feet. She stumbled into him, a side effect of her legs being locked in position for almost half an hour.
“Easy,” he grinned, steadying her with a hand on her back. His eyes dropped to where her jeans had ridden up and hooked onto part of her leg brace. “Souvenir?”
“Huh?” Arizona scrunched her brow and looked down. “Oh, that. Yeah,” she puffed, pushing sweat-soaked hair from her forehead and smearing car grease and mud in the process. “You could say that.”
Again, he seemed curious about the woman that had just wedged herself beneath a car voluntarily, but they both had a job to do. “Wait here. We’ll take care of him.”
Arizona stood back and let his team get to work on extracting the patient, taking the opportunity to catch her breath. It wasn’t exactly a hot summer day, but she was drenched in sweat and had little cuts covering the exposed part of her forearms and wrists. While SFD did their thing, she grabbed a towel from the ambulance and hurriedly tried to clean herself up.
It was hard not to jump in and help stabilize the kid while the grinding of power tools filled the air, but the fire department was taking her instructions to heart. For the longest time she was used to doing part of that job herself - with the Marines and the Navy, it was all hands on deck. Waiting patiently was not her strong suit, especially since she had the tendency to believe other people would screw it up without her supervision. But the rescue crew was fast and efficient; they knew what they were doing.
The truck gradually rose, several inches at a time, and one of the medics remained underneath to ensure the patient was cut loose in the most stable way possible. Arizona couldn’t see what was being done and it drove her nuts, but she stayed out of their way. As soon as the kid was free, EMS and the team of firefighters extracted him from under the truck on a backboard. They hoisted him onto the waiting gurney and Arizona immediately jumped back into the fray. Scattered applause erupted from the crowd.
The situation was far from over. His airway was clear for now and his circulation weak but flowing, so she assessed the leg wound while the paramedics packed his chest. She stabilized the two main breaks the best she could until they got to the ER.
“Decreased breath sounds on the right,” the female paramedic told her. “Pneumothorax?”
Arizona left the compression packing in place and felt around his chest, tapping her fingers to try and get some good acoustics in return. With all the noise on the street, it was hard to tell if they were dealing with blood or air in the chest cavity. “Hand me that 14 gauge,” she ordered.
By now she was on auto-pilot. There wasn’t an ounce of hesitation as Arizona picked her spot and plunged the needle into the patient’s chest. Instead of air, a spurt of blood jetted from the syringe.
“Fuck,” she growled. “He’s got a hemo. We need to get him to the ER; he’ll need a tube and intubation.”
“I’ll drive.” The other medic rounded the cab and jumped into the driver’s seat.
“Tell them we’re three minutes out,” Arizona barked after him. The fireman from earlier stepped up and helped them load the gurney into the back of the ambulance. Arizona had trouble climbing in after it, stumbling twice, so he helped her up.
Once she was in, he grabbed both doors before pausing. “Good luck,” he said to Arizona, watching her work.
She glanced up while putting in an IV. “Thanks for the hand. You guys are good.”
“Not so bad yourself.” He met her gaze and flashed her a crooked smile, then closed the doors and banged on the back.
As the ambulance started to pull away, Arizona realized that, in all of the chaos and confusion, she had forgotten to ask his name.
***
Callie may or may not have planned her ER visit for when Arizona was due on shift. It wasn’t necessarily the only reason she went down there, but she found a couple of excuses to stick around for a lot longer than she normally would have. The last thing she wanted was to go all psycho-stalker on Arizona, but she would feel better if she knew how her girlfriend was doing. Most of her time was spent hiding behind the admin desk, coming up with an array of excuses as to why she was not hovering and had every reason to be there, just in case Arizona asked.
When the clock reached 12:38 and one of the residents inquired as to when Dr. Robbins would be arriving, noting that she wasn’t in her office, Callie started to get worried. They had just talked when Arizona was half a block away; there was no reason for her to be almost half an hour late.
Several phone calls went unanswered and Callie started to panic. “Come on, pick up,” she muttered under her breath, re-dialing yet again as she stepped out into the ambulance bay. Callie was self-aware enough to know that she was probably over-thinking things, but then again that was all she did these days. Arizona was used to it by now.
Bailey was waiting with a team of residents for the arrival of an incoming trauma. “Torres, you filling in for Robbins? She was supposed to be here by noon.” She did not sound too impressed, as usual, and neither Callie nor Arizona could figure out why the blonde had incurred her wrath to begin with.
Callie just shook her head, distracted by another voice recording in her ear. “I’m trying to find out where she is,” she explained. “She was just a couple of blocks away.”
Bailey merely pursed her lips and said nothing as an ambulance turned into the bay and roared up to the waiting cluster of doctors.
Callie stepped back, thinking she should go somewhere quieter, when the doors burst open and Arizona practically fell out of the back. The unexpected discovery shocked Callie into a stunned silence. Arizona was already calling out vitals and information to the residents who received the gurney, working with the paramedics to get the patient on the ground.
‘You have reached Dr. Arizona Robbins, Chief of Trauma Surgery at Seattle Grace Hospital. I am unavailable right now, but please leave a-‘
Callie canceled the call and just about tripped over her own feet in a rush to get to the ambulance. “What the hell happened?”
“Kevin Reed, auto-versus-pedestrian, I was at the scene,” Arizona called out above the initial flurry of activity. “Fire department pulled him from under the vehicle. We’re gonna need you Torres; his left leg’s in pretty bad shape, pelvis might be fractured, and possibly his shoulder.”
“For starters,” Bailey commented, checking under the gauze packing that had been applied en-route.
“He lost consciousness at the scene, and a lot of blood. Intubated, diagnosed hemo in the field, he needs a chest tube STAT. At least he’s wearing a helmet.” Arizona took the gurney’s right side as a mixture of medics and doctors jogged the patient through the sliding doors and into the waiting trauma room at the back.
“I guess it’s no use asking why you were late, huh?” Callie said as she paused to pull on a trauma gown by the doorway.
Arizona nearly smiled as she discarded her latex gloves from the ambulance and let a nurse gown and re-glove her as well. “Hell of a day,” she replied.
“He’s in v-fib,” Bailey said loudly as soon as the patient was hooked up to the cardiac monitor. She hurried to cut away the remnants of his shirt.
“Push one of epi and charge to 200,” Arizona ordered. She strode to the opposite side of the gurney from Callie and took the paddles that were handed over. “Clear.”
A single shock and no results. Arizona waited while they repeated the epi and atropine shots, then called for 260. Another shock and they had a rhythm.
Now that his chest was exposed, she squirted iodine on his ribcage and cut in for the chest tube. A gush of blood escaped the vacuum and ended up all over her shoes, but it restored equal pressure in his pleural cavity. At the same time, she noticed an abnormality in the chest wall. A quick examination confirmed her suspicions.
“Flail chest on his right; watch compressions if he goes down again,” she told the room.
“OR 2 is prepped and waiting,” a nurse said as she hung up the phone.
“Excellent.” Arizona looked at Callie. “How’s it looking, Torres?”
Callie glanced up from his legs. “He’ll need an EFD,” she confirmed - an external fixation device. “I should be able to take care of it while Bailey repairs the rest. There might be a crack in his pelvis but I don’t think it’s as bad as the rest. Nothing dislocated, which is surprising, considering.”
“Good. That’s really good.” Arizona switched to the other attending in the room. “Bailey, grab me the portable ultrasound.”
Bailey switched places with a resident and brought the machine over. Arizona rolled the wand across his flank, taking a few seconds to narrow in on what she was looking for.
“Splenic rupture,” she confirmed, spotting it on the monitor. “We need to get him in the OR right now.”
Callie looked up sharply, hesitant to question Arizona in front of the others. “Uh, Dr. Robbins, don’t you think you should…?”
Arizona spared her a brief glance, caught up in the flow of things, and passed the ultrasound back across the patient before moving the around to grab a table saw.
Callie bit her tongue as Arizona very carefully cut the helmet off of the boy, forging a precise incision down the middle before cracking both sides open and handing it off to a trauma nurse for disposal.
“Pupils equal and reactive,” Arizona confirmed, glad to see that hadn’t changed since the field. “Good thing you were wearing a helmet, Kevin.” She called for a shot of morphine and instructed the nurses on what to start in his IV.
Callie stepped closer and lowered her voice. “Arizona,” she spoke softly, waiting until she had the blonde’s attention before dropping her eyes down to her leg.
Arizona felt an immediate stab of annoyance, though it had less to do with Callie and more with the fact that she hated this whole situation. “I know, I know; Bailey can take care of this and I’ll page Teddy to meet her in the OR,” she said begrudgingly.
It wasn’t hard to see how much that pissed Arizona off, but to her credit, she didn’t try and fight their agreement. That pleased Callie, even if she felt awful for having to play the bad cop.
“Get ready to roll,” Bailey announced to the room while the three attendings flipped up the side rails.
Arizona triple checked that nothing was amiss before reluctantly stepping away. The residents swooped in and pushed the patient from the room.
Callie hung back in the doorway while the trauma team rushed out. “Are you okay?” she asked now that they were alone.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Arizona mumbled. She felt sweaty and gross, and was covered in various bodily fluids, but she would live. Hopefully they could say the same thing for Kevin in a couple of hours.
Callie offered her a tiny smile. “You totally kicked ass today, you know,” she said quietly. “You’ll be back in the OR in no time. I can feel it.”
Despite the mixed feelings over being left out of this case, the sentiment made Arizona return the smile. “Thanks, Callie. I’ll be okay, I promise.” She broke eye contact to start pulling off her gloves. “Go on. I’ll head to the gallery once I’ve cleaned myself up.”
Callie continued to hover. “Are you sure-”
“Calliope, go,” Arizona urged her girlfriend. “I will feel better knowing you’re in there with him. Send me an update whenever you get the chance.”
Finally, Callie nodded and backed out the door. “Okay. See you shortly.”
“Yeah, shortly,” Arizona echoed. She watched her disappear and suddenly found herself alone in the trauma room. Compared to moments before, it was deadly silent.
The whole thing was a mess; blood and various supplies littered every surface, including the floor. A clean-up crew had already arrived and were waiting outside the doorway for her to finish. Arizona didn’t budge just yet. It was the first time since witnessing the accident that she had actually been able to stand still and let the last forty-five minutes sink in.
Hell of a way to start the day.
Arizona methodically peeled off her scrub gown and gloves, stuffing them into the medical waste bin nearby, willing her heart rate to slow down. She traced a hand across her forehead and inhaled a deep breath, then looked down at the state she was in. Her newest pair of shoes were ruined, saturated through with blood from the chest tube, and she highly doubted her jeans would make it through the wash anything short of orange.
It didn’t matter how much she told herself that the bloody clothing was the cause of her frustration; at the heart of the matter Arizona knew she wanted to be in that OR more than anything. The fact that she was stuck out here sent a stab of resentment through her entire body, and with it an outward explosion of anger.
“Damn it,” Arizona snapped to the empty room, twisting around and kicking the plastic garbage bin as hard as she possibly could. The impact caused a sharp pain to shoot up her right leg, an unwanted reminder that no matter how much she wanted it, it was way too soon to be back in the OR. Her leg would never cope with a lengthy surgery at this stage. That just made her feel even worse.
Releasing a frustrated growl, Arizona looked down at her filthy clothes again and resigned herself to the fact that she needed a hot shower and a fresh pair of scrubs. Kevin had a team of world class surgeons by his side, headed by Callie and Bailey, so she took comfort in knowing he would be well taken care of - even if she wished more than anything that it was her in that OR instead.
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