Let's just pretend this isn't QUITE as overdue as it really is, shall we?
Title: Do Not Go Quietly... (2/?)
Author: obsidian179
Rating: PG-13, at least so far.
Disclaimer: Grey's Anatomy is the property of ABC and Shonda Rhimes - though considering the treatment they've been giving it, I'm starting to think there should be some kind of DCFS-equivalent for television shows.
Summary: This was NOT how Callie wanted to leave things...
Author's notes: I apologize for the long wait, but sometimes the muse just doesn't want to cooperate, and this time of year, I don't have as much writing time as usual. Anyway, I did promise that I would include someone other then Callie and Mark in this chapter, so I will do just that. Maybe even more then one. ;)
People may still well be OOC, I dunno. But given how the show's evidently been progressing, would that be such a bad thing? ;) And this chapter has music! All By Myself lyrics (modified as they are) by Eric Carmen, Leaving On A Jet Plane lyrics (lyric?) by John Denver, and This Time lyrics by Melanie Chisholm.
And away we go...
Virginia Dixon did not especially like Seattle Grace Hospital.
It was disappointing, really. It had sounded so promising, in the beginning. Even if they'd been slipping in the rankings, Seattle Grace was still a good hospital, and a first-rate trauma and transplant center. The opening for Chief of Cardio had been unexpected, but had been a welcome surprise. She'd felt good about it.
That good feeling had lasted right up until she actually walked into the hospital and met her (possible) future co-workers.
On the surface, they'd been friendly and welcoming, and she'd written off any tension to the fact that she was (maybe) replacing one of their respected colleagues. She'd been a little disappointed that she hadn't been able to meet Dr. Hahn. The woman was something of a legend in the cardiothoracics field, after all. She had no real idea why Hahn had left, and no one seemed to want to talk about it, but it had been an honor to even be considered as a replacement for her.
But she hadn't gotten to where she was by being stupid. They wanted her as cardio chief, yet everyone from Chief Webber to the residents were condescending and treated her like a subordinate. And worse, they seemed to arbitrarily choose which rules they were going to follow and which they weren't, even making up new ones on the spot if they had to in order to get their way.
In other hospitals, they would have at least made an effort to understand her. It usually took time before the inevitable whispers started up, when the other doctors began noticing that she wasn't quite... "normal".
Whatever that was.
But not so at Seattle Grace. No, they'd bypassed all the welcoming and offered warmth she'd come to expect from a new hospital, and jumped straight to the judgmental and hurtful phase.
She supposed it was efficient, at least.
She was also disappointed that none of them seemed to know anything about Asperger's. She tried her best to interact normally with people, using everything she'd learned in her cognitive therapy, social training, and speech therapy classes, but sometimes that just wasn't enough. And to throw her into situations like they did, with no warning or preparation...
Even when they weren't saying anything, she could still feel the comments being directed her way.
Freak.
Robot.
Bitch.
She couldn't really explain why she did some of the things she did - not that anyone really asked. She didn't set out to be cold or cruel. But when she was thrown into situations like she had been, she had no idea what to do, to say, and tended to lock up. In the past, she would have just stood there, shifting uncomfortably, painfully aware of just how lacking she was.
She wondered which would have been better.
Science was both her salvation and her curse. It was something solid to fall back on, something real and concrete, that wasn't defined by people's perceptions. No matter who was dealing with it, or what the situation was, it stayed exactly the same. So when dealing with a distraught family, telling them how their daughter was brain dead, she fell back on that. It was what she knew.
She'd realized afterward just how insensitive she must have seemed, how callous, but she genuinely had thought that if she could just get them to see how much good their daughter could do by donating her organs as soon as possible, how many lives she could save...
Yes, what had happened to their daughter was a tragedy, but if something good could come out of that, something miraculous, wouldn't that be a good thing? Wouldn't that mean that it wasn't just some random horrible event, that there was a purpose to it?
Wouldn't knowing that their daughter was saving lives help?
She'd believed it would. She still did, really, but knew she'd gone about presenting her arguments the wrong way. She'd relied solely on science. And she'd kept going, even after it had become clear that she was offending them. Hurting them. Doing the exact opposite of what a doctor was supposed to do.
She'd once heard it said that science was a mercurial lover, and now she thought she understood what that meant. It could lead her to miraculous and amazing discoveries one moment, then break her to pieces the next.
She'd ended that day by hiding in one of the on-call rooms, seated on one of the beds, with her legs drawn up against her chest. It had been a while since she'd felt the need to go seclude herself like that, but it had helped, and she'd been able to finish her shift without any problems.
She'd wanted to hide the next day, and the day after that, but forced herself not to. As much as she would have loved to find a hole and pull it in after herself, that wouldn't help in the long run. She had to find a way to deal with these people.
They weren't all bad, of course. Derek Shepherd didn't seem to have any problems with her at all, and since he was a neuro surgeon, he, at least, had an understanding of why she was the way she was. Meredith Grey was a little harder to warm up to, as she seemed to have unknowingly picked up an 'all about me' complex. Well, that might serve her well as a surgeon, she supposed. She could say hurtful things, perhaps, but they never seemed to be deliberately so.
Lexie Grey, on the other hand, seemed to be one of the nicest people she'd ever met. She never minded having the younger Grey on her service, despite her... questionable taste in men.
She hadn't wanted to engage in gossip, but in a hospital where the doctors seemed to care more about their own love lives then the actual lives of their patients, there was simply no escaping it. So when it became known that there was maybe possibly kind of some potential thing developing between Lexie Grey and Mark Sloan, she'd heard about it.
Sloan made her wary. She'd heard him described as something of a man-whore, to the point where the nurses had actually boycotted his surgeries. It was just another symptom of the root problem of personal interests overshadowing professional. On the other hand, however, while they hadn't interacted much, he had been respectful when they had crossed paths, and any comments he might make never seemed to have any real weight to them.
Callie Torres... avoided her.
She really didn't know what to make of that. She'd told herself that it likely didn't have anything to do with her, that she didn't know Torres at all, and it was entirely possible that the Ortho surgeon just didn't like people. For once, the gossip mills failed her, as anyone who might know anything about anything that was going on with Torres these days wasn't talking. They'd only had one surgery together, and Torres had been clipped, formal, and to the point, without any extraneous chatter. It had just been 'go in, find the problem, solve the problem, and leave'.
Frankly, she appreciated that kind of professionalism. So when she'd learned that there was a trauma coming in that would require both ortho and cardio, among others, naturally she'd requested Dr. Torres.
And now she was being told that that wasn't possible.
"Why not?" It was a reasonable question, and she hadn't thought she'd put any special emphasis on either word, yet Dr. Yang still seemed to be fighting not to roll her eyes.
Yang was something of a puzzle. On the outside, she certainly seemed like a textbook misanthrope. She could be cold, condescending, and seemed to view her patients as machines, vessels for the cardio surgery she sought so desperately. And yet, she did seem to have friends, even care about them, not that she enjoyed showing it. Meredith Grey, evidently, was "her person", whatever that meant. She didn't seem to like Dixon at all, yet still tried to suck up to her whenever possible. That was in order to get in on as many surgeries as possible, she knew, but still...
From what she'd heard, her predecessor had not been especially kind to Yang. Indeed, she'd seemed to be thrilled to have someone else as head of cardio, someone who'd be willing to let her scrub in more often. Yet... she missed Hahn. Even Dixon had been able to figure that out. It could have been because of the loss of someone with as much knowledge as Hahn had... or it could have been something else completely. That, she did not know.
"She's off today," Yang replied simply. Yet still she lingered, obviously hoping to get in on the surgery. "Don't worry, Mack's still around."
Dixon frowned. She didn't want to work with Mack. She wanted Torres. Mack was one of the more aggravating people in the hospital, in her opinion. He took too long to make his diagnosis, he didn't take her seriously, and the only thing that made him at all tolerable was the fact that she never had to work with him. "How is that supposed to reassure me?"
Yang blinked, then looked briefly like she wanted to smile. "If he didn't know what he was doing, he wouldn't be allowed to work here."
Privately, Dixon wasn't so certain of that, but refrained from saying so. "Did I do something to make Dr. Torres unhappy with me?"
Judging by her expression - which wasn't the easiest thing in the world for Dixon to do - Yang found that a rather random question. "Just because she has the day off today, that doesn't mean-"
"Not today," Dixon interrupted. "In general."
Yang shifted uncomfortably. They were standing in the ambulance bay, far enough from the others hanging around for them to overhear their discussion. Dixon knew from past experience that if she pressed too hard, whoever she was talking to might decide to clam up, but this had been bugging her for a while, and now that she finally had an opportunity to shed some light on the subject, she was going to take it. "Not... really, no. She and Dr. Hahn were... very close."
"No one else reacts to my presence the way she does."
"Very close." Yang gave her what was probably supposed to be a significant look.
It was lost on her. She'd never met Hahn and barely knew anything about Torres - gossip about her ex and the number of times she'd been seen ducking into an on-call room with the resident man-whore not withstanding - so she had no idea what to make of that statement. "Oh," was all she said.
Yang shrugged. "Personally, I think she should just get over it, already. We all get dumped, sometimes. She likes to think I didn't know about her and Hahn, but... Well, some things you can't really just ignore. I can't really blame Hahn for walking out on her, after everything that she did. And she just had to do this when Hahn was finally starting to teach me."
Yang wasn't really looking at her just then, her gaze directed toward the street, which was good, because Dixon couldn't quite hide her look of shock. That Torres and Hahn might have been an item didn't really bother her at all, but... "Aren't you her friend?" she blurted out before she could think better of it.
"I'm not the girly sort of person. She knows that." She didn't seem to care that she was basically saying that her career was more important to her then her friend's happiness or emotional well being. Dixon had been accused a few times in the past of having no emotions - a common misconception when it came to people with Asperger's, but one that could still annoy her greatly, even now - but even she'd never been that cold.
How could she do this job without caring about people at all?
"Dr. Yang... Why did you become a doctor?"
That caught her attention. "Excuse me?"
"Why did you become a doctor? What made you first decide you wanted to go to medical school?"
"Why are you-"
"Please. Just... answer the question."
"Maybe I just wanted to help people. Is that all right with you?"
Somehow, Dixon knew that she wouldn't have talked to Dr. Hahn like that. "You could do that as a firefighter, or a police officer, or any number of things. Why medicine?"
Yang shifted defensively. "They don't interest me like this does. I mean, heart surgery... Well, I'm sure I don't have to tell you."
"My mother died from complications during a bypass surgery."
Yang rocked back, evidently startled by the revelation. Maybe it had been a bit personal, but she tended to do that, sometimes. Yang would just have to get used to it... if she decided to stick around. "I... I'm sorry, I didn't know..."
"Why would you have?" Dixon asked reasonably. "I was nine. And that was when I knew what I wanted to do with my life." She wasn't entirely certain this was an appropriate conversation for the workplace, but if she meant to work here, to teach these people, she had to start somewhere. "So, what set you on this path?"
Yang's mouth worked silently for a moment, until she managed to say, "I don't know. I guess... I've never really thought about it."
The ambulance was pulling up, but Dixon took the time to look at her for a long moment before gently asking, "Don't you think you should?"
"When you were young, you never needed anyone..."
Callie wasn't sure what she was doing.
"And making love was just for fun. Those days are gone..."
After talking with Addison, she'd known what she had to do. She needed to see Erica, to talk to her, to apologize. And, Callie being Callie, she'd immediately called the airport and booked herself on the first flight out to New York City.
"Living alone, you think of all the friends you've known. But when you dial the telephone... Nobody's home."
Of course, in the time between then and now, she'd been racked by doubt and uncertainty. Was this the right thing to do? Would Erica even want to see her? Would she listen? Would this only hurt her more? Causing her any further pain was the absolute last thing Callie ever wanted to do.
She was, however, certain of one thing.
She was seriously beginning to regret asking Mark Sloan to drop her off at the airport that morning.
"All by yourself. Don't wanna be all by yourself, anymore. All by yourself. Don't wanna live all by myself, anymore..."
"Mark!" she shouted, drawing even more stares then Mark's "singing" had been. "Would you please stop mangling that song?" He could do a lot of things well, she knew, but singing didn't seem to be one of them.
On the other hand, if this was the worst that she had to go through to get through to Erica...
"Sorry," he said, his jaunty tone and amused grin belying his words. "I guess I'm just a sucker for romantic gestures like this."
She groaned and approached the ticket counter, confirming her reservation and paying for her ticket. This sort of thing had seemed to so much faster in the past. Yay for safety and security, she thought sourly. Couldn't they see she was in a hurry? "I think I can take it from here," she told him once she had her ticket in hand. "Don't you have to get to work, soon? You'll want to leave soon if you wanna make it there through the traffic."
"I've got some time, yet," he told her, dashing her hopes. "And really, how could I leave without seeing you off safely?"
"You won't be able to anyway, you know that. If you don't have a ticket, they won't let you through to the gates." And there was no way God hated her enough to let THAT happen.
"I can at least escort you that far," he insisted, still grinning. "After all... You're leaving on a jet plane, don't know when you'll be back again..."
"Mark, I beg of you, please stop! Leave the singing to someone who can actually carry a tune to save their life."
"Like you?" The grin widened.
That she could sing was not common knowledge at Seattle Grace, and she had to wonder how he'd found out... if indeed he had, and he wasn't just screwing around with her. "Maybe." She'd been worried that they wouldn't make it in time, but fortunately they hadn't managed to get there that late. As it was, though, most everyone in line had already gone through, so the wait for the metal detectors was a short one. She'd done little more then throw a few items of clothing in a duffel bag and make sure her iPod was fully charged, so getting through didn't take especially long.
She quietly suggested to one of the security guards that the scruffy-looking guy who'd been with her was acting a bit too happy, and they might want to search him for drugs. Very thoroughly. And that they might want to get the biggest, toughest guy they had to do it, because he looked like a fighter. Then she put in her earbuds, selected a song on her iPod, and enjoyed the way his jaw dropped open as she began to sing along.
I've been practicing all day
Now the words I meant to say are gone
I promised that I wouldn't cry
Told myself I had to try and hold on
The truth, I lied
I hate myself inside
And why
I played the game and paid the price
She grinned as she turned and headed toward her gate, giving him a wave over her shoulder.
I never look back
I never cry, never try to wonder why
I'll be on my own
And never doubt, never shout or wonder how
I'll never be lonely until
This time, this time, this time
This time I will
I've been wide awake all night
There's no sign of sleep inside my mind
The headlight shadows scan my wall
I convince myself you'll call in time
She actually had been up all night. After talking to Addison, and making her decision... She couldn't have slept if she'd wanted to. Hopefully, she'd be able to get some on the flight out, otherwise...
Well, the results wouldn't be pretty.
The truth, I lied
The girl in me has died
And why
I played the game and paid the price
I never look back
I never cry, never try to wonder why
I'll be on my own
And never doubt, never shout or wonder how
I'll never be lonely until
This time, this time, this time
This time I will
"This time I will be yours completely," she sang with feeling. "This time I'll make sure you don't hate me. This time I know, this time I can, and this time I will..."
This was it, she knew. This was the absolute last chance she would ever have with Erica Hahn. If she couldn't get Erica to take her back one last time... If she couldn't at least make sure Erica knew how incredibly sorry she was for her horrific behavior...
She never would.
Make it or break it time, Torres. If nothing else... She wanted to make sure Erica would be happy. Even if that meant staying away from her forever. But only if she was really, truly happy. Not just if she said she was, or even if she'd managed to convince herself that it was true.
I never look back
I never cry, never try to wonder why
I'll be on my own
And never doubt, never shout or wonder how
I'll never be lonely until
This time, this time, this time
This time I will
I never look back
I never cry, never try to wonder why
I'll be on my own
And never doubt, never shout or wonder how
I'll never be lonely until
This time, this time, this time
This time I will...
She allowed her voice to trail off as she neared her terminal. A quick check of her watch told her that she still had twenty-two minutes left before they even began boarding. She took a seat in the waiting area, hope and determination warring with anxiety and uncertainty. She sighed quietly as the song reached its gentle conclusion.
I've been practicing all day
Now the words I meant to say are gone.
Author: obsidian179
Rating: PG-13, at least so far.
Disclaimer: Grey's Anatomy is the property of ABC and Shonda Rhimes - though considering the treatment they've been giving it, I'm starting to think there should be some kind of DCFS-equivalent for television shows.
Summary: This was NOT how Callie wanted to leave things...
Author's notes: I apologize for the long wait, but sometimes the muse just doesn't want to cooperate, and this time of year, I don't have as much writing time as usual. Anyway, I did promise that I would include someone other then Callie and Mark in this chapter, so I will do just that. Maybe even more then one. ;)
People may still well be OOC, I dunno. But given how the show's evidently been progressing, would that be such a bad thing? ;) And this chapter has music! All By Myself lyrics (modified as they are) by Eric Carmen, Leaving On A Jet Plane lyrics (lyric?) by John Denver, and This Time lyrics by Melanie Chisholm.
And away we go...
Virginia Dixon did not especially like Seattle Grace Hospital.
It was disappointing, really. It had sounded so promising, in the beginning. Even if they'd been slipping in the rankings, Seattle Grace was still a good hospital, and a first-rate trauma and transplant center. The opening for Chief of Cardio had been unexpected, but had been a welcome surprise. She'd felt good about it.
That good feeling had lasted right up until she actually walked into the hospital and met her (possible) future co-workers.
On the surface, they'd been friendly and welcoming, and she'd written off any tension to the fact that she was (maybe) replacing one of their respected colleagues. She'd been a little disappointed that she hadn't been able to meet Dr. Hahn. The woman was something of a legend in the cardiothoracics field, after all. She had no real idea why Hahn had left, and no one seemed to want to talk about it, but it had been an honor to even be considered as a replacement for her.
But she hadn't gotten to where she was by being stupid. They wanted her as cardio chief, yet everyone from Chief Webber to the residents were condescending and treated her like a subordinate. And worse, they seemed to arbitrarily choose which rules they were going to follow and which they weren't, even making up new ones on the spot if they had to in order to get their way.
In other hospitals, they would have at least made an effort to understand her. It usually took time before the inevitable whispers started up, when the other doctors began noticing that she wasn't quite... "normal".
Whatever that was.
But not so at Seattle Grace. No, they'd bypassed all the welcoming and offered warmth she'd come to expect from a new hospital, and jumped straight to the judgmental and hurtful phase.
She supposed it was efficient, at least.
She was also disappointed that none of them seemed to know anything about Asperger's. She tried her best to interact normally with people, using everything she'd learned in her cognitive therapy, social training, and speech therapy classes, but sometimes that just wasn't enough. And to throw her into situations like they did, with no warning or preparation...
Even when they weren't saying anything, she could still feel the comments being directed her way.
Freak.
Robot.
Bitch.
She couldn't really explain why she did some of the things she did - not that anyone really asked. She didn't set out to be cold or cruel. But when she was thrown into situations like she had been, she had no idea what to do, to say, and tended to lock up. In the past, she would have just stood there, shifting uncomfortably, painfully aware of just how lacking she was.
She wondered which would have been better.
Science was both her salvation and her curse. It was something solid to fall back on, something real and concrete, that wasn't defined by people's perceptions. No matter who was dealing with it, or what the situation was, it stayed exactly the same. So when dealing with a distraught family, telling them how their daughter was brain dead, she fell back on that. It was what she knew.
She'd realized afterward just how insensitive she must have seemed, how callous, but she genuinely had thought that if she could just get them to see how much good their daughter could do by donating her organs as soon as possible, how many lives she could save...
Yes, what had happened to their daughter was a tragedy, but if something good could come out of that, something miraculous, wouldn't that be a good thing? Wouldn't that mean that it wasn't just some random horrible event, that there was a purpose to it?
Wouldn't knowing that their daughter was saving lives help?
She'd believed it would. She still did, really, but knew she'd gone about presenting her arguments the wrong way. She'd relied solely on science. And she'd kept going, even after it had become clear that she was offending them. Hurting them. Doing the exact opposite of what a doctor was supposed to do.
She'd once heard it said that science was a mercurial lover, and now she thought she understood what that meant. It could lead her to miraculous and amazing discoveries one moment, then break her to pieces the next.
She'd ended that day by hiding in one of the on-call rooms, seated on one of the beds, with her legs drawn up against her chest. It had been a while since she'd felt the need to go seclude herself like that, but it had helped, and she'd been able to finish her shift without any problems.
She'd wanted to hide the next day, and the day after that, but forced herself not to. As much as she would have loved to find a hole and pull it in after herself, that wouldn't help in the long run. She had to find a way to deal with these people.
They weren't all bad, of course. Derek Shepherd didn't seem to have any problems with her at all, and since he was a neuro surgeon, he, at least, had an understanding of why she was the way she was. Meredith Grey was a little harder to warm up to, as she seemed to have unknowingly picked up an 'all about me' complex. Well, that might serve her well as a surgeon, she supposed. She could say hurtful things, perhaps, but they never seemed to be deliberately so.
Lexie Grey, on the other hand, seemed to be one of the nicest people she'd ever met. She never minded having the younger Grey on her service, despite her... questionable taste in men.
She hadn't wanted to engage in gossip, but in a hospital where the doctors seemed to care more about their own love lives then the actual lives of their patients, there was simply no escaping it. So when it became known that there was maybe possibly kind of some potential thing developing between Lexie Grey and Mark Sloan, she'd heard about it.
Sloan made her wary. She'd heard him described as something of a man-whore, to the point where the nurses had actually boycotted his surgeries. It was just another symptom of the root problem of personal interests overshadowing professional. On the other hand, however, while they hadn't interacted much, he had been respectful when they had crossed paths, and any comments he might make never seemed to have any real weight to them.
Callie Torres... avoided her.
She really didn't know what to make of that. She'd told herself that it likely didn't have anything to do with her, that she didn't know Torres at all, and it was entirely possible that the Ortho surgeon just didn't like people. For once, the gossip mills failed her, as anyone who might know anything about anything that was going on with Torres these days wasn't talking. They'd only had one surgery together, and Torres had been clipped, formal, and to the point, without any extraneous chatter. It had just been 'go in, find the problem, solve the problem, and leave'.
Frankly, she appreciated that kind of professionalism. So when she'd learned that there was a trauma coming in that would require both ortho and cardio, among others, naturally she'd requested Dr. Torres.
And now she was being told that that wasn't possible.
"Why not?" It was a reasonable question, and she hadn't thought she'd put any special emphasis on either word, yet Dr. Yang still seemed to be fighting not to roll her eyes.
Yang was something of a puzzle. On the outside, she certainly seemed like a textbook misanthrope. She could be cold, condescending, and seemed to view her patients as machines, vessels for the cardio surgery she sought so desperately. And yet, she did seem to have friends, even care about them, not that she enjoyed showing it. Meredith Grey, evidently, was "her person", whatever that meant. She didn't seem to like Dixon at all, yet still tried to suck up to her whenever possible. That was in order to get in on as many surgeries as possible, she knew, but still...
From what she'd heard, her predecessor had not been especially kind to Yang. Indeed, she'd seemed to be thrilled to have someone else as head of cardio, someone who'd be willing to let her scrub in more often. Yet... she missed Hahn. Even Dixon had been able to figure that out. It could have been because of the loss of someone with as much knowledge as Hahn had... or it could have been something else completely. That, she did not know.
"She's off today," Yang replied simply. Yet still she lingered, obviously hoping to get in on the surgery. "Don't worry, Mack's still around."
Dixon frowned. She didn't want to work with Mack. She wanted Torres. Mack was one of the more aggravating people in the hospital, in her opinion. He took too long to make his diagnosis, he didn't take her seriously, and the only thing that made him at all tolerable was the fact that she never had to work with him. "How is that supposed to reassure me?"
Yang blinked, then looked briefly like she wanted to smile. "If he didn't know what he was doing, he wouldn't be allowed to work here."
Privately, Dixon wasn't so certain of that, but refrained from saying so. "Did I do something to make Dr. Torres unhappy with me?"
Judging by her expression - which wasn't the easiest thing in the world for Dixon to do - Yang found that a rather random question. "Just because she has the day off today, that doesn't mean-"
"Not today," Dixon interrupted. "In general."
Yang shifted uncomfortably. They were standing in the ambulance bay, far enough from the others hanging around for them to overhear their discussion. Dixon knew from past experience that if she pressed too hard, whoever she was talking to might decide to clam up, but this had been bugging her for a while, and now that she finally had an opportunity to shed some light on the subject, she was going to take it. "Not... really, no. She and Dr. Hahn were... very close."
"No one else reacts to my presence the way she does."
"Very close." Yang gave her what was probably supposed to be a significant look.
It was lost on her. She'd never met Hahn and barely knew anything about Torres - gossip about her ex and the number of times she'd been seen ducking into an on-call room with the resident man-whore not withstanding - so she had no idea what to make of that statement. "Oh," was all she said.
Yang shrugged. "Personally, I think she should just get over it, already. We all get dumped, sometimes. She likes to think I didn't know about her and Hahn, but... Well, some things you can't really just ignore. I can't really blame Hahn for walking out on her, after everything that she did. And she just had to do this when Hahn was finally starting to teach me."
Yang wasn't really looking at her just then, her gaze directed toward the street, which was good, because Dixon couldn't quite hide her look of shock. That Torres and Hahn might have been an item didn't really bother her at all, but... "Aren't you her friend?" she blurted out before she could think better of it.
"I'm not the girly sort of person. She knows that." She didn't seem to care that she was basically saying that her career was more important to her then her friend's happiness or emotional well being. Dixon had been accused a few times in the past of having no emotions - a common misconception when it came to people with Asperger's, but one that could still annoy her greatly, even now - but even she'd never been that cold.
How could she do this job without caring about people at all?
"Dr. Yang... Why did you become a doctor?"
That caught her attention. "Excuse me?"
"Why did you become a doctor? What made you first decide you wanted to go to medical school?"
"Why are you-"
"Please. Just... answer the question."
"Maybe I just wanted to help people. Is that all right with you?"
Somehow, Dixon knew that she wouldn't have talked to Dr. Hahn like that. "You could do that as a firefighter, or a police officer, or any number of things. Why medicine?"
Yang shifted defensively. "They don't interest me like this does. I mean, heart surgery... Well, I'm sure I don't have to tell you."
"My mother died from complications during a bypass surgery."
Yang rocked back, evidently startled by the revelation. Maybe it had been a bit personal, but she tended to do that, sometimes. Yang would just have to get used to it... if she decided to stick around. "I... I'm sorry, I didn't know..."
"Why would you have?" Dixon asked reasonably. "I was nine. And that was when I knew what I wanted to do with my life." She wasn't entirely certain this was an appropriate conversation for the workplace, but if she meant to work here, to teach these people, she had to start somewhere. "So, what set you on this path?"
Yang's mouth worked silently for a moment, until she managed to say, "I don't know. I guess... I've never really thought about it."
The ambulance was pulling up, but Dixon took the time to look at her for a long moment before gently asking, "Don't you think you should?"
"When you were young, you never needed anyone..."
Callie wasn't sure what she was doing.
"And making love was just for fun. Those days are gone..."
After talking with Addison, she'd known what she had to do. She needed to see Erica, to talk to her, to apologize. And, Callie being Callie, she'd immediately called the airport and booked herself on the first flight out to New York City.
"Living alone, you think of all the friends you've known. But when you dial the telephone... Nobody's home."
Of course, in the time between then and now, she'd been racked by doubt and uncertainty. Was this the right thing to do? Would Erica even want to see her? Would she listen? Would this only hurt her more? Causing her any further pain was the absolute last thing Callie ever wanted to do.
She was, however, certain of one thing.
She was seriously beginning to regret asking Mark Sloan to drop her off at the airport that morning.
"All by yourself. Don't wanna be all by yourself, anymore. All by yourself. Don't wanna live all by myself, anymore..."
"Mark!" she shouted, drawing even more stares then Mark's "singing" had been. "Would you please stop mangling that song?" He could do a lot of things well, she knew, but singing didn't seem to be one of them.
On the other hand, if this was the worst that she had to go through to get through to Erica...
"Sorry," he said, his jaunty tone and amused grin belying his words. "I guess I'm just a sucker for romantic gestures like this."
She groaned and approached the ticket counter, confirming her reservation and paying for her ticket. This sort of thing had seemed to so much faster in the past. Yay for safety and security, she thought sourly. Couldn't they see she was in a hurry? "I think I can take it from here," she told him once she had her ticket in hand. "Don't you have to get to work, soon? You'll want to leave soon if you wanna make it there through the traffic."
"I've got some time, yet," he told her, dashing her hopes. "And really, how could I leave without seeing you off safely?"
"You won't be able to anyway, you know that. If you don't have a ticket, they won't let you through to the gates." And there was no way God hated her enough to let THAT happen.
"I can at least escort you that far," he insisted, still grinning. "After all... You're leaving on a jet plane, don't know when you'll be back again..."
"Mark, I beg of you, please stop! Leave the singing to someone who can actually carry a tune to save their life."
"Like you?" The grin widened.
That she could sing was not common knowledge at Seattle Grace, and she had to wonder how he'd found out... if indeed he had, and he wasn't just screwing around with her. "Maybe." She'd been worried that they wouldn't make it in time, but fortunately they hadn't managed to get there that late. As it was, though, most everyone in line had already gone through, so the wait for the metal detectors was a short one. She'd done little more then throw a few items of clothing in a duffel bag and make sure her iPod was fully charged, so getting through didn't take especially long.
She quietly suggested to one of the security guards that the scruffy-looking guy who'd been with her was acting a bit too happy, and they might want to search him for drugs. Very thoroughly. And that they might want to get the biggest, toughest guy they had to do it, because he looked like a fighter. Then she put in her earbuds, selected a song on her iPod, and enjoyed the way his jaw dropped open as she began to sing along.
I've been practicing all day
Now the words I meant to say are gone
I promised that I wouldn't cry
Told myself I had to try and hold on
The truth, I lied
I hate myself inside
And why
I played the game and paid the price
She grinned as she turned and headed toward her gate, giving him a wave over her shoulder.
I never look back
I never cry, never try to wonder why
I'll be on my own
And never doubt, never shout or wonder how
I'll never be lonely until
This time, this time, this time
This time I will
I've been wide awake all night
There's no sign of sleep inside my mind
The headlight shadows scan my wall
I convince myself you'll call in time
She actually had been up all night. After talking to Addison, and making her decision... She couldn't have slept if she'd wanted to. Hopefully, she'd be able to get some on the flight out, otherwise...
Well, the results wouldn't be pretty.
The truth, I lied
The girl in me has died
And why
I played the game and paid the price
I never look back
I never cry, never try to wonder why
I'll be on my own
And never doubt, never shout or wonder how
I'll never be lonely until
This time, this time, this time
This time I will
"This time I will be yours completely," she sang with feeling. "This time I'll make sure you don't hate me. This time I know, this time I can, and this time I will..."
This was it, she knew. This was the absolute last chance she would ever have with Erica Hahn. If she couldn't get Erica to take her back one last time... If she couldn't at least make sure Erica knew how incredibly sorry she was for her horrific behavior...
She never would.
Make it or break it time, Torres. If nothing else... She wanted to make sure Erica would be happy. Even if that meant staying away from her forever. But only if she was really, truly happy. Not just if she said she was, or even if she'd managed to convince herself that it was true.
I never look back
I never cry, never try to wonder why
I'll be on my own
And never doubt, never shout or wonder how
I'll never be lonely until
This time, this time, this time
This time I will
I never look back
I never cry, never try to wonder why
I'll be on my own
And never doubt, never shout or wonder how
I'll never be lonely until
This time, this time, this time
This time I will...
She allowed her voice to trail off as she neared her terminal. A quick check of her watch told her that she still had twenty-two minutes left before they even began boarding. She took a seat in the waiting area, hope and determination warring with anxiety and uncertainty. She sighed quietly as the song reached its gentle conclusion.
I've been practicing all day
Now the words I meant to say are gone.