All Roads Lead Back to You (2/?)
TITLE: All Roads Lead Back to You (2/?)
AUTHOR: rcruz
RATING: PG-13 (mostly for language)
PAIRING: Callie/Erica, Callie/Arizona (but not really)
SUMMARY: Erica returns to Seattle Grace for a couple of days.
Disclaimer: If I owned them, things would look a lot different. The characters, settings, established histories, and general Grey's Anatomy universe referenced in this work are properties of their respective owners. This is a work of fiction for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement is intended.
A/N: This is my first attempt at this pairing. The story started out as an exploration of what would happen if Erica came back and found Callie with another woman. I meant to really try to explore the Callie/Arizona thing, but it just became a full blown Callica piece pretty much on its own. The story is finished, but undergoing serious editing. All mistakes are mine. Feedback is always welcome.
A/N2: I stopped watching Grey’s after Erica left, so I am unfamiliar with the Callie/Arizona story. If I get things wrong about them, it’s because I’m making it up. I also believe all fanfiction is really one huge alternative universe, so I have no problems changing the histories of the characters somewhat to suit the story. Hope that’s okay with folks.
Chapter 2 - Returning to Seattle Grace
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Erica took the time to finish stirring her coffee and place the lid on before looking at her pager. She had learned early in her career that even in the face of crisis, one needed to remain calm and this was her way of remaining calm. Finally, she looked at the pager. It was the Chief and it did not appear to be an emergency of the surgical type.
She made her way to the nearest phone dialing his direct line. He answered after one ring.
"We have a situation," he told her not even bothering with formalities. He didn't require them and neither did she.
He was still pissed that she was leaving after only six months and so their relationship had chilled considerably.
"Okay," she answered waiting for him to lay it out for her.
"Come to my office and I'll explain."
That part was strange. She put the phone down, picked up her coffee and began making her way to his office. She tried not to panic, but couldn't help but think that she was about to be thrown for a loop again. She thought everything had been worked out between Mercy West and San Francisco Medical. She knew her current Chief was deeply unhappy with the situation, but she thought he understood her desire to move forward and not backward. He had been ecstatic about having her on staff, had thought he had pulled off a world class coupe on the big guys having a surgeon of her caliber at his hospital. But then Mercy West had dangled the Chief of Surgery position in front of her and she simply could not pass it up, even if it meant going back to Seattle.
Mercy had been riding a euphoric high when their trauma unit had finally been rated top in Seattle and suddenly the Board was looking at the possibility of breaking into the national rankings. They had been reeling when she left to go to Seattle Grace to replace Burke. They hadn't wanted to lose her again when she turned around and left Seattle Grace six months ago. But her desire to flee the jurisdiction as quickly as possible had not coincided with their timeline or geography. They had no way of knowing that she would take the first position offered wanting to erase her experience at Seattle Grace and leave Seattle entirely. By the time they were ready, she had already moved to San Francisco. But they had tasted blood and so they went after her anyway and she surprised everyone by saying yes. She wasn't really ready to go back to Seattle, but she would be damned if she made another bad professional move because of Seattle Grace. So she had said yes, let the Board of the two hospitals work out a deal and began to try and mentally prepare herself for a move back to Seattle.
When she walked into the Chief's office, she fully intended to be dealing with just another of one the issues that had arisen from her impending departure. As it was, San Francisco had demanded that she finish out the year with them. She had already put in six months, but they had insisted she stay an additional six. Mercy West was anxious to have her start having gone through some trouble to convince the prior Chief to retire. He had not taken it well and retired almost immediately leaving the position vacant and waiting for her, which disinclined Mercy from letting her continue to work in San Francisco. It was truly a mess and the deal that had been worked out turned out to be good for everyone but her. In two weeks she would begin to keep the craziest hours she had kept since she was a resident. For the next six months Erica would be flying to Seattle every two weeks. She would work 4 days in Seattle and then return to San Francisco. This had been the result of her desire to stay out of the negotiations between the two hospitals and while she knew it was completely crazy, part of her was glad she would be easing back into Seattle life. She hoped it would at least give her time to adjust and stop thinking she would see Callie Torres everywhere.
The door had been opened, so she took it as an invitation and just walked in.
"What problem do they have now?" she asked as she sat in front of his desk.
"Who?" He looked up from his papers.
"Mercy West? You?" she asked raising an eyebrow.
"No, it's not that. You have a patient scheduled for surgery tomorrow, a Michael Amato?"
"No. He's being admitted tomorrow. The surgery will take place early the next day. Why? Is there a problem?"
"Yes. You'll have to cancel that surgery."
"Why?" she said her voice taking on a serious tone. "He needs that surgery. Is there some problem with his insurance, because I can't be dealing with that. He needs the surgery."
"He certainly does, but it won't be happening here."
"What are you talking about?" she asked, exasperation lacing every word of the question.
"Did you give him permission to attend his daughter's wedding in Seattle?"
Erica's faced went white and then flushed red with anger.
"Son of....No, I did not. I expressly told him that he would not be attending because he needed this surgery. What the hell?"
"It looks like he went anyway." He handed her the faxed sheets he had been scanning.
"I just got a call from Richard Webber at Seattle Grace. Apparently Mr. Amato collapsed right before the reception and was rushed to Seattle Grace. He's there now. His labs were just faxed over. Dr. Webber is of the opinion that the man needs the surgery soon. "
She was looking at the labs and frowning.
"Of course he needs the surgery soon," she responded. "I told him that yesterday. Who'll be doing the surgery?" she asked.
"Well Webber wants his people to do it. They tried convincing Mr. Amato to do it today. But he refused. Says he wants you to do the surgery."
She said nothing. If she was honest with herself, she would be more comfortable if she was doing it as well. With Preston Burke and her gone, Seattle Grace had no cardiothoracic rock stars and this was her patient. She wanted him to have a rock star. But doing the surgery meant having to step foot in that hospital again. It meant having to see Callie again. She was not ready to see Callie again.
"Idiot!" she shouted cursing her patient and his stupid need to be at his daughter's wedding.
"Pack your bags, Dr. Hahn. I guess you're heading to Seattle a little early."
*****************
Erica sat in her office contemplating her predicament. She didn't mind most days that life was unfair, that sometimes you were just dealt a bad hand and had to make the most of it. Sometimes you lost and you just had to hope to make it up in the next hand. That was life. She understood that. But this...situation she found herself in was beyond mere life and bad luck and bad hands. It was like someone was handpicking from the deck and giving her the worse possible cards, hand after hand, after hand. That was not life. That was hell.
She had been tired of Seattle and everything it entailed when she had left it abruptly six months ago. At first she had tried to blame it on Preston Burke. She was done with Preston Burke. She was done competing with him because no matter how many times she won, it always felt like a loss to her. It was as if he had some special fairy dust that would make his mistakes golden, his bad choices stellar, his problems someone else's. She was a better surgeon. She knew it and she suspected he knew it too. But he got the better gigs, he got the prestigious awards and all she got for coming in and saving his ass was his leftovers.
Six months ago after trying to fix what she saw as Burke's errors, she had just quit. She quit competing with him, she quit chasing him. She quit Seattle entirely, because that city had brought her nothing but trouble. How they had both ended up in Seattle was anyone's guess, but they had. Yet he had gone to the better teaching hospital and she had ended up at Mercy West, which was a good hospital, but it didn't rank in the top ten in anything. Yet she was the one that had gotten the call to operate on George's father because Burke had been shot.
Burke had left the hospital and his department, supposedly in a huff over not being picked Chief of Surgery. Seattle Grace had turned to her again and she had tried to pick up the pieces and fix the mess he left. Which is why she had been stuck dealing with his residents. She had never seen such immature, brown-nosing, priorities-all-screwed-up, unprofessional residents in her life. He had trained them and she had to deal with them. They were talented, there was no doubt, but they were also very, very off professionally. They seemed to treat the hospital as their personal play pen and while Erica understood that spending 18 hours straight at a hospital made you feel like you lived there, you didn't. They acted like children and not adults most of the time. Hell sometimes they didn't even act like doctors. They should have known how to separate their professional lives from their personal lives.
But at the end of the end, Burke had just left and she had stayed to try and teach them. But they were too entrenched in their personal dramas and too ready to make surgery and their jobs part of that drama. And so she had found that she couldn't teach them. They ended up just irritating her. She didn't know if she could be a good teacher and she admitted to herself that she had not really given the teaching thing much of a chance when she got there, at lest not with these residents. Erica was a quick study and she learned quickly how things were done at Seattle Grace and she didn't like it. But it didn't seem to matter. So she had tried to hang on to her principles, to those things that comprised her core, as hard as she could and cared little what the rest of the hospital did. She concentrated on her surgeries and hoped the residents would maybe learn something by watching her, whenever they managed to pull their heads out of their own asses. Seattle had felt like a failure. Even though she knew they were Burke's residents, she felt like a failure. Even though those same residents had stolen her patient's heart, she felt like the failure.
She picked up a pen and clicked. The click sounded loud. Her eyes scanned the door for a second before they returned to the window she had been staring at. She clicked again wanting to hear something else besides her own breathing. She closed her eyes, blocking out the San Francisco skyline just barely visible through the fog from her window. She could feel a headache coming on.
As much as she wanted to think it was all about Preston Burke and her hatred of all things Burke had ever touched, she knew better. There was a reason the residents at Seattle Grace annoyed her. They weren't honest. Not with their patients, but most especially not with themselves. She didn't do what they did. She didn't ignore problems or lie to herself. She knew better and so she knew that she had to come to terms with the real reason she was dreading a return trip to Seattle Grace.
Callie Torres.
Seattle had been a mixed blessing really. It had been a disaster professionally. That she had left it with her reputation as a world class surgeon still intact was a testament to her skill and not her ill conceived decision to head up the Cardiothoracic department at Seattle Grace. But Seattle Grace also meant Callie Torres. Callie Torres was the most wonderful and awful thing that had ever happened to her. Erica had let herself fall completely and utterly in love with the woman who had handed her a precious gift, an insight into her sexuality that Erica had had neither the time nor inclination to find out about herself. She had been the reason for her awakening in matters of the heart and despite herself Erica still loved her for that.
But Callie Torres had also broken her heart into tiny little pieces. At the time, the rarely seen drama queen in Erica had thought she would never heal from the wound Callie had inflicted. She thought she would never feel right again. She had felt her heart shattering, pieces falling away with every step she took away from Callie and Seattle six months ago. She had told herself it was the right thing to do. It was akin to an animal chewing off their paw to escape a trap. You cut off an appendage to save the whole. You never really feel whole again, but you live to see another day. Except it had been her heart she sacrificed. She was a heart and lung doctor. You could live without a finger or even a whole hand. You couldn't live without a heart. No one knew that better than she did.
But she had a patient who needed her skills and he was currently at Seattle Grace waiting for her to perform the surgery she had advised him he needed two days prior. They could not realistically move him without risk and there was no reason to, when she could just fly there to perform the surgery. She had called him and told him he could elect to have one of Seattle Grace's doctors perform the surgery, but he had insisted on her. She had been on the verge of refusing. But it was ridiculous. Erica Hahn did not let her personal life interfere with her professional one. So she had reluctantly agreed. She had no choice but to go.
She had ranted to her Chief, about how stupid all of this was: the patient's reluctance to do the surgery while they had him here, his stupidity in even attempting to attend his daughter's wedding and his refusal to let anyone else operate. None of which was the Chief's fault. He had let her rant and then simply stated that stupid or not, she was his doctor.
"I know that," she had shouted at him and then realized she was just pissed she had to go back there.
The Chief had smiled at her. "Think of it this way, maybe you can do some house hunting while you're there. You'll be there permanently in six months anyway."
He was right of course. The problem was that this was all so last minute and it was Seattle Grace and she wasn't ready to go back there.
No one at Seattle Grace would be aware yet of her decision to return to Seattle as Chief of Surgery at Mercy West and thankfully she didn't have to tell them. She had thought through what moving back to Seattle would mean if she returned to Mercy West as Chief of Surgery. Professionally it was a sound decision. But returning to Seattle Grace was another matter entirely. One she had not given much thought, having a firm plan in mind to never set foot in the hospital again. She wasn't prepared and the urgency of the surgery would give her no real time to prepare. She would be leaving tomorrow night or early the following morning. She needed to prep for the surgery and pack and didn't have time to think about how she was going to deal with Callie Torres. The best she had been able to come up with was to just ignore her completely.
Maybe that was really the best plan. She knew that in six months she would be back in Seattle, but she and Callie had never crossed paths before Erica's stint at Seattle Grace so there was no reason, Erica had rationalized, for them to run into each other again once she returned to Mercy. A trip to Seattle Grace however practically guaranteed an encounter and she wasn't sure she could really pull off ignoring Callie completely. And that thought had her clicking her pain repeatedly.
She had left Seattle Grace because she couldn't work there. But she had left the city because she could not stand the idea of being in the same city as Callie and not be a part of Callie's life. But that had been six months ago. She was over that and ready to start anew, ready even to put the professional before the personal and take the Chief of Surgery position, even though Callie was in Seattle. San Francisco had treated her well, but she could not pass up Mercy's offer to make her Chief of Surgery. They were moving up in the rankings with a top notch trauma unit. She was planning to build on that and expand their cardiothoracic program, recruit some talent and make the program nationally recognized. The hospital wanted it and so did she. It was, unlike Seattle Grace, a perfect fit.
But it seemed that no matter how perfectly she tried to plan her life, the hand she was dealt was a loser. She didn't want to see Callie Torres.
She clicked the pen again, pulled a note pad closer, and started a careful list of the things she would need to set up for her reluctant return to Seattle Grace. She didn't think she would be able to ignore Callie, but she would try. She would let interns do all the prep work and labs. Of course she would meet with the patient before the surgery, but there was no need for her to just hang around the hospital halls or nurse's stations. She could easily spend the day in an empty office. And she knew of one way to try and keep the rumor mill she knew would be churning from completely overflowing. She wrote down Yang's name on her pad. She would specifically request Callie's roommate on the condition that she keep Hahn's presence a secret. She hoped Yang's obsession with surgeries would keep her quiet until well after the surgery. Erica was hoping it would be enough time. She hoped to get the two days she needed to do the surgery and monitor the patient's progress and then leave. After that she didn't care what happened.
***********************
Erica sat on the plane trying to recall everything she had ever heard, read, or learned about breathing as a relaxation technique. She needed every single ounce of knowledge on the subject right now, but her normally reliable brain was failing her. It was drowning unable to compute, recall, calculate or analyze, mired as it was in whatever was going on in her body. The clash of feelings warring for dominance inside her was causing stomach pains, headaches, shakiness in her usually steady hands, uncontrollable foot shakes and a host of other things. Euphoric anticipation rose in her like a buoy, only to be brought under again by the fears and anxieties that had plagued her since she had discovered that she needed to return to Seattle Grace Hospital.
She had no problems imagining Callie, her Callie walking the halls, that infectious smile plastered on her face. Who was it directed at now? It used to be Erica's smile. There was a time when that smile caused all sorts of tingly feelings to percolate inside her, when that smile had the power to make her day. But it wasn't her Callie she would see. More than likely Callie had long since moved on, most likely with Mark Sloan, who despite his man-whorishness liked Callie. He cared about her and so maybe, perhaps with Erica out of the way, with the whole am I gay problem out of the way, Callie had finished what she had started with Erica, with Mark. She hated the idea. A new wave of nausea hit her stomach. Her hand went involuntarily to the area. She noted her seating partner leaning away from her, but he said nothing. She was glad. She could not deal with people right now. She needed to get this under control before she landed. She would be heading straight for the hospital and she would be operating that afternoon. She needed to concentrate on her job.
But she had performed the surgery often enough that she could think about it almost in the background, like the news she heard every morning over her shower and breakfast. She had decided to just ignore the Callie situation and try her best to just avoid seeing her. She had warned Richard not to tell anyone she was coming and he had readily agreed to her request. She hoped Yang had abided by her promise, but she thought she would. Erica would know immediately if she hadn't and would pull Yang off the surgery and if she knew Yang, Yang would not jeopardize an opportunity at surgery with her.
She let out a breath and tried again to center herself, but it was futile and her brain was tired of the struggle, so she finally just gave up and let the memories and images and worries and fears come unbidden.
In a way it was almost comforting to think of Callie. She had thought about her a lot the last six months, wistfully wondering if she had made the right decision in just leaving without a goodbye, without an explanation. She had even let her imagination delve into fantasy wondering what they would have been like as a real couple. They had never reached that point in their turbulent, intense, yet short-lived relationship. Technically they had been lovers, but a few sleepovers and weeks of not knowing what they were, in between not talking to each other, did not make for coupledom.
She did this same thing almost every night on her balcony. The exercise often left her exhausted and yet she could not stop herself from doing it most nights. It was euphoric to imagine what they could have been and then devastating to come back down to the real world where she sat in an empty apartment with a lonely glass of wine waiting for her every night. She didn't think about the tear streaked face she met in the mirror as she brushed her teeth, tried to put aside the physical pain in her heart that was always there and concentrated on breathing and sleeping and waking up the next day.
The demise of their whole relationship had hurt more than Erica had imagined a heart could hurt and she wondered at the foolishness of people who fall in love, have their heartbroken and then fall in love again. How do people recover from this? She was no stranger to relationships, but the inevitable breaking had never felt like this. It had never made her feel lost and broken and unsure. But she did get up every morning and she hoped every single morning that when night came again, that her heart would not want to revisit that place where Callie still lingered, that her heart would hurt less as she climbed into that bed, that she would not have to think about breathing.
It hadn't happened yet and a part of her was worried that she would feel like this forever. But the rational part was there too and kept telling her to hang on, that it was impossible to feel like this forever, that it was just taking time.
She had just run out of time. Michael Amato had made sure of that. She rested her head against the back of her seat and decided that if she had to think about Callie, they might as well be good memories. So she willingly went to that place, back to the time when they were friends and trying to be more; when they were unsure of everything, but their need to spend time together; when everything was new and possible and not tainted.
AUTHOR: rcruz
RATING: PG-13 (mostly for language)
PAIRING: Callie/Erica, Callie/Arizona (but not really)
SUMMARY: Erica returns to Seattle Grace for a couple of days.
Disclaimer: If I owned them, things would look a lot different. The characters, settings, established histories, and general Grey's Anatomy universe referenced in this work are properties of their respective owners. This is a work of fiction for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement is intended.
A/N: This is my first attempt at this pairing. The story started out as an exploration of what would happen if Erica came back and found Callie with another woman. I meant to really try to explore the Callie/Arizona thing, but it just became a full blown Callica piece pretty much on its own. The story is finished, but undergoing serious editing. All mistakes are mine. Feedback is always welcome.
A/N2: I stopped watching Grey’s after Erica left, so I am unfamiliar with the Callie/Arizona story. If I get things wrong about them, it’s because I’m making it up. I also believe all fanfiction is really one huge alternative universe, so I have no problems changing the histories of the characters somewhat to suit the story. Hope that’s okay with folks.
Chapter 2 - Returning to Seattle Grace
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Erica took the time to finish stirring her coffee and place the lid on before looking at her pager. She had learned early in her career that even in the face of crisis, one needed to remain calm and this was her way of remaining calm. Finally, she looked at the pager. It was the Chief and it did not appear to be an emergency of the surgical type.
She made her way to the nearest phone dialing his direct line. He answered after one ring.
"We have a situation," he told her not even bothering with formalities. He didn't require them and neither did she.
He was still pissed that she was leaving after only six months and so their relationship had chilled considerably.
"Okay," she answered waiting for him to lay it out for her.
"Come to my office and I'll explain."
That part was strange. She put the phone down, picked up her coffee and began making her way to his office. She tried not to panic, but couldn't help but think that she was about to be thrown for a loop again. She thought everything had been worked out between Mercy West and San Francisco Medical. She knew her current Chief was deeply unhappy with the situation, but she thought he understood her desire to move forward and not backward. He had been ecstatic about having her on staff, had thought he had pulled off a world class coupe on the big guys having a surgeon of her caliber at his hospital. But then Mercy West had dangled the Chief of Surgery position in front of her and she simply could not pass it up, even if it meant going back to Seattle.
Mercy had been riding a euphoric high when their trauma unit had finally been rated top in Seattle and suddenly the Board was looking at the possibility of breaking into the national rankings. They had been reeling when she left to go to Seattle Grace to replace Burke. They hadn't wanted to lose her again when she turned around and left Seattle Grace six months ago. But her desire to flee the jurisdiction as quickly as possible had not coincided with their timeline or geography. They had no way of knowing that she would take the first position offered wanting to erase her experience at Seattle Grace and leave Seattle entirely. By the time they were ready, she had already moved to San Francisco. But they had tasted blood and so they went after her anyway and she surprised everyone by saying yes. She wasn't really ready to go back to Seattle, but she would be damned if she made another bad professional move because of Seattle Grace. So she had said yes, let the Board of the two hospitals work out a deal and began to try and mentally prepare herself for a move back to Seattle.
When she walked into the Chief's office, she fully intended to be dealing with just another of one the issues that had arisen from her impending departure. As it was, San Francisco had demanded that she finish out the year with them. She had already put in six months, but they had insisted she stay an additional six. Mercy West was anxious to have her start having gone through some trouble to convince the prior Chief to retire. He had not taken it well and retired almost immediately leaving the position vacant and waiting for her, which disinclined Mercy from letting her continue to work in San Francisco. It was truly a mess and the deal that had been worked out turned out to be good for everyone but her. In two weeks she would begin to keep the craziest hours she had kept since she was a resident. For the next six months Erica would be flying to Seattle every two weeks. She would work 4 days in Seattle and then return to San Francisco. This had been the result of her desire to stay out of the negotiations between the two hospitals and while she knew it was completely crazy, part of her was glad she would be easing back into Seattle life. She hoped it would at least give her time to adjust and stop thinking she would see Callie Torres everywhere.
The door had been opened, so she took it as an invitation and just walked in.
"What problem do they have now?" she asked as she sat in front of his desk.
"Who?" He looked up from his papers.
"Mercy West? You?" she asked raising an eyebrow.
"No, it's not that. You have a patient scheduled for surgery tomorrow, a Michael Amato?"
"No. He's being admitted tomorrow. The surgery will take place early the next day. Why? Is there a problem?"
"Yes. You'll have to cancel that surgery."
"Why?" she said her voice taking on a serious tone. "He needs that surgery. Is there some problem with his insurance, because I can't be dealing with that. He needs the surgery."
"He certainly does, but it won't be happening here."
"What are you talking about?" she asked, exasperation lacing every word of the question.
"Did you give him permission to attend his daughter's wedding in Seattle?"
Erica's faced went white and then flushed red with anger.
"Son of....No, I did not. I expressly told him that he would not be attending because he needed this surgery. What the hell?"
"It looks like he went anyway." He handed her the faxed sheets he had been scanning.
"I just got a call from Richard Webber at Seattle Grace. Apparently Mr. Amato collapsed right before the reception and was rushed to Seattle Grace. He's there now. His labs were just faxed over. Dr. Webber is of the opinion that the man needs the surgery soon. "
She was looking at the labs and frowning.
"Of course he needs the surgery soon," she responded. "I told him that yesterday. Who'll be doing the surgery?" she asked.
"Well Webber wants his people to do it. They tried convincing Mr. Amato to do it today. But he refused. Says he wants you to do the surgery."
She said nothing. If she was honest with herself, she would be more comfortable if she was doing it as well. With Preston Burke and her gone, Seattle Grace had no cardiothoracic rock stars and this was her patient. She wanted him to have a rock star. But doing the surgery meant having to step foot in that hospital again. It meant having to see Callie again. She was not ready to see Callie again.
"Idiot!" she shouted cursing her patient and his stupid need to be at his daughter's wedding.
"Pack your bags, Dr. Hahn. I guess you're heading to Seattle a little early."
*****************
Erica sat in her office contemplating her predicament. She didn't mind most days that life was unfair, that sometimes you were just dealt a bad hand and had to make the most of it. Sometimes you lost and you just had to hope to make it up in the next hand. That was life. She understood that. But this...situation she found herself in was beyond mere life and bad luck and bad hands. It was like someone was handpicking from the deck and giving her the worse possible cards, hand after hand, after hand. That was not life. That was hell.
She had been tired of Seattle and everything it entailed when she had left it abruptly six months ago. At first she had tried to blame it on Preston Burke. She was done with Preston Burke. She was done competing with him because no matter how many times she won, it always felt like a loss to her. It was as if he had some special fairy dust that would make his mistakes golden, his bad choices stellar, his problems someone else's. She was a better surgeon. She knew it and she suspected he knew it too. But he got the better gigs, he got the prestigious awards and all she got for coming in and saving his ass was his leftovers.
Six months ago after trying to fix what she saw as Burke's errors, she had just quit. She quit competing with him, she quit chasing him. She quit Seattle entirely, because that city had brought her nothing but trouble. How they had both ended up in Seattle was anyone's guess, but they had. Yet he had gone to the better teaching hospital and she had ended up at Mercy West, which was a good hospital, but it didn't rank in the top ten in anything. Yet she was the one that had gotten the call to operate on George's father because Burke had been shot.
Burke had left the hospital and his department, supposedly in a huff over not being picked Chief of Surgery. Seattle Grace had turned to her again and she had tried to pick up the pieces and fix the mess he left. Which is why she had been stuck dealing with his residents. She had never seen such immature, brown-nosing, priorities-all-screwed-up, unprofessional residents in her life. He had trained them and she had to deal with them. They were talented, there was no doubt, but they were also very, very off professionally. They seemed to treat the hospital as their personal play pen and while Erica understood that spending 18 hours straight at a hospital made you feel like you lived there, you didn't. They acted like children and not adults most of the time. Hell sometimes they didn't even act like doctors. They should have known how to separate their professional lives from their personal lives.
But at the end of the end, Burke had just left and she had stayed to try and teach them. But they were too entrenched in their personal dramas and too ready to make surgery and their jobs part of that drama. And so she had found that she couldn't teach them. They ended up just irritating her. She didn't know if she could be a good teacher and she admitted to herself that she had not really given the teaching thing much of a chance when she got there, at lest not with these residents. Erica was a quick study and she learned quickly how things were done at Seattle Grace and she didn't like it. But it didn't seem to matter. So she had tried to hang on to her principles, to those things that comprised her core, as hard as she could and cared little what the rest of the hospital did. She concentrated on her surgeries and hoped the residents would maybe learn something by watching her, whenever they managed to pull their heads out of their own asses. Seattle had felt like a failure. Even though she knew they were Burke's residents, she felt like a failure. Even though those same residents had stolen her patient's heart, she felt like the failure.
She picked up a pen and clicked. The click sounded loud. Her eyes scanned the door for a second before they returned to the window she had been staring at. She clicked again wanting to hear something else besides her own breathing. She closed her eyes, blocking out the San Francisco skyline just barely visible through the fog from her window. She could feel a headache coming on.
As much as she wanted to think it was all about Preston Burke and her hatred of all things Burke had ever touched, she knew better. There was a reason the residents at Seattle Grace annoyed her. They weren't honest. Not with their patients, but most especially not with themselves. She didn't do what they did. She didn't ignore problems or lie to herself. She knew better and so she knew that she had to come to terms with the real reason she was dreading a return trip to Seattle Grace.
Callie Torres.
Seattle had been a mixed blessing really. It had been a disaster professionally. That she had left it with her reputation as a world class surgeon still intact was a testament to her skill and not her ill conceived decision to head up the Cardiothoracic department at Seattle Grace. But Seattle Grace also meant Callie Torres. Callie Torres was the most wonderful and awful thing that had ever happened to her. Erica had let herself fall completely and utterly in love with the woman who had handed her a precious gift, an insight into her sexuality that Erica had had neither the time nor inclination to find out about herself. She had been the reason for her awakening in matters of the heart and despite herself Erica still loved her for that.
But Callie Torres had also broken her heart into tiny little pieces. At the time, the rarely seen drama queen in Erica had thought she would never heal from the wound Callie had inflicted. She thought she would never feel right again. She had felt her heart shattering, pieces falling away with every step she took away from Callie and Seattle six months ago. She had told herself it was the right thing to do. It was akin to an animal chewing off their paw to escape a trap. You cut off an appendage to save the whole. You never really feel whole again, but you live to see another day. Except it had been her heart she sacrificed. She was a heart and lung doctor. You could live without a finger or even a whole hand. You couldn't live without a heart. No one knew that better than she did.
But she had a patient who needed her skills and he was currently at Seattle Grace waiting for her to perform the surgery she had advised him he needed two days prior. They could not realistically move him without risk and there was no reason to, when she could just fly there to perform the surgery. She had called him and told him he could elect to have one of Seattle Grace's doctors perform the surgery, but he had insisted on her. She had been on the verge of refusing. But it was ridiculous. Erica Hahn did not let her personal life interfere with her professional one. So she had reluctantly agreed. She had no choice but to go.
She had ranted to her Chief, about how stupid all of this was: the patient's reluctance to do the surgery while they had him here, his stupidity in even attempting to attend his daughter's wedding and his refusal to let anyone else operate. None of which was the Chief's fault. He had let her rant and then simply stated that stupid or not, she was his doctor.
"I know that," she had shouted at him and then realized she was just pissed she had to go back there.
The Chief had smiled at her. "Think of it this way, maybe you can do some house hunting while you're there. You'll be there permanently in six months anyway."
He was right of course. The problem was that this was all so last minute and it was Seattle Grace and she wasn't ready to go back there.
No one at Seattle Grace would be aware yet of her decision to return to Seattle as Chief of Surgery at Mercy West and thankfully she didn't have to tell them. She had thought through what moving back to Seattle would mean if she returned to Mercy West as Chief of Surgery. Professionally it was a sound decision. But returning to Seattle Grace was another matter entirely. One she had not given much thought, having a firm plan in mind to never set foot in the hospital again. She wasn't prepared and the urgency of the surgery would give her no real time to prepare. She would be leaving tomorrow night or early the following morning. She needed to prep for the surgery and pack and didn't have time to think about how she was going to deal with Callie Torres. The best she had been able to come up with was to just ignore her completely.
Maybe that was really the best plan. She knew that in six months she would be back in Seattle, but she and Callie had never crossed paths before Erica's stint at Seattle Grace so there was no reason, Erica had rationalized, for them to run into each other again once she returned to Mercy. A trip to Seattle Grace however practically guaranteed an encounter and she wasn't sure she could really pull off ignoring Callie completely. And that thought had her clicking her pain repeatedly.
She had left Seattle Grace because she couldn't work there. But she had left the city because she could not stand the idea of being in the same city as Callie and not be a part of Callie's life. But that had been six months ago. She was over that and ready to start anew, ready even to put the professional before the personal and take the Chief of Surgery position, even though Callie was in Seattle. San Francisco had treated her well, but she could not pass up Mercy's offer to make her Chief of Surgery. They were moving up in the rankings with a top notch trauma unit. She was planning to build on that and expand their cardiothoracic program, recruit some talent and make the program nationally recognized. The hospital wanted it and so did she. It was, unlike Seattle Grace, a perfect fit.
But it seemed that no matter how perfectly she tried to plan her life, the hand she was dealt was a loser. She didn't want to see Callie Torres.
She clicked the pen again, pulled a note pad closer, and started a careful list of the things she would need to set up for her reluctant return to Seattle Grace. She didn't think she would be able to ignore Callie, but she would try. She would let interns do all the prep work and labs. Of course she would meet with the patient before the surgery, but there was no need for her to just hang around the hospital halls or nurse's stations. She could easily spend the day in an empty office. And she knew of one way to try and keep the rumor mill she knew would be churning from completely overflowing. She wrote down Yang's name on her pad. She would specifically request Callie's roommate on the condition that she keep Hahn's presence a secret. She hoped Yang's obsession with surgeries would keep her quiet until well after the surgery. Erica was hoping it would be enough time. She hoped to get the two days she needed to do the surgery and monitor the patient's progress and then leave. After that she didn't care what happened.
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Erica sat on the plane trying to recall everything she had ever heard, read, or learned about breathing as a relaxation technique. She needed every single ounce of knowledge on the subject right now, but her normally reliable brain was failing her. It was drowning unable to compute, recall, calculate or analyze, mired as it was in whatever was going on in her body. The clash of feelings warring for dominance inside her was causing stomach pains, headaches, shakiness in her usually steady hands, uncontrollable foot shakes and a host of other things. Euphoric anticipation rose in her like a buoy, only to be brought under again by the fears and anxieties that had plagued her since she had discovered that she needed to return to Seattle Grace Hospital.
She had no problems imagining Callie, her Callie walking the halls, that infectious smile plastered on her face. Who was it directed at now? It used to be Erica's smile. There was a time when that smile caused all sorts of tingly feelings to percolate inside her, when that smile had the power to make her day. But it wasn't her Callie she would see. More than likely Callie had long since moved on, most likely with Mark Sloan, who despite his man-whorishness liked Callie. He cared about her and so maybe, perhaps with Erica out of the way, with the whole am I gay problem out of the way, Callie had finished what she had started with Erica, with Mark. She hated the idea. A new wave of nausea hit her stomach. Her hand went involuntarily to the area. She noted her seating partner leaning away from her, but he said nothing. She was glad. She could not deal with people right now. She needed to get this under control before she landed. She would be heading straight for the hospital and she would be operating that afternoon. She needed to concentrate on her job.
But she had performed the surgery often enough that she could think about it almost in the background, like the news she heard every morning over her shower and breakfast. She had decided to just ignore the Callie situation and try her best to just avoid seeing her. She had warned Richard not to tell anyone she was coming and he had readily agreed to her request. She hoped Yang had abided by her promise, but she thought she would. Erica would know immediately if she hadn't and would pull Yang off the surgery and if she knew Yang, Yang would not jeopardize an opportunity at surgery with her.
She let out a breath and tried again to center herself, but it was futile and her brain was tired of the struggle, so she finally just gave up and let the memories and images and worries and fears come unbidden.
In a way it was almost comforting to think of Callie. She had thought about her a lot the last six months, wistfully wondering if she had made the right decision in just leaving without a goodbye, without an explanation. She had even let her imagination delve into fantasy wondering what they would have been like as a real couple. They had never reached that point in their turbulent, intense, yet short-lived relationship. Technically they had been lovers, but a few sleepovers and weeks of not knowing what they were, in between not talking to each other, did not make for coupledom.
She did this same thing almost every night on her balcony. The exercise often left her exhausted and yet she could not stop herself from doing it most nights. It was euphoric to imagine what they could have been and then devastating to come back down to the real world where she sat in an empty apartment with a lonely glass of wine waiting for her every night. She didn't think about the tear streaked face she met in the mirror as she brushed her teeth, tried to put aside the physical pain in her heart that was always there and concentrated on breathing and sleeping and waking up the next day.
The demise of their whole relationship had hurt more than Erica had imagined a heart could hurt and she wondered at the foolishness of people who fall in love, have their heartbroken and then fall in love again. How do people recover from this? She was no stranger to relationships, but the inevitable breaking had never felt like this. It had never made her feel lost and broken and unsure. But she did get up every morning and she hoped every single morning that when night came again, that her heart would not want to revisit that place where Callie still lingered, that her heart would hurt less as she climbed into that bed, that she would not have to think about breathing.
It hadn't happened yet and a part of her was worried that she would feel like this forever. But the rational part was there too and kept telling her to hang on, that it was impossible to feel like this forever, that it was just taking time.
She had just run out of time. Michael Amato had made sure of that. She rested her head against the back of her seat and decided that if she had to think about Callie, they might as well be good memories. So she willingly went to that place, back to the time when they were friends and trying to be more; when they were unsure of everything, but their need to spend time together; when everything was new and possible and not tainted.