Morning Commute, Chapter 2
Callie's POV
It’s later that afternoon and I’m sitting in the Attendings’ lounge, tapping the corner of Arizona’s business card against the table in rapid succession. There’s no way I can call right now - the same afternoon? No thank you, stalker. But god, it’s tempting.
And it wouldn’t be the most bizarre thing I did today.
In fact, I might as well just go ahead and douse myself with holy water right now. Rubbing up against complete strangers in a tram car? Am I losing my mind? And worse, the images I’ve been harboring all day would be enough to send every member of my Spanish Catholic family to an early grave.
But no time to think about mi abuela at a time like this.
Exacerbating these guilty thoughts is the fact that I haven’t been able to get this off my chest all day. It isn’t that Mark hasn’t been around. But how do you explain, out loud, that you just mind-fucked a perfect stranger, whose ass you (coincidentally) also had a handful of and whose crotch was glued to your backside for the better part of 15 minutes?
How you explain this is, you don’t.
Now the crease of the business card is starting to round itself off from this constant tapping, and even the subtle defacing of her card is enough to give me agita. And just when I begin to contemplate how odd it is that my pager hasn’t gone off once in the last hour, I realize that it’s only been 5 minutes since I last checked and time is just barely drudging forward.
Fuck it.
I’m just gonna call. If this were a normal situation, I might wait the requisite two plus days before calling but, alas, this is not a normal situation. I’m not sure what the rules are surrounding dry humping but it seems that the act itself would give me a one-up on the communication issue.
But just to be safe, maybe I’ll start with a text. Seems a bit more subtle - subtlety being tactic I haven’t tried in a while.
Hey Stranger - It’s Callie. Is it way too inappropriately early to call? In the event that the answer is yes, I’m texting instead.
Send.
Huge exhale, stretch my neck a bit, crack my knuckles. And now I’ll just put this phone right in my pocket and get on with my job, because I am a goddamn professional.
(Beep Beep)
Christ, that was fast. In my haste my phone bobbles out of my hands and after a few near catches, flies to the floor. So now I’m frantically picking up the pieces of my cell, putting the battery back in - wait, that’s backwards - and now powering back up….
One new text message.
My heart has developed an arrhythmia within the last few minutes and I consider briefly whether developing a chronic condition over a woman I’ve barely met and almost fucked is really worth it.
Calliope… not early enough! J How about a real phone conversation after you get off work?
Exclamation point, smiley face? Well, that’s a doozy. Okay. Yeah. I could handle a real phone conversation.
My shift isn’t over until 9pm… Does that work for you?
Hmm, long hours! Me too. I’ll be off at 8:30. How about I call you at 9:15?
“Torres, there you are!” Mark. Fuck.
“Hey, yeah, what? Nothing.”
“Whoa, slow down killer. You alright?”
“Yeah, of course I’m… Sure. Yeah, way.” Yeah, way? This chick is bad for me already.
“Alright… Well, car accident patient in the pit needs a consult.”
“Yep. Coming.”
But just for good measure I take the extra minute to text Arizona back and set this scheduled conversation in stone.