Sealing the Deal 1/1
TITLE: Sealing the Deal 1/1
AUTHOR: Neolithicdream
PAIRING: Callie & Arizona
RATING: PG 13
SUMMARY: This is a very late sequel to a short one shot called ‘Making a DeaI’ posted in the immediate aftermath of Ep. 7.17 (the one before ‘the Music Event’). So it’s no longer following what actually happened at all. Still you need to read the first part to make sense of this. Any way Arizona is now in surgery having collapsed hours after the accident. She isn’t religious but she may have made a deal with ‘the man above’ all the same.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Calzona or any of the characters mentioned in this fic. They are the property of Shonda Rhimes/ ABC etc... This fic is purely written for enjoyment and without intent or prospect of profit. No copyright infringement intended.
neolithicdream.livejournal.com/6381.html(Making a Deal)
“What the hell happened?” shouted Chief Webber as he saw his best Peds Surgeon being rushed into a Trauma room on a gurney
“She collapsed in the Chapel... her B.P has hit the floor, pulse very faint, abdomen is rigid, pretty sure it’s an abdominal bleed, need a portable ultra sound stat and someone prep an O.R now”.
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“Bailey, you done here, the Chief needs you in O.R 2”
“Addison, where the hell have you been, did you track down Robbins - we might need that C-section after all, Callies stable for now, but if contractions start up again then I doubt if the repairs will hold and that baby will have to come out. So I need you to scrub in. Hunt and Altman are going to repair the damage to her heart now she’s stable. Until they’re finished it’s going to be touch and go. You’ll have to be ready to go in immediately if she starts to flat line again. What did Robbins say?
“Uhm, she... She said that if it comes down to it we need to do everything we can to save the baby” Addison tried to keep her emotions in check “she says it’s what Callie would want.”
“You certain that’s Robbins decision, Addison?” Derek was surprised, he knew how much the baby meant to his friend Mark but he’d have expected Arizona to put Callie before, well maybe any baby, but certainly this one. He was pretty sure he’d choose Meredith before a baby but would he...if it was their child...his child? Did Robbins really see this as her baby?”
Addison just nodded.
“Where is she anyway, I thought she’d be trying to bulldoze her way in here like Mark...I’ve had to send Lexie off to mind him.
“She’s in O.R 2 - very late undiagnosed abdominal bleed”
“What, is she even emotionally fit to operate? Is that where Baileys needed?”
“Derek she’s the patient!”
“What?”
“And it’s not looking good so... Derek, now let’s make sure she has a reason to pull through, let’s try to keep both of her reasons alive, ok” says Addison, desperately trying not to think of what might be happening in O.R 2 or how any of them would ever face Callie if Arizona died because no-one thought to check her out properly...because in their desperation to save one colleague they forgot about another.
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Hey, Callie, you gave us one hell of a fright there.
Addis...son, what...you...oh, God my baby
Callie, your daughter is doing just fine, she’s exactly where she’s supposed to be - nice and safe and warm in your womb...where I’m hoping she’ll stay for the next 12 to 13 weeks or so.
“Daughter? We’re having a little girl?”
“Oh crap, Cal...I thought...I just assumed you knew the sex...what with there being three of you...all surgeons... looking at the ultrasounds.”
“Mark and me...not much practice reading scans in Plastics and Ortho...I think Arizona knows...but she swears she doesn’t but...” Callie smiled through the pain and the grogginess “she has a poker face that would make Lady Gaga proud” Callie smiled again...then frowning asked “where is she, Addison? What, what happened, where’s my...” there were so many thoughts and images going through her head and she was so tired and sore, it was all an incoherent mess and she was so tired...” where is Ariz...Where’s my Arizona”
“Sshh Callie...sshh you need to sleep now” Addison so didn’t want to be the one to tell her and was just relieved that Callie had fallen back to sleep.
She knew that she should feel overwhelmed with relief and happiness that the woman who had become such a close friend in her time in Seattle had survived and appeared to be miraculously free of brain damage considering the nature of her head injuries. Traumatic head injuries of that kind could so easily have proved fatal or left her with severe and permanent brain damage. And then there was the equally miraculous fact that eventually a C- Section was not needed and the little baby growing inside her got a chance to stay in her warm life developing cocoon for longer. The chances of that baby surviving at barely 24 weeks outside the womb were not good...just about at the limit of viability...the chances of such a baby surviving without serious health issues maybe long term issues even worse. Yeah all things considered Derek and Hunt and Altman and the rest of them pulled off a couple of miracles today.
Miracles. The word immediately brought her back to that weird conversation in the Chapel and Arizona...a self admitted near atheist(or was it agnostic Addison could never remember which was which)...begging, bartering, trading in promises and deals with a God she wasn’t sure she ever believed existed. Crazy illogical promises and deals that made no sense, which would only ever be made in extremis. Yet in the current circumstances at this exact moment Addison could not help but wonder(she like Robbins a near atheist/ agnostic) at the fact that beyond their best prognoses Callie and her baby girl might just pull through while Arizona...
Callie had, in the absence of a seatbelt, been catapulted through a windscreen; Arizona had been ”saved” by her seatbelt and her airbag and yet, and it was eerie - Addison shivered at the timeframe when she read Arizona’s chart earlier after both O.R.1 and O.R. 2 were vacated...at almost the exact time that they had begun to sense hope in O.R 1, hope that they might just pull this off...within minutes of that back in O.R 2 Arizona Robbins was flat -lining for the third time.
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As soon as they had closed Callie up Addison had left to check up on Arizona’s progress. O.R 2 was empty apart from the porters cleaning up. It was a sight hospital staff were so familiar with - blood being mopped up from the theatre floor - most staff - well surgeons scrub nurses and the like anyway - didn’t even see the bloodstained floor any more. It was different though, Addison knew now, when you knew whose body that blood had only recently been flowing in, been pumped around in by the heart of a colleague. Then you noticed the blood, all of it, astounded again as if for the first time by how much blood the human body could contain...and lose.
Technically of course Arizona was not her colleague. Their time at SGMW had never overlapped - if it had then given their specialities it was likely that they would have worked together closely. Maybe have been friends. Addison thought she would have liked that...to have been the friend and colleague of Arizona Robbins.
Technically they were not colleagues or friends but by extension they were. Part of Addison would always be part of this hospital; her erstwhile colleagues would somehow always remain, in part, her colleagues. And Callie Torres would always be her friend, a friendship borne out of mutual heartbreak but forged into something far more permanent. So her colleagues colleague and her friend’s (girl) friend was, by extension her colleague and friend too.
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She met Karev first, pacing up and down like a frantic relative rather than the badass boy - surgeon Addison considered him to be. She knew he had assisted Bailey and the Chief. Before she could ask anything Mark came barrelling down the hall.
“How’s she doing?”
“Callie is..”
“No, I don’t mean Cal, Derek updated me a few minutes ago...”
“Oh, well the baby sh...”
“Addison, shut up! Karev how is Blo.., I mean Roller..., no Rob...damnit Arizona, how is Arizona?”
Alex just looked at him, staring at him “Why do YOU even care? You haven’t given a damn about her or how she’s been doing all these weeks and months. You’re too busy calling yourself ‘the father’, too busy getting her girlfriend pregnant; what is it with you, you can’t find a woman to stay with you so you have to steal other peoples and knock them up”
Addison flinched at the words even though she knew none of this was directed at her, that Karev didn’t know about that other Sloan baby.
“What the hell is wrong with you Karev? Just tell me how she is! When did you become her protector, since when did she need one?”
“The only reason they were in that car was to get away from you for a couple of days, if they didn’t go away she wouldn’t be...” Alex held back a guttural sob as best he could...he was damned if he was going to cry in front of Sloan
“She wouldn’t be what, Alex?” Addison asked lowly only now noticing that the resident’s eyes were bloodshot.
“She’s okay, she’s going to be fine, right” Mark said nodding to himself as if to make it so. He was as pale as a sheet and braced himself against the wall.
“Dude” Alex said angrily “I don’t know, okay...she’s still breathing, and beyond that I don’t know” and as if it had taken all his energy to confirm her status he slumped to a sitting position against the wall. Mark did likewise and Addison sat cross-legged on the floor before the pair of them.
“By the time we got her to the O.R and opened her up...there was so much blood...she’d been bleeding for hours, probably slowly at first...her abdomen...when Webber made the first incision it was like something out of a bad horror movie... and her stats were dropping like a stone...it took us ages to find all the bleeders...there was three...and I think they must have expanded as time passed...before she collapsed...and she was losing blood as fast as we could get it into her for a while...we got them but she had lost so much over such a long time and she kept coding...damnit 3 times.. She flat lined 3 times...who does that?
We closed her up but Webbers worried that there may have been a lack of O2 to her brain so we just have to wait and see if she wakes up. He doesn’t know, how the hell does he not know, he’s the Chief of Surgery for crissake...he should know!”
“She’s gonna wake up and she’s gonna be fine.” Mark announced as if definitively.
“Mark, you don’t know that” Addison said quietly, guilt gnawing at her...she should have noticed something in the Chapel...hell she should have realised that the blonde surgeon hadn’t been properly checked at all.” God when all this was over there will be one hell of a post mortem on how...oh crap wrong choice of words...no an inquiry as to how an RTA victim could come into the hospital and not be checked out. It was like Arizona had been invisible in the chaos, but she Addison should have seen the signs in the Chapel...and that time they had spent talking about stupid deals with nonexistent stupid deities might prove to have been crucial.
“She’s gonna be fine. She’s my baby’s mommy, one of them and she’s gonna be fine. They all are. “
“Yeah?” a subdued Alex said. He liked Callie, she was one of the coolest attendings, tough but she treated you like you were human even the interns...who might not actually be human. And even if he would only admit it to himself he was a sucker for babies so of course he was rooting for the baby. But Robbins...she, she, well she was something else. He was kind of glad she was a lesbian, what was it she called herself, oh yeah a gold star. If she was straight he would have so gone there...god who wouldn’t...he’d overheard enough nurses(straight ones...the ones he knew were straight)saying they’d go there too...those legs, and those boobs and she had a nice ass too and the face well enough said....and well he knew if he had...well he’d have fucked it up...cause thats what he did...and well she was one of the best things that had ever happened to him...apart from Iz...yeah even after everything apart from Iz.
But Robbins couldn’t leave him...not again...jeez it was bad enough when she was in Malawi. She had changed everything...she was tough...ya had to see it to believe it...that ass Avery would never get it... but yeah Robbins was hardcore, badass, she was a drill sergeant camouflaged as ‘roller-skating smiling’ Barbie. He had been adrift and she had saved him, she trusted his abilities like no-one ever had, she trusted him like no-one ever had.
“Karev go get yourself a coffee and when you’re done bring us back one too. We’ll page you if there’s any change, ok” Mark said in a gentler tone than before.
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“When did Karev get attached to people?” Addison asked.
“I’m pretty sure he just makes an exception for her. Callie says he’d be her work husband only Arizona refuses to admit to wanting “any kind of” husband!”
“And you...when did you start to give a damn about your “second baby momma”...from what I hear things have been fraught?”
“Yeah, that might be the understatement of the year” Mark said dejectedly. ”I, until all this baby threesome happened...”
“Threesome? What?”
“Co-Parenting three thingy, Jesus Addison, how can you think of that at a time like this? The point is I liked, no I like Arizona, I mean she’s a bit crazy but I doubt if anyone in this hospital dislikes her...maybe Stark...anyway she is the best thing that ever happened to Callie....there sickeningly perfect...”
“Really even after Baby gate No.1 and Malawi and Baby gate No.2?”
“Yeah...just cause they’re made for each other doesn’t mean there not morons...I mean look at what happened to you and Der and me and Lexie...but these two they keep finding a way back to each other. Callie and me we accidentally made a baby when all we were trying to make was a sorbet.”
“What now?”
“The point being they’re each other’s forever...when its good between them they are like they live in a bubble of happiness...when it’s bad neither can survive without the other...like Harry Potter and he- who- must- not- be named only exactly opposite, ya know?”
“Harry Potter? What the...”
“Hey I’m gonna be a dad I had to start reading up on kids’ books, ok...and Arizona got me into them anyway! What I’m trying to say is even though she hates me I like her but I kind of got paranoid that she’d take my place as “the father” that I’d miss out again and I think this is my last chance.”
“I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want to be a father, Mark” Addison said gently.
“Yeah well we’ve been petty and bickering with each other and point scoring for weeks now.
And now I find out from Derek that before she collapsed she directed that if it came to a choice the baby was to be saved before Callie. And I don’t get how she could say that.”
“She said that, directed that because it’s what Callie would have wanted, she told me that.”
“I’m Callie’s friend but she and Callie they are...what are Yang and Grey? Yeah soulmates, meant for each other forever right?”
“Ok” Addison was trying to follow the logic.
“She chose to lose her soul mate to save my baby.”
“Her baby too? No?”
“But that’s the thing...technically she’s nothing, to this baby, shes not anything, no rights, she might as well not exist.”
“MARK!”
“No, I’m not saying that is what I think but in the eyes of the law she’s nothing. So she chose to lose her soul mate so that my baby would live and given the way it’s been between us she would have little expectation that I’d give her anything to do with my baby. She chose to lose everything to save a baby Callie wouldn’t live to hold. What kind of person does that?”
“A good kind?”
“No, the kind you’d want as your baby momma, the kind you’d want your baby to grow up calling Mom...so you see she has to be ok...for all our sakes.”
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Their rooms were close by in the ICU, a fact Addison was supremely grateful for as she waited for one to wake up again, the other to wake up at all.
“Addison, where is Arizona?” Callie was still groggy and only now was piecing together things. Arizona had asked her to marry her. Out of the blue...just like that...in the middle of a row about Mark...what else...she had dismissed her but she repeated the proposal and at that moment she saw it, it had been there all along, it was like the blinkers had come off. The last months had been both amazing and hellish. Amazing because Arizona was back, hellish because she might leave again and hellish too with all the bickering between the three of them.
But then she realised Arizona was not going to leave, she was all in, they were going to be together till extreme old age separated them. But where was Arizona?
“Addison she proposed to me, she wants to marry me, ME! I love her so much and she wants to marry me, can you believe it?”
“She told me she asked you. She didn’t tell me your answer”
“I don’t think I said yes...I know I didn’t say no but then the truck and everything went blank. Oh God, I have to seal the deal...I have to say yes...will you get her for me,where,why isn’t she...”Callie petered off noticing only now the look on Addison’s face
“Addie, where...oh god, no....but no you said she was talking to you so that means she’s fine right...Addie? Please!”
Callie felt time stop.It just ground to a halt and stopped. And as time stood still she waited to be told Arizona was fine, for Arizona to walk right in shaking her head and laughing at her girlfriends tears
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“Arizona calm down, calm down. They had to intubate you. If you understand blink twice.”
Blink blink
“Ok, I’ve paged Webber to see if we can extubate, ok?”
She seemed ok, to understand but there was a panic in her eyes that said otherwise, a fear, a terrified fear.
“You had an abdominal bleed, you passed out in the Chapel and you had surgery but you are going to be just fine, ok”
This time instead of blinking Arizona just shook her head furiously, as tears began to overflow making her eyes shine brighter than normal. She tried to pull the tube out and Addison had to use all her strength to restrain her. Addison didn’t know if she was altered or what was going on, as a surgeon even a post op groggy patient one she’d know better than this.
“Oh God Arizona, I’m sorry it’s the first thing I should have said...she’s fine ....Callie is ok...she came through, ok?”
The struggling stopped. The blonde’s brow furrowed as if she was trying to decide to believe or not. Tears continued to flow down her face.
“And the baby is well not yet a baby not for several months yet I hope...well she is a baby...uh crap...I said she...did you already know...please tell me you already knew?”
Blink blink
“So you’re all going to be fine all three of you”
Addison remained confused as Arizona shook her head ferociously, tears flowing still notwithstanding valiant eye scrunching to stem the flow.
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Webber extubated her himself and after a few more hours reluctantly allowed her to see Callie provided she remained in bed and so she was wheeled into Callies room where an expectant(in more ways than one) Callie awaited.
Arizona burst into tears. Part of her simply hadn’t believed that her Calliope was ok.
“Hey, babe, stop, it’s ok, we’re okay, we’re all okay, we’re all three of us okay. And you have to stop crying because I need to tell you something really important.”
Arizona did her best and the tears slowed to a trickle.
“Yes. I’ll marry you, yes” Callie tried to make her voice as strong as possible so that Arizona could have no doubts but that she, Callie, too was all in.
Arizona burst into tears again just shaking her head and saying “we can’t I can’t I promised so I can’t” and then she just collapsed into a torrent of tears and incomprehensible sounds.
Quite honestly if she hadn’t been forewarned by Addison about “the deal” and “the promise” Callie might have been worried. As it was she could see the funny side to her pretty much non-believer fiancée (for that was what she now was) all hung up on a promise made to a God she seriously doubted existed. It took a lot of talk and persuasion and a threat to fly both Carlos Torres and Fr. Kevin from Florida to explain, in detail the niceties and intricacies, of making deals with God but Arizona was convinced that God (he or she) would forgive her for breaking a promise this time.
In the end it was a deal of a different kind that was sealed 6 months later. Three month old Sophie was flower girl; the Robbins and Torres families came out in force as did their colleagues and friends to celebrate a most joyous union. They were married in the eyes of their families and friends and God (who Arizona admitted she had a new found respect for) and they were married in their eyes. The state, their country and the Church could catch up later.
The Deal was sealed...with a kiss, of course.