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The world was distant. A quiet beeping echoed somewhere nearby. Something hummed, like the very walls were alive.
Arizona felt detached from her body, as if her soul was a few seconds ahead of her flesh.
Her hip throbbed, her broken leg throbbed, the infection still burning.
By now, Arizona knew the feeling of waking up from sedation. And she hated it. She couldn’t recall why she’d been sedated in the first place: her surgery was the day after, surely? Her head pounded, the light in the room glaring despite her eyes still being stuck together with artificial sleep. Arizona wracked her brain for why she felt so sluggish, shifting slightly in the bed and feeling the thin, hospital blanket pull tightly across her stomach.
She groaned softly, feeling that she was propped up on her pillows in a half sitting position. Her neck was stiff and her throat was scratchy, a hard swallow only making it feel more like sand was being poured into her mouth. She groaned again, flexing her fingers and feeling resistance in her right as she turned her head in the same direction. After a moment, she realised that someone was holding her hand. Tightly. She recognised the feeling of those hands – knew them intimately and loved them with everything she had.
“C—” she started roughly, a cough breaking the word as she tried to force her eyes open. Her left hand rose and rubbed at her face, a jolty movement like a toddler. Her ears were ringing and there was a thrumming in her temples, body feeling heavy and slow as she eased back into life.
“Hey,” Callie’s voice was far away, her grip tightening on Arizona’s hand as a soft touch rubbed up and down her forearm. “Hey, don’t… don’t try and speak.”
Arizona ignored that, finally forcing her eyes open and looking in Callie’s direction. Her shape was blurred and Arizona blinked sluggishly to focus her as she croaked, “what- what happened?”
Callie didn’t reply. She just rubbed up and down Arizona’s arm, sitting at her bedside and looking away. Arizona saw her throat work on a hard swallow, lip trapped between her teeth.
Alarm grew in Arizona’s chest like the ringing of a bell. Suddenly, her jaw was tight and her eyes were stuck on Callie’s face, eerily focused. Her breathing was shallow, quickened with panic, and her hand locked firmly around Callie’s.
Arizona stared at her wife, taking in the set of her jaw and the tension in her muscles, and she knew.
She just knew.
Arizona’s body locked. She froze. For a moment, there was nothing. She didn’t breathe, didn’t blink. The only movement was the steady pulse of her heart behind her ribs. Emotion swelled in her chest but she tamped it down, her free hand in a tight fist and letting her nails dig into her palms.
Callie bowed her head, hair falling around her face like a curtain. It hid her expression from Arizona, but Arizona knew what that tremble in Callie’s shoulders meant. It meant that she was trying not to fall apart.
Arizona forced her gaze to stay on Callie, even as she attempted to move her left foot and felt nothing. No, it was less than nothing. Because there was nothing to move. She dared not look, still able to feel the pain in her femur and knee, where the infection had been trying to spread. If she didn’t look, it wouldn’t become real. She could delude herself for a few more precious seconds. Could live in her past life for sparse moments that were slipping through her grasp like sand. She could tell herself that she was just confused. That she’d had her surgery, and she still had her leg.
But she knew it was a lie.
Arizona knew what had happened.
“No.” She uttered brokenly, shaking her head. “No.”
Callie looked up, then. There were tears in her eyes and tracking down her cheeks, pity and guilt scrawled across her face like the words were written in thick, black, marker.
“No.” Arizona said again, squeezing her eyes shut, though the image of Callie’s face was branded onto her eyelids and she could still recall every detail. “No.”
“I’m so sorry,” Callie said finally, her voice cracking and broken. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“No!” Arizona’s eyes flew open and she looked at Callie with her chest heaving, panicked breaths pulling through her nose and her jaw clamped down. She shook her head again and pulled her hand back from Callie's, still refusing to look down the bed.
“You- you went into septic shock,” Callie was trying to explain through her tears, face wounded as she rubbed her hands together in her lap. “I- it was the only option. I’m so—”
“Don’t you dare say you’re sorry,” Arizona’s voice was also wet with tears, though sharp like the blade of a knife. A scalpel. Finally, almost against her will, she looked down the bed.
And, god, she almost vomited where she laid. The bile rose in her throat but there was nothing to come up, pure anguish filling her chest like concrete instead as she stared at the spot where her left leg ended. The duvet met the mattress just above where her knee would have, should have, been.
Swallowing down the nausea, Arizona sat up and leaned forward, looking down at her legs with wide, distraught eyes.
“You cut it off,” she whispered.
“I had to,” Callie choked out, reaching out for Arizona and placing a hand on her shoulder.
Arizona shrugged it off and looked up with eyes like a kicked dog. “You cut it off,” she said again. She felt sick. Her head wasn’t working properly, fogged by lingering anaesthetic and unfathomable horror. Tears welled in her eyes as she looked down, her left palm landing on mattress when she leaned forward and tried to lean her weight on her knees. She could hardly see, her monitors beeping rapidly as her heart rate increased with panic.
“No!” She shouted again, looking to Callie with agony and betrayal screaming in her eyes.
Callie reached a hand out and Arizona flinched back, spitting tearfully, “don’t touch me!”
“My love, please,” Callie said quietly, tears dripping from her chin. “Try and breathe, just… try and calm. You’ll pull your incisions.”
Arizona ignored her, staring back down to her legs and gasping for air, the IV in her elbow feeling more like a shackle than an aid when it tugged taut from the stand. Her right hand wound into her hair, bile bitter in her throat and her body aching.
“You said you would fix it!” She cried desperately, tears running down her face. “You promised me you wouldn’t cut it off!”
“I know,” Callie answered quietly, and for a second Arizona felt bad for her. Saw the agony on Callie’s face as much as she felt it in her heart. But then the emptiness of her left leg struck her again, with just as much ferocity as it had the first time – maybe more – and she found herself more angry and wounded than grieving.
“You promised!” Arizona shouted, voice pulled taut with anguish. “I asked you for one thing, Callie!” A harsh sob pulled from her chest, almost doubling her over as a hand pressed to her thundering heart and she choked out sob after sob, eyes closed again as she wrapped her arms tightly around herself and sobbed, “I asked you- I asked you for one thing!”
“You were dying,” Callie whispered, standing up and stumbling back a step.
For the first time in their relationship, Callie’s voice was grating. No longer soothing, no longer the voice of a wife. Now she was a nameless, robotic, heartless surgeon, standing above Arizona with a scalpel and a bone saw, ruining Arizona’s life. Arizona found herself only crying harder as she turned painfully onto her side, away from Callie, and curled into herself. Like she was trying to hide from her new reality.
“You were dying,” Callie said again, as if she was trying to convince herself that she’d done the right thing.
“Get out,” Arizona whispered, her body shaking, trembling with fear and mortification. She hated Callie for looking at her. Hated herself more for breaking down. “Leave, Callie.”
“No.” Callie’s voice was stronger than Arizona expected. “Not- not when you need me.”
“I need my fucking leg,” Arizona spoke into her hands, emotion weighing down every word. “but that’s not available. Because of you.” The last word was spat like a spear; a tone Arizona had never used with Callie before.
Callie recoiled like a physical weapon had been jabbed in her direction. Then they were both silent for a moment, the quiet weighted and painful.
Arizona sniffled to herself, eyes squeezed closed and jaw so tense that a muscle jumped below her ear. Her teeth ached. Her eyelids ached. She felt like a mess. She felt nothing like the Arizona Robbins she knew. She heard Callie bite back a sob, and then Callie’s footsteps sounded on the floor, carefully walking away from Arizona’s bed.
They paused and Callie whispered, “I love you. Get a nurse to page if you need me.”
Arizona didn’t reply. Silent tears were running down her face, into her open mouth, and leaving salt across her tongue.
“I said I love you.” Callie’s voice broke.
“I heard you,” Arizona said bitterly, eyes tightly closed and pain ebbing up her left side, left foot trying to rub against the right and failing miserably. She was never going to operate again. She was never going to run with Sofia again. Her life was ruined. She wiped her nose on the back of her hand and choked out, “please, leave me alone.”
The door clicked open and Callie’s footsteps faded. Before the door closed again, Arizona heard Callie start to sob too.
Then, when she was sealed into her lonely fate with the click of the latch, Arizona fell apart. Her hands fisted in the duvet and a pained cry tore from her throat with all the grace of a shattered window. It was agony in a sound. Complete and utter anguish pulling from her body in ebbs and flows, leaving her dishevelled and broken. More broken than she already was.
Later – how much later, she didn’t know – when the tears dried into tracks of salt down her cheeks, Arizona simply laid there and stared at a spot on the wall.
She wanted to call Callie back. Wanted to collapse into the arms of the woman she loved and stay there, hiding from her fears. But she couldn’t. Not when Callie had been the one to inflict this hell onto her. Couldn’t let Callie see her fall apart due to the consequences of her actions. Had to hold on and get a grip – once she’d gathered herself, she wanted to stay gathered. Like a bundle of herbs, picked in the woods and tied together with twine.
Instead of her need for Callie’s embrace, she instead focused on a deep ache somewhere in her gut for the other half of her she hadn’t seen for twelve years.
The sensation wasn’t new, and it certainly wasn’t unusual. But, God, it struck her like a slap. Like a fishhook caught in her intestines.
It had been a long while since she’d missed him so much. But her life would never be the same, and she just wished that he was there to help her through it. She needed him. She ached for him like she hadn’t felt for years.
Ached for her brother’s strong shoulder and quick wit. For the way he could make her smile even when she was more depressed than she’d ever been. How he doodled funny images on napkins when they were bored. How he had tried to braid her hair that one time and just tangled it into a knot that took her days to brush out. His laugh. His smile. His comfort. How it had been him and her, her and him, all through their childhood.
How, if he were there, he would have simply held her and let her cry into his neck, smelling of his signature cologne and running large hands up and down her back. He would have pulled her onto his lap and cradled her while he whispered, “you’ll survive, Zoe. You always do.”
But she wasn’t sure she was going to survive this time. Didn’t know how she could. Because he wasn’t there.
So, as new tears welled in her eyes, left leg throbbing despite its disappearance and the room humming mockingly around her, Arizona whispered brokenly, “god, I wish you were here, Tim.”
A tear ran down the line of her nose.
“Please, Tim,” her voice cracked, “I need you here.”
But there was nothing. The empty room buzzed, the monitors beeped, people chatted outside. The world moved on around her while Arizona was stuck behind, permanently altered and losing herself into it like she’d never known. Out in the world, people loved and fucked and danced and fought, unchanged. They didn’t know, didn’t care, about the devastation going on in one little hospital room in one little hospital.
The earth kept spinning. Kept laughing around her while everything fell apart.
Because neither Timothy Robbins nor Calliope Torres were there.
One, she’d driven away. The other was dead.
And Arizona Robbins had never felt more alone.