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and my words shoot to kill when i’m mad,
I have a lot of regrets about that.
Their house is silent, except for the light scribbling of Sofia’s crayons on her coloring sheet. Callie stares at her daughter from across the table with love swelling in her heart and fear blazing down her spine.
Arizona’s shift ended three hours ago, and she still hasn’t come home. To her, to them. To her family.
It’s not like the word home means much these days. It actually feels more like the trenches- the moment when you’re sitting there, waiting for the inevitable bombs to drop on your head. You try to brace for impact, but you know your weapons won’t do much in the face of catastrophe.
Arizona’s her bomb, but she’s also the bandage and the scalpel. And the glue. She fixes things- kids. Tiny, tiny humans. And she fixes them well. So well. Except, Arizona hasn’t seen her own kid in thirty-six hours. She hasn’t seen her wife in twenty.
So Callie worries. She worries a lot. Arizona hasn’t been picking up any of her calls or texts and when she asked Alex if he’s seen her, he said he hasn’t- not since she picked up her bag from her office and left through the doors of the hospital, out into the busy streets of Seattle.
Callie’s worried, but she tucks her cranky toddler into bed. She showers. She reheats the dinner she made for Arizona and eats it all herself, because fuck it.
She’s waiting for the bomb to drop. All night, she’s been twisting the ring on her finger and pacing down the hallway, the one Arizona hobbles down every morning without so much as a word of goodbye.
Before the accident, Callie used to get a kiss before work. But, a lot of things that were routine before are now as foreign as the caress of her wife’s hand, the brush of her shoulder.
It’s eleven o’clock at night, and she’s still waiting for the bombs to fall and crush her completely. Except, they don’t fall- Arizona does. Right through their front door and into their living room, stumbling to the ground with a resounding thud.
Her collision with the floor jars Callie out of her light, fitful slumber on the couch. As she opens her eyes and sees her wife laying face-down on the carpet, she shoots up to help her.
“Arizona!”
But her attempts at helping are swatted away as Arizona shuffles onto her hands and knees, all by herself. She winces in pain, her features twisting up for a nanosecond, but then she does the most bizarre thing in the history of all things bizarre: she giggles.
Her laughter rings loud and free throughout the house and Callie’s bewildered, but she’s also pissed. She’s pissed beyond what words can describe. How can she sit there, giggling like a madman, after hours of zero communication?
“Arizona, are you drunk?” Callie’s heart pounds brutally in her chest; she’s never understood the term “seeing red” until now.
“No! I’m completely sober, Calliope,” Arizona says. “See? I’m sitting up and I’m not stumbling.” She pauses, and shoots her wife a sheepish grin- the first grin Callie has seen in ages. “Well, not more than I usually do. You know, with my robot leg.”
Callie rolls her eyes and backs away, giving Arizona space to stand up if she needs it. She watches as Arizona makes her way off the floor, using one hand to lean on the wall for balance.
“Where the hell were you?” Callie demands, once she’s off the ground. “Did you even care about how worried we were? Sof was asking for her mommy. And, I didn’t know what to tell her.”
Arizona’s eyes go wide at the mention of their daughter, and she bows her head in shame. Her hair falls over her shoulders in that perfect, messy way it tends to do, but Callie can’t even appreciate how beautiful she looks right now because she’s just so mad. Months and months of pent-up emotion have finally escaped through the thin, barely-there fibers of her sanity and she needs to let it all out.
“You know, you couldn’t said no to this whole parenting thing, Arizona,” she says bluntly. “I gave you an out. Mark and I were fine on our own, but you came back and stayed because you loved me.”
Arizona lifts her head to speak, but Callie holds up a hand to stop her.
“I am not done,” she huffs. “We were fine, and we could’ve survived without you.”
A pang hits her chest when Arizona’s face crumples in hurt. Or, maybe it’s guilt. She’s not sure, but she has to keep talking, otherwise she’ll break completely. And she’s tired of falling apart with no one to piece her back together again.
“I had Mark, and Sofia had a dad. But now Mark is dead and I can’t do this by myself!” She thinks she’s screaming, but nothing resisters besides the lone tear that trickles down her cheek, or the frozen expression on her wife’s face.
“We have a daughter, Arizona! A beautiful daughter who deserves a mother who cares enough about her to come home on time. I deserve a wife who talks to me and touches me and- and forgives me for something that was out of my control in the first place!”
Arizona still has that frozen expression on her face and it only enrages Callie more. She feels like shaking her, and slapping her, and kissing her- all in one breath.
But despite her fury, she still loves her- desperately, hopelessly, endlessly.
Maybe that’s what pisses her off the most.
“Are you even listening to me?” she yells, and Arizona nods, slowly. But she makes no move to speak, or even acknowledge her wife.
“Well then are you going to say something? Anything?” Callie sighs in annoyance and crosses her arms defensively over her chest.
The space between them feels wider than it’s ever been, right there in their living room. But Callie laid all of the baggage on the carpet, in the spot Arizona just fell on. And now it’s her turn to collect it; it’s her turn to choose to pick it up and carry it.
Finally, Arizona opens her mouth, but then closes it again. She looks like a fish out of water, and for a second, Callie revels in her speechlessness. Her words are sinking in and Arizona looks just as lost as she feels. Finally.
Arizona sucks in a deep breath, and says, simply, “I’m depressed.”
Callie scoffs and throws her hands up in the air in exasperation. “Yeah, no shit. You’ve been depressed for months.”
“No, Callie,” Arizona tries again. “I’m clinically depressed.”
Callie pauses, her anger now replaced by trepidation and confusion.
Arizona sighs. “That’s where I just was, since I left work. Sitting in a psychologist’s office, getting diagnosed with depression.” Piercing blue meets wilting brown as she glances into Callie’s eyes. “And PTSD. And anxiety. And, potentially, a personality disorder.”
She doesn’t wait for Callie to react before speaking again, quicker this time. “Did you know that personality disorders stem from trauma? From loss? Because I didn’t, but I did know that there was something off. My whole life, I felt like a part of me was broken, deep inside. I was perky, and happy, and, God, I wore Heelys to work. But my mind was always telling me that I wasn’t good enough, that everyone would leave. And then, then the crash made it so much worse, Callie.”
She runs a hand through the wild tresses of her hair and snorts through helpless, rampant tears. “It wasn’t about the leg. I mean, it was, at first. But then it grew into nightmares- which I now know are actually called flashbacks- and so much pain, that it actually started to replace the part of me that loved.”
She steps towards Callie, her eyes pleading for her to listen. And, Callie is listening, but her head is spinning and she feels like she can’t breathe.
“Can you take a second, to just imagine how it felt to be me?” she asks, her voice breaking. “How it feels? I wake up every morning with the picture of Lexie’s face in my mind, but I used to wake up with your face in my mind, Callie; I miss it so much. And, I’ve lost a lot of patients. I lost Tim. But I’ve never seen someone- a friend- bleed out in front of me, watch the color leave her face, without the power to run over to where she was laying underneath that fucking pile of metal. My legs were stuck, and for the first time in my life, I couldn’t even try to save another person’s.”
She’s weeping openly now, her sobs muffled against the sleeve of her sweater. Callie aches to reach out and hold her, because all of her anger? It’s disintegrating right in front of her eyes. She’s still hurt, but watching Arizona break down is killing her.
But she knows that, like her own, Arizona’s words have to come out now. It’s imminent that they do.
Her words of pain are essential in order for both of them to heal.
“I tried so hard to get out of bed, every fucking morning.” She sniffs. “But I just couldn’t. I didn’t have the energy to be a good surgeon, or a good mother... never mind a good wife. And, I think I hated myself so much, that I deflected it all to you. I-I made you think I hated you, when really, I was hoping I’d die in my sleep, just so that I wouldn’t be a burden to you anymore.”
Callie’s mouth drops open in horror; her grief and pain and dread mixes together into a lead ball that drops down in the pit of her stomach.
She snaps out of her haze long enough to ask a question, an important one.
“Do you... still feel that way?” Her voice doesn’t sound like it belongs to her.
Arizona smiles sadly and wipes her tears. “Sometimes. Last night especially. I was so sad and so lonely, even though you were asleep next to me. And, I was scared. Of feeling that way. Which is why I made the appointment to see someone and get the help I need. Because, you’re right, Callie. Sofia doesn’t deserve an absent mother. And you don’t deserve a wife you can’t even touch.”
“Is that why you were so happy, when you came home? Because of your psychologist?” Callie asks, and Arizona nods.
“I was just... giddy, I guess. My psychologist finally validated everything I was feeling, and she told me she can even prescribe me medication. I always used to be against taking psych meds, but now, I think I need them more than ever.”
Callie feels a surge of pride well up in her chest, floating there right beside her mangled, healing heart. The tears haven’t stopped for either of them, but the tension has diminished. The anger has disappeared, and what’s leftover is hurt.
But Callie can finally breathe, just from knowing her wife can, too. She’s no longer holding this weight on her shoulders like Atlas. She’s expressing her fears and emotions, and Callie couldn’t ask for anything more.
“I’m so proud of you,” she murmurs. “You know that, right?”
Arizona smiles softly, her dimples pressing into her cheeks for a moment before disappearing back into the planes of her face. Callie didn’t realize how much she’s missed them until they disappear again.
“I know,” she whispers. “I didn’t, for a while, but that was because I convinced myself that you didn’t love me anymore. That maybe, I was just too broken.”
“That’s ridi-“
“I know!” Arizona cuts her off. “And you’ve been so good to me. You’ve been so patient. I feel ungrateful to even think that, when all you’ve ever done was show me you love me, again and again.”
Callie takes a step forward. “Arizo-“
“And I’m so sorry, Calliope,” she cuts her off again, this time with a cry. “I’ve been such a monster to you! And, and I know you didn’t need me to parent Sofia. But I wanted to prove myself, except I did the opposite, and now I won’t blame you if you wanna leave. I’ll pack my bags and book a hotel and-“
“ARIZONA,” Callie yells, the volume of her voice making her wife flinch. But she stops talking, and sucks her lips into her mouth instead. She looks up with the widest, clearest eyes, and Callie can’t take it anymore.
Her hands are shaking and her arms trembling, but she closes the gap between their bodies and gently, softly, rests her forehead against Arizona’s.
They breathe each other in for the first time in what feels like years, their tears mixing together, melting into this mutual hurt. Callie wonders if it’s tangible- the hurt- and if she could take it all from Arizona so that she’s left with nothing but relief.
She never wants her wife to feel anything but the relief that comes with knowing she’s loved- desperately, hopelessly, endlessly.
“Remember what I promised you, that night in the rain?” she asks. Her words are quiet, but they ring loud in the space between them- the space that’s shrinking with every tear, every sentence.
Arizona whimpers and tries to pull away, but Callie just wraps her arms around her waist and pulls her closer, rocking them back and forth.
“I promised you I would never leave,” she says, “and that whatever you can’t do, I will.”
Arizona sniffles and gasps out a breath, smiling faintly at the memory. “You said, that’s how this works.”
Callie giggles. “Mhm. And, no matter how angry I am at you, or how hurt I am, I will always stand in your corner.”
She lifts a hand to move the hair out of Arizona’s face, marveling at the pure beauty she finds underneath. She presses a burning kiss to her temple before exhaling shakily against the smooth skin there.
“I want you to know, without a doubt, that this is not your fault,” she says. “Could you have been nicer, and more honest? Yeah. I’m not gonna lie, seeing you so despondent and... cold... hurt me a lot.”
Callie can already see the apology brewing on the tip of her tongue, so she places a finger over her lips to stop it before it can escape.
“It hurt me to see you hurting so much, and it hurt even more to not know how to stop it,” she explains. “And what I said before, about not needing you... I didn’t mean it. Because, really, I’m never going to not need you. Me and Sofia, we need our person. You’re always gonna be her mommy, and you’re always gonna be the woman I love most in the world.”
Arizona allows herself to burrow her face in her wife’s neck, right where she’s always belonged, and Callie grins. She grins because this is the most physical contact they’ve had since the crash, and it’s overwhelming all of her senses in the best way.
“I’m gonna go every Tuesday,” Arizona says, after a few moments of blissful silence. “And then, maybe in a few weeks, you can start coming with me?”
When Callie hears that, she huffs out a joyful laugh. Her adrenaline fades into peace, and she squeezes her wife tighter, so that her peace can transfer to Arizona’s body.
“I’d love that, honey. I really would love that.”
That night, right before they fall asleep, Arizona sneaks an arm around her wife’s waist, and drifts off to the all-encompassing, beautiful sound of her beating heart.
Callie grins wider, impossibly wide, with the knowledge that Arizona is on the road to recovery, and in turn, so is their marriage.
I just wanted you to know
that this is me trying
At least I’m trying