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She kept smelling it. Lying in bed and staring at the ceiling and trying to just forget the whole damned day and the ammonia whiff of urine still stank in her nose.
She’d shift in bed and smell it. She’d drink her water and smell it. She knew it was in her head. She’d bathed and Callie had thrown the clothes into a trash bag and taken them with her on her way to the meeting.
She’d cleaned up the puddle in the bathroom too.
So Arizona knew it was in her head.
But she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
It was less a memory and more a physical object in her head. One she’d twist and turn and look at from every angle. If she’d gotten up sooner. If she’d skipped the second glass of water. If she hadn’t fallen between her chair and the bedroom. And her stupid pants with the stupid worthless zipper that couldn’t work with her shaking hands. Hands that were surgeon’s hands and saved babies but couldn’t undo a zipper. Couldn’t stop to torrent of humiliation.
And then Callie had come home and she’d had the audacity to sound scared. And she looked at Arizona and she frickin’ pitied her.
She hated those looks. The pitying ones. It was why she never left the house. It was why she never told people about her brother. She hated—hated—when someone looked at her like she was less than capable. Like she couldn’t handle some infinitesimal crisis the world directed her way.
And her own wife dared to do it after cutting off her leg.
And then she dragged her into the shower and cried and—no. No.
She couldn’t think about Callie. Couldn’t think about what she was going through. Couldn’t think about the best friend they’d buried and the promising resident crushed under a plane and eaten by animals.
There was this outer circle in her mind. The larger scheme of what happened to her and what she’d lost and she couldn’t look at it. She could see it as clearly as she saw herself. Saw the things that had happened and the things she had lost and she had to turn away from it and think about sitting in her own urine on the bathroom floor waiting for her wife to come home and see that mess that she had made.
So she went back to the little circle. The one that was just her being too worthless to stand up. People stood up. People could do that. They could run on manufactured legs and be Olympians and ride bikes and use stairs. People could fight infections too. People could stay awake in the woods when the growling beasts came out and could protect the ones they loved. People could make it to the bathroom in time. People could fight. They could force their wives away and they could think about settling or not settling lawsuits that hadn’t even begun.
People could feel more each day than the crushing sense of worthlessness.
Too worthless to even make it to the bathroom in time.
The front door slammed shut. Keys and purse were dropped and Callie was back in the bedroom door sooner than expected.
Callie took a deep breath then said, “We’re not accepting the settlement.”
She wasn’t looking at Callie. It was easier to look past her, but for just a moment her eyes flickered to the wife that had abandoned her.
“We have a chance to make sure this doesn’t happen to someone else and we’re taking it.”
People fought.
Callie didn’t move from the doorway. She did that a lot. Stared at Arizona like she hoped Arizona would stare back and suddenly some spark would kindle and they’d be the people they’d been before. They’d be alive.
Finally she sighed and turned on her heel.
It was easier to talk to Callie when her back was turned. She wasn’t reminded of the woman she loved. She was just a silhouette in the door. A phantom of all that was lost.
“Good,” Arizona said.