The Board Meeting
"Ok, so, lets get started... we have a pretty full agenda for this Board meeting..."
Chief Bailey began in her usual no nonsense authoritarian tone, "...including finding a replacement Head of Ortho."
Callie Torres flashed a quick brilliant smile back. To some, who'd known her for a long time, it was a smile she'd been using more and more frequently. A smile that seemed fixed in casting plaster at her mouth. Fixed. Rigid. So fixed, so rigid, that it never seemed to move. Not to her eyes. Not anywhere.
To some, who'd known her for a long time, it was a little unnerving at times.
To some, who'd known her for a long time,it made them wonder if the person they knew still existed
Miranda Bailey smiled back, a quick short smile. At least she hoped it came out as such. Maybe a grimace would have been more honest. She was unexpectedly losing the Head of the most profitable Department in the Hospital. She had concerns as to whether she would soon lose a second Head, her Head of Fetal - Maternal Medicine. As Chief her only concern was the smooth and efficient running of her Hospital. As Dr. Miranda Bailey her only concern was that her Hospital be not just the best but the absolute best it could be. And those two Doctors were absolutely as good as it got in their specialities. As Miranda, the woman, the friend, well she had other concerns, but those concerns had no place here. In her Hospital. In the Board Room of her Hospital. A Hospital she shared, one way or the other, with everyone else in the Room.
"Uhm...shouldn't we wait for Robbins?" Richard Webber asked quietly. The only empty chair was beside his and it was conspicuously empty. He was worried, worried about, worried for the Blonde woman to whom in the past year he had grown so very close. Their friendship had taken him by surprise. His role as mentor to the interns and residents shouldn't have brought them into contact very much and while Doctor Robbins had been a Doctor he had always very much admired she had simply never given him any trouble. As Chief that's what you wanted. Your Doctors to be both brilliant and trouble free. And Robbins had been one of the best and he'd fought for her to come to his Hospital all those years ago. And she hadn't let him down.
She arrived half way through her fellowship, within a few months she'd been thrown in at the deep end as head of an ailing Department. She'd turned it around in a blindingly short period of time. People wanted to work with her, for her. Promising young Peds Surgeons from all round the country soon had Seattle Grace on their radar. She ran a tight ship. Her reputation as a teacher and surgeon matched only by her reputation as a tough but fair taskmaster.
She'd been here for the most tumultuous years their Hosptal had known. The merger and the redudancies when she'd fought, sometimes winning, sometimes not, for her people, her Interns, her Nurses, her Orderlies. The horror of the mass shooting. No doubt that had left scars but she and her then girlfriend had somehow come out of that stronger, better, together.
Torres was the one he knew better,then. Torres had arrived green and shy as a Baby intern. He'd alway been good at spotting talent and Torres, a confused mess on the outside, exuded talent in the OR. He'd always liked her. It was hard not to once you made any effort at all. She had such an open heart that embraced her patients, her colleagues, even the frazzled not very talented Barista at the Coffee cart. He still giggled at the memory of the day he most unexpectedly found her dancing scantily clad and with abandon in the Hospital basement. She was so much younger then. He supposed they all were. And life had marked them all in the intervening years.
And changed them too.
Torres, Robbins, Grey. Himself. All Board members. All scarred. All survivors.
Bailey, Karev, Avery. Kepner. They too bore scars.
"Is she back yet?" Meredith asked, "From L.A?" She looked around the table, eyes briefly landing on Callie before quickly moving on,"She and Sofia were going for two weeks, Disneyland and Universal Studios and... you know, before..." She didnt have to finish. Everyone around the table knew. One way or another they'd all been embroiled in the bitter custody battle that had ended as suddenly as it began. Even those who hadn't been asked to had taken sides. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone took sides even if they kept it to themselves.
Two colleagues and,to varying degrees, friends, of all of them. Two women whose relationship had played out in front of them. Some had been there from the glorious wondrous beginning. Others had watched the drama play out only from the middle of Act 2. Torres and Robbins,Robbins and Torres. Then finally Robbins v Torres. Like a Shakepearean comedy turned tragedy. Full of heroes and villains. Twists and turns. Superb drama. Drama and thrills.
And there had to be a loser and to the victor the spoils. And Torres won. And Robbins lost. And everyone in the room knew that Arizona had spent the last two weeks with her daughter, trying to give the little girl a trip of a lifetime. Trying to build up a store of memories that would tide her over when her little girl moved a 6 hour plane ride away, to a new life.
Tongues had been bitten when Callie mentioned 5 days ago at lunch that she was missing Sofia so very much. The irony seemingly lost on her. Even Blake squirmed uncomfortably when Callie mentioned how quiet the house was without Sofia giggling in the corner, sweetly admonishing her dolls for some minor infraction. How much she was looking forward to having her home again, that she'd never been apart from her for such an extended period before.
The irony hadnt been lost on her though. Callie knew. She understood. She understood that there was no such thing as outright victory. That even when you won, you lost. It was ying and yang. For there to be a victor, there had to be a loser. Nature demanded it.
But what if once upon a time, even if it was a long long time ago, you had shared your heart with the loser, if the loser had shared her heart with you. What then?
If you once promised to always protect her heart as if it was your own, then did the residue of all that not mean that you felt her loss too? That somehow her loss was also yours?
Deep down, Callie Torres had known from the very start exactly what she had been doing. She hadnt misinterpreted Arizonas advice on long term relationships. She hadnt heard permission to take their daughter away. What she had done was make a decision. For her. And she hadn't taken anyone else into account. She had done this not because she was self absorbed or oblivious. She had done this because she was done caring.
She wasnt exactly sure when it had begun. All she knew was that once upon a time she was the girl who cared too much. Cared too much about other people's opinion of her. Wanted too much to be loved. To receive from someone the same kind of love she so desperately wanted to bestow. She so desperately wanted to love and be in love and be loved in return. And finally, after mistakes and missteps too numerous to count, had come Arizona.
And she had felt it, almost from the start.
The love.
All the love.
Nothing before had compared.
And nothing since.
And nothing ever would.
Nor did she want it too.
As wondrous as the love was the pain of its loss outweighed it.
Arizona had said that to her once. That she could not take any more loss. Well, as it turned out, neither could she.
If it had been a fairytale then Callie knew she would be the good Princess whose heart had been turned to ice. By the wicked witch. Except theirs was no fairytale and Arizona was no witch. Her beautiful ex was just a woman who had suffered one loss too many. And in her own pain and confusion she had lashed out and made horrible painful mistakes. Mistakes that had ,in turn ,caused a tsunami of pain and confusion.
She had tried, they both had. Maybe it was simply that they were never quite trying at the same time. Maybe they had both been so hurt, so afraid of losing more that they had not truly voiced those fears to each other. Or Maybe they had been doomed from the start.
If it wasnt a fairytale, and it most certainly had turned out not to be, then maybe they had been fated to fail. Or maybe there was no such thing as fate, or maybe you made your own fate and they both sucked at that.
Or maybe it was just life.
And life sucked.
She thought it started in therapy. When the pain got too much she started to shut down her heart. An unconscious decision not to be walked away from again that turned into a conscious decision to be the one to walk away.
And she knew, had known that day in therapy that she was crushing Arizona. Known on some level at least. Known that Arizona wanted to stay, to try, to keep trying.
But she had made that decision, she had been the one to sever them.
The irony had not been lost on her then any more than now. All the unfair blame and anger for the severing off of a gangrenous leg against Arizonas express wishes had led, indirectly, to her severing their marriage despite Arizona's tearful pleas.
The leg had been killing her wife. She had justified her actions to herself by telling herself that their marriage had slowly been killing both of them. A slow asphyxiation.
And she couldn't let herself think otherwise. Not then, not now. She couldn't let herself imagine a different outcome ever because if she did she wasn't sure what her conclusion would be.
So she told herself she had made the right decision. The only decision, the only rational one. And rationality left no room for doubt or emotions. Of any kind. Arizona wasnt allowed to feel jealous if she dated new people. Rationally they were both free. Rationality demanded that the marriage was over, it was the past and all that was left was the future. So she pushed for a quick divorce, a quick resolution of custody and access and finances and their dream house.
And she got angry at Arizona when she didnt move on fast enough, even though she knew deep down that she didnt want to see her with someone new. And those times when she knew Arizona needed her, like when a small plane crash brought back so many of her own memories that she just knew Arizona must be in total tumult, she stayed away. She had to if she was to survive her own decision. And it was easy to rationally convince herself she had been right.
Arizona hadn't fought her on the divorce, it had all played out almost amicably. People even congratulated them on how well they handled it all. She continued to be in touch with the Colonel and Barbara and when Carlos came to town he and Arizona had shared a coffee once or twice. Arizona's career had flourished, she was an incredible surgeon who had begun to fulfil her immense potential again. Her own career too had gone from strength to strength, her work with the Warriors Project an added string to her bow.
And it was easy for a while. To let rationality dominate. To tell herself the marriage was over so the emotions were too. The love was gone so too must be the anger. And any stray emotion that indicated otherwise had to be shut down. So she shut it down. Shut all of it down. Acted as if Arizona was just a colleague, someone she shared a daughter with but nothing more. Acted as if what they'd once shared had been nothing more than a brief fling, an interlude. Nothing to miss, nothing whose demise was worth mourning.
All that rationality, all the suppressing. In the end it worked. She believed in all of it now. She was right to walk away. Their marriage,their love, all of it had been nothing but a fleeting moment in time. Not worth remembering. Not worth feeling. Not worth feeling anything. So she stopped. Stopped caring. Stopped feeling.
And so they began a weird friendship. One in which they both seemed happy to be complicit. They had coffee and shared funny anecdotes about their surgeries and interns and Callies love life. They laughed loudly when alone together, all bright wide smiles and enthusiasm. It was the fakest relationship she'd seen outside a badly scripted reality TV show. But Arizona went along with it and so did she. Sometimes she told herself that they were doing it for Sofia's sake. Sometimes she even believed it. And occasionally there was a glimmer of the past. When they were each others person. Occasionally they would seek each other out for advice as if the trust and the bond still existed.
She no longer looked for love, didnt want it or need it. The only thing she needed her heart for now was to push blood into her arteries and around her body. That other function of the heart,to feel and to care? She shut that down as a needless distraction.
The only distraction she needed was physical and she had people lining up for her when she needed that.
When Penny Blake came into her life she made her laugh. Penny was kind, warm. gentle. She demanded nothing. And it was just fun and Callie had never experienced that before. She had never been in a relationship where her heart wasn't on the line. Nothing was demanded of her and simultaneously Penny was prepared to be whatever Callie needed, to give her whatever she needed. It was the perfect relationship for someone who no longer had it within herself to care too much.
When she told people that she'd met someone special, that Penny and she laughed and finished each other's sentences she knew Arizona would hear. And she didnt care. When she asked Arizona to meet Penny, to go to Merediths party so she could meet her, when she told her that she would like her, she didn't care if that was appropriate or not. She didnt care if it was fair.
She had moved on. She had not been the one left behind. She was not the sad girl left chewing her hair at the back of the class. She was not the victim this time. She would never let herself be the victim again.
When she heard that Arizona had finally started dating again she told herself she was relieved. When she'd heard that Richard Webber was acting as wingman she knew it was just typical misheard gossip. Her ex- wife needed no wingman, she could have her choice of women.
And so even more she threw herself into her own relationship. Standing by her girlfriend even in the face of formidable opposition. And for a while life went on. She was happy, no more no less. Arizona, gossip would have it, was happy. Playing the field, back to her old pre Callie slutty self. And Callie didnt care.
Their daughter was a happy child, seemingly undamaged by her parents split. Happily dividing her time between two very loving mothers, two happy homes. Sofia Robbin Sloan Torres was a poster child for an amicable divorce.
And then Penny won the Preminger Grant. And Callie had a choice to make. A choice no one asked her to make. And Callie, the woman who didnt care, cared very much suddenly that no one seemed to care at all. Not Arizona who was clearly so okay with her ex wife's new relationship with the woman she referred to as "your Penny" that she had no problem with Sofia meeting her. Not Penny who was leaving for New York.
And she wasnt going to be left again. She wasnt going to be the one left behind, all sad and pathetic. Not after telling everyone how she'd never been happier, how the sex was just mind blowing. Not after choosing her over her friends. Not after rubbing Arizona's face in it. She was no victim, not anymore. And she refused to be seen as one.
Callie Torres walked tall these days. And she intended to keep it that way. Even if she had to walk over others to do it.
"Oh, she's back alright, she's here. They got back last night, she's just avoiding me,like the spineless coward she..."
"Torres!" Webber might no longer be Chief but to those around the Table who'd started their careers with him as such he would always be the Chief. And a rebuke from Richard Webber bore authority.
But Callie was angry, angrier than she could remember being. Last night Sofia came home and told her she didnt want to go NewYork anymore. She'd sat down with her daughter, before Arizona involved lawyers, and told her all about this great new adventure they were going to go on. How they were going to go to the Big Apple, the City that never sleeps. See all the sights. And Sofia seemed more excited than anyone.
And that was true. Almost 6 year old Sofia Torres loved new adventures. And she was so excited that Penny was going to be there too. She liked Penny. Penny was fun. Penny bought her two scoops of ice cream when both Mommy and Mama only ever allowed her one.
And Mama was going to visit all the time too, Mommy had told her so. She saiid Mama could visit as much as she wanted and Sofia knew that meant lots cause Mama always told her how much she missed her when she was in Mommy's house. So New York was going to be the funnest place ever with Mommy and Penny and Mama and going on boat trips to see the Lady with the Liberty and horse rides in this big gigantic park in the middle of the City and it was going to be the biggest adventure ever.
But now after two weeks with Arizona, two weeks she had only agreed to because she'd felt sorry for her ex, sorry for the broken woman she'd seen after the Judge made her decision,suddenly Sofia was refusing to go. Last night shortly after Arizona dropped her off, Sofia had gotten really upset. In the end she'd been close to hysterical and had cried herself to sleep.
"I get it Richard, you're on her side, you have made that perfectly clear. I'm Big Bad Callie and she's poor little Arizona, well let me tell you just how...."
"Enough!"
Two voices rang out in unison. Meredith Grey and Miranda Bailey almost totally in sync. What might have been said next was lost as the door opened and an exhausted and harried looking Arizona entered muttering an apology before stopping in her tracks, the tension in the room was palpable and a blind Man would have noticed the thunderous look on Richard Webbers face. A quick glance at Callie saw a matching look, for once not directed at her. She told herself she was immune to them anyway now. She knew that wasn't true.
Before another word could be uttered by anyone Miranda asked, "Arizona, how did the surgery go? Are the...." She paused and looking pointedly down the table added, "A mother, carrying twins, 22 weeks gestation was brought in last night following a collision on the Freeway, Dr. Robbins was paged at 9pm."
Callie had the good grace to look ashamed. Arizona had dropped Sofia back just before 8pm. Arizona had stayed in the car. They hadnt actually spoken directly to each other since the day of the hearing. All communication now by text or intermediary. She wasnt even sure Arizona had looked her in the eye once since the verdict.
Arizona shook her head sadly, " we couldn't save the Mom, she's on life support but there's no brain stem activity.The smaller of the twins , the amniotic sac...well I, we repaired, she's just hanging on. The other one, is also in distress, if we can keep the Mom on life support for a few days, there's a chance....honestly I think we'd need a couple of weeks if they are to survive delivery."
"Well that can be done, right?" Avery asked. Karev nodded but Arizona interjected, " the baby's Dad wants to...but her parents are the next of kin and they...want to shut off life support, We're going to need to convene the Ethics Committee, lawyers are on their way."
"What the hell is wrong with people? There are babies...why would they bring lawyers into..." Kepner stopped, looking sheepishly at Jackson before catching two other pairs of eyes.
Bailey began quickly "Right so... Now that we are all here..the first order of business is the ongoing difficult financial situation in Dermatology. Overheads are too high and income is too low...we..."
And so the Board meeting dragged on,as it always did,the usual budgetary problems, the usual staffing disputes, minor appointments to be ratified, major vacancies to be filled.
"Ok, so just one last piece of business. This of course will be Dr. Torres last Board meeting as she will be leaving on her open ended sabbatical at the end of the week", Bailey looked around. Torres head held high, that smile adorning her face again. Webber frowning, Kepner looked like she might start to cry. Karev and Grey inscrutable as usual, Avery smiling like the Good Politician he'd been raised to be. Robbins looking studiously at her notes on the desk., " All that remains is to wish her well in her future and to thank her for her immense contribution to this Hospital over her time here. I think it's fair to say that she leaves the Hospital a better place, a better Hospital and that she will be much missed as a Doctor and colleague and..."A tiny catch in her throat was just about audible, "...as a dear friend."
Avery started the applause,and everyone joined in, some less enthusiastic than others. As it died down he said, "To Doctor Callie Torres" and everyone repeated his words, all except one, who little more than whispered, "To Calliope".
And the smile slipped, as anger flared, " oh come on Arizona, don't pretend to sit there and care..." And when Arizona raised her head it angered her even more. The anger she'd seen at the hearing was still there, intensified if anything. And more too, she wasnt sure what it was, pain, grief, sorrow, all these emotions and more suddenly given freedom to roam across her gorgeous face. And defeat. When a solitary tiny droplet seemed to escape from from Arizonas left eye Callie could feel almost uncontrollable anger well up inside her. Arizona had no right, none. Not now, not after all this time. Not after all this time of not caring. Of moving on. Of being fine.
" I have patients to check on." Arizona pushed her chair away from the table and was out the door faster than seemed possible.
Callie was next, anger propelling her.
The rest of the Board stayed in their seats. Silent until Karev said what they all thought , "What a goddawful bloody mess!"
"You should start looking for a new Fetal- Maternal Surgeon, I hear they're even harder to find than decent Orthos." Avery stated. No one else spoke.
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