apophenia

“It’s just not very punk rock to put the entire city at risk for some stupid bike race.” 

“I think you’re very punk rock, Dr Robbins,” chimed in a semi-faceless intern. Branson, maybe? The geeky one who was always hanging around peds, but seemed positively squeamish around children. He offered her a smile that he at best meant to be encouraging, at worst meant to be charming. The tall one, Peter Parker, rolled his eyes, his mouth twisting in a grimace. 

O’Neill snorted and Arizona could feel the edge of a headache creeping towards her temples. “Very punk rock, Robbins.” 

Arizona stepped out of the way as someone stumbled past her with what looked like barbed wire sticking out of his side. The entire ER was teeming with idiotic bike messengers in various states of injury and perfectly normal people who had just been caught in the crossfire. In some sort of preemptive strike against Webber, Kenley sent her, O’Neill plus whatever resident was on a peds rotation down to catch any peds trauma cases. Arizona thought it was overkill, but Kenley only wanted her opinion when he asked for it. 

“Incoming peds case, O’Neill,” Sandra, the charge nurse, called from the intake desk. 

“All you, punk rocker. I’ll catch the next one.” 

Turned out, O’Neill had a sixth sense for these things as Arizona found herself scrubbing out of an appy within the hour. Not that appies weren’t hardcore, of course they were. But she had also done so many appies at this point. The other week, she almost exclusively did appies, which if she didn’t know any better, was Kenley trying to fuck with her. But still, hardcore, punk rock, even. 

Branson, the over eager intern who had followed her into surgery, chattered next to her, much like he had the entirety of her surgery. She was sure he was a perfectly nice guy, but she tuned him out before their patient was even under anesthesia. 

As Branson launched into his evening plans, Arizona all but dove out of the scrub room, hoping to escape his incessant talking, only to nearly crash into Kenley. 

“Ah, Robbins, perfect. Are you free?” 

“I have to check on my patient in post-op-” 

“I would be more than happy to help you out, Dr Robbins,” Branson, ever helpful, offered. Before she could even get a word out, Kenley clapped him on the shoulder and sent him on his way to check in on Arizona’s patient. 

“Dr Kenley-” 

“Robbins, I have a job for you, follow me.” 

With a sigh, Arizona found herself following Kenley back towards peds. Kenley was cagier than usual which could only mean he was going to ask her to do something that really wasn’t at the level of a fellow. He never seemed to ask Thomas to do those sorts of things. Just her. 

“Now, Robbins, I know this is probably a bit below your pay grade,” yep, just as she suspected, “but Rick Garcia is a major donor and I can’t just have residents stitching up his son.” 

“Stitching, sir?” She asked through gritted teeth. 

“Rick’s son and his friends wanted to participate in that damned bike race, and the poor kid managed to hit a tree. He’s pretty banged up, but ortho’s clearing him now and it looks like it’s all superficial.” 

“Wouldn’t plastics be the better choice here?” 

Kenley scoffed, waving her off. “I’m not passing Rick Garcia’s son off to plastics. You’re my fellow and I’m giving you this case because I trust you, Robbins. Take the compliment.” Kenley patted her on the shoulder as they entered the room. 

“-nah, dude, I’m telling you, Seattle’s gonna be good this year-” 

“Sure, they are,” Peter Parker laughed from his seat next to a teenager, who, sure enough, was covered in superficial wounds. 

The teenager scoffed, starting to move his arm before wincing and thinking better of it. “As if your Bears are any good.” 

“Oh, c’mon-” 

“How are we doing, gentleman?” Kenley said, a sort of grandfatherly amusement twinkling in his eyes. 

Peter Parker nearly jumped, doing his best to sit up straight and grab his white coat from where he had abandoned it in one smooth motion. “Uh, yes, sir. Um, he, Bobby’s been cleared by ortho. I was just keeping him company while his parents got dinner.” He started to run a hand through his hair and then seemed to think better of it and hid his hand in the folds of his white coat. 

“Good, good, that’s good work, son. You can help Robbins out with Bobby’s stitches.” 

“Oh, I mean, I can-” 

“Stitches?” Bobby squeaked out, some of his teenage bravado bleeding away. “Do I have to watch?” 

“Don’t worry, Bobby, we’ll get you some sedation. Russell, why don’t you go get that sorted?” Arizona said. Russell glanced at her for a brief moment, his expression nearly unreadable, but troubled. He really was the twitchy sort. “So, Bobby, I hear you and your friends were having a race.” 

Bobby’s face lit up, even through the pain. “Don’t worry, I won.” 

Arizona laughed, taking the chair Russell had vacated. “That was going to be my next question.” 

“You’re in good hands, Mr Garcia. Robbins, page me when you’re finished.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Am I gonna have some sick scars?” Bobby asked, an undercurrent of fear in his voice. 

“A couple, but can I tell you a secret?” Bobby nodded, eyes wide and trusting. “Chicks totally dig scars.” As if on cue, Bobby’s cheeks flushed and his ears turned bright red. His blush only faded when they gave him a mild sedative. “How are your stitches, Russell?” 

“Um, good?” Russell said, shrugging a shoulder as he pulled on a pair of gloves. “I practice a lot, but I haven’t gotten much chance to actually use them. I haven’t had a rotation in the ER yet.” 

Arizona offered a reassuring smile in hopes of alleviating the seemingly permanent crease in between his eyebrows every time she saw him. He really reminded her of someone, but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out who. Something about his expressions, maybe his eyes, felt so familiar. Even if he seemed to be perpetually nauseous or uncomfortable. Maybe he just didn’t like peds all that much. 

“Don’t pull so tightly, Russell,” she corrected gently, glancing up from her work for a moment. “You don’t want it to be too tight or it can-” 

“Damage the skin, I know,” Russell said, nearly through gritted teeth, almost snapping at her. A muscle jumped in his temple. Arizona raised an eyebrow at his tone. He exhaled slowly through his nose, eyes flitting closed for a moment. “Is this right?” he asked and it only partially sounded like it pained him to ask. Which was truly a fascinating attitude for an intern to have. 

“Mhm, just take it slowly. Don’t try to rush through it.” 

“Got it.” Russell’s gaze briefly flickered up to her, that crease returning to his brow, almost as if he was studying her. “Where are you from, before here, I mean?” 

“I was in Baltimore before this for about eight years. But I grew up all over. My,” she paused, words catching in her throat. “We traveled a lot.” Even the act of trying to say the words ‘my dad’ hurt. The anger and grief on Daniel Robbins’ face that night, the viciousness of his words haunted her. For whatever twisted sense of irony existed in the world, she felt unmoored, out at sea. 

Russell hummed, “That’s fun.” 

Arizona couldn’t help but snort. “Yeah, that’s a word for it. You’re not local, right?” 

“Chicago and then Connecticut before Seattle.” Russell slowed his hands as he gently pulled a stitch. She watched him for a moment, quietly checking his work. “Seattle made the most sense for us for my residency so here I am.” 

“Oh, are you married?” 

Russell paused, almost frozen in place. “Uh, no, no, I’m not. Are you?” He asked in a rush. 

“Nope, nothing serious at least,” she said, her thoughts darting to Heather, the woman she had been seeing for a month or two. As she said, nothing serious. It was mainly just random drinks when Arizona had a free night. Frankly, she wasn’t even sure if it could be classified as dating or even seeing each other. Maybe just some sort of loose friends with benefits situation? Minus the friends part, perhaps? “Have you been together long?” 

“About five years I think? I’m bad with dates.” 

Arizona laughed, “You should work on that. Women notice if they don’t get flowers on the right day.” 

Out of the corner of her eye, Russell’s ears turned pink and he dropped his gaze fully back to their patient. “Right,” he mumbled, “good advice.” 

Arizona generally considered herself a chatty person. Or at least, the type of person who could act like a chatty person. Years and years of constantly re-introducing herself trained Arizona to make inane small talk at the drop of the hat, a skill she generally found useful in interacting with patients. And yet, regardless of what topic she tried, sports, weather, pets, Peter Parker-Russell stuck to the briefest possible answer and made as little eye contact as possible. 

Arizona had had more interesting conversations with two year olds. At least they wanted to tell her about Clifford or Spongebob or something with some more substance than ‘yes’, ‘no’, or the barest details for a conversation. 

Maybe he was just the most boring guy in the hospital. Maybe he was nervous that she was somehow his boss. Maybe he didn’t like her. Who knew, certainly not Arizona.

Needless to say, by the time she tied her last stitch, she was more than happy to leave Russell’s company. She didn’t have the time nor the energy to dig into why this one random intern was so standoffish. 

xx 

“Am I crazy, or do the interns look particularly young?” Thomas said, picking at the edge of his sandwich, his gaze fixed on a group of interns talking so incredibly loudly across the cafeteria. “Like they look like they’re twelve.” 

Arizona snorted, unable to help herself. “They are twelve.” 

“Apparently, the twelve year olds are throwing a house party.” 

“Oh, so they really are twelve then,” Arizona laughed. 

“We’re invited.” 

“We?” 

Thomas shrugged. “The hot one invited everyone in peds.” 

“The hot one?” 

Thomas waved a hand, his cheeks turning pink. “The blonde one.” He dropped his gaze to his sandwich, his ears matching his cheek in color. “Whatever. D’you want to go? Or whatever?” 

Arizona sincerely hoped this wasn’t some sort of date in Thomas’s mind. “I’m on call tonight, so I think I’ll pass. Plus, I’m not sure I want to hang with a bunch of interns.” 

Thomas sighed, looking a bit put out. “It’s not just interns. There’s residents and fellows going. Probably some attendings too.” 

As Arizona offered a weak smile, her pager went off and Arizona took the exit at a run, eager to leave Thomas and his awkward invite behind. It was far easier as always to just run away from her problems and bury herself in work. 

It didn’t help that things had blown up with Heather in the most major way. In the most ‘attacking her with a steak knife’ kind of way purely because Arizona was not interested in matching tattoos of all things. 

So really, the last thing Arizona needed was spending her evening at an intern party with Ken Thomas following her around. The absolute last thing. 

Before heading into surgery, she checked her cell, only to immediately regret it. Two calls from her mother, which alone was enough to give her a headache, and seven from Heather. She listened to a rambling voicemail from her mother trying to pin down a time to come see her, ideally when the Colonel was travelling for work, and then deleted the seven calls from Heather. 

Pushing her mother’s hovering and clinging aside, it was nearly enough to quiet her mind to just focus on removing the tumor on Stephanie’s kidney so the little girl could go back to kindergarten and show off how well she knew the alphabet. There was a sort of meditation in surgery, even as overeager residents tried to curry favor by asking questions and making obvious observations. 

She could focus only on her hands and what she could do to improve this little girl’s life. It didn’t matter that the rest of her life was a complete disaster. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t really a Robbins, that she had no idea who she was. It didn’t matter that she felt like she was slowly drowning without so much as an idea of life raft. All that mattered was that she was excellent at what she did. 

Arizona admittedly did feel a bit lighter by the time she left Stephanie’s room, her parents nearly in tears with joy as Arizona relayed just how well the surgery had gone. 

With that spark of lightness, she found herself dialling her mom as she walked out of the hospital. “Hey Mom, just giving you a call back.” 

“Arizona! How was your day? I assume you were in surgery all day.” 

“Mhm, yeah, it was pretty good,” Arizona lingered in the lobby for a moment, trying to gauge if it was raining or not. “How was your day?” 

“Fine, dear. Did you listen to my message? I was thinking I could come out sometime in October. Oh, maybe the last week of October. Then we can celebrate both of our birthdays together. How does that sound?” 

Arizona pushed the door open, inhaling the cool evening air as if that might soothe the headache creeping along her temple at the thought of her mother being in Seattle. “Sure, that sounds nice, if you want to. Are you sure that,” Arizona stumbled over her words, “you don’t have any other plans?” 

Her mother hesitated for a moment. “No, no other plans. Your- hm, Daniel will be traveling for work.” Even though Arizona herself struggled to fully conceptualize her relationship with Daniel Robbins, it still hurt to hear her mother say that, as if he was just some stranger and not the man who taught her how to skate and kissed her scraped knees. “I’ve missed you, especially with you being so far away. Now, I think I’ll plan on booking a hotel. Maybe the Fairmont, if they have one. Check on that, won’t you, dear.” 

“Sure, Mom.” 

“I assume your apartment is a one-bedroom and doesn’t have a guest room then.” 

“Uh, yeah, I don’t really need-” A distressingly familiar blonde woman sat at one of the benches a few feet away from her and Arizona had to swallow back a curse. “Sorry, Mom. I have to run. Let me know what days you want to come. Love you.” 

She could hear her mother’s faint goodbye as she shut her phone, tucking it into her pocket. 

“Was that your mom?” Heather asked, eyes gleaming, as if she hadn’t come at Arizona with a steak knife mere days ago. “I’d love to meet her. Your dad too.” 

“Heather. What are you doing here?” Arizona folded her arms over her chest in an effort to put as much distance between her and Heather as possible. At least if she pulled another weapon on her, she was already at the hospital. “I thought it was pretty clear things were over between us.” 

“Arizona, c’mon, it was just a misunderstanding.” 

“A misunderstanding? A misunderstanding? We’ve barely known each other a month and you want to get matching tattoos!” 

“When you know, you know! And I know-” 

“And then there’s the steak knife! No, no, we’re most certainly done.” 

Heather took a step towards her, one hand outstretched. Instinctively, Arizona stepped back. “Please, just one more chance. It was a bad night. We both said things we didn’t mean.” 

“Oh, I meant what I said. Don’t come here again. Just, just leave me alone.” 

“Arizona-” 

“Arizona! Hey! There you are!” Arizona turned towards the voice, half expecting Thomas of all people to be coming to her rescue. “Sorry, I’m late. Thanks for giving me a ride, I really appreciate it,” Russell said with a smile that was probably charming to the right person, a dimple appearing in his cheek. 

“Who’s this?” Heather bit out. 

Arizona had the strangest instinct to stand between the pair of them, lest Heather have another knife. “Um, this is Peter,” she said, voice wavering slightly. She was fairly certain his name was Peter, right? Peter Parker, but he went by Russell. Hard to forget that one. 

“Peter?” 

“I work with Arizona,” Peter said, offering a hand to Heather, that easy smile still firmly in place. Strangely enough, he almost reminded her of Tim in a way, in that sort of casual protectiveness that Tim liked to throw about on the playground when he stood half a head taller than the next kid. It was probably just the height thing, although Peter had a few inches even on Tim. “And my car’s out of commission, so she gave me a ride to work.” 

“Oh.” 

“I got stuck doing paperwork, but I’m ready to roll if you are,” Peter said, nodding towards the parking lot. 

Arizona seized on the exit opportunity this strange, strange intern was offering. “Yep! Definitely!” 

Heather frowned, glancing between the pair of them, trying to suss out the lie. “Arizona, I-” 

Arizona caught the sleeve of Peter’s jacket and all but dragged him in the direction of the parking lot. He was a surprisingly good sport about it, barely tripping at all. 

“Sorry if I overstepped-” 

“Nope, that was great. She’s, uh, yeah, not someone I want or need to talk to,” Arizona rushed out. “So yeah, that was great, awesome even.” 

“Cool, cool, glad to hear it.” Peter rubbed at the back of his neck with his free hand, reminding Arizona she was holding his other arm, which she promptly dropped. “You just looked like you needed an out. So, uh, happy to help.” 

Arizona offered him a smile, rocking a bit on her heels. “Come find me tomorrow and I’ll let you scrub in on a surgery. I’ve got a very cool peds cardio case tomorrow with Dr Burke.” 

“Oh, uh, you don’t, I don’t need you to do that.” 

Arizona couldn’t help but laugh a bit. “Russell, any other intern would kill for that offer. Consider it good karma or something for giving me a hand.” 

Peter looked pained, rocking back on his heels. “I guess if you say so. I, yeah, I guess so.” 

“Look, this is free advice, and you’re not obligated to listen to it, but you have to be a shark to survive in residency. You have to look out for yourself and take whatever you can get. Everyone else will. I’m sure you’re a nice guy, and that’s great, but you have to fight for everything. Take the surgeries you want and be the best and you’ll go far. It’s sink or swim.” 

Peter nodded along, his spine straightening a bit, some of the slouchiness bleeding out. “Sink or swim.”

“So you want the surgery tomorrow?” 

He nodded again. “Yes, yeah, I do. Thanks. But for the record, I didn’t do that to get a surgery.” 

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep your secret,” Arizona said with a laugh. For maybe the first time, she saw Peter Parker-Russell actually smile, not just that sort of vaguely pained grimace he was always sporting or a fake smile offered to a patient. He actually seemed pleasant when he smiled. “Have a good night, Russell.” 

xx 

Peter fought the urge to bob his head along to the blasting rock music in the OR. He tightened his grip on the retractor he was holding for an ortho resident who was in the midst of a hip replacement. He was having a good week, no, scratch that, he was having a great week. 

He finally rotated onto orthopedic surgery, which was his ultimate goal, even if neurosurgery was also kinda cool. He hadn’t seen Arizona since the day after he intervened with that woman. He really had no idea who that woman was or why Arizona seemed so uncomfortable with her. Nor did he care to find out. He’d count that as his good deed for the month. Plus, Col-

“Can you pull back a bit more?”

Peter nodded quickly, readjusting the retractor. “That good, Dr Torres?” He asked, voice muffled by his surgical mask. 

“Great, thank you, Dr…?” 

“Russell,” he supplied quickly. “Peter Russell.” 

“Thank you, Russell.” 

Maybe a hip replacement wasn’t the most exciting surgery of all time, but Peter was fascinated. He couldn’t help himself as he peppered Torres with questions about what exactly she was doing and how she was doing it. Torres, to her credit, humored him, answering each question as she fitted in the prosthetic components. 

His fingers itched to do the work himself. Of course, he was happy to hold the retractor, Johnson pawning him off on another resident. But he couldn’t wait until he was able to do surgeries on his own. He wanted to be the one doing the cutting, doing the fixing. 

Torres offered him a quick, “Well done,” as she scrubbed out, already checking her pager for the next case. Peter wanted to ask if he could scrub in on her next surgery, only for Johnson to appear in the OR hallway with a stack of paperwork for him. 

“Finish these up for me, lurch,” Johnson said as he shoved the stack of paperwork into his arms. 

Peter bit his tongue as he nodded. “Right, of course, Johnson.” 

He refused to let Johnson’s overall sour demeanor ruin his day. He scrubbed in on ortho and it was awesome. He was awesome, everything was awesome. No amount of paperwork could ruin that. 

Johnson always dumped paperwork on him, nothing new. He didn’t know what exactly Johnson’s damage was, but it was giving him a cramp. 

Peter slumped over in a seat in one of the OR galleries, dropping Johnson’s paperwork onto the chair next to him. He half watched Shepherd’s hemispherectomy in between interpreting Johnson’s awful notes. He’d fully own up to having his own verison of awful doctor handwriting, but Johnson’s was next level terrible. As scary as the Nazi was, Peter would happily swap endless grunt work for getting yelled at on occasion. 

Faintly, he was aware of people moving about the gallery. Shepherd was a big deal after all. The man was practically a surgery god. As much as Peter thought he wanted ortho, the idea of learning neuro from Derek Shepherd? Who would say no to that? 

“Has Shepherd already started the callosotomy?” 

It took Peter a beat to realize someone was talking to him. He glanced back, and of course, it was Arizona. He bit his cheek before he could scowl at her. “Uh, yeah, I think so.” 

She offered him a half smile and nod, most of her attention on the surgery below. 

Peter forced his gaze back to his paperwork, unwilling, or more importantly, unable to have a conversation with Arizona. It was just too strange. He liked being an only child, he certainly didn’t want a sister, much less one in the same hospital. Ever since he learned of her existence, he didn’t want a sister. 

The faint scratching of her pen behind him set his teeth on edge, and he tightened his grip on his own pen. How could one person be so distracting? 

He glared down at his paperwork, belatedly realizing he had misspelled cardiothoracic. “Crap,” he hissed, drawing a few lines through it. His jaw flexed as an extension of the irritation towards his half-sister. There had to be other surgeries happening here. Why did they have to both be sitting in the same room? 

Admittedly, Shepherd was operating on a toddler, and Arizona was in peds, he conceded. But he still didn’t like it. 

“Why do you have so much paperwork?” 

Swallowing back the sourness in his throat, he twisted slightly to look at her. “My resident.” 

Arizona’s mouth twitched into a familiar smile, and he hated it. “Ah, of course,” she said as if she understood him, which she didn’t. Because she didn’t know him, and he didn’t know her, and that’s how he wanted it. “Character building.” 

Peter just hummed in response, lest he say something untoward. Arizona seemed to take that as an appropriate response, returning to whatever she was working on without bothering him further. 

His pager saved him from getting even more worked up, sending him practically fleeing from the room. Against his better judgement, Peter glanced back at Arizona. There was something so, so weird seeing the strange little similarities between the two of them and his father. Even the way she chewed on the end of her pen looked like his dad when he was grading papers. 

It was just so weird. 

xx 

Arizona stared at her phone, half expecting it to ring, half hoping it would just implode. She needed to call her mother. That was their deal. One call a week. Proof of life, Arizona called it, as awful as that was. 

Drumming her fingers on the table, she tried to work up the courage. Because she needed courage to call her own mother. Or maybe not even courage, just some sort of tolerance for it. 

Every call was awkward, every call was stilted. They mainly talked about nothing. 

She was just so angry with her mom. That anger, that hurt, that shame buzzed beneath her skin at all times. Some weeks, her mother pretended nothing was wrong, pretended Arizona’s world hadn’t imploded. Other weeks, she offered apologies and explanations Arizona didn’t want to hear. She tried to tell Arizona about her biological father, tried to encourage Arizona to know him. Arizona’s skin crawled at the thought of speaking to that man, of really knowing anything of him. She could walk past him on the street and never recognize him. Her own father, apparently. 

A shiver of discomfort ran down her spine. 

A picture of her and Tim from high school caught her eye, both caught mid laugh. Arizona couldn’t even remember what had been so funny, or who had taken the picture. Arizona tried not to study the picture too carefully, lest she start documenting the differences between them. Between her and her half-brother. 

Swallowing back a fresh wave of nausea, Arizona dialled her mother. 

“You’ve reached Barbara Robbins. Please call back at another time.” 

A sigh fell from her lips, almost relieved, as she ended the call. 

For a long moment, she considered just not calling her mother today. It’d be so easy. Tell her mom she tried to call, she made the effort in her busy schedule. It was perfectly valid. But, knowing her mother, it wouldn’t matter that Arizona called when she was supposed to, only that they didn’t speak. 

In hopes of heading off any melodramatics, Arizona dialled the landline. It rang and rang and rang and- 

“Robbins.” Arizona froze at the male voice on the other end of the phone, at the sound of her da- of Daniel’s voice. “Hello? Who is this?” 

Panic surged in Arizona’s chest and she dropped the phone like it burned her. Distantly, she heard his voice, tinny and quiet, mumbling about wrong numbers. The call ended abruptly, leaving Arizona with only her panic and silence for company. 

She tried to focus on her breathing, rapid and uneven. She dug her nails into the palm of her hand, the sharp bite of pain grounding. 

The image of Daniel Robbins, drunk and angry, burned behind her eyes. He’d always been distant, emotionally removed, but he’d loved her, hadn’t he? She could still remember him teaching her how to throw a punch, telling her he was proud of her when she graduated medical school, putting bandaids on her knees when she fell skating. He hadn’t always been that angry man. Once upon a time, he’d been her dad, and she loved him. She still did, if she was honest with herself. He raised her. He named her.