Stef is in hospital, recovering from being shot when she notices a young brunette in the room next door who never smiles, never has visitors and never takes her eyes off Stef.

(An AU on how Callie comes to live with the Fosters - suggested and requested by meyouthem123.)

Stef had been lying in that hospital bed for over two weeks now. The fragments of bone were finally all out of her body and all that was left was for her to recover. It had taken three surgeries to repair all the damage and even then the bullet was still inside her - a constant reminder of just how badly things could have ended for her and her twins.

Stef stared at the open door where her family had just left. Visiting hours were over and they all went home. Lena looked so tired and so worn out. Brandon looked like he'd aged at least a couple of years in just a short time. Jesus looked angry and deceived and Mariana looked scared - or terrified was more accurate. But Stef had grown accustomed to all those looks for they had been the same ones ever since she'd been shot three weeks ago.

Stef sighed as her thoughts returned from her family to the scenes outside her hospital room. She watched an elderly man being wheeled in a chair down the hallway, a nurse walking around with a clipboard in her arm moving quickly out of the way when two doctors rush past in a hurry. She saw another doctor talk to a family who look so worried and so scared and she wondered if this was how Lena and the kids looked while she was lying in a bed, fighting for her life. Stef shook her head as she tried to get those thoughts out of her mind and looked for something else to distract her and that's when she spotted the girl in the room across the hall, staring straight at her.

They were all there again. Callie thought to herself as she watched the blond woman interact with the visitors. The one with curly hair was definitely not just a friend, Callie was sure of that now. They were lovers and by the looks of things it wasn't even a secret. Everyone who'd ever come to visit, and there had been a lot, didn't seem phased by it at all.

The three kids seemed to belong to the two women though Callie wasn't entirely sure if she was right. One boy could belong but the other two were clearly adopted - or maybe, just like her, they were foster kids - Callie thought to herself. She noticed the way both kids always looked very somber and distant. The hugs they gave the blond were guarded and weak and while they all seemed to enjoy each other's company and no one seemed particularly scared - they just didn't seem to fit in as well.

Apart from the four of them who visited every single evening there was also the man who clearly loved the woman in the bed. He'd bring her flowers and sneak her coffee's from Starbucks, he'd sit with her and the two would laugh and joke until the woman would hold her side in pain. Maybe he was the friend. Callie thought, since the curly haired one certainly wasn't.

There was the older couple who came less rarely - a black woman and a white man. They were definitely together for they came holding hands and occasionally came with the curly haired woman and the children so they were probably her parents.

There were an assortment of others who came once or maybe twice and not again, stayed for a few minutes and then left. They were just the visitors, they were clearly not family.

Then there was also the mother - the red-head who fussed and foostered to the point of actually making the blond cringe. Callie liked to see them together - to have a mother that cared enough to do things even when you didn't want it, who would make sure you had what you needed even when you didn't ask for it, to just be there for you no matter how old you were. Callie liked to pretend that it was her lying in that bed being fussed over by the woman, brought jello cups and ice chips and handed Harlequin Romance books that made her turn an amusing shade of red like it did to the blond. But unfortunately for her that wasn't the case. Her mother was dead and there was no one for her.

There was also no dad, Callie observed. So in one way maybe they were alike. Maybe they both knew loss and in a small way that thought made Callie feel closer to the woman who was obviously so loved - the woman who would have been missed should she not have survived whatever had caused her to be in here in the first place, the woman who meant something to someone.