A/N: So this is a new attempt at a fic, I know I've got others in the pipeline at the minute but I just had this idea in my head and wanted to see if others liked the idea.

So this story is Calzona but with them as vets (Veterinary Surgeons), I know it's a bit random, but as this is the profession that I am studying to do I know it's something that I'll really enjoy writing and in theory a profession that I know more about so I really hope that people like it too :)

First chapter's a bit backgroundish, but I want to set the scene for the story!

As usual I don't own any of the characters, they are just brilliant creations of Shonda.

Callie sighed as she climbed the stairs and entered the staff room, losing a patient first thing really wasn't the best way to start the day. Hell it hadn't even been her patient, but she had been the only vet around and therefore had to be the one administering CPR and the one that called the time of death. Worst of all she had had to be the one to go and tell the family that their dog was dead. Oh to be a vet.

She flicked the coffee machine on and stared emptily out the window, glancing down at the car park to see what staff cars were parked on the gravel. Even after four months she still half expected to look down and see the Lexus she so desperately wanted to.

Or did she?

No she didn't.

It had been four months since Erica had left her broken hearted without an explanation and still she woke up feeling the pain of the split every single day, so no she didn't want to see the stupid Lexus.

The main problem was that having worked in the same practice as Erica, she had gotten used to seeing her regularly at work and even now, she expected to see the blonde Equine Vet sat in the staff room. Their relationship had born out of friendship, the first same-sex relationship Callie had ever been in, she had known it was a risk and it was hard for her to admit her feelings for Erica, but she did, she gave her whole heart to Erica and she just ripped it out of Callie's chest and stomped all over it. It all started so well and then the arguments crept in, Erica got jealous of Callie's success in the profession as she remained stuck in a rut with her own career, she accused Callie of cheating if she was just five minutes later than she had said, usually because an emergency case came in or she'd made a breakthrough with her research. Then one day she was just gone, no word of goodbye, no note, nothing; she didn't turn up at work, and by the time Callie got back to the apartment they shared, all of Erica's stuff had gone. The Practice got a brief phone call from Erica, she'd left, and that was it. Callie was left completely bewildered and completely broken-hearted.

The Practice was Hunter's Lodge Veterinary Practice in Seattle, Callie having worked there for five years and having become renowned in the profession for her advancements in Orthopaedic surgery. She may not have been the first in the profession to come up with the idea of developing prosthetic limbs for animals but she had been the first to actually come up with the material and components to do so. Since then she'd fitted almost fifty prosthetic limbs to dogs, cats and even once on a chinchilla. She was further challenging herself by conducting extensive research into cartilage, developing a formula to basically 'make' her own cartilage to be used in joint replacements and in the many cases of arthritis and dysplasia she saw. Put simply; she was a Goddess in the Ortho vet world.

'Hey Cal.' Her reminiscing was interrupted as her best friend, and previous 'sex-friend' Mark came into the staff room. He was a general small animal surgeon but also specialised in radio and chemo and as a result in cancer. Although a bit of an ass, he was very good at what he did and no one could deny that, although they might not admit it immediately to his face. In his personal life her had previously been something of a man-whore but since he had met one of the vet nurses, Lexie, he had been smitten and Callie was happy for them.

'How did the surgery go?' Callie asked to make conversation.

'Very routine actually, removed the tumour and hopefully that'll be the end of that. You got anything today?'

'Nope, no surgeries today, just got some post-op checks and a couple of consults this afternoon, lost a patient this morning though.'

'Oh shit, sorry Cal, what happened?'

'Nurses were restraining this dog, suddenly it collapses, no matter what we did we couldn't get it to breathe again, turns out it had a massive tumour pressing down on it's oesophagus.'

'Sounds nasty, that kind of thing is hard to catch and even then it sounds like it was beyond the point of no return anyway.' Mark tried to support his friend.

'Wasn't even my patient anyway, I was just the only vet around, so naturally I had to go and tell the family...they had bloody kids Mark, why do they always have kids?'

'Who knows Torres, this job can be shit, but so can all jobs, Jesus you make dogs and cats walk again! You have the best survival rate out of most of us here.'

'Thanks Mark,' Callie said absent-mindly, she knew he was right but in the frame of mind she was in she wanted to blame herself.

'I take it you've not met the new vet then?' Mark asked, changing the subject.

'Erica's replacement?' Callie asked, failing to mask the pain in her voice.

'Yeah, she's meant to be like the best of the best.' Mark said knowing that this was a touchy subject.

'Oh right. Well us small animal lot don't have much to do with the horse folk anyway...' Callie mused.

'I wouldn't be so sure, apparently this one's as big on ortho as you, been developing stuff for horses since she was at University. I also heard she's keen to work with you.'

'Great.' Callie said; a new stuck up Equine vet in her life was all she needed. One of the reasons her and Erica had experience so many problems was because Erica always saw herself as superior to Callie because she worked in the horse industry. Then when Callie's prosthetics, hydrotherapy and then her cartilage research took off, Erica just got so jealous that Callie was doing better than her in an insanely competitive profession.

'Right best be off, I've got to remove a lump off of a ferret's ass.' Callie couldn't help but chuckle at the image as Mark left the room.

Hunter's Lodge was known for being the best in the whole country, if not the world, because of the amount of facilities it had and that was why it attracted so many top vets. With Callie they had the prosthetic, hydrotherapy pool, physiotherapy department, they had CT and MRI scanners for small and large animals, a top Neurological surgeon, two top heart surgeons, an oncology department and one of the best equine sections that had been around for a long time. It was a place where you went to further your career to the highest of highs, somewhere where you could challenge yourself but also be challenged by the colleagues around you.

Callie sighed again, downed her coffee and headed down into the main throng to see if she could help with anything, she wanted to take her mind of her personal life, and to do that she needed to get her hands dirty, not sit on her own in her lab and do research.

'Cal, give us a hand will ya?' Callie looked to the direction of the voice and saw the small frame of Meredith Grey struggling with the biggest Great Dane Callie had ever seen. Callie moved forward and took the rope from Meredith. 'Bloody beast of a thing this one!' Meredith was Lexie's older sister and was also a Veterinary nurse.

'What the hell is he in for? Seems healthy to me!' Callie laughed as she got dragged through the pre-op area.

'Well according to the owners this is him under the weather!' Meredith chuckled as the dog, known as 'King', proceeded to roll over to the floor, taking Callie with him.

'What the hell is going on here?' Miranda Bailey, the Head Nurse, came into the fray, even though she had a very stern exterior she was amazing at her job and no one ever questioned her knowledge in the profession.

'King decided he wanted a hug off of Callie!' Meredith continued to laugh as the dog proceeded to lick every inch of Callie's face.

'A hand please?' Callie said, despite the grossness of the immense amount of slober now on her face she couldn't help but laugh, this was why she loved her job. Before anyone could help the door swung open offering King a new distraction, slipping out of Callie's grasp he bounded over and knocked another victim to the floor.

'Woaoaahhh!' Callie furrowed her brow as she didn't recognise the voice that was coming from beneath the Great Dane. Bailey pulled out her 'obey me or die' voice and yanked on the dog's chain revealing to Callie the most beautiful pair of blue eyes she had ever seen. Callie's eyes continued to take in the body on the floor; blonde wavy hair pulled loosely into a pony, a tightly fitting polo shirt with the name of the practice emblazoned on it, tight jeans and some jodhpur boots. She furrowed her brow further as she realised this was the new asshole equine vet, Erica's replacement. Why oh why did she have to be hot?

'Well that's the kind of greeting I like when I walk into a room!' The unknown laughed to herself more than anyone else as she jumped up off of the floor and began to pick up the papers and x-ray films she had dropped in the process.

'I'm so sorry...you're the new equine vet right?' Meredith introduced herself to the blonde.

'That would be me; I'm Arizona Robbins, nice to meet you!' Callie gave a slight snort at the name, just about managing to cover it up with a fake coughing fit.

A perky vet? Maybe it's just first day nerves, Callie thought to herself. Suddenly she realised three sets of eyes were staring at her.

'You in there Torres?' Bailey laughed as she held a firm grip on King's collar.

'Sorry, lost in my thoughts there.' Callie stumbled. 'What did you say?'

'You're Calliope Torres right? The ortho Goddess they all talk about?' Arizona eyed the Latina before her. She'd heard a lot about her but had never seen any pictures, always imagining her as a dowdy old woman vet. The reality was a gorgeous, curvy, tanned Latina. Her mind was running wild with the divine figure that stood before her.

'It's Callie, and yeah I suppose that is me.' She shortened her name instantly, hating the fact that she kinda liked the way her name rolled off of Arizona's tongue. No one called her Calliope, only her parents, and they weren't people she wanted to be reminded of.

'Arizona Robbins,' the blonde introduced herself as Callie took the extended hand. 'Right, well, I was just coming in to have a meeting with Drs Shepherd and Hunt...they're in an x-ray room?' Arizona chuckled nervously as she admitted she was lost in the maze of corridors that the practice held.

'Oh that's just through the door there and then turn right and then left.' Meredith said.

'Super! Thanks guys, I'm sure I'll see you all around.' With that she practically skipped her way through the double doors and out of view.

'So we have a Barbie in our staff now?' Callie grumbled.

'I like her.' Bailey said simply as she walked off with King dragging her every step of the way, Lexie with her to assist.

'Oh Calliope?' Callie's fists called as she heard that sing-song voice use her full name once more.

'It's Callie.' She said with force, hoping that her voice gave the blonde some understanding of how much she didn't appreciate her using her full name.

'Oh right, sure. Would you mind coming into this meeting with us? I think your expertise might be highly useful on this case.'

'Sure.' Callie mumbled and followed the blonde down the corridor to the x-ray viewing room. They walked the short distance in silence, neither really knowing what to say. Callie didn't like the blonde on principal; she was Erica's replacement and she called her Calliope; that was enough for the dislike for now. Arizona walked quickly, not wanting to prolong the apparently awkward situation; she didn't know if she'd said something out of line or if the Latina was having a bad day, but she just hoped that she would get over it so she could pull out her best skills for the operation she was about to ask her to be a part of.

Callie followed Arizona into the viewing room and acknowledged Owen Hunt, the head of the equine department and Derek Shepherd, the neuro surgeon who were in the room too. Callie looked confused at the odd mix specialities in the room; obviously the patient was a horse dur to the presence of both Owen and Arizona, but neuro and ortho too? This must be a big case.

Callie glanced at the computer screens in front of them and gasped. There were x-rays on two screens, a CT on another and what looked like a contrast MRI on the final screen. All clearly displayed the biggest tumour she had ever seen. It was genius, in the most horrific way. The perfect tumour.

'What do you think?' Owen spoke to Callie, him and Derek had been looking at the scans for an hour and he had known they needed more than just them to get this horse back to full health.

'Well...it's genius isn't it?' Callie said, knowing that the others in the room would understand the admiration in her voice of something so completely disastrous to the vessel it was housing itself in.

'Most effective tumour I've ever seen in my whole career.' Derek mused, more to himself than anything.

'It's a two year old gelding, presented with back problems when it was just six months old,' Arizona spoke now to all of them, getting them up to date on the complete history of the case. 'I said that it was just because it was a youngster and the pain would pass, I prescribed anti-inflammatory drugs, told them to give it a couple of weeks box rest and then gradually break it in. Four months later it came back to me and I couldn't believe what I was seeing; the horse was in so much pain I thought I was just going to have to put it down, but the owner's begged me to do something to save it, I felt like it was my fault, I still do, it was obvious I'd missed something so I sedated it and immediately x-rayed and took it for a CT. What I saw completely threw me. I'd seen tumours before, but never something like this. Those scans that day are shown here,' Arizona flicked a button and up popped a different set of images where the tumour was considerably smaller.

'The tumours quite simple there.' Derek stated the facts.

'Yeah exactly, although it was shocking to see a tumour in an animal so young I immediately booked it in for radiotherapy and it worked for four months. Then the condition of the animal got worse and when we did the monthly re-scan we saw the tumour was now in fact spreading once more. We hit it with chemo and the same thing happened, initially the tumour shrunk and then five months later it was back stronger than ever, it's like the tumour evolves to whatever we throw at it, so it needs to come out.'

Callie choked, 'You want to take it out?' She couldn't believe what she was hearing.

'Yes.' Arizona said simply ignoring the stare that Callie was giving her, mostly because she knew she would just stare back into those beautiful brown eyes and her brain would go to mush; she needed to be at the top of her game for this case.

'I know you said you'd tried radio and chemo but Mark Sloan should be here, he's an expert, we're got unique facilities here...'

'I had the same facilities at the disposal at my last practice,' Arizona cut in. 'Believe me I wouldn't be suggesting this if it wasn't the last option.'

'I know it's harsh, but wouldn't it be fairer on the horse, and its owners to just put it to sleep?' Callie said simply.

'These aren't the kind of people that hear the word no.' Arizona said. 'Besides this horse is something else, it's the most good-natured, loving horse I've ever worked with and I want to give it a go.

'But how?' Callie asked as she gestured to the screens in front of her. 'This thing is a time bomb, if someone diffuses the wrong switch then the horse is dead.'

'Let me deal with the diffusion.' Derek said.

'Ok fine, even if you manage to identify all the correct vessels that belong to the tumour and not accidentally cut off the spinal chord's blood supply...' Callie began.

'I love to see the confidence you have in me.' Derek said sarcastically.

'Oh come on Derek, you've never done anything this big...anyway, even if you did somehow do that bit without a hiccup how the hell do you expect to get it out of the actual vertebrae?' Callie asked pointing at the way the MRI clearly showed the cancer was not only in the actual tumour but also in three of the vertebrae themselves.

'That's where we hoped you would offer your expertise.' Arizona said. Callie floundered at what to say and just sat staring at this impossible case in front of her. The three other surgeons in the room just looked at each other and shrugged as Callie began to mutter and point at the screen obviously talking herself through every possibility she could think of.

Arizona watched the brunette in slight awe, the amount of knowledge that spilled out of her even in her ramblings was amazing. She talked off doing things that Arizona had never even heard or thought of before. If the case hadn't been of such importance to her then the blonde knew that she would be getting aroused at the thought of the brunette doing many-a-thing to her on the desk.

Arizona was pulled abruptly from hey daydream as Callie suddenly sat up so quickly that she almost fell of the stool she was perched on.

'Get Mark.' She said.

'What?' Arizona asked, confused by the sudden declaration.

'Derek, find me Mark. I have an idea.' With that Derek left to find his best friend.

'I'm sorry but who is Mark?' Arizona asked, slightly irritated.

'He's our oncology specialist.' Owen informed her.

'I told you we already tried that!' Arizona sighed, exasperated at the stubbornness of the ortho surgeon.

'I know what you tried Dr. Robbins,' The way Callie said her name made Arizona shiver slightly, and not in a good way. 'Just let me talk to Mark before I tell you what I'm thinking; I wouldn't want to get your hopes up.' Callie continued. The blonde was still irritating her, but Callie knew that she shouldn't take it out on Arizona that she had a slight dislike for any blonde equine vet after Erica Hahn.

'You rang?' Mark came into the room and winked at the blonde who scoffed. 'Holy shit, that is one hell of a tumour you've got there blondie!' Arizona rolled her eyes, why did it have to be this type of vet.

'See how the cancerous cells are in the actual vertebrae Mark?' Callie put her surgeons hat on as she explained her plan to Mark. 'Well, if those vertebrae weren't in the body, we ould treat them with direct radio and chemo right?'

'Well yeah, but not when they're in the body like that, it would do irreversible damage to the spinal cord and the surrounding tissue.' Mark said, not understanding what Callie was saying.

'I know that Mark, what I'm saying is, if Derek removed all the blood vessels from here and I cut the vertebrae along the irregular processes, I could slide them out over the spinal cord; you could hit them with your crap and then I could put them back in, using the cartilage I've been making between as vertebral discs.' Callie got more excited with every word as she saw the brilliant plan in front of her.

'Is that not insanely risky?' Arizona spoke now.

'Isn't that what our jobs are?' Callie shot back. 'Earlier I had to call code on a dog that came it because it had a cough, a cough? This job is full of risks and it's shit, but us, here in this room, are meant to be the best of the best, we've got to take the risk to push ourselves.'

'This isn't about furthering your career...' Arizona began unfairly.

'Oh Jesus Christ what is it about equine vets and thinking they know everything?' Callie stood up and gestured wildly with her hands much to the shock of everyone in the room, especially Arizona. 'You asked for my help as the ortho specialist, that's my expert advice, it's up to you if you want to take it or not, I couldn't give a shit.' With that Callie stormed out of the room muttering something about blonde equine vets.

'Well this is awkward.' Mark said after a few moments of silence. 'Don't take that personal blondie, the woman you replaced was Callie's...well maybe it's not my place to say what she was to Callie, but the point is she hurt Callie a lot, and some of it was mainly to do with how good Callie was at her job, Erica hated the fact that Callie was making so many advancements in her field, whenever someone questions her judgement it just reminds her of Erica...' Mark explained.

'Especially as I'm a blonde and equine?' Arizona offered Mark a smile, grateful that he had offered a slight explanation.

'Yeah, I'm afraid that won't help matters at all.' Mark smiled. 'On this case though, I do think Torres is on to something, I think it might be the last chance this horse has of living and I'd want to have Cal on side for this one.'

'Right, don't piss off the Ortho Goddess, got it.' Arizona smiled, wanting to get on with her new colleagues. 'You really think it might work?' She turned to the others in the room.

'I think it's worth a shot.' Both Derek and Owen agreed.

'Right,' Arizona took a deep breath. 'So where do I find a pissed off Calliope Torres then?'

A/N: Please tell me what you think!