and Calypso would be spending New Year's Eve at the apartment, which Daisy was happy about.

She didn't want to ever go to anymore holiday parties based off of the breakdown she had had at the Christmas party a couple days prior.

It was decided that Arizona would stay with the girls since Mark would be working. Callie was working too, and so were the vast majority of Arizona's friends. She truthfully didn't mind spending her night with the two children.

Mark and Callie walked through the main lobby of their apartment, both entering the elevator. Their shifts had ended around the same time, Mark having decided to wait for Callie since they would be spending the rest of the night together anyway.

Mark pressed his floor once both adults had entered the elevator, watching the button glow beneath his thumb.

The metal slid shut, the reflective doors sealing tightly as the elevator jolted upwards.

Mark could see both himself and Callie in the reflection of the doors, staring at the reflection.

Mark would be lying if he said he wasn't staring at himself, mostly. He looked great, he knew he always did.

But he took a look at Callie too, the dark-haired girl leaning with her head back against the elevator wall, her eyes shut tightly.

"You alright?"

"Tired." Callie responded meekly.

Mark nodded, looking down at his wristwatch. "I bet. It's almost midnight, we should be-"

"No, I'm tired." Callie groaned, opening her eyes abruptly. "Things are weird. Just all over, you know? And Arizona and I, we're...weird. And I'm tired of it."

"You're weird?" Mark questioned, not knowing what the woman meant by that.

Callie turned to Mark, having no problem with being as blunt as possible. "We haven't had sex in over a month. A month. I'm a married woman, and suddenly it's like...it's like I'm celibate all of a sudden. Kepner is probably getting more action than I am at this point and I..."

Callie trailed off as she groaned, not able to finish her thought.

The elevator doors opened up, both adults stepping out onto their floor.

"Just...tell me not to worry about it."

Mark shrugged. "Don't worry about it. What's the worst reason she could be abstaining from sex? A magical STD? Some secret affair?"

Mark was trying to be funny, trying to bring up scenarios that were so far-fetched they were laughable. Arizona wouldn't have an STD, and she most definitely would never cheat on Callie. Mark was certain.

But Callie groaned, finding no humor in the statement.

"Why would even say that?" Callie shut her eyes tightly, rubbing the sides of her forehead like she had a headache. "You've poisoned my brain. I wasn't even thinking like that until you...dammit, Mark!"

"Oh, come on." Mark rolled his eyes as they walked. "Arizona isn't cheating on you. And she doesn't have some STD she magically got. Well, I mean...I guess technically you can never say never, so it's always a possibility-"

"Mark." Callie spoke sharply, letting the man know very blatantly that he was not easing her nerves.

"Kidding." Mark assured as they finally approached the front door of Mark's apartment. "Okay? You don't have anything to worry about. Let it go."

Callie sighed, slowly nodding. Her paranoia would continue to plague her mind until Arizona decided to actually sit down and talk with her. But for the moment being, Callie could push aside her doubt for just one relaxing night.

Mark swiftly used his key to unlock the front door, immediately frowning at the sight in front of him.

"What the hell?!"

Mark's kitchen looked like a bloodied massacre. A towel was laid out on the kitchen counter, Arizona hastily working on whatever that thing was on the towel.

And the thing on the towel was an alive thing.

"There's a...large possibility that I may have run over a kitten." Arizona let out a nervous laugh.

Mark was still struggling to process what his eyes were seeing as he stepped inside his apartment. "Why would you do that?"

Arizona deadpanned up to Mark as if he was the stupidest person ever. "What do you mean why would I do that? You think I intentionally tried to run over a kitten? Just 'Oh gee, a kitten in the middle of the road. Let me floor it'?"

Mark frowned at Arizona's comment, turning his attention over to Calypso, the little girl standing right beside the woman.

Her face was red, her eyes watery and her cheeks heavily tear-stained, making it evident that the girl had been crying a whole lot.

"You...you have to save him." Calypso cried out, looking desperately at Mark. "If you don't, he's gonna die, and...and...you...you have to help."

The girl was distressed beyond belief, her tone wavering as she sniffled.

"Oh, honey, we...we work on people." Mark tried to articulate as slowly as possible. "Not four-legged animals. We didn't go to vet school."

"Not an excuse." Arizona spoke as she put on her stethoscope, holding the bell to the kitten's chest. "Grab the gauze."

Mark raised his eyebrows. "Excuse me?"

"We have to save the kitten." Arizona spoke as if it were nothing. "The vet's office is closed because of the holiday, so we're gonna do this ourselves. Grab the gauze."

"How could I possibly be of any help?" Mark proposed the question. A kitten was not his element. He had dissected a dead cat once in his Anatomy & Physiology college class all those years ago, but this felt much different.

"I hate to argue." Callie started, nervously laughing under her wife's intense gaze. "But...Mark's right. I mean, unless your cat needs a tummy tuck...I don't think he can really do anything."

"Every doctor can bandage." Arizona spoke firmly as she looked at both Mark and Callie. "But if neither of you are capable could somebody please hand me the damn gauze so we can stop the blood."

Callie frowned, putting her purse down as she made her way over to the first-aid kit that Mark kept on hand. Arizona had already rummaged through the entire kit, half its contents were pulled out.

Callie pulled out a roll of gauze and medical tape, standing on the other side of the kitchen counter where the kitten was laid. Callie decided to begin on the kitten herself, checking his legs for any breaks or fractures while Arizona listened to respirations.

The kitten had been silent the entire time, laying miserably out on the counter as a result of just having been hit by a car. He was on the brink of death.

But Callie squeezed gently on the different pressure points of his right legs, and when she moved to do the left legs, he let out the most horrible and miserable sound. Something between a screech and a hiss.

"There's fluid in his lung." Arizona spoke, taking her stethoscope off and putting it around her neck. "I need to do a thoracentesis."

Mark watched in bewilderment as Arizona pulled a syringe from the sterile packaging beside her. "Where the hell are you getting this stuff?"

Arizona took her eyes off of the kitten momentarily to meet eyes with Mark. "You don't keep medical supplies on hand?"

Mark did keep medical supplies on hand. Bandages and gauze and first aid supplies. Not things like syringes, he was convinced Arizona was off of her rocker.

"His leg is fractured." Callie frowned down at the kitten's tiny leg. "He'll need a cast."

"A cast? For a cat?" Mark cocked an eyebrow. "You're joking, right?"

Mark hated cats. He thought that they were vicious and awful and...and terrible. He often found it hard to believe that people willingly adopted cats into their home.

"Hold him down." Arizona told Mark, sterilizing the cat's chest. A patch of fur had already been shaved off of the chest, leaving a clean area of skin for Arizona to drain the fluid.

"I'm not holding him down, Arizona. This is ridiculous. Why can't we just wait for the vet's office to open and let them-"

Arizona leaned in close, whisper-yelling because of the child right beside her. "I will not be forever pinned as the cat murderer. Hold him down."

Mark frowned as he approached the cat. He wasn't quite sure how he was supposed to hold down a cat while Arizona tapped a needle into the pleural cavity of his chest. And unless Arizona happened to also keep dosages of morphine in her apartment, Mark knew the cat would feel every ounce of the pain.

Mark had the cat pinned down by his head, trying to be as gentle as possible. This all felt incredibly inhumane, and if Mark got bit by this stupid cat, he would not be happy.

Arizona was right in her element though. She'd worked on babies the size of this kitten more times than she could count. She tried to picture the kitten as another tiny human that needed to be saved.

Just a really furry tiny human.

Arizona unsheathed the needle, making sure the cat's skin was pulled taut with her index finger and thumb, inserting the needle in the space between.

Calypso had to look away as the cat tried to writhe in pain. She hated seeing something so small and helpless in so much pain.

The cat tried to struggle for a moment before giving up, as if he were accepting death. He seemed to be in so much pain that he didn't have anymore energy to fight.

Arizona withdrew her needle, the fluid having been collected—via the small thin tube Arizona had inserted—as it pooled in the syringe.

She used the gauze that had been skewn aside when she turned the first-aid kit upside down, unwrapping the clean protectant as she laid it over the injection site, using a piece of medical tape to stick it right to the cat's skin.

Mark sighed as he finally released the kitten after having held him down, watching as Arizona placed the tape on his hairless chest. "It's good that you shaved his chest already. That tape would hurt like hell to rip off if he had all that fur."

Callie nodded in agreement before narrowing her eyes slightly. She didn't see a razor blade in sight. "How did you shave his chest?"

Arizona's smile faded as she grimaced, looking up at Mark. "I feel like this is a poor time to tell you that you need to buy a new razor."

"Are you kidding me?"

"It was used to help save his life. I feel like the razor thing seems so small in comparison." A small smile came onto Arizona's face as she looked down at the gray tabby cat, stroking the little guy's ears as gently as she could.

He would obviously need a more thorough examination by a veterinarian. But for the moment being, Arizona felt she had given the kitten enough time that he would be alright until he could get seen by the vet.

But no. The razor thing didn't seem small in comparison to Mark because it was Mark's razor. It was his razor that Arizona had used to shave a cat. Mark didn't care if the cat died, why waste his perfectly good razor?

"Can we keep him?" Calypso asked, looking up as she sniffled. Her face was still heavily tear-stained. She already loved the small cat so much, she couldn't bear to part with him.

Mark laughed dryly. "No."

"Come on. Let her keep the cat." Arizona too tried to reason with the man.

"Why don't you keep the cat?"

"Callie is allergic." Callie bashfully raised her hand. "So thank you! But, you know...no."

Mark hesitated. He didn't want to be the bad guy and deny the girl a cat, but he knew factually that they weren't ready for a pet. Not to mention the fact that Mark didn't want a pet, especially not a cat. They were needy and dirty and annoying.

"We can drop him off at a shelter the first thing tomorrow morning, okay? We can make sure that he's well fed and taken care of but we can't keep him. I'm sorry, but-"

Mark's talking was cut off when Calypso let out a loud sob, burying her face into Arizona's side as she cried loudly.

"Calypso. Come on." Mark frowned.

Arizona eyed the man with contempt as she pulled an arm around Calypso. "Dream crusher."

"I'm not a dream crusher."

"No, that's...that's the face of crushed dreams." Callie nodded as she looked over at Mark. "You find joy in crushing a little girl's dreams."

Mark was frustrated. He knew that his friends were just trying to give him a hard time, and Mark didn't find it funny at all. He didn't like making Calypso upset, but she needed to understand that she couldn't always have what she wanted. Especially not a cat.

"Calypso." Mark spoke more firmly, hoping his tone would make the girl get it together and realize how ridiculous she was being.

He knew factually that if Daisy was here, she would tell her sister to cut it out and stop crying.

But Daisy was taking a nap in her room, away from the cat-saving escapade in the kitchen. She also wasn't a huge fan of cats, and as awful as it sounded, she hadn't been nearly as heartbroken as Calypso was that Arizona had run over a cat. She found it quite easy to go to bed after that.

Calypso proceeded to sob intensely, and Mark was so over it. He didn't know what to do. He also didn't want Calypso to resent him. Daisy seemed to dislike Mark pretty majorly, and the thought of Calypso hating him too is probably what sent him over the edge.

"We'll...keep the cat." Mark exhaled, Calypso's head shooting up at that as she wiped at her eyes. "For a little bit, okay? Just until he recovers."

"Really?"

Mark glared distastefully at the cat on his counter. He could've sworn that the cat was glaring back at him with just as much hatred. "...Really."

Calypso beamed, looking as happy as ever, and Mark felt as annoyed as ever. The immense hatred that was bubbling inside for this stupid cat was off the charts.

"Aww, yay!" Arizona clapped happily. "New cat dad!"

"I hate you." Mark snapped, glaring over at a grinning Callie too. "Both of you, so much.

"This is so exciting." Callie clasped her hands together, ignoring the man's statement. "I'm so happy for you, Mark."

Mark scowled, glaring down at the cat once more. The vet's office would be closed because of New Year's, but Mark imagined that at some point, the cat would have to get fitted for a cast like Callie had guessed.

This stupid cat would cost him a fortune, and it was all Arizona's fault.

Calypso reached up to gently pet the cat's head, the animal mewing in return as she spoke softly to him. "You're gonna stay with us forever."

Mark grunted. Calypso clearly hadn't heard a word of what he had said about the cat only staying until he had recovered.

Because honestly?

He had been hoping to get rid of the thing by Valentine's Day.