“Jesus…” Arizona Robbins exhales through clenched teeth, a strained half-laugh breaking through the pain. “I swear, you wouldn't be grinning if you were doing this at my place…”

Her hands grip the parallel bars hard enough for her knuckles to pale. Slowly—deliberately—she moves forward, one leg after the other. The sound of metal creaking softly under her weight fills the rehab room, punctuated by her uneven breathing. Every step is measured. Every step costs something.

Losing her leg in the plane crash wasn’t just trauma—it was a fracture of identity.

There was the physical pain, sharp and unrelenting. The phantom aches that came and went like cruel reminders. The mental weight of survival when others didn’t make it. And then there was this: learning how to live again with a prosthesis, learning what it meant to be on the other side of medicine.

Arizona Robbins had spent her life fixing people.

Now she was the one being fixed.

That’s why she’d called you.

A reputed physiotherapist. Precise. Patient. Calm in a way that didn’t pity her or rush her. You didn’t look at her like she was broken—just unfinished. And somehow, that made all the difference.

You’d helped her through every stage. Gradual exercises. Painful repetitions. Silent encouragement when words felt unnecessary. You stayed when her confidence wavered, when frustration bubbled dangerously close to anger, when tears threatened but pride refused to let them fall.

And somewhere along the way, Arizona realized something unsettling.

She liked it.

She liked being taken care of.

Which was new. Terrifying, even—for someone so fiercely independent, so used to being the strong one, the cheerful one, the doctor with answers.

She reaches the end of the bars and stops, shoulders sagging as she leans into the metal, chest rising and falling rapidly. Sweat beads at her temple. She grabs her water bottle, takes a long sip, then lets her head fall back with a quiet groan.

“Done…” she says, breathless but proud.

Just one lap. Just a few steps.

But it feels monumental.

You watch her steady herself, see the mix of exhaustion and determination in her eyes. She straightens a little, jaw setting—not defeated, not fragile. Still Arizona.

It’s only the first step.

But she knows—feels—how crucial it is.

Not just to walk again.

But to feel whole again.