In Repair
Rating: R for language/implied violence
Summary: Cristina's people are there for her when she needs them the most. Burke/Cristina with a very healthy helping of Meredith, Alex and Izzie.
Disclaimer: These characters are property of Shonda Rhimes/ABC and Grey's Anatomy. They do not belong to me. Reimbursement is not received for fictitious works.
Her heart is beating but she looks dead.
It’s the first thought that crosses his mind as he stands at the foot of her bed. There’s not really any bruising that can be seen upon first glance. Her hair is a matted mess from lying in bed for countless days and she looks much thinner than he remembered, like the bed could somehow swallow her whole. Her lips are chapped and cracked, her skin dry and pale and the only evidence that he ever laid a finger on her is the slightest swell to her left wrist and two long bruises that extend like purple fingers around her slender frame.
“You know it’s your fault she’s like this,” a voice coolly informs him from behind.
He turns to look at Meredith Grey and then he looks back to Cristina. The woman he loves lying comatose in a bed.
“Yeah,” he finally answers, his voice solemn. “I know.”
“You don’t deserve to be here,” she continues, not moving from the doorway.
“I know that too,” his words are almost hollow. Part of him hopes that if she knew he was here that she’d yell at him, take out some form of anger on him.
Cristina isn’t the type to do that though. She’d just watch him, make deep wounds with her words every few minutes but never really raise her voice.
He’d even settle for that right now.
Meredith watches the man for a moment and then finally speaks again, “Yeah, well. You’re here now. Whatever.”
With that, she disappears from the door way but pauses out of sight to watch the man approach her bedside. She holds a lot of contempt for him and the things that he’s done to Cristina but halfheartedly she hopes that maybe it will help Cristina, she hopes that everything will be okay.
Burke crosses his arms as he nears her side, studies a few fading marks for a moment before he finally drops his hand at his side. It’s not a calculated move and it’s certainly not graceful. His fingertips brush the tops of her fingers and then he takes hold.
“I’m here now.”
--
She reaches out and pushes her friend’s hair away from her face after the nurse leaves. It irritates Meredith to no end that the nurses just come in and flop her around in bed and then leave. They call it care.
Meredith calls it careless.
After she gets her straightened out, she reaches out for the chapstick that she bought in the gift shop and mumbles an apology for the bubble gum flavor and puts it on her lips. They’re slowly getting better but Cristina is not. The bruises are fading and so is she.
Meredith knows that she’s missing something, that there has to be a scan or a test or something that they can do to figure out what it is that’s keeping her from waking up. There’s no big bleeds, no huge active processes. It’s all of these little things, taking her apart bit by bit, all of these little meaningless injuries that compile into one big problem.
He took her apart bit by bit and now she can’t put Cristina back together.
She lays the chapstick aside, runs her fingers through her unruly curls and threatens in a weak voice that she’s going to cut all her fucking hair off because she’s tired of trying to keep it up. After that she adds that she’d smack her but that it would be in poor form since that’s why she ended up here in the first place.
In a broken voice, she adds an apology for not seeing it sooner.
In a whisper, she adds that she’ll never let it happen again if Cristina will just get better.
Cristina doesn’t respond.
--
Alex doesn’t say anything.
He just looks at her, sits at her side for a few minutes. He never said anything when it was his mother either. There’s no point in talking to somebody who can’t hear you. They won’t remember it and there’s nothing you’ve got to say to make it better.
No, Alex doesn’t talk.
Instead, he spends his time plotting what he could do if he could get his hands on the bastard who did this. Again and again, he’s been told it was an accident. There’s remorse and that it’s not his fault. He gets it, he knows what the disease is and how it works. He also knows that there were warning signs and that things should have been done to prevent it all.
There’s no excuse when you’re a goddamn doctor and you know what the situation could escalate to.
Fuck excuses, fuck talking, fuck it all.
Alex wants to hit something because he’s tired of seeing the women in his life take this kind of crap. Maybe him and Yang weren’t the best of friends but she’s one of his people and dammit, he’s running low on them these days with Izzie gone and O’Malley dead and Meredith all shoved up Shepherd’s ass.
He cracks his knuckles and watches her monitors and waits for the inevitable. Like his mom, he knows that it’s coming except with his mom, it never came. She always got better and she always went back for more.
While he doesn’t want Cristina to go back, Alex wants her to get better. He knows that she’s got more willpower and determination than his mother ever had.
It’s enough to give him hope that he’s not going to lose another person in his life.
--
Izzie can’t help but think that when she was nearly dying from cancer she still looked better than Cristina does now. Meredith said there were marks at one point but she doesn’t see anything. She just sees sick and frail and empty, not broken or battered or bruised.
The woman in the bed in front of her is not Cristina. She’s not the person she told about her cancer because she’s a robot that can take anything. She’s not the person who she relied on to help her find some sort of answers when all she had was questions. The woman in the bed is not Cristina and she refuses to believe that Cristina Yang would just give up like that.
She rambles at the still woman in the bed, calls her weak and pathetic. She causally throws in comments about getting to be a better surgeon, not that it was stiff competition anyway. Izzie uses every insult in the book to try to drive Cristina from her comatose state and get some sort of response out of her.
Izzie doesn’t give up as easily as everybody else does. It’s not a hopeless case. If she could beat a cancer that kills 95% of its victims, Cristina could come out of this. She will come out if it if Izzie has any say.
Tears line her eyes as she finally drops the act of pretending to be better and trying to find a way to infuse medicine into her argument and she’s finally just honest with Cristina. She grasps her hand and tells her that she needs a friend, that things are messed up with Alex and that Meredith is a basket case and for some unknown reason Burke is back and that it’s like some romantic love story and that she has to wake up for it to work. She tells her that she’s really not that great of a surgeon but that she knows Cristina will be if she’d just wake up.
When fingers move lightly against Izzie’s hand, she nearly falls off the bed in excitement. Cristina never really opens her eyes but her eyebrows raise a little and she coughs against the offensive plastic in her throat that helps her breathe but it’s more than most people have gotten.
Meredith stands in the doorway with Burke, watching Izzie happily titter about and brag that she’s the one who got Cristina respond first. She leans over and speaks in a low voice, “I really wish it had been one of us instead.”
Burke chuckles but he doesn’t respond. He just can’t wait for her to glare at him the first time she opens her eyes and really gets what’s going on.
--
Cristina is wide awake and they’re having trouble getting her off the ventilator, not that she hasn’t attempted to do it herself.
The nurse had offered to get an order for restraints but the word made all of them grimace considering what she had been through. Originally, the plan was that the four of them would stay at her side twenty-four hours a day in six hour shifts to keep her from discontinuing the ventilator on her own but somehow that plan fell through.
Meredith has to do something with Shepherd and Karev is doing something with Stevens that he probably shouldn’t be doing and that leaves Burke to sit for a countless amount of hours, fighting to stay awake.
There are no words but the look in Cristina’s eyes tells him, Go on. You can lay your head down. I swear I won’t do anything.
Burke smiles at that, knows her too well even after a couple of years apart. He doesn’t respond, feeling that using words when she can’t is an unfair advantage. Instead, he closes his hand around hers and simply shakes his head.
They go back and forth like this for a half an hour, having a conversation without words. He reaches to push her hair out of her eyes and she flinches, causing him to pause. She can’t look at him after that and for the first time, he speaks to her.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” his voice is gentle, reassuring. “That was my fault.”
It reminds Cristina of a time long before Owen ever existed and in her half drugged state, something about his voice makes her feel relaxed. She takes his hand, raises it up and his first reaction is to hold it still and tell her that he’s not going to take the tube out either.
Cristina rolls her eyes at this and brings his fingertips to brush against her cheek. It’s her way of telling him that he doesn’t scare her, he thinks and he pushes the curl from her face. He lets his fingertips trace down the side of her cheek and along her bottom lip, the part that isn’t obscured by the tube in her throat.
His eyes search hers and they resume their conversation without words. This time it has nothing to do with the tube that’s in her throat and everything to do with what will happen once that tube is out of the way.
--
Meredith stands firmly in front of Burke and Alex while Owen stands at Cristina’s side. Neither man can hear what’s being said and to be honest, neither one of them care. They both want to do to him what he’s done to Cristina and the only thing stopping them is a woman who weighs all of a hundred pounds.
The men share a glance and then look back as he reaches out to Cristina.
Burke doesn’t know if it happens because he willed it to or just because Cristina’s upset, whatever the reason when he reaches out to take her hand, she pulls away from him. Alex semi-cheers her on under his breath and then glares at Meredith and Burke when they look at him in question.
“Shut the fuck up, you two were doing it in your head.”
Neither can argue with that and they turn their attention back to Cristina. She looks away while Owen apologizes profusely and there’s no mistaking the words that leave her lips, the first thing that anybody has really ever heard her say since she woke up.
“Please leave.”
Owen looks wounded and he repeats yet another apology before he turns on his heel, a movement programmed into his body mechanics by the military, and walks from the room. He pauses to look at the gathering of people outside her room and feels a mixture of shame and anger. His eyes move to the tall man unfamiliar to him but he knows who he is at the same time.
“The difference between me and you is that I never meant to hurt her,” Owen says in an even tone.
Burke doesn’t have to react because Alex does and that reaction ends with Hunt staggering backwards holding his jaw. Alex’s fist is drawn back again when Owen straightens up but Burke grabs onto Alex’s forearm to stop him from throwing another punch.
“It’s fine,” He says, his brown eyes burning with anger but an eerie calm about his voice, “He’s not worth it. Go. Go see Cristina while she’s actually awake.”
Alex jerks his arm away from Burke’s grasp and shrugs it off before he almost stomps into Cristina’s room. He hopes one day that he meets the asshole in a dark alley because nobody fucks with his friends.
Once he’s gone, Burke advances toward the smaller man and lowers his voice, “The difference between you and I is that she’ll give me another chance. Now get the hell out before I take over where Karev started.”
A smirk forms over Owen’s face and he knows that the other man probably couldn’t do anything and that he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. He knows the full story, he knows how Cristina really feels.
That smirk fades away when Meredith steps out of Cristina’s room.
“Burke,” her voice is still somewhat solemn, stuck in that state from weeks of worrying and whispering and hoping. “She wants you.”
Owen looks at Meredith for a moment and then up to Burke who, rather than wearing a smug grin, looks somewhat excited and terrified all at the same time. He simply nods and walks away from Owen without a second thought.
Meredith waits until Burke is inside the room and then looks at Owen, “What are you looking at? Get the hell out of here.”
She doesn’t bother waiting to see if he leaves. Instead, she goes back inside Cristina’s room and sits in a chair next to Alex. They both pretend not to hear when Cristina tells Burke that she missed him. They both stop listening altogether when he asks her about what happened.
The details are too much for either of them to handle.
--
“I think it’s sweet,” Izzie announces, flopping onto the end of Cristina’s bed and nearly taking out her foot in the process.
“Watch it!” Meredith snapped, pushing her away, “There are chairs for a reason.”
“It’s fine, Mer.” Cristina says, her voice still weak from the tube in her throat for so long. She’d push herself up in the bed but she’s discovered that she’s embarrassingly weak and rather than ask for help sitting up, she stays slumped down in the bed.
“It is not.”
Izzie looks at Meredith and the fact that she’s gone just a little bit crazy in the past couple of days hasn’t escaped anybody that she has. “Fine, whatever. I’ll move.” She rises from her perch on the end of the bed and very ceremoniously drops her ass into a chair on the opposite side, a sarcastic sneer painted all over her face.
Cristina cracks a small smile at the twisted expression and then clears her throat when Meredith glares at her for it. “Sorry,” she mumbles.
There’s a little bit of confusion on Izzie’s part while she watches Meredith try to straighten out the covers that she wrinkled and then she checks whatever is hanging on the IV pump and asks Cristina if she needs something.
For the sake of giving Meredith something to do, Cristina tells her she wants some more water despite the fact that she didn’t bother drinking the last pitcher she filled up. Meredith complies easily and disappears leaving Cristina alone with Izzie and it takes 0.2 seconds for Izzie to ask the obvious.
“What the hell is wrong with her?” She almost laughs, “I mean, she’s like Florence Nightingale or something.”
“She feels guilty,” Cristina says quietly, “For what happened. She’s my person and she didn’t protect me. Or she thinks she didn’t. So she’s doing this. Whatever. Let her do it.”
Izzie is quiet for a split second, contemplating the levity of the revelation and decides that it’s too heavy right now so she picks another topic. “What about Burke?”
“What about him?” Cristina asks and this time it’s her avoiding gazes.
“He’s here and stuff. Taking care of you.”
Cristina almost opens her mouth to argue that she doesn’t need anybody to take care of her but Meredith comes back into the room and she immediately closes it. She’s letting her do her thing and saying that would ruin her thing.
“What are you guys talking about?” Meredith asks, finally settling down into a chair.
The simultaneous answers are ‘Burke’ and ‘Nothing’, from Izzie and Cristina respectively.
Meredith looks at Cristina for a minute and considers telling her that it’s a bad idea to let him stick around too much longer but it’s for selfish reasons. She knows that Cristina is happy with him here, even if it’s something that she’s not ready to admit out loud.
She knows this because she hasn’t seen Cristina this lively since he left and she’s still lying in a hospital bed.
“Nothing it is,” Meredith finally concludes, letting it slide. To draw the attention away from Cristina, she looks at Izzie and flatly announces, “Derek wants babies.”
This earns a squealing noise from Izzie and a little bit of stomping and Cristina is relieved for the change of subject.
The thought of even trying to attempt a definition for what’s going on with Burke is exhausting, let alone the act of actually doing it. Her eyes start to drift closed as she listens to the back and forth between Izzie and Meredith talking about babies and the potential of screwing them up.
Sometime after Cristina falls asleep, Izzie leans over her bed and whispers very quietly to Meredith, “I think she still loves him.”
Meredith glances at Cristina to make sure that she’s really sleeping (she’s pretended to be a couple of times) and then looks back at Izzie when she knows that she is, “I don’t think she ever stopped.”
--
“You can’t fuck up this time.”
Burke’s eyebrow arches high on his forehead and he casts his gaze in Karev’s direction, “Excuse me?”
“Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Alex mutters, glaring at him. “I said you can’t fuck up this time. You can’t go and jack around with her and then decide it’s not good enough.”
“That’s not my intention.”
“I don’t care what you’re intention is. I’m telling you don’t do it. If you’re going to be here, be here. If you’re going to change your mind, get the hell out now. She’s dealt with enough from Major Fuckup. She doesn’t need you messing things up too.”
Burke is somewhat awestruck at how seemingly protective Karev has become of Cristina and he wonders if there’s a deeper reason for it. At the same time, he knows if there was that he wouldn’t be telling him not to mess this chance up.
“I won’t,” Burke finally answers him, “Only an idiot would.”
“Yeah,” Alex replies, his eyes fixed on Burkes, “You’re an idiot for leaving her the first time so I’m not holding my breath.”
--
Some of her strength is back but she still wears out easily, especially with all of the physical therapists and occupational therapists making her do stupid exercises like kicking their hands and crap. She’d like to kick them in the face.
Of course, she’d have to have the strength to do it.
Cristina thinks it’s a goal to work towards.
They come trampling into her room, make her get out of bed and leave her for hours in a chair. The last time she tried to make it back across the room to her bed on her own, she ended up in the middle of the floor for fifteen minutes because her legs gave out on her.
It also resulted in a long lecture from Meredith.
Burke comes back from getting her a cup of coffee and she’s falling asleep in the chair so he sets it aside. Gently, he pulls the tray table from out in front of her and lifts her into his arms. Meredith would tell him to wake her up and just help her walk back to the bed but she’s worn out. The therapists have worked her too hard and she just needs a break.
One time isn’t going to hurt.
He’s careful when he lays her down in the bed and pulls the covers over her. Burke stays at her side, his hand resting on hers. Despite his better judgment he leans over and places a feather light kiss against her slightly parted lips.
He’s disappointed and thankful all at the same time when she doesn’t react.
For a few more minutes, he simply lingers there and watches her sleep. He makes all kinds of silent promises to himself that he won’t screw up and that he’ll make it up somehow that any of this ever happened to her.
When he tries to leave, her hand tightens around his. “Don’t go,” she mumbles, still half asleep, “I want you to stay.”
The request is one he complies with easily. Burke toes off his shoes, lifts his feet onto the bed and pulls her into his arms while she sleeps. His lips brush her forehead a couple of times and he makes more promises that she can’t hear before falling asleep beside her.
A couple hours pass and Meredith walks into the darkened room with a tray of food from the downstairs cafeteria because ‘the crap they feed the patients sucks’ or so Cristina says. She finds the two of them in a deep sleep, watches them for a few minutes and then leaves.
For the first time in eight days, Meredith decides to go home and sleep in her own bed because she knows that Burke will take care of her.
--
Nobody ever thought they would see the day that Cristina Yang would actually want out of a hospital but as the days wear on, she gets more anxious. As she gets stronger, she gets more demanding and she’s slowly started to wear on everybody’s nerves.
“Cristina, it’s two more days. While we’re all qualified to give you IV antibiotics, do you really want to go home with a damn line in your subclavian? You’ve been here for almost six weeks. What the hell is two more days?” Meredith argues with her.
Like an obstinate child, Cristina crosses her arms and pouts. Of course Meredith wouldn’t get it. She hasn’t been stuck in an ugly hospital gown, hasn’t been forced to shower with water that takes twenty minutes to warm up and two minutes to turn to ice, and hasn’t been fed something that looks like it belongs in a dog bowl for the past six weeks.
She doesn’t get it.
Alex, who has been sitting back eating the food that belongs in a dog bowl, finally snaps at Cristina, “Dude. Who do you think has been taking care of you this entire time? She’s eating your leftovers and helping you take spongebaths or whatever. It’s not like you’ve got any place to go anyway, so why don’t you shut the fuck up, go back to sleep and quit bitching. The doctor said you could go home on Thursday and it’s two goddamn days. At least you’re living so that you get to go home. Quit whining.”
Izzie snickers a little bit at Alex’s words and then pops a warm grape into her mouth, “I totally made a way better patient than you do.”
Cristina looks between the three of them but doesn’t say a word. She rolls over onto her side, pulling her blanket with her so her ass isn’t hanging out and closes her eyes.
“C’mon, Iz,” Alex mutters, pushing away Cristina’s lunch tray, “Somebody clearly got an overdose of bitch with her morning meds.”
Again, Izzie snickers and follows Alex out of the door.
Meredith starts to follow but she stops whenever Cristina says her name.
“I’m sorry,” Cristina mumbles. “You’re here. You didn’t need to be, but you were.”
“I needed to be.”
“It wasn’t your fault. It was mine. The stuff that happened. You did your job. You didn’t have to be here for all of this and you were. And I’m…on a bitch overdose.”
Meredith wrinkles her nose, smiles and then laughs. “I’m going to talk to the nurse about cutting back your dosage.”
“Don’t. It made Izzie go away didn’t it?” Cristina says, looking over her shoulder.
Another laugh and this time, Cristina laughs with her and thinks she might be able to make it through the next couple of days. She slides over in her bed and pats the empty spot for Meredith to join her. Once she’s in, Cristina lays her head against her shoulder and closes her eyes, “It’s just two days.”
“It’s only two days,” Meredith answers, her head resting atop Cristina’s. “You could come home with me. If you want.”
“And live in the hostel?”
“And live in the hostel,” Meredith echoes, her own eyes closing.
Cristina doesn’t answer because living with every one of her coworkers simply doesn’t sound appealing to her. Neither does going back to the place that she used to think of as home. While she realizes what Owen did was unintentional, the thought of walking back into that apartment makes her skin crawl.
“Burke got an apartment.”
It’s not so much a casual comment or suggestion as it is a question.
Even though she knows this, Cristina pretends not to. “So?”
“You two have spent a lot of time together while you’re stuck in here,” Meredith prods a little, trying not to be obvious.
“Yeah, well, I was held captive in a bed. What do you expect?”
Meredith grins a small grin, “Is that what you call it when you’re all cuddled with him in bed? Being held captive?”
Cristina throws her elbow back, maybe a little bit harder than she intended. She’s excited by the fact that she can do something harder than she intended after weeks of not being able to do anything at all. “Shut up. Nobody asked you.”
“No, but I’m asking.”
“He hasn’t asked me so it’s a non-issue.”
“Maybe he’s assuming?” Meredith asks and states all at the same time, but Cristina disagrees.
“I think he’s smart enough not to assume anything. Or it could be the meds talking.”
“It could be Alex. I think he threatened him. He kept talking like he was going to.”
Cristina opens her eyes with a look of doubt, “Evil spawn threatened Burke? Yeah, right.”
“He hit Owen. Why wouldn’t he threaten Burke?” Meredith asks with a hint of pride in her voice.
When Cristina hears that Alex hit Owen, she wishes that she could have been there to see it. Well, she was there but she wasn’t. She closes her eyes again and shrugs slightly, waits a few moments before asking very quietly, “So he got an apartment?”
Meredith knows better than to react to the question, so she merely confirms the answer.
Another few moments of silence pass before Cristina speaks again and Meredith can swear that she hears wheels turning in her head, “At least there won’t be eighteen people living there.”
--
She looks more alive than she’s looked in years.
It’s the first thing that crosses her mind as she watches her walking through the hospital parking lot. She’s smiling and she’s laughing and there’s this spring to her step that she’d probably kill Meredith for recognizing, even in silence. His fingers are knotted with hers and more than being happy, she exudes life.
Meredith waits until Cristina’s door is closed to say anything, “You know it’s your fault she’s like this.”
He glances up from the trunk as he loads her things into it and he smiles slightly, “I can’t take credit this time.”
“You shouldn’t have taken credit last time.”
“She deserved better,” Burke admits, dropping the last bag into the trunk and then closing it. “I didn’t want her to be better; I wanted her to have better.”
“And you didn’t know that she wasn’t going to get it.”
He seems to accept this answer as he palms his keys, glancing at Cristina through the rear window, “I wish I had known. I wouldn’t have ever let it happen.”
“Yeah, well. You’re here now.”
“I’m here forever,” he corrects her before pulling open his car door and joining Cristina.
Meredith watches the car pull away with a small smile and knows for the first time in a long time that everything is going to be okay.
Summary: Cristina's people are there for her when she needs them the most. Burke/Cristina with a very healthy helping of Meredith, Alex and Izzie.
Disclaimer: These characters are property of Shonda Rhimes/ABC and Grey's Anatomy. They do not belong to me. Reimbursement is not received for fictitious works.
Her heart is beating but she looks dead.
It’s the first thought that crosses his mind as he stands at the foot of her bed. There’s not really any bruising that can be seen upon first glance. Her hair is a matted mess from lying in bed for countless days and she looks much thinner than he remembered, like the bed could somehow swallow her whole. Her lips are chapped and cracked, her skin dry and pale and the only evidence that he ever laid a finger on her is the slightest swell to her left wrist and two long bruises that extend like purple fingers around her slender frame.
“You know it’s your fault she’s like this,” a voice coolly informs him from behind.
He turns to look at Meredith Grey and then he looks back to Cristina. The woman he loves lying comatose in a bed.
“Yeah,” he finally answers, his voice solemn. “I know.”
“You don’t deserve to be here,” she continues, not moving from the doorway.
“I know that too,” his words are almost hollow. Part of him hopes that if she knew he was here that she’d yell at him, take out some form of anger on him.
Cristina isn’t the type to do that though. She’d just watch him, make deep wounds with her words every few minutes but never really raise her voice.
He’d even settle for that right now.
Meredith watches the man for a moment and then finally speaks again, “Yeah, well. You’re here now. Whatever.”
With that, she disappears from the door way but pauses out of sight to watch the man approach her bedside. She holds a lot of contempt for him and the things that he’s done to Cristina but halfheartedly she hopes that maybe it will help Cristina, she hopes that everything will be okay.
Burke crosses his arms as he nears her side, studies a few fading marks for a moment before he finally drops his hand at his side. It’s not a calculated move and it’s certainly not graceful. His fingertips brush the tops of her fingers and then he takes hold.
“I’m here now.”
--
She reaches out and pushes her friend’s hair away from her face after the nurse leaves. It irritates Meredith to no end that the nurses just come in and flop her around in bed and then leave. They call it care.
Meredith calls it careless.
After she gets her straightened out, she reaches out for the chapstick that she bought in the gift shop and mumbles an apology for the bubble gum flavor and puts it on her lips. They’re slowly getting better but Cristina is not. The bruises are fading and so is she.
Meredith knows that she’s missing something, that there has to be a scan or a test or something that they can do to figure out what it is that’s keeping her from waking up. There’s no big bleeds, no huge active processes. It’s all of these little things, taking her apart bit by bit, all of these little meaningless injuries that compile into one big problem.
He took her apart bit by bit and now she can’t put Cristina back together.
She lays the chapstick aside, runs her fingers through her unruly curls and threatens in a weak voice that she’s going to cut all her fucking hair off because she’s tired of trying to keep it up. After that she adds that she’d smack her but that it would be in poor form since that’s why she ended up here in the first place.
In a broken voice, she adds an apology for not seeing it sooner.
In a whisper, she adds that she’ll never let it happen again if Cristina will just get better.
Cristina doesn’t respond.
--
Alex doesn’t say anything.
He just looks at her, sits at her side for a few minutes. He never said anything when it was his mother either. There’s no point in talking to somebody who can’t hear you. They won’t remember it and there’s nothing you’ve got to say to make it better.
No, Alex doesn’t talk.
Instead, he spends his time plotting what he could do if he could get his hands on the bastard who did this. Again and again, he’s been told it was an accident. There’s remorse and that it’s not his fault. He gets it, he knows what the disease is and how it works. He also knows that there were warning signs and that things should have been done to prevent it all.
There’s no excuse when you’re a goddamn doctor and you know what the situation could escalate to.
Fuck excuses, fuck talking, fuck it all.
Alex wants to hit something because he’s tired of seeing the women in his life take this kind of crap. Maybe him and Yang weren’t the best of friends but she’s one of his people and dammit, he’s running low on them these days with Izzie gone and O’Malley dead and Meredith all shoved up Shepherd’s ass.
He cracks his knuckles and watches her monitors and waits for the inevitable. Like his mom, he knows that it’s coming except with his mom, it never came. She always got better and she always went back for more.
While he doesn’t want Cristina to go back, Alex wants her to get better. He knows that she’s got more willpower and determination than his mother ever had.
It’s enough to give him hope that he’s not going to lose another person in his life.
--
Izzie can’t help but think that when she was nearly dying from cancer she still looked better than Cristina does now. Meredith said there were marks at one point but she doesn’t see anything. She just sees sick and frail and empty, not broken or battered or bruised.
The woman in the bed in front of her is not Cristina. She’s not the person she told about her cancer because she’s a robot that can take anything. She’s not the person who she relied on to help her find some sort of answers when all she had was questions. The woman in the bed is not Cristina and she refuses to believe that Cristina Yang would just give up like that.
She rambles at the still woman in the bed, calls her weak and pathetic. She causally throws in comments about getting to be a better surgeon, not that it was stiff competition anyway. Izzie uses every insult in the book to try to drive Cristina from her comatose state and get some sort of response out of her.
Izzie doesn’t give up as easily as everybody else does. It’s not a hopeless case. If she could beat a cancer that kills 95% of its victims, Cristina could come out of this. She will come out if it if Izzie has any say.
Tears line her eyes as she finally drops the act of pretending to be better and trying to find a way to infuse medicine into her argument and she’s finally just honest with Cristina. She grasps her hand and tells her that she needs a friend, that things are messed up with Alex and that Meredith is a basket case and for some unknown reason Burke is back and that it’s like some romantic love story and that she has to wake up for it to work. She tells her that she’s really not that great of a surgeon but that she knows Cristina will be if she’d just wake up.
When fingers move lightly against Izzie’s hand, she nearly falls off the bed in excitement. Cristina never really opens her eyes but her eyebrows raise a little and she coughs against the offensive plastic in her throat that helps her breathe but it’s more than most people have gotten.
Meredith stands in the doorway with Burke, watching Izzie happily titter about and brag that she’s the one who got Cristina respond first. She leans over and speaks in a low voice, “I really wish it had been one of us instead.”
Burke chuckles but he doesn’t respond. He just can’t wait for her to glare at him the first time she opens her eyes and really gets what’s going on.
--
Cristina is wide awake and they’re having trouble getting her off the ventilator, not that she hasn’t attempted to do it herself.
The nurse had offered to get an order for restraints but the word made all of them grimace considering what she had been through. Originally, the plan was that the four of them would stay at her side twenty-four hours a day in six hour shifts to keep her from discontinuing the ventilator on her own but somehow that plan fell through.
Meredith has to do something with Shepherd and Karev is doing something with Stevens that he probably shouldn’t be doing and that leaves Burke to sit for a countless amount of hours, fighting to stay awake.
There are no words but the look in Cristina’s eyes tells him, Go on. You can lay your head down. I swear I won’t do anything.
Burke smiles at that, knows her too well even after a couple of years apart. He doesn’t respond, feeling that using words when she can’t is an unfair advantage. Instead, he closes his hand around hers and simply shakes his head.
They go back and forth like this for a half an hour, having a conversation without words. He reaches to push her hair out of her eyes and she flinches, causing him to pause. She can’t look at him after that and for the first time, he speaks to her.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” his voice is gentle, reassuring. “That was my fault.”
It reminds Cristina of a time long before Owen ever existed and in her half drugged state, something about his voice makes her feel relaxed. She takes his hand, raises it up and his first reaction is to hold it still and tell her that he’s not going to take the tube out either.
Cristina rolls her eyes at this and brings his fingertips to brush against her cheek. It’s her way of telling him that he doesn’t scare her, he thinks and he pushes the curl from her face. He lets his fingertips trace down the side of her cheek and along her bottom lip, the part that isn’t obscured by the tube in her throat.
His eyes search hers and they resume their conversation without words. This time it has nothing to do with the tube that’s in her throat and everything to do with what will happen once that tube is out of the way.
--
Meredith stands firmly in front of Burke and Alex while Owen stands at Cristina’s side. Neither man can hear what’s being said and to be honest, neither one of them care. They both want to do to him what he’s done to Cristina and the only thing stopping them is a woman who weighs all of a hundred pounds.
The men share a glance and then look back as he reaches out to Cristina.
Burke doesn’t know if it happens because he willed it to or just because Cristina’s upset, whatever the reason when he reaches out to take her hand, she pulls away from him. Alex semi-cheers her on under his breath and then glares at Meredith and Burke when they look at him in question.
“Shut the fuck up, you two were doing it in your head.”
Neither can argue with that and they turn their attention back to Cristina. She looks away while Owen apologizes profusely and there’s no mistaking the words that leave her lips, the first thing that anybody has really ever heard her say since she woke up.
“Please leave.”
Owen looks wounded and he repeats yet another apology before he turns on his heel, a movement programmed into his body mechanics by the military, and walks from the room. He pauses to look at the gathering of people outside her room and feels a mixture of shame and anger. His eyes move to the tall man unfamiliar to him but he knows who he is at the same time.
“The difference between me and you is that I never meant to hurt her,” Owen says in an even tone.
Burke doesn’t have to react because Alex does and that reaction ends with Hunt staggering backwards holding his jaw. Alex’s fist is drawn back again when Owen straightens up but Burke grabs onto Alex’s forearm to stop him from throwing another punch.
“It’s fine,” He says, his brown eyes burning with anger but an eerie calm about his voice, “He’s not worth it. Go. Go see Cristina while she’s actually awake.”
Alex jerks his arm away from Burke’s grasp and shrugs it off before he almost stomps into Cristina’s room. He hopes one day that he meets the asshole in a dark alley because nobody fucks with his friends.
Once he’s gone, Burke advances toward the smaller man and lowers his voice, “The difference between you and I is that she’ll give me another chance. Now get the hell out before I take over where Karev started.”
A smirk forms over Owen’s face and he knows that the other man probably couldn’t do anything and that he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. He knows the full story, he knows how Cristina really feels.
That smirk fades away when Meredith steps out of Cristina’s room.
“Burke,” her voice is still somewhat solemn, stuck in that state from weeks of worrying and whispering and hoping. “She wants you.”
Owen looks at Meredith for a moment and then up to Burke who, rather than wearing a smug grin, looks somewhat excited and terrified all at the same time. He simply nods and walks away from Owen without a second thought.
Meredith waits until Burke is inside the room and then looks at Owen, “What are you looking at? Get the hell out of here.”
She doesn’t bother waiting to see if he leaves. Instead, she goes back inside Cristina’s room and sits in a chair next to Alex. They both pretend not to hear when Cristina tells Burke that she missed him. They both stop listening altogether when he asks her about what happened.
The details are too much for either of them to handle.
--
“I think it’s sweet,” Izzie announces, flopping onto the end of Cristina’s bed and nearly taking out her foot in the process.
“Watch it!” Meredith snapped, pushing her away, “There are chairs for a reason.”
“It’s fine, Mer.” Cristina says, her voice still weak from the tube in her throat for so long. She’d push herself up in the bed but she’s discovered that she’s embarrassingly weak and rather than ask for help sitting up, she stays slumped down in the bed.
“It is not.”
Izzie looks at Meredith and the fact that she’s gone just a little bit crazy in the past couple of days hasn’t escaped anybody that she has. “Fine, whatever. I’ll move.” She rises from her perch on the end of the bed and very ceremoniously drops her ass into a chair on the opposite side, a sarcastic sneer painted all over her face.
Cristina cracks a small smile at the twisted expression and then clears her throat when Meredith glares at her for it. “Sorry,” she mumbles.
There’s a little bit of confusion on Izzie’s part while she watches Meredith try to straighten out the covers that she wrinkled and then she checks whatever is hanging on the IV pump and asks Cristina if she needs something.
For the sake of giving Meredith something to do, Cristina tells her she wants some more water despite the fact that she didn’t bother drinking the last pitcher she filled up. Meredith complies easily and disappears leaving Cristina alone with Izzie and it takes 0.2 seconds for Izzie to ask the obvious.
“What the hell is wrong with her?” She almost laughs, “I mean, she’s like Florence Nightingale or something.”
“She feels guilty,” Cristina says quietly, “For what happened. She’s my person and she didn’t protect me. Or she thinks she didn’t. So she’s doing this. Whatever. Let her do it.”
Izzie is quiet for a split second, contemplating the levity of the revelation and decides that it’s too heavy right now so she picks another topic. “What about Burke?”
“What about him?” Cristina asks and this time it’s her avoiding gazes.
“He’s here and stuff. Taking care of you.”
Cristina almost opens her mouth to argue that she doesn’t need anybody to take care of her but Meredith comes back into the room and she immediately closes it. She’s letting her do her thing and saying that would ruin her thing.
“What are you guys talking about?” Meredith asks, finally settling down into a chair.
The simultaneous answers are ‘Burke’ and ‘Nothing’, from Izzie and Cristina respectively.
Meredith looks at Cristina for a minute and considers telling her that it’s a bad idea to let him stick around too much longer but it’s for selfish reasons. She knows that Cristina is happy with him here, even if it’s something that she’s not ready to admit out loud.
She knows this because she hasn’t seen Cristina this lively since he left and she’s still lying in a hospital bed.
“Nothing it is,” Meredith finally concludes, letting it slide. To draw the attention away from Cristina, she looks at Izzie and flatly announces, “Derek wants babies.”
This earns a squealing noise from Izzie and a little bit of stomping and Cristina is relieved for the change of subject.
The thought of even trying to attempt a definition for what’s going on with Burke is exhausting, let alone the act of actually doing it. Her eyes start to drift closed as she listens to the back and forth between Izzie and Meredith talking about babies and the potential of screwing them up.
Sometime after Cristina falls asleep, Izzie leans over her bed and whispers very quietly to Meredith, “I think she still loves him.”
Meredith glances at Cristina to make sure that she’s really sleeping (she’s pretended to be a couple of times) and then looks back at Izzie when she knows that she is, “I don’t think she ever stopped.”
--
“You can’t fuck up this time.”
Burke’s eyebrow arches high on his forehead and he casts his gaze in Karev’s direction, “Excuse me?”
“Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Alex mutters, glaring at him. “I said you can’t fuck up this time. You can’t go and jack around with her and then decide it’s not good enough.”
“That’s not my intention.”
“I don’t care what you’re intention is. I’m telling you don’t do it. If you’re going to be here, be here. If you’re going to change your mind, get the hell out now. She’s dealt with enough from Major Fuckup. She doesn’t need you messing things up too.”
Burke is somewhat awestruck at how seemingly protective Karev has become of Cristina and he wonders if there’s a deeper reason for it. At the same time, he knows if there was that he wouldn’t be telling him not to mess this chance up.
“I won’t,” Burke finally answers him, “Only an idiot would.”
“Yeah,” Alex replies, his eyes fixed on Burkes, “You’re an idiot for leaving her the first time so I’m not holding my breath.”
--
Some of her strength is back but she still wears out easily, especially with all of the physical therapists and occupational therapists making her do stupid exercises like kicking their hands and crap. She’d like to kick them in the face.
Of course, she’d have to have the strength to do it.
Cristina thinks it’s a goal to work towards.
They come trampling into her room, make her get out of bed and leave her for hours in a chair. The last time she tried to make it back across the room to her bed on her own, she ended up in the middle of the floor for fifteen minutes because her legs gave out on her.
It also resulted in a long lecture from Meredith.
Burke comes back from getting her a cup of coffee and she’s falling asleep in the chair so he sets it aside. Gently, he pulls the tray table from out in front of her and lifts her into his arms. Meredith would tell him to wake her up and just help her walk back to the bed but she’s worn out. The therapists have worked her too hard and she just needs a break.
One time isn’t going to hurt.
He’s careful when he lays her down in the bed and pulls the covers over her. Burke stays at her side, his hand resting on hers. Despite his better judgment he leans over and places a feather light kiss against her slightly parted lips.
He’s disappointed and thankful all at the same time when she doesn’t react.
For a few more minutes, he simply lingers there and watches her sleep. He makes all kinds of silent promises to himself that he won’t screw up and that he’ll make it up somehow that any of this ever happened to her.
When he tries to leave, her hand tightens around his. “Don’t go,” she mumbles, still half asleep, “I want you to stay.”
The request is one he complies with easily. Burke toes off his shoes, lifts his feet onto the bed and pulls her into his arms while she sleeps. His lips brush her forehead a couple of times and he makes more promises that she can’t hear before falling asleep beside her.
A couple hours pass and Meredith walks into the darkened room with a tray of food from the downstairs cafeteria because ‘the crap they feed the patients sucks’ or so Cristina says. She finds the two of them in a deep sleep, watches them for a few minutes and then leaves.
For the first time in eight days, Meredith decides to go home and sleep in her own bed because she knows that Burke will take care of her.
--
Nobody ever thought they would see the day that Cristina Yang would actually want out of a hospital but as the days wear on, she gets more anxious. As she gets stronger, she gets more demanding and she’s slowly started to wear on everybody’s nerves.
“Cristina, it’s two more days. While we’re all qualified to give you IV antibiotics, do you really want to go home with a damn line in your subclavian? You’ve been here for almost six weeks. What the hell is two more days?” Meredith argues with her.
Like an obstinate child, Cristina crosses her arms and pouts. Of course Meredith wouldn’t get it. She hasn’t been stuck in an ugly hospital gown, hasn’t been forced to shower with water that takes twenty minutes to warm up and two minutes to turn to ice, and hasn’t been fed something that looks like it belongs in a dog bowl for the past six weeks.
She doesn’t get it.
Alex, who has been sitting back eating the food that belongs in a dog bowl, finally snaps at Cristina, “Dude. Who do you think has been taking care of you this entire time? She’s eating your leftovers and helping you take spongebaths or whatever. It’s not like you’ve got any place to go anyway, so why don’t you shut the fuck up, go back to sleep and quit bitching. The doctor said you could go home on Thursday and it’s two goddamn days. At least you’re living so that you get to go home. Quit whining.”
Izzie snickers a little bit at Alex’s words and then pops a warm grape into her mouth, “I totally made a way better patient than you do.”
Cristina looks between the three of them but doesn’t say a word. She rolls over onto her side, pulling her blanket with her so her ass isn’t hanging out and closes her eyes.
“C’mon, Iz,” Alex mutters, pushing away Cristina’s lunch tray, “Somebody clearly got an overdose of bitch with her morning meds.”
Again, Izzie snickers and follows Alex out of the door.
Meredith starts to follow but she stops whenever Cristina says her name.
“I’m sorry,” Cristina mumbles. “You’re here. You didn’t need to be, but you were.”
“I needed to be.”
“It wasn’t your fault. It was mine. The stuff that happened. You did your job. You didn’t have to be here for all of this and you were. And I’m…on a bitch overdose.”
Meredith wrinkles her nose, smiles and then laughs. “I’m going to talk to the nurse about cutting back your dosage.”
“Don’t. It made Izzie go away didn’t it?” Cristina says, looking over her shoulder.
Another laugh and this time, Cristina laughs with her and thinks she might be able to make it through the next couple of days. She slides over in her bed and pats the empty spot for Meredith to join her. Once she’s in, Cristina lays her head against her shoulder and closes her eyes, “It’s just two days.”
“It’s only two days,” Meredith answers, her head resting atop Cristina’s. “You could come home with me. If you want.”
“And live in the hostel?”
“And live in the hostel,” Meredith echoes, her own eyes closing.
Cristina doesn’t answer because living with every one of her coworkers simply doesn’t sound appealing to her. Neither does going back to the place that she used to think of as home. While she realizes what Owen did was unintentional, the thought of walking back into that apartment makes her skin crawl.
“Burke got an apartment.”
It’s not so much a casual comment or suggestion as it is a question.
Even though she knows this, Cristina pretends not to. “So?”
“You two have spent a lot of time together while you’re stuck in here,” Meredith prods a little, trying not to be obvious.
“Yeah, well, I was held captive in a bed. What do you expect?”
Meredith grins a small grin, “Is that what you call it when you’re all cuddled with him in bed? Being held captive?”
Cristina throws her elbow back, maybe a little bit harder than she intended. She’s excited by the fact that she can do something harder than she intended after weeks of not being able to do anything at all. “Shut up. Nobody asked you.”
“No, but I’m asking.”
“He hasn’t asked me so it’s a non-issue.”
“Maybe he’s assuming?” Meredith asks and states all at the same time, but Cristina disagrees.
“I think he’s smart enough not to assume anything. Or it could be the meds talking.”
“It could be Alex. I think he threatened him. He kept talking like he was going to.”
Cristina opens her eyes with a look of doubt, “Evil spawn threatened Burke? Yeah, right.”
“He hit Owen. Why wouldn’t he threaten Burke?” Meredith asks with a hint of pride in her voice.
When Cristina hears that Alex hit Owen, she wishes that she could have been there to see it. Well, she was there but she wasn’t. She closes her eyes again and shrugs slightly, waits a few moments before asking very quietly, “So he got an apartment?”
Meredith knows better than to react to the question, so she merely confirms the answer.
Another few moments of silence pass before Cristina speaks again and Meredith can swear that she hears wheels turning in her head, “At least there won’t be eighteen people living there.”
--
She looks more alive than she’s looked in years.
It’s the first thing that crosses her mind as she watches her walking through the hospital parking lot. She’s smiling and she’s laughing and there’s this spring to her step that she’d probably kill Meredith for recognizing, even in silence. His fingers are knotted with hers and more than being happy, she exudes life.
Meredith waits until Cristina’s door is closed to say anything, “You know it’s your fault she’s like this.”
He glances up from the trunk as he loads her things into it and he smiles slightly, “I can’t take credit this time.”
“You shouldn’t have taken credit last time.”
“She deserved better,” Burke admits, dropping the last bag into the trunk and then closing it. “I didn’t want her to be better; I wanted her to have better.”
“And you didn’t know that she wasn’t going to get it.”
He seems to accept this answer as he palms his keys, glancing at Cristina through the rear window, “I wish I had known. I wouldn’t have ever let it happen.”
“Yeah, well. You’re here now.”
“I’m here forever,” he corrects her before pulling open his car door and joining Cristina.
Meredith watches the car pull away with a small smile and knows for the first time in a long time that everything is going to be okay.