Déjà-vu
« You can survive only if nothing is necessary to you. » Paul Auster
Let the bubbles burst into your throat. Close the eyes to feel the bitter flow submerge you. Wait impatiently for you thoughts to dissolve. Forget about the world an instant. Invent a present that still has a future. Talk and be sharp as if nothing mattered. As if you were still the same. As if nothing was happening that could deprive you of being happy. As if History didn't make circles.
She left time when she entered Joe's. At least, that's what she had whished for. But time is there, launching assaults on her walls. The Past, the present and this forever changed future .
A few moments ago, she has entered this store, pushed by her survival instinct. Erase the present to buy one elsewhere. Believe that tomorrow may still happen. 99 cents and you buy hope. 99 cents.and you are no longer captive. 99 cents and you go on living. It's not just drawing out cheap junk from their well ordered department. It's not just trying to randomly fill the emptiness that has grown inside her. Every time her hand brushes an object, she hesitates. Each one of them makes spring up a not so harmless question.
How will tomorrow look like ?
And to ask this question to herself is like calling of all her strength the course of time. It's like clinging to its tick-tock, hoping it will carry you away. In her case, the act doesn't matter. What is important is the process.
She is investing into the future.
They aren't just a tiny chair or Sudoku. They are her belief that life goes on. They are her single bond with tomorrow. Without them, the clock would stop. Without them, she would be stuck into this present which used to promise her bright days to come. Into this present which has threwn a veil across the future and reawakened the past. Into this present in which her person has stopped breathing.
So, each of her gestures is a step towards the possibilities that haven't disappeared yet. An attempt to retie the thread which has just been cut. It's an escape ahead, a race towards what was to be. And it's quite ironic when your name is Cristina Yang and that you are used to making backward leaps.
Then, one by one , she grabs the crappy things and introduces them into her life. Into her projects. Into her becoming. Because if she stops thinking that she may need them, that they may be useful, that she may want one day spend time racking her brain on numbers in boxes, she knows she'll be trapped forever into this moment.
Glued.
Bogged down.
Into this moment when the Fates cut the thread. Into this moment when, once again, someone is going to leave her life. Even if that invented future is highly unlikely, it is at least a future. A future to replace the one that has been stolen . She wants to lose herself into the ways which are offered to her.
After all, it's America. And everything is possible there.
A road has been closed but million of them are still within reach.
For 99 cents you buy cakes just in case you feel peckish.
For 99 cents you buy a frame for memories you haven't yet.
For 99 cents you buy days to come.
Already, alcohol has dispersed. Her future has flawn away with it. The present is everywhere which watches for her.
In America for 99 cents, you buy pieces of furniture.
But who would like to own a tiny yellow plastic chair? Certainly not her. Neither yesterday, nor today and there won't be any tomorrow. Because time is suspended. Because the death, lurking around, destroyed any prospect.
She is alone with the present and this past which curiously looks like it. She thinks that it feels like déja-vu. And that's why she couldn't stay. She knows what will happen next. She knows how the impotence slowly consumes you and destroys the life you had anticipated. She has already seen hers stop whereas, in front of her, another's life escaped. She knows that fighting is vain. She knows that it isn't worth holding on tight to faith, whatever you do, the time is the only master. It decides who lives or dies. The hope, the love, the rage have nothing to do with that.
Then she drinks. But alcohol doesn't have the expected effect. Her thoughts are fuzzy but don't fade. Past, present, future entangled. There's only chaos left. She doesn't know anymore where is the beginning, where is the end. So she gives up beer for numbers. It's quality Sudoku. It can help. She tries to give the figures their right place. Their only place. She puts order in what has been muddled up.
Each thing in its place, and a place for each thing. Thus it was supposed to be.
Before Meredith drowns. Before life fails her.
She was going to get married and wanted to tell her person. She had a future in which Meredith was a bridesmaid. A future in which they were delighted.
This future was her choice. Burke was her future.
Cristina Yang knows the power of words. That's why she uses them with parsimony. What is said becomes real. You can't deny it. You can't backstrack. The confidence was supposed to seal their pact.
She was going to get married. She was in love. Meredith had to know it. To tell her was like engraving the promise in the stone. But Meredith will never know. Meredith is going to leave her and change the course of history. It wasn't supposed to happen like this. It is never supposed to happen like this, she knows it and yet she allowed herself to be trapped. She has dreamed, she has anticipated. She has seen a life she liked and she has believed it could be hers. But once again, it was wrested from her grip as if she didn't deserve it.
Déjà-vu.
The bitterness which fills up her throat is no longer from beer. It is the bitterness of a little girl who knows too well destiny's games. It is resignation faced with the repetition of history. Faced with the nonsense of such a fight.
She might as well nip the Hope in the bud since Hope will never grow old. And just try to survive.
When the enemy is stronger than you, what would be the point to face it? It is not cynicism, it is resignation. Cristina Yang hasn't forgotten.
She has been this child who prays with all the enthusiasm and purity of her heart. She too has wanted to believe in the power of hope. The one which moves heaven and earth, which works miracles. But blood has went on running, heat has left the body she was trying to warm up with her words. Her tears and calls of despair have failed preventing life from leaving his body. Love has been unable to keep him at her side. The prayers have been lost in the empty night. Their hands entwined, she couldn't do anything but look at his eyes darkening. Her cries, her threats and even the soft words cut with sobs have been useless. She has called his name with all her might . Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Until her voice dies with him. That did not make any difference. She was still there and he was not.
Despite the love, the tenderness, the need.
Then what is the use of loving? What is the use of being there for them when one doesn't let you have the last word? What is the use of believing that they will never leave you alone? That they will always be there for you as they promised?
It was a long time ago but it is still today.
Déjà-vu.
She might as well make the first move and protect herself. Not look at her own fallibility . To leave before impotence and guilt overwhelms you. Since you can't do anything against it, what is the use of facing death?
Cristina Yang has never prayed again since that day. If God had remained insensitive to a so intense pain, He couldn't exist. Or worse. He didn't care. He hadn't deigned to save them. Or He hadn't been able to.
And she had moved her faith to a more powerful and reliable God. Science. Yes, medicine could have saved him, could have saved them. Because she also lost her life this day. A life full of promises, a life in which he helped her to grow, a life she had never thought could be different.
She would have preferred that everything dies on this road. That this moment, so painful it is, be the last one. A present preferable to the future that was coming. A present when he was still there. A present for eternity.
But time had pursued its race. She was told she still had a future even if she had no idea how to reach it.
Then, she pressed on without really leaving this last moment. She refused to give up this piece of the life which should have been hers. With him at her side.
She remained wedged into this September evening, on a desert road, waiting for an ambulance which won't arrive in time. She built herself out of time. She was nothing but present. No past. No future.
It was easy.
Memories and projects are filled up with people you care for. That's what makes them valuable. If you refuse any tie, your past as your future will remain empty. And that's what she did.
Having classmates, colleagues but no friends. Flirting, chatting up, having sex but never falling in love. During years, she excluded people from her life. No relation, no loyalty, no disappointment.
She had lost her capacity to make plans. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't imagine any future anymore, she couldn't imagine anything anymore. She only belonged to the present in which she was caught.
Her future was nothing but a white page, full of uncertainty. If life was a story, she had nothing left, no plot to unroll. Her only certainty was related to surgery.
She had drawn aside one by one every other characters. She lived from day to day, by herself, for herself, because she was the only one she could ever stand losing. She was her own world. She ruled it. She was the author and the single character.
But it was before Seattle Grace. It was before Meredith. It was before Burke.