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Cristina

Cristina had known from the moment Izzie had spilled her secret, the moment their worlds had shattered around them, that she would be facing a difficult few months ahead of her. At the time, she had comforted herself with the thought that at least she was better off than Izzie. Hell, some might say she was better off than all of them: Meredith, George, and of course, Alex. She knew what everyone thought; Cristina, the unfeeling one who never liked Izzie anyways. How misunderstood she was. She was definitely feeling the strain of having to be the person with all the answers, the rock, solid and unyielding, dependable and predictable. It wasn't the role she had ever asked for, but it always seemed to fall on her, either by default or habit.

And besides, she loved Izzie too. Cristina knew she didn't show it, but it's not like that was treatment unique to Izzie. She had said "I love you" to her mother only once in her entire adult life. She smiled seldom and laughed even less, but that was just the way she was, the way she'd been since she could remember. But Izzie was still important to her. It was Izzie who brought them back down to earth, despite the fact that she was a crazy dreamer. It was Izzie who balanced out their misery, who made cupcakes for birthdays and decorated the Christmas tree when no one else felt like getting festive. How Cristina had come to need Izzie.

This is why her new job was so undesirable, so achingly painful, so difficult. She had to keep Izzie alive. She had to be not only the doctor who decided which medicines were the most appropriate for her patient's disease-ridden body, but also the sheriff who policed the rules that everyone neglected when it was one of their own laying in the hospital bed. She had to keep her focus when everyone else's vision was becoming increasingly fuzzy, and sometimes she wanted nothing more than to succumb to the easy blur, to play the role of the weary but hopeful and supportive friend. Instead, she had to be the clear-headed responsible one. Just as she needed Izzie for her optimism and cupcakes, they all needed Cristina for her responsibility and remoteness.

At least now, Christina thought, things were beginning to settle down. Izzie's surgery had completely eliminated the tumour as far as they knew. There had been a moment of sheer panic as Izzie's memory struggled and Cristina thought that that was perhaps the most terrifying part of the entire cancer ordeal. She knew Alex felt so too, questioning whether or not he had made the biggest mistake of his life letting her get the surgery, knowing it was completely irreversible. Cristina knew that if she had been the one with the tumour, she would take death over incapacitation any day. Thankfully however, even that dark cloud had lifted, and Cristina's hope in Izzie and faith in modern medicine had been restored. Izzie had remembered and was on the path to recovery.

Cristina observed as Alex leapt to Izzie's bed in a case of ecstatic disbelief. She watched as Izzie smiled radiantly back, a vision, even weak and sick and without hair. Cristina sighed softly before leaving to find Swender. She could appreciate that these two needed a moment. Izzie wasn't completely out of the woods; her kidneys were still slower than she would like but that was manageable, a minor detail compared to the war they'd just won. Cristina would return to take care of that later.

"Dr. Yang, we need you!"

Cristina lifted her head, instincts fully alert and ready for action. She turned in the direction of the voice, an older nurse with graying hair.

"What is it?" Christina demanded, picking up her pace and following the nurse. But she heard none of the nurse's reply, only the deep, commanding voice of Alex.

"Put a mask on her! Get Yang down here already!"

"Alex, what happened?" Cristina asked, returning to her professional tone, displaying no emotion. To a random passerby it would seem that Cristina's relationship to this patient, to Izzie, extended to no more than that of her doctor.

"She crashed. I had her back for two God damned minutes. Izzie, look at me. Open your eyes!" The desperation in Alex's voice was becoming all too familiar to Cristina lately, a fact that discomforted her. She forced herself to concentrate.

"Page Shepherd, page the Chief and Bailey, right now," Cristina instructed, willing her voice to remain level.

She didn't have enough energy to spare to stop Alex from working on his wife. She needed to be more doctor than sheriff right now. Cristina focused all of her attention back on Izzie, trying to bring life back to her while she waited for the back-up crew, for the people who would know what to do.

Cristina went through all the motions of a real doctor. She did everything she was supposed to do, everything she would ever be expected to do. She gazed up at Alex for just a moment. She could see the craze in his eyes and realized she was watching the rapid dissolution of not one but two lives, right in front of her. In that moment that she looked at Alex, she saw a person in love, a person at a dead end, a person who was already disappearing into a lonely, furious existence. It was horrifying and mesmerising and about a thousand other things Cristina had no hope of rationalising.

"What happened?"

"Is it her brain?"

Somehow, Cristina managed to keep her composure as she informed her two seniors of the situation. The diagnosis: hyperkalemia. Cristina was ready to fly into a rage just from that word. After everything that Izzie had gone through, that they had gone through, from chemotherapy to surgery to riskier surgery to memory loss, only to be dying from too much potassium? Life was a cruel, cruel joke.

The expression on Dr. Bailey's face did little to reassure Cristina. Not that she didn't already know. They were treading on thin ice. They didn't have many options left. Izzie, poor, poor Izzie. Alex! Poor, poor Alex.

"Give me an intubation tray," Alex said, surprisingly calm.

What did he just say? Cristina thought.

"Alex," she said, knowing they were stepping into dangerous territory now. They'd been here once before, with Denny. Alex gave her a disgusted look, knowing exactly where this was going and not backing down.

It was time for her to play sheriff again.

"She signed a DNR," she confided to Dr. Bailey and the Chief, still standing at the bottom of the bed processing the disaster that was their colleague, their employee, their friend.

"Shut up, Yang." Alex spat the words hatefully, as if it were Cristina herself who had signed the DNR for Izzie.

"She knew this might happen, that's why she signed it," she urged. Ethics, morals, having to sleep at night, wanting to keep her friend alive… All of these things ran through her head at lightning speed. Again she thought of being in this situation, of having to choose between death or a life in bed. Then she thought about Izzie, about how much she needed her to live, how important she was. Cristina knew she was in the wrong room, knew she had no business treating Izzie when she was this emotionally invested. But did either of them?

She was counting on the Chief, on Dr. Bailey, to bring her back down. The air was thick with fear, with dirty fear that made it difficult to breathe. They didn't teach you how to do this in medical school.

"Alex, this isn't what she wants."

But oh, how she wanted it. They all did. They wanted Izzie, every single one of them.

Cristina looked at the Chief, waiting for instructions. Hoping, hoping, hoping.

Alex was doing chest compressions, using all his strength to pump life into her. Cristina knew that this image would forever be burned into her mind. It was so powerful, she felt like throwing up.

"Screw the DNR! Hand me those paddles."

Cristina sighed, more of an inward release than a physical one. She had to give this everything. This really was their last chance. This had to work. Life was the only option for Izzie.

Cristina quickly took over Alex's work, compressing Izzie's chest. Her arms became machines, mechanically pumping the small organ that held so much at stake, for so many people.

Cristina doesn't know how she managed it. She doesn't know how, in all the chaos that was the room, with monitors bleeping, with shocks being fired, with orders being barked, with Alex sobbing against the wall, that she managed to look down. But she did. Cristina looked down at Izzie and saw an almost smile on her face, along with an intangible peace.

"Clear!"

Cristina held her hands up, away from Izzie, as if she was surrendering herself. She then did surrender herself, to the mercy of the monitor, hoping, hoping, hoping for a bump in the flat line, a blip that would interrupt the monotonous, steady bleeeeeeeeep.