4th Floor Nurse's Station SGH

Izzy is standing with Meredith finishing up last night's on-call notes and this morning's coffee. "Did you see Cristina this morning?"

"No?" Meredith's half-listening as she looks through a chart.

"She was here at the crack of dawn."

"Stealing the good patients?"

"No. That's what's strange. I saw her in the locker room then she disappeared. I haven't seen her on the floors since then. Remember the look she had on her face the day that she came back to work from her surgery and Burke wanted to have a relationship?"

Meredith looks up now paying attention "Yes"

"Well she's got that look today and she's about to be late for rounds." Meredith turns her head and sees Bailey walking up followed by George and Alex.

"Hope that you all got a good night's sleep because we have a very busy day ahead of us and most of you are going to need to stay late. It's a very crowded board today, the attendings are going to be in surgery and you're going to have to help more on the floors. Where's Cristina?"

Silence.

Izzy speaks up "She's here at the hospital. I saw her earlier."

Cristina walks up behind Izzy. "Dr. Yang, glad that you could join us this morning. I hope we didn't interfere with anything by getting you here this early."

Cristina apologizes staring at the floor "Sorry, it won't happen again"

Bailey looks at Cristina annoyed. "Better not!" and walks off.

The interns are following Bailey down the corridor. Meredith is eyeing up Cristina to see if Izzy was right.

"Izzy said you've been here for hours, why were you late?"

Cristina begins to speak "Burke…never mind" Cristina changes her mind and starts walking a little bit faster to catch up to Bailey.

Cristina catches up to Dr. Bailey walking ahead of the other interns "Uh Dr. Bailey, can I be in the Pit today?"

Bailey slows down, staring at Cristina with surprise.

"What? Why what's wrong? First you're late now you're asking to go to the Pit.""

"Nothing"

"Nobody ever volunteers to go to the Pit."

"Please?"

Now Bailey was concerned. This was definitely not Cristina. Cristina hardly ever asked for anything, definitely did not look for assignments that were routine and definitely did not throw around the word "please".

"What are you hiding from? Better question…who are you hiding from…you and Dr. Burke…"

"No, it's nothing like that" Cristina tried her best to brush it off like a normal request but nothing about how she felt today was normal. She did not want to explain herself to Dr. Bailey and she wanted to be in the Pit so she didn't have to spend the day listening to her friends ask her what was wrong and, worse, explaining to them what was wrong.

Bailey stares suspiciously at Cristina as the other interns walk up.

"Like I said today is going to be a busy day…lots of surgeries…try not to kill anybody. Karev you're with me, Grey you're with Burke" Bailey pauses looking at Cristina "Yang the Pit, Izzy Addison Shepherd, O'Malley Shepherd. Go and stay out of trouble!"

George gloats as he walks past Cristina "I'm going to open a brain today. Awesome!"

"Too bad Yang. Maybe you can be a real surgeon tomorrow." Alex grinned as he walked away.

Cristina gives a halfhearted "Yeah" as they walk away. Inside she felt some relief for the first time since last night.

Izzy and Meredith are just standing silent with Cristina when Bailey barks at them "Move it!"

Bailey stares suspiciously at Cristina who quickly averts her eyes and walks towards the Pit.