It was just a cup. 40 recycled goods, 60 new materials with some red ink and a logo splurged across it, topped off with a crisp white plastic lid. And despite the rapid influx and output various vending machine wrappers, used up batteries and underwear packages, it was always a constant in her locker.
Something that Cristina Yang just couldn't let go of.
At first, in her naiveté, she believed the coffee cup to be a sign that he considered her to be an equal. She thought it to be a symbol that he accepted her as a colleague, and not just as an intern. It might've even been a sign that he respected her intelligence, and her prowess on the job. Recognition that she was more than just an average intern, in her mind.
She was careful to put the cup where she could see it in her locker later that morning, a status symbol for her of sorts. The cup was a tangible sign that THE Preston Burke had provided her with some sort of preferential treatment.
The cup didn't even cross her mind as they exchanged smoldering glances throughout the day, as she felt herself falling into those deep coffee brown eyes that whispered of unbidden desires when they caught hers. As a matter of fact, the only time that the cup crossed her mind is when she felt her hand on the cold steel of the door to the on-call room where he watched her intently.
Thanking him for coffee made her feel a lot less desperate for the physical attention that her body ached for after a long day of unspoken flirtations and occupational irritations. If he wanted her, he would make the first move.
And if he didn't, she would move on from the call room, unaffected. Untouched.
As his lips caught hers on that day though, the meaning of that cup morphed a little in her mind, to the reminder of forbidden temptations. She'd get to the hospital earlier than everybody else to snatch up the groundbreaking surgeries before anyone else, and find the cup staring her in the face and ultimately wound up stalking the hospital just so she could have another taste of him. He had become her coffee in the morning- dark and bold, his touch innervating her body with an energy she was not used to. After just a few days she'd found herself at a point where she couldn't begin her morning without him, and if she was forced to do so, she wasn't a happy intern.
Life got in the way though, and the fates toyed with her as she found herself pregnant, and the cup turned into a vessel of regrets. What was it exactly that she was doing with this man that she'd looked up to as a pioneer in the specialty that she had driven herself towards since the tender age of nine? Was it some sort of unconscious attachment or just a desire for physical contact with an attractive man. She couldn't look at the cup after she'd made the appointment, but instead of throwing it away, she merely hid it under a scrub top. Not even she understood her motivation for keeping the cup in that moment.
But as her life changed before her eyes, once again, the cup took on another form, and it became bitterness and denial. Not the bitterness she craved from her beverage of choice, but an internal bitterness for letting her emotions go, letting her resolve down in just the slightest amount for him. He ended it like it was some sort of business deal. He ended it as if there were no liabilities, no attachments formed between either of them. The denial factored into exactly what she was feeling for him. Never again would she let herself fall like that for his silky voice laced with a vocabulary of medicine and sweet nothings that only she would find attractive. Never again would she allow herself to fall into those bedroom eyes that pulled at the very sustenance of her soul.
The cup lay forgotten in her locker as time passed, but she found herself drawn to it once again as she lay in his arms in an uncomfortable hospital bed, her eyes focused on the cup of latte that her mother had brought her earlier in the day.
She couldn't figure out what the cup meant anymore. Was it symbolic of comfort and safety? The two things she felt the most when she was in his arms, or was it merely an empty reassurance. She preferred to think it was the latter, still afraid to form the attachment that had brought her to her current predicament.
More so, it was strange to her that a silly cup could cause her to think about things more clearly. It was the cup sitting in her locker that persuaded her to seek him out in the darkened on call room and commit to him. It was that damn cup sitting in her locker that made a smile cross her lips as she prepared for her date. It was the cup that reminded her that he had seriously whispered the forbidden words to her as he thought she was sleeping.
It was that cup that made her whisper it back later that night.
On the night of the prom when her life had been flipped upside down, she sat in the locker room where she'd gone to change after Denny's death and held the cup in her hands, trying desperately to remember the rush of emotion she'd felt the first time that she'd kiss him. Trying to remember a time in her life where the only reason they needed each other was for casual, unattached sex. It was only then that she realized that it was never casual and unattached.
There had always been something there, otherwise she would've discarded the cup like any other coffee cup she'd had in her possession.
She gingerly placed the cup in her locker, the empty container now full of hopes, dreams and realized emotions and went to him, a silent promise to herself that she would remember the cup and remember the connotations that it carried within it's now emptied chambers.
Every morning, she found herself staring at the cup in her locker, lying amongst texts describing in full detail cardiothoracic surgeries that she wouldn't have to know for years and she reminded herself why she was doing things that she'd never dreamed herself to be doing before. Why she was covering for him, still holding his hand in a dark period of their life.
When she made the decision to tell Webber about the deceit that they'd carried out in the past month, she couldn't look at the cup. She knew that her actions would hurt him, but she knew that they couldn't carry on in their lives as they had been. She knew they wouldn't have a future if they did.
Every afternoon, she'd run her fingers over the cup as she pondered exactly what it was that she could do to make him speak first, to end the little power struggle that had ensued between them and smiled to herself at the thought of their frequent rendezvous now that they were sharing the same bed again.
Every evening before she went home, she would grasp the cup in her hand, believing that somehow, if she pondered it enough that it would provide an answer to his question. That somehow it would make her decision easier. More clear.
Now she found herself rolling the cup back and forth in her hands, a smile traced upon her lips as she replayed the previous night's events. She had finally given him an answer, and there was no regret or bitterness, no anger, but only hope for the future.
Letting a little bit of joy seep into her steely resolve that she exhibited while at work, she placed the cup in the locker, content with her morning.
It still amazed her how 40 recycled goods, 60 new materials and a little bit of red ink could hold so much more than just coffee.