It's past midnight when she texts him: I love you xx.
She doesn't know if it means anything anymore; if he will read it, if it will make him angrier, if it's a mistake. She doesn't know much right now but she knows that it's true, and that it matters. About fourteen hours ago those words had meant everything, had summed them up: the overwhelming force at the heart of their relationship, the pinnacle; their safety net and comfort, their unending togetherness, strength, forgiveness.
But now... how had he put it this morning? "You can contain more than you think you can." It seemed their marriage had suddenly become so much more than them, so complicated, and perhaps it was naive but she had never expected to have to deal with anything else, had been content in their world where there was just the two of them; did not want to have to make any other considerations because all the 'I love you's were enough for her.
All day she's felt like they'd got lost in this stupid baby stuff and everything in the before seems not to matter now. Since when was loving somebody not enough? Is she supposed to leave him, leave her soulmate, the man who is everything to her, and go out into the world hoping to find someone new, someone the same in all but one vital belief? Because she knows there is no way she will ever find another Owen, and no way she can ever fall in love like that again.
It's ridiculous and unfair and just the hardest idea to contemplate - breaking up, getting a divorce; not being allowed to kiss him around hospital corners or have him hold her when she's upset; not having anyone to share her life with, her thoughts, her rants, the sides of her no one else is ever allowed to see. When she thinks what they've been through, what she never imagined she would or could endure for another person, the thought of being apart from him is nothing short of devastating.
Even now, still hearing his voice in her mind, those painful words – "Get out," – is tearing at her insides, rushing in her veins, making her feel sick. She had never hurt him like that before, never seen him so shocked, so angry, not even when she gave him back her wedding ring the day after the ceremony. In the silence of Meredith's house, she muses that it's incredible that one person can love another so much the connection is almost telepathic: right now she can feel how much he is hurting; feel his heart racing, pounding, shattering beneath her own ribs.
And she knows she hadn't been fair but he didn't listen to her when she really, really needed him to, and she just didn't know what else to do. She has always been rash, hasty when it came to him: she rushed into him, rushed into marriage, and now she realizes that she has just rushed straight out again.
Her whole life has changed in fourteen hours, and what's that compared to forty years?
"I imagine such a huge life for us."
She can still smell him, feel his arms around her, his forehead on hers, his breath on her face even as tears are sliding down her cheeks again. She wants their huge life full of his hopes and dreams, she wants to make him happy more than anything, more than she wants surgery or greatness, but she just cannot contemplate this particular dream of his, and right now she feels like it might literally kill her.
Save her marriage or save herself, which would mean breaking her own heart in the process and losing herself anyway? Longing to be with Owen but unable to give him what he wants, unable to give him such a huge piece of her, probably more than she could afford to lose... Unable to even consider it.
Selfish.
She gets up off the sofa, shocked. Trying to bury that horrible word, that chilling thought, she puts on her shoes, grabs her bag and bolts out of the front door. For a second, in the cool night air, she thinks she's left it in Meredith's living room, left it to float up into a corner of the ceiling and quietly disappear, but then it's back, and louder.
Selfish.
"I warned him," she says aloud, looking around desperately for someone, something to understand. There are cars, trees, a small breeze, street lamps throwing orange light onto the road, but no one to absolve her. "He knew I didn't want this." She begins to walk - drained, exhausted, sick.
And worst of all, craving him.
"What does he want me to do, bend over backwards, tear myself apart, have a baby I don't want and then make me fall in love with it?" Her face screws up and it makes her head hurt. All she wants is to get into bed with him and to wake up yesterday morning with an 'I love you' and the unspoken promise of forty years.
She walks for twenty minutes, her feet carrying her back to him and her mind powerless to stop them, and all the while she's going over and over the same words:
Selfish.
I love you.
Forty years.
Rash.
Huge life.
Piece of me.
Until she's standing outside their apartment, looking up at the light glowing in the tall windows, and the only way she can make sense of these words is that to share a huge life and love him for the next forty years she needs to hang onto all the pieces of herself - she cannot lose control, cannot lose herself again - but being selfish and rash has hurt him, and ending their marriage - ending them - in fourteen hours, and for the sake of an appointment, is just ridiculous.
She sits down on the front step and remembers him telling her, just a few blocks from here, that he thought she was beautiful, and she knows that she cannot lose him over this: he is so much more than anything else, than any argument, any fight.
Could he convince her to give up that piece of her, physically and forever; to change her entire life for him? Is he even asking her to? Deep down she knows he isn't; that he would never do that, never force her hand or try to make her miserable. He respects her, loves her in a way no one else has ever done before, wants to be a partnership where they make decisions together and neither is allowed to be selfish and run off to make rash appointments.
Cristina doesn't want to be selfish anymore; can't bear to hurt as much as she is, as much as she knows he is too. She doesn't think he can change her mind, and it might hurt her to see him try, knowing her answer all along, but maybe if it makes him feel better, if it can fix what they've broken, if there is even the slightest chance it can save them whatever the outcome of this impossible situation...
She sighs, feeling his presence through brick and mortar and knowing that she can't see him right now because she looks and feels like crap, and she knows he needs time, and she just doesn't know what to say once she gets beyond "I'm sorry". So she gets up, stands tall and closes her eyes, gathering herself. She feels like he's watching her but daren't look up, and anyway, he's probably fallen asleep in front of the news and forgotten to switch off the lights as he often does.
She has this picture of him in her mind - of waking him in the early hours of the morning and leading him to bed with her, peeling off his clothes and burying herself in his arms, in his soul - as she makes a promise to them both into the night: "I am a fighter. I will fight for us, whatever it takes. I love you. And I really, really need to sleep."
On the way back to Meredith's, dazed and exhausted but with a new resolution, a potential solution, she takes her phone from her bag and does the one practical thing she can right now. When she hangs up, having hardly paid attention to the message she was leaving, she feels that nasty little word - selfish - retreat to a small corner of her mind and sit there, contemplating her; daring her to prove it wrong.
When she wakes in the morning she expects it to still be there, still poisoning her - but it isn't, or at least, it's quiet for now. Time to prove it wrong.
Time to fight.