"Forget it."
Her voice was hollow as she walked away, and it was then that he saw the defeat in her body language, the way her shoulders slumped and the way she hung her head. He started at the woman who was walking away from him, who was so different than the fiery woman he had kissed in an exam room so long ago.
"Cristina...wait."
She didn't turn around, but with a few long strides he caught up to her. He knew he had surgery, knew that it was unprofessional to do this in the middle of his shift, but the look in her eyes had caught him off guard and he was worried. With a gentle pull of her arm he guided her into the empty on-call room at the end of the hallway, shutting the door firmly behind them.
Her eyes were trained on the floor, not looking at him. He tried to tilt her chin up so she would look at him, but with a jerk of her head she turned away from him completely before staring at him.
Owen's heart stopped when he saw the tears pooling in those brown eyes. It wasn't just the presence of tears, though, that made him long to take her in his arms. It was that expression she wore, one of tiredness and lack of caring.
She had given up. And it frightened him more than any look of anger from her ever could.
"Cristina, talk to me."
"Why?" Her voice was biting. "Don't you have surgery or something?"
So this was about him choosing the Mercy West resident to scrub in. Okay. That was a starting point. He could try to smooth it over.
"Look, I didn't--"
"You know what? I don't want to hear it." Her voice was clogged with unshed tears and it nearly killed him to see her struggle to speak.
He lowered his voice and tried again, moving in closer to her, his arms itching to embrace her.
"Look, I didn't mean to--"
"You don't see me."
The simple clarity of her words rang throughout the empty room and his stomach flipped as he absorbed the paraphrased, all too familiar words.
"Wh...I don--"
"You don't. You don't see that this...it's who I am. I'm a surgeon. A surgeon who is meant to work on hearts, to save lives, to..." She closed her eyes and sucked in a raspy breath, cutting through his very being.
She opened them again and her teary eyes were focused straight on him. "It wasn't just a surgery to me. And you don't see it."
Her hand covered her face for a moment before she spoke again. "No one teaches me. I can't get into surgeries." There was another sharp intake of breath, as if the words physically pained her to say. "I can't be who I'm supposed to be. And if I can't cut--If I can't be that surgeon..."
He tried to talk, but no words came. The slow realization of her torment was descending on him, as well as his role in it, and there was nothing he could possibly say to comfort her. He tried to reach out, to touch her, to physically be there for her, but she shrank away, shaking her head. She wasn't going to let him in. Not that he deserved it at the moment.
Her next words were murmured, distant, as if she was reliving a memory she had long forgotten about.
"...Then I'm just a ghost in this hospital."
Owen recognized the mirror of the words he had once used to beg her to see him, to accept him, but something told him there was more to the phrasing she had chosen to say, because she looked more broken now than ever, and he mentally kicked himself for being so oblivious to her distress, or taking it lightly.
"Cristina, I'm so sorry--"
"Just--" Her hands gestured at him to stop. "I can't right now. I..." Her voice broke. "I have to go. And you have surgery."
The bitterness in her voice was unmistakable and this time he did reach out and caress her face, wanting to take away all of it, his mistakes and her demons.
She shook her head, a few stray curls sticking to where her cheeks had tear tracks on them, her smaller hand pushing his away. She looked at him with those eyes, those watery eyes that seemed to say more than her words ever could, accusing him with their lack of feeling, their dullness.
She didn't make a scene as she walked out, didn't dispense one of her usual parting shots, didn't even look at him, but left him standing there in the silence, only the whisper of her words and the all too ironic beating of his heart echoing in his ears.