Talks
Cristina doesn't know what to do and she doesn't like that. Nearly always in control, she is someone accustomed to certainty and stability. Cristina Yang always has a plan and she knows exactly how to execute it. She has been in this situation before, after all. There was Burke and while it ended on its own, she still had went on and made her decision. Papers were signed and appointments were made.
She can't do that now, though. Or at least not without taking a moment to think, but she is a resident with patients and responsibilities and there just isn't time to think. There's hardly time for her to eat lunch.
Still though, she needs something and while for hours just what exactly this something is escapes her, she knows it the moment she sees it. Dark blonde hair knotted into a low bun, this something offers her a distracted smile, entirely unaware of what is about to be forced onto her already overflowing plate of things to worry about.
"I need to talk to you," Cristina says.
"I have some paperwork to do and-"
"Look, you know I wouldn't ask if I didn't really need to talk," Cristina interjects hurriedly. She's pressing for her to understand, to see what is being left unsaid. And sure enough, she does.
That's what persons are for, after all.
"Locker room?" Meredith suggests, already stepping past Cristina in that general directions. She follows, fingertips tingling as she realizes that this will be the first person outside of Owen who will know.
And the lab tech. She really hopes that woman can keep her trap shut. Cristina walks into the locker room and shuts the door, clicking it locked.
"What's going on?" Meredith demands. "You're acting crazy."
"You can't tell anyone this," Cristina warns first. "Not anyone. Not Derek. Not Alex. Callie. No one."
Meredith shakes her head at the overt confidence in which this imminent confession is being fashioned in. She says, "What did you do? Kill someone?"
Cristina rolls her eyes and says, "Yes, Meredith, I killed someone. Stabbed them right in the jugular."
The sarcasm is not lost on Meredith and she relents, "Alright fine, I know you didn't kill anyone. You're just acting all weird."
"Well, that can happen when you get life changing news," Cristina huffs.
"Life changing news?"
It occurs to Cristina then, several minutes and one hurried trip to the locker room too early, that she can't tell Meredith. She shouldn't because the exact thing she is begrudging is what her friend has been working towards, praying towards for months. But here she is, Meredith looking at her expectantly as she stalls. Finally Cristina sits beside her and says, "I'm pregnant."
A beat and then Meredith answers, "Oh."
"I need you to listen to me," Cristina says slowly. "And I know this is hard for you and I probably shouldn't even be telling you all of this, but I have no one else to talk to. Owen doesn't understand and Callie has all those pregnancy hormones raging which renders her completely useless-"
"Just tell me," Meredith says.
She waits a moment to let Meredith have a chance to change her mind and then begins to air her concerns. She goes into her beliefs on parenting and her thoughts on being a mother.
"I don't want kids because I'm not cut out for that," Cristina says, shaking her head. "I was practically born with a scalpal in my hand. That is what I am supposed to do, supposed to be. Not a mother."
"So what are you going to do?"
Cristina looks down at the floor, running the toe of her shoe along the lines of the linoleum. "I don't know," she admits. "That's why I came to you."
"I can't tell you what to do," Meredith says immediately. "Not with this."
Cristina hears the pain in her voice and looks up, heart breaking just a bit when she sees the tears in her friend's eyes. She frowns as she somewhat inappropriately feels the injustice of it all cut deeper. Meredith is the one who wants the baby. She is the one willing to juggle and balance.
"This should be you," Cristina says.
"No," Meredith answers, shaking her head a bit before emerging with a watery grin. "You just want me out of the running for Chief Resident."
Cristina laughs a bit but it is just as hollow as Meredith's previous remark.
"You look like hell," Derek notes, falling into stride beside Owen as they head to a meeting with the Chief.
"Been a rough day," Owen answers evasively, avoiding his colleague's gaze. All day he had been unable to think about anything else beside his wife and this ridiculous storm she is pulling them through. A baby is a good thing. How she can't see that is beyond him.
"Cristina proving difficult again?" Derek guesses. Owen nearly instinctually answers with, "You have no idea." Luckily he catches himself, though, and simply says, "Things have complicated."
"How so?" Derek catches Owen's hesitance and quickly adds, "If you don't mind my asking."
Owen nearly tells him then. He thinks of how nice it would be to have a friend at a moment like this. Someone to take his side and agree how ridiculous his wife is being. But he will never betray Cristina and she had asked him not to tell anyone. So, he forces himself to laugh and says, "You know how, Sheperd. She's one half of the twisted sisters."
Derek laughs at that and says, "Very true. Well, hang in there. They always bounce back."
Owen nods, although honestly he doesn't know if that will prove true. Maybe not this time.
Cristina takes her time at work, not too keen on getting home. At the hospital there are patients and work that take her mind off of everything in her increasingly frayed personal life. At home there is nowhere to hide.
At home there is Owen.
Still, though, there is only so much to do in one workday and much too soon for her liking she is walking up the steps of their apartment and then turning the key in the door. She can tell the minute that she walks in that he is cooking, a terrible sign considering he usually does it to temper a fight.
"How was work?" he asks, voice careful. He is tiptoeing around the subject that he really wants to address. Beating his way around it until conversation invariably lands right on the issue.
"Let's just talk about it," she sighs.
She sits in the living room, listening to the final clatter of dishes and then Owen joins her. He speaks first, getting directly to the point as he says, "You can't seriously be thinking about not keeping it."
"I don't know what I'm thinking about," she says. "I haven't made any decisions."
"No, we haven't made any decisions," he corrects firmly. "I get a say in this, Cristina."
"It's my body-"
"And it's my kid. This isn't just you who is affected by this, Cristina. Do you know how hard I've worked to become the man who can be your husband? Be a father?"
"Don't make this about you," she says heatedly. "It's not about you."
"And what? It's only about you?"
"It's my body, Owen!"
"And it's our life!" He gets up from the couch and begins to pace, something she knows from experience can only mean trouble. "I won't let you end this pregnancy, Cristina. It goes against everything that I believe in. Out in that battlefield I saw people have their lives taken from them. They were good men who didn't have a chance in hell to survive out there. We will not do the same thing. We will not take this person's life because you want some damn position at work!"
"I'm not saying that I'm going to do anything," Cristina says agitatedly. "You're jumping to conclusions! I'm just saying that maybe we should think about this for a minute!"
"What is there to think about, Cristina? What?"
"This is going to change our lives forever," she says firmly. "Are you prepared for that? Nothing will be the same, not ever again and-"
"That's what is supposed to happen," he interrupts, no longer pacing but his shoulders rigid with tension. "What did you think comes after marriage?" She doesn't answer and he shakes his head. "You're not getting an abortion. I don't care what you say or what you think, you are keeping that baby."
"How do you even know we'll be good parents?" Cristina asks, looking up at him from the couch. "I'm not maternal."
"Cristina-"
"I hate kids. I'd rather spend all day in the psych ward than suffer five minutes on a pedes rotation."
"That means nothing."
"And kids don't like me. Probably because they know I don't like them. Which I don't." Despite her overtures on disliking children, Owen feels the heat behind her words soften and he sits down beside her as his own anger ebbs. Despite all her talk, he knows she wouldn't do it. The woman he fell in love with would not do it.
"We're going to get through this," he tells her, voice full of determination. She refuses to look at him but doesn't move away when he lays a hand on her leg. "And this isn't the end. A lot of people have kids and professional careers. If anyone can do both, it's you."
"I need some time," she tells him.
"Cristina-"
"Just give me some damn time," she snaps, head turning toward him. "I need to sort through things, okay? Just-just give me some time."
"Fine," he relents. "I'll give you time." Just what this time means he doesn't know. He won't let her get an abortion and he truly believes that the woman beside him would never actually go through with it. Cristina may appear heartless, but she would never go that far.
And so he comforts himself with these simple thoughts. Simple thoughts that aren't capable of entertaining the unknown truth that Cristina had gone that far.
A/N: And..next chapter will be up in a few days! Please leave feedback! With finals kicking my butt, I could use something nice like a little review :)
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