A/N: New chapter! This is a little one, leading in to the next longer one. Hope you enjoy!

One year and nine months

One year and nine months ago, Cristina was barely getting by. She still felt the pull at the base of her belly when she walked into the OR. Her nights were dotted with visions of bullets and jaws slackened with traech tubes. Owen knew she wasn't healed. He recognized the emptiness of her eyes, the distance of her touch. He knew it intimately, and now understood the delicate role she herself had played back when he was recovering. Regardless of how much he wanted to help her, there was little he could do.

And then the strip turned blue. Her first thoughts were that it was all wrong. She was broken and damaged, how could she ever raise a child? She had found strength in his eyes, though. He thought that she could do it, and she decided not to question him. She could do it. She would do it.

She knew motherhood would be a change, but she could have never anticipated just how dynamic becoming a mother would prove. Suddenly, there was someone else for her look after. Her life was no longer all surgeries and clinicals, and as she logged more and more hours in her son's nursery, she slowly felt herself begin to heal.

One year and nine months, and she could stand in an OR without problem. Her hand never trembled, her focus never faltered. She never regretted going through with the pregnancy. She never doubted it, because it had brought her something so obviously perfect. She had not only found herself again, or found a son. She had found a family.

Her, Owen and Sam. It was the family that she always secretly yearned for since she felt her father's beating heart still beneath her fingertips. Something had been taken from her that day. She had lost her family and with Sam, she had found it again.

She wandered into the nursery, smiling softly when she saw Owen leaning over the cradle. She moved beside him and put her hand beside his on the cradle's bar.

"I can't believe he's going to be one tomorrow," Owen murmured, moving his hand along the bar to cover hers.

"Me neither," Cristina said. "That means I have to clean the house for the party."

Owen chuckled and slipped an arm around her waist, pressing a kiss to the side of her head. "I'll do the vacuuming."

"Good." She rested her head on his arm. "I hate vacuuming."

"Well, I need to look over some articles," Owen sighed, giving her side a little squeeze before leaving the room. Alone, she leaned in toward the sleeping Sam and whispered, "You were a pretty wonderful surprise, kid."

A/N: Next chapter will be Sam's first birthday party! Please leave feedback.