Full Circle.

August 1, 2016.

Zurich, Switzerland.

She pulled her hair into a quick ponytail, taking one last look at the man splayed across her bed before she headed into the living room. Collin was, surprisingly, still wearing the clothes she had put him in about twenty minutes ago. He was sitting in front of the TV munching on a bowl of dry cereal, his eyes clued to the colorful characters he had come to love in the last few weeks. When he saw her coming, he pointed to the door, curious.

"It's time to go see Ms. Dawn," Cristina told him, plucking him up, setting his cereal on the couch, and spinning in a few playful circles. She grabbed his diaper bag from the kitchen table, jumping when her phone starting ringing. She had to drop the bag to answer it. "Hello?"

"Cristina."

Her blood ran a little colder. It was a voice she hadn't heard in a while.

"Phyllis?"

"I need you to… witness."

"What are you talking about? Where are you?"

"I'm in that little hotel near the airport. Flower, or something. I think the name is in German. Room 116, down at the end of the hall, on the right."

Cristina could not believe what she was hearing. "What are you talking about?"

"Please just, just come. If you were ever my friend, come here. I need you."

She sounded groggy, and Cristina had to wonder what the hell was happening. She set the baby down on the couch, rushing back into her room as the line went dead. She shook Owen, throwing the covers off of him. "You need to take Collin to rehab today. I have to go somewhere."

He stirred, still half in a dream. "Huh? What happened?"

"Phyllis called. I think she's drunk somewhere. I'm going to pick her up."

"Child abandonment," he grumbled. "It's a crime here, huh?"

"Forget about that. Please get dressed and take Collin. I'll be back."

"Okay." He was waking up fully now. He sat up, scratching his head. "I have to catch my plane at three. Will you be back, or should I take him over to Dr. Ross'?"

"If I'm not back, call Shane."

She went back into the front room, kissing Collin and giving him a brief, confusing explanation as she left without him. She was on the road before she knew it, navigating the quiet roads with a kind of desperation she had forgotten she possessed. She didn't like the way Phyllis had been talking. She didn't like the things she said. It raised alarms in her head.

She found the room relatively quickly. The front door was unlocked. She heard water running down the hall and she headed toward it.

She stepped toward the bathroom, the first door on the right, and froze in the doorway. Her eyes hit Phyllis immediately. She was beside the tub, sobbing, staring at Cristina. She had been sitting there all day. Her lower legs had lost their color because she'd been squashing them for hours. She didn't seem to notice. Her arm had several false starts on it – knife cuts, not deep enough to kill, but deep enough to hurt. As Cristina had come in, she'd placed the knife at the base of her wrist, prepared to drag it straight up her arm to her elbow. She would sever the majority of veins and arteries in her forearm, and death would unpreventable.

Cristina put her hands up, shaking her head. She had an ominous sense of calm settling over her, like she sensed the inevitability of it, but she wasn't willing to accept it. Her voice was low and it trembled as it left her lips. "Don't… Phyllis… don't do this."

Phyllis gasped out a cry, tears pouring down her face. "I should have died in that sinkhole." She looked at the floor, and then back at Cristina. "God is punishing me. I was never supposed to have kids… Collin… Collin was my punishment. I can't take it."

"You're suffering a psychotic break," Cristina reasoned, unconsciously scanning the room. In the back of her mind she was trying to prevent it, trying desperately to be the hero and lunge at her friend, but somehow she knew – she just knew – that this was going to happen. "Whatever you're feeling right now, whatever you think is happening, it's not real. Just listen to me. Listen to my voice. You trust me, don't you? Phyllis, it's me. It's Cristina. Listen to me."

"I can't," Phyllis sobbed. Ribbons of blood began rolling down her arm. She was pressing the knife into her flesh. "Collin… was my punishment."

"Collin is fine, he's fine. He's alive, he's happy."

"He is broken!" the woman snapped.

She could have said something – anything – but it wouldn't come out of her mouth. She felt the words balling up in her throat. Phyllis dragged the knife down her arm, turning the ribbons into a river, and the light drained out of the room. Before she made it all the way to her elbow, she dropped the knife and began to convulse on the floor.

Cristina hit her knees, tapping into that selfish human need to have a kindred spirit, that selfish desire to avoid blame, to escape guilt. She felt a flash of emotion, a potent mixture of terror and despair, as she ripped a towel from the rack and wrapped it around the wound. She squeezed, even though she had over a decade of experience telling her that it was a hopeless effort.

Phyllis stopped moving only thirty seconds after the cut was made. Cristina slumped down to her bottom, hot blood soaking into her clothes, darkening her jeans, and dripping from her face. It was the spray of clenched veins, the spray of a sudden seizure to accompany a violent suicide. She fell backward into the wall, gasping for air apart from the thick copper taste of death. She stared at the corpse and thought about the kid sitting in her living room.

It all came down to this.

She pulled her phone from her pocket, smearing it with blood as she dialed. She felt numb, but the numbers came out, and despite how dark the words were – the ones she droned to the operator, the ones she kept repeating when they asked for specifics – she didn't stutter. Her mouth was working in the absence of her mind. She was almost grateful.

She stayed where she was until she heard sirens outside. She started to rise as the door burst open, and the paramedics beheld the scene. One of them yanked her to her feet, asking urgent questions, guiding her to the couch, while the other crouched down and confirmed death, a grim look on his young face. It was, perhaps, the first time he had seen this particular mutilation.

Cristina sat quietly, accepting the towels they offered her to clean off her face and arms. Some cops came and encircled her, very curious about the fate of the woman on the bathroom floor, and she gave them Owen's number.

She sat there, keeping to herself, until Owen arrived to take her home. He hovered in the doorway for a moment, taking a steadying breath, before he came over to the couch and took her hand. He pulled her gently to her feet, putting an arm around her despite her bloody clothes. He said something sweet, and something about Collin, but she wasn't listening. She was fixated with the gurney rolling out of the house, and the dead body jiggling around on top of it.

"Hey, look at me," Owen insisted, stepping between Cristina and the body. He held onto her face, forcing her to focus. "She was lost before you got here. She had a rough life. There was nothing you could have done… there was nothing you could have said to make it better for her."

Cristina nodded. "I-I know that. I know that."

"Let's get you home," he murmured.

"What about Collin?" she asked, just now realizing he had mentioned her son.

He kept coaxing her to the car. "I called Dr. Ross – er, Shane – and he went to watch over him. Collin is fine. Come on, we don't need to stay here."

XxX

Cristina stayed in the shower for longer than she should have. She was stuck with the residual force of blood spraying on her face. She hated the feeling. She hated the person who had given her this memory. She hated how she had frozen in place.

Hours later, when she had long since sunk to the bottom of the tub, Owen appeared to carry her to her bed. It was another memory of hers – finding Owen in her shower years ago, listening to a dark story about a man with holes in his body, guiding him to her bed so he could feel safe again. The situation was reversed now, and it was much sadder this time around. They had come so far, and yet they were still standing in the same place.

Shane dropped the baby off in the afternoon, coming by her room to exchange sad looks about the woman they had both known since moving here. He sat by her side for a while, loyal despite it all. He had found his own place when Owen had started coming on the weekends and the bitterness he experienced because of their reconciliation had worried her, but he was here now. It was all that mattered.

"I'm sorry you lost her like that," Shane said quietly, taking her hand. He leaned his head on her bed like a small child, staring at her intently. "I'm sorry."

She sighed, turning on her side to stare back at him. "I love you. You know that, right? If you ever needed to say anything to me, you could just call."

He nodded solemnly.

"She thought Collin was broken," Cristina went on. She could hear Owen entertaining her son in the living room. His hysterical giggling broke the sad haze that had settled over her. "He is not broken," she growled, her voice a little shaky. "He is… he is mean sometimes, and he takes all of my food, and he cries with absolutely no provocation, and he is insanely picky about how you play with him… but he's perfect. He's perfect. He's mine, and he's perfect."

"I think he was yours when he was born," Shane responded softly.

She took a breath. Her heart agreed with that. Her head was swimming in every direction.

"I have to go," he whispered, taking her hands in his and kissing them. "I'm supposed to be working right now."

He had the opposite shift from hers, now more like her shadow self than her resident. She let him go, lying alone in the darkness for a little while before she was joined by Owen. She had listened as he talked to Collin, as he laid the little boy down to sleep and hummed him a lullaby. When he came in he was smiling, but it turned into a quiet frown as he came to lay behind her. He put both arms around her torso, pulling her into his chest and kissing her cheek.

She was silent for a long time, wondering what she could say to qualify what she had seen. She had witnessed some dark things since becoming a doctor, and dark things before that, but she had never seen someone take their own life. It was stunning to watch all that blood pour out, more than any surgery mistake, more than anything that had rolled into their hospital.

She settled on the idea of it, and turned toward Owen, her lip trembling as the memory came full circle to her mind. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her face into his skin, breathing him in. "I saw her die," she whimpered.

He ran his hand up and down her back. "I know."

"Why did she make me see that?"

"I don't know."

She clung to him, shutting her eyes as hard as she could to try and keep the tears from falling. "Owen… I want to forget it. I don't want to see it anymore."

"I'm sorry." He pulled away briefly to kiss her face. "What can I do?"

"Just… just stay with me. Just don't leave me, please."

"I would never leave you."

"Good. Don't."

"Hey," he said, drawing away a little to look at her eyes. He ran his thumbs over her cheeks until she looked at him. "Hey, I finally got you back. I'm not going anywhere. I'm never going anywhere. I don't care if you set me on fire, Cristina. I'm staying with you."

She sniffled, balling her arms up to his chest. She liked how warm he made her. "You're crossing into stalker territory," she taunted.

He smiled. It was the perfect expression. "I accept that."

She felt something stir in the pit of her stomach and she shoved away from him, sprinting for the nearest bathroom. She threw up, releasing her anxiety about that morning. She felt dreadful all of the sudden, like the sickness had waited to torture her until she was almost okay with what had happened. It had to remind her that she had seen her former friend die. She had seen the mother of her child die. She had been there to watch the light leave her eyes.

Owen appeared behind her, holding her hair back, as was customary for the two of them. When she was running on empty, she slumped back and he caught her, sinking into the tub and holding her against his chest. She felt clammy, and his hands were cool on her cheeks.

"I wish I could take it away," he whispered, his lips pressed to her head. He stroked her hair back, occasionally stopping to make sure she was still awake. "I wish I could be more useful."

"Just stay there," she said, twisting around to put her arms around his neck again. She rested against him. "You're doing everything right now, just by being here."

"I love you," he murmured.

"Even when I'm pukey?"

"Even when you're pukey."