Scar Tissue

by greyeyedgirl

Written May 15, 2006 4:30 AM

When Cristina Yang was 11 years old, she had been riding her bike when suddenly she'd hit a bump in the road, and, tipping forward and sideways, she had flipped, her bike traveling in the air and throwing her directly into the rushing Los Angeles traffic.

Some people say when a moment like that happens, you see your life flash before your eyes, but that didn't happen for Cristina. Others, they say that you have some sort of out-of-body experience, where you're watching it from above. Watching yourself crash, watching the swerves, hearing the sound of brakes and squeals and one person's yell of "Holy ----!" This theory, this out-of-body synopsis, was slightly closer. Her mind had sealed off for that slow second, no fear available, just that quick thought when she had no doubt of what was going to happen and oh, shit, had slid through her adolescent brain. She had landed partly on the handlebars, her body skidding forward and rolling, gravel implanting itself in her skin as she looked up into the bright sky above her, blood dripping from her elbow and forehead.

She had been fine. A scrape on her elbow, a bump on the forehead, a huge scar on her right knee, and six tiny pieces of gravel which had implanted themselves in the back of her right leg to be removed during a visit to the nearest hospital 22 minutes later. A few days out of gym class, her mother pawning over her for 45 minutes, and seven scars she never brought attention to. No biggie.

Seven months later, six months after she had turned 12, Cristina had gotten sick in the middle of the night and was rushed to the hospital. 7 hours later and her appendix had been removed, 15 hours later and she was on her way home. Three scars on her stomach, one above her belly button, one on the left side, and a tiny nick in the center of her lower abdomen. The surgery was on a Friday, she was at school three days later.

At fifteen her best friend had gotten into a car accident her first time out on the road, killing herself and two people in the other car. Cristina had grown more distant than ever, not talking to anyone for three weeks. The school shrink said her brain had developed scar tissue.

And just after turning twenty-six, she had had a unilateral salpingectomy to remove the tiny life she had created, albeit accidentally, with the love of her life, which was inlodged inside her left fallopian tube, which had burst while she was operating with said love on a man who had, as one had put it, "literally a broken heart." She was back at work four days later, still in pain, still in confusion, and with the pink surgery scars still bright against her milky skin.

When Preston Burke was 7 years old, he had fallen off the teeter-totter on the playground at school, and got a large scrape on his left leg from where the sharp edge of the metal handle had scraped his leg before he fell. 25 years later, he still had a faint scar, but no longer remember how he'd gotten it.

When he was 21, he developed a double hernia, which was operated on when he collapsed after running his third Relay For Life. He had two tiny scars just below his stomach, but they were barely visible, and he did not spend enough time staring at that spot of his body to notice it.

Cristina had inspected every millimeter of that body, memorized it, knew how every curve and bulge on his chest and back felt under her fingers, and could point out and trace each those three scars without even opening her eyes. She never paused to ask where he'd gotten any of them, and even though he had long since seen the tiny spots on her back leg where the gravel had went in 25 years ago, he never asked her what happened, never focused on anything but the softness of her skin under his fingers. It didn't matter to either of them where the scars were from, because it was just another sign of the thing each loved so much about the other, the one thing they both had in common, the one thing that warranted the undeniable respect that each knew lived deep inside the connection they shared. It was strength. Cristina and Burke's job was to heal, and it seemed completely logistic that they were able to heal themselves. The scars were prove off the past, prove of the lives they had lived before they had met each other, proof of what they had been through and what they had survived.

Scar tissue. It was like all aspects of life. Some stayed pink for a long, long time, and some wounds refused to ever go away or be forgotten.

Cristina stood under the archway of the automatic door to the hospital for almost a full six seconds, staring, heart exploding, and her mind reached that slow period once again where it seemed to stop working, and only her first basic sense of sight was available. She watched, not being able to hear the yell, as Bailey dropped next to Preston's body (she was not able to comprehend her view of him as "Preston" and not "Burke," she was unable to think, and at first to feel, as the sudden slowness of her mind took in this scene). Her hearing switched on for half a second, hearing a low, raspy moan from Preston, heard a similar sounding gasp escape from her own, she was having an asthma attack but she didn't have asthma. Her life and world came back on around her as if someone had reswitched on her brain. "BURKE!" She screamed, her legs carried her faster than she had ever moved, and then she was on the ground, on her knees, the right knee where she had skidded across the pavement at age 11 feeling the coldness of the night's sidewalk as she bent over him, one finger instinctively touching his skin, he felt warmly hot and she thought about the adrenaline that must be pumping through his body. "Burke, Burke, Burke," her senses were mixed up, she was unaware if she was whispering or yelling. Bailey and the others were trying to get him on a gurney, Cristina was screaming and she couldn't breathe and suddenly she didn't know where she was or where she was going and her life was flashing before her eyes. Falling off a bike, attending a friend's funeral, a party where she had drank for the first time, a stack of medical texts piled on a desk, looking down at her Medical School Admission Test and absorbing all the questions, a sick scrub nurse, a cup of coffee, seeing a scar on Burke's body for the first time, a positive pregnancy test, the fog of an OR before collapsing, feeling Burke's lips on her forehead as she cried on a hospital bed, the sound of a trumpet, the sight of Burke in a bomb vest, listening to the sound of his breath while he was sleeping, hearing his whispered "I love you" every night before they feel asleep, watching him fly away in a helicopter, and then her vision cleared and she saw him laying on a stretcher before the process started in reverse, and all that she could feel was Burke's arm brushing against hers and the flash of his teeth when he laughed and then all the way back to a scared walk into school on her first day of kindergarten. They zoomed in and out, her vision and memories suddenly like a frightening scene in a disturbing movie. Her thoughts couldn't process, her heart couldn't beat, her lungs couldn't seem to compress and expand like they were supposed to. Then she realized she was screaming and then crying and then whispering "it's okay, it's okay, it's gonna be okay Burke" to the still, bleeding figure she was following blindly, all while images of the past present and future flashed and juggled in her mind.

Deep, deep inside Preston Burke where ice cream tasted good and he knew he hit a right note on his trumpet and he realized he was in love with one of his interns he could hear a voice from his dreams whispering comfort to him, but his pulse immediately began to race because he could tell from her tone that she was not all right. His first impulse was to speak, to make her okay and feel right again, but his mind wasn't comprehending and something he couldn't place was telling him that it wasn't okay to feel anything yet because maybe if he did something bad would happen. One word seemed evident in Preston's mind but he couldn't seem to be able to think it, it simply existed and he reveled in the beauty and the purity in everything it stood for, the pain in his body subsiding as he heard her voice, felt her touch on his hand, heard her admission to love and felt his chest hurt at the sound of her tears, hearing the scared, little-girl whisper, hearing her emotion and her fear and her illness and something he couldn't just recognize yet, and suddenly he felt a physical pain like nothing he had ever felt before, he moaned again, and suddenly she was saying more things and although he could not hear or understand them he somehow knew it was exactly the things he wanted to hear, and that it was going to be okay. The one word circled his mind over and over again, she was making everything okay and suddenly he knew exactly what it was but needed reassurance, needed to make sure it was concrete, needed to be absolutely positive his mind wasn't playing more tricks on him.

"Cristina..."

Cristina Yang took his hand and squeezed harder, his vision came back for a brief second and he caught a glimpse of the face he loved so much, somehow all the words and promises she had just made were lost in his memory, but what she murmured was fine with him, he was okay just knowing he had not lost it in some weird dreamland.

"Cristina!" It hurt so much to talk, but everything was foggy and grey, he needed final proof, he needed her, he needed to make sure and he needed to have her squeeze her hand again, proof of the past and proof of what they were, like a short-lasting scar that would live forever in his mind.

"It's okay, Burke," she murmured, her breath gasping as she looked down at him, a thousand "I love you"s screaming at him from her eyes, a thousand "please be okay, I need you"s visualized in his mind from the way her voice reached his eardrums. "It's okay, Burke," Cristina whispered again, her face only an inch from his as she moved with the gurney. "I love you. It's okay Burke. I'm here."