1

Chapter 2

The show Grey's Anatomy and the characters are the sole property of Shonda Rhimes and does not belong to me.

Preston Burke hanged up the phone and lay back on his bed running his hand across his face, his chest constricted and he felt as though he were about to have a heart attack. He found himself repeating her name over and over, Cristina, his Cristina was laying in a hospital bed seriously injured and alone. He should have been there to take care of her. Maybe if he were there, this would not have happened. He thought about the last time he saw her, they had fought because he wanted to go back to Alabama to be near his family while he recovers from the gun shot wound. She was upset and angry. She said that he asked her to move in with him and now he was moving away from her. He had explained to her that he was not leaving her but that he wanted her to be able to focus on her internship without having to worry about taking care of him. She thought that he was using his injury as an excuse to punish her for not being strong enough to support him while he was in the hospital. She had cried, something that Cristina rarely does and he remembered how hurtful their last conversation was. " When I took the internship at Seattle Grace, it represented a new beginning for me.' Cristina had said, ' I had no friends here and knew no one. For me to make it I would have to survive on my own and for the most part I succeeded. I made good friends and I liked the city and the hospital, and then I met you and everything changed, I let my guard down, and let you in and before I knew it I was pregnant and you broke up with me."

"Cristina, when we broke up I did not know that you were pregnant," Burke replied. "Not that you were ever interested in keeping that baby, you told me yourself that you were planning on terminating it. Without my knowledge I might add."

"And if you had known; what difference would that make? I was just an intern who was stupid enough to fa . . . to get involved with my boss, and furthermore, when I told you that I was not going to keep the baby you weren't even upset, it's like you were glad that I was getting rid of it."

Burke was losing his patience with her but he wanted to continue the conversation because this was really the first time that Cristina was really talking about how she felt. He had taken her by the arm and turned her around gently so that she was facing him. "Cristina, I want you to listen to me and listen to me carefully. I love you and if you had chosen to keep that baby I would have been the happiest man alive, but I do not want to be happy at your expense. I am already established in my career, but you are just beginning yours. If you had not miscarried, there was no way I could have asked you to give up everything that you worked so hard for in order to have that baby. Loving someone means that you are willing to make compromises and sacrifices for that person and that relationship."

"So I'm the sacrificial lamb"

" Cristina I know that you won't believe me right now but one day you'll thank me for this"

"Stop acting like my teacher Burke, we're not at the hospital. You know, you told me once that you didn't understand the problem with an intern dating an attending, well, neither did I, until now."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that you see yourself as my boss both here and at the hospital, and you can't seem to separate that from being my boyfriend. I have done everything that you have ever asked of me. I moved in here because you asked me to, I gave up my apartment because you asked me to. You went public with our relationship when I was not ready to do so but I went along with it because you decided that it was best. Every important decision in this relationship was made by you, and I just went along with it. You call the shots and if I so much as hesitate, you threaten to walk away. Well now you have the perfect excuse; walk away Burke. I don't care anymore." With that she had grabbed a blanket from the closet and went to sleep on the living room couch. The next morning when he woke up she had already left for the hospital. He tried to call her to say goodbye but she wouldn't answer her phone. So he left.

He had written to her several times but she never replied to any of his letters. Eventually he wrote to her and asks her to ship his belongings to his mother's address, which she did. After a while he stopped writing but he could not forget her, every woman he met who showed any interest in him was compared to Cristina. He checked up on her periodically through George. She was still the brilliant Cristina he knew. That was almost three years ago. She was now a resident and he believed that she may have moved on with her life. Every time he spoke to George and ask about Cristina he was certain that George was keeping something from him but he didn't push for information, he wasn't sure if he wanted to hear that she had someone new in her life. He had recovered from his injuries and decided to take a position at one of Alabama's most prestigious hospital. It was not Seattle Grace but it was a chance to start over, and it was better than having to go back to a place where there were so many memories of the woman he had loved and lost. Now she was in a coma, maybe dying and he has to be there no matter what.