The next day went much more quickly than Cristina had anticipated. She was looking forward to her date with Owen, and had thought it was going to take forever to come around, but luck had scrubbed her into a very complex and interesting surgery with Dr. Sloan, and the hours had flown by. Now it was 5:45 and suddenly the clock seemed to have stopped dead. She was praying nothing last minute would come in that would delay her from running home to shower and change. Fortunately O'Malley came in a bit early and was anxious to take whatever came in next, so she was able to sneak out a few minutes before 6:00.

What to wear? Jeans? Nicer pants? A skirt? He said casual, right? So jeans. Now, for the top. Something sexy but very casual. Cristina settled on an eggplant-colored sweater that set off her curves nicely. Hair down, pulled back just a bit with one hair clip, and she was ready to go. The socks were in her bag, but Cristina still had no idea what they were for. Given what this man had already come up with since they'd met, one thing was pretty certain: This was likely to be interesting. And I can always tie them together and strangle him with them if I don't like it, she mused.

Her buzzer rang at precisely 6:30pm and she let him into the building, assuming he was resourceful enough to figure out which apartment was hers. Sure enough, a minute later there was a knock on the door. She opened it to see Owen lounging against the doorjamb as if he'd been waiting there for hours.

"Ready?" he asked.

"As I'll ever be," she retorted with a mystified sideways look. It was almost too much to look at him directly. They were still so new at this. She suddenly felt shy in his presence, and the Tough Girl attitude was coming out big time. "Will you tell me NOW where we're going?"

"Nope. Come on." He took her arm and they made their way down the stairs. "I'm parked over there," he nodded in the direction of a black SUV.

20 minutes later they pulled into a spot at the Seattle Bowling Center. Cristina turned to Owen, "Are you shitting me? You're taking me bowling?" Owen just looked at her with that cocky look of his. He didn't say it, but Cristina could tell he was thinking, "So?" "Have some faith, Dr. Yang," he teased. "Just go with it and I'll bet you anything this'll be the most fun you've had in ages." Cristina's expression was still incredulous.

"Come on." He opened the door and got out. Cristina didn't wait for him to come around to her side before doing the same. Whatever, she thought.

As they approached the entrance Cristina noticed a bunch of rowdy guys outside smoking and joking around. Their loud voices and jostling gave her an uneasy feeling. Great, she thought, these places are always in the best neighborhoods. Owen noticed them at the same time and took her hand, walking confidently toward the front door. They took one look at him and parted like the Red Sea. One of the guys even held the door open. Ok, cool, she thought, there's definitely something to be said for going out with Major Badass.

Once inside Cristina was assailed by the sound of balls rolling and pins crashing, the buzz of conversation and the occasional yelp of glee. The odor of greasy fried food and stale cigarettes vied with the sickly sweet disinfectant smell spilling out of the bathroom near the entryway. Bells chimed to her left from the pinball machines in the arcade, and a kid's birthday party was in full swing in an alcove to her right. Owen led her to the counter and quickly dispensed with the details of getting them outfitted and ready to play. He also placed an order for some cheeseburgers and fries, and gave the teenager at the concession stand a big tip so she would deliver their order to their lane instead of just calling it out over the loudspeaker. While all this was going on, Cristina just looked around in amazement that he had thought to bring her here of all places. The snotty skeptic in her was having a field day. For the moment, this felt like a really lame first date. Maybe this is what Army guys consider classy entertainment, she mused. Army guy first, surgeon second. Now I know.

By the time they had gotten their shoes on and picked out suitable bowling balls, the food was delivered. They took a few minutes to eat before moving back down to the lane and setting up the scoreboard. He started to enter her name first, but she protested. "Ladies first, right?" he asked. "No, no, no. no, no," she protested, "Not this time, please. I suck at this so bad. You go first. Please. Don't make me go first. Please."

"Ok, ok" he teased. "I happen to love it when women beg."

"Eat me," Cristina muttered under her breath. His raised eyebrow and pointed glance let her know he had heard. Though he said nothing, Cristina could read the expression as if he'd spoken aloud: Don't worry, I will. A hot surge shot from her belly straight down to her toes and she looked away. Ok, ok, Cristina, get a grip, she thought.

Her preconceived notions about bowling as the lamest of lame dates underwent a radical turnabout when Owen removed his button down shirt and remained in just a black T and jeans. Ok, this is actually not too bad, she thought, I can do this if all I have to do is watch. I could watch this guy read the phone book and I'd probably melt into a puddle. When he picked up the ball and took his first shot, she just about fell off her chair. She barely noticed the fact that he'd knocked all ten pins down at once in favor of the view of one super hot looking rear end. Whoa! Major Badass, meet Major FINEass, she thought. He turned to her with a smile and she had to consciously remind herself to keep her jaw from hanging open. "Looks like you're up," he said.

Cristina suddenly felt a little frantic. "Ok, so… Have I told you yet that the last person to take me bowling was my dad, and that I haven't bowled since I was eight or nine?" She was trying to conjure up some of that Tough Girl attitude, but underneath it she knew she was feeling really scared for some reason. His incredulous expression was tempered with compassion as he realized the import of what she had just told him. Her father's death had ended this kind of fun for her, and her mom must not have had the energy or the patience to do these father/daughter type activities with her only daughter. Though he could see she was having trouble admitting it, this was actually a pretty big deal.

He looked her straight in the eye and held her gaze for a moment. "Hey, I don't mind if you suck at this, ok? Just try it. It's fun. How about you trust me on this?"

"Ok."

"Go take your shot."

"O-kay!" Annoyed and intrigued at the same time, Cristina picked up the ball she had chosen and tried to focus on hitting the pins, but all she could really think about was how Owen had looked when he'd bowled a minute ago… Something about the way those hard leg and ass muscles moved… Never really got that view of him before... I just want to... For God's sake! Snap out of it! Just throw the fucking ball already, Cristina! You're so horny and pathetic! she scolded herself. She aimed, released, and threw the ball straight into the gutter. Perfect, she thought, my mind is already there. Now the ball follows. She turned to Owen with a rueful smile and threw her hands up with a "See, I told you!" look on her face. The second shot followed the first, albeit making its way slightly further down the lane before staggering off to the side. As she returned to the seating area, Owen didn't rise to take his turn and instead gestured for her to take a seat next to him.

"Ok, Cristina, so you definitely do suck at this." They both laughed, and it felt good to Cristina to share her failure and not be judged or ridiculed. Her upbringing had been pretty strict, and Burke had not helped matters by trying to mold her into what he'd wanted her to be. For once she could suck at something and actually laugh at herself without feeling too self-conscious. "You must think I'm nuts for bringing you here," he continued.

"Kind of, yeah." she admitted.

"Want to know why?"

"Uh huh." This had better be good, she thought.

He leaned over, elbows on knees, and studied his hands for a moment. "I learned something important here, and my gut tells me you could use the lesson too." He paused and glanced at her. "I don't mean for that to sound condescending. I just think I get you more than you might realize."

"Go on, I'm listening," she replied. And she was.

"I didn't used to understand the appeal of this game at all. It seemed a waste of time. The only reason I played it was because my buddies were into it, and I liked hanging out with them. Sometimes there were pretty girls involved," he smiled. "It was an ok way to spend a Saturday night, I guess. It wasn't until I became a surgeon that I got what it was really all about. Now that I've been over to Iraq a few times, I get it even more."

She said nothing and waited for him to continue. He had gotten that intense look on his face that he got when he was talking about something deep. So maybe this was going to be enlightening after all.

"I'm a few years ahead of you, but all of us in this profession tread the same path, at least for a while. We go to med school, and we do our internships and residencies and specialties, and we learn all we can. We go in, and we think we have control because we've studied so hard, practiced so much… We're surgeons and we know how to open people up and put them back together, so everything should work out ok, right? We're doctors, right? People have faith in us. They trust us. And we do whatever we can to make them better. But you and I both know that there are days when, in spite of our best efforts, the patient dies, or the surgery fails, or we just can't get the results we want – for whatever reason…"

She was totally focused now. Every word seemed to be meant specifically for her. She definitely knew that feeling of having things spin out of control, given the events of the last couple of days.

"That's where bowling comes in. I can set up my shot to the best of my ability, take aim, and … once I release that ball, it's out of my hands. I can lean left or right, yell at it, jump up and down, swear - but it's going to go where it's going to go no matter what I do. Once I let it go, I have to really let it go. Sometimes it goes right down the middle and I get a strike. That's like a good day at work: I've saved a life. I've made a difference. Other times it creates a split or lands in the gutter. That's not such a good day. Maybe I've lost a patient or made a bad mistake. Most days at work are a combination of those, just like most of my games are a mixed bag of shots that work and shots that don't. In the end, all of that has to be ok, because ultimately I have no control. I just think I do."

The sounds of the bowling alley had faded out into nothingness as she listened single-mindedly to what he was telling her. " "Wow," was all she could say, "You've really thought about this."

"Yeah, I have," he continued. "I've had to. Since my last deployment I've been struggling with how to deal with a lot of events over which I had no control, and it doesn't sit well with me. I can't reconcile it with what I wish was true about the world." He shook his head sadly as he spoke. "I tell myself I should have been able to DO something to save my unit – and I know intellectually there was nothing I could have done differently that would have made any difference." He had been looking at his hands as he said these last few sentences, but now he paused and looked her right in the eye. The pained look on his face as he spoke pierced right through her. Her eyes told him that she heard him, really heard him, and he went on. "I'm only just scratching the surface on most of this shit, and it really messes me up when I think about it as if I had any power over what happened… Believe it or not, this place is where I come to make sense of it. Christ, this is the ONLY place where it makes any sense at all. I come, I take my best shot, and I let it go. Bowling is about letting go of the outcome. When I forget that, when I become too God-like in my own mind, I get like I was the other night in that alley. The anger almost consumes me sometimes. So this is where I decompress. This is where I let go."

Cristina just sat there and looked at him. Wow. This man continues to amaze me. He can take the most mundane place or activity and give it a profound meaning. "Kind of like the vent…" Cristina ventured.

"Yeah, kind of…"

Sensing the timing was right, Cristina shifted gears abruptly. "So, Big Man, you think you can give me a few tips on how not to score a gutter ball each and every time?"

Owen smiled, rose, and made a courtly gesture. "After you, Dr, Yang."

"Thank you, Dr. Hunt."