I walked out on her.

For the first time in our relationship, I have walked out on her.

The hallways seem darker, the people seem quieter than they used to.

When the relationship was new, and fresh, and we didn't have these...issues, everything seemed better to me.

Life was better.

But now, that's all gone, and all we have is raw emotions; anger, lust, fear, anxiety.

They run our lives.

They dictate our relationship.

I want the newness, the freshness of it all back.

She has taken over everything that I had before her. My career, my life, my apartment.

Nothing is my own anymore.

I share it with her.

That's commitment, though. Right?

I don't know what I'm doing here.

I still love her. Couldn't live without her. That's not an option.

But I long for normalcy again.

I reach the scrub room, where George is standing outside of the door, waiting to question me about my hands.

He does. I tell him I'm fine.

And he doesn't believe me.

I don't believe me.

I excuse myself from the conversation, and I grab a package of the povidone 4.5 and pull it open.

I love the scent of the scrub room. It's so clean. Sterile.

It's where you wash away all the filth that you carry with you, and free yourself from anything that you wouldn't want to carry on to someone else.

If only they had scrub rooms for the soul.

The water is warm on my hands, but my anxiety levels are so high that the droplets feel like needles puncturing the backs of my hands one right after another.

I look down at them, and I notice that I am already starting to tremble.

Cristina looks over my shoulder, "Burke, I can do this."

"I am not going to have you responsible for O'Malley's father's condition. He is my patient, and I will be operating."

"Back down, Burke." she urges me. There is urgency and frustration in her voice, "Back down while our record is still clean. This is George's dad we're talking about."

"I can do this, Cristina." I reply, trying to convince myself.

I don't allow the conversation to finish, and I back out of the scrub room doors into the OR giving her a threatening glance.

The scrub nurse meets me with a blue towel and I dry my hands.

Normally at this point, power and importance surge through my veins with that egoism that made me who I am today.

Now? Anxiety and tensions have halted my heart beat.

I can feel myself slip before I have even started.

Cristina glances up at me nervously as I make my initial incision. It's not the incision that's hard.

It's the sutures.

But I'm not there yet. I'm not push myself into a further darkness.

"Dr. Burke, is there anything I can help you with?" she questions me, sending me a look of worry and despair through her expressive almond eyes.

"I will tell you when I need you to retract the chest wall, Dr. Yang, and not a moment before...now please, stop talking to me, I need to devote my full attention to Mr. O'Malley." I am curt with her, and I see the hurt in her eyes.

Thirty minutes flies by in what seems like milliseconds, and I find myself staring at a leaking aorta.

The man wouldn't have lasted another day.

I go to suture the tear that the cancer has eaten away, and my hand starts to tremor lightly.

"Dr. Burke..."

"Dr. Yang." I cut her off, "You're not holding the retractors correctly. Do you want me to kill this man?"

"No sir." she replies, looking down at herself in the shiny steel retractors.

I begin to suture once again, and for the first few placements, I am steady and strong, and I begin to regain confidence.

Then I nick his left anterior descending artery, sending a fountain of blood towards Cristina.

"Shit!" I curse under my breath, "Dr. Yang, suction, now! Faster!"

And all hell breaks loose.