"Left, over, right, under, pull. Left, over, right, under, pull." she repeated to herself, working carefully and methodically, pulling the cold white skin of the chicken before her together.
She looked on in disgust as her far-and-near sutures began to look a jumbled mess and she threw down her needle and hemostat. "Bullshit." she muttered, falling into a kitchen chair to study one of the four textbooks she had open.
Her eyes traced over the pictures of the far-and-near, but she didn't see them. She couldn't see the suture.
She couldn't see it, and she couldn't do it.
She looked up at the clock on the microwave and saw that it was 3:30 and knew that she had about an hour and a half to perfect it before Burke would wake up and make her get some rest.
Cristina didn't understand why he couldn't understand that she didn't need rest. She was an intern, for God's sake.
Emphasis on 'was', she thought to herself, then picked up the suturing tools again, pushing the thought as far from her mind as she could.
She pulled the proline through the skin gently, mumbling to herself, "Left, over, right, under, pull..."
"It's right, under." Burke sighed, grabbing a cup from the cupboard and filling it with tap water.
"Sorry. I hope I didn't wake you." she sighed, pulling a pair of scissors to clip the threads, frustrated with the fact that she had to start all over again.
He sat the cup down after taking a sip from it and walked back into the room with no reply, not even a glance towards her.
She wondered silently for only a moment if she'd done something wrong, and shrugged it off going back to work.
Her fingers were calloused and ached from hours upon hours of suturing inanimate objects, trying to get her dexterity back, her feet were sore from standing on them for hours at a time, thinking if she just got a better perspective of her 'patient' that it would all come back to her. Her eyes stung from exhaustion, and her body ached with frustration because she couldn't put it all together.
She longed to return to the hospital, thinking that if she just put one more night into it, if she just restrained herself from falling into some sort of domestic trap, that she could just wake up one morning and be ready for work, and she'd be welcomed back with no reservations.
It was a long shot, and something highly unlikely, and whereas Cristina Yang did not typically result to daydreaming, it was no longer an option.
She couldn't just be forced to stay home for a year and do nothing except sit by and watch her life dissolve around her.
And she couldn't be forced to settle for a specialty that her heart wasn't in.
And she couldn't be forced to settle down and just be a wife.
She stopped suturing and glanced into the bedroom to Burke's form lying in bed.
Is that why she was pushing herself? she wondered, studying him closely, advancing quietly towards the doorway.
When she was in the hospital, all the talk of a future and everything was dimmed by the drugs, and the recurring fear of commitments she experienced were irrelevant lying in a hospital bed.
But now that she was home, and the future he'd pictured was more tangible to him then ever, she found herself focusing less on them, and more on work.
On getting back. On being the best again.
She shrugged off her doubts as just being tired and glanced one more time at him lying in their bed, and the thought traced across her mind that it looked so empty without her in his arms.
She moved slowly across the room, thinking that she'd just lie down for a moment, snuggle against him, and let him know that she was there.
Or maybe it was just because she longed to be in his arms again.
As she approached the bed, he stirred a bit, startling her and she abandoned the idea.
He was sleeping, and he didn't need her waking him for some sort of deranged emotional refueling.
More than that, she determined that she didn't need any kind of emotional refueling at all. She'd made it through med school by herself, why should she have to rely on some man to get her through this.
She picked up the suturing tools, glancing at the clock. She still had an hour before she had to give it up and go to bed at his request.
An hour was plenty of time to perfect this stitch.
And a month and no less would be plenty of time to learn them all over again, and be able to get back to work.
Then they could talk about them, only after she had control of her destiny again. Then she could allow herself to fall for him all over again.
But only after she was herself again and she would accept no less.