It had been three and a half weeks of long, sleepless nights for Burke and Cristina.
Cristina, because she obsessively sutured banana peels and had even stepped up her game to trying the chicken surgery that she once enforced upon Burke. When she wasn't suturing banana peels, she was watching surgeries trying to recall the vessels that lie within the human body within the same intricate parameters she once possessed. And when she wasn't doing that, she'd had her head stuck in a book about something to do with surgery.
Burke, because it had been almost three months since he was able to lie in bed next to the woman that he loved, scoop her up into his arms, brush kisses against her forehead, and let her know exactly how much it was that he loved her.
He'd wake in the morning, kiss her in passing as she went to sleep for very few hours and cook her dinner at night while she worked on her sutures.
Burke had a fantasy mapped out in his mind about what things could be like when they got home, and he never thought about realism. He never considered the fact that this was his Cristina, and his fantasy wouldn't apply.
He was going to get her better, get her strength back, and then he would pop the big question before she returned to work, and they would...
What? Live happily ever after?
He chided himself for such silly delusions.
In all actuality, they were existing in the same tangent of reality.
They were not living together.
They were not in a relationship.
He watched her suture, and she sutured.
Her replies to his questions were short, succinct, and to the point. She spoke very little to him, and blew off his requests...no, pleas, to take care of herself and to allow herself at least a little time to rest.
It was as if everything that he'd worked for in the past two years of their relationship had dissolved and he was left, trying once again to break past her tough outer shell, to find the real Cristina again.
But he feared she was too far gone.
"Burke..." her voice, obviously worn from exhaustion broke his thought processes.
"Yeah, Cristina?" he replied in a soft, saddened tone.
"I need more proline. And some more suture kits. My needles are getting dull." she requested, looking up to him for only a moment, then her eyes sinking back down to the banana in front of her.
He started to nod, and then paused for a moment, taking all the thoughts racing through his head into consideration.
"Burke? Did you hear me?" Frustration was becoming apparent in her voice.
Or was it desperation?
He calmly removed the food from the burner and went to her side, dropping on the couch next to her. His hands covered hers steadily, pulling the needle and banana away from her, and placing them to the side, "Cristina..."
She cocked her head to the side, her eyes narrowing in accusation, "I was doing something."
"You've been doing something for two weeks. You're not sleeping, you're not eating well, you're not talking to me..."
"I have to learn these sutures again." she protested, her lips pursed tightly.
"You know them."
"Not all of them."
"You have a year. A little over a year, you have plenty of time."
She looked to him, defiance sparkling in her eye and reached towards her project lying on the coffee table, and he grabbed her arms, pulling her to face him, "Cristina, you have got to snap out of this." his emotions began to erupt from within him, "You have to take care of yourself, you have to sleep, you have to eat...you can't just live in this existence, because if you don't slow down and take it easy, you're never going to make it a year. You're going to drive yourself into the ground."
"I'm fine." Her typical response.
"You're not fine!" He took her face in his hands, forcing her to draw her eyes to his, "You...are not fine. We are not fine."
She laid her hand over his, and moved it away, "We're fine."
"Cristina, two weeks ago you disappeared, cut every inch of your hair off that you could, came home with textbooks and I haven't seen you since. You've been here, existing. Breathing. But I haven't seen you. You haven't come to bed with me, you barely talk to me..." he sighed, grasping her hand once again. "You have time to make it perfect, you have time get through this. You don't have to do everything at once."
Cristina took in a sharp breath, and let it out just as quickly, still trying her best to avoid his penetrating glances.
Couldn't he see that everything in her world had completely spun out of control, and that she wasn't going to be okay until she had some sort of say in her life again?
Couldn't he see that she was hurting, and this was the only way that he knew how to fix it.
"Cristina..." he urged, his hand trailing up her arms to her shoulders, "Do you know that you've been home for almost a month? And for the first couple of days, you couldn't get your mind off of the three week rule, and now...it's passed, and you? You're too busy in your own world, doing your own thing to even be an active participant in this relationship."
"This is about sex?" she questioned, grasping at anything to make this his fault.
To take the blame away from herself and place it on him.
She wouldn't have another element be out of her control.
"This is not about sex." he countered, his grip tightening on her shoulder.
"Good." she muttered, shrugging him off and pushing past him to grab the banana. "I still need another suture kit."
He sat back against the arm of the couch, letting out a long exhale, "No."
She looked up to him, anger in her eyes, "I need another one. If I want to get back into the program, I'm going to have to get this perfect!"
"No. If you want a suture kit, you can go to the hospital and get it yourself." He stood from the couch and walked back towards the kitchen.
His body was pulsating with anger for her until he heard a stifled cry from her direction, and he immediately felt guilty, he fell back to her side, taking her into his arms, trying to make right what he had just wronged.
Or had he wronged anything.
She continued to confuse him.
"I can't do this..." she sniffed into his chest, "I can't take this all at once. I'm supposed to just sit here at home for 12 months...for what? To see Bambi, and Meredith, and Izzie, and Alex just fly ahead of me? I was the best."
"You're still the best." he assured her, running his fingers through her hair.
"No...I'm weak, I'm rusty. I've been reduced to a housewife who compulsively sutures bananas."
Burke couldn't help but smile at a glimpse of her personality breaking through this state of helplessness she'd found herself in. "You're not a housewife...not yet, anyway."
"We are not talking about this now." she warned, not looking at him.
He nodded slightly, and pulled her chin up so that she was facing him, her cheeks stained with tears, "You're doing better than anyone ever expected, but you are going to slow down."
"I am?"
"Let me finish. You can still practice, you can still study, you can do whatever you want, but you're going to take care of yourself first, Cristina. I can't watch you do this to yourself. I love you too much to sit by and watch you do this to yourself." he continued, his voice soft, but steady and commanding.
She opened her mouth to protest, but closed it as she contemplated the look in his eyes when she brought him a bag of chickens to put back together.
He didn't have the drive she had at first, but he was in the same dark place that she'd found herself in.
But she'd taken it to the extreme, but she wouldn't be Cristina if she didn't.
"I can still practice?" she questioned him, searching his eyes.
"You can practice." he repeated, staring back into her eyes.
"And you'll help me?"
"I'll never stop helping you."
She sat down the banana on the coffee table and leaned back against him, closing her eyes. "Okay."
He rested his head against hers, pulling her closer. "Okay."