Cristina looked down at the dummy arm in front of her that she'd taken a box cutter to, placing multiple lacerations to it, suturing and resuturing the lacerations with the mattress stitch.
When she was satisfied that nobody could do it better, she replaced it in the heavy black leather bag and slid it under the bunk bed of the call room, content with the work she'd done.
She glanced down to her cell phone and saw that it was 3 am.
Pondering for a moment, she picked up the phone and slowly punched in his numbers, and hit dial, listening for the sound of his voice, a temporary replacement of the feeling of his arms wrapped around her waist and a kiss gently placed on her forehead before she could rest.
The tone alerted her that it was her time to talk and she smiled to herself, knowing he'd be content with the words, and she spoke into the receiver, her voice soft, "I'm okay." and she clicked the phone shut, lying back in the bunk, the phone clutched tightly in her hand.
Her body was worn and weak from the previous two days already and she wondered to herself how she would make it through the next couple of weeks, preparing herself to go back to work, to fight her way back into the spot that was rightfully hers in the internship program.
'I can handle this.' she thought to herself, letting her eyes slide shut, 'I am Cristina Yang, the best intern at Seattle Grace Hospital, and this is a breeze. This is cake. I can handle this.'
She opened her eyes to program the alarm clock on her cell phone for 9 am, thinking to herself that she couldn't allow herself to rest too much if she ever expected to return home in a decent amount of time.
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Burke sat on the couch in silence, a crumpled piece of yellow paper being compulsively smoothed out in his hands as he found himself in deep thought.
What was it about this girl that he sat here restlessly, wishing for her to come home.
Part of him wanted to just be over her, to be over the relationship, to forget she ever existed and move on from it.
To quit causing himself so much pain.
But a greater part of him, focused on what could happen when she came home. The greater part of him knew what it was like to have his career and everything he'd worked so hard for in his entire life at stake and to have to work through it.
Except when he worked through it, she was at his side, and she stuck. She was there for him in a way that was uniquely Cristina, even if it ended badly, it brought the two of them together.
He couldn't imagine how this though, could bring the two of them together.
He picked up his cell phone sat beside him and longed to hear the sound of her voice again, even if it was a saved message.
Even if it was a message that just contained two simple words. But somehow, those two simple words had the power to set his mind at ease.
If the words were something else, 'I'm fine.' or her dreaded 'I love you.' he would worry, but somehow the words 'I'm okay.' were reassuring to him.
The display flashed on, and he noticed a tiny symbol in the top right hand corner, a beacon in his darkness.
He had another message.
He listened quietly, his ears longing to hear the sound of her voice, and a small smile crept across his lips as he heard the words, 'I'm okay.'.
A small chuckle escaped him as he thought of her ruminating on what to say the first time, but after finding that the words 'I'm okay.' came easily to her, she'd set her mind on that.
He also knew that he could count on that message from her on a nightly basis from now on, or so he thought as he shut the phone off and placed it back on the coffee table.
Burke stretched his legs over the couch, laying back against a throw pillow and allowed himself a minute amount of sleep.
He'd never really slept on the couch before, he'd never had a reason to, but somehow his bed was too empty and it felt too strange to sleep in it without her after having her there for so long.
His mind wandered as he thought of her, and the different ways he could help her. He pictured her in his mind, sitting in a call room, piles and piles of fruit and chicken around her, suturing like a mad woman, trying to work herself up to the best intern that she could be, all while reading textbooks to brush back up on her pathology and gross anatomy.
If only he could write a textbook about love and belonging, support, and relationships in terms that she could easily relate to and commit to memory like she did with science.
That'd be easier.
But then again, he wasn't sure that he'd had the art of their relationship mastered to a science yet, especially with all of the wrenches thrown into theirs.
He ignored the fact that it could be fate warning the two of them that the relationship was a bad idea, and he maintained the fact in his mind that he'd found his soulmate, and he'd get her back no matter what the cost.
A/N: Okay, I think that's it for tonight. My cold medicine is finally kicking in and I'm pretty tired. That's what, like, 5 or 6 chapters in one night. You should love me by now. And if you don't? You never will. :)