Izzie watched quietly as Cristina stood outside of room 4815, a chart in hand, her eyes frozen on the occupants of the room, her body poised to move, but frozen in space.
Her heart ached as he realized that it was Burke's room before he died.
She crept slowly towards her, biting back tears of sympathy, "Cristina." She mumbled, pulling the chart from her hands.
Cristina didn't fight it as the chart left her hands, "I have to do a preoperative assessment, and I need to get him to surgery." She spoke, her voice barely above a whisper.
"I can do it for you."
She looked to Izzie, her eyes dark and empty and swallowed hard, "How did you do it, Iz?"
"Do what?" She questioned quietly, already knowing the answer to the question.
Cristina bit her lip for a moment, and chided herself for a moment of weakness, then pulled the chart from Izzie's hands, "Never mind."
She stalked into the room, anger replacing sadness and went about her work, cold, complacent and uncaring.
Izzie shivered as she saw Cristina work with exactitude as she went through the movements of a physical assessment. A precise and well choreographed dance that she knew all too well.
Inspection.
She remember the last time that she saw Denny. He looked better. He had skin color. His breathing wasn't labored.
But hers was. He took her breath away.
Palpation.
She remembered the last time that he touched her, the way that he cupped her face in his soft hands.
Auscultation.
More than anything else she remembered lying in bed next to him after he was gone, her head against his chest and not being able to hear the rhythmic lub-dub of his heartbeat.
She also remembered hoping against all hope that if she just laid there long enough, that he'd come back, that he would get his color back, that he'd pull her close to him and that she could hear the sound of his heart beating.
Tears began to spill from her eyes as she realized how jealous she was being, and guilt overrode her thoughts of Denny as she came to realize that the only reason that Preston Burke was dead was because she killed him.
She was the one who had fallen in love with a patient.
She was the one who cut the LVAD wire in an act of desperation.
She was the one who made Preston Burke come back to Seattle Grace, placing him in the line of fire.
If he hadn't of been shot, he wouldn't of gotten the tremors.
If he hadn't of gotten the tremors, he wouldn't have needed another surgery.
If he didn't need another surgery, he wouldn't have died.
Izzie laid her hands against the wall, trying to brace herself as her world spun around her, darkness and anger enveloping her being and she wondered how Cristina could even look at her.
How she could even look at herself in the mirror.
Not only did her forbidden love take one life, it took two.
She continued to watch Cristina as she emerged from the room and she shook her head, looking away from her ashamed. Dirty. Guilty.
Izzie Stevens had taken away the love of her life through a series of events that she herself had started and she wondered if Cristina thought the same.