Dr. Richard Webber watched from behind his desk as a very pregnant Cristina Yang made her way into his office and lowered herself into the seat in front of him, obviously exhausted, and looked to him with reddened eyes from hours of sleeplessness.
"You wanted to see me, Chief?" She spoke quietly.
"Dr. Yang...we need to discuss your leave." He put his hands together in front of him.
She opened her mouth for a moment, looking at him in curiousity, her brow furrowed, "I told you that I was going to take leave after the baby is born."
"I can't accept that." He was firm in his approach, "You're a liability to this hospital in your condition."
"With all due respect, Dr. Webber, I'm pregnant. That's far from a condition." She shot back at him, sensing where the argument would lead.
"I can't have you on my surgical unit when your due date is rapidly coming upon us. I can't have you working 18 hour shifts when you could go into labor at any point in time."
"I'll cut back my hours." She protested.
She looked at him shaking her head gently.
Cristina knew that she wouldn't win this fight, but she also knew that she couldn't take leave, she couldn't sit at home, alone, in a house that was still very unfamiliar to her and just wait for her son to come.
She couldn't sit at home and wallow in her sadness.
"You and I both know that you never cut back your hours. Even after Preston..." his voice trailed off.
"After he died." She finished the sentence for him, bitterness overwhelming her intonation.
"My point being, you won't cut back your hours, and I can't have you on the floor."
"Why didn't you just have security take away my ID and send me home when I walked in the door?" She rose from the chair slowly, her center of gravity greatly affected by the child she was carrying, "You let Bailey work..."
"Until she had to go on bed rest. I would've made her go on leave as well, and you would do well to remember in the future that you don't question my authority, Dr. Yang."
"Of course, sir." Her words were curt.
"You can come back after your maternity leave is up, but until then, I do not want to see you in this hospital in any other capacity than as a patient, is that clear?"
She walked from his office without answering him, without acknowledging his words.
He brought his head to his hands and massaged his temples lightly as she disappeared from his sight and he pondered the mystery that was Cristina Yang.
At first thought, he wasn't certain that she would make it after Preston had passed, and on more than one occasion, he'd thought about cutting her from the program, but always at Bailey's request he held back.
Gave her a second chance.
And a third chance.
She did not disappoint, and started coming back into her own, but there was still a great sadness about her whenever she worked.
The spark that she had once carried was long gone, though she still knew the facts, and could spout them as if she'd wrote the textbooks herself, the drive was gone.
Cristina Yang had truly lost her edge.
If he had known, the things he knew now, he would've told her that she hadn't lost her edge, but just the opposite, she had indeed found it in Preston. That she had something so very valuable and not to question it, not to try and fight it.
If only he'd known now, what he didn't know then.
He glanced over his shoulder at her making her way across the skywalk and half expected to see Preston step up to her side, a light hand on her back, guiding her to their spot, where they would look out over the railing, seeming to be no more than a teacher and a student and they would talk.
But he always knew that they were so much more than that, and it pained him now to see her making that walk alone.
To be living this life alone.