Cristina had thought she'd be able to sleep better without Owen there, but that didn't prove to be true. She lay on her back and stared at the ceiling, and images of their conversations, their shifts together, their lovemaking last night paraded themselves through her mind, interspersed with flashes from what she was now calling "The Incident." It was so hard to reconcile the Owen she had grown to love with the heartless machine who had dug his thumbs into her throat and gone for the kill. And that made sense. She knew intellectually that her Owen would never hurt her. The problem was, that other Owen was in there too, and it wasn't like they could just hire an exorcist and chant him out.

As her tired mind went around and around with it, she vacillated between hope and hopelessness, back and forth between despairing over the relationship and envisioning him whole, healed, and the two of them together - but always landing with a thud in the stark reality that for now, they were apart, and she had no idea if they'd ever be able to be together again. She tossed and turned for over an hour and finally fell into a fitful doze, only to drift into a nightmare where Owen was strangling her again, and this time he was wide awake, fully aware, and looking her straight in the eye. She was trying to scream at him, to get him to stop, but he had cut off all her air and she couldn't get the words out. She woke up in a cold sweat and sat bolt upright, her heart racing, only to have Callie burst into her room seconds later.

"Shit, Cristina, are you ok?" Callie looked panicked.

Cristina was breathing heavily and her hands were shaking. "Huh? Yeah... Why are you in here?"

"You were screaming your head off! I thought someone was murdering you… God, that scared me." She peered into the darkness, "Are you alone?"

"What? Yes. Of course. There's no one here. I must have had a nightmare… Sorry I woke you up." Callie cocked an eyebrow at her. "Really, I'm fine. Go back to sleep."

Callie shook her head. Cristina was so clearly not fine. "Want me to stay in here with you?"

Cristina looked at her like she was crazy. "No! I'm fine, really. Go back to bed."

"Ok, whatever you say… but, you know, it's ok if you need help. That wasn't a little nothing that happened the other night, and you don't have to be all strong and brave for everybody…I'm here for you if you need me."

"Thanks… I… I'll let you know if I need anything. Right now, I just want to go back to sleep." With a resigned nod, Callie left the room, leaving the door about a foot ajar, and Cristina flopped back on the bed. Her heart was still going a mile a minute, and with the amount of adrenaline that had flooded her system, she knew it wasn't likely she'd be falling back asleep any time soon. Her mind was on overdrive too, and rather than try to shut it down, she let it fly. The disturbing images returned, and she felt an almost macabre urge to pin them down and really remember the details of the nightmare. It had been a vivid replay of what had actually happened, only far worse because Owen hadn't been asleep this time. It had felt so real, and had resembled what everyone else had assumed it was at the time, and what she knew for sure it was not - a willful assault by a deranged man.

And then it hit her. This is what Owen goes through. This is what it's like for him to relive Iraq in his nightmares. This is how it feels for him to startle awake like that, to panic, to have all that extra adrenaline flowing through his veins and not be able to do anything but wait it out. How does he do it? How does he function?

She turned on her side and tried to get comfortable as her brain processed this new information. I thought I understood before, but I really didn't. Not fully.

And then it hit her again. Oh, this is actually kind of ironic. Because of what he did to me, I really get it now.

Shit, she let out a bitter laugh, am I NEXT? Is it fucking contagious or something? Am I going to wake up screaming every night now? She knew there was nothing funny about it, but the laughter continued to bubble up nonetheless, accompanied by sporadic sobs as she tapped into the well of sorrow she had been carrying since the moment she realized that she could not allow herself to fall asleep in his presence. The pendulum of her emotions had swung from joy at their intense physical and emotional connection to abject sorrow and fear, all in a heartbeat. It was too massive a load to process all at once, and now she let the enormity of her delayed reaction flow out in a rush. Happiness, sadness, anger and fear all coexisted and jockeyed for position as she hugged Owen's pillow, laughing and crying at the same time. She was bordering on hysteria and she knew it.

Breathe, Cristina, she admonished herself. Stop it. Enough. You're ok. You're fine. She took a few deep breaths and let them out slowly, mimicking the relaxation exercises they encouraged patients to do when they got nervous before surgery. It did help to slow her heart rate down, and the sobbing laughter subsided, but she was still far from relaxed enough to fall asleep. After a few more minutes she gave up, dug out one of her cardiac surgery DVDs, and popped it into the machine. It was going to be a long night. Might as well enjoy it.

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