I do. Two small words, three letters embedded with infinite meaning. I do love you...I do need you...I do see you. Affirmations partners exchange in the half light of shared evenings, in the glare of enforced separation, in the dawns of new days spent taking the first tentative steps of a journey together or treading a familiar path travelled over many years in the bliss of each others company. For this couple it was a case of two words, three letters joining three hearts made by two people to one shared life.
Cristina had got her original wedding dress altered into a sleek strapless column. The material enveloped her curves showing off the enviable figure that was most of the time swamped in scrubs. She wanted to keep part of their original day with her. Even though she had felt out of control of her own mind and body when she had tied her life to her man the first time around, she had been in total control of her heart. When she had said "I do", the organ that fascinated, excited and defined her professionally had quickened in her chest, flooded with pure adrenaline. Her heart had always known the truth; it could only beat for him. There had been others before who had tried to make it adapt to their own rhythm but, although she hadn't realised at the time, they were like pacemakers- a temporary fix, sustaining a combined beat for a pre defined period. Her heart had jarred, resisted, it was patiently waiting. Waiting for its piggy back transplant. This other heart, it was a match! The chances of rejection minimal. This heart was a perfect fit, it took some of the strain, it helped her to rest, to mend, to heal, and it helped her to live.
Today was the day she got to reaffirm the vows that she had promised when she had been scared of not knowing who she was without her gift or without him. She got to tell him again, now she was healed, that he had fixed her with his love, with his presence, with his support. She got to thank him for not giving up on her, even when she had disregarded his voice and hurt him, to thank him for keeping his promise of staying through it all.
Today was the day she became Mrs Hunt all over again.
Across on the other side of the city, the other heart was beating excitedly as he took in his reflection in the mirror of the penthouse suite at The Meridien hotel. The new black Dolce and Gabbana suit hung snugly over the contours of the muscular body, the opulent Italian fabric hugging his posture, making him feel masculine, confident and comfortable. The crisp White shirt dazzled, making his blue eyes sparkle like twinkling stars and the red silk tie, the same one he had worn almost 2 years ago to the date, sat comfortably in a Windsor knot at the base of his thick neck.
Today was the day he got to tell the people he had made his family how much he loved this woman and the life they had started to live together. He got to, for a second time, promise to protect her for eternity, to thank her for making him a father and to tie his whole being even tighter to her side.
Today was the day he became Mr Yang all over again.
Back at the firehouse...
"Cristina?" The voice was questioning, searching through the open space of the loft apartment for its only female inhabitant.
"Yes!" Cristina did not turn her head, she recognised the voice calling out to her instantly. She continued to look in the dressing table mirror, painstakingly applying her make up, wanting to look nothing but her very best for her husband. She was wrapped in Owen's bathrobe, desperate to breathe in his scent and feel closer to him. He had been defiant in wanting to do all the traditional things associated with a wedding they had missed out last time. So he had taken Daniel, boys together, to spend the night at the hotel where they would hold the ceremony and reception. They had parted on a lingering kiss and whispers of their private version of I love you and she had woken to a voicemail of Owen telling her he could not wait to marry her and the delivery of a huge bouquet of red roses.
Helen Rubenstein stood nervously under the arch where the doorframe had once stood, not sure whether to approach her daughter or not. Cristina immediately noticed the hot pink trouser suit her mother was decked out in. Trust her to pick a colour that would clash with my dress! Cristina thought to herself derisively.
"Your friend Meredith let me in." her mother explained neutrally.
"Sit down." Cristina gestured toward the bed and turned back towards the mirror to start styling her hair. She was going to wear it half up, half down so Owen could get a glimpse of the neck he loved so much but also so he could run his hands through the loose curls, as had become his habit since the early days of their relationship.
"Your dress is beautiful." Helen ran her hand over the fabric before she sat on the furthest corner of the bed, legs crossed at the ankle in a true Beverly Hills lady who lunches way that made Cristina silently scoff at how little her mother had changed.
"It is the material of the dress I wore the first time. I had it altered." The response was stilted, Cristina really did not know what to say to the woman she had barely exchanged pleasantries with in the past 2 years.
"Really? You didn't wear a proper wedding gown?" Helen was exasperated that her daughter took such little pride in doing the things that normal women grew up dreaming about. Little girls dressed in net curtains, putting on their mother's make up simulating the perfect day when they got to be a princess and marry the handsome prince. Not her daughter, Cristina had never been interested in vanity or makes believe. She had buried herself in books, desperately seeking fact. Her intellect had been something her mother had resented as she did not understand it. She had hoped her daughter would become a ballerina. Cristina had been a dainty, gifted dancer who had loved her lessons and putting on little shows for her father but when he died it was as if the devastated little girl could not find any warmth to enjoy anything she had enjoyed with him. She became closed off, detached and cold. Helen felt she had tried to reach her but how many times do you offer someone your hand to have them bat it away, preferring to go it alone?
Helen acknowledged that her only child was beautiful but she didn't make the most of herself! The older woman looked at her daughter doing her hair and wondered if she had changed and become more feminine. But then as quickly as the musing had entered her head her real daughter chased it away.
"And there it is! How long did it take you mother," she mimicked looking at an imaginary watch on her wrist to drive home her point that her mother could not resist an opportunity to pick and criticise at the daughter who had not shaped her life into a carbon copy of her own.
"You looked so beautiful in the dress you would have married Preston Burke in, that is all I am trying to say to you." Helen was defensive. She knew her daughter to be difficult but she really did not want to argue with her. Their relationship was littered with cross words, misunderstandings and silent judgements.
"Why? Why would you bring him up on the day I am marrying someone else. You are a real piece of work mom!" Cristina spat the maternal address at the tiny woman perched like an uncomfortable child on the edge of her bed.
"I bring him up because, in truth, I still do not understand why you didn't go after him? He was handsome and brilliant, a real catch and now he is living a privileged life with another woman." Helen had found her voice and she was directing it squarely at her daughter. She wanted to know this young woman, who she had given financial security and a lavish LA upbringing. Helen seethed inwardly sometimes at how ungrateful and unpleasant her daughter was. She could only imagine what this Owen Hunt was like to put up with her!
"Because he left me at the altar!" Cristina let her annoyance at her mother's insensitivity get the better of her and screeched the painful truth of the event that now felt like it had happened to someone else in another lifetime, out into the tension filled air. "Because I didn't really love him."
Cristina realised she was shaking. With anger or upset she could decipher. She took some steadying breaths and say down on the parallel corner of the bed to her mother. Speaking quietly, like she had as a little girl she started to tell her mother the absolute truth.
"I never loved Burke, Mom. Not like I love Owen." Her final sentence was said in a tone that left no room for confusion. It was absolute.
Helen raised her eyes to meet her daughters. She had always known Cristina to be passionate about her work, but she had never heard her talk of another person with such conviction. It took her by surprise that the emotionally detached child, the unfeeling young adult had changed into this warmer, more open version of herself.
"Owen is a good man Mom, he may not be a world renowned surgeon, not yet anyway, but he is a man who cares deeply about the people he makes part of his life, he is fiercely loyal. He is the most amazing father. He doesn't care that I only wear dresses to weddings, or that I don't cook or that I would rather watch surgeries than Hollywood blockbusters! He loves me! He has never tried to change me… but I have changed." Cristina stopped and took a deep breath.
Why did she feel this overarching need for her mother to see who she really was? They had never really had a relationship that bordered on anything other than a biological connection. Maybe it was because of Daniel. She had vowed to her son that she would not be the mother that would try to shape him into what she wanted him to be but to help him find his own gifts, his own passions and even if she did not share them she would try to understand and take an interest. "Owen has experienced and seen things you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy but he loves me, like dad did, for me, for exactly who I am."
"Are you happy, Cristina?" Her mother reached out and gingerly offered her open palm to her daughter. "That is all I have ever wanted for my daughter, for you to be happy."
"Yes. I am. I am happy." Cristina slipped her hand into her mother's, her wedding and engagement ring drew both women's eyes. "I have my work, which I know you have never understood but it is part of me. After Dad died, I knew I had to learn how to fix hearts, if I had done more, if I had known what to do, I could have..."
Her mother cut her off, wanting to protect her child from re-opening these old wounds and also from her mascara running all down her perfectly made up face, "It was not your fault! You were a child, you did more than most adults could have done." Helen lifted Cristina's chin upwards and stoked her cheek lightly, "It was not your fault."
Cristina was rendered speechless for a few moments. The woman who had given birth to her was being a parent! It had taken her 33 years to get here but she was being an actual mother! Cristina felt a small sense of closure as a wave of peace overtook her. She felt a calm just sitting with her mother, she felt that maybe she could understand her a little bit more than she had before. Maybe they could move forward as mother and daughter and she could be a grandmother to Daniel, whatever that may look like.
"Cristina. I may not have said this enough but….." Her mother let go of her hand and dropped the hand on her cheek into her own lap, started fiddling with the sleeve of her jacket and looked down. "I am proud of you and I do love you."
Cristina could not recall a memory of hearing those words from her mother's lips directed towards her. She felt stunned and her body began to move almost without any cognitive direction. She slid across the bed and laid her head on her mother's bony shoulder.
"I do love you mom, just in my own way." She smiled weakly and wondered why it had taken this woman so long to put down the paint swatches and truly try to get on the same pages as her own daughter.
2 hours later, at The Meridien Hotel...
Meredith and Cristina stood facing each other behind the heavy oak doors that separated bride from groom. Meredith, her maid of honour, was dressed in a shorter black version of Cristina's column dress and Zola was wearing a white fairy inspired outfit with a red sash. In her chubby fist she held a small basket of red roses and her face was beaming with a smile that would tell everyone that she was delighted at the chance to dress up like a fairy and get lots of attention.
The weight of this moment was not lost on either of the doctors. This was Meredith really giving her person away to the man she had not always trusted to keep her best friend's heart safe. Now she did. Owen was Cristina's true soulmate, Meredith had just been keeping that spot warm in Cristina's life until he came to fill it.
"Well this is it now, Cristina Yang." Meredith was fighting back the tears as Zola clung to each of the older women's right hands.
"It is Meredith Grey...I have to tell you..." Cristina could not find the words. She sighed and fixed her friend with a look of willing, willing her to understand everything she could not say in this moment.
"I know." The unspoken declarations of their shared past passed between them. They clasped hands and the circle of a mother, a daughter and a godmother just stood and paused.
This was 2 best friends letting go and moving on. Moving past a place of having a relationship that at times excluded others, that others had envied and despised in equal measure from the outside looking in. There was no more secret coded language more often heard in playground games, it was time to play at being the grown ups. But now both of these dark and twisty people had come to see that they had outgrown the relationship as it existed in it's present form. They still would need each other, still would be part of each other. But now they both had husbands to truly share their joy and pain with. They both had children who relied on them to nurture and guide them, they had other people. Now each of them just needed a pure and simple best friend.
Cristina Yang, you are getting married! The thought left a serene smile on her face, as Meredith pulled open the heavy door and the strains of chamber music started. Holding tightly to her best friend's hand, letting Zola walk ahead to adoring looks from the congregation, she put one foot in front of the other and started off down the aisle towards the 2 men who had changed her life.
TO BE CONTINUED...