Are there any other kinds of lovers?

Images drifted before her eyes, scenes from surgeries, or high school or rainstorms, but mostly it was hazy. Through it all though Burke's voice rang in her head, calling her name with increasing panic.

She was in the house she grew up in, but it was different. Her motorcycle was propped against the kitchen wall and everything was fuzzy around the edges. She looked down; she was wearing her scrubs, but they were orange, not blue. She swayed as she stood staring around her.

"Cristina." That was Preston's voice, but where was he? He didn't sound as anxious has he had before – in the operating room he had sounded close to terror. Where was he? What was going on?

Her heart started beating faster and in the operating room Dr. Bailey turned up the anesthesia one more degree.

"Cristina." She turned behind her, and he was there. He was standing by the door, which led to a mix of colors that wouldn't stay still long enough for her to look at them properly.

Cristina opened her mouth to reply, but no sound would come out. She felt the panic overtake her again, but then Preston was in front of her, holding her, and she felt safe.

Bailey checked the heart monitor and frowned as she brushed a lock of hair out of Cristina's face.

He let go of her to reach behind him and then in his arms he held a baby. Small and soft, with dark hair and skin the color of … she didn't know. She couldn't tell. It was there but it also wasn't.

"Cristina." She looked at Burke, standing there holding that baby, his baby, their baby?

"Why didn't you tell me?" She could feel the panic bubbling up in her chest again.

Bailey quickened her step on the walk back from the door, after she forced Meredith out of the OR. It was the right choice, she knew. That much, at least, she knew. Resuming her place at Cristina's head she checked the clock. Four hours. It had been four hours – she hadn't realized how draining not doing anything but watching could be.

Preston seemed to grow blurrier, she took a step towards him and he grew blurrier still. She reached a hand out for Preston, for the baby, and then they were gone. His voice calling her name was still ringing in her ears.

The next thing Cristina thought was pain. That was all there was room for, no conscious thought could break past that wall of agony.

Bailey turned up the anesthesia on the drip next to the bed at Cristina's involuntary clenching, and resumed her vigil.

Cristina's last thought before she succumbed again was Preston.

The images moved more quickly now, not forming into bigger ideas, just flashes of moments. A park. A scrub shirt. A bottle of tequila. Her med school textbooks in a pile. Her best friend from high school. Her dog, Peaches, who had been hit by a car when she was in the third grade. The head of a Judy doll. Other things that weren't even recognizable. A hat. A piece of green fabric. Faces she didn't remember.

She woke up to a familiar presence, and through her haze she thought it might be Burke keeping watch over her. Her disappointment at seeing it was Bailey was minimal; the comforting presence of the older woman was calming to her overwrought mind, which by now was frantically fighting the cloying fuzziness that the drugs brought. She knows they spoke, is sure that Bailey told her the outcome, but right then it was all she could do to not succumb again to oblivion's siren song. Reacting was beyond her mind's abilities, though the information tried to shift itself into her subconscious meanderings.

Images again, though interspersed with long periods of darkness this time. A baby's cry. Silence. Then through the void, which was blurry and indistinct even in its' impenetrable darkness; she could hear voices, syllables, the occasional words.

"Why – "

"o you … do –"

"Blushed … ery ti –"

"can't deal wi –" That was Meredith, maybe.

"… be okay?" George, she thought. George. Yes.

"Yes."

Then laughing, some shuffling of feet and chairs, and silence.

Darkness, but she wasn't alone now. She couldn't see anything, the void was still pressing in around her, folding her into its' pocket, but now there was someone here with her in the darkness. Burke, her subconscious supplied, and then she was drifting again.

When Cristina awoke this time, with the last tendrils of the drugs still entrenched in her mind, Burke was sitting beside her. One hand supported his head and the other was entwined with hers on the hospital bed. He was still in his scrubs, looking rumpled and haggard. She twisted her head a little to one side, to read the clock over his shoulder. It read 2:39, and her small movement brought him out of his reverie.

He turned his piercing gaze on her, though it softened as he took in her open eyes, still cloudy with the pain medicine.

"Hi," said Burke quietly.

Cristina didn't have confidence in her control over her vocal chords, but tried anyway.

"Hi." It came out as a croak, but with her small smile that might have looked more like a grimace to someone else he relaxed a little more into his chair, and his shoulders looked as if a heavy burden had been lifted from them.

"How are you feeling?" His eyes held all the questions he wanted to ask, but wouldn't. Cristina could imagine them all rocketing around inside of his head, demanding to be vocalized, but he was to kind to interrogate her immediately after she woke up.

Maybe it was this knowledge, or maybe the drugs still in her system that prevented her from following a conversation, for she answered a different, unspoken question.

"I'm sorry." At her words his gaze softened even further, but sadness seemed to overtake his features, and his shoulders drooped again.

"Why – " He struggled to get that word out and fell silent, but seemed to take courage from her somehow, and so started again.

"Why didn't you tell me – about the baby?"

Her voice protested its' use, but this was something that Preston deserved to know, it was the only thing she could give to him, to somehow, possibly, make it better. A little better, at least.

"I thought…" here she trailed off, the drugs making her dizzy, and the enormity of the situation beginning to trickle into her awareness.

She swallowed and started again, her voice pitched low and lacking emotion.

"I thought I could do it alone."

His panicked voice calling her name in the ER echoed in the recesses of her mind.

"I was scared. I didn't … know what to do – " The surgery had exhausted every inch of her, she was floating back into the darkness but she didn't want to go, she wanted to stay here with Burke, even if his eyes when he looked at her were haunted. Her distress must have shown on her face, or maybe he was moved by her confession, because at that moment Burke cupped her face in his hand and leaned forward to kiss her forehead.

"It's okay. Everything's going to be all right. Go back to sleep, I'll be here when you wake up, I promise." His voice was low and rough with emotion, but his hand and his kiss were gentle, almost reverent.

With his promise clutched around her frayed consciousness like a blanket, she drifted off to sleep. This time the darkness didn't' reach up and claim her, she dreamed of a white picket fence and a minivan and a thriving surgical practice with Burke by her side. The dream made her smile a little in her sleep, and if Meredith appeared in the dream as a life-size Judy doll well, she wouldn't tell anyone.

This time when Cristina awoke, Burke was pacing the room. Weak sunlight had made it's way across the hall from the window, the glass walls of her room refracted it, giving metallic surfaces a harsh glare and leaving some places entirely dark. Burke's pacing corner was one of those places. Her head felt a little less muddled, and though there was a dull pain in her lower abdomen she wanted to be as lucid as possible for now, and so could forego the drugs for a while.

A burst of color caught the corner of her eye and she looked towards her bedside table, where a bouquet of purple Singapore orchids was doing its damnedest to brighten the bleak hospital room. Singapore orchids were her favorite kind of flower, her one concession to beauty instead of utility, to frivolity instead of rationality. Who would know that? She didn't think anyone at the hospital did … her eyes slid to Burke, who was now watching her with an expression she couldn't read.

Well, she would start with the tried-and-true.

"Hi." She saw the flicker of a smile flash across his face.

"Hi," he replied. "Are you okay?"

She smiled at that. "I will be. Thank you for staying here with me." She said this quietly, without meeting his eyes, unable to bear the unhappy truths she was sure she would find there. How could anything survive this?

"Cristina." She looked up and was stunned at the devotion she saw in his eyes, and could it be? The love. Maybe. She couldn't be sure.

"I'm sorry." She couldn't do anything but say that, and it could never be enough.

"I know. I'm sorry too." He sat down beside her and took her hand, which seemed so small when sheltered within his own.

Their relationship had always been about the subtext, never what was said out loud. "Thanks for the coffee" had translated to "Yes, I am interested in you enough to risk my career" and "Lock the door" to "I dislike your emotional evasiveness but I am willing to continue whatever it is we're doing, although it will remain undefined against my will." Cristina could read hope and the future and sunshine into his words, and the concern and love in his eyes confirmed her instinct.

He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it as if she would break.

The sun was coming in more strongly now, lighting the hospital as nurses and doctors bustled about their early morning routine. In one recovery room an intern and an attending had come through their trial by fire and emerged stronger than before, to continue their lives together.