Title: "on the edge of greatness"
Author: monimala/Mala
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Rating/Classification: suitable for all readers, angst, Burke/Cristina, filler/tag for 2.3.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters.
Summary: He had a man's heart in his hands and all he remembers is watching her drop.
He quit smoking in med school, cold turkey, after seeing the inside of a diseased lung for the first time in path lab. It hadn't seemed like a particularly wise habit anyway...and there was that whole Hippocratic vs. Hypocritical factor, too. Who wanted a doctor who smoked telling them to stay healthy?
Of course, that was also when he decided to be a surgeon...where contact with patients was more hands-on and less verbal.
He made quite a few decisions at that time, poised on the edge of greatness -- at least in his own mind, if nowhere else -- and remembers poring over Spiderman comics on rainy afternoons, devouring the superhero costumes and the webslinging and that beaten-to-death phrase: "With great power must also come great responsibility." Power had intrigued him even then. No, especially then, when the other boys in the neighborhood routinely kicked him into the dirt for having a sissy name like "Preston," for thinking he was better than them, for the thickness of his Coke-bottle glasses and the thinness and darkness of his skin.
He still reads Spiderman sometimes, taking classic issues out of the protective plastic and turning pages with careful precision. He's seen both movies. He cried when the New Yorkers pelted the Green Goblin on the bridge and pretended he had popcorn salt in his eye.
And he finally understands the "great responsibility" part.
The peds intern still hasn't learned her carcinogenic lesson, and instead of lecturing the girl, he just intimidates her -- with three words and a harsh look -- into handing over one of her Virginia Slims before she flees the roof. He shouldn't have to remind her to scrub up, but he does it anyway. She does not need to be handling children with the stink of tobacco on her hands.
"I'm sorry, Doctor," she whispers, meekly, as she hurries away. "I'm sorry."
Children.
He chokes, coughs, blames it on the smoke going down the wrong tube even though there's no one to hear it.
*C. Yang. Ectopic pregnancy.*
He slumps against the railing, takes a deep drag, and lets the menthol burns his throat.
He had a man's heart in his hands and all he remembers is watching her drop, calling her name, the cool, snide, pedantic "Dr. Yang" forgotten. But why should it be a surprise? He forgets "Dr. Burke," too, when it comes to her. He's Preston, kicked in the dirt, and tasting blood.
*C. Yang. Ectopic pregnancy.*
She was so pale, so still and quiet. He wonders how many of them saw her in the OR, how many people stopped and read the board, where her procedure -- her private life-- was written out for everyone to see until it was callously dry-erased away. She would hate that. She hates for anyone to see her weaknesses. *"Oh. You're ending this."* At night, sometimes, he pretends she didn't say that with a little girl's catch in her voice...that note of shock before she nodded, business-like, and let him proceed with the break-up speech. He knows that's how she prefers it. Don't realize she's vulnerable, don't think she cares, don't know that she is carrying his child. Was. *Was* carrying his child.
All the power in the world can't change the tense.
He gets down to the filter too quickly, flips the butt to the concrete and crushes it under his heel until not even one spark remains.
He quit smoking in med school, cold turkey.
You'd think he'd have learned from that...and quit falling in love the first time he saw a broken heart.
--end--
October 12, 2005.