Author Notes: Thanks again for your great reviews! Keep them coming! :) I truly appreciate that you take the time to review.

The next few days felt like a dream. Minutes passed, hours elapsed, day turned into night and then back to day again. Time just went by like a river that slowly runs among the hills and the meadows. It felt like slumber: one moment it was Thursday night, then suddenly, as if no time had passed at all, it was Monday. As if everything in between had been too meaningless to live through, while, in truth, those moments meant everything.

After giving her father the mother of all surprises, Claire had apparently heeded her grandmother's words and decided to fight the virus with ferocity that could only be found in the Hunt family. Even Arizona was taken by surprise by the sudden turn for the better. Day by day her condition slowly increased, her fever went down and her vitality improved. They were small steps, but as Owen knew from experience, the best progress happened slowly, inch by inch. He thought Claire was like a stream of lava: slow but unstoppable. And though Arizona tried to keep him calm by reminding that they weren't on dry land yet, he couldn't help but let joy slowly fill the empty space in his soul that the gradually retreating fear and worry left behind. Every day he dared to place more and more hope in the slowly-growing feel that maybe, just maybe the worst had come to pass.

Having his mother by his side made life a lot easier. She was always there when needed. She was there to take part in those moments of joy when Claire's condition was said to have increased. She was there to offer reassurance when he was having doubts. She was there to make sure that he also took care of himself, ate, slept and showered every now and then. The burdensome ordeal had it's effect on her, but all traces of weariness disappeared from her face every time she saw her granddaughter. She already loved her very much and made sure that she was taken good care of.

Though having his mother around definitely made things easier, there were things that she just couldn't ease. The bed felt cold at night and falling asleep without hearing the familiar snuffle of Cristina sleeping beside him was difficult. The morning oatmeal didn't taste the same without seeing her wolfing down her toast in a hurry. Shower felt cold, no matter how hot the water, without the chance of her joining him, pressing her warm body against his, letting her black curls tickle his skin. Even walking around in the hospital, the place that was his second home, felt strange, knowing that he wasn't going to see her. And though he wanted to, he didn't go looking for her. He knew that if she wanted to see him, she would find him. And though he was now more confused than ever before, especially after noticing the owl that Meredith had confirmed to have come from Cristina, he forced his brain to push Cristina aside and focus on Claire.

On Monday morning, however, the reality struck back in the form of a duty that Owen had completely forgotten about.

"Owen, hey!" Callie came jogging towards him as he and his mother stepped through the hospital doors. "I've been looking for you."

"Good morning to yourself", Owen said with his brows furrowed. It was still an early morning, but she had said it like she'd been looking for him for ages. "I just got here. What's up?"

"It's about Sharon MacAllister."

His expression immediately sobered down. "What about her?"

"I think I'll leave you two to talk in privacy", Marion said. "I wish to see my granddaughter."

"Sure, mom", he said as she walked towards the elevators. "I'll be there in a moment."

"Actually, this may take a while", Callie stated.

"Why? What is it?"

"Kepner came to talk to me last night, she said that she got a call from the morgue. Sharon MacAllister's body is still unclaimed, and the people there want to know if there's anyone to come and claim her since she doesn't have any family."

Oh crap! Owen felt like hitting himself. In the midst of all that whirl he had completely forgotten about her. Somehow he had just assumed that someone else would take care of her. But she had no family to do that. How could he had forgotten a matter of such importance?

"I'm sorry to talk to you about this, but we kinda needed to ask. You are his only... relative. Of course you don't need to –"

"No", Owen quickly said. "No, I'll... take care of it. There's no one else to do it. It's my responsibility."

"Are you sure? Because it's okay if you –"

"No, no I can't abandon her like that. She was someone's loved one, someone's daughter. She deserves proper burial. I feel like I owe it to her – and to Claire. She was her mother, after all."

Callie nodded. "Okay. I'll let Kepner know right away."

"Could you also go tell my mother? I'll go to the morgue right away and get it done."

"Yea, of course."

They parted ways, Callie hurried to the elevators while Owen started walking towards the morgue. He knew it was hard to understand why he wanted to take her burial as his burden – he wasn't sure if he even understood it himself – but somehow it just felt like he needed to. Whether it was his overall wish to respect the dead, the fact that no one else was there to do it or the feeling of debt or gratitude or guilt or whatever the hell it was, but somehow he just felt that he needed to do this. For Claire. Whatever the circumstances, she was still the mother of his child, and he needed to treat her as such. He hadn't even known her, yet there was this weird, unexplainable bond between them that obligated him to respect her, even if it meant taking care of her body.

The morgue was located at the bottom floor of the hospital. There was a narrow hallway with benches and candles leading to the door of the storage (or the "Chamber of Corpses", as some doctors called it). On the right there was a door leading to the small chapel-like room where the body of a loved one could be put on display for the family to see. Owen descended the stairs and arrived to the hallway, where a lone woman was sitting on a bench close to the door. The young dark-haired woman barely even looked up as he sat to the bench next to hers.

After a moment of silence, the diener arrived from the morgue. "Doctor, I got a phone call from Dr. Kepner, I'll be with you in a moment", he said to Owen before turning his attention to the woman who got up and spoke with a low, grief-stricken voice: "Hello. Paula Walsh, we spoke on the phone. I'm here to see the body of Sharon MacAllister."

Owen looked up at the woman with wide eyes. "Excuse me?"

The woman turned her head. "Pardon?"

Owen stood up, shocked. "Did you say Sharon MacAllister?"

"Yes. Why –?" The woman paused, her eyes shot up to his hair, then to his eyes. Her jaw dropped. "Oh my God. Dr. Hunt."

Owen looked at the woman carefully. She had light skin, amber eyes and straight dark hair. There was a faint scar between her eyebrows. She looked somewhat familiar. "Do I know you?"

"I – I – I was your patient once. A car accident... about nine months ago..."

The realization hit him like a current of electricity. A stunned "Oh" was all he could say. This was the woman whose life he had saved nine months ago, the MVC collision with a truck that had given him a lot of work to do on that fateful night. This was the woman whose friend had insisted on buying him a drink at Joe's for saving her life. This woman had brought Sharon MacAllister to his life.

Owen couldn't take his eyes off the woman, and she appeared to be equally unable to stop staring at him. The diener was looking at them questioningly. "Okay...? I have the body ready, Miss Walsh."

"Um, I'm actually here to see the same body", Owen informed, then looked at Miss Walsh. "If that's okay with you, Miss Walsh?"

"Uh... Sure. No problem", the woman stammered.

"Well this is certainly the strangest situation I've ever been in", stated the diener. He lead Owen and Miss Walsh to the morgue and showed them the body. Seeing her pale and battered body made him feel uncomfortable. Miss Walsh, however, collapsed to a stool next to the table, her eyes wide with despair and sorrow. Only now did Owen realize that she had been Miss MacAllister's best friend.

"I'll give you guys some privacy", the diener said and exited to his office.

"I'm sorry, Sharon", Miss Walsh whispered. "I'm sorry I didn't get here sooner. I'm sorry I wasn't there for you."

Owen put his hands to his pockets, trying not to look at Miss MacAllister or her grieving friend, who was gently caressing her cold face and sobbing. This was getting extremely awkward. Especially because he didn't know whether Miss Walsh knew about his connection to her friend.

"You must think she was a horrible person?"

Her words were hardly louder than a whisper, and it took a moment for Owen to realize that she was talking to him. "Sorry?"

She gave a grief-stricken laugh. "Lets not pretend that I don't know who you are. You're the married surgeon hunk she went to the bar with."

"Oh", Owen said. "So you know."

"Of course I know, she was my best friend. And she wasn't like that. She came to see me the following day, and she was horrified. She told me what had happened and she regretted it so much. She would never have touched a married man. It's just that... She was always a good drinker, and sometimes that caused her to do stupid things. She wasn't a bad person."

She was looking defiantly at him, daring him to argue, but he just sighed. "I don't think she was a bad person."

"You're right! She wasn't." Miss Walsh turned her head back to her friend. "She was the best friend I've ever had." She gave another sorrowful laugh. "They say a friend helps you after an accident, but a true friend is with you in the car. She was a true friend."

Owen was glancing at the door of the diener's office. He had never been good at these kind of situations. He didn't know if he was supposed to comfort the woman, stay silent or leave. He felt like an intruder in her grief.

After a moment, Miss Walsh stopped sobbing and seemingly pulled herself back together. Came the moment when reality came back with the blunt realization that it was time to move on. The moment when tears turned into silent grief and the will to understand. "How did she die?" Miss Walsh asked. "Did she die straight away or did she suffer? Was she in pain?"

"I wasn't here at the time." Owen felt uncomfortable thinking about that night, but he understood that this woman had the right to know what had happened to her friend. "When I was summoned to the hospital, she was already in surgery. About 20 minutes later I was told that she had died on the table. There was damage in her abdominal aorta and it ruptured, causing her to bleed out. There was nothing the doctors could have done to save her, so they decided to try and save her baby."

Miss Walsh suddenly gasped and stood up, covering her mouth with her hands. "What? Did the baby survive?"

"Um... Yes. She did", Owen stammered.

"Oh my God." Miss Walsh's saucer-sized eyes were filled with new tears as she stared at Owen. "I thought she... Oh my God. I thought... Wait." She was suddenly staring at him, shock in her eyes. "Oh my Lord, do you know? Do you know that she's..."

"I know. She managed to tell before she died."

"Oh my God." She looked at Miss MacAllister's body, then at him. "Where is she now?"

"In Pediatrics. There were complications and –"

"Please." She grabbed his arm and looked him in the eyes, a pleading look in her amber eyes. "Can I see her? Please."

Owen looked at her and felt sorry for her. He nodded. "Of course."

Mrs Hunt was fairly surprised to see Owen enter the room with a young dark-haired woman, who walked to the incubator with glittering eyes, looked at the baby and covered her mouth saying: "Oh my God." She looked at Owen with raised eyebrows, silently asking for an explanation. Her mother's friend, Owen mouthed, and her mother nodded while making a silent "Oh."

"W-why is she covered in tubes and wires?" Miss Walsh asked.

"She had a dangerous virus", Owen answered, then quickly added: "But she's doing a lot better, now."

"Aha", she said and examined Claire with her gaze. Mrs Hunt backed away until she stood next to Owen. "Want to enlighten me some more?" She whispered from the corner of her lips.

"I ran into her at the morgue", Owen whispered back, "and she asked to see Claire."

"The morgue? What were you doing in the morgue?"

"That's what Callie came to talk to me about. Claire's mother had no family, so her body was still unclaimed. I went to the morgue and she was there."

"And she's a friend of Claire's mother?"

"Yes. She recognized me because she was my trauma patient once."

"How did she find out about her death if she didn't have any family?"

"I don't know."

"Oh, she's awake!" Miss Walsh exclaimed, and at that moment Owen heard a familiar cry that signified that her daughter was awake. He walked to the incubator to see his child while his mother stayed behind. "I talked with the nurse and she said Claire was crying most of the night and then fell asleep around 4am", she informed.

"Claire? Is that her name?" Miss Walsh asked. "It's beautiful."

"I think so too", Owen said and touched his daughter's cheek. "Hey, Tough Girl. How are you today?"

"I'll get us some coffee", Mrs Hunt said and left the room, leaving Owen alone with Miss Walsh. She seemed absolutely mesmerized by Claire. "She looks a lot like you", she noted.

"She does", Owen said with a small smile.

"But that jaw is definitely hers. And those delicate hands. You're going to grow up beautiful."

"Let's just hope she has inherited her looks from her mother", Owen said without thinking, which instantly lead to a nasty sting from his conscience.

"Well, her father's not too bad either", Miss Walsh said with a chuckle, but the smile soon froze. She was eying Owen's hand. "Oh."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Listen, I just want to apologize. For my friend. I'm sorry that she harmed your marriage."

Owen furrowed his brows. "What makes you say that?"

Miss Walsh nodded towards his left hand. "No wedding ring."

Owen followed her gaze to his bare ring finger. He felt another painful sting, this one given by his heart. He sighed. "It's not... We had other problems, big problems. She had nothing to do with them."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I guess it was a train wreck about to happen all along." Owen saw Miss Walsh flinch a bit and realized that talking about train wrecks was stepping into sensitive territory. "Sorry..."

Miss Walsh looked at Claire, but the look in her eyes was somewhere far, far away. "You know, I came home from New York yesterday. Sharon's expected day was two weeks away, so I had bought the most cutest toys and all sorts of mother stuff to her. Last night I went to her apartment with all the gifts and bags, but no one was there. I asked her neighbor, this sweet old lady we called Nana Fields, if she knew where she was. Her daughter works here and had mentioned a surgery involving a pregnant woman, and Nana had realized that it was Sharon."

Of course, Owen thought. Lucy Fields.

"This is just horrible. I come home expecting to share the latest gossip with my best friend and watch her have a baby, and then I find out that my best friend has died and her baby almost died. And do you know what makes this nightmare even worse? My brother, my big brother whom I haven't seen in ages is coming to Seattle today, all the way from Texas to visit me because he wants me to meet his new girlfriend. I had to call him this morning and tell him to come straight to the hospital because I am here claiming my best friends body." She looked at Owen and made a weary sound. "And now I'm pouring out my heart to a man I literally just met."

"It's okay. I'm used to that", Owen said, thinking about Callie. Miss Walsh bridled. "I need a change of subject."

"Okay. You said your brother is coming from Texas. Are you from Texas, or...?"

"No, our family is from Montana. My brother moved to Texas for work. He and his girlfriend both work at MEDCOM in San Antonio."

"Really?" Owen was interested. "I have a friend who works at MEDCOM. She used to be our Head of cardiothoracic surgery."

"Is that so?" Miss Walsh asked. "What was her name?"

"Theodora Altman."

"Here's the coffee!" proclaimed Mrs Hunt as she emerged through the door.

Cristina and Dr. Russell left the patients' room, both feeling victorious. The patients were all okay, strong and willing to undergo a surgery that would surely be one of the most memorable cardiothoracic surgeries in the history of the hospital. This time tomorrow they would be performing a heterotopic heart transplant on a woman suffering from intense pulmonary hypertension. A piggyback transplant was already a cool procedure, but to make matters more interesting, the donor of the extra heart was the woman's husband. He was a tall, strong man whose heart was too small to effectively support his body, so he would get an all new heart and donate the original heart to his smaller wife. The procedures would be done at the same time, thus making it a highly unusual surgery. Needless to say, Cristina was bursting at the seams from excitement.

"That's one hell of a couple", Dr. Russell stated as they were walking towards the charting station.

"I know. Two people who both have malfunctioning hearts. It's like they were made for each other."

"Exactly. And the husband is literally giving his heart, his life to his wife. That's true love."

"Yea", Cristina said and suddenly her mind was totally elsewhere. "They seem like they'd cut off each other's legs."

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing, I – nothing." Cristina shook her head. The way Dr. Russell had talked about giving one's entire life to someone had made her think of Owen. "So, we'll meet at the OR tomorrow."

"10.30. Don't be late", Dr. Russell said and left.

"I won't!" Cristina shouted after him and then walked to the charting station. She quickly updated the charts (this time she had to do it herself since all her interns had been snatched away from her for the day) and then decided to go grab something to ear. On her way to the nearest vending machine she walked through the hospital lobby where she spotted Alex and the intern Jo talking with a couple. She was about to move on but suddenly paused, staring at the couple.

The man was tall and handsome, had short dark brown hair and round amber colored eyes. His posture was bolt upright and his arms were behind his back – his poise was similar to Owen's,

Cristina realized. The woman next to him had long straight blonde hair and a long, narrow face, and as she looked over Alex's shoulder and spotted her standing there, Cristina couldn't stop her eyes from widening as she stared into those light green eyes.

Teddy Altman locked eyes with her and a small smile appeared on her lips.