"Okay, listen up."

An exhausted Bailey stumbles to the front desk, a plastic clipboard in hand.

"O'Malley, you're with Shepherd. Phoenix, you're with Sloan. Stevens, you're with Burke. Karev, with Addison. Go."

Meredith stays behind to be assigned a task while Cristina tries to convince Bailey to let her scrub in on a case.

"Aren't you glad I'm working with you today?" My hip bumps against Derek's.

"Technically, you're under Sloan, not me." He greets me with a swift peck to the cheek. "I have surgery, though. Right before the wedding."

His face beams brightly, but the cautious look in his eyes says otherwise.

"Why are you staring at me like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like. . .you know something that I don't."

He shrugs his shoulders. "I'm the best man, if you want to know. Preston picked me to be his best man."

"That's sweet. I'm one of the maids of honor, so. . .it's rather fitting." I fail to look away from the glint in his eyes. "Okay, what is the matter with you?"

"I met up with your dad yesterday. At Joe's. Shared a couple of drinks."

"Better than me. I had a whiff of Meredith's tequila sunrise while drinking my fourth cup of coffee for the night."

"He doesn't want me to be with you."

The fronts of my brows furrow. "What?"

"Lennox knows I'm damaged goods, Mark knows I'm damaged goods. . ." A shaky sigh leaves his lips.

"We can talk later." I clear my throat. "You have surgery, I have to get back to Mark. . .it'll be fine, okay? Everything's going to be fine."

With uncertainty lingering in my thoughts, I walk away from him. Meredith and I meet up by the front desk by the main entrance of the hallway.

"Meredith. . ."

"The chief's wife is pregnant. And it can't be his if they were divorced. Unless they — no, I don't want to think about it."

"Leven. . ."

"Why does my father not want me to be with Derek? Does he not want me to be happy or something? Thought he learned his lesson after twenty years of torment."

"You know how something it's about you, sometimes it's about Meredith, and sometimes it's about me? This is really, really about me."

The two of us swivel around in our chairs, staring up in shock at the sight of Cristina without her eyebrows.

"What happened to your face?"

"Oh — Leven."

"Don't lie to me. You were thinking the same thing."

"Mama took my eyebrows." She trembles on the spot. "She took my eyebrows, and now I am a Burke."

Bailey lets Meredith and I leave early with Cristina to make sure she gets ready for the wedding instead of making a run for it.

But with less than thirty minutes for the wedding, we stick to prepping in the locker room with the other interns.

"Moment of truth, people."

Patricia walks in with six individual envelopes, each one addressed to one of us. She passes around each of them, and we hurry to open them up.

"Yes, thank God."

"Yeah, baby."

"Well, that's over with."

"We're done with our intern year."

"Alright, let's go."

The door opens, and we leave one by one. But Derek walks in dressed in his suit, so I tell them that I'll meet them at the chapel.

"Derek, we have to get to the wedding. Cristina and Burke need us today, so can't we just —"

"I. . ."

"Spit it out, Derek. What do you want from me?"

"He's right."

"Who's right? And about what?"

"You. . ." His hands hold my own tightly, tears glossing the whites of his eyes. "You deserve better than what I can give to you."

My own tears threaten to slip. "I don't know who has plagued your mind, but —"

"I'm letting you go."

". . .what?"

"Your father thinks this is for the best, and I. . .I have to agree."

"Who is holding a gun to your head and making you say all this?"

"Leven, I wish it could be different —"

"No." I rip my hands from his grasp. "If you wanted this to be different, you would have stood up to my father and said no." His face falls.

"It isn't that easy —"

"As much as I'd like to waste more time on this. . .we have a wedding to attend."

Before anything can escalate, we rush to the chapel for the wedding. He stands at the altar with Burke while the bridesmaids help Cristina.

"Oh!" Cristina's mother gasps when she steps out of the dressing room with her dress. "Oh, you look beautiful. I am proud of you."

"Thank you." She genuinely smiles at her mother.

Mrs. Rubenstein places the bouquet in her hands. "Frankly, I always feared you were too emotionally stunted to settle down." And the tears begin.

"Was she about to run?"

"Thankfully, no. I think she's ready to get married."

"Well, I'd hope so since we're already here."

Izzie, Meredith, Callie, Cristina, and I line up behind the double doors — just a wall away from the beginning of her married life.

Alex walks in to check on us, giving the women a perfect view of the decorations and altar.

"Ooh. I see Burke." Izzie giggles giddily while fiddling with her bouquet. "God, it looks so pretty in there."

Alex looks Cristina up and down. "Yang. . .the twins look nice in that dress."

"Thank you." She grimaces lightly. "Sort of."

"I gotta go." He glances down at his watch. "I gotta check —"

"Oh, you're on call?" Callie questions.

"Wait, Alex." Izzie calls him back. "Did you see George in there? Because I don't see him."

"He's, uh. . .probably gonna be late." Callie stops beside the arrangement of flowers on the right side. "Yeah, we had kind of a big, emotional day."

"Oh, really? Did something happen between you two or —"

"No. It's just that I was named chief resident. Plus, we decided to have a baby."

"A baby?"

"Yeah, we're trying. We tried today, in fact."

"Wow."

"Yeah. Big day for us."

The wedding march starts to play ahead of those doors, and we finish with last minute fixes and arrangements.

But Cristina panics almost immediately when she realizes she accidentally washed off the vows written on her hand.

"I-I scrubbed off my vows. I. . .I can't. . .I can't do this. I don't have-I don't have anything written on my hand."

She paces back and forth, trying to think of something to say off the top of her head.

"There are no words in my head, okay? I have no vows."

"It's okay. It's going to be okay."

"Stop saying that, Mer! Will you please say something else? Someone, just say something that is going to help me."

"I could pretend to be you and give you a pep talk."

"Okay. Okay, that might work."

Meredith clears her throat, channeling her emotions to whatever Cristina would do.

"This is your wedding, Cristina. Stop whining like a little puppy." She raises her voice. "You better walk down that aisle, and you better get married today because I didn't put on this bridesmaid dress for you to quit on me."

The bride-to-be nods along to her words.

"I think it's working." I mutter to her.

"Do you hear me, Cristina Yang? You — and every women here today — needs this. Now go get your happy ending."

And I can't help but find her words to be necessary.

Just as we line up again to enter the chapel, Burke walks in to talk to Cristina. . .and he calls off the wedding.

That night at their shared apartment, Burke has moved every last bit of himself out of the rooms, leaving Cristina on her own.

But instead of breaking down from his abrupt departure. . .she cries tears of joy. The freedom she thought was gone last night. . .is still within reach.

A relished emotion we all feel.