[Dead eye stare right at Reid, just for a moment. Eye to eye contact, and then he folds his fingers together on the table and shrugs. Shrugs for himself and no other reason, just allowing himself to act like this doesn't matter to him the way it does so that he can talk about it openly. Even when parts still burn a little, this far down the road. Even though he's over it. And her.]
We met as interns, y'know, same group. She showed me up when I was a real jerk to her, turned the tables on me pretty quick. [So maybe Kitty's a little like her, not the same but similar. He snickers. Maybe that's when this all started, between him and Izzie. That far back.] She busted my balls, man.
An' so then we dated on and off. [He waves his hand. The whys about that aren't important. Denny doesn't need to be brought into this.] ...Then.
She got sick out of nowhere. Cancer sick. [Shooting Reid a glance, another shrug of his shoulders. He's never validated this decision out loud like this before. He kind of hopes for an interruption, but keeps talking.] So we got married 'cause how do you freaking know if you'll have the opportunity later? When cancer's messing with your girl.
[He's back at staring at his coffee cup, still half full yet he can't make himself want to drink it.] Treatment after treatment, she started getting better. Came back to work, around the same time our hospital merged with another. The hospital needed to make budget cuts, she got fired even though I...
She thought I got her fired, but I was just looking out for her. So what does she do? She bails, leaves me a letter and bails. Checks out, disappears. You think you know someone and they pull that on you, not even giving you the benefit of the doubt.