“I left. And I’m with Izzie. When you were in danger of losing your license, when I called everyone to write letters and show up on your behalf, I called Izzie, too. I want to say I hoped she wouldn’t answer, but the truth is I hoped she would. I want to say, “I had to call her for you,” but that would be a lie. The truth is your trial gave me an excuse good enough to call her. I wanted to know if she was alive and well. I wanted to hear her voice. When she picked up, I blurted out the whole thing about you picking up trash off the street and needing a letter that proved you’re better than that. And she laughed and said, “Of course she’d be trash-picking, trying to save the world.” And then these voices were in the background and a girl was singing this song about “greasy, grimy gopher guts” that I learned in first grade and I started laughing and I asked if she had kids and… Izzie got quiet. For so long, she was quiet, and finally, she said, “Yeah, I have kids. Twins.” And it turns out they’re my kids, Mer. Izzie’s and my kids. She had our kids. Eli and Alexis. They’re five. And hilarious and stubborn as hell, just like Izzie. Like this little team that gangs up on me with stubbornness and sticky hands. And the second I walked in the door, they wanted to show me their rooms and the look on their faces when they were showing me all their toys and books and… asked if they could call me… Dad. They both want to be doctors, and Izzie teaches them to bake just like her. And they scribble pictures of stethoscopes all over the walls in chalk. And Alexis… oh, she’s got Izzie’s eyes. And Eli smiles crooked just like I do. And now I live on a freaking farm in Nowhere, Kansas. And the kids play with the chickens and Izzie goes to work as a surgical oncologist. Oh, and she’s amazing, Mer. The progress she’s made. She’s alive. And she’s a miracle and keeping other people alive. And I’m applying to the hospital nearby. And I wanted to be mad at Izzie for keeping them from me, but I can’t because all I am is grateful she made them. Oh, they’re so damn smart, smarter than I was at their age. Hell, sometimes at my age. And they get to have everything… a home where they feel safe and loved, and they play “sleepover,” where they just keep swapping beds non-stop, all night until they land in ours and they wake up with two parents, when I rarely ever even had one. Oh, I love them, Mer, with every inch of me and every cell, and I get to be their dad. I’m in love with Izzie. I imagined this whole life for her where she was baking and happy and had a bunch of kids. And I never imagined me in that picture. But suddenly, I am. Not suddenly. That’s a lie there. There was a part of me that always wondered, always wanted to know, always felt like we left things unresolved, unfinished. So, when Mer needed all those letters, I reached out to her. I reached out to Izzie and we started talking and it scared the crap out of me because it felt like no time had passed, like Izzie and I were kind of frozen together in time, and now… now we’re not. She’s not. She’s here in Kansas, on a farm in this incredible place in the middle of nowhere. And I never, in a million years, would think I belong here, but I do.”
