Disclaimer: I don't own CSI. If I did, I'd have a bigger house.

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Dear Sara,

How well I remember your first autopsy: a Jane Doe whose COD was multiple blunt force trauma to the face. That poor woman was so battered that brain matter was seeping through what used to be eye sockets and yet, you didn't run out and vomit. Turns out, you had worked as a CSI prior to coming to Vegas and I had not yet learned that information. Your first autopsy wasn't really your first after all, but at the time, I was shocked and impressed with how well you dealt with the experience. After all these years, you're still the only "first-timer" I've worked with who hasn't vomited. You told me you didn't get sick or even excuse yourself from the room during your actual first autopsy in San Francisco, and I came to really believe that, but not because I thought you were tougher than everyone else. I came to believe that you witnessed your first autopsy without nausea because you had already seen death and that the death you had seen was worse than the death of the first dead guy on a slab that you worked with. I was curious. I did some research. I found out about your father's death. You saw it. After that, Sara, I can readily believe that the random bodies you saw on the job were nothing compared to the body of one you loved, brutally murdered in your own home. Don't worry- I have never told anyone.

After that first meeting of ours, in which I was impressed with your fortitude and professionalism, I readily respected your abilities and immediately considered you an asset to our formidable graveyard team, despite your tendency to get a bit feisty when my findings didn't line up with your theories. I particularly enjoyed the fact that you could so easily distract Grissom when none of the rest of us could; I always took great pleasure in watching him react to you. He seemed to love and hate that you could distract or confuse him. It was high time he met his intellectual match, you know. Before you came along, I was perhaps his closest intellectual sparring partner. I've still got you beat in Shakespeare quotes, but I fear you may out-play me in all other categories, particularly in mental chess. Heaven knows I can't play that game worth a darn; I was quite relieved when our fearless leader took to dueling you and leaving me out of his mental chess world.

You're a bit older than my daughters, but not much, so it was easy for me to come to feel that you were one of them. In fact, one time after telling my wife how horrifying it was to autopsy Debbie Marlin because she looked so much like you, she commented, "Al, you've got such a soft spot for that girl, don't you?" I couldn't deny it. She was right.

Therefore, just as I did when my oldest decided to go to Oxford for college, then to fall in love with a British chap, and then to get married to said British chap, and finally to decide to live in England forever, I am both mourning and rejoicing. I'm mourning my loss of your constant companionship, but I'm rejoicing in the fact that you're finding your definition of happiness. After seeing so many bodies of people whose lives were lost well before old age and wondering if these people had found happiness before they met their untimely demises, I am all too ready to let you go if leaving is what you need to do to be happy. I sure hope you come back to us one day, but above that, I hope you're happy. Know that wherever you are and for however long you stay away from here, I will always care for you; you've always got a piece of my heart.

Wherever you are, do me a favor and find a nice blues establishment. Visit it every once in a while and think of me, your favorite ME.

Love, Doc