Ok so...I must say, I am plesantly surprised you mostly seem to understand Gillian's point of view here.

As it sometimes happens, I think I didn't manage to get the right vibe with Cal's apparent dismissal. He didn't say what are you still doing here with haste or hate, it wasn't a self-defense move to shield himself from the pain: it was him aknowledging that the time had come, knowing that her departure was in the cards and had only be postponed for obvious reasons but he had been waiting for the other shot to drop.

Then of course he's hurting, but he's respecting her choice

To NoName and Guest: I confess, it's good for me to know this is getting to you because after it was the goal.

Now I guess you all want to find out what happens next?


Then, as to confirm all of that, Cal nodded slowly before scooting over in the bed and laying down. Gillian watched him, bracing herself with her own arms, wondering if that was really it was all going to end as she watched him pick up from the nightstand the war novel Emily had brought him from home and find the marked page where he had left off.

Just before writing his own ending of his own to their story.

"Then what are you still doing here?"


After that, it was clear what she had to do. Finish what she had started and leave.

And she did, little by little, having the decency to postpone the inevitable to a time that wouldn't make her look like a complete heartless bitch.

Gillian kept driving things at the group as if nothing had changed for the following days, interacting with clients and employees as if she wasn't about to drop a bombshell on them. While Cal continued with his recovery she carried on, business as usual by day and preparing for her departure in the off hours. She knew that leaving was going to need a lot of paperwork, both work admin and personal, as well as some subtle preparation for the people she was going to leave behind. She had to sort things out with her flat, make sure everything on the other end was ready in time; meanwhile, she was trying to ensure that by the time she left the personnel could take on some of the work and tasks she normally looked after, mostly masking the passage of notions as her intention to push some people to step up their game and take more responsibilities.

She didn't go back to the hospital, knowing her absence would have probably been noticed but also that her presence was likely going to stand out like a sore thumb. Besides, it couldn't be helped. They had barely kept things under control when it was only the two of them, there was no way they could keep up the act in front of someone else. Cowardly, Gillian thought that if Emily was going to enquire about it with her father Cal could take care of it: after all, he had the right to explain that as he saw fit, including putting all the blame on her. Why not? After all, she was the one calling it quits, and perhaps it was for the best as far as the father/daughter relationship was concerned.

A couple of days after the revealing conversation at the hospital Cal was sent home, however he was still a couple of weeks away from full recovery and that gave Gillian more time to prepare. As much as she was going full steam ahead with it, it hadn't been an easy decision and there were a lot of moving parts to adjust, both emotionally and logistically, and she wasn't going to take the last step as long as Cal was not able to come back to work. It was the least she could do, she owed it to him no matter what and to herself as well because, as much as was sure of her decision, the company they had built together was not something she was going to let go off easily and she wanted to see it continue to thrive no matter what.

When Cal finally came back to work, taking a couple of days to ease back into it, they both knew it was best to rip the plaster off with no further hesitation. As business partners and bosses they had often kept things from the rest of the staff for a variety of reasons, and unsurprisingly they did a decent job at ignoring the elephant in the room for a bit. But the secret there, unlike most of the times, was not something others had no business knowing: Dr Foster leaving the company was not something they could hide, and certainly not something they could ignore.

They danced around it for a couple of days, interacting when needed and pretending the only odd thing hanging between them was the tumour that was no longer inside Cal's head. They didn't really talk about it, about her leaving, and Gillian easily understood why: Cal wasn't going to fight it, and it was leaving up to her to find the time and way to share the news.

When that eventually happened, Gillian had the graceful attention to exclude him from the show. She gathered the staff in the meeting room and announced, as comprehensively as she could, that she was going to leave Washington and take on a different job. She didn't say that she was going to leave the company because that wasn't the plan, not yet at least: she would keep her share of the company and would continue to be available for consults on cases but she would be doing so from New York. She reassured everybody that, despite the big change, the future of the group was solid and bright and that she would continue to work closely with them. But she didn't allow for questions, not the ones people were hitching to ask, and she failed to say out loud what almost everybody thought as her announcement unfolded.

That she was leaving because of Lightman.

If she was going to still own half of the company, still look after admin and other things, still working on cases…pretty much doing the same things that she had been doing for years, why did she suddenly need to go 200 miles away? It was easy to see what the only thing missing in the Big Apple would have been.

But they didn't ask; not to her, and certainly not to Lightman.

They tried to gauge his feelings about it, assuming that he knew about it already and that was probably part of the reason why he had made himself scarce for the announcement. But everytime they approached him it only took Cal one look to assert whether they were after him for work or something else; in the first case he would listen to them and gladly respond accordingly, even if the work enquiry had to do with Foster, but the second he read on their faces they wanted to ask about her departure or, God forbid, what if anything he planned to do about it, Cal was quick in putting up a very eloquent and transparent expression that screamed 'leave it alone' with no room for misreading.

After Foster's announcement, the countdown to her departure started: one week, one week to come to terms with the monumental change that was about to crash down on all of them. Strangely, the only ones who didn't seem to be affected by the impending moment of the doom were the two whose lives were going to change the most. Foster and Lightman pretty much ignored each other in those last few days, by then she was mostly running admin rather than working on cases so it made things easier, and as her final day came near Torres reached the boiling point.

It was T minus 1, and she had just seen the two business partners - perhaps friends no longer - yet again pull the switch and go from discussing something related to a case as if nothing was wrong to leave the room in opposite directions without so much of an additional look or word. In a way, she would have preferred some hostility between them, anything was better than the blank stares and empty silence, but nothing like that seemed to be on the cards.

She watched them part ways, realising they were about less than 24 hours away from doing that forever, and then she thought about the farewell party they had organised for Foster, due the day after. Then, after a few minutes, she left the lab and marched over to Lightman's office. The door was open and she went in without announcing herself, seeing the man sitting at his desk and closing the door behind her before walking up to him and staring him down.

"When are you going to do something?"

Lightman looked up from the document he was reading, glasses resting on the tip of his nose, immediately giving her the empty face he had perfected over the past weeks. Like the others, Torres had learned to read it and take the hint; but like the others she had kept hoping that it wouldn't last forever, that eventually Lightman would have shaken out of his passive attitude and found a way to stop that craziness.

"I'm working Torres, in case you didn't notice."

"What are you going to do about Foster? You can't let her leave."

Cal sighed and leaned back on the chair, taking off his glasses and shrugging - yes, shrugging - in response.

"Nothing I can do about it."

"How do you know? You haven't even tried!"

Cal scoffed and rolled his eyes, thinking he'd had enough of that sort of speech from Emily already.

"Have you tried?" He countered then, and Torres' eyes nearly popped out of her head. "See, you think that would be useless too so why bother?"

"I'm not you," she pointed out. "Are you really going to let your friend go without a fight?"

He didn't respond, he hadn't engaged in that kind of conversation for days and he wasn't going to start then. Instead, he just sat there with his hands on his lap, looking up at his employee as if to dare her into elaborating her thoughts. He certainly asserted once again that he wasn't going to talk about it, but in a way he also exposed himself to further scrutiny.

"What did you do?" Torres questioned him assuming a rather eloquent accusatory position, hands on hip and all. "I get we're supposed to pretend that this has nothing to do with you but clearly Foster leaving is all about you, and I think you owe to everybody to try and fix it before-"

As she spoke, vomiting words on him with a mix of rage and pent-up frustration, Torres suddenly realised what her words really meant. Yes, it was fair to say that Foster's departure was Lightman's fault in one way or the other, and if that was the case how could he be the one to fix things? Worse even, he had probably thought about how to do that a million times already and found nothing, and while they had all been gobsmacked about the news he had been living with the epiphany that he was the problem and therefore couldn't also be the solution.

And that was why the following day, when the Lightman Group staff gathered to give Dr Foster the heartfelt goodbye she deserved, he was nowhere to be seen.