She lets this go for about a week before she says something.

“She needs help. Medical help, Alex.” He’s making her breakfast, well after Meredith’s run off to do early morning surgery at five, and so it’s just them and Ava or Rebecca or...whatever, doesn’t matter. Just them. And this breakfast thing? It’s like every other day of this past week, where he’s nice, at least to Ava, and he does things like cook and smile and says nice, non-sarcastic, things, which is all good and well. However, when he has to dress her like she’s a child? That crosses the line from being a good boyfriend/(non)baby daddy, right into being a good nursing home attendant.

“I’m a doctor; I think I can figure it out.” Right, still sarcastic to her. Whatever. She expects it anyways. “Aren’t you supposed to be gone already?”

Izzie chooses to ignore both the question and the tone in favor of remaining a caring, civil human being, and not giving him exactly what he’s asking for. “You get that you’re not a bad person if you have her admitted to the hospital so they can see if they can help her, right? You get that?”

“This is my problem. It isn’t theirs, and it certainly isn’t yours. I can handle it.” Defiant to the bitter end, but she can see his hand shake when he grabs a knife and there’s this thing called sleep that he really, really needs, and is clearly not getting any of.

“For how long?” It’s a good thing he’s turned away from her; otherwise she’s fairly sure she’d find him glaring at her. The longer this goes on the touchier he gets. “How long can you keep this up? I mean really, no sleep, the hospital, and then this? That’s insane.”

“I can handle it, okay.” He repeats, but this time there’s more fire and more anger behind the words. It doesn’t matter, because he can scream it until he’s blue in the face and she still won’t believe he can. And he probably won’t either, because he isn’t stupid, and this is ridiculous. “Why won’t you just leave it alone already?”

“Because I care, Alex, because I care.” At the moment the words don’t sound very caring. They sound irritated, and sometimes, most times, he makes her not want to care at all. It would be so much easier if she didn’t care and they could just live their own lives and not care if the other was ruining theirs because, hey, not their problem. But she isn’t that kind of person. She is Izzie Stevens and she has been through hell and back, and yeah, maybe she cares too much sometimes, maybe if she didn’t, if she was like Cristina, she would be a better doctor, but she’ll never find out, and that’s fine with her.

“You shouldn’t.” He tells her, still angry, or maybe that’s just what he sounds like naturally, she’s starting to forget. “You should go care about someone who needs it, because I don’t.”

And so she gets up. And she doesn’t know why she does it, but her feet are solidly on the ground, approaching him, before she realizes what she’s doing. In one swift movement she gets between him and the counter, taking the spatula he’d just picked up and swatting it out of his hand, and grabbing a fist full of his shirt to hold him there. If he won’t listen to her when she’s trying to do this nicely then there’s always option B, and that’s this.

“Knock it off Izzie; I’m not in the mood.” He tries to get out of her grasp, and his movements cause her elbow to move back, knocking the cinnamon off the shelf and the glass bottle crashes to the ground, spilling everywhere, and it doesn’t even faze her, in fact she’s glad for it because it just punctuates everything so much more.

“Look, I understand you feel like you have something to prove here and that if you act like you know what the hell you’re doing then that makes you a good person or something but seriously Alex, you are probably doing more harm than good right now by waiting this out.” Fight fire with fire, she thinks, and when he looks away, she squeezes her hand into his skin harder. “I am tired of standing by and watching you screw up your life because of...I don’t know, hurt pride or some want to be needed. Whatever. Enough is enough. You always complain about all the optimists, all the patients who are all ‘la-de-da everything’s going to be fine’ when really it isn’t, but what do you call this? Isn’t it just the same damn thing, only it’s you so, hey, magically it’s okay. Except it’s not and if you can’t see that then maybe that’s the real problem.”  

She pulls back, takes her hands off of him, and moves away, because, really, if that didn’t get the message across then they’re in real trouble. Strangely though, saying it all, getting it all out, makes her feel better, freer somehow, because she said her piece and she did her best, and damnit this is not going to be something she looks back on and says she wishes she said something when she had the chance. That’s all she’s got, and it’s out there now.

He doesn’t say anything for the longest time, doesn’t move for the longest time, and she can smell something burning but she doesn’t care about that. There’s only so much caring she can do. But it might be the unspoken that means something, it might be the silence that means she’s finally gotten somewhere, because he will never admit she’s right, never, and that’s him, and she knows that. She’s under no illusions now.

“It’s okay to say it’s too hard.” She starts, quieter now, cautiously. “It’s okay to be scared.”

Wrong word choice and she knows it immediately. “I’m not scared; I’m not some pansy ass who wants to run to mommy because life isn’t perfect.”

She cuts him off before he can go on. “Whatever. You can call it whatever you want. Point is no one’s going to blame you if you ask for help because most people would’ve given up already.”

“I’m not a quitter.” He’s warming to the idea, slowly but surely.

“I know that.” And he’s not, none of them are, because if they were they would’ve left long before now, they wouldn’t be at that hospital, after all they’ve been through, if they were quitters. “I just want you to think about it. That’s all I want. And if you need me to do something I will, just...think about it.”

He nods, and she gets a wet dishtowel to mop up the cinnamon, and the rest of the day goes along much easier than the last few days have, fewer fights and arguments and aggravated looks, and that’s something. That’s progress.

She just hopes something sunk in.