After the Season 2 finale, I called Chris Lowell.  He was on top of a mountain in Africa.  That's the kind of guy he is.  He's a spirited traveler who considers the world a small place.  Give him three days off and he returns with stories of running with bulls in Pamplona.  We'd had this feeling for a while, he and I, that his character didn't have enough to do.  Dell was a midwife in a world of doctors.  Babies can only be delivered in so many episodes.  Dell got lots of coffee, answered lots of phones.  Mostly, he handed people charts.  Now, Chris is an amazing actor, talented and giving; an actor of his caliber should be doing Shakespeare, not handing people charts.  So we decided that we'd exit his character from the show.  But we disagreed on how.  I wanted him in med school, happy, with Betsey.  Chris wanted to die:  "I want to go in a devastating way."  He's a mountain-top guy, he likes a challenge.  So I took a deep breath and headed for the writers' room.  There's a lot I'll remember about Dell, from the kid with the surfboard that he was to the man he became lying in a hospital bed discussing guinea pigs with Betsey.  And there's a lot I'll remember about Chris: his easy smile; the photos he liked to take of the cast; the tears in his eyes as we filmed his last scene.  William Dell Parker died May 13, 2010.  He is survived by his daughter, Betsey, and his friends Addison, Pete, Sam, Charlotte, Cooper, Naomi and Violet.

-TeeJay