Author's Note: A sincere thank you to the roughly five people who read Not What Could Have Been, particularly Matt/GrownUp90's. Matt, your commentary was an incredible help and inspiration!

Initially, Not What Could Have Been was meant to be the sole glimpse into the present, but, as a lifelong Adam Banks fan myself, I just couldn't bear to let his story end the way it did. Not that this story ends with everybody riding into the sunset to live happily ever after, but I like to think this one will be at least 20% less depressing.

Also, standard disclaimer: Obviously I don't own any of this stuff. If I did, I wouldn't be slaving away in a corporate office for five zillion hours a week to pay for things that I don't even like.


"No, Mr. Smith. Your family care physician may have told you that you need to eat every hour, but if so, I'm afraid he was mistaken…."

Say hello to your friends

Babysitters Club

For the last fifteen minutes, as the other doctors and nurses had scurried about the 5th floor cardiac care unit, going about their busy days, Julie had sat at the bedside of a 450 lb. diabetic, trying to explain that he did not need to eat a sandwich every hour, on the hour.

Particularly not ice cream sandwiches.

Unfortunately, as she watched the corpulent Mr. Smith reach over for a bucket of fried chicken, she realized that her advice was falling on deaf ears.

Say hello to the pe-ople who care

Babysitters Club

Taking a bite of a chicken leg, Mr. Smith continued, scrumbles of fried batter falling from his mouth as he spoke.

"I'll get low blood sugar. You can die from that, you know. I knew a guy from church that died that way—"

Nothing's better than friends

Babysitters Club

"I understand, sir. That's why it's important to monitor your blood sugar. There's no need to eat unless the glucose monitor says it's low."

Welcome to BSC Super Special #119. Dr. Julie and the Inability to Delegate to Nurses.

"Look Miss, I'm just tryna' be provacative here. I don't want to mess with my health or nothing."

Yeah. Yeah, that would be a real shame.

Glancing down at her pager, she briefly contemplated what she'd ever done in life to deserve such a fate.

Become a doctor, they said. It'll be really interesting and rewarding, they said.

Memories of lying to her mother about who broke the lamp and how mud got tracked across the kitchen all danced through her mind; a lifetime of minor transgressions having finally come to roost. Mentally, she made a note to start being more regular with her trips to confession, a few extra Hail Marys surely preferable to a lifetime of Mr. Smiths.

Mr. Smiths and fried chicken scrumbles.

…...

Nine hours later, Julie finally found herself back at home.

Walking into the gleaming high-rise condo, the first thing she noticed was the smell of bad Chinese leftovers. Walking over to the kitchen, she noticed a trail of ants marching their way across the black granite, all seeking the mecca of day old General Tso's that she'd accidentally left out the night before.

So much for dinner tonight.

Too exhausted to cook, and decidedly no longer in the mood for Chinese, she poured herself a bowl of cereal before collapsing down onto the couch. Pulling out her phone, she finally took the time to look through her slog of missed calls and texts, courtesy of an 18-hour shift spent without her gold iPhone.

Junk call. Junk call. Bank draft reminder. Mom. Junk call. More mom.

Julie sighed, cursing her mother's lack of outside interests. After 27 years of baking casseroles and shuffling kids to hockey practice, Mary Ann Gaffney had found herself at a complete loss for what to do once her youngest son left home. Eager to fill the void, she'd become a prolific texter and Facebooker, using every medium she could to tell her adult children about who she saw at the grocery store or what random project she saw on Pinterest that she wanted to try.

Almost ready to set her phone back down and get some much needed sleep, she noticed one voicemail that looked worth listening to.

A voicemail from the one guy under the age of 50 who still made actual phone calls on occasion.

"Hey Jules—

Curling up with her cream-colored wool blanket, Julie found herself smiling at the familiar Minnesota accent. "It's Adam. Obviously. I was just calling to see if you were planning on going to Guy's retirement party. I mean, obviously you don't have to. I don't even know if I am, but if you do, I just wanted to let you know you'd be more than welcome to stay at our house. Or not. I just, you know, I wanted you to know you were invited, and that we have an extra guest room if you'd like. Anyway, I hope you're doing well…"

Glancing back at her phone to check the time, Julie waffled for a moment, trying to decide whether it was appropriate to call at 9 o'clock at night. Hesitating, she finally pressed the little blue pictogram of a telephone, unable to resist an excuse to hear back from her favorite Midwesterner.

Listening to the dial tone, she stared out the window at the glimmering Boston skyline in front of her, thinking back to the times the two of them had snuck up to Mr. Banks' downtown Minneapolis office, and all of the long conversations they'd had as the city twinkled below.


"You can always get a hotel." Julie reminded herself, her heart racing as she took in another deep breath of re-circulated plane air. "The Holiday Inn has plenty of rooms…"

.

Before she'd gotten on the plane, she'd checked. Twice.

.

After an exhausting eighteen-hour shift, the thought of a long weekend in Edina had sounded lovely, the mere thought of her friend's taste in sheets enough to sell her on the idea. In the weary haze of sleep deprivation and nostalgia, three nights with her favorite sandy haired hockey player and an endless buffet of off-brand breakfast cereal and $4 wine had seemed like a cure to all of life's ills.

In the fresh light of morning, however, the idea's flaws were a bit more apparent.

After all, it was not 1998 anymore.

In her thoughts, she could still see the white Tiffany platter that showed up at her door a few days before her med school graduation; the loopy cursive in a card attached explaining that Adam was unwell, but that he surely sent his love. She could see the embarrassing viral video of a well-heeled junkie getting his ass handed to him by a 300 lb. Occupy protester, and the photo that appeared on the cover of The New York Times a year later, of him being led from the courthouse in a wheelchair, unable to walk with his hands cuffed behind his back.

For weeks, that picture in particular had haunted her.

At night when she closed her eyes, she'd see a visibly pregnant Laura and their two boys stoically looking on in the background; all of them in perfectly ironed Brooks Brothers outfits and Ferragamo accessories. She'd see the confused looks on the faces of both boys, the younger one clutching a worn teddy bear, and the way that everyone was dressed in crisp, neatly coordinated navies and whites, as if they believed that good tailoring and clean lines could make everything better. She'd think of the complete deadness in Adam's eyes as the bailiff helped him make his descent; yesteryear's fiercely independent forward having lost the last morsel of control.

.

Of course, she could also see all of the Christmas newsletters that arrived every year in toile or tartan lined envelopes, filled with sunny paragraphs about trips to BVI and bird watching and baking cookies with the kids. The photos on Facebook of a happy, wholesome family building snowmen and chaperoning team campouts; Adam and Laura always looking as though they could go meet up with The British Royal Family for an impromptu pheasant hunt if need be.

.

As she dug through her purse for her chapstick, she tried to reconcile all of those competing images, pursing their conversation on the phone two weeks earlier for clues.

He'd sounded good. He'd sounded like the boy she'd fallen for at thirteen, offering to let her borrow his parents as they sat together on a southern California pier.

.

Of course, she also knew that was part of the problem. That he was good at sounding good.

Many a times, she'd thought back to the familiar rattle of pill bottles in his desk drawer and the "accident" his freshman year, wondering what clues she'd missed. How long the writing had been on the wall, hidden behind a pleasant pastiche.

.

Shit.

The sharp point of a comb finding its way under her fingernail, the search for chapstick was abandoned as Julie cursed the stupid piece of plastic, amazed at how much pain a $.50 comb could inflict.

Sinead O'Connor had the right idea.

Setting her purse back down, she tried to shake all of the worries from her head, reminding herself instead how nice it would be to see the rest of the Ducks again.

She thought about how she'd finally get to catch up with Connie, and give Charlie a hard time about coaching at the same school he'd spent four years whining about. She made a note to congratulate Ken and his wife on the new baby, and Russ on the promotion at work, and Luis on his second marriage.

She also thought of how ironic it was that the least noticed Duck was the only one whose pro dreams ever came true. About how the two debaucherous Bash Brothers were now balding men who spent the weekends following their wives around Pottery Barn; Portman working in middle management for a company that made telephone poles, and Fulton having found his calling as a junior high principal. She thought of Averman's comparably glamorous life as a software developer in California, and of course, she thought of the quiet forward who all of the newspapers hyped as the next Gretsky.

"They were wrong about that." She thought to herself. "He was going to be better."