Memories

Timeline: Post- New Hampshire

I was watching some of my Newsradio tapes and ended up watching the series finale, New Hampshire, and this came to me. I don't beta so sorry for any mistakes.

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"It's you and me. Forever." Matthew stated excitedly as he bounced out of the room.

"I know." Dave replied to no one with a pained expression. This was it. This is what he had to look forward to in his future days at WNYX, Matthew. The possibly insane man, who rarely worked, unless playing computer solitaire could be considered work. It wasn't that Matthew was a bad person, in fact he was quite nice, just for the most part, useless and not to mention he drove him off the walls. Dave sighed.

He couldn't believe it. They left. They really left. Over five years of working together, forming a bond with these people, some more then others and they left. To go to a small and probably unknown station up in the middle of nowhere, New Hampshire. It amazed him. These were city people. Jimmy for example, he belonged in the city. That's where billionaires lived, not out is some pasture with cows. He couldn't image Beth having as much fun up there as she did in New York. As for Joe, he just couldn't picture the man living in the country environment. He couldn't. Even Lisa was hard to picture in the country environment but at least she, had some reason for going. A newspaper. Her ultimate dream, along with living where the primaries actually took place. For those two thoughts alone, he couldn't blame her for going, despite the fact that he would miss her most of all. All that left was Max, whom he never understood so him dropping everything for the country was possibly the most puzzling of them all. Since no matter how hard he thought, he just couldn't figure it out. Just then Matthew bounced back into room wearing the same grin on his face as when he left.

"Here's your coffee, Dave." He said while placing a cup in front of him.

"Thank you, Matthew."

"So what should I do now?" The over eager man asked. Dave paused.

"Whatever you normally do." He responded.

"Play computer solitaire." Matthew stated.

"Well go to it." Dave said in slight annoyance. "Close the door when you leave." Matthew frowned for a second but shook it off.

"Ok." He left the room, closing the door behind him. Dave sighed and reached for the coffee mug, pausing once he peered inside it. He groaned slightly in disgust. The coffee wasn't steaming like a cup of coffee should and there were little white things floating around in it. He shook his head and leaned back in his chair, his thoughts traveling back to the others.

He listened to the quietness of the office; it was so weird since it was never quiet. Almost surreal. Every so often, Matthew would let out a soft yelp, probably because he's won the game but other then that, you could hear a pin drop. It scared him. It was unknown to him. Sure, when he was still living in Wisconsin it was normal, but here in the big city, it was a rarity. They'd only been gone maybe thirty minutes and he already missed them, wishing he'd been able to convince them to stay. It wouldn't be the same without them. After five years of working with the same people, becoming a family, it would be hard to adjust to them no longer being there. He felt alone. He was alone. In the five years of living in the city he hadn't made many friendships, just with the people he worked with and even that bugged him, he wished he'd had taken the time to meet others, but the family like bond they shared made up for it. It comforted him since his actual family was so far away.

He thought back to his first week at WNYX, the first few days had been hectic but he had settled in. Though he hadn't been expecting something like Matthew's mispronunciation of the name Joey Buttafuoco so soon. He'd been warned by others that Matthew had a tendency to mispronounce things, among other screw ups the man could commit but still, he wasn't expecting it, let alone the relationship between him and Lisa that evolved from it, indirectly of course. He smiled at the thought remembering how sneaky the two had been at first to try and hide the relationship but not succeeding in fooling Beth. He laughed quietly remembering the time his ex girlfriend Nancy had visited. She had told everyone about the affair and much to his own disbelief, no one believed that him and Lisa could have been dating. The thought amused him, especially considering the way the staff responded to finding out that they were indeed going out, he remembered the sign he'd found on the office door after lunch that day, if the office is a rockin, don't come a knockin. He wondered to this day who had wrote it, it was either Beth or Joe but still he had to wonder which one.

Then there was the time, for the first time he'd felt out of place at the station, when rattraps had to be placed throughout the office. Apparently the staff had loved the little rat, despite the fact that it was eating food right out of the boxes from the break room. He frowned remembering how as far as he could figure out, the staff didn't consider him as one of "them". It had hurt. Though what hurt more is the fact that they've really thought he was just a cold blooded heartless man, because he wasn't, he had and still did care about them and their feelings as much as anyone could. He snapped out of his thoughtful trace when someone knocked at the door and still was knocking.

"Yes Matthew?" He called wearily. Matthew peeked in.

"I'm leaving."

"Ok."

"See you tomorrow, Dave."

"Yep."

And with that the office door closed again and everything was quiet once more. Out of boredom he started going through his desk. He came upon a picture of him and Lisa, it was somewhat old, a little bit over three years old actually. He smiled recognizing it from when him and Lisa had first gotten back together after the Stuart incident. He shook his head at how he had acted then, there were at times where he deserved the treatment he got, like when he spent the night sitting outside Lisa's apartment, he was surprised she hadn't slapped him for it.

He ran a hand down his face tiredly remembering the time Mr. James had a minor heart attack. It hadn't been anything to worry about but he had worried, they all did but he got a double dosage of worries from it. Lisa had wanted a baby, which led him to think afterwards, if he had said yes, would they're relationship have survived, probably not but he still wondered. He didn't have a problem with Lisa wanting a baby, he just believed in being married first. It had hurt when she didn't want to be married, not that he had really offered but still it hurt. He remembered the time he did that horrible interview. Everyone hated him for it, or so it seemed, well with the exception of Matthew, he probably didn't even understand half of what he had said, but everyone else, Beth, Joe, Lisa, Bill, Catherine and even Mr. James, despite not saying so had been mad at him. He knew it. He remembered when he handed in his resignation and Mr. James talked him out of it. Insisting he had to just start over and win back the staff's trust and loyalty. He didn't believe it would be that simple but after a few weeks the staff had for the most had forgotten about it, or they thought his tap dancing on the restaurant table was torture enough.

He smiled coming upon another picture of him and Lisa from his desk drawer, this one more recent, from the year before. It was a sad smile though. It had been taken two weeks before they'd broken up for good, or before he'd said those stupid words, maybe we need a break or whatever they'd been, either way, they were stupid and cost him the best relationship of his life, and possibly the one woman he truly loved. He remembered it had been during the time that the efficiency expert Andrea had been there, basically insulting the way he did his job, she had fired Matthew, and then to top it off after the breakup, she gave his job to Lisa. He remembered he temporarily had adopted a "pure evil" outlook on life during that time but in the end had to admit that Lisa was doing a much job then he had been doing as News Director. That night they'd ran into each other, drunk off their asses, he recalled that somewhere in the back of his mind that night he had wanted to just hold her. They'd been interacting so well at that moment, though it wouldn't remain, they were only acting so from intoxication.

He recalled the time that Tom from accounting had died, via choking to death from the copy machine. He'd felt so bad, the man had worked there for years and he didn't have the slightest clue who he was. When he'd found him he had just stared. He'd never seen a dead person before that moment in his life. He had told the staff, they were speechless, with the exception of Matthew who thought the coffee machine killed the man. Joe had blamed himself for the man's death after apparently altering the copy machine's mechanism. Dave reached for the cup of coffee but pausing remembered the white floating things. With a sigh he loosen his tie, then remembering how as a way to convince Joe he hadn't killed the man, he'd stuck his own tie in the copy machine to show him it was just been a freak accident. Of course the demonstration didn't go as planned as the machine had actually sucked his tie in, quickly making breathing hard, he'd had tried to hide it as the rest of the staff tried to get Joe away, but it was useless, Joe saw. In the end they'd been able to cut him free before anything bad could happen but it turned out it was done for nothing. The man had committed suicide. Dave subconsciously rubbed his neck; suddenly wondering why the hell he'd done that, it had been stupid.

Dave decided to get up and get a cup of real coffee but quickly sat back down when his eyes came upon the framed picture of the Time magazine that Bill had appeared on. His eyes got slightly wet and sniffed. Out of his time at WNYX, that had been the hardest thing for him. Bill's death. When he got the call he'd been home, sleeping. For that entire week, he'd barely slept, and then come the funeral; he had delivered the longest and probably most boring eulogy ever. He'd spent the day convinced he let everyone down, even though they tried to reassure him that he hadn't. The hardest thing had been reading the letters Bill had left the staff, particularly the final one where he remembered he got choked up, farewell, take care of each other and I'll see you all again whenever you get to wherever the hell it is I am, the words went through his mind once more. He choked back a sob and dropped his head into his hands. He sat there in silence for what seemed an eternity before finally lifting his head. He wiped his eyes and sunk back into the chair.

He glanced at the coffee mug the staff gave him as a farewell present. He smirked at the fact that Max was shirtless. The man at times gave Matthew a run for his money when it came to craziness. He remembered how he didn't want to hire him, but the staff insisted since he'd been a former friend of Bill's, so he did, which for the most part had turned out well. He started going through old papers and came across an old preview format for Lisa's "This Day In History" segment. It couldn't have debuted at a worse time then it had. His blood pressure had been through the roof, relatively speaking, and the staff was trying to relax him. While most of they're tactics had failed, Joe's white noise machine did the trick, and way to well at that, making him completely useless to the mocking that was being made of the "This Day In History" segment as Lisa and Max went back and forth with it.

Then when things couldn't have gotten worse, Mr. James was put in jail, thus leading to the temporary staff addition of Johnny Johnson, whom he'd ended up hating with a passion. Which also lead to the one thing he couldn't bare to deal with, Lisa marrying Johnny, him being the best man at this wedding that he'd been so opposed to, that had been like a dagger to heart. He'd never be able to get her back, sure he said he had three to five years to convince her to get out of the destined to fail marriage, but it didn't matter anymore, Lisa was gone, just like everyone else he cared about. Gone. They either lived to far away or had just abandoned him.

He sighed sadly, grabbing the cup of so called coffee Matthew had made earlier and left the office. He placed the cup in the break room sink before stopping at the coat hanger; he grabbed his coat and put it on, staring at the office for a moment.

"I got through all that okay, I'll get through this too." He said to himself aloud, flicking off the light switch before heading to the stairs.