(Author's Note: This story features a character I introduced in Chapter 13, Cole, who Ruri Kzalt created for me as a love interest for Sam and Jamie's eldest daughter, Jasmine. He joins Larry, Terry, Ralph, Jasmine and Penny's group when they're eight. I actually wrote this thing a long time ago and wanted to wait until after I at least introduced him to you all before dumping this story on you. Then I forgot about it until today and decided to share it with you all, not only so you can meet this new character, but so you can see a little more of what they get up to. So, everyone, without further ado, meet Cole Vorce and his mother Robin...)
Robin Vorce sat in her scrubs at a table in an empty room, waiting.
She fidgeted nervously in her seat, her baby was coming to visit her today, which would make it the first time he'd seen her since he moved in with her sister after her ex-husband, Roger, was sent to prison and she and her sister decided to send her to this mental hospital for help.
Even though she was grateful for the care and treatments she got here and that her sister could watch her baby boy, she missed him terribly.
She heard a buzz and the door open, thinking that it was probably the doctor to tell her how to talk to her own child again before he arrived.
"Mom?" She looked up and saw a boy with green hair that was shaved into a mohawk, and although she could recognize the boy anywhere, the hair threw her off for a moment.
But just for a moment.
"My baby." She replied softly as she got up and held out her arms for him as he raced over and launched himself into her warm embrace. They held each other for what felt like a wonderful eternity, tears of joy leaking from their eyes as she murmured, "My baby…" and kissed the top of his head, which was a little strange without the mop of green locks that he had before she came here, but her son was happy and safe in her arms and that was all a mother needed.
"Hey Robin." Another familiar voice cooed. Robin looked up at her sister and brother-in-law, "Hey. How are you feeling?"
"Meh, between the treatments and the weed, I hardly know anymore." She replied with a laugh. "We're great, how are you?" Her brother-in-law answered in her stead.
"Better." Robin replied as she put her son down, "Thanks again for taking care of Cole while I'm here. With Ruby's cancer, you probably have enough on your plates…"
"Forget the cancer," Ruby said with a dismissive wave of her hand, "Cole has plenty to tell you about what's happened this past month, we'll talk to the doctors and be back to tell you all about my depressing physical health later." she said with a smile.
And with that, after a quick hug and kiss from both of them, the two left the room and carefully closed the door behind them.
Robin then indicated the two chairs at the table, Cole smiled and they took their seats, holding hands and letting them rest on the table.
"So, how do you like living with Aunt Ruby and Uncle Martin?"
"It's good, they're taking good care of me and they've been asking me about which school I want to go to and stuff."
"Have you made any friends?" she asked, hoping that he'd say yes. He had no friends growing up and she wanted him to be happy and surrounded by people who cared and treasured her baby boy as much as she did.
To her utter joy, a large, vibrant smile lit up his face, "Yeah! I've made a bunch of them!"
"Well, tell me about them! How did you meet them? What are their names? What kinds of games do you play?" Robin urged, eager to hear about his new friends.
"Well, I was in Aunt Ruby's backyard for a while, trying to figure out how to make friends, and was about to give up and go inside when three boys my age fell over the fence. Ralph introduced himself first, he has blue hair and talks kinda weird, but he's really nice and friendly and strong. Then Larry and Terry introduced themselves, they're twins with black hair and invent cool machines."
"How can you tell them apart?" Robin asked, smiling as widely as Cole was.
"Larry wears glasses and Terry doesn't, but Larry doesn't really need glasses, they explained that they're more like goggles and that since Larry codes more then Terry, he wears them more. People began being able to tell them apart easier because of it, so they've been sticking with it." Cole explained, then went on to say that, "So I asked why they hopped the fence, I mean, it's a high fence, you really have to work hard to climb over it. Apparently Larry and Terry's new invention blew up in their faces and they were picking up the pieces and the last one was in a tree in the backyard. Then we hopped onto each other's backs and got it back. Larry and Terry thanked me and Ralph for helping and Ralph said that 'that's what friends are for.' Then they invited me to help them fix it and I hung out with them for the rest of the day, and when I was going to leave to go back home, they invited me, Aunt Ruby and Uncle Martin to a barbeque in their neighborhood the next day!"
"That's wonderful!" Robin cried excitedly, "Did you all have fun?"
"Yeah! I met the rest of the kids in the neighborhood and their parents at the barbeque, and they were all really nice and friendly and told me and Aunt Ruby and Uncle Martin were always welcome and that if they ever needed anything to let them know!"
Robin was stunned for a moment, then gave Cole's hands a squeeze, "I'm so glad you have so many people around you who care about you and are looking out for you, Sweetheart, it means a lot to me to know that you're happy and safe and enjoying yourself." Cole beamed and squeezed back.
"So, what have you and your friends been doing this summer?"
"Well, I've been playing with Ralph, Terry, Larry and these two girls I met at the barbeque, Penny and Jasmine for most of the summer. Penny's nice and funny, but really shy, so she talks through her rock, she calls it Roxy, using ventriloquism. And Jasmine's a tough girl, but she's always really, really nice to me!" Robin smirked when she saw that his smile got a little bigger and his cheeks turned a little rosy when he mentioned this Jasmine girl, but she didn't say a word and let him tell her about all the stuff he'd done that summer so far:
"We've all become really good friends and done tons of cool stuff! We've built our own race cars out of spare parts from this junk yard nearby and raced around the neighborhood! We've gone swimming in a creek together! We've gone around a forest pretending to be explorers to a new land! We've been getting ninja training from Penny's dad, Mr. Patrick! And Mr. Conner and Miss Rachel, Ralph's mom and dad, run a daycare center and a scout troop from their farm called the Urban Rangers and all the kids in the neighborhood are a part of it, so I became a Urban Ranger too and have been learning all sorts of cool stuff and I've gotten ten badges so far! Mr. Sam, Jasmine's dad, took us to the animation studio where he works and we made our own cartoon! And Mr. Larie, Larry and Terry's dad, taught us how to make swiss army knives and key chains and stuff out of metal in his workshop!" He reached into his pocket and pulled out a key chain metal heart with a picture of him, his aunt, his uncle and his mom, from right before Robin checked in here, "Here, this is for you!"
She smiled as she admired the small gift, touched that Cole had thought of her and made it for her, and that his friends' parents were so kind to him.
"Larry and Terry's mom, Miss Ann, is a doctor, and she told me if Aunt Ruby has any pain or anything to not hesitate to call her. And all of their families said that if she has to go to the hospital and Uncle Martin can't pick me up, that they'd be happy to have me as a guest and help in anyway they can!"
Tears slipped down Robin's cheeks, she was touched that these total strangers were so kind to her family, she wished she could meet with them and thank them for everything.
"That's great, Cole." She said, then asked, "Well, what have you done with your friends this week?"
"Well, on Monday, we went to the zoo and rescued a Python that was going to be put down and hid it in Larry and Terry's house!"
"That sounds like fun- wait you stole a python from the zoo?!"
"It was being abused, mom, my friends and I witnessed it! And when we told the head zookeeper, he didn't believe us and it wasn't fair that it was going to be killed for defending itself! So we hid in the zoo until closing time, waited for the coast to be clear, then we picked the lock to the reptile house, cut the glass with one of Larry and Terry's inventions, made a copy of all the surveillance tapes for the past month, to prove that the python was only defending itself, and all of us carried him out. It was so cool, Mom! It was like being a secret agent rescuing a comrade in arms!" Robin opened her mouth to tell Cole that, no matter what the reason was, that they shouldn't have stolen a wild animal from the zoo, only for Cole to tell her that, "Larry and Terry's parents found out and, after they explained why they took him and got a nasty visit from the zookeeper who was hurting him, they let them keep it. They told us that their parents discussed it with the zoo director and turned in the evidence we got of the abuse and the director let them keep the python, Larry and Terry named him Pythagorean, after Pythagorean's theorem, which Terry explained was a formula that was used to measure right triangles that could be simplified into the equation a squared plus b squared equals c squared. Then Larry told us that they nicknamed him 'Py' so it would be easier for people to pronounce."
"Oh, well, if it all turned out…" Robin said, unsure what else to really say about the matter.
"It did." Cole assured her, giving her hand a squeeze, then, after a minute of silence, he spoke in a soft voice, "Mom, when are you coming home with us?"
Robin's chest ached as she told Cole that, "Not for a while, Sweetheart…"
Cole's head sank into his chest, a heartbroken expression on his face, Robin gently cupped his face in her hands and lifted it up so he was looking at her, "Cole, I am not well." She brushed the tears that slid down his cheeks with her fingers as she went on to say that, "And as much as I want to be with you and your aunt and uncle, I don't want you to worry about me all the time and have to take care of me. I'm the mom, it's my job to take care of you and worry about you." Cole chuckled a bit and Robin smiled at him, "I need to get better before I can do that. This place has helped me so much, I'm sure that I'll be ready to go home with you all soon, but until then, I need to stay here. I need to keep working with the doctors and the specialists. And I need to make sure that when I do get out of here, I can be a reliable mother for you, Okay?"
"Okay mom." He sobbed, Robin got up from her chair, walked over to his side of the table, knelt down and embraced her baby boy, "You are such a strong and wonderful boy, Cole, and I love you so much and I'm so glad that you have made so many friends who see the amazing person you are and cherish you. A mother couldn't ask for anything more."
Cole hugged back and sobbed into her scrubs. Once he calmed down, Robin leaned over and finally asked something she had been wondering since he had arrived, "I know I said that that I couldn't ask for anything more, but I'd like an explanation as to what you did to your hair…"
Cole chuckled and rubbed away any left over fluid on his face, "Aunt Ruby has her head shaved because she's going through chemo, so I was gonna shave my head in support and donate my hair to a charity that makes wigs for cancer patients, but I didn't want my scar to show…" he explained, rubbing his Mohawk back and forth as if to indicate where the scar he was referring to was. Robin winced, when Cole was a baby, their first apartment caught on fire with the two of them still in it, Robin had gotten second degree burns on her arms, legs and chest and Cole got a burn scar down the middle of his head when a piece of the ceiling fell and landed on Robin's chest and Cole's head, she had flung the burning plaster off of her baby boy, but the damage had been done. "So Uncle Martin suggested I get a Mohawk, so I can still show my support and hide my scar, he must have been joking, because when he saw that I had done that, he was so shocked he did a double take! Aunt Ruby was laughing so hard that she almost fell out of her wheelchair when she saw my hair!" Cole informed her, chuckling. Robin laughed with her son, a tiny voice in her head asking when they had last had such a good laugh together. She couldn't pin point the date, but she knew it had been a long time.
Then they heard a knock on the door, they turned and watched as the door buzzed open and Ruby and Martin walked in, followed by a small crowd of people.
"Hey, we went to talk to the doctors and saw some familiar faces…" Ruby said with a smile before the adults of the group walked over and formally introduced themselves to Robin while Cole walked over, greeting his friends' siblings as he made his way to his friends and asked what they were all doing here.
"Your Aunt told us that you were coming to visit your mother, Mohawk-Cole-boy, so we wanted to introduce ourselves and assure her that you are well cared for." Ralph explained.
"Indeed," Larry said, pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose, "Our parents wanted to introduce themselves to your mother and assure her that they are always available to you and your family if you're ever in need of aid."
"Also, Mother wanted to inform her that we have a neighborhood watch program, so she won't worry too much about you while she's here." Terry added.
"Penny's parents are lawyers," Roxy explained in Penny's place, "They wanted to tell your mom that when your dad is released, that they will get restraining orders against him for all of you and make sure that he will never bother any of you ever again!"
"My parents brought photos and gifts from everyone to make her stay here more comfortable." Jasmine added, her cheeks pink.
Cole's eyes watered a bit as he looked at his friends, he turned to look at his mom, who was surrounded by the adults who had been so welcoming and kind to him, hand his happy and stunned mother gifts and spoke to her cheerfully. Cole turned back to his friends and pulled them into a large group hug.
"Thank you." He murmured.
"There is no need to thank us." Ralph said, "This is what friends are for, yes?"
"Yeah." Cole replied with a laugh, "You're exactly right, Ralph."
Author's End Note: If anyone wants to read the full story of how they met and rescue Py the Python, please let me know and I'll put it up as soon as I can.
