Chapter 12
David hung up the phone from his wife and walked out the door of his office. He stopped to ask Diane for directions to the president's office then left. Several minutes later he was at the president's office. The admin notified the president who opened the door and walked out, "Dr. James, so good to see you again," he said as he extended his hand.
"David is fine sir," David said returning the hand shake.
"Great," he said with a smile, "I'm Stan. Please come inside." The two men walked in the office and the president motioned to a couple of chairs sitting near a round coffee table, "Please sit down."
David sat in one of the chairs and Stan sat in the other, "We are so excited to have you here," he said. "When Mark resigned after the spring semester, we were really scrambling to find a replacement and when your CV found its way to my desk I was really impressed with your credentials."
"If I may ask," David started. "How did you happen across my CV?"
"You didn't send it?"
"No, the first I heard of the job opening was when I received the letter inviting me to come for an interview," David said. "I've been wondering how you found out about me, but the interview was such a whirlwind of activity, I didn't have opportunity to ask."
Stan seemed a little perplexed and got up from his chair and went over to his desk and pushed a button, "Madeline, would you please bring me my file on David James?" He walked back to the chair and sat down just as his admin brought in the file, "Thank you," he said as he opened the file. The admin adjourned closing the door after her. He rustled through the file and found the CV, "Well that's interesting," he said handing the resume over to David.
David took his resume and looked it over, it was the same version he'd had on his computer at work, "What's interesting?" David asked handing it back.
"When resumes or CV's come through the HR department, they are stamped with a receipt date on the top left. This one doesn't have a stamp which means it bypassed the HR department." David was silent, not knowing what to say. He hadn't actually sent them anything prior to his interview.
"Well," Stan said brushing it off. "However it got here, I'm glad it did. As I said we are thrilled to have you here."
The men spoke together for about an hour going over the president's vision for the university the coming years and David's role in that vision. Toward the end he asked about David's family, "Susan and I have three children," he said. "Laura is 21, Phillip is 12 and William is almost four months."
"That's quite an age range," Stan said.
David smiled, "Susan and I were both widowed. Laura came with her and Phillip with me. William is ours."
"I have two," Stan offered. "Our son is 27 and our daughter is 23. Both of them are out making their own way in the world. We had another son, but he passed away nearly a year ago."
"I'm so sorry to hear that," David sympathized. "What happened if you don't mind me asking?"
"He just got sick and the doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with him. We did finally get a diagnosis, but it was too late," he answered with tears welling up in his eyes.
"I'm so sorry," David said. "My wife's brother was a world renowned diagnostician. He often got the most difficult cases. He was killed the same day our youngest was born. It was very hard on my wife and I worry about how she will handle our son's birthday when the time comes."
Stan nodded in understanding, "It definitely will make the day bittersweet," he paused for a moment, "You're from New Jersey, may I ask who your wife's brother was?"
"Dr. Gregory House," David replied. "He was a remarkable physician, but quite a handful personally. Still though, his loss is a huge detriment to society."
"Your brother-in-law was Dr. House?" Stan repeated in surprise.
"Yes," David confirmed.
"He was the doctor that diagnosed my son," Stan said.
"You visited him in New Jersey?" David asked.
"No, when my son's doctor reached a dead end, he told us that he needed a consultation, but it would be very expensive. Of course we agreed to do it. He contacted Dr. House and gave him the symptoms and everything he had tested. Dr. House said he would get back to him and two days later he called with a suspected diagnosis and a test to confirm. The test came back positive, but as I said, it was too late. There wasn't anything that could be done. If we'd found out earlier, we could have postponed his death, but he could never have been cured. My wife was devastated, but we're both grateful that we got a diagnosis and that his death would not remain a mystery," he paused for a moment, "Come to think of it, we never did get a consultation bill from him."
"I'm not surprised," David said. "For all his show of misanthropic attitude in public, underneath he really did care. It wasn't uncommon for him to manipulate situations to benefit others, but if you called him out on it, he'd throw you some kind of insult and send you packing. He also had a soft spot for kids, but he'd never admit it."
"Well, this has been an interesting conversation," Stan said standing up. He reached out to shake David's hand, "I'd like to meet your wife sometime. Perhaps you two could go to dinner with Pauline and me sometime next week?"
David returned the handshake, "I think we would enjoy that. Have a good evening." David left the office with plenty to think about. He dropped by his office before heading out for the evening. He was off for the rest of the week so he wouldn't need to return to the office until Monday. He remembered that he needed to stop somewhere and get the family something to eat on the way home. It would be probably another full day before Susan could start cooking again. She was trapped at home until they could get another vehicle, so he decided to stop by the grocery store and pick up a few simple things that didn't need to be cooked. He'd pick up some bottled water as well. He remembered Susan saying something about needing to treat the well. He was glad she had experience with everything. He'd spent his entire life in the city and had no clue of country life, but he was looking forward to learning. Already he was enjoying the openness of the country and while he heard several people complain about the traffic today, he wasn't sure what they were referring to because he sure hadn't experienced any so far.
An hour later he had finished running his errands and was heading home. His mind kept going back to his conversation with Stan. How had his CV made its way into his new boss's hands? He always had an updated CV readily available as he often had to submit it with grant applications or when he was asked to speak at various functions, but the fact remained that he hadn't even known of the opening to submit his CV to begin with; then the remarkable coincidence that his new boss had consulted with House indirectly. He was looking forward to discussing his conversation with Susan and he was sure she would want to meet Stan and Pauline. He reached out to turn on the radio and scanned through the stations, then turned it off. Well, that's one disadvantage to being out here, he thought to himself. There seemed to be an inordinate number of country stations and he wasn't much of a fan of country music. David settled back and enjoyed the scenery as he drove home. It wasn't anything like the scenery on the eastern side of the country, but it had a beauty of its own. The rolling hills were dotted with various crops and acres of pastureland for cattle. Trees lined the banks of the creeks and surrounded the farm houses as a wind break. The wind did always seem to be blowing. The trees here were a lot shorter than back in New Jersey; he guessed that was because of the drier weather and warmer climate. It wasn't long before he pulled into the property and up to the house. He got out and looked around, Susan was right; there was a lot of work to be done. But he looked forward to it, but mostly looked forward to working on it with Susan. It was their project together and as they worked, it would be more and more their home.
