Telephone Call
Summary: Chapter 2 of three... and let's just say it didn't work.
Rating: I don't remember...whatever it was before, nothing's really changed.
Disclaimer: Nope, no change here either. Sorry to disappoint you. Oh, except I've borrowed the names for all parental units apart from Kim's stepfather from Cheryl Roberts' stories. Sorry!
Author's Notes: Wow, I have to say I do like enthusiastic responses such as the ones I received for the first chapter. So I'm being nice and making this into a possible trilogy. Yes, you guessed it, still putting off revision (denial, still I only have 7 exams left) and I still have no ideas about Unavoidable Secrets 2. Also, I've just finished reading Veronika Decides To Die by Paulo Coelho, and this has inspired me a lot. Read the book, it's absolutely fantastic!
Thank You's: Everyone who reviewed the first chapter, please review people!!!
"There's some mail for you on the table," Janice Oliver told her son Tommy as he wandered into the house one afternoon. "Looks as though it's from Kim, judging by the postmark."
Tommy silently picked up the letter and looked at it. Since leaving school barely a month beforehand, he'd been so busy with the new concept of racing in his life, that he'd barely had time to think about his ex-girlfriend, the only person who he had really given his heart to. Katherine had left for England just a week before, and although he had been sad to see her go, he hadn't been in the same depressed state that had taken him over after Kim had left for Florida two years before.
"Are you just going to look at it, or actually open it sometime today?" his mother asked gently. "She hasn't been in touch for quite some time, who knows what she may have to say by now."
Nodding, Tommy ripped open the white envelope and pulled out the sheets of notebook paper inside. His eyes widened as he read the first lines, and he quickly scanned the rest fo the letter, certain phrases jumping out at him.
"I still love you..."
"cancer patient for the last two years..."
"Can't save me..."
"No more me."
Tommy didn't realise that his hands were now violently shaking until he dropped the letter back onto the table. Janice took one look at her son's ashen white face and picked up the letter, all the while listening to Tomy who was swearing under his breath.
"Why wasn't I home?" her son demanded presently, struggling to fight off tears. "If I had been home, the maybe she'd still be here now."
Janice had always know there was unfinished business between Kim and Tommy, and now she hoped that Kim had not been able to go through with her suicide attempt, or that her cancer was not as bad as she had described. She went to pick up the cordless phone and the address book that lay beside it. "I don't want to get your hopes up, but it may not have worked, or she may have decided not to go through with it. I would have thought that someone would have contacted you or Rocky maybe to tell you if Kim..." she trailed off, unable to say the two words 'was dead' in front of her son, who looked as though his whole life had been torn apart.
"Why did she keep it from everyone that she had cancer?" Tommy asked. "I would have been there for her, we all would have been."
"Maybe she didn't want your pity," Janice suggested, looking up from the pages of the address book. "I've worked with cancer patients before, and they can become very self-defensive about their condition. Or maybe she didn't want to tell you because she thought she'd get better."
At these words from his mother Tommy buried his head in his shoulders, resting on the cool surface of the kitchen table. Janice abandoned the address book and crossed the room to give him a sympatheitc motherly hug. She had always cared more for Kim that she had for Kat, and the news of her...situation was also affecting her deeply.
She took a deep breath, and dialed the number of a phone in Florida. After five rings which seemed to last a lifetime, it was picked up.
"Hello?"
It was Kimberly's mother. Surely they'd only call Caroline in if... Janice pushed away her negative thoughts and said,
"Caroline, it's Janice Oliver, Tommy's mother."
There was the audible sound of a sigh on the other end of the line. "Oh Jan, thank god, I couldn't find your number anywhere."
"Tommy got a letter from Kim..." Janice said delicately.
"She's alive, but barely." Caroline said. "I'm just so glad I walked in when I did, but I don't think she sees it that way."
Janice mouthed the words 'She's alive' to Tommy, who looked as shellshocked as she felt. "How bad is the cancer?"
"It's leukaemia, and I'm not denying that she's been to hell and back with it, although doctors are telling me that she was getting better before she did this. I think she was just petrified at the though of becoming helpless..." Caroline's voice trailed off, and Janice was similarly choked with emotion.
"Would it make things any better if Tommy and I came to Miami?" Tommy's head suddenly snapped up at Janice's request, but she waved him away impatiently, waiting for an answer at the other end of the line.
"I don't know," Caroline said hesitantly. "She's going to start some new treatment soon, now that all the effects from her overdose have calmed down, but I do think she'd appreciate some familiar faces other than family."
"Why did she not tell anyone?" Janice asked.
"I have no idea how my daughter's mind works, even more so after this," Caroline said. "Maybe she thought she'd get better quickly...she didn't even tell me till she'd known for three months."
"I'll see what I can do about getting us on a flight this weekend," Janice said. "Which hospital is she in?"
"Miami City, but if you ring me when your flight is confirmed then I'd be more than happy to come and pick you up from the airport. It'll save you cab fare," Caroline said. "Just leave a message once you know and I'll call yuo back, I have to be back at the hospital soon."
"Okay then, that's really kind of you," Janice said and after polite goodbyes they each hung up their end of the line.
"Are we going to Florida," Tommy said, "and how on Earth is she still alive?"
"Yes we are, and I don't know," Janice mused. "Caroline found her in time and got her to the hospital. The doctors are going to start her on new treatement and see how it goes from there."
"What am I going to say to her?" Tommy asked, his momentary happy bubble suddenly burst. "I mean, she declared her love for me thinking we'd never see each other again, and there I will be turning up on her doorstep."
"Well, do you love her?"
"Of course I do!" Tommy all but yelled. "Why would I have broken up with Kat if she hadn't figured out for me that she was just a subsitute for Kim?"
"Well then, tell her that," his mother suggested, drawing Tommy into another protective hug. "From what she wrote, she's hardly going to turn you down."
"Yeah, but...you know, what about the cancer?" Tommy said haltingly. "I won't know what to say to her about it when we go there, and it'll look so awkward."
"Don't ask her about it unless she's the one to bring it up," Janice advised, picking up the yellow pages to look for a number to get an aeroplane flight. "Remember that she wasn't expecting to see you again either. She thought that about this time they'd be planning her funeral."
"You always did have a way with words," Tommy remarked with irony. "What's Dad going to say about all this?"
"Your father is working this weekend, so we wouldn't be seeing a lot of him anyway." Janice started talking to the person on the other end of the phone, and Tommy returned his head to its perch on his arms.
What was he supposed to tell all Kim's friends still in Angel Grove? Rocky and Adam were still in the city, and Aisha, Jason, Zack and Trini were rumoured to be returning soon. Would Kim want them to know about her illness? He was pretty sure that she wouldn't want the suicide attempt broadcast to the world, but the issue of a long term illness was another thing entirely.
He just wished he knew what he was going to say to the girl he'd lost his heart to all those years ago and had never got it back.
* * *
"Tommy, you've been impossible all week," Janice compained as they stepped off the plane. "Did you tell Rocky and Adam where we are this weekend?"
"No, I just said we were going out of town," Tommy said. "I didn't know how much Kim wants people to know."
"That's a good point," Janice said as they made their way through the maze of corridors that made up a main part of Miami's airport. "Never mind that now though, Caroline said she'd meet us at the gate."
Sure enough, Caroline Barriez was standing at the gate to meet the pair. Her confident and competent facade remained in the way that she dressed, but dark bags had developed under her eyes that couldn't eb covered with foundation or concealer.
"Janice, Tommy, how was your flight?" she asked warmly.
"It was fine thanks Caroline," Janice said, giving her friend a hug. "How are you holding up?"
Kim's mother rolled her eyes. "I don't want to sound as though I rely on Christophe for everything, but I'll be glad when I get to see him again. KIm's dad and brother have been here a lot, but I haven't seen Chris in over three months."
"Is Kim okay?" Tommy asked. He wanted to find out as much as he could before they reached the hospital, and also so he didn't have to ask Kim that much.
"She's been on the new medication for a couple days now, and we won't know whether it's actually going to do any good for a couple of weeks. She knows that I'm coming here to pick you guys up, and she seems a lot more positive about survival than she did before all this happened." Caroline sighed and unlocked the doors to her rental car. "Then again, I never thought she was so depressed as to warrant a suicide attempt, so who am I to judge?"
The twenty minute journey was silent from then on, apart from Caroline pointing out the street on which Kim lived, and a few other places of merit. After what seemed like twenty hours to Tommy, the car pulled into a parking space opposite the main building of the hospital.
"I hope that she's awake, the new medicine has been making her feel drowsy during the day," Caroline told them as the mother-son pairing followed her into the hospital.
"Us being here won't tire her out too much will it?" Janice aske anxiously.
"She's been asleep all morning, she could do with seeing the light of day for a change," Caroline said. "She should be out of here in a week, and then she'll have to learn to start taking care of herself again."
The hospital was a pattern of untrackable corridors, lifts and doors.
"How do you manage to find your way around here?" Tommy wondered out loud. Caroline laughed, and said,
"When I first came here I ended up in a ward filled with seventy year olds. They wouldn't let me leave for half an hour!"
The light relief did a lot to help calm the nerves of all three of them. Caroline finally called a halt to the procession in front of a door marked 4114. Janice's trained nurse eyes took in the details of Kim's medical chart which was displayed by the door. Kim was on three daily doses of medicine that would hopefully kill infected cells, as well as a lot of painkillers. The barely legible doctor's notes told Janice that Kim's condition was markedly improving day by day, and she would hopefully be dispatched home within the next fortnight.
"Hi honey," Caroline said to her daughter as she opened the door and led Janice and Tommy into the room.
Like her mother, the external effects of her trauma looked as though they were beginning to show. Kim's hair had been cut to just below her ears, and her cheekbones were alomost frighteningly prominent. As Kim moved the portable table over her bed so she could sit up easily, both Janice and Tommy noticed that she had lost at least 15 pounds in weight, and her trademark smile now held all the repressed pain that she was going through, but still it was there.
"Hey, did you see Dr. Rutland on your way up here?" she asked. "He was looking for you."
"That doctor wants to have a meeting with me about having a meeting half the time," Caroline grumbled. "What's it about this time?"
Kim shrugged her shoulders and played with the thin blanket that covered her legs. "I don't know, he didn't say."
"Well Jan, what do you say we go find Dr Rutland and then get a coffee in the cafeteria?"
"That would be good," Janice admitted. "The aeroplane coffee tasted like dishwater."
So, the two older women left the tiny hospital room, leaving an ex-couple together who hadn't seen each other for two years.
What were they supposed to do now?
Summary: Chapter 2 of three... and let's just say it didn't work.
Rating: I don't remember...whatever it was before, nothing's really changed.
Disclaimer: Nope, no change here either. Sorry to disappoint you. Oh, except I've borrowed the names for all parental units apart from Kim's stepfather from Cheryl Roberts' stories. Sorry!
Author's Notes: Wow, I have to say I do like enthusiastic responses such as the ones I received for the first chapter. So I'm being nice and making this into a possible trilogy. Yes, you guessed it, still putting off revision (denial, still I only have 7 exams left) and I still have no ideas about Unavoidable Secrets 2. Also, I've just finished reading Veronika Decides To Die by Paulo Coelho, and this has inspired me a lot. Read the book, it's absolutely fantastic!
Thank You's: Everyone who reviewed the first chapter, please review people!!!
"There's some mail for you on the table," Janice Oliver told her son Tommy as he wandered into the house one afternoon. "Looks as though it's from Kim, judging by the postmark."
Tommy silently picked up the letter and looked at it. Since leaving school barely a month beforehand, he'd been so busy with the new concept of racing in his life, that he'd barely had time to think about his ex-girlfriend, the only person who he had really given his heart to. Katherine had left for England just a week before, and although he had been sad to see her go, he hadn't been in the same depressed state that had taken him over after Kim had left for Florida two years before.
"Are you just going to look at it, or actually open it sometime today?" his mother asked gently. "She hasn't been in touch for quite some time, who knows what she may have to say by now."
Nodding, Tommy ripped open the white envelope and pulled out the sheets of notebook paper inside. His eyes widened as he read the first lines, and he quickly scanned the rest fo the letter, certain phrases jumping out at him.
"I still love you..."
"cancer patient for the last two years..."
"Can't save me..."
"No more me."
Tommy didn't realise that his hands were now violently shaking until he dropped the letter back onto the table. Janice took one look at her son's ashen white face and picked up the letter, all the while listening to Tomy who was swearing under his breath.
"Why wasn't I home?" her son demanded presently, struggling to fight off tears. "If I had been home, the maybe she'd still be here now."
Janice had always know there was unfinished business between Kim and Tommy, and now she hoped that Kim had not been able to go through with her suicide attempt, or that her cancer was not as bad as she had described. She went to pick up the cordless phone and the address book that lay beside it. "I don't want to get your hopes up, but it may not have worked, or she may have decided not to go through with it. I would have thought that someone would have contacted you or Rocky maybe to tell you if Kim..." she trailed off, unable to say the two words 'was dead' in front of her son, who looked as though his whole life had been torn apart.
"Why did she keep it from everyone that she had cancer?" Tommy asked. "I would have been there for her, we all would have been."
"Maybe she didn't want your pity," Janice suggested, looking up from the pages of the address book. "I've worked with cancer patients before, and they can become very self-defensive about their condition. Or maybe she didn't want to tell you because she thought she'd get better."
At these words from his mother Tommy buried his head in his shoulders, resting on the cool surface of the kitchen table. Janice abandoned the address book and crossed the room to give him a sympatheitc motherly hug. She had always cared more for Kim that she had for Kat, and the news of her...situation was also affecting her deeply.
She took a deep breath, and dialed the number of a phone in Florida. After five rings which seemed to last a lifetime, it was picked up.
"Hello?"
It was Kimberly's mother. Surely they'd only call Caroline in if... Janice pushed away her negative thoughts and said,
"Caroline, it's Janice Oliver, Tommy's mother."
There was the audible sound of a sigh on the other end of the line. "Oh Jan, thank god, I couldn't find your number anywhere."
"Tommy got a letter from Kim..." Janice said delicately.
"She's alive, but barely." Caroline said. "I'm just so glad I walked in when I did, but I don't think she sees it that way."
Janice mouthed the words 'She's alive' to Tommy, who looked as shellshocked as she felt. "How bad is the cancer?"
"It's leukaemia, and I'm not denying that she's been to hell and back with it, although doctors are telling me that she was getting better before she did this. I think she was just petrified at the though of becoming helpless..." Caroline's voice trailed off, and Janice was similarly choked with emotion.
"Would it make things any better if Tommy and I came to Miami?" Tommy's head suddenly snapped up at Janice's request, but she waved him away impatiently, waiting for an answer at the other end of the line.
"I don't know," Caroline said hesitantly. "She's going to start some new treatment soon, now that all the effects from her overdose have calmed down, but I do think she'd appreciate some familiar faces other than family."
"Why did she not tell anyone?" Janice asked.
"I have no idea how my daughter's mind works, even more so after this," Caroline said. "Maybe she thought she'd get better quickly...she didn't even tell me till she'd known for three months."
"I'll see what I can do about getting us on a flight this weekend," Janice said. "Which hospital is she in?"
"Miami City, but if you ring me when your flight is confirmed then I'd be more than happy to come and pick you up from the airport. It'll save you cab fare," Caroline said. "Just leave a message once you know and I'll call yuo back, I have to be back at the hospital soon."
"Okay then, that's really kind of you," Janice said and after polite goodbyes they each hung up their end of the line.
"Are we going to Florida," Tommy said, "and how on Earth is she still alive?"
"Yes we are, and I don't know," Janice mused. "Caroline found her in time and got her to the hospital. The doctors are going to start her on new treatement and see how it goes from there."
"What am I going to say to her?" Tommy asked, his momentary happy bubble suddenly burst. "I mean, she declared her love for me thinking we'd never see each other again, and there I will be turning up on her doorstep."
"Well, do you love her?"
"Of course I do!" Tommy all but yelled. "Why would I have broken up with Kat if she hadn't figured out for me that she was just a subsitute for Kim?"
"Well then, tell her that," his mother suggested, drawing Tommy into another protective hug. "From what she wrote, she's hardly going to turn you down."
"Yeah, but...you know, what about the cancer?" Tommy said haltingly. "I won't know what to say to her about it when we go there, and it'll look so awkward."
"Don't ask her about it unless she's the one to bring it up," Janice advised, picking up the yellow pages to look for a number to get an aeroplane flight. "Remember that she wasn't expecting to see you again either. She thought that about this time they'd be planning her funeral."
"You always did have a way with words," Tommy remarked with irony. "What's Dad going to say about all this?"
"Your father is working this weekend, so we wouldn't be seeing a lot of him anyway." Janice started talking to the person on the other end of the phone, and Tommy returned his head to its perch on his arms.
What was he supposed to tell all Kim's friends still in Angel Grove? Rocky and Adam were still in the city, and Aisha, Jason, Zack and Trini were rumoured to be returning soon. Would Kim want them to know about her illness? He was pretty sure that she wouldn't want the suicide attempt broadcast to the world, but the issue of a long term illness was another thing entirely.
He just wished he knew what he was going to say to the girl he'd lost his heart to all those years ago and had never got it back.
* * *
"Tommy, you've been impossible all week," Janice compained as they stepped off the plane. "Did you tell Rocky and Adam where we are this weekend?"
"No, I just said we were going out of town," Tommy said. "I didn't know how much Kim wants people to know."
"That's a good point," Janice said as they made their way through the maze of corridors that made up a main part of Miami's airport. "Never mind that now though, Caroline said she'd meet us at the gate."
Sure enough, Caroline Barriez was standing at the gate to meet the pair. Her confident and competent facade remained in the way that she dressed, but dark bags had developed under her eyes that couldn't eb covered with foundation or concealer.
"Janice, Tommy, how was your flight?" she asked warmly.
"It was fine thanks Caroline," Janice said, giving her friend a hug. "How are you holding up?"
Kim's mother rolled her eyes. "I don't want to sound as though I rely on Christophe for everything, but I'll be glad when I get to see him again. KIm's dad and brother have been here a lot, but I haven't seen Chris in over three months."
"Is Kim okay?" Tommy asked. He wanted to find out as much as he could before they reached the hospital, and also so he didn't have to ask Kim that much.
"She's been on the new medication for a couple days now, and we won't know whether it's actually going to do any good for a couple of weeks. She knows that I'm coming here to pick you guys up, and she seems a lot more positive about survival than she did before all this happened." Caroline sighed and unlocked the doors to her rental car. "Then again, I never thought she was so depressed as to warrant a suicide attempt, so who am I to judge?"
The twenty minute journey was silent from then on, apart from Caroline pointing out the street on which Kim lived, and a few other places of merit. After what seemed like twenty hours to Tommy, the car pulled into a parking space opposite the main building of the hospital.
"I hope that she's awake, the new medicine has been making her feel drowsy during the day," Caroline told them as the mother-son pairing followed her into the hospital.
"Us being here won't tire her out too much will it?" Janice aske anxiously.
"She's been asleep all morning, she could do with seeing the light of day for a change," Caroline said. "She should be out of here in a week, and then she'll have to learn to start taking care of herself again."
The hospital was a pattern of untrackable corridors, lifts and doors.
"How do you manage to find your way around here?" Tommy wondered out loud. Caroline laughed, and said,
"When I first came here I ended up in a ward filled with seventy year olds. They wouldn't let me leave for half an hour!"
The light relief did a lot to help calm the nerves of all three of them. Caroline finally called a halt to the procession in front of a door marked 4114. Janice's trained nurse eyes took in the details of Kim's medical chart which was displayed by the door. Kim was on three daily doses of medicine that would hopefully kill infected cells, as well as a lot of painkillers. The barely legible doctor's notes told Janice that Kim's condition was markedly improving day by day, and she would hopefully be dispatched home within the next fortnight.
"Hi honey," Caroline said to her daughter as she opened the door and led Janice and Tommy into the room.
Like her mother, the external effects of her trauma looked as though they were beginning to show. Kim's hair had been cut to just below her ears, and her cheekbones were alomost frighteningly prominent. As Kim moved the portable table over her bed so she could sit up easily, both Janice and Tommy noticed that she had lost at least 15 pounds in weight, and her trademark smile now held all the repressed pain that she was going through, but still it was there.
"Hey, did you see Dr. Rutland on your way up here?" she asked. "He was looking for you."
"That doctor wants to have a meeting with me about having a meeting half the time," Caroline grumbled. "What's it about this time?"
Kim shrugged her shoulders and played with the thin blanket that covered her legs. "I don't know, he didn't say."
"Well Jan, what do you say we go find Dr Rutland and then get a coffee in the cafeteria?"
"That would be good," Janice admitted. "The aeroplane coffee tasted like dishwater."
So, the two older women left the tiny hospital room, leaving an ex-couple together who hadn't seen each other for two years.
What were they supposed to do now?