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Okay, so here's the 18th chapter! Sorry its so short, but it's more good news for Carter

SAVING GRACE—CHAPTER 18

The echo of the doorbell throughout the cavernous house made Carter look up from the paper he had been reading. Knowing that the butler would answer the door, he folded the paper and set it onto the countertop. He quickly brushed a wrinkle out of his shirt and stepped down the polished wood hallway to meet the man who had called at the door.

When he arrived at the front door a few moments later, he found that the tall, thin and balding butler Alger had just closed the huge front door on the cold, gray October day. Another man stood just inside the door, face slightly flushed from the cold.

Mr. Conway was an older man, with thick gray hair and a strong, youthful complexion. He was a lawyer, no doubt, judging from his manner of dress, which was currently a suit and tie underneath his coat. He greeted Carter with a brief smile and nod in his direction.

"Good afternoon, John," he said, handing Alger his coat and hat.

"Afternoon, Ralph," Carter returned the greeting. He gestured toward another room with his hand. "Shall we?" he asked. Conway nodded.

"Of course, of course." Carter led him into a familiar room, a well-lit meeting room with a large polished table and several old family photographs, mostly black and white, hanging framed from the papered walls. Four tall windows let the dull, gray weather outside into the room. Carter showed Conway to a seat at the table, he himself sitting across from the lawyer.

"Okay, let's get down to business, shall we?" Conway asked, hoisting a leather briefcase onto the tabletop and snapping it open. He took out a small stack of papers to go over with Carter, and closed the case again.

"Yes, let's. I'm eager to get this whole thing over with," Carter replied, folding his arms on the table.

"All right," Conway said, lifting several sheets of paper off the top of the stack. He began to go over each bit of paper with Carter, explaining what each was.

It turned out that there were several more things that he had to do before he could adopt Grace, now that the drug addiction had come into the scheme of things. First, there would be a lot of tedious paperwork that he and Conway would have to complete, and lots of agreements, statements,, etc., that he would have to sign. Most of these papers, Carter found out, were very repetitive, concerning the fact that he would never go to drugs again and that he would do everything required to provide economic and emotional support for "the child in question."

In addition to all of the tedious paperwork, he would have to undergo a series of tests; physical and mental competency examinations were among these. He was told it was standard procedure that he would have had to do anyway, but he couldn't help thinking that they would want the ful story of his encounter with the narcotics.

"Don't worry," Conway told him. "I've worked with some strange characters before, and I know what a nut is. You should not have a problem at all passing those little tests."

Carter wasn't sure he was comforted by this remark.

The SCCS was also going to be intruding unpleasantly into Carter's social and personal life. As he found out from Conway, not only would he have to sit through an interview with an SCCS representative, that representative would be staying for an extra day. He or she would then go around the hospital, finding people who knew him, and interviewing them about his mental and emotional stability.

"That is way below the belt," Carter commented upon hearing this bit of information.

"It's a low blow, all right," Conway agreed. "But it is necessary. Let's just hope you have more friends than enemies at that hospital."

Carter learned that he would also be forced to conform his apartment to child-safe regulations. Conway gave him a list, a very long list, of requirements from the SCCS and from DCFS (the Department of Child and Family Services in Chicago). Carter glanced over the list, and realized that most of the stuff on it was just common sense: locking medicine cabinets, putting child safety handles on doors to cupboards containing harmful chemicals, stuff like that.

Finally, though, Carter learned about the final step to getting his little girl back: the hearing. It would be held on a date to be set, in the main courthouse of Summit County in the city of Akron, Ohio. This hearing would be held after everything else--the interviews and inspections--was finished.

Usually, said Conway, these things were pretty simple, and the whole thing should not last much longer than half an hour. If he won, he would officially be able to adopt Grace that same day.

"There's not a chance you'll lose, there's too much pulling for you," Conway had said around noon, as Alger brought in cold drinks from the kitchen.

Carter was glad to hear that.

These reassuring words stuck with him, in fact, through the following days that he spent waiting with bated breath.

Several days later, he received an unexpected surprise. It arrived sealed carefully in a white envelope, with his name and the address of the hospital printed in upright script on the front. Though the writing was much too neat to have been formed by a child's hand, the return address told him that the letter was from Grace.

"Oh, man," Carter had groaned after he saw the return address on the envelope after Randi handed it to him at the Admit desk. She had given him a puzzled expression and answered the ringing telephone. "I promised her I'd give her my home address, and I never did," he explained to Randi, who was only half listening to whoever was on the other end of the phone as she nodded in understanding to what he was saying.

"What?" Luka asked from behind, his thick accent recognizable even before Carter turned around to see the speaker.

"He got a letter from Grace," Randi told him, hanging up the phone and scrawling something on a Post-it note. She didn't look up, but Luka raised his eyebrows.

"Oh?" he asked. Carter gave a half-nod, holding up the envelope.

"Yeah."

"That's a nice surprise." Carter smiled.

"It is, I haven't read it yet, though." Luka sat down behind the desk and began to review the chart of a deceased patient that he would have to present at the M&M overview later that day [a/n by the way, that stands for Morbidity and Mortality].

"Oh," he said, not looking up from the chart. There was a short silence, and Carter remembered something that Luka had said earlier.

"Hey, weren't you supposed to leave for Africa last week?"

"Yeah, but I couldn't get the time off. I'm going to leave next week, my schedule's rearranged and everything."

"Gotcha," he said, glancing up and around at the ER. It was only 8:00 in the morning, so the chairs area was sparsely populated, and Carter only had two patients. It's quiet enough, he thought to himself, wondering if he should make time to open the envelope.

It wasn't a hard decision to make, he thought as he took a seat on one of the stools at the Admit desk. Shoving a small stack of charts aside, he tore into the envelope swiftly, albeit carefully, with the blade of an open pair of scissors. He pulled out two sheets of white paper, covered in the large, carefully penciled handwriting of a child.

"Dear Daddy," it began innocently.

"Hi, how are you? I am fine. I am back with the Thompsons in Ohio, but I wish I was with you. I miss you lots.

"When I was gone, Brian left the house. Yesterday a new boy came. His name is Thomas and he is 13. His legs are both broken. Iris says that's why he came. He is nice. He says we match. But he can't use crutches like me.

"I had to go back to school. I like school most of the time. Not at the new school, though. The kids make fun of me, and the teacher calls me Gracie, which I don't like. She calls me a smart cookie, and the other kids call me teacher's pet.

"I hope you're OK, and that your head doesn't hurt anymore. I only had to ask for help 7 times to spell words. Tell Elizabeth and everyone I said hello. I miss you.

"Love, Grace."

Carter smiled, rereading the letter again before folding it carefully and slipping it into his pocket, knowing he needed to get back to work soon.

He was so glad to have heard from Grace, though he felt completely awful for breaking his promise to give her his home address. "Some father you'll be," a voice said inside of his mind. "Already breaking promises."

Carter shook the voice out of his head. That wasn't true, he thought to himself as he absentmindedly fiddled with the pair of scissors on the desk that he had used to open the letter. Sliding the blades back and forth was almost calming for him.

The more he thought about Grace, the more his heart ached for her. He wanted nothing more than he wanted to be a good father for his daughter.

With all of this court stuff happening, he wasn't off to a great start. At least, not in the minds of the oh-so-wonderful folks at SCCS.

Carter never dreamed that it would be so difficult to adopt his own child. In all of the cases that he had heard of from Adele Newman, the hospital's social worker, family services organizations were generally so glad to have the biological parent adopting the child that the parent hardly had to do anything but sign a few papers.

The whole thing was ridiculous, he decided. He had been addicted to painkillers, but only for around 4 months. Some people hardly considered it an addiction, especially when he had been in a room with alcoholics who had been like that for 5 or 10 years. He had gone through a rehab program in Atlanta that had lasted almost as long as his addiction had.

"Carter," Randi's voice cut into his reverie.

"Hmm?" he mumbled, coming back into the present and looking around. Randi held up a very large brown envelope.

"X-rays are back on your abdominal pain in 3." Carter stood up and took the films from Randi's hands.

"Thank you," he said, swooping off down the hallway and through the door into Curtain 3 where his patient was waiting with his wife.

"Hey doc," the middle-aged, potbellied man asked him. His anxious wife was gripping his had so hard that it looked painful.

"Yeah, Mr. Ascor, we've got your X-rays back, so let's just take a look at them." He snapped the films up onto the board and flipped on the backlight.

What he saw wasn't pleasant, and Mr. Ascor seemed to be able to sense it.

"What is it, doc?" he asked, patting his wife's hand to signal to her to loosen her own grip. She did so, though reluctantly.

"It looks like you've perforated your small bowel, and there's air leaking in and the bacteria that is supposed to stay in your bowel is leaking out. I think you are developing an infection called peritonitis, which is why your temperature is high."

"That's not good, but you can cure it, right?" Carter nodded, pulling up a chair and sitting facing his patient.

"Yes, we can, but unfortunately it will require surgery, and you'll need to sign a release form."

Mr. Ascor signed the form, and was later transferred up to surgery to have the operation. The poor man was in for a very long stay in the hospital while the toxins were cleaned out of his body.

The rest of the day went pretty normally for Carter. He worked with a couple of traumas, and treated several more people, getting caught up in the rush of working in the Emergency room. Much of the morning was a blur, and he was relieved to find that he had time to grab something quick in the cafeteria for lunch.

On the way back into the lounge to eat his lunch of a sandwich and coffee, Jerry flagged him down, removing the telephone from where it had been cradled between his chin and his shoulder.

"Dr. Carter, your attorney's on the phone for you," he said, holding the receiver to his shoulder, so that the person on the other end would not be able to hear the conversation. Carter waved his hand at Jerry, as if swatting at an imaginary gnat.

"I'm not here," he said. Jerry nodded, speaking into the telephone once more. Carter had just turned to go back into the lounge when--

"Carter, he says to get your ass over there and talk to him." He rolled his eyes and trudged over to the desk, setting down his lunch and taking the phone reluctantly from Jerry, who shrugged at him before turning away to file a chart. Carter cleared his throat.

"John Carter," he said, leaning against the counter.

"Do you think I'm stupid or something?" Conway's voice said over the phone. Carter hoped that it was a rhetorical question. "I use that line on people too much to fall for it."

"All right, all right," Carter said. Conway went on as if he hadn't heard him.

"Did it ever occur to you that I might have good news?"

"No." Carter said frankly.

"Well, I do. I've made a few phone calls."

"And?"

"Well, earlier, I got to thinking. DCFS doesn't complain if the birth parent shows up to adopt the child, and doesn't give most addictions a second thought as long as there was evidence of rehab." He began. "So I considered your case again. You are obviously eager to get your little girl back to Chicago for good. Your little problem with drugs was very short-lived, and you went through rehab and have been clean for over 4 years now."

"Yeah, and...?" Carter urged him on. He wanted to know where this was going.

"Well, After reconsidering the insane things that SCCS wanted you to do, I get to thinking, 'This is ridiculous. Why are they keeping him from his kid?' So I made a few phone calls, one of them was to the Richard Brodthed, the main director of SCCS. I run the case by him, try to talk some sense into him. He's reluctant, but he admits to me that there really isn't a point to the mental and physical exams, because you're a doctor anyway. They wouldn't let a doctor work if he was mentally ill."

"Uh huh," Carter interjected. His spirits lightened a bit at these words.

"He also said that he saw how four years with no recurrence was great for the drug rehab thing. He says he has no problems with that. And since that isn't a real problem, he says, then the co-worker interviews are pointless, too. I bring up the apartment inspection, and the guy sits on it. Then he says that it doesn't seem necessary, either.

"Then," he continued. "He apologizes to me for misunderstandings, and tells me that the only necessary step for you to take is to come to the hearing, which, he says, is only a formality anyway."

"Oh, man," Carter said, a smile spreading from ear to ear. He laughed in relief and in happiness. "I don't believe it!"

"Well, believe it. And by the way, the date for the hearing has been set."

"When is it?"

"It's going to be in a week, on Saturday morning at 9:30. You'll have your daughter by noon."

"This is great!" Carter exclaimed, almost not daring to believe that the news was true. He turned his head to find that Susan, Deb, Haleh and Jerry were all staring at him. Rolling his eyes, he turned his attention back to Conway on the phone. "So, what do I need to do?"

"You need to be at the Cuyahoga Falls City Courthouse by 9:00 that morning. Make sure you're early. I'll be there, too, of course. I'll get in touch with you, though, to get some final things in order. For now, though, that's all." Carter laughed softly under his breath. He almost couldn't believe this.

"Really? Thank you."

"Don't mention it. It's my job," Conway said gruffly over the phone. "Do you have any questions?" Carter shook his head, even though he knew that Conway couldn't see the gesture.

"No, not right now. I probably will later, though. Thanks again."

"You're welcome. I'll get in touch with you soon with more information."

"Great, I'm looking forward to it."

"I know you are. You should get back to work now. You still sorry I called?" Carter laughed.

"Definitely not. You're right, though, I do need to get back to work."

"Okay, I'll speak to you later," Conway said. There was a short pause, then a click on the other end that told him that the attorney had hung up the phone.

Carter turned around and hung up the phone back on its base, still smiling happily. He was going to have Grace with him in just under a week! This was going to be a huge change in his life, but Carter knew that it was for the best of everyone concerned. It was all becoming very real to him.

He was jolted out of the reverie by a throat clearing loudly. He looked around to find the small crowd of before, in addition to Yosh, looking at him curiously with raised eyebrows. Carter tried his best to look as normal as possible, reducing his huge grin to a small smile, though he found that he couldn't stop grining altogether.

Okay, so the ending sucks, but there's one more chapter coming after this. We're nearing the end, folks, sorry to disappoint. There's a chance that I'll write some other stuff as Grace grows up, but it depends on whether people will read it.

Anyway, I'd like to thank all of my reviewers for their feedback. It's greatly appreciated.

I'm getting started on the next chapter :)

Ciao!

Snapdragon