Second Chances
- an Adam & Joan story -
by TeeJay
Chapter 4
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The next day after school, Adam had gone to the Herald again to start his first day at the paper. He entered the large office on the fifth floor with a mixture of anticipation and anxiety. He wasn't sure what to expect. He went up to Kate Wiles' cubicle. When she wasn't there, she asked the woman in the adjacent cubicle, who was typing hurriedly on her computer keyboard, looking at the computer screen in concentration while typing.
"Uh... I'm looking for Kate Wiles," Adam asked in an unsure voice.
The woman looked up at him, slightly irritated at being interrupted. "She'll be back in a minute. Just wait at her desk."
"Okay," Adam replied and sat down on Kate's desk chair. He swiveled it slightly to the left and right and studied the contents of her desk. A few pictures of women her age were pinned to the flat screen computer panel with adhesive tape. Yellow post-it notes with scribbled handwriting were attached here and there. A stack of copied articles was piled on one side of the desk. The computer screen was showing a layout of a newspaper page with different headlines and articles. There were some white rectangle spaces where Adam figured articles were still going to be inserted.
As he was casually reading the headlines from the screen, he heard Kate's voice behind him. He started and jumped up, immediately feeling slightly foolish for reacting as if he had just done something wrong. "Sorry," he said, apologizing for nothing in particular.
Kate laughed. "Hey, it's okay. I don't bite."
"I'll try to remember that," Adam said, now also smiling.
"Come on, let's get you started." As Kate and Adam walked past a waste-high cupboard with a coffee maker on it, she told him, "This is our communal coffee machine, so feel free to help yourself. Mugs, sugar and milk are down here." She indicated the doors of the cupboard.
"Ah, no thanks, I don't drink coffee," Adam declined.
Kate shook her head, but smiled. "Suit yourself. We're all coffee junkies here. Not to scare you, but everyone learns to appreciate caffeine after working here for a while."
Kate showed Adam to 'The Dungeon', gave him quick introductions into the different software search engines on the computer and left him with a list of articles he should get for her from the archives and a stack of paper for him to xerox.
As she went to go, she indicated the small copier in the corner, and told him, "This thing is fine if you just wanna copy a few pages, but if you have a whole pile of documents to copy, you can use the big one in the hall. It has a feeder, stapler and sorter and everything. Just ask if you don't know how to work it."
Adam worked on his assignments for the next hour and a half. When he was done, he took the pile of paper he had gotten from the archives and copied and presented them to Kate. She looked at him, surprised. "You're done already? Goodness, you're fast."
Adam blushed. "Guess I'm a quick study."
Kate looked around her desk. "Well, for the moment I don't really have anything else I could give you, but Kevin was gonna come up here with another project in ten minutes. Why don't you just grab a coffee? No, wait, you don't drink coffee. I'll get you from the Dungeon when there's more work you could do, okay?"
"Okay," Adam replied and turned to go.
Kate quickly added, "Oh, Adam?" She leaned closer to him and told him in a whisper. "That PC in the Dungeon has internet access. No one checks where you surf." She winked at him. "But don't tell anyone I leaked that to you."
Adam smirked at her. "I didn't hear anything from anyone."
"Just stay away from any adult stuff."
"No, I wouldn't do that," he said, almost shocked.
"Okay, good."
With that, Adam went back to the Dungeon. He quickly logged on to his e-mail, but only found two spam mails, offering him to enlarge his breasts or incredible mortgage rates, and the school newsletter. Not feeling like surfing the net, he leafed through some of the articles lying on the desk on which he had had to clear away some work space.
He started reading an article on how the local fire department had saved a scared kitten from the top of a tree because it couldn't come down again by itself. Taking a piece of scribbling paper and a pen, he first started doodling absentmindedly, but then began drawing a kitten in a tree. It soon became a small comic of the scared kitten in the tree in the first picture and the firemen coming to rescue it in the next pictures. He added some speech and thinking bubbles to the cat and the firemen, but was interrupted before finishing it by Kate, who was being followed by Kevin Girardi.
Before Kate could introduce them, Kevin said, "Hi Adam."
Adam replied, "Hey, Kevin."
Kate's eyes widened a notch. "You know each other?"
"Yeah," Adam said, "He's my--" He had wanted to say 'girlfriend's brother', but that wasn't true anymore. He repeated, "He's the brother of one of my friends."
Kate said, "Oh, okay. That explains it."
Kevin handed Adam another list of articles he needed to get from the archives and told him, "Could you get me these?"
"Yes, sure, that's what I'm here for."
"Great," Kevin said.
"Okay, you're all settled then," Kate said and left.
Kevin was also turning his wheelchair around, but Adam told him, "I wanted to thank you. You know, for the job..."
Kevin waved it off. "Sure. Glad I could help." An impish smile crept onto Kevin's face. "And don't thank me yet, I will have you run to the archives so often that you'll pray you never took this job in the first place."
Adam's face took on a slightly daunted expression.
Kevin laughed. "Relax, I was kidding!"
"Oh," Adam said. "Yeah."
"Okay, I'll see you around." Kevin wheeled out of the room and Adam continued working.
Kate had given Adam more small assignments in the meantime and he was busy for the next two hours. Then Kate came in and told him he had done enough for the day and that he should go home. Adam would have been happy to work some more, but also didn't object to going home, so he grabbed his backpack and left the Dungeon to return another day.
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As Adam was entering his house, he called out, "Dad, I'm home."
Only silence greeted him. A rush of panic swept over him. Had his dad collapsed and now lay somewhere, unconscious? He called out again. "Dad?"
When he rushed through the hallway into the living room to check all the rooms, he found a hastily scribbled note in his father's handwriting. "Tried to call you, had to go to Kennedy Memorial. Not serious, don't worry. Dad." Just as he had finished reading, his cell phone rang.
"Dad?"
"Yes, it's me."
"I just found your note."
"Listen. They think they found me a kidney. I had to go to the hospital to have some more tests run. If things turn out right, they'll operate tonight already."
Adam was stunned. "Wow. That's ... that's great. I'll come over right away. You want me to bring anything?"
"No, I already packed some things before I went. Second floor, room 414."
"Hang on," Adam said and looked for a pen. He found one in one of the kitchen drawers and scribbled the floor and room number onto his father's note. "I'm on my way."
Adam left the house in a hurry.
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At the hospital, Adam had found his father in his hospital bed with an IV already feeding a saline drip with medication into his arm. Both had huge smiles plastered on their faces since it seemed that the kidney that had become available indeed matched Mr. Rove's blood type and other tissue factors.
Adam stayed with his father until they took him into surgery. Both had talked about the possibility that the transplant might not work or even that there could be complications during surgery, but they were trying to focus on the hopes that Adam's dad would get well and that everything would turn out for the best.
Adam had promised to stay at the hospital and wait until the surgery was done. When Adam was sitting down on one of the more comfortable armchair-like chairs in the waiting area in front of the entrance to the operating rooms, he thought, 'Jane! I have to tell Jane!'
He went to find an area where he could use his cell phone. He dialed Joan's cell phone number, but only got the voice mail. He tried the Girardi home. No one answered there either. Adam looked at the clock fastened to the wall, 9:17 PM. Then he remembered Joan having said something about family dinner at their father's favorite Italian restaurant.
"Damn," he swore out loud. He tried Joan's cell again and left a message on her voice mail and hoped she would listen to it soon. He then called Grace.
Grace's slightly abrasive voice greeted him. "Rove, what's up?"
Adam didn't know how to start. He still hadn't told Grace the whole story about his father's recent decline in health. "Grace, There's ... I--" he stuttered. "There's something I need to tell you."
Grace was obviously waiting for him to go on. When he didn't, she said impatiently, "What, did you kill Price? Get it out, Stutterboy."
"I think you should come down to Kennedy Memorial."
"You're in the hospital?"
"Not as a patient, don't worry. It's about my dad."
"Okay," Grace just said. Adam told her where to find him.
Twenty minutes later Grace entered the waiting area. She plopped down into the chair next to Adam. With a mixture between curiosity and worry, she looked at Adam. "So, shoot."
Adam told her how his father's condition had worsened gradually lately and about the transplant. Grace's sometimes indifferent seeming demeanor vanished and you could see the compassion in her features when she realized what Adam must have gone through lately.
"Dude, why didn't you tell me earlier?"
Adam remembered how Joan had asked him the same question. He shook his head, "I don't know, it just seems like everyone is having their own problems to deal with and I felt like I shouldn't add all my crap on top of all that."
Grace studied Adam. Determined, she said, "First of all, none of this is crap, and second of all, you can keep adding as much crap as you like onto mine. Because everyone is doing it anyway, so, seriously, dude, don't hold back the next time."
Adam knew that Grace didn't mean to sound so gruff, it was her way of saying he should confide in her the next time.
She asked him, "So, with the transplant and all, your dad is gonna be all right?"
Adam rubbed his face and then looked up. "Hopefully. Of course all sorts of things can still go wrong. Surgery complications, tissue rejection, things like that."
Grace remembered Joan's comment about the job at the Herald and asked Adam, "So, did you get that job at the paper?"
Adam looked surprised. "Yeah, I did. It's nothing great, though, but it'll do. How'd you know about that?"
"Girardi told me. Well, no specifics, just that you were looking for another job." Grace looked around, as if expecting Joan to turn up. "How come she's not here?"
Adam explained that he couldn't reach her on the phone.
"Want me to find her?" Grace offered.
"Naw," Adam said softly. "I'll tell her in the morning."
Grace sat with Adam for a while. Even though he put up a show of being brave and hopeful, she could see that he was nervous. After a while, their banter turned gradually into silence. Grace was half-heartedly leafing through a magazine. Adam had leaned his head back on the top of the backrest of the armchair. When Grace looked at him, she noticed that he had dozed off.
She got up and went to find a nurse. She asked if they had a spare blanket and the nurse found her one. Grace carefully covered Adam with it and left him to get some rest, even if it wasn't going to be anything close to quality sleep. But she figured he should get as much rest as he could, it would be a long night for him.
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Adam awoke to the sound of voices and shuffling of feet. He needed a second or two to get his bearings. Someone had placed a blanket over his body. As he got up to see where the commotion was coming from, he stole a glance at the wall clock. 1:45 AM. He rubbed his eyes and his neck, which was aching from the awkward position he had slept in.
At the nurse's station, he asked for his father. The nurse checked something on her computer and told Adam to hang on a few minutes, she would get Dr. Wade.
Adam paced the hallway to try and get the stiffness from his joints. He saw a woman in blue scrubs coming towards him. When she approached him, she asked if he was Adam Rove. When he confirmed that he was, she told him that the surgery had gone well without complications. His father was now in the recovery room and that Adam could see him soon.
Adam couldn't help but smile at those news. He had to wait another half hour before he was led to the room they had put his father in. Adam stayed with him until a nurse came and told him that it wouldn't be for another few hours before his father would be alert and he should go home and catch some sleep. They would call him if anything came up.
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Joan was sitting in the school cafeteria. She was all alone, no one else was in the whole dining area or anywhere else in the room. There was a huge birthday cake with creamy, colorful icing on it in front of her, candles stuck in the top, the flames dancing wildly even though there was no current or wind in the room.
"Congratulations, Joan," she heard a voice. She looked wildly around, but there still wasn't anyone in the room. Then she heard a rapping noise, like someone was knocking stones on glass. She went to the window and saw a group of kindergarten children, clad in devil costumes, who were throwing pebbles at the windows. The kids were laughing madly and picked up bigger stones with every time they threw them at the windows. If they went on like this, they would--
Joan floated from her dream to wakefulness, to find that the rapping noise was real and coming from her window. She got out of bed, went to the window, pulled the curtain aside and looked where the noise might be coming from. She could see a figure standing in the garden that looked uncannily like Adam.
She opened the window and a pebble just barely missed her head. It flew into her room and clattered to the floor next to her bed. In as quiet as possible a voice she said, "Adam? Wait, I'm coming down."
She went downstairs and opened the front door for him. He came in and Joan greeted him, "What are you doing here, it's the middle of the night!"
Adam looked happy, "Jane, they found a kidney for my dad!" he blurted. "I tried calling you earlier. They just finished the transplant, and everything looks good."
Joan openly smiled now too. "Wow, that's great news! I'm so happy for you." She gave Adam a hug and he hugged her back.
Since they were still standing in the hall, Joan said, "Don't you want to come in?"
Adam hesitated. "I should go home. It's just ... I wanted you to be the first to know that everything went well."
Joan took his hand and pulled him through the hall into the living area. "Come on, you can stay here tonight. There's no one gonna be at your house anyway."
Adam still didn't look convinced. "Your parents, they're gonna think..."
"Think what? We have a guest room upstairs. Really, don't worry."
Adam was finally persuaded and followed Joan quietly upstairs. Joan pulled back the covers of the bed in the guest room to check if everything was in order. Of course it was, so she showed Adam the bathroom.
She quickly went downstairs again. When she got back to the guest room, she handed Adam a pair of checkered boxer shorts and a slightly crumpled grey t-shirt with an imprint on the front that said 'I survived the 2002 Arcadia Science Fair'. "Here, you can sleep in those. They're Luke's, I got them from the dryer."
Adam took them and looked at them. They would do. Joan asked him if there was anything else he needed. He said he was fine and Joan went back to her own room and bed. But she couldn't go back to sleep right away, something was nagging at her.
How high were the chances for it to be a coincidence that Jason Hall dies and donates his organs and they find a kidney for Adam's dad, someone with a rare blood type, at the same time? How could God send her to work with Jason, only to take his life away shortly afterwards? And how could she believe in good ripples if people around her kept dying, people that she had gotten attached to in one way or another? Sleep slowly entangled her as she was still mulling these thoughts over in her head.
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