A long time passed by and the bell rang again. Terry looked at his watch and saw it was lunchtime. He went back to the empty classroom to get his stuff and then he walked over to the cafeteria. He was not hungry, but he had to take his medicine with some food. He bought some suspiciously looking stew, but he didn't care.
The cafeteria was packed. There were no free tables, so Terry began to look around after a free seat, when suddenly he caught Dana's eyes. She smiled to him and begun to walked over to him. He felt his heart in his throat. Suddenly she stopped.
He felt a hand on his arm, which got him to forget all about Dana.
"Terry, I didn't know you also was going here."
He looked up at the hand's owner and recognized Dawn.
"Come, I'm sitting over here"
He followed her over to a table next to the window and sat down next to her. Behind him he didn't saw Dana, who dejectedly walked back to her table.
"I'm so glad to see you. It's so hard to get friends, when you are new. How is your boss?"
"Okay, he is tough. What about your mom?"
All of a sudden her eyes went dark.
"Well, the doctors have saved her this time, but what about next time… They want her to get help from a psychologist, but she is against it. It was so close this time."
He could see tears coming up in her eyes, which made him forget all about his own worries. He placed an arm around her and gave her a napkin to wiped the tears away with.
"Dawn, it is not your fault. You can't force your mom into getting help. You can only show her the way and that have you already done. A long time ago I had a friend, who also thought her only salvation was suicide"
Dawn wiped her eyes. She lightly shook his arm off and looked him straight into his eyes.
"And what then?"
"She tried several times, but in the end she found out that she needed help"
"What happened?"
"She got pregnant."
"Yours?"
He had to smile as he shook his head.
"No, it wasn't mine. She was my girlfriend, but she deceived me with an other guy."
"Did she keep the child?"
He nodded.
"Yes, but around a year after she died in an accident."
"Wow, what about the child?"
"It got adopted by a nice family…"
He took a swallow of his fiz.
"…It took my a long time get over that I couldn't help her. It was me, who almost always found her, and when I found out, that she had deceived me, was it too much. I had done so much for her and then she just stabbed me in the back like that. But in the end I have come to terms with that our relationship wasn't build on love, but on her sickness. She liked that I took care of her, and I liked doing it. It was almost sick."
"So she went to a psychologist?"
"Yeah, she and the other guy was really in love, and he made her wanted to lived for him and the child."
"But why didn't he keep the child after her dead?"
"He tried at first, because it made him remember her and he was the dad, but then he was killed in a fight with an other gang."
"Wow, was he a member of a gang?"
"Yeah, we all were."
He took another swallow of his fiz.
"Dawn, I haven't told anybody this before, so I would prefer if you didn't tell anybody about this, okay?"
She nodded.
"Okay and thanks."
"It's okay. You really help me at the hospital, so I'm glad I could help you…."
He began to eat his stew:
"…How long have you been going there?"
"A little over a week. I couldn't see a point in just sitting at home and waiting for mom to come home, so I began to go to school. What about you? I haven't seen you here before."
"Yeah, I had a break-down just after we met. The doctor says it was causes by the stress around my boss's heart failure, so my mom decided to give me some time to rest."
"Are you okay now?"
"Yeah, but I'm still on some medicine, because I have a too high blood pressure."
He took a small pill bottle from his bag and took a little yellow pill.
Dawn finished her lunch and looked at her watch.
"Well, it almost time for the next lesson. Do you know where room 414 are?"
"Yeah, are you going to have mathematics?"
She nodded.
"Then you can just follow me, since we are going to have the class together."
