Apologies for taking a longer time with this chapter. Too many things to do...

Thanks to everyone who reads and comments on my story!

Previously...

Chicago General Hospital, April 11, 2009

The room was quiet, except for the muted sounds of the monitors and oxygen pump. Jack studied the monitors for a few moments. Ellen's heart rate was fast, and somewhat erratic. He took off his jacket and hung it on the back of a chair, pulled the chair closer, and sat down where he could reach over and take hold of her hand.

"I'm here, Ellen," he said softly. "It's Jon. I hope you can hear me somehow, and know that I'm with you. I won't leave as long as you need me. You never failed me when I needed you, and I...I..." He stopped, knowing that if he continued he would break down. And he didn't want her to hear him cry.

Reaching into his jacket pocket, he took out the rosary, and sat for several long minutes with it in his hands. Finally, he leaned over and put it in Ellen's hand and closed her fingers around it, resting it on her chest. Then he picked up her other hand and held it in his.

He was still and quiet for a while then, and his thoughts began to drift back into childhood memories...

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Chapter 7

St. Catherine's, August, 1962

"I'm not going back to school!" Jon declared stubbornly, shoving out his lower lip in defiance of Sister Rebecca's attempts to help prepare him for the first school day of the year—just a week away.

"Jon, you know you have to go. It's important. Why—you'll be in the fifth grade this year! Think of all the new things you'll learn."

"I'm nearly ten, Sister," he scoffed. "I don't need any more school! What can they teach me that I don't already know?!"

Rebecca chuckled. "There are always new things to learn, Jonny. Even I still learn new things every day."

"Really, Sister?" He stared at her in disbelief. "But you're so old!"

Sister Rebecca huffed, a bit offended, but mostly amused. "That doesn't mean I stop learning. Besides, what will you do if you don't go back to school?"

"I'll get a job. Earn money."

"Where are you going to find this job?" Ellen asked from the doorway, where she had been watching them.

"Down on the docks," Jon said, turning toward her confidently. "I'm big and strong. I can work hard."

Ellen saw Rebecca's frown, and said quickly, "Yes, you are big for your age, I'll grant you that. I'll tell you what, Jon... I'll make a deal with you. School starts in ten days. If you can find a job by then, one that will earn you—say, forty dollars a week, then we'll talk again about school."

"Sister Ellen!" Rebecca exclaimed.

Ellen merely smiled and shook her head at the other nun. "Jon?"

"Really?" he asked eagerly, hardly able to believe his ears. "You mean it?"

"I mean it," she promised. "And, by the way, you owe Sister Rebecca an apology for what you said before."

He knew exactly what she meant and hung his head.

Of course, Jack had not found anyone who was willing to pay a ten-year-old kid forty dollars a week. The best he could do was a dollar a day making deliveries for a local market after school. The clerks in the dockside offices where he asked hadn't made fun of him, however. One man complimented him on his willingness to work. Another advised him to stay in school, adding "I wish I had."

Chicago General Hospital, April 2009, 1610 hours

Jack smiled at the memory. Ellen had known he would not be able to find a job on the docks, and thought that finding it out for himself would be a valuable lesson. She'd been right.

His attention was brought back to the present by the click of the opening door, and he raised his head.

"Aaron," he said, rising as he recognized the tall, bespectacled man entering the room.

Dr. Aaron Cohen stepped quickly toward O'Neill and the two men embraced warmly, then stepped back to look each other over. After a few moments Cohen's glance went to the woman in the bed.

"I'm so sorry, Jack," he said, his gaze taking in the monitors' readings in an instant. "Betsy said you were in here. I'd have been in sooner, but there was an emergency. How are you?"

"I don't really know," Jack replied honestly, shaking his head. "What happened, Aaron? I didn't know she had heart problems..."

"Neither did I." Cohen was Ellen's regular physician. "She never mentioned symptoms, and she always checked out fine on her regular visits. The cardiologist, Dr. Samuelson, diagnosed an infarction, which was caused by a clot developing silently."

Aaron was Betsy's husband. Her first husband had passed away eight years earlier, and four years ago she married Aaron, who was a lifelong friend of the younger McNamara siblings, which included Jack. In fact, he and Aaron were especially close growing up, since they were the same age and had gone through school together. Aaron's family had lived just down the block from the McNamaras, and not far from St. Cat's. They graduated together from Westside High School and decided together to join the Air Force...

St. Catherine's, June 1970

"I can't do this without telling Ellen first," Jack decided. "It wouldn't be fair."

Jack and Aaron were sitting on the front steps of St. Cat's late one afternoon, just two days after their high school graduation ceremony.

"We agreed. We're both going to join up," Aaron protested.

"And I will, but I can't just spring it on her as a done deal. Not since Jamie..."

Aaron sighed and pushed up his glasses with one finger. "Yeah, maybe you're right. You're not eighteen yet, either. That might be a problem." Aaron's eighteenth birthday had passed just two weeks earlier.

"It's not that." Jack shook his head. "I'm an emancipated minor—besides, 17 is the age for joining the Air Force. I just think I should tell her first."

"She'll try to talk you out of it."

"I don't think so. She knows I'll be up for the draft in a few months anyway. What did your folks say when you told them?"

"They get it," Aaron said. "I had an automatic deferment until after graduation, but now they can take me anytime. At least if I join up I may have some choices."

"What about college? You're still planning to go to med school, right?"

"Yeah, but you have to get deferments every semester. So I could be pulled out if I have a bad term. I figure it's easier to go ahead and serve the two years, and then go to college uninterrupted." Aaron leaned back against the step and stretched. "Are you gonna tell her tonight?"

Jack nodded. "No point putting it off."

"Want me to go along?"

"Nah. That's okay. Thanks, though." Jack stood up. "I'll come around in the morning and we'll go downtown."

Aaron reached up a hand and Jack pulled him to his feet. "Okay. See you in the morning."

Aaron jogged away down the street as Jack climbed the steps to the front door of St. Cat's.

After dinner that evening, Jack and Ellen took some of the boys down to the ball field three blocks away for a pick-up game. They sat on the wooden bench off to the side to watch.

"What's wrong, Jon?" she asked after watching him fidget for ten minutes or so.

He took a breath. Might as well get it over with, he thought. "Aaron is going down tomorrow and join the Air Force," he said, staring down at his hands. "I'm going with him." She didn't say anything right away, so after a few moments he continued. "I'll be 18 in four months and the draft will get me anyway. I'd rather join the flyboys than be in the Army. Maybe I'll have some options this way—at least, that's what Aaron thinks. I'm a pretty good mechanic, maybe they'll train me to service helicopters."

"Jon..." she began, but her voice broke. She breathed deeply for a minute. "So soon..."

He closed his eyes. It was just four months since Jamie was killed over there. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "But I have to do this... It's important." He couldn't tell her that he needed some kind of redress for Jamie's death, and this was the only way he could think of to get it. He didn't know if it would help, but he had to try.

They sat in silence for some time. Jack felt as if he were watching Ellen's heart break.

Finally, she nodded. "Do what you need to do, Jon." Her voice was steady and calm. She looked him in the eye and there was no anger or blame or bitterness there. If she was afraid for him she didn't let it show.

After they took the kids back to St. Cat's, Ellen went to her parents' house. She couldn't let them be blindsided by this news. They loved Jack as much as they did their own kids. Bridget cried when Ellen told her what Jack was planning to do, but Dylan simply nodded, as if he weren't surprised at all. He put his arm around Ellen's shoulders and hugged her. "There was a time when I had to go, too," he said. "And you understood."

"Yes, I did," she agreed, remembering back to the months after Pearl Harbor. "But I had a child's faith that you would be all right. It's a little different on the adult side of the fence."

"Jack is a good boy," Dylan said. "And he's going to be a good man. You raised him to be responsible and to do what's right. You can't stop him when he decides to go and do it."

Ellen sighed. "Of course I won't stop him. I couldn't if I wanted to. He'll be eligible for the draft in four months, anyway. Maybe this will give him some choices, like he said."

Dylan nodded. "Maybe so."

The next day Jack and Aaron went to the Air Force recruiting office to sign up. As it turned out, Aaron was rejected because of his eyesight, but Jack was in perfect health, and was accepted immediately.

TBC. Upcoming: Ellen's prognosis.