This chapter is dedicated to Stormyx. Hope you like it!

"The greatest healing therapy is friendship and love."

- Hubert H. Humphrey, Jr.

Jarrod meekly nodded and looked at the floor. Jac could see a slight resemblance to his father, now he'd mentioned it. Tim's hair was a completely different colour, light brown bordering on blond, but his deep brown eyes and athletic build reminded her of him. A small smile tugged at the corner of her lips as she remembered her best friend for the first time in many years. Her fingers intertwined with his, him kissing her on the forehead, laughing and putting his arms around her waist like he never wanted to let go.

"I don't understand, why are you here?"

Jarrod hesitated, "It's a long story."

"Okay." Jac glanced at her paperwork, and probably still trying to avoid it, added,

"Have you had lunch yet?"

She still wasn't sure why she was doing this. Jac bought two prawn mayonnaise sandwiches, and a Twix bar and a bottle Pepsi Max from the vending machine for Jarrod. Well, if anything, this has to be more interesting than work. She decided. They left the hospital and sat at one of the tables outside. It wasn't until after he had taken a bite of the sandwich Jac spoke again.

"How is your father?" She started eating, not realising how hungry she had been.

"He's dead." Jac nearly choked on a prawn.

"What?" She mumbled.

"Car accident. Him and my mum."Jarrod took a sip of the Pepsi and studied Jac's reaction.

"I'm so sorry for your loss. When did he..."Jac trailed off, uneasy and stunned at the news.

"Three months ago. Everything's nearly back to normal." He smiled sadly. Jarrod hadn't expected things to return to normal so quickly but, he supposed, life must go on. The death of his parents may seem monumental to him but in the grand scheme of things they were just two lives out of 154,000 that died each day worldwide and their passing had made little to no impact on the planet.

"Who's looking after you?" Jac asked, flashbacks of her horrible time in care running through her head.

"My mum's sister. She already has two kids, younger than me." Jarrod picked at the crust of the bread. He didn't mind living with his cousins. They were already sharing a room so he didn't feel that guilty about taking the spare room. His aunt and uncle were nice people, before his cousins were born his aunt had always spoiled him. Jarrod's mum had disapproved of the presents she brought nearly every time to see him but never stopped her. She'd secretly vowed to herself that she would spoil her younger sister's kids equally as much as his aunt had spoiled him. Since Jarrod's cousins had been born the endless gifts had faltered but recently she had started again, probably out of pity for her orphaned nephew.

Jac's sandwich lay untouched, her previous hunger forgotten. She'd never expected to see Tim again anyway but she still felt a pang of grief and even a little guilt. After all the good memories they'd shared, they hadn't ended on particularly good terms. Her own fault, naturally.

"Everybody's been really nice. Even my teachers. And I never thought my friends could be that sensitive. I'm glad that's over, I liked them the way they were." he said and offered one of the Twix bars to Jac. She shook her head. Jac could remember that pitying look some kids had given her when they found out she was in care. They sounded concerned but she knew they were just satisfying their curiosity and finding something to gossip about. She hated it, which was one of the reasons their initial probing was cut short by a harsh insult. In retrospect, Jac thought, there might have been a few genuinely nice, decent people that I deterred but I didn't deserve to hang out with them anyway. They would have ended up scared to be nice to strangers ever again.

"But why have you come to see me? I'm really not the best person at comforting people." Jac admitted, hoping to finally get some answers as to why this boy had turned up and told her his father, her first love, was dead.

"He mentioned you once. Ages ago. He said you were his best friend." Jarrod told her. "I met a couple of his friends that came to the funeral but they didn't say much about him. They said he was a good man, kind. General things. So I guess, I'm here to ask you about him, find out what he was like. I don't know what compelled me to look for you but I felt I had to talk to you."

Jac took a sharp intake of breath. So that's how he thought of her, best friend. It was better than she'd expected. "I knew him a long time ago. We were a bit younger than you when we first met."

"Do you remember him?" Jarrod asked quietly. He hoped that Jac could tell him about his father in the years before he was born, to make up for the years he was going miss with him.

"Oh yeah." she smiled. "You forget the things people say, the stupid everyday things they did, but you can never forget the way someone made you feel." Jac brushed a strand of hair behind her ear and shivered. "Windy isn't it?"

"You were in love with him?" Jarrod asked, ignoring her question.

"Yes, and he was in love with me. He said as much anyway." She replied. "Well, he said he couldn't help falling in love with me, that higher forces had brought us together, or something like that."

"Huh." Jarrod seemed surprised. "Dad never seemed like the religious type." A dozen roses, chocolate and a card on Valentine's Day was the most romantic Jarrod had ever seen his father be towards his mother.

"I don't think he meant God," Jac explained, "more like destiny or fate. Or he read it off a Hallmark card. That's entirely possible, knowing him." Tim could get her teenage heart racing with one of his lines, if it'd been any other guy Jac would have dealt them a scowl and walked off. But then Tim wasn't any other guy. Great now I sound like a corny Hallmark card. I could have sworn teenage Jac was more sceptical about romantic stuff than this.

Jarrod laughed. "What was he like?"

"Confident, charming, funny, great at sports, DT and maths. He always wanted to join the RAF. What did he end up doing?" she asked. Oh, the grand plans they'd had as teenagers. Jac knew she wanted to be a doctor from an early age, even before her mother abandoned her. Tim had wanted to become rich and live with her in a big house with a Ferrari and his own plane. His words exactly.

"Er... something to do with aircraft parts. He studied engineering at university." The spare room had been adorned with model aeroplanes, his mother wouldn't allow them in their bedroom . They were stored in a cardboard box on top of Jarrod's wardrobe now. He had taken them out a couple of times since his father's death, as a reminder of who he was.

"His favourite film was Top Gun. He forced me to watch it with him once." Jac had only agreed because he adored it so much. "I didn't understand his fascination with it myself."

"Yeah, he showed it to me too. I guess that's something we have in common, I prefer horror movies." Despite not sharing the same taste in movies, Jarrod and his dad had done lots together. He took him to Arsenal matches, they went skiing, go-karting. Once, for his birthday, his father had taken him to an art gallery. He was only about eight at the time but he could remember it clearly. He had been fascinated by the artwork and was inspired to try it himself. For nearly every birthday after, his parents had bought Jarrod art supplies: Prismacolour art pencils, sketchbooks, canvases, watercolour and oil paints. In fact today, was one of the few days he wasn't carrying his sketchbook and a couple of art pencils with him. Jarrod loved to sketch random things he saw. It could be anything, a wild flower, an interesting shop window, a sports car, a pigeon or a person with a particularly unusual nose. To him, his sketchbook was like a diary, documenting the things he found worth drawing in his mundane life and how he saw them.

They sat in silence, each of them remembering the late Timothy Anderson in different ways. The kind, devoted father and the confident, charismatic teenage boy.

"I really should be getting back to work." Jac said reluctantly, for she was enjoying reminiscing with Jarrod. "I'll give you my mobile number, maybe we could meet up sometime and talk more."

"I'd like that." Jarrod said. They exchanged numbers and stood up. "It's been good talking to you,Jac, I feel... better now." He tried to explain. Jac smiled understanding the gist. She was about to go when Jarrod stepped forward and hugged her, unexpectedly. To her surprise she found herself hugging him back instinctively. A single tear ran down her cheek. Jac didn't spend tears abundantly, but this one was for Jarrod, and the parents he'd lost, so it was worth it.

They pulled apart after a few seconds, and not needing to say anymore, parted their ways. Jac watched Jarrod walk away, standing there for a few seconds after he'd disappeared from sight. Then slowly she went back to the ward.

Back to the hustle and bustle, patients crashing, relatives lying and crying, nurses chatting, doctors gossiping, back to paperwork and meetings. Jac sighed.

Back to normality.

Please review if you enjoyed it or even just to say you don't like prawns (me too!) or prefer Coke to Pepsi (you crazy person) :).