A/N: You will note a distinct shift in the BEFORE chapters, now that we have progressed into 1947. The closer BEFFORE gets to NOW, the more the perspective will change.

BEFORE

So far away

Doesn't anybody stay in one place anymore?

It would be so fine to see your face at my door

Doesn't help to know you're just time away

Long ago, I reached for you and there you stood

Holding you again could only do me good

How I wish I could

But you're so far away

"So Far Away"

Carole King

January 18, 1947

Palo Alto, California

The chill wind followed Chuck inside the Student Center, though he pulled the door closed forcefully instead of waiting for it to close by itself. The temperature was in the low 50s, which back home, January in Massachusetts, would have felt like spring. But after six months in northern California, it felt chilly to him.

Back home. Home.

The word was a common utterance. He went home from class, home from the dining hall, home from the library. The other students said it to each other. His roommate asked him when he would be home.

But none of those homes was really home, not by his definition. Home was thousands of miles away. He had heard the word "homesick" before, in conversation or writing, and he had believed it to be merely a mood, a temporary, changeable thing. Now, he knew otherwise. He suffered it like it was a disease, an affliction that lastingly pained his body and mind. It had begun as an acute infirmity, debilitating in every aspect of his existence. Slowly, forced to cope, the transition to chronic illness occurred, almost without his notice.

He had learned to live with the misery, incorporating it into how he approached the world. To an outside observer, Chuck was thriving. He had just begun his second semester of his first year of college and had aced every class. He had taken more than the required, or recommended number of course hours, overloading, it was called…and still had managed a perfect grade point average. He was serious and dedicated to his studies, unusual for first year students, or so he was told.

His plan from the beginning was to finish school as quickly as possible. His roommates and the friends he had made were more interested in the whole collegiate experience, absorbing not just the academics but all the social aspects of university life. Chuck wanted to take as many classes as he could manage at one time. If he took one or two classes extra each semester, a double major was attainable for him in four years. The logistics of travel during the holidays, particularly dealing with winter in New England, ensured he would have to stay on campus during Christmas break. The idea of being alone at Christmas was upsetting, so instead he chose to take an accelerated course during the time. His goal was a double major as an undergraduate, and subsequently a dual master's degree in less than another year. He would be done in 1951, perhaps as early as March, barring any unforeseen circumstances.

He spent his time either in class, studying, working in the college library, or sleeping. The happiest times he had were reading Sarah's letters, and writing back to her. He had become friends with his roommate, Michael, a tall boy from a town in central California. Because Michael was closer to home, he was able to return more frequently than Chuck. Oftentimes, as a result, Chuck was alone, especially on weekends. Chuck had made other friends through Michael, who was much more extroverted than Chuck. He tried to fill the empty spaces with time spent with those friends.

Nothing was ever enough, though, not when he thought of Worcester…and Sarah. How he wished he had wings and could just fly home to see her. The sound of her voice on the long distance line wasn't the same as when it was whispered in his ear. He fretted as he thought about Sarah alone…and then fretted again when he thought maybe she wasn't alone. For Chuck, home had blonde hair.

He was at the campus post office this afternoon hoping for mail. The last letter he had received from Sarah had come on Thursday. The frequency of her correspondence, given her predictable pattern, meant he should have received a new one on Saturday. But he hadn't.

Worse, when he'd called Sarah's house on Sunday evening, there had been no answer. He had called Casey and Gertrude, the second call he routinely made. Gertrude had informed him Sarah had come down with the measles about six days before. Fourteen was relatively old to contract measles. Chuck and Ellie had caught the disease in 1936, much younger, both of them confined to their rooms for almost two weeks.

Chuck had remembered how terrible he had felt while ill. Yet Sarah had still written him another letter, during the days of her illness, although Sarah hadn't mentioned feeling sick in the letter. She didn't want me to worry, since I'm here and I couldn't be there for her. He knew her well enough to feel confident in his assumptions about her motives.

But Jack hadn't answered the phone call, which was strange. If Sarah was home sick, would Jack have left her there alone? Why would no one be home if she was sick? Chuck was hoping for another letter, hoping for some explanation.

He walked to the counter. The girl behind the counter was familiar. She was in several of Chuck's classes, advanced math and science courses, and her work study job was in the college mailroom. She had long brown hair that fell almost to her waist, with bluntly cut bangs over her chocolate brown eyes. She was petite and delicately featured. Her smile was warm and friendly. Her name was Jill, he knew after having heard it spoken by their professors. He had never spoken directly to her before, just please and thank yous at the mailroom window.

"Hi, Chuck," she said brightly, leaning forward on the counter on her elbows, her smile warm. "How was winter break?"

"Oh…uh…it was fine," he said, stuttering over the sentence, not expecting her to make conversation. "I…uh…took accelerated accounting."

Her smile faded and she leaned back a bit, surprised. "You stayed here? Why didn't you go home?" she asked.

"Home is…far away. Massachusetts," he said. Blonde, the thought. But he made himself forget the thought and smile at Jill.

"Oh, well, that explains the accent," she said with a teasing smile.

"What accent?" he asked, his mouth twisted in a crooked grin. "I don't pahk my cah in the yahd or whatever a Boston accent is supposed to sound like."

"Maybe your accent is not that bad," she conceded. "But you do drop the r's in lots of words…or you add them where they don't belong."

"Huh?" he quizzed. He had never had a conversation with her before. How did she know how he pronounced so many different things?

"Like idear, instead of idea," she offered, exaggerating his accent.

"I'm…uh…from Worcester, which is in central Mass. Maybe that's why," he explained.

"Wooster?" she mimicked. "Is that how you say it? We've all been saying Wor-chester," she said, demonstrating the difference.

"Who is 'we' and why are they saying it?" he asked, bemused and still shocked to be in a conversation with her at all.

She laughed enthusiastically. "All the mail clerks. You have the record for the most mail, by the way." Her eyes twinkled mischievously. "Are the letters from your girlfriend?"

He blushed, scarlet red like a sunburn, enough that he felt the heat in the tips of his ears. "No…uh…no," he stammered.

He had almost said I don't have a girlfriend. However, he had the suspicion that to say that would be to supply the information Jill was fishing for.

"Linda and Patty and I have a bet going…about what the 'S' stands for. Is it Sandra? Susan? Sadie?" she continued to pry, still teasing but also insistent. He sensed it was good natured, but it bothered him.

"Sarah," he said, his voice low. "It stands for Sarah."

Jill slapped her palm on the counter. "Damn it," she cursed, not the least bit embarrassed to say the word in front of him. "Linda wins." She gave a sly grin. "So who is Sarah, if she's not your girlfriend?"

Home. He didn't want to have to explain who Sarah was, to put a label on what it was that they were to each other. "She's in high school," he added, addled, then almost hit himself on the forehead for the stupid words. Of all things to say, he said that? He needed to elaborate before Jill asked him if he was Sarah's baby-sitter or something. "Our fathers were business partners. We grew up together."

"Oh," she said slowly, making some connection in her head, as he watched her eyes shift. "She writes to you four times a week?" Jill asked.

He felt trapped, cornered, like he wanted to run from this girl. She had been counting how many letters Sarah sent to him? Calculating their frequency? It was a strange thing to occupy Jill's attention. "I do get letters from other people, too, you know."

"Mr. and Mrs. Casey, right?" she proclaimed knowingly.

"Are you investigating me or something?" he asked her, only half-kidding.

She giggled hysterically, obviously believing he was only kidding. "It gets boring sorting mail," she admitted, wrinkling her nose as she giggled. "Aunt and Uncle?"

"No, my…guardians," he said, having no other word to explain them, but realizing that referring to them that way just invited more questions. He continued before she could pry more. "My parents…and my sister…died in a hurricane when I was ten. The Caseys worked for my parents and they…took care of me…afterward." He rarely spoke of his past like this, and as uncomfortable as she was making him, he found the answers tumbling from his mouth.

She sobered. The twinkle in her eyes disappeared, the teasing grin now flattened into a small frown. "Oh, I'm so sorry." She paused a few beats. "I'm Jill, by the way. We were in Calculus and Chemistry together last semester."

"Hi, Jill," he replied gently, glad her approach had changed. Her attitude. It made him feel better about the whole interaction. "You…uh…know I'm Chuck, right?"

"Chuck Bartowski," she confirmed with a soft chuckle.

"Speaking of mail," he said, pausing, getting back to his reason for being in the post office. "There's no problem or anything, right? No reason why mail from the east coast would be delayed?"

"There're always snow storms or whatever at this time of year, but, no, nothing that they told us about specifically," she told him.

"Ok, well, thanks anyway," he said in defeat, disappointed, drumming his fingers lightly on the counter before walking away.

He told himself he would call Sarah again tonight, even though it was Monday.

A message was waiting for him when he returned to his dorm, written by his roommate. Gertrude had called for him…in the middle of the day, on a Monday…when she knew he had class. The only other instructions on the note were that Chuck should call home as soon as possible.

His heart plummeted, worry instantly transforming to fear as he made his way down to the common area where the phone was located. He had to remind himself that if Gertrude had called around two, California time, she had called in the evening in Massachusetts. It calmed some of the fear, but not all of it. Sometimes Gertrude would forget the time difference, so she may have just thought she was calling when his classes were already over. Still, she and Casey rarely ever called. Something was wrong. He had an awful premonition that he couldn't shake.

The clicking, the silence of waiting while the long distance call initiated was agonizing. Finally, it was ringing, an echoey and tinny sound that he had gotten used to. He was counting the rings. One. Two. Three. His heart started pounding. He sat down in a nearby chair.

Before the fourth ring was completed, he heard the click. The call was answered.

"Hello?" Gertrude asked. She sounded impossibly distant.

"Gertrude, it's Chuck. What's wrong?" he almost shouted into the phone, cringing at his anxious directness, bypassing the normal pleasantries.

"Oh, Chuck, you got the message. Thank goodness," she said, so calm it unnerved him.

"Gertrude–" he interjected pointedly.

"Chuck, I don't want you to worry. Everything is fine, ok?" she began.

"What's fine?" he asked impatiently.

"Sarah's measles. There were complications. Pneumonia. She's in the hospital, at St. Vincent's," Gertrude relayed in an even tone, clearly hoping to keep him from overreacting.

Chuck felt his strength drain away, glad he was already sitting, fully aware his legs wouldn't have held him up. No letter…because she was so sick. He felt helpless, like a caged animal, trapped in California, while she needed him back at home. Measles were so common, and complications were rare, but the older the patient, the higher the risk of any complications.

His logic started dictating to his anxiety. Pneumonia was curable. Antibiotics could cure pneumonia, even if the virus still needed to be fought by her immune system. Gertrude had told him first that everything was fine, and she wouldn't have lied to him.

"Is she alright?" he asked quietly, keeping his logic firmly in mind as he asked her.

"Jack took her to the hospital on Thursday, in the middle of the night. John and I have been to see her every night since. She's in good spirits. Just exhausted. Pleurisy, Jack said. Lots of fluid in her lungs, which makes breathing harder. But she's staying in bed and taking her medication. Everything is fine," Gertrude repeated.

The picture Gertrude's words had painted in his head were frightening, despite her reassurance that Sarah was just tired. He'd had pneumonia when he was five, caused by the flu. It was one of his earliest memories; that, and Ellie taking care of him while he was bedridden. Sarah was in the hospital, with only strangers tending to her.

"Chuck, she's fine, I promise," Gertrude said again, interpreting his silence as worry.

"What if she isn't?" he asked with dread. "I'm trapped out here, a million miles away." People died of pneumonia, despite Gertrude's ignorant reassurances. No doctor would have explained something like that to Sarah's father, let alone just a random visitor. Gertrude had no medical information to base her confidence on. Was it her faith? Was that why she was so sure Sarah would be alright? Chuck had none of her faith, instead just a longstanding suspicion that terrible things were attracted to him, pulled to him like a magnet. Now, he had ensnared Sarah in his disastrous orbit.

Gertrude didn't answer him at all, more proof that her calm was artificial, or forced.

"I want to talk to Mr. Burton," Chuck announced. "He didn't answer the phone last night."

"No, I'm sure he didn't. He's been at the hospital every waking minute," she told him, the concession in tension with her previous reassurances.

Jack was Sarah's father, after all, but still, the situation as Gertrude explained it seemed odd to him. Jack behaved outwardly like he hardly cared at all. Chuck looked for the good in people, even when there was little evidence of it. He felt wrongly judgmental, pronouncing Sarah's father neglectful, though he had ample proof he was right. While she was growing up, Sarah might have contracted pneumonia on numerous occasions, since she was barely cared for or tended to by anyone other than the Caseys, or himself.

But now Jack could see her need for him firsthand. While her contracting measles was not Jack's fault, he was left to deal with the ramifications of her illness. Despite Sarah's angry insistence otherwise, Chuck knew Jack loved her. A health scare like Sarah was enduring at the moment had never happened to him before.

Not since Emma had contracted polio and died two weeks later. That flash of memory added perspective. Sarah was all Jack had left. Sitting beside her hospital bed must have driven that point home.

"I can call the nurse's station, can't I?" Chuck asked. "They can get him on the phone?"

"Chuck, that's the fourth call you'll make in two days," Gertrude reminded him.

He knew she was just looking out for him, trying to keep his finances in focus, but he bristled just the same. What the hell difference did that make? So I work a few extra shifts in the library.

"That doesn't matter. Can you get the number for me?" he asked, impatient again.

She didn't reply, but he heard a clunk and muffled noises in the background that alerted him to her abandonment of the receiver to search for the number. It took several minutes, but she returned to the phone. She read off the numbers and he scribbled them down quickly. He thanked her and hung up, then immediately dialed the number she had given him.

A nurse picked up the phone on the first ring. Chuck explained who he was, and who he was trying to reach. She told him to wait one moment, then he heard the background chatter of what had to have been the nurses' station. There was a clattering, a scuffle, and then Jack's voice.

"Chuck, is that you?" Jack asked. He called me Chuck, Chuck thought, immediately sensing the seriousness in Jack, highlighted by his choice of address. He sounds exhausted.

"Yes, Mr. Burton. Gertrude just told me about Sarah. How is she?" Chuck asked, not wanting to engage in small talk with Jack.

"You're 18, Chuck. You can call me 'Jack,'" Jack said softly. His usual flippant cheer was missing, and it made his voice sound strange, foreign, like it belonged to someone else. "Sarah's doing fine. Antibiotics are working, that's what the doctors say," Jack added. He sounded relieved, reassured. "The biggest problem right now is the fluid in her lungs. She gets winded even sitting up to eat. That could take time before it gets better."

Chuck was still worried, but Jack had physicians instead of prayers, and it helped. Sarah's life wasn't in immediate danger. A long hospital stay, and what it meant for school, was worrisome, however. "How long? Did they say?" Chuck asked warily.

"Two, maybe three months…before she's back to her old self," Jack answered, disappointed but trying not to sound like it.

Three months…The thought left Chuck reeling. Sarah had told him in her letters that her grades had suffered in the first half of the year. She had explained that it was just high school, how difficult the coursework had been. Chuck had a nagging suspicion it was also a result of her depressed distraction, as Gertrude called it. She missed him, to the point of not being able to properly focus.

For him, coursework in college had been a means of distracting himself from his homesickness. He buried himself in books and papers. He gave himself very little time that wasn't focused on something else. But Sarah had neglected her schoolwork, spending all the time she hadn't been with Carina by herself, usually outside, her lonely scavenger hunts the only source of distraction.

"She's going to have to repeat ninth grade, from what I understand," Jack mentioned, as if he had followed Chuck's train of thought. "Summer school works for one or two classes. Not all of them."

Chuck didn't really know why, but he found that news devastating, worse than her illness or her state of mind. All of the girls she associated with, including Carina, who Sarah called her best friend, would continue on to tenth grade next year. Sarah would have to start all over again. To be so bright and to be left behind. Instead of being four years ahead of her in school, he was now five. Granted, he was in college. But…in the future, she would have been a freshman in college while he was completing his Master's degrees.

With an insight he hadn't ever had before, he understood something about himself he had been denying. Maybe it was from a dream, a fantasy…some misplaced wish on a penny or a rainbow. But wouldn't it have been like a dream…if somehow Sarah found herself in California, with him?

No one would care that she was four years younger than him, or even be aware of the fact. They could just be…whatever they were supposed to be, meant to be. No one else's opinion or commentary would matter.

Now that wasn't possible. He would come home, and she would leave for…wherever it was she wanted to go. What if she didn't go? What if she stayed close by? Holy Cross or Assumption?

Why was he thinking this way?

She would have her own life, her friends and anyone else she chose to spend her time with. Boyfriends. It was hard to think the word and he refused to examine himself close enough to understand why. Every other letter she sent him, she asked if he had met any girls, gone on dates…or whatever. The "whatever" was a mature teasing he might have expected from Carina, but it was alarming coming from Sarah. The hazy line between what Carina found acceptable and what Sarah found acceptable had been weakening all along, or so Chuck feared.

Now what would happen if they weren't in the same grade? If Sarah felt forced to keep up?

"She's going to go stir crazy if she can't talk to you," Jack said, interrupting Chuck's silent rumination. "She started crying last night and could barely breathe after that, when she missed your call."

He knew it couldn't have been helped, but he felt guilty all the same. He started doing math equations in his head, trying to figure out cost and time if he were to travel back to Massachusetts to see her, even if for just a short time…but it was impossible. Three days there, three days back…or literally a fortune to fly.

"I sort of offered her a bribe," Jack said, under his breath like he was talking about an actual misdemeanor. "If she gets enough rest and stays in bed, she should build up her strength enough to come out to the nurses' station and talk to you soon."

It would have to do, he thought. He would write to her tonight and reiterate it, so there was no doubt.

In the meantime, he would study and work every moment he wasn't asleep. The extra effort would be doubly beneficial, putting money in his pocket and worry off his mind.

A/N: Thank you Zettel for pre-reading. Historical notes: Measles is still, in 2023, the most contagious virus on earth. R0 is a term used to explain a communicable disease's infective power. As you may have learned during COVID, COVID's R0 was on average 5, which meant for every infected person, 5 more became sick after exposure. Measles' R0 is 18. If you were born before 1967, when the first vaccine for measles was developed, you caught measles, probably as a child. Complications from measles were rare, but more common than with any other rash-type disease. Most frequent was pneumonia, as Sarah has contracted. Sarah's relative isolation as she grew, spending most of her time with someone who was immune to measles, is a feasible explanation for her late onset. Also, in 1947, penicillin was newly available to the populace, although it was used during WWII. Chuck's worry, his needing to remind himself that she was on the "wonder drug" as it was called, also time appropriate. This early, there was little to no known resistance to penicillin. The next generation of antibiotics, cephalosporins, were not discovered until 1948 and not readily available until the early 1950s. Important to note both now and later. And yes, Jill's behavior is stalker-like, although that term was not coined until 1995. Chuck used a more time appropriate term. Let me know what you think!