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"I don't understand what this is about Mr. Wilson," Jackson said.
"I thought you understood Doctor, the Davis family donated this home to the university with the understanding that it would be used for housing a deserving faculty member with a young family as long as they lived here and stayed a member of the faculty." Wilson said.
"You mean the 'David Davis Mansion,' Davis family?" Jackson asked.
"The very same" Wilson answered.
"So this is real and not some cruel joke?" Jackson asked.
"I can assure you, Doctor Powell, this is all very real. You were very highly recommended. We thought this would take much longer but Doctor Willoughby pushed this through because he said your need was urgent. I can see now why the old man was so insistent." Wilson said, motioning to Liz.
Half in shock, Jackson said "Alright, what do you need for us to do?"
"If you would just give me your faculty ID and Driver's license so I can make copies, and then sign in all of the places where are red X's we will be done and you can move into the house Friday. We already have copies of your information Mrs. Powell, but if you would just come by and let us copy your corrected driver's license after you visit the Secretary of State's office, that would be great." Wilson said.
Jackson took out his wallet and gave Wilson his Faculty ID and Driver's License, and the two started signing the dozen places in the twenty-five page document.
When Wilson returned, the couple had finished signing the papers. As Wilson handed Jackson his IDs saying "I will have your copies of the contract delivered to your office by Thursday. If you would like to look over the place, I can arrange a walkthrough tomorrow afternoon at 1 PM."
The two men shook hands and exchanged pleasantries and the couple walked out of the office. When they were outside of the office building, they sat down on a park bench at the edge of the Quad. They reached out and pinched each other yelling "OUCH!" laughing out loud and then saying in unison "I can't believe this is really happening!"
Finally he stood up, grabbing her arm gently and said, "Come on, there's something I have to show you", and lead her to his new office.
"Oh my God, this is incredible. Your old office was like a glorified broom closet compared to this." she said as he closed and locked the door. He walked over to the window and closed the blinds.
He turned around and started undressing while walking around the desk and sitting on the old leather couch totally nude. She looked at him and took off the sweatshirt and shorts. She hadn't worn a bra or panties so she was nude also. She ran to him and they christened the old couch for the next hour and a half.
The next day they met Mr. Wilson at his office and they walked the three blocks to the house on E. College Ave. Wilson unlocked the door and walked them through the two bedroom bungalow that had been built in the 1920's. It had been completely restored and had two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, a living room, dining room and kitchen on the main floor. There was a full basement and the back porch had been enclosed and turned into a laundry. In the back yard there was a one and a half stall detached garage that had built sometime in the 1960's that had a workshop. The best thing about the place is that it came fully furnished so the young couple would move right in.
As Wilson locked up the house, Jackson said that everything was perfect. Wilson said everything was on schedule and they could pick up their keys Friday morning. Liz noticed that the house was across the street from the professor's office, and both men remarked how convenient everything was. They parted company, the couple walking back to their apartment and Wilson going back to his office.
Moving day was much like the last time, with the professor providing the beer and his friends doing all of the work. The difference this time was that everyone but Jackson and his bride were drinking beer on the front porch of the little brick bungalow on College Avenue. After everyone left Jackson and Liz climbed the stairs to their bedroom. They decided that they would make the larger bedroom with the dormer facing the street theirs, and turn the slightly smaller rear bedroom into the nursery. As they made love like the newlywed's that they were, they remembered something that Wilson had said about the insulation in the house being very thick. He had her screaming like a banshee as he has two fingers in her ass, four fingers in her vagina, and her clitoris in his mouth.
The next day one of Jackson's former students showed up in his office and asked if he knew anyone who needed a desk. It seems that he was taking a job in California and he had to divest himself of all of his worldly possessions. He had gotten rid of everything but an antique oak roll-top desk about a third the size of the massive one in Jackson's office. When Jackson went out to the truck to look at it he knew that it would fit perfectly in the alcove of their master bedroom.
Jackson said "I'll give you $50 if you move it into my house across the street."
The kid said "But I only want $30."
Jackson said "I need it to be in the bedroom on the second floor of my house."
The kid said "Deal, I'll even throw in the chair for that price!" Twenty minutes later the professor had an office in his bedroom. Life was perfect for the young couple.
The next week the girls of Alpha Delta Pi held a baby shower for Liz and between them and all of the other sororities the mother-to-be received a crib, a bassinette, a changing table, a dresser and all of the necessities that a new mother would need. They even had their Frat boyfriends assemble everything so that Jackson didn't have anything to do but sit on the front porch and keep the guys company while they drank beer. That evening, as they held each other in post coital bliss, they talked about all of the amazing changes in their lives. Since he had placed his 'new' desk in their bedroom, they compromised that the bassinette should also be their bedroom as well. They both thought that they were the luckiest people on earth.
The next months seemed to crawl by until Sunday, December 7th, the forty-fifth anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Liz woke up Jackson at 6 AM, telling him she was having contractions. They knew that she was due and were prepared, at least until the LTD would not start. He was finally able to contact one of his assistants who pulled up in front of the professor's house in his friend's old caddy hearse that had been converted to a party wagon. Jackson was aghast, but Traci calmed him down and said "It's a 'hippie van' with mattresses in the back and it looks really cool." They were driven to Brokaw Hospital in Bloomington and were taken immediately to the delivery room. At 12:55 PM CST a little girl weighing 6lbs. 8oz. and measuring 19 in. was delivered with no complications. They decided to name her Traci Elizabeth Powell.
Now their fairy tale romance was complete. The little blonde baby girl with blue eyes was living with her mother and father in a cozy home on the edge of the college campus where her father's office was just across the street. Everything seemed to be perfect until about four years later when, the day after 'mommy' came home from a routine doctor's appointment. The doctor had called saying he had noticed some unusual results from her PAP smear.
A month later and several visits to specialists, Liz met her husband at the door with some devastating news. What she had thought was a urinary tract infection or irritation from their still very active sex life was in fact Stage 3 Ovarian Cancer. They held it together until after they tucked their little angel to bed and held each other while they cried themselves to sleep.
They spent the next month consulting with all of the leading cancer hospitals in the Midwest, from the Mayo Clinic to Houston Texas. He took a leave of absence to take his family home to Rhode Island so that his family could meet their granddaughter and daughter-in-law before taking Elizabeth to Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston to see if they could help her.
They decided to take the train and were able to get a sleeping coach for the trip from Chicago to New York. They took the train from Bloomington to Chicago and the young family shared hot fudge sundaes at a small shop on Canal St just outside Union Station. The train for New York left in the early evening and arrived at Pennsylvania Station at about Noon the next day. They had a two hour layover in New York before the train left for Kingston RI. Traci's 'Pawpaw' met them at the station and loaded them into his old Dodge station wagon and drove them to their home in Wakefield where they had moved when Jackson's father retired.
When they reached Jackson's parent's home they were met by a large crowd of relatives. Liz was overwhelmed by the loving family she was surrounded by when she walked into the home of her husband's parents. She never knew most of her parent's family members, having been raped by her stepfather and raised by her older sister. After four hours of meeting twenty of her husband's relatives, the crowd went home. The exhausted young family were then shown to the extra bedroom on the second floor where mother and daughter went and were soon asleep. Jackson spent the next few hours on the front porch chatting with his father.
The next day Jackson's cousin Vinnie, who owned a cab company, showed up with a limo. He took the family on a day-long sightseeing tour of Rhode Island, Cape Cod, and several islands including Newport and Martha's Vineyard. The next day, Vinnie took Jackson and Liz to her appointment in Boston while Pawpaw and Gramma took little Traci to South Kingston State Beach with the rest of the grandkids.
While Liz was poked, prodded, scanned, and examined, the grandchildren played, swam, built sand castles, and played in the sun until they all fell asleep in the three station wagons it took to transport them the shore. After being examined by an army of doctors, nurses and technicians, Jackson and Liz were escorted into an office where the head of the oncology department, the chief gynecological surgeon, and hospital's chief of staff Dr. Joseph Steinmetz were waiting for them. Dr. Steinmetz opened his remarks with "Although we will not have all of the results until next week, it is our conclusion that your cancer is at an advanced stage, Mrs. Powell, but I know you already know this."
Dr. Steinmetz continued, "We conclude that there are three paths you can follow. If you do absolutely nothing, the cancer will probably take your life in about six to twelve months. If we take dramatic action, such as surgery to remove the tumors, and follow up with radiation and chemotherapy, we believe that we may be able to extend your life but cannot guarantee that you will live more than two years. We say this because the surgery will be very invasive and painful, and there may be serious side effects and you may not even survive the surgery. Also the chemotherapy and radiation will make you very ill. The type of cancer that you have is a particularly difficult one to remove surgically and we have not had very good luck treating tumors like this. Also our survival rate is no better than twenty percent."
The doctor continued "Only two out of ten of our patients have survived for more than four years after the procedure you will need to have done to treat your cancer. I will not even bring up the quality of life issues after the surgery. At this time I can only guess what the test results we do not have yet will say. I feel comfortable that these results will not change my opinion about your case. I will ask you to not rush into anything right now. Your cancer seems to be confined to your left ovary but any surgical removal attempts may cause it to spread by being exposed to the air when they open you up. Finally, I would like to make some recommendations to you. First of all, we will send all of the results of our testing to your doctor in Bloomington. After that, if you do decide on the surgical route, the best place in the country for you would be the University of Texas Hospital in Houston. Their survival rates for this type of procedure are closer to fifty percent, the last time I checked."
The doctor finished with "The other alternative I am suggesting is something different that I have been reading about in medical journals. There is a growing trend in how incurable cancers are treated. What these facilities are doing is to treat the patient more humanely and make the time they have left more pleasant and pain-free. They adjust the patient's diet and administer drugs to slow the cancer's growth while keeping the patient as comfortable as possible. You see, the current cancer treatments tend to ravage the body and make the patient's life a literal living hell, because we are killing healthy cells as well as cancerous ones. However, there is a hospital very close to your home in Springfield, Illinois named St. John's Medical center that is doing clinical trials on this more humane treatment, of terminal cancer patients. If you decide to take this route, I will give you a referral. I am so sorry that I was not able to give you good news, and I wish you the best."
The stunned couple said their goodbyes to the doctors and walked quietly to the parking deck where Cousin Vinnie was waiting for them. When they got into the cab, Jackson said "Vinnie, take us to Holy Cross."
"Right away, Jacks." Vinnie said and drove them to Holy Cross Catholic Cathedral in South Boston.
Fifteen minutes later, they pulled up in front of the massive gothic church on Washington Street and Vinnie found a parking space right out front. Liz had not been to church since she was ten and had never been in a Catholic Church in her life. She didn't say a word and followed her husband inside.
She watched as he dipped his fingers in the small bowl attached to the inner doorway and touched his fingers to his forehead, chest and shoulders before walking into the Sanctuary and kneeling down at the rail in front of a row of candles. She sat in the pew closest to where he was kneeling and watched him pray for nearly a half hour. When he was finished he 'crossed himself' (he would explain this later when they held each other in bed later that night), lit one of the candles and slipped a handful of bills from his pocket into the slot under the candles.
As he stood she noticed a man in long black robes walking toward them. Jackson walked over to him and asked "Father would you hear my confession".
The Priest nodded, and Jackson turned to Liz and said "I'll be back in a little while." The two men went to the side of the Sanctuary where there were a series of doors. They each went into a separate door and for the next thirty minutes she waited, not knowing what was happening. When they finally came out of what she would later find out was a confessional, the two men shook hands and walked over to where she was sitting.
"Darling, this is Father Murphy" Jackson said.
"Hello Mrs. Powell, I'm Joseph Murphy and yes, I'm a Catholic Priest. I can see by your confusion that you have no clue as to why your husband has brought you here." The man in the black robe told her.
"I understand a little about the Church Father, I just didn't know Jackson was Catholic, and I have never been in a Cathedral before." She said.
"Do you mind if I pray for you?" Fr. Murphy asked.
"Father, I will take all of the help I can get. I was scared to death when I first came in here, but now I feel an inner calm. I think I can take whatever happens from here on out." Liz said.
Liz sat silently with her head bowed and listened as her husband and the priest knelt on the marble floor in front of her, both of them holding some beads in their hands, and reciting what she would learn later was a Rosary. After that, the priest stood, placing both of his hands on her head and said "Heavenly father, please take this, your child, Elizabeth, into your fold and protect her from harm. Let your will be done but spare her and those who love her pain and suffering, Amen."
When she finally stood, she felt like the weight of the world had been lifted from her and she felt better than she had been since before the devastating news from her doctor over a month ago. "Father," Liz said "I have never been religious but I see the peace and solace that talking to you has given my husband. I have never felt so much at peace as I am right now. I do not understand why I should feel this way. I remember the stories in Sunday school about how Jesus forgave Mary Magdalene. I did not understand it at the time, and since that time I have sinned so much. Do you think that this cancer is my punishment for being such a whore, and could Jesus really forgive me for what I have done?"
"My child," the priest said "He has already forgiven you for your sins by blessing your marriage and giving you a beautiful healthy daughter. The disease that is attacking your body has nothing to do with your sins, but is simply a 'cross you must bear' for being human. When you return home, I suggest that you and your husband visit your local priest. He will be able to help you to work through this together as a couple."
"Thank you, Father," she said and stood, embracing her husband as they walked slowly out of the cathedral and down the stairs to Cousin Vinnie's waiting cab.
As Vinnie drove South on I-93 and then I-95 toward the Ocean State, the couple sat silently, holding onto one another and tried to absorb all of what had transpired that day. After eating dinner they talked, and watched their little Traci playing gleefully with two of her cousins (Jackson's baby brother lived next door). After Liz put their daughter to bed, she joined her husband on the porch. As she sat next to him, she asked, "Why didn't you ever tell me you were a 'Mackerel Snapper?"
"What?" he responded, "Where did that come from?"
"I'm sorry for the crude irreverent shot darling, you never mentioned that you were Catholic," she said.
Finally regaining his composure he said "The Church hasn't been a part of my life since I left home to go to Harvard. I thought I left it behind with all of the debauchery I was involved in as an undergrad. After that, I got so involved with my work at ISU that I blocked it completely out of my mind. When I found you and we fell in love, I started praying and thanking God for helping us to find each other. When it all started crashing down on us I thought I had done something terrible and that's why I asked Vinnie to take us to Church today."
"I'm sorry darling, I didn't mean to offend you or your Church," she said "The only person I ever met in my life before today who was Catholic was my 'evil step-father'. I have never seen this beautiful side of your Church. Please tell me more about what it means to be Catholic. What I felt today in that Cathedral was so peaceful and loving, I want to know it all."
He spent the next three hours explaining everything that he remembered from his catechism classes, and how his faith was woven into everyday life. When he finished she said, "The first thing that we are doing when we get home is to have Traci baptized, and the second thing is for us to start going to Mass as a family. I want to take instructions and I want you to get us a cross for our house. Every one of your family's homes has one in them. I may not survive this cancer thing, but now I know, for the first time in my life, that God has always had plan for me, and I can live with that."
He stared at her and wrapped his arms around her and said "My whole life, I always thought that God was playing some kind of cruel joke on me, but when I sat in the confessional today, it all became clear to me what my place in the world was. He gave me you for a short time so that I could be there to take care of his child, our Traci."
