Second Time's the Charm

And to have second thoughts.

Kate had known. He’d been released from detention shortly after his eighteenth birthday. He’d had no family to turn to. No real friends.

He’d called Barbara. She hadn’t wanted anything to do with him—not since he’d turned “bad,” as she’d called it.

It was bad enough coming from juvie, but coming out after growing up as a ward of the state—no one believed he’d amount to anything.

He’d been labeled. By everyone but himself.

His foster brothers were already serving time again for other crimes. Jon was determined not to be like them.

He’d needed a fresh start, and so he’d taken his parole officer’s suggestion and sought help from Kate’s uncle—a man who helped released prisoners start new lives.

Kate knew that. Knew what jobs and housing her uncle reserved for the men he “rescued.”

Jon’s ex-con status had been the reason Kate had come on to him to begin with. And, in the end, the reason why she’d left. He was convinced of that.

If he’d been different?up-and-coming with a pressed white shirt and a trendy tie—they’d have moved to New York together. Abe, too.

With the mental reminder, Jon tried to stop thinking about everything but that which was under his control, which, at the moment, meant conductors and production times.

* * *

LUNCH ON MONDAY was a brief affair for Lillie—a quick snack cup of pears and some crackers with cheese. After a busy morning at the day care—which included another surprising tantrum from Abraham while he was standing in a circle holding hands with a group of kids for movement class—she’d rushed to the clinic to assist with a four-year-old who’d split his chin open, and then supported a couple of children through radiology procedures.

The worst was yet to come: a two-year-old with a bowel condition, requiring several surgeries that mandated tube feeding. The good news was that the condition wasn’t permanent. Little Manny’s prognosis pointed to full recovery and normal life span.

Sadly, the toddler required a kind of semipermanent IV line that had to be exchanged. As she was already in radiology, Lillie made it to the room in plenty of time to get things ready for Manny. This was their second time together for this particular procedure. The first had been as close to a nightmare as Lillie could remember. The procedure, which consisted of inserting a thin catheter in the arm just above the elbow and guiding it by X-ray close to the heart, could be completed in a matter of minutes. Manny’s had taken an hour and a half. Partly because, after forty-five minutes of unsuccessful attempts to get his soft little veins to cooperate, Lillie had called for a break to let the little guy recover a bit.

With the lights down low, music playing softly in the background and a plastic console that she could hold in front of the boy as he lay on his side on the table, she was ready. Manny liked to press buttons.

He was crying as his distraught mother—a young woman who lived with her family on a cotton farm ten miles outside of Shelter Valley—brought him into the clinic.

“Manny, sweetie, what’s wrong?” Lillie asked. Taking the toddler from his mother’s arms, acknowledging the grateful smile on the worried woman’s lips, she settled Manny on her hip, held the hot and sweaty little head against her chest and rubbed his scalp, talking softly to him as she carried him through the doors leading out of the waiting room.

Not waiting for the boy to answer her, Lillie kept up a steady stream of quiet chatter, keeping her voice light, nonthreatening, as she told him that they were going to have a much better time together than the last time they’d seen each other. She told him about the box they were going to play with. The lights and buttons he would get to push.

Thankfully, there were a couple of radiology rooms at the clinic. Lillie had purposely requested the one Manny hadn’t been in the last time for today’s procedure. She’d taken care to decorate the room with colorful stuffed animals and plastic wall hangings. An overabundance of them. Visual stimulation that would help distract the boy if his veins refused to cooperate again.

“Look!” she said, picking up the console box at the same time that she set the boy down on the procedure table, intending for him to begin playing and not pay attention to where he was sitting. She’d scheduled fifteen minutes of alone time with the boy before his procedure was due to begin.

Michael, the radiologist on duty, came in with his support staff right on schedule.

“Look, Manny, it’s Michael! Do you know who Michael is?” she asked the little boy.

Manny wasn’t crying, but there was mistrust in his eyes as he stared up at the short-haired man wearing scrubs with cars all over them.

“Michael’s the zoom-zoom guy!” she said. “He can make everything go zoom! You want to watch how fast he is?” she asked, handing Michael a big plastic car and pointing to the ramp she’d pulled in from the playroom down the hall.

Michael shot the car down the ramp a few times and let Manny play, too.

“Okay, big guy,” Lillie said, scooping the child up with one arm while keeping the car in his toddler hands with the other. “You hold on to the car while we make you go zoom-zoom,” she said, glancing to make certain the technician had a papoose—a special cloth apparatus that would hold the boy still during the procedure—open on the table.

“You’re going to go zoom,” she told Manny, not asking him if he wanted to so he didn’t have a chance to say no and then be ignored. He had no choice in this matter so she wasn’t going to feed his distrust by pretending like she was giving him one.

With a few quick motions, she had the car on the table beside Manny’s head and the little boy was wrapped firmly in the papoose, with both arms free.

Free because they migh