Chapter 16: Back Into The Grind

It was strange being at home again. Nine days after the accident, a studio limo had picked the three of us up at the hospital and delivered us to our apartment. We were received by our parents, who would take turns looking after us, cooking and even doing a bit of cleaning. I was to rest and not exert myself for another week, and Jenn was under the usual restrictions for new mommies. For that first week, every evening somebody else visited and brought us a pre-cooked, homemade dinner.

We were restricted to feeding the baby and watching her drool, since two grandmas competed for diaper duty, which was light, of course, since Carly was not eating anything solid. She was less wrinkled now, after seven days, and looked more like the babies you see in movies.

Since we had a rather large master bedroom, we had decided to postpone Carly’s move into our guest room, allowing us to host one set of grandparents in our apartment. Instead, the crib was on Jenn’s side of our queen sized bed, in easy reach for Carly’s midnight milk snacks.

During the days, Jenn was already up and about, still moving a bit slowly, but getting fitter every day, while I spent most of my days with my feet up on something upholstered. Finally, after a week at home and a final EEG, I was declared usable again and started to do my chores, both at home and in my office. We had rented a van for Jenn’s use and our parents, while I used Isabella again. I was driving her far more carefully, too. Isabella had been retrofitted with seat belts when I acquired her, but there was no way installing airbags in a car that old.

At work, I found a boatload of paperwork waiting for my perusal, but I also had to sit with the writers to finalize the season’s story arc. With four show regulars, my shooting schedule would be lighter than in the years before, freeing up a few hours per week. Far more helpful was Terry Duke’s involvement. The woman is organized, and she doesn’t shy away from making decisions. She completely took over my former bailiwick, giving me the time to find my way through the duties of an executive producer. I wished that I had given more attention to the business classes I had taken in college, but Sharon often stopped by in the afternoon, giving me life-saving tips on how to handle certain questions.

Missus Blanche Waintree, the widow of Mister Benjamin Waintree, our deceased opposite number in the car wreck, sued us for recklessly killing her husband. We were told not to worry by our traffic law hotshot lawyer, Mister Collins, and indeed, her suit was dismissed with prejudice after the autopsy report became official, determining that Waintree had been dead from an aneurism before his car even entered the intersection.

It also came out that good old Benjy was not supposed to drive a car because he’d had frequent seizures following a stroke and had wrecked his previous car due to one of those seizures. Collins pursued a lawsuit against his estate, and Waintree’s insurance was talking settlement. Collins told us to wait for at least six months. I’d suffered a severe head injury, and we did not want to settle before we were sure that there were no long-term problems.

That was sound advice, but it meant that we had to break the piggy bank for a replacement car. It was fortunate that Sharon and I received juicy bonuses for the positive development of UI during Season 4, and hence, a snow-white Porsche Cayenne, slightly used, became our new mom bomb, together with a vastly increased coolness factor. Jenn gave up her reservations against SUVs after a test drive. We called it Portia and used it for commuting.

Jenn’s parents had to return to England with the school year starting, and two weeks later, my parents flew back to New York to attend their duties in forming the next generation of brilliant minds. We were on our own with Carly. Well, not quite. Judith and Brenda volunteered to help out whenever we needed a break.

Lucy offered to helpout, too, but she was very busy. Her new agent, Elise, had her hopping, booking her on talk shows and for product endorsements. That, and the frequent gigs she performed with her writer and sidekick Chris, gave her very little spare time. Her affair with the Chargers’ running back Earl Gunderson was simmering on the back burner, too, and we decided not to add to her work load.

By mid September, Jenn declared herself ready for doing a limited number of scenes. Of course, it helped that she was playing a new mommy, and it was no great stretch for her to come over authentically. In my scenes with her, I was always at the receiving end of Pris’s complaints and demands, making for some fierce verbal sparring between us.

Lucy and Terry had to carry a lot of the load during the early episodes, and they were doing great. The dailies I saw were excellent, but I could also see that the writers were challenged to come up with enough fresh material for the two of them to fill entire episodes. September 27 then saw the season premiere of UI with the pre-recorded material from before the break, namely Ricky and Pris’s crazy drive to the hospital, the bureaucratic red tape they faced, waiting for the baby to come, and then a chaotic birth.

At the end of the episode, we showed the picture we had taken of Jenn, Carly and me with the nurses and doctors, and a message running over the screen where Jenn and I thanked the real doctors and nurses for the excellent care we had enjoyed.

As expected, Season 5, Episode 1, set a new ratings record for us, not because it was that good, but because most viewers knew about our accident and wanted to see how we were faring. They got mostly canned stuff from the early summer, but with some new material strewn in.

Episode 2, aired a week later, showed Pris in her first post partem appearance, haranguing a Ricky with shaven hair. I had refused to wear a wig, and Chris had created a legend for my lack of hair, in that Ricky had celebrated the birth of his daughter with some former colleagues who had got him dead-on-his-ass drunk and then shaved his head for fun. This gave me the time to let my hair regrow without hassles and ever changing wigs. The ratings were not quite as good as for the first episode, but still on par with the previous season’s showings.

From then on, Jenn’s participation slowly increased, and by late October, she had enough presence again to justify her star billing. At that point, a multi-episode story arc started with a scene shared by Dallas and Pris.

Episode 5-6, Scene 4

Dallas: (enters kitchen where Jenn eats breakfast).You’re an attorney, right?

Pris: What kind of a stupid question is this? I graduated magna cum laude from Yale Law. I aced the State Bar exam with 97% right answers. Of course I am an attorney!

Dallas: How’s business then in your little office?

Pris: I have my clients.

Dallas: Not good then. Look, do you notice something about me?

Pris: I don’t know. You look normal.

Dallas: My skin?

Pris: Yes, that looks normal.

Dallas: Normal? I’m pale faced!

Pris: Now, you shouldn’t use racial slurs when...

Dallas: Don’t you get it? My face is bleached! I look like ... you!

Pris: You shouldn’t have done that. I thought that you were quite successful with ... well, whatever you are doing.

Dallas: That’s the point. I look like a fraud!

Pris: Then why did you bleach...

Dallas: I didn’t ... well, not knowingly. I got a sample of this new skin cream. They wanted me to promote it on my channels. They wrote it makes the skin more even. There was nothing about bleaching in the documentation.