Chapter 20: Friends and Family

October 23, 1987, Chicago, Illinois

"They voted him down?" I asked when I went home for lunch.

"58 to 42," Elyse said. "Probably the most qualified man ever to be nominated. Disgusting, really."

"Ted Kennedy demagogued this nomination the whole way. I watched some of the hearings on CSPAN and Judge Bork made the senators look like idiots."

"Not hard to do. Oliver North did the same thing back in July when he testified."

"I loved Brendan Sullivan's line during that hearing: 'I'm not a potted plant. I'm here as the lawyer'. I bet Melanie pulls that one out in court sometime! I wonder who Reagan will nominate now."

"I wonder what Reagan is going to do to retaliate against the six Republicans who voted against the nomination."

I thought about it for a moment before responding.

"Not much, I suspect, because that still would have only given Bork 48 votes. The Democrats were never going to let someone like Bork on the court, and they have 54 seats in the Senate. Reagan will have to nominate someone acceptable to them. The Republicans blew it when they lost the Senate in the elections last Fall. On the plus side, Biden's presidential campaign imploded because he lifted a speech from Neil Kinnock, the head of the Labour Party in England."

"It just doesn't seem right the way Bork was treated," Elyse said.

"Maybe not, but he had his hearing, and his vote. Most people expected him to drop out once the Judiciary Committee voted 9-5 against him. I think he should have been confirmed, but the Senate didn't, and they're the ones who have to consent. I also think Ted Kennedy is an ass who probably should have gone to jail over Chappaquiddick, but the people of Massachusetts elected him to represent them, so he gets his say."

"Wait! I thought you didn't approve of direct election of senators!"

"I don't. But it's in the Constitution, so that's the way it is. I'd repeal the 16th and 17th Amendments if it was up to me. It's not."

"King Stephen I?" Elyse teased.

"God help the country if that ever happened!" I chuckled.

"Before I forget, Matthew has a pediatric appointment on Tuesday. I thought you might want to come along. I know you don't get to go with Jesse."

"Is there something specific that you're concerned about?"

"No, but I thought you might have questions or want to talk to the doctor."

"I talk to a doctor every day," I chuckled. "If you want me to come with you, I'd love to. But I don't have any questions at this point."

"I would like you to come along. It's at 10:00am in the medical building next to the hospital."

"OK. If you bring Matthew to work on Tuesday morning, we can go straight from there. He can stay in my office if need be. It's big enough to set up his playpen if you want."

"It's too much of a pain to lug that thing down there. He'll be fine crawling around on the floor in your office. It's carpeted and clean."

"He's doing his best to catch up to Jesse!" I said.

"And Jesse has finally decided it's good to be a Big Brother. I watched him help Matthew try to stand up last night."

"I figured that he'd come around, eventually. Before I forget, I need to go call Great Lakes and arrange for the recruits for Thanksgiving. Will you be here?"

"Yes, of course," Elyse said. "This is home. You may not be my husband, but we're a family. The real question is whether or not your wife has to work that day."

"PGY1 Resident? You can count on it. We'll probably do dinner at 6:00pm instead of 3:00pm to accommodate her schedule. But she won't know for sure what her schedule will be for another week or so."

"How many recruits?"

"Four seemed to work well last year. Once you factor in the extended family, we're going to have a huge crowd!"

"Jennifer and Josie are joining us?"

"Yes. I suspect that as long as they live here, they will. Christmas is a bit trickier, because they want to celebrate that as a family. I think we'll all end up doing multiple celebrations. My wives and I, and our kids, will celebrate on Christmas Eve. Then we'll invite everyone for an extended-family celebration on Christmas Day in the afternoon. That lets everyone have their own morning celebration however they wish."

"I prefer Christmas morning, so unless your wives object, you, me, Matthew, and our second kid could have a private celebration on Christmas morning."

"That should be fine," I said. "I need to call RTC before I take Jesse on his walk."

"I'll come with you. I can use the exercise. And Matthew likes going to the park."

I made the call and got on the list for four recruits for Thanksgiving. Because we'd been cleared the previous year, and I hadn't had any run-ins with the law that mattered, approval would be automatic. They promised a call the week before Thanksgiving to confirm the details.

"All set!" I said. "Let's take the boys to the park!"

October 24, 1987, Chicago, Illinois

"Are you here all the time?" I asked Alex when we sat down to breakfast on Saturday morning.

"I'm here a lot. Why?"

"I was just curious if you'd like to join us for our Guys' Night. It's these guys and a few others, just hanging out at my place in Hyde Park, drinking, smoking cigars, playing pool or poker, that kind of thing. Your wife could go out with our wives and girlfriends; they have their Girls' Night Out the same time."

"You do that all the time?"

"Every other week," I said. "We alternate with breakfast here. And next week, it's Halloween, so we're combining both — you two can come to the Halloween party. Your wife will fit right in because she's the same age as most of the other women."

"Because I robbed the cradle!" he grinned. "I'm sure that Sam would love it! Is it a costume party?"

"Of course!" I replied. "We also have a babysitter available, if you need one."

"No, no kids yet," he said. "Sam isn't ready to take time off work. What time is this shindig?"

"It starts around 7:00pm and I expect it to start winding down around midnight or so, but you never know. On 'normal' Guys' Nights, it ends when the girls come home, usually midnight to 1:00am."

"I think I could manage the party."

"Cool. If you give me a piece of paper, I'll write down the address!"

"Careful, Alex," Pete said. "You'll get sucked into Steve's crazy world!"

"Like you were by Melanie?" Kurt asked with a grin.

"I thought at the time it was Melanie's crazy world, but boy, was I wrong about that!" Pete laughed. "She was just gasoline on the fire!"

"Right!" I laughed. "Keep telling yourself that, Pete. Somebody might believe it eventually. Melanie helped make me what I am today!"

"So did Kathy, so Kurt has no room at ALL to talk!" Pete laughed.

"Or me, I guess," Nick said.

"Don't look at me!" Jorge laughed. "I'm dating his sister!"

"So, from what I hear, you got the TRULY crazy one in the family!" Jamie laughed.

"She's crazier than all of you put together, and that's really saying something!" Jorge laughed. "But that keeps it interesting."

I looked at Howard, who just shrugged slightly. He and Stephanie and gone out occasionally, but I hadn't heard about them going out recently. Despite my sister continually saying that she didn't want to get tied down, she seemed to always gravitate back to Jorge. And because Jorge had said something publicly, that told me that it was probably more serious than it had been.

I had noticed that he was more confident and had opened up a bit more with the guys since Stephie's funeral. The effect of the funeral on him had been profound, perhaps even more so than its effect on me. Until the moment when he dropped the flower into the grave, I hadn't realized just how close he'd felt to her.

As we ate, and my friends chatted, I thought about the impact Stephie had on my life, and on the lives of so many others. The same was true of Birgit. And of Don Joseph. In a sense, they lived on in the hearts and minds of the people whose lives they had touched and in the families they had created. I had learned something from each of them, and each of them had impacted my life in ways that even I probably didn't understand. One thing that I did understand was that she would be with me, in my heart, for the rest of my life.

When we finished breakfast, I headed back to Hyde Park for karate class.

"Remember, I need to stop in the office on the way home," I said to Kara when karate class ended.

Penny had left a message while I was at breakfast saying that she'd run into a problem with one of the modules for the medical software and needed to talk to me about it.

"We'll see you at home," Kara said. "Will you be long?"

"I'm not sure; Penny didn't go into details. I'll try to finish as quickly as possible."

I couldn't say why I needed to hurry home, because that would give away what Kara was going to announce to our housemates. She was between six and eight weeks pregnant, and felt it was OK to let everyone know. With Julia and Joyce pregnant, 1988 was shaping up to be a big year for kids, and there was always a possibility that there could be more, given that everyone was more or less in the right age range for kids.

Bethany and Nick were waiting because she had started on her PhD in August, and between her coursework, research, and clinical work, she simply couldn't take the time off. Pete and Melanie were waiting because Melanie was just getting established and wanted to get a year of experience under her belt before she got pregnant. On the other hand, there were subtle hints that Cindi and Chris, and Jackie and Jamie, were either trying, or soon would be.

Which reminded me of Josh and Mary, the wildcards in my crazy bunch of friends. I hadn't talked to them much since I'd been to New York. They were both in DC now, and Josh was lecturing at Georgetown and doing some consulting for a Beltway Bandit firm on the side. Mary was still working the Soviet Desk at the State Department. At some point, too, Tanya and Dmitry would have children, but given Tanya's truly conservative nature, there would be no hints given, and she'd simply announce her pregnancy at some point after it happened. Then there were Mikael and Katt, and Kristian and Karin, but I'd heard nothing from them yet on pregnancies.

We left the dojo, and two blocks later, I kissed Kara and turned the corner to head to the office. I walked into the building, said 'hello' to Tasha, and then went into the office I shared with Penny.

"What's up?" I asked.

"I'm having trouble with the database. Records just aren't coming up correctly, and I know they were right."

"I know the topic for the next team lunch," I chuckled. "I'll bet you $10 that if you look at the database with the debugging program, I wrote that you'll see records that have corrupted multi-value fields. Then you'll need to figure out whose code broke it. It could be anyone who worked on anything that updates the records. I first saw this kind of problem a couple of years ago and it has happened at least once since."

"One sec," Penny said.

I saw her bring up the debugging program and open the database and look at the records. A red 'E' next to each of the multi-value fields told the story.

"See, somebody made a mistake in code that updates this record. Now you'll have to backtrack and find it."

"Well, that sucks!" she griped. "I didn't touch anything that updates those fields!"

"I'm pretty sure that Heather, Alonzo, and I all worked on code which touched it. Check the programmers' notes and comments. The technical docs will have a list of all modules which update those fields."

"If it was you, you're going to owe me big time!" Penny said. "I hate cleaning up your messes!"

"And how often does THAT happen, Pretty Penny? Hmm?"

"Rarely," she admitted. "I can't wait to graduate so that I can do something other than fix bugs!"

"I hear you," I said. "But concentrate on your schoolwork. I expect straight A's."

"Of course you do," she sighed. "All I hear is what a fantastic student Steve Adams was. How successful Steve Adams is. And those friends of Tasha's? I thought only rock stars had groupies!"

I laughed, "So do race car drivers, hockey players, and just about anyone else who can claim a bit of fame. Is it really that bad at IIT?"

She smirked, "No, I was teasing. Well, about the stuff besides the groupies. That's for real. Except for Doctor Bauer, nobody has mentioned you. I guess when I take Scott's class, I'll hear more."

"That makes me feel better, I was starting to get worried about what Doctor Bauer or Scott might be saying. OK. I need to get home. If you don't find the problem, leave me a note and I'll look at it on Monday morning."

"Thanks. I never used that debugger before. It looks cool."

"It can do lots of stuff, though mostly with the database. Look at the menu options. It can be really handy when things don't work right."

Penny gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, and I walked out of the office.

"Steve," Tasha called out, "Do you have a minute?"

I walked over to her desk and plopped down in a chair.

"What's up?"

"I was wondering if you had some time to talk," she said quietly.

"I'm sure I can make time. What did you want to talk about?"

"You know," she said, blushing.

"Why don't you come over for lunch tomorrow?" I said.

"Thanks," she said.

I said 'goodbye', waved to Penny through the open door to our office, and saw her smirk in return. I headed home and took a quick shower, then made my lunch, and sat down with Kara and Sofia, who were just finishing theirs.

"Everything OK?" Kara asked.

"Penny just ran into a problem which she hadn't seen before. I showed her how to go about finding and fixing it. Tasha asked me if we could talk and I told her to come for lunch tomorrow."

"I was expecting it eventually," Kara said. "So was Jess."

"You two STILL let him play around?" Sofia laughed.

"Excuse me!" I chuckled. "She's coming to talk. Nothing more."

"Yes, and I invited you for dinner and nothing more back in Hovås, right?" she asked, with a twinkle in her eye.

"Sofia, please don't talk about what goes on with Steve and other girls," Kara requested.

"Don't worry. I only said something because it was just the three of us here."

"Thanks," Kara said with a smile. "I guess I'll tell you first, but you have to stay calm."

"Tell me what?" Sofia asked.

"I'm pregnant!" Kara exclaimed happily and with a huge smile.

"Oh! That's fantastic! Congratulations!" Sofia whispered. "When are you due?"

"Around June 1st!"

"That's awesome! And perfect timing, too!"

"Yes, just when I finish my degree. I guess I'll miss my commencement."

"My commencement will be around then, too," Sofia said. "My parents are flying here from Sweden, so there is no way I can miss mine!"

"Did you receive your MCAT results?" Kara asked.