Chapter 22

I sat for an hour in the hospital waiting room, with no information from anyone as to what was happening. Maria arrived at the end of that hour and seated herself beside me.

“Any news?” she asked.

I just shook my head.

“She’s been in there for an hour,” I said, “I’ve asked for information, but they don’t know anything.”

“Let’s see if they’ll tell me anything,” she said and marched over to the reception desk.

They still didn’t know anything, but a few minutes after she sat back down a swarthy-looking man in scrubs came through the doors to the treatment area and asked for Mrs Dunham.

Maria stood up and walked over to him, I followed her.

“Hi,” he said, “I’m Kostas Papandreou, one of the surgeons here.”

“How is my daughter doing?” Maria asked.

“We have her stabilised and at the moment, sedated,” he replied, “she has suffered what we call a Transient Ischaemic Attack, but you may have heard of it as a mini-stroke.”

“A stroke?” Maria queried, “that’s what they told us in Whistler, but how can that be? She’s only twenty-one, old people have strokes.”

“No Mrs Dunham, anybody can, particularly if they’re under great emotional or physical stress, and your daughter looks like she’s had some trauma recently.”

“The good news is, she’s going to be fine, there doesn’t appear to be any damage, and we’re giving her medication to thin her blood down and clear any clots that have formed.,” he continued, “but we’d like to keep her here for a couple of days, just to keep an eye on her.”

“Ευχαριστώ, γιατρέ,” Maria said, which, she told me later was Greek for thank you, doctor.

“Είστε Έλληνες,” he replied. <<You are Greek?>>

“Yes,” she replied, switching back to English, “from the islands.”

“Which one?” he asked, “I’m from Rhodes.”

“Kalymnos,” she answered.

“We’re almost neighbours,” he said, “now if you’ll excuse me, I must get back to work.”

“Yes, of course,” Maria agreed, “thank you, again.”

Sandy spent the next two and a half days in the hospital, and I spent most of that time in a chair at the side of her bed, holding her hand and talking to her. During the time she spent asleep, I had my laptop and I was reading scripts. It was getting close to the start of filming.

We both talked a lot about our childhoods and, inevitably a girl called Calista figured prominently in my tales.

“You really love that girl, don’t you?” she asked after I’d told her about our fateful meeting in the head’s office.

“Loved,” I corrected her, “she is far too blinkered for anything but herself.”

“I think you still love her regardless,” she said, “just not as deeply.”

“Not as deeply as I love you,” I protested.

“I’m not sure about that,” she replied, “I think you and she are destined to be together. There’ll be other women for you and, I suspect, other men for her, but I think you’ll be together in the end.”

“You and me maybe,” I said, “but not me and her. Not any longer.”

“No,” she said, wistfully, “I don’t see that. I don’t think I’m going to be the mother of your children. I think we’ll be friends for the rest of our lives, maybe even lovers, but I don’t think we’re destined to be together.”

“We’ll have to see then,” I said, “won’t we.”

She drifted back into sleep after that.

She did come home after the two days that the doctor had promised, but what she said had rocked me. What did she mean that she and I weren’t destined to be together, but that we’d be friends for the rest of our lives? I was, suddenly, a very insecure sixteen-year-old boy.

I think Maria must have noticed the distraction in me, because on the Sunday before we started work on the series, she cornered me.

“What’s wrong David?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I lied, “I’m just worried about Sandy and starting work on Monday.”

“Are you sure that’s all?” she asked.

I just nodded a yes at her and went back to reading my script.

By the time we were ready for bed, I had the first four episodes pretty much tied down. The first episode was set back in England and was mainly a two-hander between my character and the mother, although it did involve a kindly solicitor. It was the set-up for the rest of the series, where the action moves to Chicago.

I knew that Monday was due to be a meet and greet session, a chance for the cast and key members of the crew to get to know each other, and the rest of the week would be taken up with filming the introductory scenes in England, although in our case, the English scenes would be filmed in a reasonably English suburb of Vancouver. I think they were hoping that people wouldn’t notice the distinctly North American road markings and signs We’d also be filming some of the interaction between the lead character, David, and his mother, solicitor and some friends at school. The plan was that while the British side of the cast did that, the American side would be filming their own establishing scenes, and the second unit would be in Chicago filming some street background scenes.

I have no idea why they decided to call the main character by my first name, the original script had him called Peter.

I also had some doubts about some of the language in the first episode. Not that it was bad language, but that the dialogue had obviously been written by an American with no idea of British English. To us pants are what you wear under your trousers, you use braces to hold your trousers up and a car has a boot and a bonnet, not a trunk and a hood.

And on that thought, I put down my script, helped Sandy to her feet and we wished her mother goodnight and went up to bed.

As soon as we entered our room, Sandy threw her arms round me.

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed, “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Love,” I replied, “you’ll never upset me so long as you say what’s in your heart. If you don’t see us together forever, then you don’t see that. I’ll just have to make it my life’s work to prove you wrong.”

She looked at me, eyeball to eyeball then smiled.

“How do you always know exactly the right thing to say?” she said.

“Perhaps because everything I say comes straight from the heart,” I replied, “or it could be that I’m a much better actor then everybody thinks.”

“For that,” she said, thumping me on the shoulder, “you can take me to bed and fuck me. And don’t you dare finish until I’ve had at least three.”

“Finish?” I countered, “I’m not even going to enter you until you beg.”

I always keep my word.

I didn’t have to be up very early on Monday, the studio car would pick me up at nine, so at seven-thirty I stumbled into the bathroom, did my usual morning routine then came back out to the bedroom to dry myself off and get dressed.

Following a long discussion, it had been decided that Sandy didn’t need to accompany me to the studio this morning, so, at nine-thirty, I climbed out of the limo that they’d sent for me, in front of the admin building at the studio and walked inside.

I walked up to the reception desk which was manned, so she told me, by Candi with an I. Speaking to her I thought her description of her name was appropriate, she was there as eye candy and nothing else, she certainly wasn’t employed for her massive intellect. Although she may have been employed for her massive something else, which was, impressive if that’s what you fancy.

It definitely didn’t appeal to me, even without considering Sandy.

I introduced myself and she looked me up on her list, then handed me a badge on a long red lanyard.

“Please wear this at all times while on the studio premises,” she intoned.

I refrained from pointing out that if I did as she asked, it would look funny with the cast of our show all wearing ID badges on screen.

It wasn’t until later that I discovered that she was the niece of the head of the studio, and she’d been given the job as a favour to her mother, the head of the studio’s sister.

She directed me to meeting room five, on the top floor of the two-storey building. And I headed for the stairs, taking them two at a time.

When I arrived at the room, it was set out as if for a board meeting. According to the call list I got, there were to be seventeen of us there. I counted eight already in the room as I walked in.

I assumed that the entirely bald-headed man at the head of the table was James P. Morrison, the Producer and that the Director, Benedict Dixon, was the middle-aged man to his left. I suspected that the attractive redhead to his right was Samantha Richards the First AD.

Over the next fifteen minutes the other nine trooped in, during which we all just chatted, one or two people introduced themselves to their neighbours, but generally, there was just a buzz of quiet conversation.

I ended up at one end of the table, seated between the only two teenage girls in the cast. Sarah Cox, a fifteen year old American girl who would be playing a classmate in my American school, who was making her professional debut in the part, and Jackie Wilson, who was actually seventeen, although she was supposed to be younger than me in the show, who was best known for her part in one of the myriad soaps that infest US daytime TV.

When we were all in, had all got drinks and doughnuts, the man who I had assumed was the producer stood up. The first thing he did was confirm my identification of the three at the head of the table.

“Good morning,” he opened up with, “and welcome all of you to A Different Place, what I’m sure will be one of the biggest TV shows of next year. For those of you that don’t know, I’m Jim Morrison, and I’m producing the show, to my left is Ben Dixon, your director and on my right, Steve McKenzie, Director of Photography. Each of them nodded at us genially. Also present from the production team are, our on-set teacher Peter Simons, First AD, Samantha Richards. Terry Aylward from the sound department, and Sally Barnes and Tony Dixon from the make-up and camera departments respectively made up the non-cast members present.”