After some obligatory grumbling on Medness’ part, they packed up and left.
***
Grace’s earbud said, “You have a call from Albert Smythe.”
She stopped running, took a couple of deep breaths, then said, “I’ll take it… Hi, Mr. Smythe?”
“Hello, Ms. Penn,” he responded. His ominous tone told her the lawyer’s news wasn’t good. “The court has ruled that we must bring Simone to a hearing so they can make a determination regarding whether she’s alive, or whether her will can be activated and contested.”
“Can we bring her in her Stade? I’ve got it at home now. It wouldn’t be difficult to move.”
“Um, reading between the lines of the decision, I don’t think that would be advisable. Well, unless…” he said thoughtfully. “Could you bring her in the Stade, then have them destaze her in the courtroom so the judge could ask her a couple of questions, then immediately restaze her?”
“Nooo!” Grace said, “She’s sick! And she won’t have any idea what’s been going on so she won’t be ready to answer questions.”
“Perhaps the best thing would be to allow the court to declare her dead? I doubt they’ll be successful in contesting the will.”
“I don’t want to bring her back, cure her of her cancer, then tell her she may feel alive but she’s legally dead!”
“Yes, that’d cause a lot of problems with the government as well.”
“Can you appeal? Not even because you think it’ll be successful, but as a delaying tactic?”
“I can. In fact, the first thing to do is to file for a delay of the hearing she’s to be presented at. Then, when that’s looming, we can file an appeal. We can delay things quite a bit, but it’s going to cost money. Is that okay?”
“Go ahead and file for the delay,” Grace said. “I’m going to talk to Dr. Jonas to see if we can proceed with destazing her and starting her treatment. He recently sent me a message saying she’d been approved for compassionate use treatment with Arvinzamab. Even if it works, she’ll be sick for a while. Too sick to go to court. But we’d just as well find out if it’s going to work. If it doesn’t, we’ll have to restaze her for a long time and we’ll need to get confirmation from her about how she wants to handle her will.”
“Okay. I hope it works.”
Grace resumed her run. I’ve got to send a message to Dr. Jonas as soon as I get back to the house, she thought.
***
Dez was packing up her stuff at the end of the day. She looked up when she heard Kaem say her name. “Yes?”
He spoke quietly, as if he didn’t want others to hear, “I was wondering… could I take you out to dinner?”
“Tonight?” she asked, surprised. And, wondering, Is he asking me out? Or to an after-hours work meeting? Doesn’t matter, she decided, either way, I’ll be happy to go.
Kaem nodded. “Yeah, tonight. Sorry to ask at the last minute. I understand if you have plans…?”
She smiled, “Nah. No plans. Married to my job.”
Kaem frowned, “Are we giving you too much to do?”
She grinned, “Not a chance! I love this stuff.” She stood, “You ready to go?”
As they walked to the door, he got out his phone and told it to call an Uber.
She said, “Hey. No Ubers. I’ve still got my truck.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, canceling the Uber. “Um, has Gunnar seen your truck?”
“Uh-huh. Green with envy’s how I would’ve characterized him.”
“Hah. Wish I could’ve been there to see it.”
She laughed. “I could describe it in gory detail?”
He widened his eyes, saying, “Yeah, do that. Then I’ll be able to give him some grief about it!”
Embellishing a little, she described pulling in and parking her new truck next to his old one just as he was getting out. “He tried to act all unimpressed with the new truck,” she said. “I swear I could hear him thinking, ‘That truck’s just a toy. Hasn’t done a lick of work, I’ll bet.’ So, I slapped Betsy on the hood and said, ‘You ever need someone to tow your hunk of junk to the dump, I’m your woman.”
Kaem’s eyes flashed. “Ooh, how’d he take that?” he asked as he got in her truck.
Rather than answering, she asked him where they were going and told the truck to take them there. As the truck pulled out, she said, “Gunnar grumbled and said something about his ‘sturdy and reliable truck being more likely to tow my newfangled pile of fancy circuits,’ but I could tell he loved me giving him crap. I don’t think he’s nearly as much of a grump as he makes out to be, is he?”
“No,” Kaem snorted, “Gunnar’s loyal, and caring, and really wants to do what he sees as right. He just doesn’t want anyone to know it.”
Dez laughed merrily without knowing how happy the sound made Kaem.
Neither of them noticed the nondescript car that followed them.
Dusk was beginning to fall as they walked into Molly’s Restaurant. The little restaurant’s eclectic style turned out to be something Dez liked, with menu choices mixing up a variety of cuisines. She and Kaem had a delightful time ordering and sharing odd menu items like a small pizza with gyro meat and a selection of fruit tacos.
Kaem asked about her life in Ohio with her Aunt Rilee.
Dez confided the strange fact that she looked more like Rilee than she did her mother. She told him how wonderful it’d been to learn she had a large extended family that all cared about her and were proud when she did well in school.
All in all, it was a warm and fuzzy evening. As they walked back out to her
