The Fortuity Duet

by Rochelle Paige

  “But the cost—”

  “You didn’t listen to a word I said about the state’s tuition waiver when I mentioned it to you earlier in the school year, did you?”

  “I’m sure I listened”—she snorted, and I couldn’t blame her because I didn’t sound convincing at all—“since it kinda sorta rings a bell.” A super distant one, but a bell nonetheless.

  Her hazel eyes gleamed with determination. “Listening and hearing are two completely different things, and I really need you to hear me now.”

  “Okay.” I shifted on the bed, twisting so it was easier to hold her gaze. “You have my full attention.”

  “You qualify for a full waiver of tuition and fees if you attend a state school.” My jaw dropped, and the good news kept coming. “And I’m almost positive I can get you additional financial support through the Postsecondary Education Services and Support program.”

  “What kind of support?”

  Her lips tipped up in a grin. “The kind that will cover the majority of your living expenses while you’re in college.”

  “How much is a majority?”

  Her grin turned into a huge smile. “Twelve hundred and fifty-six dollars a month.”

  “Holy shit!” I fell back on the mattress and stared up at the ceiling, tears filling my eyes and making the view hazy. Free tuition. Enough money to cover my living expenses each month if I was careful. It was more than I could have hoped for, but the pessimistic side of me just had to ask, “What’s the catch?”

  “Don’t age out of the system. Stay in extended foster care until you turn twenty-one. Get continued case management services and judicial review every six months.”

  I turned my head and blinked at her. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Would I be able to keep you as my caseworker?” She nodded, and I swiped at my cheeks as my heart started to fill with hope. “Then that’s a downside I could live with.” In my situation, it sounded more like a godsend because I was nowhere ready to stand on my own two feet...even if it meant I’d have to go to another foster home.

  She reached out and squeezed my hand. “Since it’d only be short-term until you moved into the dorms, I might even be able to get you back into the last foster home you were in before you needed to be admitted to the hospital.”

  It was like she’d read my mind and already found a solution that more than worked for me. “That would be amazing.”

  “I can’t make any promises, but I’ll do my best,” she swore. “And if it doesn’t work out, I swear to you that I’ll find you a good placement. Somewhere you’ll be safe.”

  “Hey,” I whispered, reaching out to squeeze her hand like she’d just done with mine. “What happened to me wasn’t your fault.”

  “Sometimes it feels like it is,” she admitted softly.

  “You came when I called, no questions asked.”

  “But—”

  “And you made sure the rest of the kids were moved to better homes. Right away,” I reminded her.

  “I just—”

  “Nope.” I shook my head and leaned back against my pillows. “No more looking back and thinking ‘what if?’ because it won’t do either of us any good. What happened is already done, and I’ve been given a second chance. Let’s focus on making the most of it.”

  She heaved a deep sigh before nodding. “The best way to do that is to get you enrolled in college.”

  “Is two weeks enough time? What all do I need to do to apply?” I’d sat through the usual presentations and talks in high school about college, but I’d never paid much attention because I didn’t think it was even a remote possibility for me.

  She grabbed the laptop the hospital had been letting me use off the rolling, over-the-bed table and handed it to me. “Figure out which state schools you’d like to attend, go to their websites, and fill out the online applications. I’ve talked to your guidance counselor who assured me she’d have your transcript ready to send out as soon as you let her know where you’re applying.”

  She bent down, pulled an envelope out of her bag, and held it out to me. “And I wrote a letter of recommendation in case you need one.”

  Reading it in front of her would have been way too awkward, but I was dying to know what she’d written about me. “What does it say?”

  “I told them about your childhood and how you rose above circumstances which would crush some adults. How you’ve become an amazing young woman despite odds that were stacked against you. And that they would be lucky to have you as a student there because I have no doubt you will find a way to accomplish anything you set your mind to doing.”

  “You left out the part where I can leap tall buildings in a single bound?” I joked, feeling a little uncomfortable with being the recipient of so many compliments.

  She reached out and pretended she was going to take the letter back from me. “I can always add it in if you think it’d improve your odds.”

  I clutched the envelope to my chest. “Nah! Maybe we’d better leave that part out.”

  “Since you accepted that so well, I might as well give you this now too,” she mumbled, leaning down again to pull another envelope out of her bag and holding it out to me. “This should cover the application fees.”

  Taking it from her, I peered inside and found a prepaid debit card. “You shouldn’t have done that. Can’t you get in trouble or something since you’re my caseworker?”

  “It’s not from me.” She jerked her chin towards the closed door. “You have a lot of people around here who are rooting for you.”

  Accepting money from Sarah would have been bad enough, but taking it from the people who’d saved my life? No way. “I couldn’t—”

  “You can, and you will,” she insisted. “I might have been able to get the application fees waived, but with the super tight timeline I’m not sure we have enough time to make it happen. All it took was one brief mention of that concern to your doctor when I asked him if you’d be healthy enough to enroll for the Fall term a few days ago, and one of the nurses handed me that debit card when I got here today. With a huge smile on her face, too.”

  “Crap,” I mumbled. “I’m going to have to accept it, aren’t I?”

  “That depends on two things.” She sat back, crossed her arms over her chest, and stretched her legs out. “Would it bother you to disappoint everyone who threw in to give you that card? And how badly do you want to go to college?”

  The answer to the second question was easy. “Now that I’ve got a new kidney, a college degree is at the top of the list of things I want.” The first question was a little trickier. I’d grown accustomed to not letting other people’s feelings matter much to me because mine didn’t seem to factor into anyone’s decisions but my own. But the nurses and doctors had taken good care of me while I’d been in the hospital. They’d done everything they could to save my life. And they’d been kind to me—even before they’d pulled the money together for me to be able to apply to college. Throwing their generosity back into their faces felt wrong, and I’d made myself a promise a week ago to not let my second chance go to waste. Part of that was doing the right thing whenever possible. “And no, I don’t want to disappoint them.”

  She beamed a smile my way. “Well, then I guess you have some work to do before they come to transport you to the rehab facility.”

  “I guess I do.”

  She got up and walked to the door, turning towards me before she opened it. “If you run into any problems, give me a call. I’ve helped my fair share of kids fill those things out, so I’m a bit of an expert.”

  “Will do.”

  It wasn’t long before I discovered that filling out college applications was a major pain in the ass. I took Sarah up on her offer and called a few times over the next two weeks. She helped, just like she’d said she would. And she also got me back into the same foster home when I was discharged from the rehab facility. Things were good there, and then they got even bett
er.

  My conversation with Sarah that day changed my life—to the point that I almost couldn’t believe it was the one I was living. All that studying I had done when I thought I was going to die really paid off when I got accepted into two different state schools. One was in my hometown; the other about three hundred miles away. Since Sarah and the transplant center were in town, I opted to go to the school closer to home.

  Sarah was able to line up the tuition waiver and stipend for me, and the days flew by as I marked item after item off my list of things to do. Before I knew it, I was walking across campus for my first day of classes and the excitement was almost overwhelming. I never thought in a million years that I would be able to go to college. Not back when my mom was alive, or when I was living in foster care, and certainly not when I was in the hospital. Yet there I was, a college freshman. Not only had I been given a second chance at life, I’d been handed an amazing opportunity. One that I would do my best to honor.

  Luckily, I was used to living with a bunch of strangers, so I was expecting the transition to dorm life to be easier for me than most of the other students. I even sort of had a small support system since there were nine other kids from the foster system enrolled as incoming freshmen. Sarah had even talked the school into pairing me up with one of the other girls as my roommate. As I watched groups of girls giggle and hug while I trudged to the dorm with the textbooks I’d just grabbed at the campus bookstore, I was doubly glad to be matched with someone closer to my own background because I knew I wouldn’t ever be able to be as carefree as they were. I just needed to remember that I was happier now than I ever had been before in my life.

  My gaze drifted away from the nearest group of girls while I was giving myself a pep talk and landed on a bunch of boys playing football in the quad, the grassy area surrounded by dorms on all sides. I wished I didn’t have to walk across it to get to the academic side of campus, but it was what it was I guessed. The guys had divided into two teams, half of them kept their shirts on and the others had gone without. I faltered a bit in my step as my eyes landed on a guy I really wished had been picked to go shirtless.

  He ran across the grass to join his team in a huddle. My gaze trailed up his body to take in the dark brown hair which needed a trim, laughing brown eyes, and dimple showing in his cheek. If I had to guess, I’d say he hadn’t shaved in a couple days, and the look really worked for him. When he leaned into the huddle, my eyes landed on his ass and I almost groaned out loud. He really was the epitome of tall, dark, and handsome.

  Even though I wasn’t in the market for a boyfriend, I was tempted to stop and watch them play. Then I heard the group of girls I’d noticed earlier as they whispered about the boys, and I realized it wouldn’t matter anyway. My long, dark hair was pulled up in a ponytail, and I didn’t even have any mascara on the lashes of my brown eyes. Glancing down at my tattered jeans, flip-flops, and T-shirt, I knew I didn’t compare favorably to the rest of the girls who were dressed in short skirts or shorts and tight shirts that showed off a lot of tanned skin and toned muscle. There wasn’t a chance in hell I’d be caught dead in anything that showed my legs right now because I still needed to gain back a lot of the weight I’d lost, and I needed to stay out of the sun so there was no tanning for me.

  I regretfully tore my gaze away from the football hottie and continued on my way to my dorm, redirecting my focus to what was truly important for me right now—school. I didn’t want to worry about the things I didn’t have. Instead, I wanted to focus on what I could do with this chance. There was a family out there who suffered a terrible loss from which I benefited. I refused to let them down—not for anything or anyone.

  3

  Faith

  Three Years Later

  “You’ve gotta have faith.” I’d been distracted while the nurse had asked me the usual questions to kick off my annual check-up appointment, but her whispered words of encouragement made me smile. I’d never asked how the office staff had learned about the tradition started by the nurses when I’d been in the hospital, but it wasn’t because I hadn’t appreciated the reminder of one of the happier memories from my stay there.

  The nurses had gotten into the habit of reminding me that I needed to have faith that things were going to get better each time they checked my vitals. It was how every morning had started for me for months—with a super early wake-up call by one of the nurses to make sure I hadn’t gotten sicker during the night while they teased me about my name. I never took offense though because I knew they didn’t mean anything bad by it. Although the members of my medical team were aware I was part of the foster system, I didn’t think they knew much about my background beyond that. And they definitely didn’t know my confusion about my name.

  I never understood why my mom picked Faith. She’d given up on hope before I was even born, and having a baby girl sure hadn’t changed her outlook. Her approach to mothering didn’t inspire flights of fancy—quite the opposite in fact. Growing up with her indifference taught me reality was harsh and dreams were for suckers. That was her gift to me before she died, and the years that followed didn’t help much either. Being a cynical girl named Faith was just one of life’s little ironies I guessed.

  Taking a deep breath, I tried to settle my nerves and flashed the nurse an almost-genuine smile. She gave my hand a gentle pat, and my fake smile turned into a genuine grin. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for how good you guys are at your jobs. So I do have faith—in all of you.”

  “Have it in yourself, too. Because we do, and for good reason.” She dug a piece of paper out of her scrub pocket and smoothed it open. “Maybe I should ask you to sign this for me so I can say I knew you before you became famous.”

  My cheeks warmed, and I knew I was blushing. “I’m never going to be famous, not with a degree in social work. But I’ll be helping people, which is more important anyway.”

  “From what I read in the paper”—she folded the article that’d run in Sunday’s edition and put it back in her pocket—“you already have.”

  I wasn’t used to compliments, and I looked down at my hands in my lap as I fidgeted on the exam table. She gave my hand another squeeze before she walked out of the exam room and left me alone to wait for my doctor. It was only a few minutes later when he rapped his knuckles against the door and poked his head inside the room. “Everybody decent in here?”

  “It’s only me; which you know,” I chuckled, shaking my head as he came in and shut the door behind him. “Just like you know that I’m decent because it’s been a couple of years since I’ve had to wear one of those awful robes.”

  “Yeah, but asking never gets old.”

  Dr. Stewart enjoyed his corny jokes, and I’d quickly gotten used to them when I first started seeing him. “Neither does answering.”

  “I’m glad you think so.” He shook his head as he sat on the stool next to the counter and rolled towards me. “The patient I saw before you did not appreciate my sense of humor.”

  “A tough audience, huh?”

  “Very tough,” he sighed. “But I guess I have to cut them some slack since this was only their second post-op appointment with me.”

  I thought back to how I’d felt after I’d been discharged from the hospital and started to see Dr. Stewart in the outpatient clinic. Even though I’d been staying in a rehabilitation facility and they’d done all the heavy lifting to get me there, the effort required on my part had been enough to exhaust me. “Yeah, some grouchiness is to be expected.”

  “Indeed.” He grabbed his stethoscope and did the usual exam stuff—listened to my breathing, checked my ears and throat, looked for any signs of excessive swelling in my belly and ankles. “You’re looking good.”

  I sat up and scooched to the edge of the table, my legs swinging because I was trying to burn off nervous energy. Even though my blood tests had been relatively stable with only one minor issue over the past year, I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that the other shoe was abo
ut to drop. Getting the kidney transplant was one of the few things that had gone right in my life, and it was like I was always waiting for it to go wrong somehow. “How about my numbers? Are they still doing okay?”

  He dropped his stethoscope in his lab coat pocket and sat back down, rolling towards the counter on the opposite wall to grab his tablet. After a few taps on the screen, he smiled at me. “They’re really good. Your WBC, HCT, and PLTS have remained stable over the past year. Same with your creatinine and BUN. Your electrolytes are right where they should be, so you’ll need to keep taking the magnesium supplement. Your Prograf levels have remained where I’d like to see them after the dosage change we made in February, so we don’t need to make any additional changes there.”

  When I’d first gotten sick, I’d barely been able to follow the explanations the doctors and nurses had given me. It was as if they were speaking in a foreign language I’d been desperate to understand because it held the key to my survival. But now I didn’t even blink at all the acronyms Dr. Stewart used since I’d gotten used to hearing them and could easily follow along. “Please tell me that means I can go back to doing blood work every three months again.”

  “I think that can be arranged.”

  “Yes!” The tension drained from my body, and I pumped my fist in victory. It’d taken me awhile to work my way up to quarterly needle sticks at the lab and annual visits with Dr. Stewart, so it’d sucked when my numbers slipped and he’d made me start going to the lab more often over the past half year.

  “Are you sure? I could make you go in every month if you’d prefer,” he teased.

  I held my hands up in surrender. “No need to threaten me with extra needle sticks. Quarterly is perfect!”

  “That’s what I thought.” The humor leached from his expression, and I braced myself for what he was about to say when he wagged his finger at me. “I know it’s your senior year and you’ll be busy, but you need to remain as vigilant as ever when it comes to your health. Eat right, take your medications, get plenty of rest, and try to keep the stress to a minimum.”