Fated Lives (Part 3)
by Allison
Five months later, Janet closed the door to her new office and sighed. She'd accepted the position as Chief of Staff of the Infectious Diseases department at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine a few months earlier, but they didn't want her to start until August, right before classes started. She'd moved to Maryland two weeks earlier, having bought a house in Columbia, MD, about 20 miles from the city. She had unpacked the week before, and spent the last week getting settled in at the University, going over her lesson plans for her two graduate seminars and meeting her new colleagues.

She would be starting rounds two days before her classes started, so she was in a rush getting things ready before then, since she knew she would have no time whatsoever when she went on rounds. As the Chief of Staff, she also was required to go to board meetings and hold morning briefings, and pretty much do a whole lot of paperwork in addition to her duties as a doctor. She couldn't wait. She loved the administrative side of medicine as well, something she had made clear in her interview.

She was probably the only one, she thought to herself as she headed home, the only one who didn't mind the paperwork. Because it was the Friday before school started, the campus was busy with students registering and finding their classrooms. Janet carefully made her
way out of the building towards the faculty lot, waving at a couple of her colleagues as she passed them. She was exhausted. She hadn't had much time to sleep since she'd returned to Florida after house hunting. It had been a hard decision to come to Maryland. Part of her wanted to turn down the offer with the same indifference as the school had turned her down, but the other part had argued about the salary and the position and the research grants. While she had gotten offers from the other schools as well, this one offered the most money in grants as well as wages, and the highest position as well. The most she was offered elsewhere was a fellowship, not a Department Chair.

So, she moved. It was rather depressing to realize that it took less then a day to pack up her condo in Miami. She didn't realize how little she actually had. She liked her new house, though. It wasn't in the city, which was nice. Columbia was a quiet suburb that seemed almost in the middle of nowhere, even though it was only about 20 miles each way between Baltimore and Washington. And the commute wasn't that bad. If all else failed, she could take the light rail into Baltimore and catch a bus.

As she headed out of the city, her cell phone rang. Digging blindly through her purse, she grabbed it on the third ring and turned it on.

"Hello?"

"Dr. Frasier?"

"Yes?"

"It's Margeret Simmons, I was just wondering if you were going to stop by today?"

Janet winced; she was supposed to go by the breeders today and pick up the kitten she was adopting. "Yes, I'm sorry, I got held up in a meeting. Will you be there in thirty minutes?"

"Yeah."

"Alright. I'll see you then."

"Good-bye."

She hung up the phone and sighed heavily. It would take her at least a half hour just to get to Columbia, given the way traffic was slowing down, and another ten beyond that to Ellicott City where Margeret lived. After she picked up her new kitten, she would have to drop her off at the house, and then go to the store and buy food and litter and all the things that she'd forgotten to get during the week. Remembering belatedly that it was Friday, she decided to just get the bare minimum that night, and go out to Petsmart on Saturday.

As her thoughts turned to her new pet, she grinned to herself.
She'd wanted a new cat for over a year, ever since her fifteen year-old Persian died. The same week she unpacked, she saw an ad in the Baltimore Sun for homes for some pure-bred Maine Coon kittens that had been born two months earlier, and she couldn't resist.

Traffic picked up a bit on 265, and she found herself pulling up to Margeret's house pretty much when she said she would. Grabbing her purse, she got out of her car and made her way up to the front door.

When she left twenty minutes later, Janet found herself the new mom to two kittens, not one. Apparently, there was a runt in the litter that no one wanted.

This runt also happened to not want to leave his sister, and so, Janet adopted them both. The girl was Ephiny, and the boy would be Tigger, because his fur was and orange-ish brown with black stripes. Ephiny was in homage to her favorite recurring character on Xena, not that she admitted to actually watching the show.

Watching them climb around their carrier box, she drove home and dropped them off. She returned fifteen minutes later with kitten food, a litter box and trimmings, and a toy for each of them. She put the food and the litter box in the laundry room, as well as a couple towels for them to sleep on later. For now, she took them into the kitchen and let them loose. She checked her messages (there were none), then dug out a tv dinner from the freezer. Once that was made, she took it and the kittens down to the family room to watch the news.

*

A week later, Janet walked into her house and collapsed on the nearest sofa. It was four in the afternoon, and she was exhausted. She'd spent Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday pulling twelve hour shifts at the hospital, and Wednesday and Friday in meetings and leading her two three hour seminars. And she had once more day to go, since she had another 6 am to 6 pm shift on Saturday. Closing her eyes, she leaned back, sorely tempted to just fall asleep then and there. The feeling of something small landing on her stomach made her groan and open her eyes to see Ephiny peering up at her from her lap. She meowed softly, and then butted her head against Janet's hand that was scratching her ears.

"Where's your brother hiding, Eph?" she asked, as she reluctantly got up off the couch. Walking up the short flight of stairs towards the laundry room, she stopped off in the kitchen to get a glass of water to refill the bowl with. The previous Saturday, she had bought several cat toys, five bags of kitten food, two of those cat bed/tower climbing things, and water and food bowls. So far, Ephiny and Tigger still slept on the towels she had put down their first night there.

"There he is," she said, as she walked into the room. Tigger was in
there alright, curled up asleep in a corner of the litter box.

Setting Ephiny down, she poured the water into the bowls, then carefully picked up Tigger. Ignoring his indignant mewling, she brushed off the litter that was stuck to his fur and was relieved to see that he hadn't been sleeping in cat poop. She set him down next to his sister and refilled the food bowls. She had just filled them that morning, and yet they were both empty already.

Leaving them to their meal, she went into the kitchen to prepare her
own. Deciding to make spaghetti, she put the sauce on to simmer for a couple hours. She wasn't all that hungry. After wandering around the house looking for something to do, she sat down at her kitchen table and started pawing through her briefcase. When she pulled out her planner, she got the feeling that there was something she needed to do. Unsure of what it was, she started flipping through the pages towards that calendar day. As she passed by March, a business card fell out of the pages onto the table. Putting the book down, she picked up the card and looked at it. It was the card that Dr. Jackson had given her with his email address on it while they were both in Denver. While she sat there looking at it, she remembered that they had emailed each other a couple times in April once they'd each returned from Colorado. But by May, the communication between them had dwindled as Janet made her decision and began making plans to move to Maryland.

Hearing tiny padded feet walking across the floor, she turned slightly to see Tigger walking towards her. Putting the card in her briefcase, she lifted it and the cat and headed upstairs to her room. Once there, she took out her laptop and hooked it up to her Ethernet cord. She ran her fingers through Tigger's fur while the computer started. "Do you think I should e-mail Daniel, Boo?" She'd started calling him 'Boo' not long after she brought him home, she wasn't sure why. It fit him, though. By the time she opened her e-mail, her decision was made. She took the card out of her briefcase again and turned it over to where he had written his e-mail address five months earlier. Setting it down on the bed next to her, she began to type.

To: DJackson@uchicago.edu
From: JFrasier@jhu.edu
Date: September 6, 2002
Hi, Dr. Jackson

Hey, Daniel. It's been a long time, I know, sorry about that. Ever since May, I've been incredibly busy. Do you remember those job offers I was debating over? I decided on Johns Hopkins in May, and I spent most of the summer packing and house hunting and all those other annoying things you have to do when you move. I got up here three weeks ago, and I think I'm pretty well settled in. I just finished my first week (well, sort of, I have another shift tomorrow, but I have Sunday off at least) as the Department Chair. It was... interesting. Well, anyway, I just wanted to stop in and say hello. I am sorry we lost touch there for a while. How is everything going for you?

Hope to hear from you soon,
Janet

Reading it over one more time before she sent it, she hoped she didn't sound to scatterbrained. Grinning to herself, she moved the cursor over to the send button and picked up Tigger's paw and used it to send the email. "Good boy, Boo! How long do you think it will take him to answer it?" She kissed the top of his head before setting him back down on the comforter.

Part 4

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