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11 A.M., SATURDAY, JAN. 15, 2022, Portland Heights house — Blair had so many emotions roiling around inside that she was actually numb. That didn’t make sense, really. But she was on emotional overload, and it was as if everything canceled each other out. Will’s injury and surgery; the destructive rage he’d shown in that apartment, her fear of him and his anger, and now, she needed to take charge of EWN?
She’d looked forward to doing that — spring term. When she had some time to prepare for it. But now? Suck it up, buttercup, she mentally repeated Bianca’s favorite phrase.
“You’re good to go, Blair,” Corey said. He was running the Zoom meeting from his laptop at home in the Loft. He still looked half-asleep — this was early morning for him. She looked around the room at her friends and coworkers and the additional ones on her laptop screen.
“We have a crisis,” she said. She explained about the bleed in Will’s brain, that he had blacked out in front of the EWN building in the middle of the night and was now at OHSU. “He’s in a coma, and the neurosurgeon is operating or will soon. He’s in good hands up there. That’s one of the best hospitals on the West Coast.”
She swallowed. “So, we have to figure out how to run EWN while he’s unable to. And that might be a week — it might be longer. Ryan? Can you explain the legal aspects and the requirements of the charter?”
Ryan explained the need to have a student in charge. They’d learned that lesson well last spring when they’d gotten hit with a libel suit. “I have suggested that Blair and Ben be interim co-editors-in-chief. Interim co-EICs has some precedent.” He paused and smiled at Emily and Cage who were sitting in on the Zoom call. “I just informed the Media Board chair of the situation and recommended them as co-EIC. Unless someone has an objection or a recommendation, the Board will convene sometime today to confirm that recommendation.”
“Discussion?” Blair asked.
“Do you plan to submit your application for EIC next year?” Miguel asked.
She nodded. “I do.”
“Then this makes good sense,” Miguel said. “I support it.”
Everyone else smiled and nodded. Reassured, Blair moved on with her recommendations for shifts in leadership roles. More nods. Her team might be young, but by God they were a team, she thought, fiercely proud of them all.
The only comment was from Ellison Lee. “Me?” he yelped.
Everyone laughed. “You,” Bianca said. “Of course, you.”
He smiled at Bianca. “If you think I can, then I guess I can.”
“Thank you all,” Blair said. “We’ll meet at 4 p.m. as usual for stories and such. We’ve still got a newscast tonight — no matter what crisis we face.”
When the call ended, she sagged in her seat. “You need food and a nap,” Teresa said. “Someone needs to go for pizza. The order is in at Straight From New York Pizza.”
“I’ll go,” Joe said, and headed for the door. Kari was on his heels. Blair smiled wistfully at the two of them. She and Will had been a couple like that. Always together. Comfortable with each other. She doubted they could ever get that back. They might be together — she didn’t know yet what she wanted — but it would never be like that again. She would always know that there was a room inside Will where he bottled up his anger, and that it might explode out again.
“Blair?” Ryan said quietly. “I’m going to call his parents. I’d like you to sit in on it. Have you met them?”
She shook her head. “And they won’t have heard about our engagement,” she added. “So, let’s just say girlfriend?”
Ryan nodded. He called up student records, got the telephone number, and called the Bristols. Mr. Bristol exploded about the protester hitting and kicking Will. “Damned commies. They should be locked up,” he said.
“Sir, it was actually a Trump supporter,” Ryan said firmly. “They were protesting a conference at the university about Critical Race Theory.”
“Is he going to be OK?” Mrs. Bristol said timidly. Blair thought that if she’d met his parents, this week wouldn’t have come as such a big surprise.
“The doctor thinks so,” Ryan reassured her. “He’s in surgery right now. We’ll know more in the next 24 hours.”
“Should we come up there?” she asked.
“Not yet,” Ryan said. “They don’t want visitors waiting. It’s a precaution against COVID. They’ll call me, and I’ll be happy to call you.”
He hesitated. “Have you two been vaccinated?”
“Don’t believe in that crap they’ve been pushing,” Mr. Bristol said. “We’re fine as the Lord made us.”
“Then it’s doubly important that you stay home,” Ryan said. “For your own safety.”
“Who’s going to pay for this?” Mr. Bristol asked. “Our insurance?”
“He has health insurance through the university,” Ryan said. “The hospital will contact you if there is any need for your insurance to supplement that.” He would step in if he had to, but Mr. Bristol was annoying. Let him pay a bit of it.
“You’ll take care of him, won’t you?” Mrs. Bristol said. “He admires you so much. He talks about you all the time. And Blair? I look forward to meeting you. I’ve tried to get him to bring you down to meet us, but the two of you are so busy.”
“We are,” she agreed, although, actually, Will had never asked her to go. “But we’ll make the time soon. As soon as Will can travel.”
“And of course, I will take care of him,” Ryan said. “We’ve been through a lot together. We’ll get through this too.”
Blair wasn’t sure how much Will had even told his parents about last spring. It was good Ryan was carefully vague.
Ryan ended the call and looked at her for a while. She wanted to say something, but she wasn’t sure what. She waited to hear what he was thinking.
“Will needs counseling,” he said finally. “He was seeing one, but I think he quit. We need to get him back. He’s been bottling up a lot of anger, and the bottle burst.”
She nodded; that was how she saw it too. She was relieved that Ryan didn’t try to say it wasn’t real.
“You’re going to need couple’s counseling as well,” Ryan said. “And I think you need to talk to someone, too. Dr. Clarke for starters, maybe, or she can recommend someone.”
He hesitated. “Will compared you to me,” he said slowly. “That we both know how to blend in. He thought it came from having money, and he was envious of it. But that’s not it. I learned to read people, to see the smallest indication of what they might want — to please them and to prevent abuse.”
He sighed. “I’m sure you’ve heard the gossip about me.”
“EWN’s favorite soap opera star?” she teased. “Oh, yeah. Including reruns from the years before I came here.”
He laughed “I may never live it down.” He was silent for a moment.
“I was a major player in the party circuit — BDSM,” he said quietly. “The wealthy version. Private clubs where memberships run $20,000. Where men, usually men, actually acted as if they owned people, slaves. They called me a chameleon because I could become whatever you wanted. I could be the dom, the sub. Men, women, fluid? I was happy to please. You didn’t even have to ask because I knew what you wanted before you did. Don’t get me wrong. I got a lot of pleasure out of all that.”
She grinned. But she waited because she thought he had more to say.
“But being a chameleon is not a healthy thing. Took me years to realize that. And sobriety, to be honest. This week, watching you deal with Will, I realized your camouflage was much like my chameleon act. We are hyperaware of others, and we will do what it takes to please them — to defuse anger especially. I know what caused that in my life; I don’t know what you went through. But I know you must have gone through something. If you want to talk? I’m happy to listen. Teresa is a better listener, but I’ve been there. I’ve also been through the TBI last summer. And if Will’s irritability and anger bursts are disconcerting? I sometimes woke up and didn’t remember I had a son. Or that Teresa and I were married.”
Blair frowned. Had she known he was going through that? She remembered when he got hurt, of course. And that memories he was missing came flooding back. What had he said? Someone tipped over the filing cabinet in his brain, and he had to re-sort them all? This sounded more serious than they’d been led to believe.
“So, I’m just saying, we’re here for you and for Will. Counseling is really good — I think essential. But sometimes you need to talk to a friend who has been through things too.”
Blair swallowed and nodded. “Thank you,” she said. It was hard to get words out. She closed her eyes. “My father insisted I learn to blend in. ‘No one likes a smart girl, Blair,’ he’d say. And I lost reading privileges if I disappointed him. I’m just beginning to sort that out — and the marriage my parents had. And you’re right. Counseling will help.”
He smiled at her. “Well, you’re not a smart girl,” he said lightly. “You’re a smart woman. And that’s something different altogether.”
She felt a smile spread across her face. “Smart woman,” she repeated. “You’re right. I like the sound of that.”
Ryan laughed.
His phone rang, and he went to take the call from the Media Board. Blair just sat on the deck and looked out across the city. Well, in January, you had to take it as a matter of faith that there was a city out there. It was gray with mist and clouds. But it felt good to sit out here. It felt clean.
She thought about what Ryan had said. A part of her wanted to protest. She hadn’t been abused — sexually or physically. And if she had understood what he had just said, he’d been both. But she hesitated. Because really? Weren’t there other forms? Did someone have to beat you or assault you for it to be abusive? Could you be abusive just with words? She thought about Harmony’s story. It had started with words, she thought. She didn’t think it had stopped there. Abuse didn’t stop. Maybe?
When she was growing up there had been angry outbursts. Her mother would just listen to him silently when he berated her.
When he yelled at Blair, she’d tried to protest when she was young, but as she got older she followed her mother’s example. Silently accept it. Let him win. He was bigger, stronger. Don’t make him angry. Don’t make him angrier. Say whatever he wanted to hear, whatever it took to placate him.
So, when she started dating, she chose guys who were ‘laid back’. Her father dismissed them as losers. But she’d been terrified of picking a man who would turn out to be like her father. And she had fallen in love with Will because he was wicked smart and yet this sweet, gentle man.
And now it turned out he, too, had all that anger inside, waiting to burst out. She didn’t think she could deal with it. Wistfully, she wished sexual orientation really was a choice. She’d switch to women in a heartbeat.
Which made her think about what Ryan had just said. Could he really do men or women or be fluid? Had that been the way he was born? Bisexual, or omnisexual as Ryan had joked in the past? Or had abusers made him that way? That wasn’t possible, was it?
Being curious doesn’t justify prying, she admonished herself. Maybe she could get more information from Teresa someday. She grinned. So, she was curious. It was an occupational hazard.
Bianca came out and took the seat next to her. “You doing OK, girlfriend?”
Blair nodded. “Scared,” she admitted.
“About?”
“Everything. Running EWN. Will’s surgery. Our relationship. All of it.”
Bianca grimaced. “That’s quite a list,” she admitted. “But we’re here for you. And we’re a team. We’ll get through it. Just like we always do — together. Although I have to admit when we had that strategy session? We missed this one. EIC has meltdown.”
Blair laughed. They shouldn’t have. This was the second one — last spring, through no fault of his own. And now this one. Although she guessed he couldn’t be blamed for getting hit over the head. But being too stubborn to get help? She sighed. Assigning blame wasn’t all that useful.
“Well someone write everything down, and we’ll add it to the manual,” she joked. There wasn’t really a manual, but maybe there should be. She’d bet Corey had notes from that meeting on his computer.
She made a mental note to ask Ryan on the Zoom meeting about the remodeling project. And weren’t they supposed to get a receptionist? Be good to look forward to other things, not just deal with this crisis. And wasn’t Dona’s project supposed to run next week? That would be interesting.
“Where did your mind go?” Bianca asked. She sounded amused.
“Thinking about the remodel, and the future, and not just dealing with the current crisis.”
“Which is why we want you as our leader,” Bianca assured her. “Because you can think of those things while we’re all going, ‘Oh my God, the sky is falling.’”
Blair reached over and hugged her. Bianca hugged her back. “We’ve got you, girl,” she said.
After the 4 p.m. editor’s meeting, everyone packed up and headed down to EWN to produce the show. Blair noticed that Ryan didn’t come along. She thought maybe he was waiting for the call from OHSU. Should they have heard from them by now? She frowned. But she needed to focus on the evening show, to edit copy, and to make sure the website was updated. All of the things she’d been doing for a year now. They soothed her.
When she was done, she started to leave with Bianca and Ben, and stopped outside the EWN building. She couldn’t go back to that apartment. She wasn’t sure she ever could.
Fortunately, she didn’t have to. Joe was parked outside the building — illegally — waiting for her. “It is possible to walk down from the house,” he said, as she got into his ancient pickup — it was even older than Ben’s. “But no one in their right mind walks up to it. And that includes Emily and Ryan who do run up it from time to time.”
“Up Montgomery?” Blair said, startled. “They run up it?”
Joe grinned at her. “Certifiable, right?”
She snorted. It was something. “Have we heard anything?” she asked in a small voice.
“They called Ryan, said the surgery went well, but they were keeping him in a medically induced coma until morning so that he doesn’t become agitated. That’s a concern apparently.”
“So good news,” she said with relief.
“Yes,” Joe said. “But you can get the details from Ryan.” He hesitated. “Ryan’s more upset than he’s letting on. He wouldn’t talk to me about it. Maybe he will you. But I don’t think it’s about Will’s health. Something though.”
Blair nodded. She didn’t need Ryan’s troubles on her shoulders, but well, she kind of owed him for that conversation earlier. It had helped. More than she thought possible until she realized she was able to function all evening because of it. What had Corey said at the Seattle conference? He had felt seen.
Today she had felt seen.
So, when they got to the house, she went down the elevator to the Matthews home, and spotted him sitting out on the patio, alone. She could hear Teresa down below with Rafael — it seemed late for a 4-year-old to be up, wasn’t it? But she went out onto the patio before she lost her nerve.
“Hey,” she said quietly.
He smiled at her. “The hospital called, said surgery went well. They’ll bring him out of the coma in the morning, and then we’ll know more.”
“So Joe said. What are you thinking about out here?” she asked before she lost her courage.
He gestured to a chair, and she sat down and waited.
“Some things are easier talked about in the dark,” he said softly. “I was thinking about EWN and about the ugly duckling.”
“What?”
“You know the fable, right? The ugly duckling that isn’t a duckling at all, but a beautiful swan?”
“Sure,” she said, somewhat bewildered.
“So, here’s Will. He never fit in growing up. His family loves him, but they think he’s a dork. His brothers pick on him. He shrugs it off, because he thinks he’s a dork. He likes to read. They like to hunt. They play football. He writes stories for the school paper. So, he comes to PSU, finds EWN, and suddenly, he finds out he’s a swan. Happy ending, the story closes.”
He paused, and she thought about the fable. He went on. “I’ve never liked that fable; I’ve always thought it misses the point. Because the ugly duckling doesn’t know how to be a swan. He doesn’t know how to glide like swans do. He does a duck paddle. Not a very good one, but still. The swans smiled at him tolerantly. He doesn’t sound like a swan. He sounds like... well a duck. And worse? He doesn’t really know the swans. He doesn’t get their jokes. He hasn’t seen the movies they’ve all seen. The only family he knows are the ducks, and even though they laughed at him, he loved them. So, he’s a bit angry about all of it, but he knows he’s supposed to be grateful to the swans because now he belongs.”
“Except he doesn’t,” Blair said. “Not really. Everyone still sees him as a dork, a loveable one. He’s our dork, but inside? He resents being a dork.”
Ryan nodded. “And then a swan princess falls in love with him, and he thinks maybe there is a happy ever after. But he defines that like ducks define it. A job, a wife, a home. Nothing like what his swan princess wants — even though she seemed to have grown up in a home exactly like his dream home. Add to it, he’s hurting. His brain is literally bleeding, and he lashes out. And he’s really lashing out about all of it. And about the unfairness of it all. And at you and me who he sees as fitting in easily wherever we go, when he doesn’t fit in anywhere.”
He fell silent. She waited.
“And he doesn’t realize the price I paid to learn to fit in,” he said with difficulty. “To be a swan with swans, and a duck with ducks. Or the price you paid in that home than punished you by depriving you of books — and Jesus, Blair, that’s worse than total sensory deprivation for someone like you or me. Or probably Will, now that I think of it. And you learned to be blend in, too, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she whispered. Feeling seen indeed.
“I don’t know how to help Will. Or you. Or any of the others in the newsroom who come there hurting because they’ve been ugly ducklings and now they’re finally in a place where they can belong. And yet? It isn’t enough, is it?”
Teresa said quietly from the door, “President McShane used the analogy of a bucket with a hole in it. You can pour all the water in the world into it and never fill it up.”
Ryan nodded. And Blair realized he had tears in his eyes. “He was talking about you?” she asked him. He nodded again.
“About being needy. And I’m slowly repairing the hole in my bucket,” he said. “But I feel totally inadequate to help Will repair the hole in him. Or to help you. Or all of the other lost souls that come to the newsroom.”
He sighed. “I often talk about the survey a former editor did of the staff that showed almost everyone who stays at EWN are geniuses who got derailed by something that didn’t let them move smoothly from high school to college. But eventually they get their lives back together and come to PSU. And they thrive at EWN.”
She nodded. It was part of the stories EWN told about itself.
“What I don’t mention is the rest of that survey,” Ryan said quietly. “The vast majority of the women had experienced abuse — sexual or physical abuse — and nearly 100 percent of the men had gone through drug and alcohol treatment. Geniuses, yes, but mostly broken people trying to become whole again.”
She frowned, thinking about that, about the people she knew.
“I think — thought — because you all are younger that perhaps that wasn’t true. The genius part is, but maybe not the rest. But now I think I was wrong,” he said, still this quiet voice in the dark. “McShane told me once about a Japanese art form called kintsugi, that uses gold solder to repair the breaks in pottery vessels, not to hide the breaks but to celebrate them. To honor them. He said it was beautiful. I looked it up afterwards, and he’s right, it is beautiful. But I couldn’t help think the vessel would rather have just been the nice little terracotta pot or the porcelain teacup that it originally was.”
“And you think you have to heal them all, don’t you,” Teresa said. She sounded part sympathetic, part teasing.
“Maybe,” he conceded.
“Maybe we heal each other and ourselves,” Blair said. “We find ways to become who we were meant to be. Early this week, I thought, I wonder who I would be if I’d been allowed to become who I was intended to be? And I thought it was too late now. I was what I was. But that’s not true. I still have plenty of time to discover who I was intended to be. We all do. And EWN is a part of that discovery process.”
Ryan smiled at her. “You do,” he assured her. “And I look forward to seeing what you become.”
“Good,” Teresa said, but her tone was gentler than her words. “Start tomorrow. Sleep tonight.”
Blair laughed, because Teresa was scary smart herself. And she probably hadn’t had it any easier than she did — growing up Latina in Yakima, and college-bound? Blair shook her head. That would be tough.
Blair got up and headed inside to go up to the room she’d been given across from Emily and Cage’s penthouse. She looked back and saw Teresa hugging Ryan silhouetted in the patio door. If he, as abused as he had been, could become a father and husband, maybe there was hope for them all. And she made a mental note to tell him so. That the way he helped the rest of them was simply by showing that it could be done.