Grace was stunned. This was big news. A feature slot with The Tribune was the Holy Grail of journalism. She knew people who had been pitching ideas to them for months and hadn’t even had a response.
‘Wow,’ she gushed, her cheeks flaming scarlet now. ‘Erm, wow. Thank you. Thank you very much. That’s amazing.’
‘Yes it is. So, send them the best two thousand word feature you can possibly write and if Bill likes it, he’ll run it this summer. Get this right Grace, and you will almost certainly be guaranteed an internship with them, if not a job when you graduate.’
She’d spent the next week researching ideas in the library, sitting for hours at the battered, teak desk in her dorm, typing up her handwritten notes on the electronic Brother typewriter she’d been given as a Christmas present the previous year, only to tear the printed pages from the machine, screw them up and throw them into the bin. The college dorms were small, just big enough to fit two single beds (her room-mate Ella Jackson was at home sick with glandular fever), two desks, a dresser with a mirror and a small window. Thank God for the window, Grace remembered thinking to herself as she’d unpacked her case on the first day of term. The small, boxy room with its stark white walls, flimsy teak furniture and cold, vinyl flooring felt like a cage to a girl who was used to roaming along hedgerows and swinging in the seat on the front porch drinking homemade lemonade.
In the run up to the Thanksgiving vacation, she gazed out of that small window for hours at a time, hoping that inspiration would strike her. President Reagan’s inauguration? The Pacman game craze? The first space shuttle to be launched? These were all big news stories which dwarfed Grace’s confidence and caused her to doubt her ability to do them justice. She needed to find something more personal, a story which ordinary people could relate to, a story which, above all else, she felt compelled to write. Professor Andrews always told his students that, ‘great news journalists write with their head, great features journalists write with their heart.’ She needed to find a story which touched her heart, and she was failing to do so.
It bothered her over Thanksgiving and continued to bug her over the holiday season. Although she enjoyed the time at home with her family, catching up with Art who was back from travelling around India, relishing her mom’s home cooking and savouring the late-night conversations between just herself and her dad, she was distracted and couldn’t wait to get back to the city and college life. A few weeks into the New Year and the start of the spring semester, she still hadn’t found her story.
‘Why can’t I do this Jimmy,’ she complained as they lay on her small, dormitory bed, legs perpendicular to the wall. She often lay like this; enjoying the sensation of the blood flowing down her veins, pulled by the force of gravity. It made her feel weightless, as if she were floating in water.
Jimmy turned to face her, pushing her hair gently from her forehead. ‘You will find your story Gracie,’ his smooth, velvety voice captivating her as always. ‘Don’t force it babe. Stop panicking. Something will come to you, it always does.’ He leant towards her and kissed her gently on the cheek to reinforce his certainty. They gazed at each other for a moment and as her eyes fell across the familiar contours of his face, she wondered what the future held for them, whether their relationship would continue, or whether, like so many college-bred romances she had seen, it would fall apart outside the familiarity and security which an academic institution provided.
As she considered this, Macy Johnson, the dorm monitor, knocked on her door to tell Grace that her mother was on the phone. Her father had been in a terrible car crash and she had to go home immediately. All thoughts of her feature, and her future with Jimmy, were forgotten.
Jimmy drove as quickly as he could, breaking the speed limit on the interstate and running red light after red light. As they drove, Grace sat motionless in the passenger seat of Jimmy’s blue Ford Mustang and gazed up at the light winter fog which shrouded the tops of the higher buildings in downtown Chicago. She noticed odd things like the last of the recent snowfall still clinging to the kerb sides like moss and she remarked on the new, digital, time and temperature display on one of the buildings.
They reached Mason District Hospital at 7.32pm, nine minutes too late. Her father was pronounced dead at 7.23pm. By the time Grace got to his bedside, a frightening array of tubes and drips hung listlessly from the machines around him. They had failed to stop the internal bleeding; failed to keep him alive. He’d been hit head-on by a truck on a blind bend just outside their farm. The truck was travelling way too fast for the road conditions and had lost control. Her father, sensible and practical as always, had been on his way to get salt to grit the roads because he knew they were dangerous to drive on.