The Life of Jane continued

                          A Turn For theWorst



        When asked by his neighbours in Fredericton how his daughter Jane was doing over in London, England, Doctor Sinclair would reply, "She's doing fine." And she was. In fact for a time it seemed nothing could go wrong for Jane in London.She passed her written exams. She passed her oral exams. Then she started in on her thesis on John Donne.
     She even went to a musty museum outside of London. There she saw under glass of course, some  of Donne's original poems written in the 17th century. She at one time also touched some of his original manuscripts that were part of his sermons. Now she started to write her thesis. She thought, the thesis would stretch out over 150 pages or more.
    Then came the new year of 1961. In  a blink of an eye, everything started to go wrong. Don vanished just before New Year's Eve. "Oh he's gone home," one of his roommates, Bill Arthur told Jane when she went around to his student digs in the apartment he shared with two other Americans. "He's finished his thesis and passed with flying colours."
    Arthur leaned his big florid face on the side of the front door and asked her, "Do you want to come in?"
    "No, I want to know where he is. I haven't seen him or heard a word from him for two or three weeks. Do you know where he is?"
   "He's back in the states now. Flew back two weeks ago,I think."
   Do you have his home address?'
    "Sure," Arthur said. "Come on in and I'll give it to you." Jane then edged past Bill's  tall thin frame to sit in the small living room of this second storey apartment where she'd sat many times before. But she couldn't bear to sit in the bedroom that Don had lived in. As soon as she had Don's address,which she'd lost a few months ago, she fled the building and walked briskly, nearly running back to her cold room.
     She lay down on her lumpy bed and gazed at the flaky white ceiling. She got up and wrote a letter to Don at the address that Bill Arthur had given her . She waited for two weeks after  sending the letter but no reply came. Then came more bad news. She went to a doctor after she realized her period had stopped. "I think you're pregnant, miss," the doctor, a middle aged greying man told her. Jane hadn't worn a ring when she went to see the doctor. So he assumed she wasn't married . "Oh my God," Jane muttered as she made her way home from the doctor's office . "What do I do now?"
     She'd have to contact Don one way or another.There was no other way and she'd have to speak to him . So she'd have to speak to him on the phone. That meant going to someone who had a phone. She didn't want to go to Don's former apartment where there was a phone. But she did know someone else who owned a phone. She's contact that person and phone Don from this person's place . Let's hope he'd be back at  his parents' house she thought.  At this point it was the only hope she had.