TIME OUT

If a discussion isn’t getting anywhere, either can call for a ‘time out’, resuming the discussion the next day.

One evening Sandra again broaches the subject of priorities, and she is now willing to adjust them, but Paul blows up at the first word of priorities. Sandra decides to punish Paul and let him stew for a while before telling him that she’s pregnant. She calls a ‘time out’. The next morning Paul is gone. A drawing of two hands forming a ‘T’ is left on his pillow. Vowing never to pay her alimony, Paul joins a traveling road show as an actor. He never learns he has a son.

A head-on collision between a motorcycle and Paul, a pedestrian, leaves Paul unable to act. He makes ends meet as a roadie. Paul never stays anywhere for long, worried Sandra may find him.

Sandra continues climbing the corporate ladder as she pushes Paul Jr. to great achievements in sports and elsewhere.

Paul Jr. being tired is excused as his workload, or hanging with friends, or mono, or… Finally he is diagnosed with a blood disease. Treatments are tried. The consensus is a stem cell transplant is his only hope. His mother’s HLA type rules her out.

Sandra swallows her pride, realizes that for once she needs Paul’s help. She assigns the job of finding Paul to Craig, her corporation’s security chief.

Next thing Paul knows, he is kidnapped and flown to Sandra. They have a lot to learn – about each other, what’s happened during the missing years, and if they can remain civil long enough to help Paul, Jr.

When told that he has a son, he thinks Sandra is just making it up to get back alimony from him. (There is no son, or his belongings, at the home Paul is brought to. Paul Jr. is in the hospital)

Sandra confesses to Paul that she was going to tell him that they were going to have a child the night before he left. Now she regrets that she put it off.

The ticking clock looms large: Paul Jr. needs a stem cell transplant. Paul is the best hope to have a matching HLA type.

Craig, having used a chemical knockout to grab Paul, complicates things. It must wear off, before doctors are able to type and possibly use Paul as a donor.

In the mean time they have a host of things to figure out, including: are they still man and wife, how to tell Paul Jr. that he has a living father, should they even ever tell him, etc.? There are medical complications, including needing Paul’s bone marrow instead of stem cells because of Jr.’s young age. Paul undergoes a couple operations to get enough marrow from his accident scarred bones.

Paul and Jr. are released from the hospital on the same day. Sandra reveals to Jr. that his father is the donor. They arrive home with plenty to sort out.

Paul closes his eyes to rest, never opens them again. A tiny sliver of his damaged pelvis bone found its way to his brain, resulting in death. The family is in ‘time out’ again.