Chapter Five

Two weeks had gone by, and nobody else had bothered to call his special line. Michael was working on a project for his latest client when Margaret buzzed him.

“Call for you on one, someone named ‘Patti’. She wouldn’t tell me where she was calling from; she said you didn’t want to know. What’s that about? Do you want to take the call?”

Michael remembered speaking with someone named Patti a couple of weeks ago. Hoping it was the same woman, he told Margaret to put her through. He pressed the blinking line indicator. “Hello?”

“Michael, this is Patti. We spoke a couple of weeks ago, you and I and my co-worker Joanne? Well, I just wanted to let you know that the, um, my employers received Natalie’s card, and they have a message of their own they’d like to deliver to her.”

“That’s great!” Michael replied, with happiness in his voice. “Do you want her contact information? How do you want to handle this?”

“No, not quite,” Patti said. “Let me run something by you. First, this won’t work if you don’t know who I work for.”

“OK,” Michael said, “who is it?”

“Well, my employers are Bon Jovi, and they want to deliver their message in person. At their concert next month at the arena. I wanted to talk to you first, before sending the information on to her. I speak from experience here – they can be pretty overwhelming, and from what you and the doctor said, well, I just wanted to err on the side of caution.”

Michael was momentarily speechless. His voice thick with emotion, he said, “I appreciate that. Honestly, Patti, I don’t know what to say. She, and I, never expected anything like this. You’ve got to know that.”

Hearing the emotion, the gratitude in his voice, touched Patti. “I – we – do know that. Frankly, I think that’s part of the reason The Boys are doing this. That, and they seemed truly touched by your sister’s story.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Michael said. “I do know that Natalie would kill me if I turned this down. I’d like to make this a surprise for her; what do we need to do?”

Patti gave Michael the rundown on what was planned. The band would send a car for them. The driver would have their tickets, and someone would meet them at the gate and escort them to their seats. Partway through the show, the band would give their message to Natalie.

“That’s about it,” Patti said, with a smile in her voice. She was keeping the part about the song to herself, at Jon’s specific request. The band wanted it to be a surprise.