Roschel: Familiar Faces Trilogy 3 Chapter 33, a friends fanfic

A/N: Hey guys, this is just me reminding you guys for the reviews and suggestions for any improvements I could make to keep coming and to read all the chapters leading up to this one and the other books. Please also keep in mind that strong themes of bereavement and mental health issues will feature from now on for quite a while across all three books, and so if you are sensitive towards that topic, I ask you to keep that in mind before continuing to read on with the trilogy. Thank you so much for your continued support, and I hope you have a good day whenever and wherever you're reading this!

Chapter 33 - Ross

"Ben! Lara! Emma! Go answer the damn phone!" I yelled from where I was standing in the corridor, as I was just about to take a cup of coffee to Carol and Rachel.

I waited a couple more minutes for any of the kids to actually react, and then decided to leave the cups on the top of the shoe cabinet and then rushed into the kitchen to answer the phone. I luckily picked up the phone before whoever was on the other end gave up and then rang off.

"Ross Geller-Green speaking," I said into the microphone on the handset as I walked over to the table and sat down.

"Hi there," the voice on the other end said. "It's Dr Evans you're speaking to." Then she added before I had a chance to digest what this inevitably would mean. "I'm your wife's oncologist."

I swallowed the lump that had appeared with quite impressive speed before replying, "Oh yes."

"We discharged Rachel for a short time being whilst we decided how to pursue her treatment, and as much as I expected to be able to leave the two of you and the rest of your family to have a peaceful, treatment-free holiday season, we got back the results that we needed on the rate at which her cancer was spreading far sooner than expected due to the seriousness of the results of the initial testing we'd planned for it," Dr Evans said, sounding apologetic although it was having no effect on making me feel any less worried about the news.

"So, what were the actual results?" I asked, realising a minute later that I probably seemed a bit rude and impatient but at the same time hoping that Dr Evans would understand, given the nature of our situation.

"The cancer has developed into Stage 2 almost Stage 3," Dr Evans said. She didn't have to say anything more about it for me to know that it wasn't good at all that cancer had spread. "At this stage, we can continue treating it with the a more aggressive type of chemo than the one she previously had, but if it progresses into stage three we will have to do a hysterectomy because at that point she'll be in seriously dangerous territory of it developing further into stage 4, of which about 60% of cancers that reach that stage become terminal."

"Does this mean she'll need to be in hospital sooner or can she still come back in on the originally agreed date?" I asked, wanting to make sure that I knew all the important facts before I stopped to properly digest the news.

"She can still take the whole time off," Dr Evans said, clearly trying to sound cheerful even though she was almost definitely unlikely to actually be able to improve our situation.

"Thank you so much and see you then," I said, hoping the fact that I was desperate not to have to talk much more about this wasn't making me come across as too rude.

Once I'd hung up and put the phone back down, I walked back out of the kitchen and picked up the mugs to continue the journey of taking them upstairs to Carol and Rachel. Particularly after the news that had just been told me, I was really hoping that the kids would be self-sufficient in continuing to get themselves ready for the day. I wasn't yet going to tell them about the news yet, and I would have to assess the situation before deciding when would be the best time to tell Carol and Rachel, whom I know of course would need to know at some point or another.

"Good morning, ladies," I said as I walked through the door of Rachel and I's bedroom and saw that Rachel was still in bed but clearly Carol must have moved from her room into ours whilst I was on the phone because she was currently also sitting on the bed.

"Thank you very much, Ross," Carol said to me as I passed her her mug before sitting down on the bed and leaning over to give Rachel hers.

"Thanks, babe," Rachel said, before taking a sip. "Carol came in to keep me company whilst you were downstairs, and I of course told her about the fact that you were making coffee for the both of us, so she decided it would be a good idea to stay."

"Good call," I said, laughing though I was worried that it would sound hollow as I wasn't quite feeling it after the call.

"The kids okay?" Rachel asked me, her usual motherly concern edging into her tone.

"Yeah," I said, in what I hoped was an offhand manner so that she wouldn't worry, although of course I wasn't 100% certain.

"Good, good," Rachel said, sounding suitably less worried.

I sat with both of them for a while, until I excused myself to go and double check that everything with the kids was actually running smoothly.

I found Ben downstairs in the kitchen.

"Where are the girls?" I asked him, on guard for a negative answer.

"Your guess would be as good as mine unfortunately, Dad," he answered, shrugging.

"I'll go check upstairs then," I said, walking out of the kitchen and then up the stairs at the end of the corridor joining the living room, the kitchen and the front door. I then went up the second set of the stairs where both girls' bedrooms were.

Both doors were ajar, though I could hear no noise – not even the sound of a Bluetooth speaker playing or Netflix – so the radar that switched on when I thought something suspicious was going on was alerted. I decided I would go into Emma's first, as being the older of the two, she'd obviously be the one with the greater responsibility with doing everything she needed to do to get ready for the day.

"What?!" Emma exclaimed, impatiently, as I stood in the doorway of her bedroom.

"I was just coming to see whether you were ready for the day but, considering you are still lying under your duvet, I'm going to assume that you're not," I said in my best strict but verging on pretentious tone, as I knew that this would deliberately annoy her enough to give up playing whatever game it was that she was so hell-bent on playing this morning.

"Why don't you go harass Lara instead of me?" Emma asked, no less annoyed than she was when I first entered the room.

"Because I have two daughters, and my responsibility as a father is to make sure that both are behaving as they should be," I said, as Emma rolled her eyes as if she had heard this many times before, which she had.

"Whatever," Emma said as I told her one last time to make sure that she got ready for the day and closed the door behind me on the way across the landing to Lara's bedroom.

As the door to her bedroom was also ajar, I decided that I'd knock and announce my arrival and then go into the bedroom.

"Lara, are you ready for the day?" I asked Lara, who was lying on her bed with her MacBook on her lap.

"Yeah," she said, not even looking up from whatever she was doing on her laptop.

"Okay," I said, realising that I probably wasn't going to get much more of an answer out of her and so it would be a completely worthless use of my time to do so.

I walked back down the stairs to the second floor and then walked back into the bedroom I shared with Rachel, hoping that Carol might still be in there to discuss the important ins and outs of running this household, as the kids being happy in their own rooms meant that this would be a perfect opportunity for us to have a conversation about this.

Carol and Rachel were both in the room still and so I asked the two of them whether they wanted to start to talk about the plans for the week, and delegating important bits of adult life to each other.

"So, is there anything that we need to prioritise for the coming week?" I asked Rachel and Carol.

"Only making sure that we have enough food to feed ourselves and all three of the kids, as I think we are definitely now running low," Carol said, as whilst she had been the main woman in the house, she had been doing everything that had been Rachel's responsibility when she was still well.

Rachel laughed, because I knew that she would be able to relate to the struggle that Carol and I had felt whilst she was in hospital, as we had both been experiencing how finite any resources that we would buy would end up being.