"Out of the way!", Yolanda yelled, carrying the boxes full of tapes to be destroyed. Damn useless rubbish, she thought. The worst part of the job was having to carry the boxes up and down the always crowded hallways of Abbey Road Studios. She knocked over a man on the way, and all the tapes flew by.

"Oh God damn it!", she yelled.

"Yolla, is that you?"

She raised up her head.

"Hiya, Paul! Didn’t know I’d see you so soon.", she said.

"Want some help?"

"For God’s sake! Please!", she smiled. One by one the tapes were disappearing again into the box.

"The useless ones.", she said.

"Poor of the guys who recorded them."

"Well, something is got to give, sir", she said. "Not everybody is meant to be playing, if you know what I mean. This is just the game we play."

"Don’t you feel guilty?"

She sighed, picking up the box. "All the time. But you learn how to grow with a stone heart when you deal with the lions."

What happened next?

We became quite friends. Well, stumbling on each other all the time, no wonder. Whenever it was possible to, we were talking. I guess that it was a tell-tale of what was to come.

Do you really think so?

Now that I know the truth...yes, I do.

"Yolanda Fairchild here", Yolanda said, picking up the phone.

"Yolla? Here’s Mica."

Mica was Yolanda’s family long time neighbour.

"Hey, Mica, what’s up, you don’t sound well."

"And I am not, little girl. Your dad...he’s on the hospital."

"Mrs Baker!", the doctor called. Ophelia turned to answer him.

"How is my husband?"

"I am sorry, Mrs. Baker, but the news ain’t the greatest. Your husband will have to pass through one operation."

Yolanda, leaned on the wall, just heard the news as if a knife was entering her brain. Jerome Baker, that surely wasn’t the weak kind, was on the hospital. Yolla just looked to her mother, seeing her straight face while talking to the doctor, and yet knowing she was breaking inside.

"Yolla", Ophelia called. "Can you do me a favour?"

"Sure, Mum."

"Listen, take the kids to Leeds. I already called Margot up. I don’t want them to hang around here while their father is on the hospital. You understand, don’t you?"

"Yes, Mum, I do. I just don’t agree, but, anyway..."

"Yolla, this is serious. And I am afraid of what can happen."

"Alright, alright, I do it. I just need to go to The Road to get some stuff I had to finish and we’ll be on the road to Leeds."

"Alright. I will call the children up, to tell them to get packed."

Yolanda just nodded, and walked away, to the front door.

Before she slipped away, she looked back to se Ophelia Baker sat down on a chair, praying.

Yolanda just threw the things on the handbag, still blinded by the confusion in her brain. Jerome was in hospital. He would get out alive...would he? She heard the doctor... how it was to pray? She had forgotten.

Someone knocked on the door. "Yolla?"

"Come in!", she shouted.

The door opened and Yolanda turned back.

"Something’s wrong?"

"Everything, Paul. Jerome’s in the hospital, he had one kidney crisis, I think. I am taking my brothers to Leeds tonight...my Mum don’t want them to hang around in the hospital."

"Is he that bad?"

"Yeah...He is.", she said, in a defeat. "Man I am lost."

"I suppose you’re really. Listen, if you need some help, I am around."

Yolanda headed for the door, touching his shoulder. "Thanks for the support, Paul. Well, I am off to the night. Leeds is waiting for me."

She just left the room, with only one image on her mind – her mother, praying on the hospital. She didn’t want Jerome to die. He was the kind
of man that deserved to live forever. And he would live.