Working back and forth between the Archers and Laura, Brenda managed to get the segments featuring them finished on Tuesday evening. On Wednesday, she had a long filmed interview with Dr. Thompson; he or Susan took her and the crew around the campus, showing off the place and some of the ways it was special. That involved talking with several students about the experiences they’d had there.

The more Brenda covered the story, the more interested she became in the place. They really did have something special here, something that you usually didn’t find in higher education, and she wanted to show it off. Maybe Susan’s suggestion of doing a piece on the college and Dr. Thompson wasn’t just a quid pro quo for setting up the stories with the Archers and Laura Delacroix, after all.

Brenda managed to wrap up filming the story late on Thursday. That evening she caught a plane back to New York. She knew she had a lot of work to do; the segment was scheduled for Sunday evening on WNN Newsmagazine. On the plane with her she had hours worth of tape, actually digital files, and somehow they’d have to be boiled down into the forty-four minutes available on the broadcast. She knew she’d have to do most of the work herself, and might be busy with it right up until air time, but a story like this, she knew, was worth the extra effort.

By putting in a lot of effort, she made it. She was pleased and proud with the piece, especially in that no other news media had managed to get such an in-depth feature on Cody and Jan. They were a very special young couple, who had a great deal of story to tell.

On Sunday evening the residents of the Spearfish Lake House gathered in the two-bedroom apartment to watch the piece – there was more room there than anyplace else in the house. Susan had managed to borrow a big-screen TV so they wouldn’t have to watch it on her tiny portable, and once again she even provided pizza.

Laura and Stacy were there, too; by now they’d become sort of honorary residents of the house. They’d asked Cody if there was a chance that an apartment would be available there the next year. He told them that most of the residents looked like they planned on staying for a while, but his and Jan’s apartment might be available if they had to go somewhere else for his law school.

The segment on Cody and Jan took up nearly half of the show. Susan thought that perhaps Brenda had skimmed over some of the interesting parts, but she admitted it was a lot to jam into a short period of time; Brenda could have easily filled the hour just on them. Even so, there were some memorable moments, like when Jan said, “I was laying there on the floor dying, then my guardian angel came into the room and took me from hell to heaven in three shots.”

Even more moving was what Jan said when Brenda asked her what advice she had to other girls caught in bad situations. Jan turned away from Brenda and talked right at the camera. “From one who has been there, I ask you, no, I beg you, to live. Do not give up. There is a chance things will get better for you, but you will never know if you let yourself die.”

The next segment was the one on Southern Michigan University, and it was also very well done. Dr. Thompson was at his best: jovial, visionary, and inspiring. He talked about the philosophy of the institution a bit, and Susan heard words she’d heard him say before, things like “There are plenty of liberal arts colleges that can prepare students for careers in fast food joints. We prepare serious students for quality careers.” Some of his remarks were even pithier, and were bound to be controversial. That, of course, was what he intended in the first place, to draw attention to the university so people could look at what was different and see that this was education of the future, not of the past.

“I think we’re going to get some hits on the website out of that one,” Susan commented in the commercial break following the segment on Dr. Thompson and the university. “And with any kind of luck, George Wilt is going to be even busier over in the admissions office.”

The final segment was the piece on Laura and her chastity belt, and was a little bit lighthearted. It showed Laura as a perfectly normal college girl, with an unusual interest, but one that she had plenty of good reasons for. During one part of the interview she was wearing a short shirt that showed the chastity belt clearly. Laura said that wearing the belt was quite comfortable for her, and even showed with some gymnastic moves that it only limited her flexibility slightly.

They didn’t get into the story of the attempted rape on campus very deeply, but discussed the one that had caused her to start wearing a chastity belt in the first place. “I can’t recommend it as the solution for everybody,” she told Brenda. “In fact, I can’t really recommend it as a solution for myself. But I’m now comfortable wearing it, and it reminds me that I’m the one responsible for what happens to my body, not anyone else. If there are times that it only makes me stop and think about what I’m doing, it’s worth it to me.”

Brenda even interviewed Stacy, asking what she thought about her roomie wearing a chastity belt. “I think it’s pretty cool, and it doesn’t cause any problems,” Stacy said on camera. “It’s not the usual thing, but she has every right to do it if she wants to, so it’s fine with me.”

Brenda and Laura did discuss the shooting, and what had happened; there was even a close-up of the ding in the chastity belt that Reed’s bullet had left. “I’m very glad I was wearing it,” Laura said. “If I hadn’t been, the shot would probably have destroyed my kidney.”

But she added one final caveat. “If you are the one who wants to wear a chastity belt, then that’s fine. If it’s forced on you by someone else, it’s not fine and could well be abuse. It’s up to you to make the decision to wear one, not someone else.”

At the end of the broadcast, Brenda had an on-the-air comment. “Southern Michigan University is an unusual place, and it draws some unusual students. But they’re students who are interested in excellence, in overcoming challenges. Expect the university and its graduates to be making some waves in the next few years. I doubt this is the last we’ll hear from them.”

The mood in the two-bedroom apartment was pretty light once the program was over. Everyone thought the stories had been very well done, and they’d showed Cody and Jan, Laura, Dr. Thompson, and the university in the best light possible considering the brief amount of time Brenda had to work with. Once again, Susan said she thought that Wilt was going to be pretty busy starting the next few days.

The pizza arrived about that time, and people were just digging into the boxes when Stacy’s cell phone rang. She’d been expecting the call; she’d told her parents that she might have brief spot on WNN Newsmagazine this evening, but hadn’t gotten into the details.

As expected, her mother was pretty hyper, even for her. “Stacy!” her mother said. “How can you live with a girl like that as your roommate?”

“Like I said on the show, Mom, Laura is pretty cool.”

“But wearing a chastity belt? And showing it off to the whole country? What kind of pervert is she?”

“Mom, she’s not one at all. It’s like she said on the show. She wants to be in control of what happens to her body, not anyone else, and it makes her stop and think about what she’s doing before she does it.”

“But a chastity belt? That’s the strangest thing I ever heard of! I think maybe your father and I had better come and get you so you can go to the community college like we wanted you to do in the first place!”

“Actually, Mom,” Stacy said, grinning at Laura – who was overhearing at least part of the conversation, “I think maybe she has a good idea. I think maybe you ought to consider buying me one for Christmas, so long as I know the combination to the lock. If you do get me one, get one of the custom-made German jobs, not the cheap Chinese crap you can get on E-bay. Laura says they don’t fit worth a darn.”

“Stacy, you can’t be serious!”

“Oh, I’m very serious, Mom,” Stacy said, knowing she had her mother on the run for once and was enjoying every second of it. “Actually, she’s right. I need to be the one who’s in charge of what happens to me. After all, I’m an adult now, and that’s how it’s supposed to be. I need to be able to be the one to make the decisions for me, not someone else, and that means whether I stay here or go home and to the community college, just as much as it’s my decision to wear a chastity belt or not.”

“Stacy, we’d be much happier if you were safe at home, and going to the community college. That place isn’t good for you.”

“Oh, it’s very good for me,” she replied. “In fact, it’s probably the best place for me at this time in my life, and I don’t intend to leave here to go to that stupid community college. That’s my decision to make now, not yours, and I don’t intend to change my mind.”

*   *   *

A daily concern around Southern Michigan University for the next few weeks was the condition of Elise Simpkins. The tall blonde Wiccan girl had been very, very near death from Reed’s rampage before Cody finally brought it to a halt. She was barely alive when she’d finally made it to the emergency room, and one of the most heroic efforts in the hospital’s history had been necessary to stabilize her. At one point there had been discussion of having her flown by helicopter to a larger regional hospital, and the helicopter had been standing by on the lawn of the hospital to take her – but no one was willing to take the risk; things were that precarious.

Fortunately, it hadn’t been necessary. By very great effort, many bags of blood, and emergency surgery, her condition had been stabilized. It seemed like a miracle that she was still alive, but perhaps the miracle had been aided by the prayers to the Goddess of her circle by fellow Wiccans at the university. They wouldn’t claim it as a miracle – they were not the kind of people who claimed anything done by the Goddess was a miracle – but they had to give thanks to the Goddess for Her efforts anyway.

Elise was still in very bad shape and needed round-the-clock efforts in intensive care for days to come. As time passed she slowly improved, only to be struck down again by a stubborn staph infection that drove her back almost to the brink of death. Her friends knew of her battle for life – indeed, though the hospital only announced that her condition was “critical,” the students at the university knew a lot more – her status was updated frequently on the university’s message board. It is only rarely that such details as blood pressure and heart rate are so widely known or so intently watched. Once again she was buoyed to some extent by the prayers of her fellow Wiccans – and by a spreading circle of Christians, led by Reverend Fowler and the Hawthorne First Methodist Church.

Elise’s survival became, to some extent, the heartbeat of the university itself. If she survived, it would mean that Reed’s rampage had been a total failure, as irrelevant in reality as his ranting before he started shooting. If she were to die, he would have been victorious; but if she lived, no matter the difficulty of her recovery, the spirit of the university would be the winner.

One of the sad things about the affair was that Elise’s parents were barely aware of her struggle for life, and they really didn’t care. They had rejected her, driven her out of their lives, because of her dedication to the Goddess. They called her, at best, “a heretic” and many, not only the Wiccans of Southern Michigan University, thought her parents would have been just as happy if she’d died. They never once came to see her while she was in the hospital, and many, including Elise, were happy that they hadn’t.

Elise had plenty of visitors, though – after she was cleared for visitation fully as many as the hospital would allow. There was no reason for her to be bored during her recovery, and for her, boredom was almost as great an enemy as death itself.

As she grew better, she tried to keep up on class work, with the help not only of her fellow students, but of her professors themselves. In a way, it was a futile effort; she had been carrying too big of a class load to keep up in her condition, though she did drop some classes to concentrate on just a couple of them. She was a senior, and failing to finish some of those classes meant that she couldn’t graduate.

Dr. Thompson was among those who visited her frequently. He usually didn’t stay long, but tried to help keep her spirits up. One day she mentioned her frustration at not being able to stay current with her classes – and that she just wasn’t going to have the funds to finish them another year. “Don’t worry about that,” Dr. Thompson told her. “Concentrate on getting well. You can finish your classes another year. Under the circumstances, we can consider that your tuition has already been paid.”

“Dr. Thompson,” she replied in surprise. “Do you really mean that?”

“Of course I meant it or I wouldn’t have said it,” he smiled. “I for one think we owe it to you. Elise, you have no idea how important you’ve become to everyone, here at school and more. We want you to be all you can be, even if it takes a little extra time to achieve it.”

As the days and weeks passed, Elise got better and better, and the time was drawing near when she could leave the hospital, given proper home care. Of course, she had no home to go to, but Darrin and Bremusa offered to take her in. While she would need ongoing outpatient care for some time to come, there were many offers to provide in-home nursing assistance – in fact, the nursing school at the university took her on as a special project.

The day finally came when she could leave the hospital, still weak and wan, but victorious over death, and victorious over Reed. As her fellow Wiccans – Darrin, Bremusa, Alan, and Summer – carried the things she’d accumulated in her month in the hospital, a nurse rolled her out the front door in a wheelchair, where she was met by a sight she’d never expected to see in her life.

Over a thousand people were gathered there to cheer her release! There were even television crews there recording it, and the crowd, while partly Southern Michigan University students, also had many others there. The Hawthorne First United Methodist Church, led by Reverend Fowler, had good representation, but there were a lot from other churches, too. While they may not have shared a faith, Reverend Fowler had made the point around the community time and time again that someone who had almost died for her faith deserved the respect of believers of all religions.

Elise was flabbergasted, but was able to give a small wave and offer her thanks to those who had come just to show that they cared. In many ways, that was the final healing of the wounds caused by Reed and his pistol.

*   *   *

Elise’s release from the hospital was the signal for something Dr. Thompson had long decided on. A few days later there was a gathering on the quad in front of the Community Services Center; a couple of local television stations even covered it. Susan had prevailed on Brenda Hodunk of World News Network to make a special trip out for the occasion, and she had a pickup camera crew with her.

Interestingly enough, the one surviving former trustee of Hawthorne College was there, to make clear by his presence that the gunman had not honored the memory of the college, but in fact defiled it. Although he was quite elderly, he made the point several times that the former college, now represented by him alone, repudiated the maniac’s actions.

Cameras were rolling as Dr. Thompson addressed the crowd over a public address system. “Here at Southern Michigan University we haven’t been very active about naming buildings,” he told them. “We named the Wyndham Science Center after a large donor, but honestly, we’ve held off on some others with the idea that they may be available to honor future donors. But given the events of one day last September, and especially the heroism of a couple of our students, we’re making an exception to that rule. Here at Southern we feel it’s best if students can take care of themselves. Oh, we in the administration try to help where we can, but we think that students are best qualified to help other students.

“The best example I can think of took place in this building back in September, when a crazed gunman tried to break the spirit of this place. He was stopped by one of our students, who was working part-time as a police officer, Cody Archer. The fact that the gunman wasn’t successful in killing anyone is at least in part due to another of our students, Janice Archer, who rendered first aid with her bare hands to keep the worst wounded of the victims of the gunman alive. She is here with us today, Elise Simpkins.”

There was a small round of applause. Dr. Thompson went on, “In honor of this sterling example of students taking care of students, we have decided to take the unprecedented step of honoring them, not as financial donors, but as heroes who contributed much to maintaining the spirit of Southern Michigan University. Mr. Archer, Ms. Archer, Ms. Simpkins, I would ask you to remove the cover of the plaque rededicating this building as the Archer Community Services Center.”

There was a big round of applause as the three pulled on a cord, revealing a simple plaque dedicating the building.

Susan knew that Cody and Jan had both protested the idea; they thought they’d done what needed to be done and deserved no special honor. But both Susan and Dr. Thompson pointed out that the publicity in the wake of the shooting would be good for the university. And, it would point out, if anyone still needed reminding, that Cody’s actions that day had the full approval of the university, and repudiated the stories that deRidder had spread around about him. Nothing had been heard about the former Dean of Students in a while, but Susan privately hoped he enjoyed pushing meat around a grill in some burger shack.

“I have one more special announcement,” Dr. Thompson continued. “After the incident in September, and after the television stories that were produced, especially the one on World News Network by Ms. Brenda Hodunk, the university received several donations with the stipulation that the Archers use the money to further their education. I am pleased to announce that Notre Dame has accepted Mr. Archer to their law school, and Ms. Archer to their nurse practitioner program, starting next fall. Between donations and a couple of scholarships, their tuition at Notre Dame is fully paid.”

That one shocked both Cody and Jan – neither one of them had any idea it was coming. Susan had known about it, but Dr. Thompson had asked her to keep her mouth shut. “Dr. Thompson,” Cody said quietly. “I still feel that Jan and I did what we had to do out of a spirit of community service, and we didn’t expect any reward for it other than the satisfaction of knowing we’d done what needed to be done. But nevertheless, speaking for Jan, we both deeply appreciate the honor you’ve given us today, and we have to thank the donors and Notre Dame for having faith in us.”

“It’s richly deserved, Mr. Archer,” Dr. Thompson said. “That’s part of the reason why I think naming this building the Archer Community Services Center is a testimony to what community service is all about. Both of you have honored us by your presence here.”

There was a formal reception in the Student Union lounge following the ceremony, and several of the people who had contributed that day were present. Cody and Jan and the others made nice, but at the same time they hoped that the ceremony would put the day of the shooting behind them, so they could get on with their lives.

Several hours later, there was a smaller, more informal gathering in the two-bedroom apartment in the Spearfish Lake House. All of the residents were there, of course, along with Laura and Stacy. “I still don’t like it,” Cody said. “But Dr. Thompson had our arms twisted up behind our backs, so we really had no choice but to do it.”

“That’s not saying that Cody and I aren’t deeply grateful for the scholarships, of course,” Jan added. “But I think today was a bit much, too.”

“You two don’t get it, do you?” Susan shook her head. “That wasn’t done because of what you did that day. Yes, you did your duty, and you did what needed to be done. I don’t want to say that anyone could have done it, because I couldn’t have done it. I don’t have your training or your skills, for one thing.”

“If you had the training you could have done it and you certainly would have,” Cody protested.

“Perhaps so,” she said. “But what Dr. Thompson did was something else. He wanted to make symbols of you, symbols of what people should aspire to, especially in terms of community service. Using you as symbols gives other people a goal they can aspire to. Don’t get me wrong. Dr. Thompson knew what he was doing, and he was doing it for the good of the university, not for you. Reed could have broken us by his actions. If he’d been successful, panic and paranoia could have resulted, and that could have damaged or destroyed the delicate spirit of this place. You two, and Elise, just made it stronger. That’s the point Dr. Thompson was trying to make.”

“Do you really think that?” Cody asked.

“I’m sure that’s how Dr. Thompson thinks,” Susan smiled. “Believe me, I spent hours trying to talk him out of doing what he did today because I knew you’d be embarrassed by it. Maybe I was wrong. All I know is that the university will be stronger as a result of what you did, and that includes what you did today.”

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