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Jess and Cal's Visit to Maryland (2037) Event

Jess and Cal’s visit to Maryland was Jess Ross and Cal Ross’s nearly two-week stay with the Lee family in late spring or early summer 2037. It was Cal’s first in-person meeting with Jae Lee, following more than a year of video calls between Portland and Baltimore. During the visit, the two young men developed the physical and daily rhythms that distance had prevented, and Jess decided to return to Portland only long enough to transfer Cal’s care and prepare their permanent move.

Background and Planning

Cal and Jae met through a video call arranged by Jess and Nari Lee in early 2036. Their communication combined AAC, gesture, shared vocalizations, music, and periods of companionable silence. Calls became a regular part of both households, and Cal eventually asked whether he could visit.

Jess and Nari planned around both young men’s seizure risk, mobility, fatigue, communication, sensory needs, medications, equipment, and care routines. Cal was approximately six feet three inches tall, weighed almost 300 pounds, used a wheelchair, needed continuous supervision, and had wandered away before. The Lees prepared the accessible mother-in-law suite attached to their house while Jess retained a hotel reservation in case Cal could not settle there.

Charlie Rivera helped arrange a first-class flight upgrade for Cal’s first plane trip and, with Logan Weston, paid for an accessible rental van in Jess’s name. The flight from Portland left Cal exhausted, overheated, nauseated, and difficult to wake fully after landing. Jess managed his immediate personal care at BWI, collected the van, and stopped for one of Cal’s reliable McDonald’s meals before driving to the Lee home.

Arrival and First Meeting

Jae had slept very little while waiting for Cal and had fallen deeply asleep in his recliner by the time the Rosses reached the house. A welcome sign in the window helped Jess recognize the home. Nari woke Jae by telling him that Cal had arrived.

Cal got out under his own power and staggered toward Jae. Both young men shrieked when they recognized each other and collided in an immediate embrace. Cal squeezed harder than he intended; Jae accepted the contact and did not pull away. Jess and Nari met beside them and held each other while their sons converted a screen friendship into physical presence.

Inside, Jae offered Cal the recliner Logan had given him for Christmas because Cal looked exhausted. Cal initially indicated that the chair belonged to Jae, but Jae insisted. Jess connected Cal’s travel CPAP while Nari offered coffee and Minh Tran brought one of her muffins. Nari then showed Jess the attached suite, including its accessible bedroom, sitting area, and bathroom, and gave her privacy to recover from the trip.

Cal later woke from a deep nap confused and frightened because he could not find Jess. Jae reassured him until Nari came in, then Nari guided him to the suite. Cal threw himself onto Jess’s bed with relief. The Lee household’s monitor, charging dock, accessible bathing space, adjustable bed, and willingness to respond without treating his needs as an imposition allowed Jess to rest and care for him with more support than she had at home.

Daily Life During the Visit

Cal slept through the first night, an unusual stretch after years of waking at least once. Over the following days he remained close to Jae, listened intently while Jae played piano, and shared meals, television, rest, and personal communication that did not require either young man to perform conventional speech.

During one piano session, Cal had a drop seizure in the recliner. Jae recognized the seizure from his own experience with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome but became overwhelmed by fear for Cal; his crying escalated into an anxiety attack and worsening spasms. After both had stabilized, Jae asked whether they could rest together. Cal held him carefully, and both fell asleep. Their families repeated the arrangement with deliberate positioning and supervision because each young man settled more easily beside the other.

After several days, Jae requested a public outing. Jess, Nari, and Minh packed the two medical bags, loaded both wheelchairs into the accessible van, and took Cal and Jae to a mall during a quieter weekday period.

Mall and Ice-Cream Outing

Main article: Mall Outing with Cal and Jae (2037) - Event

Main article: Ice Cream Shop Fan Encounter (2037) - Event

At the Disney Store, Cal found a giant Mufasa plush and asked Jess for it. Jae decided to buy the gift with money from his music and documentary royalties. Nari supported the choice through the bounded spending-card system the Lees used to preserve Jae’s financial agency without exposing him to unrestricted financial risk.

Jae next asked Cal directly whether he wanted ice cream. The question mattered to Jess because Jae addressed Cal as the decision-maker rather than asking the nondisabled adults around him. At the shop, Jae remembered Minh’s strawberry-with-sprinkles order and made Cal laugh while telling him that Minh was the sun and that Cal needed a wife like her.

A young woman recognized Jae from his music and documentary work. Nari checked whether he wanted to meet her and be photographed. Cal moved into the photograph with Mufasa, turning the formal fan picture into a shared joke. During the drive home, he repeatedly enlarged his own and Jae’s faces and replayed the fan’s surprised greeting on his iPad.

The large Mufasa remained with Cal during the rest of the visit and was shipped to Portland after his departure rather than taken on the return flight.

Departure Crisis and the Offer of the Suite

Main article: Cal’s Meltdown and Fainting Episode (2037) - Event

Near the end of the visit, Jess reminded Cal that they would fly home to Portland. Cal and Jae had been living in the immediate present and had not continued holding the future separation in mind. Cal initially asked where they were going, then understood that Portland meant leaving Jae.

Cal’s distress escalated into a severe autistic meltdown, hyperventilation, vomiting, and syncope. Minseo Lee, then a first-year medical student, recognized that he was about to collapse. She and Joon-Ho protected his head, lowered and positioned his nearly 300-pound body, monitored his recovery, and kept Jess beside his face to orient him.

After regaining consciousness, Cal asked for Jae. Jae had crashed in his own room after hearing Cal’s distress. With support, Cal went to him, sat on Jae’s bed, lifted him against his chest, and held him while both young men cried and then slept.

Joon-Ho watched them and said, “The apartment is there.” Nari initially interpreted his flat statement as an objection that the Rosses could not simply uproot their lives. Joon-Ho corrected her: that was not what he had said. Jess then understood that he was offering the attached suite as their Baltimore home.

Jess’s Decision and Charlie and Logan’s Visit

Jess called her mother and sisters from the suite. They argued that she had known the Lees only two weeks, that Cal’s specialists and established services were in Oregon, and that adding another medically complex person to the Lee household would be unfair. Jess answered that Oregon had supplied appointments and equipment without giving Cal a peer community or an ordinary social life.

She then called Logan and asked to speak with Charlie as well. Logan told her that Cal thriving in disability community was survival rather than selfishness. Charlie told her to look at Cal rather than the calendar or her relatives’ fear and to fight for the disabled joy she had witnessed. The call helped Jess name the decision already taking shape: she would take Cal back to Portland to transfer his care, pack, and close out their life there, but they would not remain.

Charlie and Logan visited the next day. Cal had not met them before. He recognized Charlie’s small body, thin build, and open happiness as familiar qualities he associated with Jae and pulled him into a powerful hug. The pressure made Charlie dizzy and nauseated, although he reassured both Cal and the repeatedly apologizing Jess. When Charlie later vomited almost silently into a bag Logan gave him, Cal noticed, used gesture to ask whether Charlie’s stomach and mouth were sick, and accepted Charlie’s joking reassurance.

Cal laughed with Charlie, then gave him his original dinosaur plush when Charlie admitted that he needed to sleep. Cal settled in the recliner and slept too. Jae, depleted by the preceding days and the approaching separation, slept in Logan’s lap. Their visit ended with the room holding several disabled people resting together without apology.

Return to Portland

Jess repeatedly explained that they would return, but Cal could not reliably map that promise across an abstract span of months. He cried through the drive and airport, rejected strangers’ attempts to distract him, and developed a headache that combined with airsickness and cabin pressure during the nearly six-hour flight.

Jess’s mother met them after landing. Cal needed Jess beside him in the back seat, and the headache had become a migraine severe enough that he vomited in the car before sleeping after pain medication. During the following days, he withdrew, slept more, vocalized less, and engaged less with his usual activities.

The Mufasa package arrived during that period. Cal pulled the lion against his chest and laughed for the first time since Baltimore. Jess sent the Lees a photograph, and the boys resumed FaceTime while both families began the medical, housing, construction, and travel work required for the March 2038 relocation.

Long-Term Consequences

The visit led directly to the expansion of the Lees’ one-bedroom suite into separate bedrooms for Jess and Cal and to their permanent March 2038 move. It also established Jess’s relationships with Nari, Joon-Ho, Minh, Minseo, Charlie, and Logan as a support network distinct from Cal’s clinical providers.

For Cal and Jae, the visit established how they communicated, rested, played, and responded to one another’s medical and emotional crises in physical space. The months apart did not create the friendship; they confirmed how much of their daily wellbeing now depended on being able to live it outside a screen.

Events Personal Milestones 2037 Ross Family Lee Family Baltimore