Hello everyone... two one shots in two days? I seem to be writing again. Anyway, here is another slightly different take on Sam and Tom. Hope you like it and thank you once more to Anny, for convincing me to write again.
History repeating
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
The darkness was overwhelming to the point where Sam was certain she had frozen to the spot in fear at the blackness that surrounded her. She was channelling her focus onto the small strip of light that glowed dimly through the crack below her bedroom door and desperately wished that she could switch on the lamp that sat atop her bedside cabinet without waking the sleeping giant who was lying on her duvet, sprawled out and snoring as only a man who had consumed his bodyweight in alcohol that day could.
She found herself leaning back against the hard wooden frame of the bed, attempting to root herself back in reality and away from the thoughts that invaded her mind every single time someone turned out the lights. She dragged her knees up in front of her, wrapping her arms around them as if by holding herself in tightly she could somehow stop the terror from consuming her.
Sam knew that she had learned to sleep in the dark curled in Tom's arms, mainly because his barely concealed smirk of amusement when she had revealed her fear had given her little option if she had wanted to save face. However there was a significant difference between being snuggled in beside him and being sat like a statue on the floor, too afraid to leave him in the state that he was in and afraid to do anything that might disturb him given her uncertainty at the mood he would be in when he awoke.
The past few months had been an exceptionally difficult time for Tom, she knew that this was not a matter for dispute and she was sure it would have knocked anyone sideways to have a complaint made about them for such a serious mistake, especially one which came down to a single call of judgement on a busy day. Sam reflected that she would have understood if Tom's confidence had been knocked or if he had needed some space to get his own head together, but she was sure that things had started to change even before the baby incident. She dragged her mind back to the day he had made such a fuss about declaring to the world they were together via a highly embarrassing public kiss in the ED reception and felt confident enough of her memories to acknowledge that it had been from that day things had become more intense. She had to inwardly concede that as much as all those around them had put the recent changes in Tom's behaviour down to his misdiagnosis, there was something more to it than that.
She recalled that she had first become aware of his panic attacks a week after the complaint was lodged, when she was woken in the darkness being dislodged from his warm embrace to find herself pinned to the bed by his tight grasp as he struggled to catch his breath. Sam had always prided herself on being strong, but caught off guard half asleep she had been unable to free herself and had needed to bite back her terror to talk him down from the disturbed heightened state he had agitated himself into.
The fingertip bruises from that night and others since were only just visible around her wrist and easily concealed by a light touch of make-up, but unfortunately seemed to hurt disproportionately to their size. The morning after the first time Sam vividly recalled Tom dismissing her concern as unnecessary, but it was she who had witnessed the escalation of attacks night after night as the man who shared her bed appeared to be haunted by nightmares that she was sure were triggered by far more than just one incident with a baby. Sam struggled to remember the last night that she had slept soundly, or felt at all safe as she lay in his arms, but in spite of this she knew that she could not walk away from him when he needed her.
Sam recollected that things had been bad enough in the immediate aftermath of the complaint, but with the frequent panic attacks worsening the situation she had watched with horror as Tom had struggled to keep his own head above water at work. His insistence that Zoe could never know of the situation, apparently in fear that this would compound her negative opinion of him and potentially lead to his dismissal, had weighed heavily upon Sam's own shoulders as well as his and she knew that when she looked in the mirror these days the eyes staring back at her were of someone who had been dragged down to a place where she barely recognised herself anymore.
She had reluctantly accepted his refusal to talk about his emotional state, so nights in the bar after work had become commonplace to the point where they had become part of their daily routine. A long shift, followed by several hours in the pub pretending their world hadn't irreparably changed had become standard, as had the hurried sex almost the second they stepped through her front door. Sam had long since grown used to her nights being lonely, as she worked hard to convince her eyes to close beside the man who had by then slipped off into a drunken stupor, knowing full well that she was now fighting both her own fear of the dark and her constant edginess about when he would next wake in fright.
Sam reflected that she should have seen Tom's suspension coming, given that it wasn't much of a leap between his erratic behaviour and constant snappiness and him lashing out at the relative of a patient who had riled him. She knew that in attempting to hide the events from Zoe all she had actually done was worsen them, but when Tom had returned to the hospital thirty minutes later Sam had known he had been drinking before Dr Hanna had even had chance to comment on it. Watching him being ordered to hand back his ID card and being escorted off the premises had been heartbreaking, but it had been when Zoe had made it clear she was unimpressed with Sam's own behaviour that it had hit her quite how out of control her life had become and how much she was risking to stay by his side.
She hated to admit to herself how awful things had gotten, but these days she knew that whilst she was at work, having to do twice as much to cover for him and attempt to keep Zoe on side, Tom was spending his days in the pub and by the time she eventually could leave and track him down he was barely able to stand, never mind speak. In fact she was almost grateful that he was so drunk he had gone past the point of being capable of anything other than sleeping it off, despite her deep rooted concern that the lack of sex in their relationship might mean he was getting it elsewhere and also her pondering at what point she had ceased to be his girlfriend and became his carer.
Sam considered it a miracle that to date she had not damaged her back supporting him up the stairs to bed and she found herself cursing him for being so tall, that not only was he difficult to manoeuvre but he took up the majority of her bed. She remembered finding this comforting when they had first been sleeping beside each other and she had snuggled up into his chest, but these days it felt just an annoyance, as was the fact that he had moved in with her by default as he was incapable of being left alone anymore.
Sam cocked her head slightly, a memory triggering her to reach out to the bottom drawer of her bedside cabinet and pull out a photo that she could barely see through the near complete darkness. Sam traced the image from memory, recalling every single moment of the day she had spent with Dylan after her exams. It was a picture of happier times that she had allowed to still adorn her bedside until Tom had become a semi-permanent fixture. She recalled the moment, not long after she and Dylan were married, back when they had been relatively carefree just as Tom and her had been just before Christmas. Not long after the picture had been taken Sam had borne witness to Dylan making an incredibly rare mistake, one that nearly cost him his career and changed him forever, and she recollected how he had turned to alcohol rather than her as he descended into despair.
Sam thoughts drifted back to the night that she had played rock, paper, scissors in the pub with Tom and how relieved she had been to shake off the weight of responsibility she had felt at being Dylan's ex-wife by spending one supposedly uncomplicated night with a colleague. She had not considered the consequences of her behaviour beforehand; in fact she had willingly permitted herself to be reckless because she had been desperate to see where a relationship with someone as seemingly straightforward as Dr Kent would take her. She had never really been the one night stand kind of girl, that one particular night notwithstanding, and Dylan had been right when he had advised Tom that she wouldn't kiss just anyone. However after years of struggling to support the man she had loved and how helpless she had felt every single time Dylan had fallen, Sam knew that all she had wanted was the apparently simple life the rest of the world appeared to be able to achieve. Yet she conceded that what she had been expecting to occur with Tom had been based on one night back when they had both, to a degree at least, been accepting of the casual element of their connection, rather than the puppet-masterly sounding strings attached commitment they appeared to have entered into on Tom's insistence a few months ago.
A noise from behind her startled her, causing her to flinch in the darkness and drop the photo frame that she had been absentmindedly still holding onto. Sam put her hand down to steady herself and winced as the glass splinters prickled the skin of her palm, causing her to curse silently at having broken the frame that had been holding together the illusion of happiness the picture captured so effortlessly. She turned herself slightly to check on Tom, only for him to roll away from her and noisily vomit over her side of the bed.
Tears stung the back of her eyes as Sam remembered despondently the lifetime she had spent clearing up after her husband, only for her to realise too late that underneath it all she had loved him more than life. She reached her fingers up to brush her eyes and felt the warm droplets of blood from her hand spill down onto her cheek, recollecting in an instant the night when Dylan had raised his hand to her in an act of sheer desperation. She was certain that he had scared himself more than her that night, but as she had fled into the darkness she knew that she would return. No one had been more horrified than her when he had not been there for her to come back to and her destructive behaviour with a soldier comrade on finding her husband had gone AWOL had been the final nail in the coffin of her doomed marriage.
Sam considered the man in front of her momentarily, knowing that what really scared her is that she wasn't sure that if Tom raised his hand he would actually stop himself from hurting her. She thought back to last summer, when she had first really taken note of the man as a colleague and a friend, and wondered how the guy who had seemed such a polar opposite to Dylan had turned out to have such similar tendencies. His complete lack of similarity with her ex-husband had been one of the things Sam had found attractive about him, back when she had hoped any potential relationship between them would be a completely fresh start for her and she was struggling to comprehend how that had led her back to being trapped in the same situation, just with someone else.
To have one man she adored turn from competent doctor into alcoholic right in front of her eyes had been one thing, to have a second was something else completely. She recalled her mum telling her that history would always repeat itself when her father had left them for the second time, with the first time being a tragedy of sadness that he had gone and the second being a farce because he should never have been allowed to come back in the first place. Sam reflected that she had always considered her mum weak for permitting her dad to walk back into their lives and take a wrecking ball to them for the second time, that had been what had driven her to escape to medical school and the army as soon as she was eligible, and yet she had to acknowledge that here she was, doing exactly the same thing, seemingly unable to help herself.
The threatened tears escaped down her face as Sam buried her head in her hands, silently sobbing into the darkness, with the tearstained blood on her skin mixing with the overwhelming stench of sick in the air and causing her to shake uncontrollably. She knew that in the morning she would clear up after him, make him breakfast and then set off to work just like any other day and that just like any other day, she would come home to a similar set of circumstances again tomorrow night. History appeared doomed to repeat itself once again, only unlike last time Sam was certain that the man currently snoring beside her sprawled across the vomit covered sheets would not be doing the honourable thing and setting her free. She spread her hands out in front of her face, staring at the shadowy shapes in the blackness and was certain that if she squinted she could see the puppet strings attaching her to him forevermore, something even she had to admit made this situation just as much a farce as it was a tragedy.
Thank you. I'd be interested in hearing your views, so please review!