You've been going by her house every day after school to take care of her. You just don't trust her mom or her family to feed her, wash her, or make sure she takes her medicine. In fact, you still remember when she broke her ankle back in 7th grade and some junkie relative stole her pain pills, so you've been hiding her medicine this time around. You make sure she takes it, and that she eats, then do your homework in her bedroom while she sleeps or reads or listens to her PearPod; and when it's late and Spencer finally has to call you to tell you to come home, you squeeze her hand and promise you'll do it all again tomorrow. If she's awake, she'll smile weakly and nod.
You're just glad she's close to being the same old Sam again; maybe her old energy and spunk haven't returned yet, but at least she still loves ham and calls you 'cupcake' and Freddie 'Fredwad' when he comes over, and can still put that exaggeratedly bored expression on her face when you start talking about school. But man, when she first woke up in the hospital, she didn't know who Spencer was, or even recognize Melanie. She knew you, though; some primal part of her brain never forgot your face, and cried out for you whenever you left the room.
But that was months ago, and now she's talking normally again and each day growing more anxious to get out of her room and back into the world again. So you drive over to her house after school on a warm, sunny Tuesday, carry your bookbag up the porch and inside, say 'hi' to her mom, and make your way down the hall to Sam's bedroom. You're not surprised to find her sleeping.
She's out of the covers, laying on her bed in a tank top and lime green boxer shorts. Her window is open, letting sunlight spill onto the carpet beside her bed and letting wind ruffle the curtains slightly. She's on her back with her head tilted slightly to the left, her arms straight at her sides, her left leg bent inward at the knee like some pose a ballerina would hold. You watch her chest rise and fall as she takes long, slow breaths through barely parted lips. The hemline of her tank top has risen a bit, revealing a pale sliver of tummy skin, and also the arc of one of her scars. Curling out of the leg of her boxers and down her right thigh is the jagged trail of another scar. The scars are still livid and red, and god, you can see part of another up near her collarbone, but that one winds back down and disappears under the thin white cotton.
You're constantly aware of the fragility of Sam now. She's always been larger than life and fearless, a blond bundle of demon energy, but right now you see just how small and compact her body has always been and how weak it still is. The legs that used to be so toned are just skinny now. Her skin is pale all over except where the consequences of 'the incident' are marked in angry red scars.
The scars are a part of her now, which you've accepted, and so is all the squishy red stuff inside of her. That's why the scars are there - those are the places where she was stitched back together to keep the squishy red stuff from falling out. Ever since you realized this you've been constantly aware that you too have the squishy red stuff inside, guts and organs and such constantly at work to keep you alive. And it freaks you out, because it makes your bodies seem like machines, like all the workings inside are just a bunch of mechanical processes. You just can't wrap your mind around that; what about the other parts of you? The memories and dreams and hopes, the part of you that loves? Where does all that stuff go when the body is broken?
You stand there watching her sleep and breathe, and you try to comprehend how if the physical part of her would have stopped working then you would have lost the Sam part of her forever.
And you are the only person to know the Sam part, really, because there is so more to her than just the ham-loving bully that everyone else thinks they know. You know the Sam that actually reads books, the Sam who cried at the end of Always, the Sam who swears every year on the anniversary of your friendship that she'll be your friend forever.
Sam would have never survived in that family if she showed her smart and sensitive sides, so she kept them hidden from everyone but you.
You glance at your wristwatch. It's not time for her to take her medicine yet, so you settle down at her desk and start on your homework. You keep glancing over your shoulder, checking on her. You would get up and cover her with a blanket, but it's warm in her room and there is a thin sheen of sweat on her forehead and in the fine blond hair around her ears.
You work on monomial equations for a while, then work on your Wordsworth essay until five o'clock. You get up and dig her pill bottles out from under the dirty clothes in her laundry hamper, then move to her bed. The angle of the sun has moved, throwing the sunlight onto the edge of her bed. She's turned her face further from it, but it catches her hair and highlights the many different shades of blond at play. You stand over her, your hand outstretched, about to shake her awake when your eye latches onto the scar on her thigh.
It's a thin red line moving in an irregular path south, like some lonely highway on a road map. This is the legacy of that night of 'the incident,' which is what Sam started referring to it as when she could talk coherently again - 'the incident,' never 'the accident.'
The scars don't make her any less beautiful. You've seen the ones on her back and chest and tummy, but you don't know how far up this one on her thigh goes. You can't help yourself. You touch it just above her knee, and with the lightest touch you trace it up a few inches.
That touch is all it takes to wake Sam up. Her eyes snap open and meet yours.
"Sorry," you whisper, withdrawing your hand and tucking it under your other arm as you cross your arms over your chest.
"No biggie," she says. The sleepiness in her eyes begins to evaporate and be replaced by that blue sparkle you know so well. She hitches up her shorts leg and shows you the puckered spot where the wound starts. "Right where my thigh meets my butt," she says.
You smile because you don't know what else to do.
"Time for your medicine," you tell her. You hand her the pills, and her big plastic Girly Cow mug with the spill-proof lid and straw that she keeps filled with vitamin water. She sits up, pops the whole handful of pills at once, and washes them down.
"I walked around for ten minutes straight today," she says proudly.
"No kidding? That's great, Sam."
"It'll be even greater when I can finally ride my skateboard and pound the chiz out of nubs who piss me off."
You laugh, but you know she means it because her eyes these last days are strong, which means she has the willpower even though her body hasn't repaired enough to catch up.
"Do you want to try to walk some more?"
"Maybe later," she says. "All that sleeping made me tired." With that, she plops back, rests her wrist across her forehead and, realizing she's been sweating, wipes it away.
"Do you want me to read to you?" you ask. Every day you've been reading out loud to her out of some crazy book about the zombie apocalypse, which gives you nightmares but which Sam loves.
"Don't you have homework?" she asks, her eyes closed.
"A little."
"I'll be alright if you want to finish that."
"It can wait. There's not that much left."
She's laying there, next to the sunlight, and you can see the energy going out of her body. You swear you can actually see the weakness creeping along her limbs and muscles as her body appears to be deflating. She turns her head from you.
"What's the matter, Sam?"
"I just feel bad."
"Do you want me to get you something? Some..."
"No," she interrupts. "I mean, I feel bad about... Have you even spent a single night at home since I got out of the hospital?"
You think about that. You can't remember. Before you can answer, she goes on.
"I feel bad that you've been putting your life on hold for me."
You shrug. "There's nothing more important to me."
And it really is that simple. There's nothing that could drag you away from this bedroom right now, not until Sam is up to full strength again and mended.
She turns back to you, opens her eyes. They pierce you with their blueness.
"I'm sorry it's all on you, and that you have to take care of me."
You shrug again, attempt to smile. "It's better than the alternative, 'cuz if I wasn't taking care of you it means you'd be dead, and I..."
Something catches in your throat. Until this moment you haven't realized how close you've been to the edge, how much was building inside of you ready to spill over, until you say those words: "You'd be dead." Suddenly, though, it's all welling up from deep inside, cutting you off in mid-sentence, demanding to get out. You can't stop your face from scrunching, you can't stop the tears that are blinding you, you can't stop the cry that seems to rip itself from your throat, or the sobs that wrack your body. You fall to your knees and bury your face in the blanket close to her body, letting your own body shudder and heave as you cry out these last few months of pent up fear and anguish and helplessness.
Her hands are in your hair, softly rubbing your head and squeezing your shoulders, soothing you as she whispers, "It's okay, Carls. Everything is going to be okay;" and even half broken she has strength enough for both of you.