The Day After
The day after Sam's funeral, when it was a done deal that he wasn't coming back, Nate began drinking.
At first he had held off. When Sam was diagnosed, he still saw him regularly. He didn't want Sam to see him drunk or hungover, the way he had seen his father most of the time.
And then Sam got to Stage 2. And then Stage 3. By the time Stage 4 rolled around, it had become a metaphorical staring contest between him and a bottle.
The bottle was winning.
But it wasn't just Sam. Maggie needed him sober, too. She was having a hard time keeping up with the bills and her job, and to let her take it all alone would have been cruel of him.
So he pushed on, fighting the bottle, trying to stay optimistic. To keep up with the bills, he continued working for IYS, traveling for very short times.
On one of these travels, he met up with Sophie. Of course, she knew everything, and immediately recommended Nate to someone she knew who could cure Sam. At first, he was ecstatic. He kept the news from Maggie, wanting to surprise her. Then he heard how much it would cost.
Knowing that they were pretty much out of money, he went to Ian.
First, he mentioned the expensive painting he'd recovered while away. He caught the thief as well, which certainly didn't hurt. Ian took all this well, happy that he didn't have to pay forty million dollars for the painting's insurance.
Then Nate mentioned the treatment he found for Sam. The one that was only one-fourth of what he'd recovered. And Ian's face went stone cold, and he refused. Even after taking a real look at their situation, he refused.
Nate was reduced to begging. Every day, Sam got worse. Every day, Nate pleaded for the simple one million. Every day, Ian claimed that it was experimental.
And then one day, it happened. Nate was driving home, discouraged, and he got a call from Maggie.
"Sam-" Maggie choked out on the phone, through tears. In the distance, a voice could be heard, announcing multiple codes regarding cancer. Nate made an illegal u-turn and reached the hospital in record time- only to see his son be defibrillated, and not respond.
Nate screamed incoherently. His entire world shattered before him, the eye of the storm a flat line.
He and Maggie did whatever they had to through tears and broken hearts, and came home robotically. Only it wasn't home. Not without Sam. Not without the meaning to their lives.
The last time Nate saw his son, alive, was in his room that morning. He told Nate that he saw their dog in his dream. The dog had been dead for a year, and Sam had been heartbroken over it. Maggie told him that their dog was in a better place, and Sam wanted to know what it looked like.
Nate remembered Sam that morning, saying that their dog visited him and told him that the wait was over. Nate's heart had iced over, but he brushed the feeling away and told his son to not talk to dead creatures.
Nate ran to his son's room, only to find it exactly the same. Books everywhere, clothes all over, toys scattered on the floor. One was on his bed, a stuffed dog he used to cuddle with on cold nights.
A puppy he named Sam, after himself.
Nate broke down, clutching the stuffed puppy as though it were a lifeline. Through his tears, he begged anyone who could hear him to let this be a dream, let him wake up, let Sam be alive...
When no response came, he went down to Maggie. She was in front of the fridge, unmoving. Nate walked over and saw a drawing on the fridge.
Three figures were drawn. One labeled 'Mommy', one 'me', and one 'Daddy'. And he and Maggie fell into each others arms, crying so hard they thought they would suffocate.
The pain was so sharp, so intense... Nate didn't know how to make it stop. It didn't exactly help that he looked in the mirror with self-hatred and disgust, knowing that he was the one who let his own son die.
He began drinking, elated when the memories began to fade and pained by the fact that he wanted to forget. This, in turn, led to more drinking and more pain, in an endless cycle.
Soon enough, Nate lost his job. Even before that, he lost Maggie, who left him because she couldn't handle losing her son and husband to cancer.
Nate began living a different life. Step one, he was drinking a lot. That in itself differed from his old lifestyle. But now that he was a fired IYS cop, he wanted to help people who were in situations like his. Maybe not having to do with children all the time, but people who were being taken advantage of by others who were hiding from the law. He took jobs and worked hard. Even alcohol couldn't make Nathan Ford lose his edge.
He never saw Sophie again. He figured that she blamed herself for Sam's death. He knew she shouldn't, but he couldn't bring himself to find her. The memories she brought with her were just too much for him...
...
...
"...Nate... Nate!"
"Hnnnn..." Nate moaned.
"Nate, wake up." A voice demanded gently.
"Wha?" Nate slurred, drunkenly making his way back to consciousness. He opened his eyes to see Sophie standing in front of him, looking at him with concern. "Soph..." he whispered brokenly. It was then that he realized the existence of the tears running down his face, and the sharp pain sticking into his heart.
The pain reminded him of the dream he had that was all too real, and he burst into fits of sobbing and shaking.
"Nate..." Sophie sighed. She gathered him into her arms and consoled him as best as she could.
"It's all my fault... all of it..." he sobbed painfully. "I could have saved him... I could have..."
"Nate, there was nothing you could have done," Sophie said gently.
"Sam... " Nate moaned. "I'm so sorry..."
