"Sam"
It had been 50 years since she had spoken to him but the familiar sound of her voice immediately stirred something in the depth of him that had been buried a long time.
Turning in the direction of her voice he half expected to see no one there . After all he was hooked up to enough pain medication to kill the average man , but Sam had never been the average man. She looked like a memory from the days of her slinging burgers and drinks at Merllotte's , not a day over 29 , the silvery beams of moonlight dancing through her loose blond hair.
"Is that you …where have you been ?" He sat up straighter but coughing spasms overcame him. By the time he had recovered she had already crossed the room to stand next to his bed gently patting his back and holding out a glass of water .
"That wasn't quite the welcome I was expecting Sam " She smiled brightly "I hope I didn't startle you too badly"
He shook his head ,slowly sipping the water. It was as he suspected 50 years ago when she had gone missing. It hadn't been unusual for her to call off work at the last minute or even after the last minute if something had come up in her topsy turvey life, but the phone call never came . Being close friends , Sookie never hid the details of her life from him so when she had gone missing and he didn't know where she was Sam was certain the disappearance wasn't of her own accord.
There was the usual police search, dredged swamps , blood hounds even but she wa ; not a trace was left behind. Bill and Eric denied knowing what had happened to her ( though they were on everyone's top 2 suspects list) but it was as if the Earth had simply opened up and swallowed her whole.
Jason, her brother, nearly lost his mind with the grief, couldn't even stand to be in Bon Temps after she went missing. He boarded up the Stackhouse home just as she had left it when she left it and moved to Shreveport. Last Sam had heard Jason settled down around 40 and had a couple kids , might still be living too, but it had been a good 20 years since Sam saw hide nor hair of him.
But here she was, just as beautiful as Sam remembered and there Sam was , fixin' to die. Her timing certainly left something to be desired.
"I always knew one of those bastards was responsible" Sam choked out the words reigniting another coughing fit .
"Now , now " Sookie picked up the oxygen max Sam had dropped when she made her very unexpected entrance "I didn't expect you to be this…sick "
She tried not to sound disappointed but she had really been looking forward to having a conversation with Sam for a few decades now and these coughing spells were putting a real hitch in her giddy-up.
Sam's lips turned blue as he gasped for breath and she could hear his heart speed up to compensate for the lack of oxygen . It sounded weak compared to all the other hearts she had listened to over the last 50 years (and she thought people's brains were loud) .
"Maybe I can help" She said drawing closer to Sam . Even without his glasses he could see the telltale signs ; the slightly glowing skin, the "smell" that maybe only the 2 natured could detect , and the most obvious sign of them all …the fangs.
"Mr. Merlotte are you OK " the light switch clicked flooding the room with florescent beams. Sookie seemed to glow even more obviously in the artificial light . The nurse was startled to see the glowing young woman standing next to Sam's bed and stuttered but still managing to get the bit about it being past visiting hours out . Sookie gracefully crossed the foot of the bed ( Sam wondered what happened to the pert bounce he and all her old male customers enjoyed )and clasped the Nurse's hands in hers
"Are you listening to me ?" Sookie half asked half commanded the nurse
As their eyes locked the tall dark skinned woman's tense face relaxed and Sam knew Sookie was poking in her brain and rearranging her thoughts.
"Mr. Merlotte is just fine " Sookie drawled "you won't worry about him any more tonight, and if anyone asks his daughter from out of town is sitting with him ,OK "
The nurse shook her head dark curls bobbing up and down "well y'all have a good visit Miss Merlotte" she said slowly , backing out of the room .
Sookie turned back to Sam " I don't think she'll be bothering us again " she smiled that same smile from 50 years ago . She gently touched his damp forehead and he coughed a bit more .
"Like I said Sam , I can help you if you want . It won't cure you but it will make this all a bit easier "
It hadn't been easy on Sam for over a year now and as his end drew nearer he only wondered why he hadn't had the guts to end it all sooner and spare himself the suffering. Anything that would make the suffering a little less sounded good and if Sookie just so happened to sink her gleaming white fangs into his jugular and drain him of every last cancer ridden drop of blood, that was OK too. So he nodded his head as yet another , stronger fit racked his body.
When he could finally take a breath Sookie pulled the oxygen mask down from his face and offered him her wrist . Two puncture marks had produced 2 streams of thick sweet blood that didn't smell anything like the vampire blood he had smelled many times before . He pulled her wrist to his lips and lapped the blood slowly. Almost instantly his lungs felt clearer and the ever present pain in his chest subsided a bit; he tipped his head back , opened his mouth and drew in the first deep and painless breath he had taken in months. It was ecstasy.
Sookie smiled, satisfied that she could finally have the talk she had been waiting so long to have with Sam . She drew one of the chairs next to his bed and sat down. 50 years ago she might have kicked off her shoes and sat barefoot and crosslegged on the chair to chew the fat with Sam, but she definitely wasn't the same girl she was 50 years ago. Now she sat with her 2 perfect ( even she could admit it ) glowing legs crossed at the knee . She smoothed the hem of her grey silk shortall , which was high fashion in 2062 , fluffed her luminous blond hair and settled in to recount the last 50 years of her life to Sam.
The first thing I remember was waking up in pitch darkness and starving , just starving . The only way I could tell up from down was that whatever was in front of my face felt looser and lighter than what was behind my head. Shortly after I woke , and I am talking less than a minute, I could hear the digging and worked my hands so I could meet the digger in the middle .
2 sets of strong hands ripped me up in short order and I was suddenly naked and covered in dirt in my family's cemetery next to Bill and Eric.
"Are you FUCKING kidding me" was just about the only thing I could get out
After making my way back home in silence and hosing myself off in the yard I sat down on the porch swing , naked as the day I was born, and swung a bit . My head was swimming trying to grasp everything that just happened . Bill had the sense to go in the house and grab a 6 pack of True Blood
"Sookie you have to eat " Bill popped the cap and passed it over to me . Just a day before I would have hurled buckets at the thought of a blood meal but the deepest hunger pang I had ever felt had just ripped through me like a tidal wave and before you could spell Mississippi I was wiping a hemoglobin mustache from the 6th True Blood off my face.
"Lover" Eric broke his silence . "I know I have failed you miserably , and if you wish that I should meet the true death to atone for the loss of your life I will.."
"SHUT UP" I was thoroughly and completely FED UP with the 2 of them but I wasn't quite ready to be done with them that completely, yet.
If I was going to be a vampire it would be in my best interest to have the two best vampires as my mentors . But I wasn't ready to think about mentors or vampiring ,right then all I wanted to do was morn my life , because I was officially dead and I didn't know what the heck I was going to do about it.
I went into the house and drew a bath, it always made the human Sookie feel better . Bill stayed on the front porch while Eric fiddled around trying to look helpful pouring bath salts and oil into the tub. "Sookie" he tried to speak but I glared at him . Red tears started to drip into the tub coloring the water pink and the big Viking was smart enough to hightail it onto the porch with Bill.
Really the only person to blame for my current situation was a pile of goo on the floor of Fangtasia . I always knew I was a hot commodity ; part Fae human with super yummy blood and a handy telepathic ability but I never thought the King of Nevada would go to those lengths to "possess" me.
Claude, Nial, Alcide, Pam, Amelia all tried to protect me ..all of them paid with their lives . The only 3 left were Sam , Jason and Tara and for the life of me ( whatever) I wasn't going to let a single one pay another drop of blood for knowing me. As far as I was concerned I could have packed a bag and skipped town leaving my 2 dead cohorts in the lurch and making sure every living person I loved stayed safe . How would I survive, what would I eat , what was I going to do for money ….too many questions to be answered in one night so I resigned myself to sinking into what I would have considered a cold bath the day before and drifting off to sleep .
Most people would have woken up as their head slid under the water but I wasn't a breather anymore and it didn't matter that I had been floating face down, fast asleep in the tub for over an hour . A knock on the front door , pound actually, woke me up and Sam's concerned voice asking Eric why I hadn't shown up for work , Damn ! I never skipped out on a shift but waking up dead sure has a way of making you forget about slinging burgers. I heard Sam insist on seeing me repeating my thoughts of never ditching a shift to Eric and Bill , so I wrapped myself up in my favorite moth – eaten bathrobe and ragged slippers and shuffled to the stairs.
"Sam" I called down from the landing , putting on my best puking all day face "sorry, I fell asleep and they didn't know to call me off " I said trying to look haggard. I was really hoping it would avoid the "why so pale" question "
I'm just so sick" I squeeked out.
Sam shook his head and waived apologetically looking me square in my lying face . A shadow of doubt crossed his eyes and his nose sniffed a bit as to detect the stench of truth in the air but all he could smell was vampire and fairy .
"Why don't you give her some blood and fix her up ? " Sam asked Eric on the way out
"Why ever didn't we think of that " Eric replied in his usual conceited tone and closed the door unceremoniously on Sam.