Do No Harm
Of particular importance to Sam was his dear old Gaffer. One whom he had always aspired to be more like in every way. Also a seemingly endless chasm of useful knowledge which Sam had made fairly frequent use of in his youth. There was a certain lesson he'd been given once which, had the simpleton had half the wits to remember, may have been somewhat handy under the Hobbit's current circumstances.
It was a very hot Summer afternoon in the Shire and Frodo and Sam had both been incredibly busy frolicking and laughing in the fields, as they often were. As of yet, this activity had yielded no significant progress towards anything truly meaningful, but the day was young and these two Hobbits were prepared to wait indefinitely for something tangible to emerge.
It was around that time that Sam's father, the esteemed Hamfast Gamgee, appeared before them with a somewhat worried expression on his face.
"The two of you've been out here nigh on four hours! What in the blazes are ye hopin' to accomplish?"
Sam, not entirely sure himself, nervously looked at Frodo, ready to defer to whatever he said.
"Ah, no matter." The Gaffer continued, "Have you two been staying hydrated?"
Upon seeing the youngsters' blank expressions, he inaudibly muttered "Fucking hell" under his ale laced breath.
What followed was, frankly, a rather half assed explanation of the importance of staying hydrated while playing outside on hot days like this. Presentation inadequacies be damned, Frodo and Sam were utterly entranced by every word the Gaffer uttered. Concepts such as heat exhaustion were frightening and new but piqued their naïve curiosities nontheless.
Satisfied with himself, Hamstaff started hobbling back home to get another pint of ale. Suddenly he stopped and scratched his head before turning and saying
"Oh, if one of ye were to pass out... ye know 'cause of the heat... don't ever try to force water down their gullet. You shouldn't ever try to force an unconscious person to drink water."
Often times, people do things that they probably should have known weren't good ideas. Usually, these problems are alleviated by the herd immunity arising from friends and family calling foul upon one's bullshit. Generally speaking, a fuck ton of bases get covered when you surround yourself with people who aren't entirely retarded.
This, however, can create a false sense of security when it comes to doing things which are in a gray area, ethically or otherwise. Common reasoning might suggest that
'if this thing I'm about to do is so stupid, then I would have been told by now that it's a stupid thing to do'.
Common reasoning would thus betray you, as common reasoning is clearly not functioning in the interest of self preservation at this point. In addition, people who reason this way are likely also the type of people who have already been warned about this behavior and have simply ignored or forgotten these nuggets of wisdom.
It wasn't Sam who realized there was a problem initially. It was actually Smeagol who spoke up first after his companion had already funneled at least half a pint of Athelas tea down a half conscious Frodo's throat.
"What if that's getting in his lungs, precious?" Smeagol asked meekly.
Sam's knee jerk reaction to the inquiry was one of fight or flight, which manifested quite bombastically as a momentary pause in the pouring of the liquid. For starters, Sam didn't really have any idea what Smeagol's suggestion even meant. He reacted so strongly because the phrasing made whatever it was sound really fucking catastrophic. Some of the most frightening things in the world to Sam were 'what if's' that he didn't have the prerequisites to evaluate.
But after thinking about it for a moment, he managed to roughly piece together the main thrust of Smeagol's question. Was Frodo drowning? Clearly not, thought Sam. While it would be a disservice to Sam's intelligence to suggest that he held to this axiom simply because Frodo was not currently submerged in water, the more nuanced reasoning behind his conclusion was less convincing and offered negligible support for his thesis.
More important to Sam was the fact that he had let his guard down for a moment. He had betrayed his lack of resolve in his plan and now he would face severe reprimands if he didn't play it cool right quick.
So, instead of continuing to pour the tea down the funnel jammed in his friend's mouth, he did a little hover, as though contemplating dumping more, and then smoothly lowered the vessel before starting to say
"That oughta be enough".
Before he could finish speaking, however, a gurgling, gagging sound arose from Frodo's throat as the tea began dribbling out of his forcibly agape mouth.
In this particular case, Sam was in no real position to make this look any better than it did. That's not to say he didn't give it his Gamgee best, but what resulted was arguably the absolute apex of absurdity of Sam's entire life.
"I think it's working!" Sam exclaimed loudly as he violently grasped Frodo by his shoulders. "Fuckin' ell, I must be a genius!"
Smeagol looked on in abject despair and wept, hypothetically. He had every reason to weep, given the situation, but was critically hampered by the fact that Gollum tended to rein in shit like that but also by a total lack of functioning tear ducts.
Still, inside he wept for Frodo, because he was probably gonna fucking die. The expunged liquid sprinkling the forest floor mirrored the phantom tears that theoretically streamed down his face. But he wept mostly for Sam, who was currently vying for his intelligence by shaking his drowning friend around like a ragdoll while lauding himself for devising such a scenario.
Sam, himself, was more than a fair bit concerned about Frodo's most recent complication, but for some reason his desire to not look stupid in front of Smeagol slightly edged out over his desire to preserve his friend's life.
To his credit, it only took him about fifteen seconds to realize that this was one of those times where trying to please everyone usually results in pleasing no one.
As it happened, Frodo's vitals were plummeting at nearly the same rate as Smeagol's already dismal opinion of him as a living entity. Sam couldn't see the trendlines, but it was plainly evident that he was in the midst of a uniquely masterful fuck up. So in a moment of unusual strength, Sam stopped what he was doing. Frodo continued to choke as Sam glanced at Gollum and said,
"Well, I guess we should try and..." while carefully laying his patient on the ground.
It was certainly not a triumphant display of resuscitation prowess on anyone's part. It was actually one of the ugliest fucking things to happen in the region since some mild skirmish during the second age. Though Sam and Smeagol worked together to rescue their friend, the whole seemed to be significantly less than the sum of its parts in this instance.
And yet, despite pitfalls both mechanical and mental, the duo managed to excrete whatever liquid had caused an interruption in Frodo's ragged and wailing, but marginally consistent breathing pattern. Upon hearing the soothing rhythm of his desperate inhalations, the two breathed almost pointedly relieved sighs.
"I s'pose we oughta see if e's alive." Sam postulated. Smeagol nodded in solemn agreement. They then proceeded to perform an atrociously uninformed vitals check.
The last several minutes had forced the two to forge some sort of bond. It was strictly for practical purposes of course, but the way they now spoke so freely of their unfathomable ignorance about the human body was almost beautiful.
"What's the uh... fuck- you know like the heartbeat?" Sam began as he glanced at his partner for affirmation at every step.
Smeagol nodded firmly. He knew about heartbeats. Encouraged, Sam continued,
"We should... I mean we oughta check that I reckon." Smeagol nodded again.
"That makes sense, precious. The fat one is... that's a good idea anyways..."
A somewhat troubled look came across his already twisted face as he mused aloud,
"How do we checks it?"
Sam had been preparing for that question but he wasn't nearly ready to answer it.
"Well I was just thinking, you know, there's that- It's like the little heartbeat. You know? It's sort of, err... all over? Or rather it's sort of- you know what I'm saying" Sam had run out of rope a long time ago and was attempting to weave some more as he spoke. Tragically, he had naught the faculties required for weaving anything.
Despite the overwhelming ambiguity of Sam's inquiry, peer pressure seemed to coerce Smeagol into loosely coraborrating his theory.
"Yeeeeeaaaasss?" he half bullshitted, squinting hopefully at Sam.
They continued to blindly fumble through refining their theories surrounding basic bodily functions. In the end, they managed to ascertain that Frodo's pulse in fact existed. It's inconsistency may have scared a doctor shitless but luckily nobody present had that kind of unnecessary distinction. They also noted that his eyes were wide open, which more likely than not meant he was asleep. Unable to determine anything else, the two decided his condition was probably stable.
Despite its terrifying nature, the cave Frodo had found earlier made a decent shelter. When the storm clouds rolled in, the able-bodied members of the troop relocated all assets to the relative safety of the gaping chasm of certain fucking doom. Sam propped Frodo up against the cave wall and quickly got a fire going while Smeagol went hunting for meat of some sort.
The plan for now, ostensibly, was to hold tight for a bit while Frodo's wounds healed. Sam supposed he would have to redress the wounds every few hours or so and also have some of that tea at the ready at all times.
That delightfully aromatic tea.
There was something very interesting about the way the brewed athelas leaves smelled and now that Sam was alone, he wanted to test something out. After grabbing his pipe from his pack, he proceeded to jam some kingsfoil leaves into the bowl.
He paused for a moment. In some abstract sense, there was no fucking reason for this to work. They had already leveraged this plant well past any justifiable level in that they were actively counting on it working effectively as a coagulant, an anti inflammatory, a decontaminant, and a painkiller. Now, here Sam sat with the nerve to imagine that it might also work as a psychedelic for some reason.
Before he could work up the courage to light his pipe, Gollum returned with three coneys in hand. Sam couldn't quite explain to himself later why he'd hurriedly hid his pipe back in his pack at the sight of the skitzo bitch's return, but he knew that a precedent had been set. This kingsfoil smoking business was his dirty little secret. Nobody but Sam was getting in on the ground floor for this one. If it was a flub then nobody got hurt. If it was a roaring success then all the better for Sam. He grinned at the thought.
For some reason acts of pure selfishness were the next big thing for Sam. Maybe in some way he felt that Frodo needed some sort of directly related comeuppance for his lembas stunt and the only way he could think to enact that was to invent a resource and deny him the opportunity to harvest it. Maybe that's precisely how he felt.
"Why does the fat one smile, precious?" Smeagol interrupted his chain of thought.
Sam wiped the grin of his face and retorted, "None of your business, skank." grabbing two of the coneys as he spoke.
Smeagol indignantly muttered to himself as he tore into his raw rabbit. Sam set about boiling some water over his nominally performing fire and began cooking the meat. He reached back into his pack and retrieved a single carrot.
As he stared at it, wishing it would morph into some thyme or a couple bay leaves, the rain began to fall. Sheltered from the storm in his cave of abyssal demons, Sam sighed heartily and took a large bite out of his last vegetable.