Chapter Nine
"Sam," Stephen called to her, unable to bring himself to lift his hand and feel for her pulse, afraid that this time, this time he would indeed find nothing there. She hadn't simply closed her eyes, she hadn't seemed to merely drift off, she had in fact succumbed or so it looked like, smiling a small knowing smile that had frightened him to the point of his immobility as far as she was concerned.
"Sam if you can hear me, wherever you are, don't…don't leave me."
When the phone in his hand rang it startled him to say the least, he opened his eyes realizing he too had drifted off though for the life of him he could not remember having done so. Once more his eyes touched upon Sam, she hadn't moved while he had been out, still wore the same peaceful expression upon her face and yet some part of him told him that she was still with him for the time being at least. How much longer he couldn't be certain and hastily he flipped open his phone.
"Hello," his voice was so low, barely a whisper that even he could not hear.
"Stephen, is that you?"
It took a lot longer than it no doubt should have for him to recognize Stuart's voice and that recognition only came about the long way as he had a sudden flash of memories associated with the man first.
"Stuart?"
"Aye it's me, where are you mate? We're all worried sick here. I got a call from the police, they said you'd been in an accident but they are having trouble locating you. Can you tell me where exactly you are?"
"You've always been a good friend Stuart, have I ever told you that before?" He heard himself ask, smiling a little, feeling weary once more, weary to the point where keeping his eyes open seemed an impossible task.
"Stephen listen to me, you have to give me some clue as to where you are. You said Rural Route 4 and we are on Rural Route 4 but we can't seem to pinpoint your location."
"There was an accident," Stephen stated as his mind attempted to clear for a moment but failed to do so, everything was running rampant, his memories, his thoughts colliding in such a way that focusing on one specific idea had become impossible.
"I know there was an accident, but where Stephen, where did it happen and why can't we find you?" Stuart sounded frantic, this much Stephen was able to wrap his mind around but that was it as the weariness took over, pulling him in, pulling him down.
"Sorry Stuart, for all the times I let you down." Stephen felt the phone slip from his ear and did nothing to stop it, turning once more to look at Sam. "I was with her the day she died." he began speaking to her once more, no longer certain as to whether she could hear him, simply needing to tell the end, to say to her what he had never found the strength within him to tell anyone else. He had touched upon this moment, briefly, shared Cecily's last words or at least part of them , then glossed over it just as he had managed to gloss over a lot of things. But there were details he had left out, important details, and he wanted Sam to know before it was too late, before he might not have another chance.
"You remember, what you said about Sabrina, the smile on her face, the look in her eyes that seemed almost a knowing…almost as if she had received the answers to the questions that the rest of us wouldn't until the moment of our deaths?" He lifted a hand and brushed a stray hair out of Sam's face, trying not to notice how still she was. "I saw that smile, that same look on Cecily the day she passed. At the time…I didn't want to believe my own eyes and in the years since I have managed to convince myself it wasn't real but…it was…"
Cecily had been so emaciated, hollowed out by cancer that often when Stephen had looked at her he had imagined he was seeing a cadaver, the shadow of the woman he loved, an entirely morbid and exceedingly depressing notion, but one he could never shake completely. It wasn't like that on the day she died however. Oh she was still painfully thin, each bone beneath the surface of her skin seemed to protrude and show itself but there had been an instant, a bright shining instant when he had looked at her wearing that smile, graced with that knowing and he had seen her, the Cecily who had stolen his heart, the Cecily who had sent him running for the hills at the thought of spending the rest of his life with her.
"Nathan needs you…" she had whispered, taking his hand in her own and clinging to it with a strength he had been certain was impossible for her to possess, all the while she had been smiling. "…and what's more, you need him."
"I didn't want to hear her, didn't want to listen," Stephen went on speaking aloud, though he had long since closed his eyes and was no longer seeing the clearing, the twisted metal surrounding him and Sam, her still form still entangled and upside down. He was instead seeing that smile on Cecily's face, hearing her words, feeling that moment of clarity when he realized that this was it, that their dreams, their hopes, their plans, all of it , they were all about to end, all about to come to a screeching grinding halt.
"Your son needs you Stephen," she had told him once more, all but crushing his hand this time and he had looked at her through his tears, looked at her, at her damnable knowing smile, and for one brief instant he had hated her, he had hated her for having the answers to questions he himself had spent a lifetime asking, had hated her for finding peace in the knowledge that her life was ending, he had hated her because already she had embraced the end and was ready for it. But most of all, more so than any of these things, he had hated her simply because he had known she was about to leave him forever.
"I was so angry with her," he said softly, feeling the memories slip away from him, but only briefly. "I couldn't understand how…how she could just… say goodbye and let it all go, let me go, let Nathan go, without raging against it, without trying to fight it."
At some point in Cecily's final moments while she had been holding his hand, while he had been leaning close, he had begun to count her breaths, silently, willing her to go on, willing the numbers to go higher.
"Twenty seven," Stephen said, opening his eyes for a moment and glancing toward Sam, who remained exactly where she had been when last he looked at her. "I got as far as twenty seven then…." Then she had simply stopped, stopped breathing, stopped living, just stopped.
"It wasn't until afterwards in those moments when I was alone with her, before they came and took her away, that I realized I didn't really hate Cecily, not then, not even a little. I hated myself more because….because I had let her go, long before she had passed away, I had let her go."
Wasted time, that was what it had all come down to, wasted time, wasted moments, gone in an instant and never again to be reclaimed.
"I didn't cry again over her after her funeral, at least not in public, not where anyone could see me," he said softly, feeling the tears he had always suppressed before fall freely once more. "The pain of losing her was mine and mine alone. I didn't share it with anyone, not her family, not my family, not even Nathan."
"You don't even act like you miss her," Nathan and once accused him of this, and Stephen had swallowed these words, buried them deep along with the unending ache over the loss of Cecily that he was certain would never go away as long as he lived.
"What Nathan didn't know, what I couldn't make him understand or simply chose not to, was that I didn't just miss his mother, I felt…cut in half, as if part of me had died with her, a part I could never get back or so I believed."
He had been left with a hollow , empty feeling inside of him and instead of fighting against it he had embraced it, let it claim him, and for so long, for so very long dwelled within it.
"It was easier," he went on to tell her.
But suddenly he was no longer certain as to whether this was the truth or not. Pushing Cecily aside, sending Nathan away, burying his grief, his guilt, his loneliness, his fears, at the time it had seemed the best thing, the only thing for him to do, the only way he could possibly survive. But in a way, it hadn't made things any better, had only served to make things worse
"Do great things Stephen," he heard these words yet again inside his mind, Sam's words or had they been Cecily's, he was no longer certain as all at once his thoughts of each of them had merged into one, had become entangled and entwined until he couldn't separate the present from the past , truth from the tales.
"Do great things," his own voice, soft, waning, and afterwards, falling into silence.
Stephen felt adrift, this was the first sensation that greeted him when next he began to rouse, the sensation of being disconnected, not just from his thoughts and from the pain that had seemed to be a constant for a time, but from himself as well, from every part of his being. For the life of him he couldn't figure out why this was, couldn't quite grasp what was happening and why, though some part of him knew he should, some part of him knew he needed to remember, that it was important for him to do so.
"You're gonna be alright, you're gonna be just fine."
"Hang in there buddy, just hang tough."
Disjointed words repeated to him time and again, they flitted through his mind the way clouds flitted through the sky on a warm summer day. Not lingering long enough to make a difference, simply passing through then passing on, only to be forgotten moments later.
How long it was before the harsh realities finally began to work their way through the dreamy haze that settled upon him he couldn't be certain, but eventually they did, beginning with that same nagging sensation that there was something he was forgetting, something he had overlooked, something important.
"Stephen, time to wake up mate."
"Stuart." He said this name even before he opened his eyes, recognizing the voice that seemed to literally whisper into his brain. After that he opened his eyes, took a long, slow look around and immediately found himself wondering where the hell he was.
"You're in the hospital," Stuart again, and once more Stephen opened his eyes, surprised to find they had at some point closed once more. This time the room around him was dark, the sky beyond the distant window, a steel grey, a hint of the sunset still lingering on the horizon.
"How long?" He heard himself ask, already feeling the pull of sleep yet again.
"Nearly two weeks Stephen. Time to get off your lazy ass and get back to living."
He faded yet again after this, the sound of his own laughter echoing in his ears.
"Stephen, open your eyes."
Stuart's voice intruded yet again on Stephen's blissful drifting, this time his words sounded less like an urging and more like a plea, a soulful earnest plea.
"Why…can't you just …leave me alone?" Stephen responded, though doing so took a great deal of effort, more so than it should have and for the first time in a long time or so it seemed he found himself wondering yet again where he was, what had happened, and why it seemed every time he opened his eyes he wanted nothing more than to close them once more.
"You listen to me Stephen and you listen to me good, if you fucking quit now, if you fucking give up, I swear to everything that is holy I will wait until the after life , hunt you down, and kill you all over again." There were tears in Stuart's voice, Stephen could hear them, but they weren't enough, not nearly enough to pull him back from the weariness that dragged him back into the arms of oblivion.
When next Stephen came too he did so on his own, slowly, bit by bit until when he finally opened his eyes, he did so feeling not as if he was ready to fade away once more, but as awake as he could be under the circumstances. Bright sunlight flooded the room around him making it seem starker and whiter then any room he had ever seen before and without the need of asking he knew he was in the hospital, could vaguely recall Stuart telling him this very thing. Again his eyes perused his surroundings, taking in the machines that appeared to be attached to every square inch of his bare flesh, and bare it was, every inch of him exposed to the world. There were so many wires, so many tubes, and each one told him more than any doctor ever would or could, that he was bad off, or at least he had been for a time. Surprisingly, he was less frightened by this knowledge then he was certain he should have been.
The sound of soft snoring drew his attention away from the electronics beeping and churning to his right and slowly he turned his head not at all surprised to find Stuart asleep in the chair next to his bed. His friends presence as well as the state of the man was even more proof to Stephen that he had been staring death in the face, wrestling with his own mortality without even having known he was doing so.
"You look like shit," he said aloud, though saying it aloud actually consisted of a squeaky hoarse sounding breath that was scarcely audible even to Stephen's own ears. Somehow though Stuart heard it, might have even sensed it, as his eyes flew open, the concern in them made all the more apparent by the dark rings that encircled them.
"I look like shit, you should s...s…s…see yourself," Stuart responded, leaning forward, seeming to do so with a slow reluctance as if he was afraid Stephen's consciousness was part of some dream and might slip away as it had so many times before.
"I have an excuse then don't I," he stated softly.
"And w...w...what excuse might that be? I mean for Christ sake you've been asleep for nearly eight weeks, you'd think some of it would be the beauty kind."
He had begun to cry then, Stuart, the strongest person Stephen had ever known in his life, began to cry, lowering his head and swallowing back his tears but seeming unable to fully digest his emotions.
"I th…th…thought…" he tried to speak once more, shaking his head and seeming to give up on the notion of forming words in that moment.
"You didn't leave me once did you?" Stephen asked, feeling his own emotions begin to ebb and flow like the coming of the tide.
"I couldn't…I mean…I'm your attorney Stephen, I had to make sure you lived long enough to pay all my legal fees."
He lifted his head then smiling weakly and Stephen chuckled softly, feeling again a weariness pulling on him. This time it was different though, it felt different and he went into it knowing its hold wouldn't keep him for long, not like it had before.
"Don't go away…I'll be right back," he told Stuart as the man knelt before him and gave Stephen a tender embrace.
"You better be or I'm coming after you."
"No more rain," Stephen whispered as the first drops touched upon his skin. He was remembering a different time, a different place, a moment that seemed only to linger on the edges of his mind and wouldn't come forward enough for him to fully recognize.
"Just lay still Mr. Morgan, we're gonna get you all tidied up."
He opened his eyes at the sound of a woman's voice surprised to find himself staring at the largest breast he had ever seen before in his life, though this might have been nothing more than a trick of the mind brought on by the fact that they were so near his face.
"I've seen every movie you ever made you know," the talking breasts went on to say, and finally they were replaced with a face, a nurse with ginger hair, a crooked smile, and the greenest eyes.
"Please don't tell me you're my number one fan," he quipped, and for several seconds she seemed to think on these words and the elusive reference that went with them, until finally she chuckled softly.
"Misery, that was a great movie as well."
"You know, all this mollycoddling is probably gonna ruin you for life." Stephen was helpless but to smile at the sound of Stuart's voice, all the more so as his friend suddenly appeared at his bedside, looking if not better, at least somewhat more put together than he had the last time Stephen had opened his eyes and found him snoring .
"Listen to you, a bloke gets a little sponge bath and suddenly he's the worst person in the world," he responded.
"Actually," Stuart commented, pausing for a moment as the nurse gathered up the rest of her things and left the room. "I was wondering how this bloke could get a little of that same treatment."
"Wrap your car around a tree Stuart and you'll get all the attention you need," Stephen responded, and the instant he did the levity in the room faded away, leaving behind and uneasy silence that hung between them for several long grueling seconds.
"How much do you want to know?" Stuart questioned finally, breaking the silence as he reached for the chair behind him and pulled it up closer to Stephen's bed. For several seconds this question was debated, mulled over, considered.
"I guess you might as well tell me everything," Stephen said, uncertain if he truly wanted to hear it all, but somehow knowing he had to.
"Well, the good news is you survived, you're still alive."
"I'm thinking that, depending on the bad news, that is still open for debate."
He was only half kidding when he said this and the expression on Stuart's face said his friend realized this fact.
"The police managed to locate you about five minutes after we spoke on the phone that day. You do remember that don't you?"
Stephen had dim recollections of talking to Stuart, dim recollections of a lot of things, which only served to make that nagging sensation deep within him become all the more insistent.
"Just so you know, you were of no help. They had to triangulate your location using your cell phone itself, or something technical like that. By the time we did manage to stumble across you, you…" for a moment he paused, taking a deep breath and seeming to struggle to regain control of himself, which, by this very action, told Stephen far more than his friend would no doubt say in words. "…you were pretty bad off."
Stephen wavered for a moment on the edge of remembrance and just as quickly as this sensation came, it was gone.
"They managed to stabilize you enough to transport you here, but…it weren't easy, and they were almost certain they were going to lose you. Can I ask, what the hell were you doing on that road anyway?"
"It shaves ten minutes off my drive time," Stephen responded almost absently, and the instant he did he recognized how absurd this statement was especially in light of recent events. He began to laugh even before he realized he was doing so, and before long Stuart was chuckling as well. His laughter ended however in a soft frightened sob he was a little surprised to find had actually come from him.
"They say you'll walk Stevie," Stuart told him, leaning closer, whatever mirth he had been feeling replaced yet again by concern. "It won't be easy. It'll be a long, hard road, but…you'll do it, if you want to."
"I couldn't feel my legs ya know," he told his friend, choking on emotions. "They were useless much of the time, wooden, dead even."
"There was some damage, to your back. But…they fixed it, did everything they could, now…the rest is up to you."
In response to this Stephen merely nodded his head, relieved somewhat to hear this, but not at all surprised to find that Stuart's revelation had done nothing to quell the insistent nagging inside of him. He had forgotten something, something important, something vital, and it had little or nothing to do with his own condition.
"She…um…she's alive you know."
In that instant, the instant his best friend in the world uttered these words, it all came back to Stephen, in one great, uncontrollable rush the memories returned. He saw again that clearing, hidden from the road, saw his jag wrapped around the tree, saw the blue car turned on its back like a squashed bug, but most of all, and more importantly , he saw her face, smiling back at him, hiding the pain, swallowing the tears, accepting the inevitable.
"Sam," he said her name softly, feeling the dam break inside of himself, all the walls that had been erected in his heart through the years, crumble into a million pieces and simply drift away.
"You…you wanna tell me about it Stephen?" Stuart asked, and all at once, more than anything in the world Stephen did want to tell him. He wanted to tell him everything, not just about Sam and the hours they had shared together, but everything, every detail he had ever hidden, every truth he had ever buried, every lie he had ever perpetrated.
"I hope you've cleared your schedule, because…this could take some time."
"No worries," Stuart responded, leaning toward him, the ghost of a smile crossing his face. "I'm charging you for this anyway."
After that Stephen began to talk, telling Stuart things he was certain he would never give voice to in his lifetime. It felt good, felt liberating, to bring everything into the light, to open the doors that had for so long been locked and barred to nearly everyone including himself. It was only when he reached the part about Sam that he felt himself hesitate and hold back a little. He wasn't certain he wanted to impart her just yet, wasn't ready to give voice to what they had shared, to what had begun in those precious moments that had most likely changed their lives forever in so many ways.
"You said she was alive, where is she?" Stephen questioned.
"Well she was here for several weeks but, the moment it was determined she could make the trip safely, her family had her transferred back to the states. I…I didn't ask where. Should I have?"
"I think…she's part of my destiny." Stephen said softly, half expecting Stuart to laugh at him, or look at him like he was crazy though his friend did neither of these things, he merely stared as if waiting for him to elaborate further. "She…she was here on holiday, well sort of a holiday. See, it all began for her with a visit to a gypsy psychic named Madame Zoltar."
"Alright Stephen, here it is in a nutshell," the man in the white coat told him, and for several seconds Stephen did his best to concentrate on what it was his doctor was saying. It wasn't all that easy, as first it seemed all men of medicine spoke to their patients as if they too had graduated magna cum laude, and second, it was just the same thing they had been telling him for nearly two weeks. He didn't want to hear anymore how lucky he had been to survive, didn't want to know how close he had come to being crippled, and most definitely was tired of everyone pointing out to him how much worse things could be.
"Just think, you could have ended up a paraplegic," one of the nurse had made this observation that very day as a matter of fact, and it had taken all that Stephen had inside himself to hold back his angry retort. He was tired of being waited on, tired of being treated like an invalid, he wanted to start getting better, start walking again, or at least start the journey that would eventually have him doing just that.
"Enough of the bullshit doc, how long before I can get out of here?" He asked, interrupting the man just as he had gone into a long spiel about spinal injuries and the serious nature of them.
"Well…best guess I would say you have a few more months here at the very least. You are going to require a lot of therapy if you ever want to stand on your own, let alone walk again."
"Stephen, it's not magic, they can't just…wave a wand and make it all better. You nearly died mate, and coming back from that well…it won't be easy."
As always, Stuart was the voice of reason and with a deep sigh Stephen lay his head back on his bed, closing his eyes, lost for a moment in thoughts of Sam. Two weeks had passed since he had awoken completely and told Stuart the whole tale, two weeks that felt like an eternity, and everyday he found himself thinking of her more and more, wondering over her condition, praying she was doing alright, praying for the moment when he would be able to see her again.
"There's a very good chance that what happened between the two of you was only a result of the moment you shared, you do know that don't you?" Stuart had told him this, and though some part of him had recognized the truth in this statement, another part of him, the larger part, couldn't help but think otherwise. There had to be a reason for what happened, something much bigger and more substantial then that he had been driving too fast, that he had been on his phone, that he hadn't been paying attention. He and Sam had been brought together in that moment, in that one instant of inevitability for a purpose, and regardless of what others told him, regardless of what his own rationale dictated, he knew he had to find out for certain what that reason was.
It wasn't just Sam however that had him frustrated and ready to move forward with his recovery. He had been thinking a great deal about Nathan as well. In so many ways he now realized he had shortchanged his son, shortchanged himself as well as far as the boy was concerned. Stephen now realized he hadn't just given up his child, Cecily' s child, he had given up every chance, every possibility, every moment of happiness he might have had and shared with his son. Looking back, his reasons for doing so no longer seemed as important and valid as they once had. In fact, in light of everything, they seemed a bit selfish, more than a bit in fact, completely selfish.
"It's what's best for him."
"Best for him…or for you?"
How many times had this conversation passed through his mind since that moment, the moment when he had stood on his parents doorstep, his son beside him, their life, the life that he had built with Cecily, in shattered pieces all around them? Several times since the crash he had actually dreamed about it, dreamed he was again standing there in that instant, his son at his side, their life broken and torn apart, only this time, this time instead of doing what was best for himself, he had done what was best for Nathan, had packed him and his belongings back inside the car and drove him away from there, drove him home, the home he should have had, the home he should have grown up in.
"He at least deserves the chance to hate you," Sam had told him this, and he had known she was right then, and in retrospect, had come to agree with her all the more. Nathan did deserve that right, and maybe, maybe that was all he would ever do is hate him, maybe he would never get past it, would cling to that hatred forever. There was always that chance and in too many ways Stephen wouldn't blame him if he did, but there was also the chance that he would one day let it go, let it fade away and come to once more think of him as someone other than the man who had tossed him aside when he had been needed the most. Maybe he would never call him Dad again or consider him anything other than an intrusion into his life, but, it would be enough, would be more than enough in Stephen's opinion.
"You don't even act like you miss her." Nathan had accused him once, and the time had come to set the record straight on that, to set the record straight on a lot of things as a matter of fact.
"I'd like to start your physical therapy next week if you think you're up to it," the doctor stated all at once, and this did capture Stephen's attention. "It isn't going to be easy but if you work hard and I mean really hard, I think we can have you on your feet and walking out of here in about six weeks."
"Well, that sounds good to me." Stephen responded softly.
"Yes, well…we'll see if you feel the same way a week from now," the doctor quipped lightly, chuckling softly as he left the room, leaving Stephen alone with his thoughts, alone with his concerns.
"I… I can't find her." Stuart stated later that same day when he came back to visit. He was looking more like his old self then he had in the days following Stephen's awakening, gone were the dark circles under his eyes, he had started to sleep at home again, started to go back to work, no longer had his life on hold and for that Stephen was grateful.
"I managed to locate several Samantha Reynolds in the Pennsylvania area, but finding the right one is the equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack."
"What about here, the hotel she stayed in, the rental car she was driving? Surely they have some information."
"They do Stephen, but they aren't willing to share it, not even for you."
He seated himself heavily in the chair to Stephen's left and without even having to look at him, he could sense Stuarts worry, like a physical presence it seemed to fill the room.
"There's a chance you might never find her, you know that don't you?"
He did know this, was loathed to admit it, but knew it nonetheless.
"Then there's the possibility that maybe she doesn't want to be found, have you thought about that?"
"Why must you be so damn honest all the time?"
"I can't help it Stephen, there are just some facts that have to be faced, regardless of whether or not you want to they still need to be faced. " To this Stephen said nothing, merely glanced away, staring toward the window, watching the last of the day wane into night, remembering all too well the many times he had shared the sunset with Cecily and the one moment he had done this very same thing with Sam.
"So what now? Do I keep looking…or….?"
"Do great things Stephen," these were the last words she had spoken to him, words that had remained with him every moment since she had uttered them.
"No," he heard himself say. "No…if …if I am meant to find her, if she is my destiny and I hers, then…some how, some way, we'll find each other again without trying."
To this Stuart merely nodded his head, saying nothing, saving what little honest remarks he might have had.
"Do great things Stephen."
"I promise you…I will."
