Chapter 9
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"You can't take my truck away from me. It's my truck."
Sam didn't honor that childish remark with a reply.
"I mean it."
"Uh huh."
The rhythmic swipe of windshield wipers provided background noise for Amanda's sulking. She'd said good night to Dee Pence with a bit of a grumpy attitude and now that they were together alone, grumpy was changing into an extremely bad attitude.
"What did you do with it?"
"I didn't do anything with it. You saw it being towed."
"You had it taken someplace, I know."
"Uh huh."
"I'll just find out in the morning."
Sam slowed, braked and stopped at the red light at the intersection. "You're not driving it. It's not safe."
"It most certainly is."
The light changed and they started moving again.
"I talked to Sam about it. There are at least two gauges he continually replaces, and one of them is the gas gauge. The transmission's iffy, probably because it has over 230,000 miles on it, but he's not sure about that number since the odometer stopped working years ago. Replacement parts are no longer available for half the stuff that needs to be replaced which means he has to find used parts to keep it running, and why? Because you like old things. Has it occurred to you the kid has his hands full with his family? You don't have to rely on him for that kind of thing anymore. But that's not my concern. You're pregnant. The fact that your truck has no safety features is worrisome."
"You worry?"
The sarcasm attached to that remark told Sam it would be wise to not respond. There was no sense in escalating this. He had made up his mind. Her truck was not safe. All this episode tonight did was speed up his need to put her behind the wheel of something much safer on the road.
The distance—in miles or emotions—wasn't very far from where they had been to where they were going, but the terrain and the winding two lane road to their home made the trip much longer. The rainy conditions slowed things and the rest of the trip was made in silence.
When he parked his SUV in the driveway and turned to look at her, she was biting her lip.
"That was not necessary, and it was mean on my part." She reached across the center console to clasp his hand. "I'm sorry, Sam."
"You're getting a new vehicle tomorrow, Manda, because I want you to be safe, and because if for any reason you're in an accident I'd like knowing you and the baby have a better chance of surviving. This isn't complicated."
"I'm sorry."
"Has anyone ever told you that you're stubborn?"
"Just you and your son."
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Slow, steady rain on a tin roof was the ideal, the absolute ideal accompaniment to falling asleep. It sweetened and intensified the pleasures of other gentle activities to leave lovers with bliss-filled peace.
With Amanda resting against his chest, he knew he was going to ruin the lovely, loving moment before he did it, but the question hit him sometime this afternoon when he was watching her fall asleep on the couch, before he left to see David and then investigate Sam's unnamed buddy project. He couldn't let it go. He needed to ask her.
He'd heard her say it; now it was indelible. Small pieces of information, things without explanation, often took residence in his memory. It was a decades' old occupational hazard he'd been thankful for, but this was extremely personal, and not the business of espionage or combat.
Thank God, he doesn't know I almost threw him away, too. And I thank God for my dad, for what he did. I couldn't have you, but I could have your son. When I got my head straight, I tried to do a good job . . . I did the best I could.
What Amanda meant and what he understood might be different things. Hadn't he just learned that? Hadn't not understanding something simple altered the course of his life 30 years ago? Hadn't inaction on his part done the same thing?
Were all of their differences simple misunderstandings? Failures in communication? Was there something more he didn't understand? He had a natural inclination to correctly read and interpret responses in negotiation situations. Get it wrong, someone dies. Screw-ups aside, his record had been fairly solid as a proven operator. Comprehension of the present situation so it could lead to a desired outcome was standard procedure. So why couldn't he understand the simpler stuff with Amanda?
It continued to perplex him.
Her soft cheek was on his chest; his fingers threaded through silken soft strands of her hair while his other hand caressed her shoulder. He had forgotten how soft and smooth her skin was or how much he liked touching her.
"Manda, I don't want to argue, but . . ."
"If that isn't a dead giveaway that I'm not going to like what you're about to say, I don't know what would be." She moved her palm from caressing his ribs to where her cheek had been on his chest and propped her chin on the back of her hand to look into his face.
"I'm sorry." Now that he'd started this, he wasn't sure he wanted to finish it. He really had a problem with how he timed things with her. Maybe his problem wasn't communication as much as it was his timing? He used to be fairly adept at that, too.
She sighed and kissed his chest. "We're never going to get anywhere unless we have some of these uncomfortable conversations. But before you say anything else, I need to tell you I don't want to hear you call yourself a boy toy again. You're neither a boy nor a toy. It hurts me to hear that. Now, what don't you want to argue about?"
Sam tightened his arms around her and placed a kiss on her forehead. He closed his eyes and hugged her and her words close. If that wasn't a kind of forgiveness, it felt like it. That thing in the middle of his chest expanded. Again.
Because it made what he was about to ask even more difficult, he kissed her again.
"That night here, when we argued, you said you were glad Sam didn't know you almost threw him away. What did that mean?"
"Oh."
She looked at him, then looked away. Slowly, she separated herself from him, sat upright and then turned to clasp her arms around her knees. Her bare back was to him and she waited a few moments before she spoke. "I said that, didn't I? I was a little emotional. I forgot about that."
He could hear her inhale, waiting to leap into the past.
"I was barely 18, and they didn't have parenting classes like the kind Zoe and Sam went to before Jacob was born. Everything about taking care of a baby was really new and a lot scary. It's probably good thing Sam was tough, even as a baby. By then, I had already talked to the Navy about finding you to let you know you had a son, but they pretty much told me to go away. By the time Sam turned one, Mack had been home a couple of times and he'd say that he'd seen you, but by the time he was here, he never knew where you were."
She sighed and leaned her head on her knees, facing away from him.
"The longer you were gone the more I wondered if . . . if . . . I was a little crazy. I had seen a poster from a church. It was about not aborting your child, but they also handled adoptions. I talked to a couple of people there because I thought maybe Sam deserved having two parents instead of just me. Of course they wouldn't consider it once I told them I was married. You might have been missing, but without your consent . . ." She put both hands over her face. "I think I scared myself . . . that I'd even . . ."
He slid his arms around her shoulders and gently turned her toward him. When he first saw her face, she looked away quickly, but not before he saw the tears in her eyes and the silent flood that was washing her cheeks. Her body was rigid, she was resistant to his touch.
"My dad was sick, but for some reason, he was convinced you'd come back, and the more I looked for you, the more upset he was. He kept telling me to wait. Just wait. By the time Sam was two, I thought you had abandoned us. Then a few months later you came back.
"After . . . that . . . when you gave me your ring back, I didn't care what anyone said. It didn't matter anymore. Sam was mine, I loved him, and he needed me and I needed him. A couple of years later when Sheldon and Zoe moved here, I stopped worrying so much because we helped each other . . . you know, there were times I thought someone must have been watching over me and Sam after you left. My mother, maybe, or later my dad, or it could have been your parents, or some stray angel. I don't know. I'm sorry I even thought about it. So that's what . . . that meant."
As burdens of past were revealed, he'd felt the weight push him under. It was hard to breathe, submerged in pain, hard to get air into his lungs. In learning this, he'd become utterly enveloped by his continual need for her forgiveness and the few sweet words of redemption she offered. Now, he finally understood she might be dealing with regret the same as he was.
He wrapped his arms around her and held on as if she was his personal life vest, this loving woman who washed his chest with silent tears. He held her carefully. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." And after a long while, she was at peace again.
But Sam was not.
If only she could believe him when he said I love you.
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The early morning found Sam and his package of crackers taking refuge on the front porch, close to the wall by the front door, because the gentle showers of the previous evening had turned into something stronger. The leftover hurrah from a Gulf Coast hurricane being driven in a northeasterly fashion was leaving North Carolina before heading to where it was expected to join another late season storm and escalate along the upper Eastern seaboard.
He figured Amanda would use the rain as an excuse to avoid shopping for a vehicle, but he didn't plan on letting her do that.
When Diesel head butted his shoulder, his hastily consumed cracker nearly made the trip back from the way it traveled. He growled something at the mutt he was becoming too fond of, and the dog lay down with a sigh and put his face between his paws.
Sam reached over to pet his head and scratch his ears. It wasn't the dog's fault he was in this condition. It was Amanda's. No, it was his. No, it was theirs.
He was cold and damp, and after thirty minutes or so, he was solid again. This truly wasn't an enjoyable experience. After three days of Couvade Syndrome, he was ready for it to go away.
This was not normal. Not normal.
When he opened the door to come back inside Amanda was waiting for him with two large towels, but they weren't for him.
"Hold up. You need to dry off Diesel, otherwise the whole house is going to smell like wet dog. Are you okay?"
He realized she didn't look the least bit ill this morning. That was interesting. "I'm fine."
She smiled. "Me, too."
By the time he finished with his shower and brought his soiled clothing and the wet towels to the cozy laundry area off the kitchen which had previously been a porch, he could hear her talking on the phone.
He turned on the burner under the tea kettle and sliced yesterday's loaf of her homemade bread for toast.
"Do you know what Sam just told me?"
"Not unless you tell me."
"Have you talked to him?"
He turned around before he depressed the toaster lever and faced her. "Today? No. What's up?"
"My truck."
"Amanda—"
"He says he's not giving it back to me! Did you do this?"
"Nope." He couldn't help himself. He smiled.
"That is my truck."
"We know that."
"I want my truck back, Sam."
"We know that, too."
She stood there, hands on her hips, barefoot with sparkly blue toes, wearing faded, tattered jeans she couldn't completely zip or button and a pale pink t-shirt without a bra underneath. Her hair was tied up in a curly fuzzy ponytail on top of her head. Just looking at the woman zinged that thing in the middle of his chest. She was adorable. Some old expression about having a wife barefoot and pregnant in a kitchen came to mind, as did several other things. He smiled.
Apparently she was a mind reader because she shook her head and started to leave the room, but not before he caught her in his arms for a quick kiss.
She'd returned the kiss for a moment, and then a moment quite a bit longer, and then apparently she remembered she was irritated with him. She pushed herself out of his arms. "Men!"
He laughed. "Do you want some toast?"
"I already had breakfast. I'm not the one with morning sickness today."
"Really?"
"Really." It was Amanda's turn for laughter.
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Amanda loved her new truck. It was purely a luxury vehicle, to her way of thinking, because Sam and Sam insisted her well-loved, cute as a bug, short-bed pick-up truck, scented by many years of spritzing Chanel near her throat, was permanetly decommissioned.
Her new one was exactly like Zoe's. Except it was red, not white, and a year newer. There weren't that many colors to choose from, but after driving a blue truck for so many years, it was fun to change.
She wanted to be angry with Sam, but she couldn't be.
The entire vehicle shopping trip had been fun. Of course, there wasn't much shopping involved. He'd pulled into the dealership and parked and told her to go pick out what she wanted from the SUV line, and if she didn't pick one out, he would. There were even two of them in the showroom inside, out of the rain, so she could stay dry while she asked questions.
That almost seemed like it had been planned, she thought.
Their son had been on his way to his warehouse when he saw his dad's vehicle and stopped. The two Sams talked while she'd taken the SUV she liked for a test drive in the rain with the salesman. It really did feel safe and solid on the road and heavier, which it was. It really was a much different type of vehicle than her small truck.
She liked it. A lot.
She told her Sams about all of that when she returned.
"You can't beat this SUV for safety features, Ma. Do you know they use it for testing other vehicles in their fleet? It's solid, and it's virtually impossible to get one to roll, even when they try. The center of gravity is different and they sit lower to the ground," her son pointed out. "You're going to love it the same way Zoe loves hers. It's good for keeping kids safe, too."
"But it's not made in America." It was her closing move in the weak argument she no longer had the heart for.
"These are built in Alabama."
"Oh."
She was sitting next to her son while waiting for the vehicle to appear after the final dealer inspection while Sam took care of the last of the paperwork.
When he stepped out of the office he handed her the essential things she needed to keep with the vehicle—the license application, registration and temporary insurance status. She reached up and pulled his head down and kissed his cheek. "Thank you."
"Drive careful, Manda. The rain's let up but you still have to watch out for the other guy."
"Worrywart. I'm going to show Sheldon and Zoe and then come back to the Cakery."
Sam the younger stood behind her with a thumbs up sign, just as her new truck appeared outside the door. It had been warmed and all she had to do was get in and adjust seats and mirrors. The salesperson helped her do that and spent more time explaining how the radio and some of the higher tech features worked.
Sam watched and smiled. The woman he loved and the child she carried were now going to be surrounded by airbags, from the top, the front, and both sides.
His son clapped his shoulder. "Good job, Dad. I didn't think anybody could get her out of that old truck."
"Yeah, but she's still upset about it. I wouldn't put it past her—"
"It's locked in the warehouse back shop and I swiped her spare key this morning after you left the house. By the way, are you still coming to the buddy project?"
"Wouldn't miss it."
Amanda turned and waved to them and drove away.
Sam laughed again as he waved to his mother. "Kind of glad you showed up, Dad."
"Me, too, Sam. Me, too," he said softly.
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It'd been almost a year since he'd seen Nick Carnahan. He was pushing a man in a wheelchair up the ramp to Sam's warehouse.
Most of the men who were in chairs had the motorized type, and it appeared this man's chair had a problem because Sam could see the battery pack underneath.
As soon as Nick saw Sam he grinned, then said something to the man in the chair who laughed. They walked toward each other and met like old friends, exchanging hugs.
"Good to see you, Nick," Sam said with a huge smile.
Carnahan laughed. "Sam, meet my brother Jack. We had a long talk about someone named Sam Axe and I decided there must be two of you or you had a son."
He reached to shake Jack's hand. "Nick's brother, huh? Well, he's a good man."
"I agree." His legs were missing below his knees. "Good to meet you, Sam Axe," he laughed. "Yeah, you're related, aren't you?"
"We share the name and the same birthday. How about that?"
"Birthday, too?" Jack laughed. "We knew it had to be something like that. I told Nick my captain's name was Sam Axe, and he said, no, Sam Axe was a former SEAL who worked with the CIA. So we were both right."
"That you were."
"Are you here now?" Jack wondered. "Helping Sam?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"Good. That's good. Sorry, but I'm going to go—" Jack nodded toward the group of men by the weights.
"Oh, yeah," Nick said. "Hey, let me get that other chair for you."
In a matter of moments they swapped wheelchairs. Nick had retrieved a standard, lightweight chair for his brother to use. With Jack off to join in a group of men working with weights, the power chair he'd arrived in had been hooked up to a charging device, and Nick and Sam had time to talk.
They found an alcove where they could watch what Jack was doing and sit and talk. "Did Westen live? He didn't look like he was going to make it," Carnahan said.
"Yeah, it was real bad, but he kept fighting. He's good now. They have a son. What happened to your brother?"
"IED. His team pulled him out. I got to tell you, Sam, this place, what your son's doing here . . . this is . . . "
"Like a lifeline."
"Yeah."
"Are you still taking jobs?" Sam wondered.
"Trying to decide what to do next. Raines has been really decent about this, and he told me they're still talking about who in intel they want coordinating with the new Defense Clandestine Service. I actually think that came about after that mess . . . anyway, I'd be fine with that if it we were here in the states, but they're focusing on Africa and China. I'm sure you heard about it," Nick said.
"Just a little here and there. Talked to Raines myself before I left Miami to come back here. How long have you been away?"
"About six months. When Jack finally got out of the hospital, ah, well, actually when my sister-in-law called and begged for help, I couldn't say no. He'd tried . . ."
Sam stopped him. "He looks good now. Is he past . . .?"
"I think so. I hope so. Sam's friend David . . . that guy really helped Jack a lot."
"David Pence? I just met him."
"Yeah, he was leading a special ops team in Vietnam years ago when he got hurt. That guy's solid as rock. Good man."
They caught up, like teammates do, hitting the high and low spots about their lives since they last worked together. By the time Jack rejoined them, it was lunch time and someone had ordered pizzas. Wallets opened, the pizza guy was paid and tipped well, since most of the men there knew him from their unit.
Sam and Nick were enjoying listening to Jack and his former teammates talk about building a school in Iraq and about the kids and dogs they'd befriended when Sam wondered if Diesel wouldn't be a good addition to the mix here.
When his phone jangled in his pocket, he answered. It was David, who got straight to the point.
"Have you seen Amanda? We had an appointment at noon and she never called and she's not answering her phone. That's not like her. I'm concerned." It was just a few minutes after two now.
Sam told him what they'd done this morning, and excused himself from the group to call Sheldon and Zoe. Neither had seen her. From the time she left the dealership until now, no one had seen her. Four hours. Panic settled in, escalated his heart rate and creased every worry line on his face.
An extrasentory perception whispered to him that something was seriously wrong.
Sheldon immediately said he'd go to the house to see if she was there. Sam called his son over to tell him what was happening, and when his phone rang again, he answered.
It was Sheldon. He'd found the house empty and was heading into town. Sam looked at his son and said he'd go check the Cakery. He tried her phone again. No answer. That made him crazy. The woman had to stop turning off her phone.
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Sheldon hadn't gone more than a mile from the Axe homestead when he was slowed by a line of vehicles with brake lights on that curved down the hill. He was stopped dead on the blacktopped surface by a roadblock.
An chill not related to the weather washed over him.
There was a glare of color transfused through rain of white, red and blue flashing lights from a collection of emergency vehicles, wreckers, fire trucks and state and county police cars. The counterpoints against out-of-sync flashing lights in the rain-grayed atmosphere were the red fire trucks and neon yellow of rain coats worn by EMTs, firemen and police officers.
He pulled his truck off on the shoulder behind a line of cars with warning flashers blinking, and parked, then flipped on his own emergency flashing lights and walked closer to investigate what appeared to be the scene of an accident. Dread deepened with every step he took closer to the scene.
When he spotted a familiar mass of blonde hair on a lightweight stretcher being moved into the back of an ambulance, he yelled. "Hey! Hey there! I know her!"
Sheldon could just about guess what happened, and he felt like he'd been hit by a Howitzer with the realization that Amanda was hurt.
He hurried past cops who were yelling at him to stay back, but he knew it was imperative that he let the EMTs know their patient was pregnant.
One of them was squinting at a syringe filled with something just as he reached the back of the vehicle. "Hey there, careful what you give her. She's pregnant."
"She's pregnant? Is this your wife?"
"No, but she's family. That's Amanda Axe—she's four months pregnant."
"Thanks. Hey, is this Sam Axe's mom?" one familiar looking EMT asked.
"Yeah."
"Tell him we're taking her to Regional."
With that the rear doors were pulled closed, and the ambulance driver flipped on the siren and left the scene.
Sheldon stood in the rain and called Sam and told him where he'd found Amanda and what the EMT told him.
He turned back to where he'd left his truck, and stopped to take a more careful look to see if he could determine what had happened.
Off to one side of the road a semi-truck with a trailer was tipped on its side, wheels off pavement, angled across the road. The trailer was being set upright, lifted and moved by the two-stage boom arm connected to a semi-sized tow truck that was stable and braced against the pavement.
Across from it, the guardrail told another story. A section was missing. What remained was scraped, curled and split. A second tow truck was also locked down on pavement, using a winch to pull up the cranberry red SUV from the ravine where it'd landed. The loud screech of metal touching metal was unnerving. The entire front passenger side was bashed in, and it was obvious from the collection of dents on every surface and the broken branches and limbs stuck in the undercarriage that it had rolled over several times before coming to a rest.
He looked down the hill and saw the path of broken shrubs and splintered saplings from where it had traveled. If it would have rolled once more, it would dropped into an even deeper ravine.
It looked like every airbag inside the vehicle deployed, but those on the driver's side had been sliced and deflated, and the door had been cut away from the vehicle, apparently to remove Amanda.
Sheldon quickly used his phone to take several pictures of the frightening damage to Amanda's new SUV before turning to take photos of the semi. Then he called his son-in-law and reported what he saw. A few minutes later, he sent the images to Sam the younger's phone.
Sam and his dad were at the hospital now, and waiting to find out what was happening with Amanda. Sheldon promised to join them as soon as he went home and changed into dry clothing. But he stopped before he reached his truck when he saw a lone figure off to one side, leaning on a police cruiser, his head in his hands, obviously in distress.
"Hey, you okay there?" Sheldon asked.
"No. That poor woman."
"You were driving the truck, weren't you? Did you get hurt?"
"No, but I saw her face. She was so scared. My load shifted and . . ."
The man's arm was bandaged, and he could see it tucked up inside his jacket. But the man was soaked. The rain had let up, but it was still coming down steadily. Sheldon could see he was trembling and having a reaction of some kind. Then he took a closer look.
This was some kind of true medical emergency. He clapped an arm around his shoulders just as he began to lose consciousness and sink to the ground. Sheldon yelled at one of the firefighters who was walking away after releasing the chain that pulled up Amanda's damaged vehicle to set it solidly on pavement.
"Help over here! Help!"
A yellow-slickered cop and two yellow-jacketed firefighters appeared nearly instantly; they evaluated the patient and opted to not call for another ambulance. Instead, they'd decided to save time by using the chief's SUV to transport their new patient to the same ER they'd taken Amanda to ten minutes earlier.
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He wasn't sure what they were doing with or to her, but he wanted to know, and no one was talking. He told them she was pregnant and the nurse said they knew that.
Sam knew he was on the wrong side of the woman guarding the window outside the ER when she told him to sit down and wait. A few minutes later, his son asked and was told the same thing. Ten minutes later, he requested permission to go back to be with her, and was told to wait in the same rude tone she had used earlier.
It didn't matter if he was her husband, he was not being allowed anywhere near her.
Worse, no one was sharing an ounce of information about Amanda's condition. He knew he was being irrational, but he wanted to be there, to see what was happening to her.
And, now, he wanted to hit something.
His son, however, was a voice of reason. "Come on, Dad. Let's sit down over there. Let them do their jobs. They'll let us know when they can tell us something."
Sam knew he was right and he struggled to find the composure he'd routinely employed during a thousand stress-filled, life and death situations, but he couldn't.
Thirty minutes of antsy behavior later, his son grabbed his arm and roughly steered him outside into the cold, damp air and pushed him against a brick wall.
His voice was deep, stern and grim. "I'll be happy to put you on your butt again if you don't cool it. Mom doesn't need you in this condition."
He jerked away from Sam's grip and headed back to the ER waiting room but he hadn't taken two steps away when he found himself spun around and slammed back, hard, into the wall again. "I mean that."
This time, he locked on his son's eyes, eyes the same color as Amanda's.
Father and son focused on each other. Sam closed his eyes and felt himself deflate under his son's commanding presence.
He inhaled and the grip he had on his son's arm relaxed and softened as he pulled him toward him for a hug. "I'm sorry, Sam."
"I understand, Dad. But, you know they won't let you in to see her if you aren't calm. You know that," his son told him quietly.
Sam took a cleansing, calming breath. Then he took another one. "I'm sorry."
"I understand going crazy, all right? I understand. Take a minute. Take two."
Sam nodded. "I . . . I'm sorry. I just can't—"
"Lose her," his son filled in.
"Yeah. That's it."
"I know." Father and son met each other's gaze.
Sam straightened up. Of course his son understood. Hadn't they been here in this same hospital just a few months ago when doctors were trying to save Zoe from suffering a stroke?
He brushed himself off and tucked his shirt back in his pants.
"You okay now?"
"No, but I'm good to go back."
"That's enough."
Sheldon had arrived just as he saw Sam shove his father into the wall and brace for a physical exchange. He'd stayed back and had watched the whole scene. Now, he breathed easily.
The Axe family, no matter what had happened in the past, had reformed itself. He debated joining them and then opted to wait. He'd already enjoyed many father and son moments that Sam had missed with his son.
They could take care of each other now. Amanda would be pleased.
He called Zoe to tell her what he'd witnessed, but it took no convincing her to believe they all loved one another, despite the missing 30 years of Sam's life with theirs.
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Her baby. That was her first thought.
Everything hurt. That was her second.
She waited, sensing. She didn't hurt there. Her baby was all right wasn't she?
What hurt more than anything was her hair for some reason. It felt as if every single strand had been pulled, follicle by follicle. Maybe it had been. Maybe she was feeling her scalp, not her hair.
Her lip felt swollen and ached.
She could only open one eye a tiny bit, because the other seemed to be bandaged shut.
The fingers of her left hand were taped to something and she couldn't move them. And her right hand was taped to something else. It felt much colder than her left hand. Why?
She wanted to touch the child in her womb but she couldn't move her hands.
Something was beeping. What was that?
She thought she could move her knees. She could wiggle her toes, but what was that under her left leg? A pillow?
She shut the eye she'd opened again and tried to think. She was pretty sure she was in a hospital, but why? Thinking was hard, so she closed her eyes again.
Someone was holding her hand, the one that was so cold, and it felt good, warm flesh next to hers, warming her. Had someone kissed her lips? She couldn't tell.
She wanted Sam. She wanted Sam.
She wanted to say it but she drifted away again, back to that gray place where there was no noise and focused on the warmth of the hand touching hers that felt so good. So good.
The next time she opened her eye, warm brown eyes were looking at her. She wanted to smile but it hurt.
"Hey, there you are."
His lips touched hers, lightly, gently. She tried to smile but she couldn't, and the gray was such a pleasant place where nothing hurt so she returned to it.
The next time she woke, she could see from both eyes. She could see the wall with the TV held by a bracket of some sort in the corner up high, a white plastic board with her name printed on it in black and a bunch of red hearts around her name.
Her hand was tucked inside someone else's hand. Sam.
She closed her eyes again, briefly, if only to savor his presence. He was sitting on a chair next to the bed. He was holding her hand with one of his, and his head was on the bed, sleeping, maybe. His other hand was there, where she wanted to put hers, on the baby, but she couldn't move her hand.
Amanda wanted to talk to him, but she couldn't find her voice and her tongue felt fat. She couldn't find anything except the gray wall so she turned back to it again.
The next time she woke up, she opened her eyes to see Sam looking at her, smiling.
"Hey, how are you feeling?"
"I don't . . . know."
Then she focused and looked into his eyes. "The baby?"
"The baby is fine. Fine."
"Mmmm."
And then she saw the gray.
She heard them then. Her Sams. They were talking to someone, but she didn't understand.
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"She is a very lucky, lucky woman. Trauma is, well, traumatic, and often a non-obstetric cause of death in pregnant women. The fetal monitoring, which is an extremely accurate way to measure fetal status after trauma, tells us your baby is doing well. He has a very strong heartbeat. Your wife's doctor will want to keep track of that as well. We'll send over all our reports to him. Don't let her miss an appointment.
"The fact that she was wearing seatbelt and the vehicle had airbags probably saved her life. We saw the photos of that accident; she's lucky. You're a lucky. Most people would not be able to walk away from an accident like that. Her bumps and bruises will heal, but she's going to need a little more time with that. She really got banged up."
The doctor looked at his son and then Sam. She smiled. "I understand this is your second child?"
Sam ducked his head. "Yeah. I don't have an explanation if you're looking for one."
His son grinned at him.
"No, but I want to emphasize that you must to make sure she doesn't miss an appointment with her OB/GYN. Pregnancies for mature women have their own kind of risk, without the added factor of trauma."
Sam nodded. "Will do."
When Amanda and Zoe emerged from the room where Zoe had been helping Amanda get dressed, she was sitting in a wheel chair with a large teddy bear on her lap. Jacob and Noah had brought it for her to hug when they'd come to visit yesterday.
Amanda didn't want her grandsons to see her while she was looking scary, she said, but Zoe had a different viewpoint. "This isn't about you, Manda, it's them. They need to see you. OK?"
Sam was holding his baby daughter while they were waiting and Sheldon was entertaining Jacob and Noah until Zoe and Sam returned home.
Sam had not left Amanda's side for the past five days except for quick trips home to shower, shave and change his clothing. He knew he'd have a lot of laundry to tend to after he got Amanda home.
And right now, that was all he wanted to do: take her home.
#
#
#
"It feels like it was a month ago, not just a week since I was here," Amanda said.
Sam was helping her take off her jacket. The left side of her body had a collection of bruises that ran from her collarbone across her breast and down her arm; they touched her hip and upper thigh. At least the purple in her fingers was fading, but the impression of the seatbelt was clear as it could be, in various shades of purple, blue and black.
The gash in her hairline had been stitched and was healing. Sometime later today he'd promised to help her wash her hair in the shower. She'd been told not to get it wet, but he'd conferred with a nurse who told him how to let her have clean hair and not harm the dissolvable stiches.
She had a collection of bandages that would need tending. Elbow. Knee. Thigh. Ankle. Sam had learned she didn't complain about pain, which didn't mean she could hide it. He could see the response on her face and it reverberated as if it was his pain, too.
She'd made Sam show her the photos of her new truck and of the accident and then had closed her eyes. "I think my guardian angel was watching over me," she'd said.
"All those airbags helped," her son told her.
Now that her jacket was off, Sam handed her a footed cane. "This is ridiculous, but handy," she said.
"So where to? Living room or bedroom?"
"I really need to lie down," she admitted.
He couldn't take watching her struggle with the cane, so he picked her up and carried her to their bed.
She pressed a soft kiss to his cheek as he lowered her to the bed.
"Are you okay? Do you want . . . ?" he asked.
Her eyes were dark, pleading. "Please, Sam, please be by me. Stay with me."
How could he not? He removed her shoes, then his and lay next to her on the bed. She was on her right side, the side that didn't hurt, turned toward him. She used her left hand to caress his face.
Sweet, light kisses were just enough.
"That was scary," she said. "Really scary." And then she closed her eyes. Sleep found her within seconds.
He watched as he'd been watching her sleep for days.
Yes, that was scary. Really scary. Breath-stealing, heart-stopping scary.
Because he couldn't lose her. Not now.
How could she know she held the power to keep him from being swamped by uncertain waters, terrorized by dragons, and falling off the edge of a flat world?
