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Chapter Ten

Forever and Always

"Your mother was never one for this much whining," Sam said gruffly a few days after their night at the restaurant. Since beginning her job, the two had fewer chances to talk, and Kate was so infuriated with the man that she hadn't dared bring up his fine dining and geurilla tactics that he'd shared with the group, and even encouraged Marc to employ. Kate had started to think it was a blessing that she now had a job—they weren't constantly in each other's hair—but then she remembered how sick he was. Then the guilt set in.

"You must've known a different Diane than I did then," Kate retorted with a biting laugh. She loved her mother dearly, but if anyone could find something to complain about, it had been Diane. "I'm just saying—and it feels like I'm talking to a wall, by the way—that I don't appreciate you trying to play matchmaker between Jack and I. It makes things awkward."

Sam rolled his eyes and Kate could tell he was trying to cover up how terrible he was feeling. The intensified chemo and radiation treatments were taking a toll on him physically and mentally and had left him even more closed off than Kate had grown accustomed to.

"Woulda been awkward anyway. Guy's had eyes for you since the moment you walked into his office. Don't think I didn't notice."

"I didn't even notice!" she lied, hoping to have the last word. She wasn't used to having someone around who insisted on disagreeing with everything she said. "I hope you understand that I'm doing this for you, trying to focus on getting you better."

Taking his eyes off of his novel, Kate felt that she finally had his full attention. "Doing what? Pissing away a chance to be with someone?"

Losing her temper, Kate stopped tearing the lettuce she was preparing for that night's dinner. "What has convinced you so entirely that Jack and I are meant to be? Because honestly, if you can give me some sort of reason and I agree with it, then I'll admit that we're soul mates and are destined to be together, all of that shit."

"Dr. Shephard and I have... talked," Sam said.

"Oh, now you've convinced me. That's right, we are meant to be together."

"Say I'm wrong," he started, "which I'm not, but still… would it really be so bad if I just wanted something else to focus on? You know, other than dying and potentially fatal surgeries. Those kinds of things."

Kate softened. While his explanation didn't cure everything, it was understandable that the man needed a distraction.

Sighing, she turned the tap on and continued her work. "Let's compromise here, all right? Could you at least be a little less... just a little less?"

"Only if you promise me you'll do a little more."

The next day while Kate was at work, she found herself still pretending that Marc hadn't upset her the other night at their dinner with Jack and Sam. Never in her life had Kate considered herself soft, but something about the way Sam and Marc had both basically attacked her and Jack dug at her. It pissed her off.

So it didn't help her situation in the slightest when the man in question strode through the office doors, that cocky smile plastered on his face.

"Well, I would ask who you're here to see, but I don't think that's necessary," Marc chimed in, greeting Jack with a casual handshake.

Jack shot him a glance—and for a brief moment Kate wondered if the two had their own version of gossip, that maybe they sat on Jack's couch, drinking beer and scheming up ways to get in her pants—then she stopped, wondering where the actual conversation was headed.

Rolling his eyes, Jack continued. "Actually, I wanted to tell Kate in person."

Moving her glance from the computer screen in front of her, she met his eyes. "Tell me what?"

"So you couldn't come to Sam's appointment yesterday, I get that—"

"I couldn't leave, Jack, we had a last minute deadline and I just started—"

Marc raised his hands in the air, proclaiming his innocence. "Hey, I told you you could leave for a bit—"

"Woah," Jack interrupted. "Not playing the blame game here. I wanted to tell you about your father… I was waiting for you to call me last night but you never did."

"Sorry?" Kate said, unsure of his angle. Sam had told her that everything was the same.

Jack sat down across from her. "I knew he wouldn't tell you right away," he said, shaking his head. "Stubborn."

"Tell me about it."

When Jack's eyes lit up, Kate prayed for good news, though the deal she'd reluctantly accepted was surely packaged with it. There was no way she would rally against her father just so she wouldn't have to give Jack a chance, or whatever it was he wouldn't shut up about. They'd practically been a date before anyway…

"You know how sometimes things just seem to go your way?" Jack asked, vague as ever.

"Okay, I'll take the bait…"

"We scheduled the surgery. It's in three days—"

How could they possibly have taken such a drastic step without even consulting her? Sure, Kate wasn't the one who was sick, but it had been her pushing that made Sam see Dr. Shephard in the first place. And yes, as a doctor, Jack did know what was best, but that feeling came back to her, the one the dug at her, similar to how she felt after Sam and Marc's ambush at dinner.

She was no longer in control, and she didn't like it.

"Wait, what about the tumors? I thought you couldn't do the surgery until they were smaller?"

Jack smiled, this time not cocky, but confident and seemingly genuinely happy for Sam. "That's the thing," he started. "We did new scans today on his spinal tumor. It's gotten smaller, not significantly so, but to the point that it's more operable than before. And I don't like to wait."

"That's… great," Kate said, looking around the office to Marc, who didn't belong in the conversation and knew it. "But what about the liver tumors?"

"They're in control. There's never been much question as to whether or not those can be operated on. They can, but that won't happen until after I operate on him. Right now the pressing issue is getting the spinal tumor out. It has the most potential to spread at this point."

Before Kate could speak, Marc chimed in to excuse himself. "Listen, this all sounds wonderful, and I'm happy for your dad, but I have some work to finish. Kate, you can leave after you finish up the graphics on the front sleeve, okay?"

Kate nodded absently. "Then why did Sam tell me everything was pretty much the same? Wasn't it at least a little bit important to tell me about this?"

Leaning back in his chair, Jack chuckled. "Before you go all crazy and stuff, I have to tell you that we just scheduled the surgery today. I had to call Dr. Holland on the liver tumor issue, get the facts from her. He wouldn't have had time to tell you."

"Like hell he wouldn't," Kate said. "Is it that hard to pick up the phone? I get that he hasn't told me about the surgery yet, but he could've told me that the tumor has shrunk."

Very aware that they were now alone, Kate sat rigidly in her desk chair, watching Jack look out the window, carefree almost, as though he didn't face a tough surgery in only a few days.

"Fair enough. But whatever the case, I figured that I should come out here to explain everything to you."

Kate managed a meager "thanks," before returning to her graphic, not able to concentrate but not able to look directly at Jack, either.

"Three days… wow," she said eventually, her senses on alert when he leaned behind her, examining the graphic of a bird she'd recently designed.

"Yeah," he said nonchalantly, instead focusing his attention on the screen. "That's cool, you're really talented, Kate." He glanced over to her and finally she met it, afraid to be rude, but also afraid of the lack of distance between them.

People who are 'just friends' don't do things like this, she thought.

Why was it that when he stood like that, his palms planted on either side of her elbows, so close that she could feel the heat of him, the tickle of his breath on her ear, that she didn't think at all about how in three days, Sam's fate was in his hands?

She didn't think of him as a doctor at all—just a man.

After receiving a fairly harsh lecture from Kate about the importance of filling her in immediately on all information regarding his health, Sam was ready for bed. He just wanted the yapping to stop.

"We don't even know each other very well, you know," she started again, causing Sam to roll his eyes.

"I know."

"And in three days, I mean…"

"You mean if I die in three days you wanna make sure we got to be buddies, or what?"

Widening her eyes, Kate surveyed the beaten down man before her. He had sacrificed so much for her, and who knew if he would come out of it any better?

She paused and reminded herself not to get an attitude. "I just want to make sure we've taken advantage of this. It's not every day that you meet your father after thirty years. It's quite the opportunity."

Attitude visibly softened, Sam told her stories of his days with Diane, or Poppy as he always called her. She got little pieces of information about her mother, things that surprised her, like the fact that Diane had a tattoo Kate never knew about. She didn't have the guts or interest to ask where it was, or how he knew about it…

The rundown of their relationship was much like the stories that Kate produced in her mind as a child, stories that became increasingly more realistic as she got older. The two had met in a diner Diane was working in at the time. Sam was in town on a construction job, and took a liking to Diane immediately. The waitress was feisty and kept him on his toes.

"Plus, she was awfully pretty," he said.

The affair had lasted only a few months, when Sam found out that his next project would relocate him to California.

"Before I could even tell her I was leaving, she'd already taken off," he said. "Guess that's about the time you come into the story."

Kate never expected that she would be the one filling in the gaps of Diane's life, but Sam was curious, and it settled her to realize that he still thought of her mother. The pair was more than a little combustible, but at one point they'd been in it for the right reasons.

"I wish I woulda known about you… coulda helped out a little maybe. Visited you."

Confused why a simple conversation, one that they'd basically already had, was bringing her near tears, Kate shook her head and placed her hand on top of Sam's. "You had no way of knowing. There's nothing to feel guilty about and nothing to feel sorry for. I know you're the type of man who follows through on his responsibilities. But since you didn't know about me in the first place…"

"All right, all right," the older man grumbled. "I wanna help you, though. You know, after I'm gone."

For the first time, the man's talk of death was not in jest. For the first time, she saw fear in his eyes.

And without her usual biting tone, she said, "Don't talk like that. You can't think like that."

"It's not about being morbid or expecting to die, Kate. I wanna make sure that my daughter has everything she's entitled to. And it's different when there's a more concrete timeline on your fate. When you're told you only have a few months left, you gain some perspective. And a few days? I could be gone, and we have to think about that. Three days from now, it could be like I never existed."

The tears that had threatened to spill over the duration of their conversation finally did, and Kate wiped them from her cheeks hastily. Deciding to sprint through whatever boundaries they had left, she pulled the older man, no, her father, into a hug.

Eventually she felt his arms settle around her, and she thought a few tears of his had soaked into the shoulder of her top. It was unbearable to think that all of the hardship he'd been through could end up being for nothing. He might still die.

She whispered into his ear, gripping the fabric of his shirt and unwilling to let go. If there was ever a time to let their feelings out, this was it.

"You're gonna make it through this, Sam. I'll always be your daughter, and you'll always be my dad."

Up next: Sam and Jack prepare for surgery, but in drastically different ways, and Kate is caught in the middle.