/ / / Samuel \ \ \
He followed the nurse down a seemingly never-ending series of turns and corridors. He had known Maggie for a long time, she was married to one of his best friends and she had been a good friend after his wife died. She walked into the ICU and directed him to wash his hands before they continued on to Stiles' room. He saw Derek's name on the outside of a door as he passed but couldn't see anything inside the room. He probably wouldn't even be there yet.
Maggie stopped next to Stiles' room and laid a hand on his elbow. "He's going to be pale and look worse than he is Sam."
The sheriff nodded not sure if he wanted to step inside yet or think about it some more.
"Sam, I do this with love," she opened the door and pushed him in.
Samuel stared at Stiles for a few minutes while the entire night suddenly hit him and he collapsed down into the chair Maggie steered him into. He heard her leave, close the door behind her but he didn't care as he gripped Stiles' hand as gently as he could and started to cry. Stiles was alive, Samuel stared at his chest rising and falling for a long time counting his breaths. Sam took a couple of deep breaths trying so hard not to think back to sitting next to his wife with Stiles standing at his side almost shaking with the pressure of keeping himself from crying. Stiles looked pale like his wife had but there was a quality, something that Sam didn't know how to describe that told him Stiles was still there, that he was alive and that he'd be okay. Samuel knew that there was still a chance that things could go wrong, and they wouldn't know what was wrong with Stiles until he woke up. Sam knew he would need to steal a computer from one of the nurses to look up temporal bone to see what he was looking at. He'd heard it a number of times over the years but never enough for it to have stuck in his brain well enough to be able to know what effects it could have.
Samuel wiped his tears away and leaned over next to Stiles. "I'm here Grzegorz, you just need to wake up and we will take care of everything else. I can't lose you okay? Just wake up and everything will be fine."
Samuel pressed a soft kiss to the space over Stiles' eyebrow one of the few spots of unmarked skin. He sat back down and held onto Stiles' hand watching his son closely. His head was bandaged and it covered his ear on the far side away from Samuel. He was pale and there was still a hint of black soot under his nose. He wasn't wearing anything over his chest and Sam could see the bandage around his ribs spreading from just under his armpits all the way down to the bottom of his ribs. Samuel had only ever bruised his ribs but the remembered pain told him that Stiles would be dealing with that wound for a long time. Ribs, like any part of the body constantly in use, seemed to take much longer to heal. Stiles' arm was in a plaster cast from the shoulder down to his wrist. The sheriff couldn't see any other obvious wounds but there were dozens of little, and not so little, bruises as well as cuts.
Samuel waited until Maggie came back and knocked on the door before he stood again. He leaned over and spoke into his uncovered ear again. "I'm only going for a little while. I'll be back soon son. I love you."
The sheriff turned and walked out of the room.