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Chapter 14- Paying Respects.
Sam was left gawking at her, her knack of knowing him better than he knew himself still surprising him at every turn.
"McNally..."
"No Sam, I know you and I know you're going to have me bumped...".
Sam's hands found themselves rammed into his pockets as he payed great attention to the tarmac.
Had he bumped her before?
"I don't know what I'm doing here okay, I don't know if I can do this...".
Andy's mouth fell open, but she recovered quickly and slammed it shut. Sam was totally unguarded, and totally honest with her now in this moment, something she had only really ever experienced a few times in the past.
"You can do this, you're tougher than you think". Andy tried to make it sound like she really believed that he could, even though it might take some time before he got there.
Sam snorted in response. "You make it sound so easy, but I nearly got you killed today Andy, I don't want that to happen again because I'm not in control".
"Sam, you can't always be in control of everything, sometimes things aren't meant to be controlled". She felt herself blush slightly at him using her first name. Since the accident she had been McNally, only twice had she been Andy now.
Andy bit back a small smile, the old Sam was making an appearance and he didn't even know it. Sam the in control kind of guy was still there, deep down somewhere.
"So what was it that..." Andy repeated her question from earlier in the locker room. The one that he had labeled as nothing.
Sam looked really uncomfortable.
"Andy... Look, it's nothing".
"Sam!".
"Okay, I remembered working Brennan, and what happened okay".
Andy felt a cold chin run through her, it didn't take much to know what parts of working Brennan Sam had remembered. Besides his expression, Sam unconsciously flexed his wrist, the one that Brennan had so callously broken.
"Who's Candice?" Sam blurted, Andy's face paling at the name.
"Candice?". She echoed.
"Yup, Candice. I remember asking Brennan where she was".
"Probably just someone you met while under?". She wasn't lying, Sam had me 'Candice' while under, and she wasn't breaking the rules by telling him anything. He had remembered Candice on his own, and she was guessing.
"Maybe, Frank hid my file...".
His comment made her let out a light giggle, she had obviously been wondering about that and had figured that he would go looking for it.
"So, need a ride?". Since they were both excused from shift, Sam might as well take her where she wanted to go. She was out of uniform too, so that meant that Frank relieved her from shift.
"Um, okay?". Andy tried to hide her feelings at how strange it felt to have him ask her that.
"Where to? Penny? Home?".
"The Penny? This time of the day?". McNally asked when he opened her door for her, like the gentleman he was.
Wait, he was a gentleman right?
"Yeah, cocktails in the afternoon".
Sam closed the door hoping that she said okay. He had no idea where she lived although he probably should know that. He just couldn't remember.
"Okay, Penny it is" she said smiling widely.
Twenty minutes later, they were halfway through their first cocktails, Sam had kept to his word and ordered them each something he thought they would like. McNally was drinking hers, so it couldn't be too vulgar.
But she was still distant and quiet, like she had a lot running through her mind.
Sam arched an eyebrow and looked her way knowing that she would give in to the invitation to talk.
"What's it like?". She whispered the words so softly. Like she was scared of the answer she'd get.
"It's funny" Sam said letting out a little chuckle.
"This morning Epstein comes up to me and says 'Hey Swarek, I don't know if you remember me' so I say, 'Sure I do, you're Traci Peck'. His face was priceless".
McNally let out a really loud laugh and clamped her hand over her mouth like she wanted to hide it. At least he had: had the sense to wait for her to swallow before saying that. "You didn't!" She gasped out between her breathless giggle.
Watching Sam nod and smile to confirm that he indeed had, Andy was lost in the wonder of how free this version of Sam was.
Sure he still had his baggage, and the stress of what his life had become, but he was so different- in a good way.
None of their passed tainted their present, and it was almost like he actually looked at her and saw her for the very first time.
"It's hard most days, and you never know what to say so you don't say it. In case it's the wrong thing". Sam shrugged.
Andy was speechless. Sam was actually being open, and she didn't have to put up a fight to get him to do it, he was volunteering it to her.
"But, it's coming back?". Andy tried to hide behind the brim of her glass, but the object in her hand was see through in any case, and way too small.
"But it's not enough".
"For now Sam, it'll come back" Andy instinctively reached out and put her hand on Sam's arm, but she pulled it away after barely touching him.
Sam tilted his head to the side slightly when her hand retracted, it was as though he was questioning the reason she took her hand away, or the reason she nearly went there in the first place.
"Am I missing something here?" He asked unfiltered waving his hand loosely in the air between them.
His dreams were running freshly through his mind the second he felt the spark that shot out of McNally's hand and up his arm. If he wasn't mistaken, the woman in his dreams could easily be her, but what were the chances of that right?
"Um, missing?". McNally looked nervous when he asked the question. She almost looked like she was about to lie.
"Have we ever...?".
Sam scrutinized McNally's face as her mouth opened only to be closed again when her phone went off.
"Hi" she mumbled into it the second she had it out.
"He's good".
Sam was guessing that it was Sarah on the other end of the call, he knew that she made regular calls to McNally to check on him or just to talk.
"Nope". McNally said, blushing. She was having a one sided conversation about him obviously.
Turning away from McNally, Sam lifted his glass and took a sip, scolding himself for even considering her as the woman his mind had most likely conjured up.
McNally was sweet, and passionate and honest, and caring and he wasn't any of those things. She was soft, while he was made of chiseled concrete on the inside, his cold far from her inner warmth.
They were total opposites, and she was way out of his class, miles out of his league anyway, so there was just no way...
Besides, she's his rookie.
"I'm not your rookie anymore Sam, I got cut loose".
Ouch!
That had not been muttered in his head, had it?
Peering at her, he could tell that she hadn't heard most of it, or she wouldn't be wearing the slight trace of the friendly face that she was.
Sam's eyes drifted a little lower, the red and purple marks on her neck suddenly screaming at him, and making another surge of anger race through him.
It was like the time that she was...
Like when she...
Damnit, every single scenario that could be used in comparison had completely evaporated.
Just as a vague image pulled into his minds eye, Sam forced it back out and willed his mind to go blank. He was done with having these little flashes of a life that he didn't remember, and a woman he couldn't seem to forget.
He was done and over it, so he willed the memories away.
...
"I don't know".
"Come on Detective Swarek, there must be at least one small thing you remember? Even if it seems insignificant".
Dr Dwyer refused to believe that for the last three weeks Sam had not remembered one single thing. Not since the day that McNally was strangled had he allowed a memory to surface.
Every single time that one threatened to come to light he literally forced it out of his mind and shut it down before it even got started.
It was most likely really unhealthy, but after that day he refused to let it jeopardize either of them on the job.
"Nope" Sam said looking Dr Dwyer in the eye while swirling his coffee around.
He was still keeping his weekly appointments with her as Frank had instructed, but it was more out of humoring his friend than his need to get his life back.
"So, when is Sarah's birthday?"
"June Eighteenth".
That was the Doctor's forte- collect information from Frank and quiz Sam on it each time he came by. But her questions were all things that he knew, they pre-dated the accident by miles.
"Look Detective, I can't help someone that doesn't want to be helped here. I can't magically make everything come back. I had hoped for a gradual ease into it, but you are unwilling to get past the first step".
Right, time to go. Sam stood up off the arm of the chair, every intention of walking out the door and never coming back when one last question stopped him "Do you blame yourself for Detective Barber's death?".
Sam froze with his hand stretched out towards the door handle.
Did he?
Did he blame someone else?
Sam looked down at his hands, the faked images of blood staining his skin had long since stopped haunting him, but he still didn't remember anything about that day.
"I have no idea" Sam said without looking away from the door before he simply opened it, stepped through and closed it behind himself.
The drive to the cemetery was short, everything this side of town was relatively close together.
Since he had remembered Jerry's death, he had never worked up the courage to actually pay Jerry a visit.
Somehow he felt like Jerry would know that he had been forgotten.
Treading lightly over the grass, Sam followed his gut on where to go because surely he had been here the day of Jerry's funeral, and again after that to pay his respects.
When his feet stopped walking, Sam looked up to find a tombstone marked with Jerry's name, his heart picking up speed until it physically hurt.
"He's missed you" a voice said startling Sam slightly. He should have guessed that Nash would be here with time off.
Sam nodded as she stepped abreast of him, both of them looking at a stone carved with a name that was a part of their lives.
"You really doing okay?" Nash asked, Sam looking to the side to see her.
He merely nodded.
"You doing okay?".
Nash nodded back, but held on to her words.
"It's still so hard". Her voice was riddled with longing when it finally became audible.
"But you don't need anything?".
Sam had an unbelievable urge to know that she was okay, that she was coping and didn't need money, or to talk or any kind of help.
"I can't have what I need Sam".
That there was probably the most heartbreaking thing he had ever heard.
"I just feel like I'm going to wake up, and this has all been a nightmare"
Sam snorted, he knew that feeling all too well.
"It'll get better Sam". This time Nash was smiling widely at him as she finally looked his way.
Nash faced Jerry's tombstone again, a solemness sweeping over Sam. It had been a while since he had felt this way.
These days he was cold and callous, trying to keep everything and everyone at a distance. He was also trying to suppress the onslaught of his memories that threatened to turn his life destructive.
"Do you know anyone by the name of Candice?" Sam suddenly asked without really knowing why. He'd had plenty of opportunities to ask Nash that same question, but before now he'd always chickened out.
Sam faced her, and saw how hard she swallowed, she knew Candice alright.
"Yeah, she sells insurance?". Nash let out a whimsical sound as she looked Sam's way, her own private joke staying just that- private.
"Okay, so where do I know Candice from?"
"Um, I can't tell you that Sam".
But she wanted too, she really wanted to share the secret, it was written all over her face as her eyes twinkled and her smile flared.
"But it's a good thing, I promise, or it was when she was Candice". Nash gulped when she closed her mouth, Sam getting the idea that she hadn't meant to say what she had.
And that only left him with more questions, what was 'when she was Candice' supposed to mean?
"No more Swarek!" Nash teased before she blew a kiss at Jerry's tombstone and swept across the grass as silently as she had approached.
Sam glanced over his shoulder as he watched her walk away, she really was one of a kind.
His memories of her were pretty limited too, everything around the blank spot concerning anyone had been wiped away, and sadly it included Nash as well as how Jerry might have been with her. But Sam suspected that Jerry had been really happy, after all he was going to marry her.
Sam turned back to Jerry's grave and let out a light chuckle. "You wanted me to remember that didn't you" he stated at the stone in front of him.
It was as though Jerry needed him to know that he planned on marrying Nash so that Sam would be reminded to look out for her.
That thought was meant to stream into his mind right now, here.
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