Sam looked out the peephole and saw Janet Fraiser standing at her front porch. Damn. She had planned on avoiding her for at least another month. Daniel must've ratted her out. Surprisingly, she felt a bit relieved to see her here. Hopefully, Daniel had told her everything. It would save Sam some pain.
She leaned her forehead onto the door for a few seconds, breathing deeply and trying to compose herself before the conversation that would ensue. She opened the door and took in Janet's shocked expression at seeing her. Sam knew she looked awful, especially here, at the end of the day, with no makeup on and her tank top and pajama bottoms exposing her thin flesh. Her eyes must've looked pained too, because Janet had the biggest look of pity on her face. Crap, I can't take her pity. Sam huffed and stood behind the door. She looked down and bit her bottom lip, hard. "Jan," she said, not looking at her.
"Oh, Sam," Janet said, tilting her head but staying put.
"Did Daniel call you?" Sam asked, still hidden behind the door.
Janet pursed her lips and shook her head very slowly. Sam's eyes shot up. She's seen Jack, then. Her heart started hammering in her chest and Janet noticed.
"Can I come in, Sam?"
Shaking herself from her thoughts, Sam opened the door wide and allowed Janet to come in. "Of course," Sam said. "Look, I'm sorry I haven't been to see you. Things have been a little, um, screwed up."
"I'm not here for an apology. It's okay that you haven't come in. You're a grown woman – I'm definitely not here to reprimand you, Sam," Janet said, moving forward and making her way to the living room, since Sam seemed intent on standing in the foyer. "I hope me showing up unannounced is ok."
Sam followed her to the living room and they both sat down, but Sam didn't respond.
After about five minutes of silence, Janet spoke. "Listen, I'm here as a friend. But I also happen to be Dr. Fraiser. If you want, I can leave, or I can sit here and talk to you, in whatever capacity you want." Janet saw Sam grimace and look somewhere else. "Would you like me to leave?"
Sam licked her lips but didn't answer, and Janet moved to stand up. Sam moved instantly, stopping her with a hand on Janet's thigh. "No!" Sam spoke, much louder than necessary. "Please, don't leave."
Janet immediately sat back down and put a hand on top of Sam's. "I won't."
Feeling uncomfortable, Sam moved her hand away and sat back against the couch, rubbing her hands against her face. "When did you see him?"
"Today," Janet spoke softly.
Sam whipped her head up and stared at her. "How is he?"
Janet looked Sam up and down, "I'd say about the same as you, Sam. How much weight have you lost?"
"Where did you see him?" Sam asked, ignoring Janet's question.
"At my office. He came there, very concerned about you, wanting to know how you were." Janet noticed how Sam was drinking in this information, any information on Jack. "I told him right away that I couldn't discuss you with him, and I didn't, Sam. Nothing that we have talked about was shared with him, I want you to know that. But I let him talk. He was very upset."
Sam had turned her body towards Janet, and Janet saw the shimmer in her eyes at the revelation of Jack's obvious emotional distress.
"How much did he tell you?" Sam asked, her voice shaky.
Janet took a deep breath. "He said he hadn't seen you in a month. He seemed very distressed to hear you were dealing with all of this alone; that you hadn't seen me since finding out. He said that you both discovered that, um, that Jonas, Sara, and Charlie were all in the same car accident. He mentioned something about a newspaper article that you both have, and that he gave you some space… some time to process. He said you broke off the relationship."
A single tear fell down Sam's face, and she brushed it away from her face quickly. "That about sums it up," Sam said bitterly. She looked back up at Janet. "What did you tell him?"
Janet cleared her throat. "I listened, Sam. He's not my patient. I told him that I thought it was a good thing for him to respect your boundaries, that he could use this time to, um, to deal with some of the grief from Charlie's death that this revelation probably brought up." Another tear fell down Sam's face, but she ignored it this time.
"He thinks I'm going to come back to him." Sam stated.
Janet licked her lips and searched her mind for the best answer. "What happened didn't change his feelings for you." Janet thought some more. "And I don't think that learning the connection between Jonas and Charlie means the same to him as it does to you."
"Bullshit, Janet." The anger was back.
"Yeah, maybe it is. But I still think it's –"
"I killed his son!" Sam yelled, red-faced, standing up. "However inadvertently, Charlie died because of me, because of my bastard of a husband. Because of my sick, mucked-up relationship with him!"
Janet sat and watched Sam, listening silently to her verbal barrage.
"I mean, how exactly are we supposed to happily move on from this? How in the world is he ever supposed to look me in the eye and, and…" she breathed out and deflated, kicking at a toy that had been left on the floor. "What kind of people build a relationship around this kind of foundation?"
Sam sank back onto the couch, a hand over her mouth, attempting to control her breathing. After several minutes, she barked at Janet, "Well, aren't you gonna say anything?"
Calmly, Janet smiled and nodded at her, "Yes. Can I ask some questions?"
Sam nodded but kept her face downturned.
"It's been six weeks, I guess. Do you still love him?"
"Yes," Sam said immediately, "that doesn't mean anything, though."
"Okay. Why does it not mean anything?" Janet asked, calmly.
"Loving him isn't the problem." Sam moved her legs up to the couch and hugged them to her chest. "Loving him doesn't mean we can be together. Loving him doesn't make all this mess go away." She sighed. "Loving him is all I have left."
Janet furrowed her brow, trying to understand Sam's thought process, however jumbled. She decided to change the trajectory of the conversation. It had to happen eventually. "Let's talk about Sara and Charlie, Sam."
Sam looked at Janet, finally, and her façade broke. Her face crumbled and she allowed herself to cry. Janet didn't reach for her, allowing her space and autonomy.
"We spent a long time together talking about the 'mother and child' that Jonas had killed in the accident," Janet stated. "Now the 'mother and child' have names. They were Sara and Charlie." Sam started to talk but Janet put her hand up, stopping her. "We'll add Jack to the conversation in a minute," she said. "Right now, I want to talk about Sara and Charlie." Janet deliberately used their names as much as she could, trying to drive the point home.
Sam nodded. "Okay."
"What was your reaction, what did you feel when you found out that Sara and Charlie were, in fact, the 'mother and child?'"
Sam let out a shaky exhale, shaking her head at Janet, urging her with her body language to let the topic drop. Janet waited patiently, watching her patient, watching her friend. Sam's eyes were roaming around the room, searching her brain. Her breathing was uneven, panting and shaky.
"I wanted to get them back for him. I wanted to undo the accident. I wanted them to be alive again." Sam was raw with emotion.
Janet nodded at her. "I don't think I can explain how I feel, Janet." The tears poured out from her eyes, "I'm so incredibly sorry. I want to tell them how sorry I am, but they're dead. I want to tell him how sorry I am."
"Because, however inadvertently, you feel responsible for their deaths?" Janet clarified, using Sam's own words.
"Yes," Sam said. "I know, I know… we've been through this a million times. I know that it's a bit irrational. I know that he could have hit a pole, or a house, or a different car with different people in it. I know that I didn't force alcohol down his throat and push him into the car." She looked up at Janet. "I haven't forgotten everything we've talked about, Jan. And I'm not stupid. I'm not delusional enough to really believe that I myself killed them. But it's so hard not to feel guilty, not to feel responsible…" Sam wiped her face on a doll blanket she found on the floor. "Loving Jack makes their deaths unbearable, unforgivable."
"Ok. What you're saying is you understand that your feelings of guilt over Sara and Charlie dying are a bit irrational, but that it's not something you seem to be able to overcome. And that their deaths now seem magnified due to the fact that they are the 'mother and child' - that Jonas was the drunk driver who hit them. Their deaths also seem overwhelming because you now love their father, their ex-spouse, and you feel his pain. Is that what you've just told me, Sam?" Janet asked, showing genuine concern for understanding Sam's thought process.
Sam nodded emphatically. "Exactly."
Janet smiled. "Okay. I'm not disagreeing with you. In fact, for now, let's just say I have no opinion on this at all. But, explain to me your reasoning for breaking off the relationship with Jack." Janet asked, trying to be professional.
Sam looked at Janet like she had grown another head. "How could we possibly salvage anything after this?" Sam looked away again, biting down hard on her teeth. "I'll always love him. But I can't see him every day. I can't have him see me every day."
"Because seeing you might remind him of the accident? Of Charlie?" Janet tried to understand.
"Not just me, Janet. I mean, we had been talking about getting married, for crying out loud! My daughters - Jonas' daughters - would have been reminders enough!"
"You've never called them Jonas' daughters before," Janet mentioned.
Sam sighed loudly. "They are, Janet. They are his daughters." She looked up at her and shrugged unapologetically. "They could even grow up to look just like him."
Janet pushed back with a knowing look. "They look just like you, Sam, save for the hair."
Sam ran her hands down her face and sighed again. "He deserves an uncomplicated future. He deserves a family with everything to give him."
Janet waited to see if Sam would say more. When she didn't, Janet spoke, "Hear me out for a minute, Sam."
Sam looked up at Janet and turned her body to face her, obediently. "You said earlier that no one in their right mind would build a relationship on this 'foundation.' But I have to disagree with you. This situation - the fact that your lives were interconnected, albeit tragically, from the beginning - is not the foundation to the relationship that you and Jack had." Sam sat and watched Janet, listening intently.
"From everything you told me, and I know you didn't lie to me, your relationship was founded on mutual attraction, on honesty, and on the premise that you both wanted a different future than what you both had coming for you. The discovery that caused this break up is not the foundation of your relationship. It certainly is a huge obstacle, and it is the cause of the current dissolution of the relationship. But let's both agree here that you, Sam, successfully built a relationship on trust, honesty, and love. I won't let you belittle that. Few people today can achieve that at our age."
Sam opened her mouth to speak and Janet cut her off, "And don't you say that it worked because of him, that he did all the work. We both know that's not true. You both put in a lot of energy into building the foundation you had."
Janet waited and Sam spoke, calmly. "I agree with you. I agree that we had a good foundation. But this isn't just an obstacle, Jan. This is a freaking hurricane," Sam sighed, "a freaking hurricane that's destroyed the house, cracked the foundation, and killed the people."
"You don't look dead."
"Don't I?" Sam said sarcastically. "I feel pretty dead."
Janet waited a moment and was about to speak, when Sam blurted out, "I feel like a big part of me is dead." Sam waited a moment then added, "the part of me that was free to love Jack."
"Is it?" Janet rebuffed.
"Uh," Sam looked away from Janet's pitiless stare. "I… I'm." A deep breath and a sigh, "I'm not sure."
Janet nodded, holding her hand to her chin. "Maybe you should find out," she gently encouraged.
Sam looked up at Janet, her blue eyes bluer because of the tiniest hint of moisture there.
Janet thought for a moment, deciding what else needed to be said. "Do you remember the letter you wrote?"
Sam nodded her head. She had written a letter, almost a year ago now, to the father of the woman who had died in the accident, asking for his forgiveness. Sam thought back to it, realizing that Sara's father had been the one to receive it. "I took it to the police station, gave the accident case number, and asked them to forward it to her father."
"Right. You remember how healing that was? That the simple fact of asking for forgiveness, and the gesture or writing a letter seemed to lift some of your, um, burden, for lack of a better word?"
"Yes, I remember."
"You're the one that came up with that idea, remember?"
"You're the one that made me think about it so damn much." Sam shot back, and they both grinned.
"Yeah, ok," Janet said. "What if I asked you to think of a way, a gesture, something you could do for Jack, to show him how sorry you are, to ask for his forgiveness?"
"I don't know what that would be. Besides asking, which I've already done."
After a few moments, Janet spoke again. "Ok, well… good. So maybe asking can be good enough for now."
Sam sighed and scooted closer to her friend, laying her head gently on Janet's shoulder. One of the things she had lost was the abundance of human touch. Adult human touch. It made a difference.
"Sam?" Janet said.
"Yeah?"
"I know you love him, and I know this is hard, but do you still want to be with him? Do you still want that relationship?"
Janet could hear Sam's breathing, could practically hear her thinking. "Because things don't have to be so cut and dried. You can still tell him that you need space, but still talk to him, still interact with him. If you decide that it really won't work, then you can move on. But it's okay to make a choice to speak to him."
After a while, Sam picked her head up, looked at Janet in the eyes and said, "No, Janet. This is the way it has to be. I can't hurt him anymore than I already have. He's so handsome, and so successful, he'll find someone soon. I know he will." After a moment, she added, "I didn't reach this decision lightly. I thought about it a lot. I think it's the right thing to do."
"The right thing for whom?" Janet asked, but Sam never answered.
Swallowing hard, Janet nodded. "Okay, Sam." Janet felt like she had said enough that might encourage Sam to rethink the issue.
They sat in companionable silence for a while, until Janet asked, "What's the hardest part about right now?"
"Sleeping," Sam answered almost immediately.
"Oh? You miss having him next to you?" Janet asked.
Sam looked at her and frowned. "No, that's not it." She shook her head. "We weren't living together. He'd spend the night occasionally, but he'd always leave really early before the girls got up. It was nice having him there, yeah, but that's not what I meant." She cleared her throat, "I meant that I literally can't sleep."
Janet could tell. Sam truly looked ill, her skin pallid and huge dark circles under her eyes. "When I lie down at the end of the day, I'm so tired… exhausted, even, but I can't…" – she had to stop at the sudden lump at her throat.
"You can't stop thinking about the situation?" Janet suggested.
Sam shrugged. Not exactly. Deep breath. "I can't stop thinking about him."
Janet nodded silently.
"It's an actual physical pain, in my chest. It's so tight, so painful, almost like a heart attack. I do pretty well during the day, I guess 'cause I can stay busy with the girls and with work. But at night, when it's just me and no one to talk to, no one to look at… well, I just miss him so much." She sighed. "It'll get better with time. I'll get over all this in time."
Janet didn't want to say much else, feeling that the current conversation already accomplished much for Sam's progress. "You know, Sam. I can help with the sleeping thing. I can help with some of the other stuff too."
Sam nodded.
"Will you come back to the office?"
Sam pursed her lips. "Eventually. Right now I'm trying to take it one day at a time, Jan."
Janet nodded. "Okay. I can deal with that."
Before Janet left that night, she told Sam about some medications that she thought could aid her in her current situation, to help her sleep and help her during this depressed state. After Janet left, Sam threw her list of meds in the trash, and lay awake in bed, weeping over what could have been.
Author's Note:
So many people have left kind reviews and notes. Thank you, for the new ones and the old ones - some of you have stuck with this since January! The feedback really does make a difference, thanks.
SAMnJACK ALWAYS has been a huge help fixing typos and sentence structure... and making sure the writing is grammatically sound. Any remaining errors are mine.
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