Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.
"Love is divine only, and difficult always. If you think it is easy, you are a fool. If you think it is natural, you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God." – Toni Morrison
o o o o
6 January, 2002
The wheels of the wheelchair squeaked slightly against the polished tile floor as Derek pushed it down the hallway. James was talking a mile a minute in his ear about the upcoming soccer game against their cross-district rivals.
"Scouts are going to be there to see us play and Coach said that a scout from SMU and a scout from UCLA called to see if I was playing. And they're both coming! So I'm getting the start, of course, and Harrison's back from his separated shoulder, so our offense is going to be incredible. We just have to get through that defense they have. Their defense is really tight this year. They're great at breaking up odd-man rushes."
"Guess it's good that Harrison's back. You're going to need Harrison at centre to get to the back of the net," Derek turned the wheelchair around a corner a little bit too quickly and Sammie let out a startled noise. "Sorry, Angel."
"You're going to the game, right?" James asked, looking at Sammie but talking to Derek.
"I dunno, James. We'll see on Friday."
"Ddurkk." Sammie's voice was clear and sounded a little annoyed as she said his name. Derek leaned down and kissed the top of her head, the short fuzz of blonde hair tickled against his lips.
"You want me to go, don't you?"
"Sì," Sammie nodded as Derek pushed her into the physical therapy room. Then she pointed at herself.
"You want to go too?" Derek stopped and applied the breaks to the wheels so that the wheelchair wouldn't move. Sammie nodded at him as he reached for her, hooking his hands beneath her arms and lifted her up the way the physical therapist had taught him. The physical therapist watched as Derek helped her to the other chair. Sammie moved her feet very slowly, carefully shuffling one foot then the other until they'd made it the four feet from her wheelchair to the hard plastic therapy chair. "We'll see, Angel."
"Well done, Derek," the therapist stood as Derek and James sat in two of the chairs lining the wall.
Sammie was supposed to have come home for Christmas Day, but when he'd gotten to the hospital to pick her up she had been having such a bad day already that they decided it was not a good idea for her to be checked out, especially for something that would cause such sensory overload. She had a lot of bad days.
That happened more often now. Her bad days came more and more frequently and they were no longer just 'bad.' They were terrible. On bad days, Sammie was hostile and listless, incompliant with anything and everything said to or asked of her. On bad days, she lay in bed and stared vacantly at the wall instead of sitting up, alert and engaged. On bad days, Derek could do nothing to get her attention and, on the off chance that he did, she snapped at him, hostile and angry. Despite her bad days, the doctors and therapists said she was close to coming home.
Derek wanted her home. It didn't matter how many bad days she had. He wanted her at home again. Taking her to the soccer game would be wonderful if she were having a good day. She would love going to the game as much as he'd love taking her to the game.
James kept talking in his ear, but Derek wasn't paying attention. It was something about the other team's keep having a weird, unconventional style of tending goal, but Derek was watching Sammie move marbles from the bowl on her right, from her right hand to her left and then into the bowl on her left.
Her movements were still slow, but the exercise moved much more quickly then it had the first time. The last marble hit the bowl and the therapist praised her efforts before they began the exercise in reverse. This way was more difficult, but every time it became more manageable. So many of her exercises were tasks like this – things no one would have thought about back in October. Three months ago, moving marbles didn't require any sort of thought. She could have moved the marbles, chewed gum, talked, sipped through a straw and attached a reed to her clarinet all at the same time three months ago. But now simply moving marbles needed as much concentration as Derek needed at the shooting range.
Derek half-listened to James as he watched Sammie work through the tasks that would normally be easily accomplished. At the end of her forty-minute session, Derek stood to help her back into her wheelchair. She weighed nothing in his hands. Four weeks in a coma and then bed rest had atrophied her muscles and she'd lost weight to the point of being thinner than Desiree. Sammie's body had gotten so small in so short a time and, since she had been pregnant at the time of the attack, the weight loss was even more noticeable.
"You did great," Derek kissed her forehead when she was safely in her chair. The walk back to her room always seemed to take less time than the walk to the physical therapy and before he knew it they were in her doorway. The first thing Derek saw when he turned the wheelchair to push it into her room was Gary and Colleen Young, Keira's parents, sitting in the chairs by the window. Derek's first instinct was to shield Sammie from the Young's anger over their daughter's death. Keira's death hadn't been Sammie's fault. But when Gary and Colleen stood, they didn't look angry or resentful the way Derek expected.
Sammie gave a strangled attempt at speech when she saw her best friend's parents and Colleen rushed forward towards Sammie. The greying woman dropped to her knees and threw her arms around Sammie.
"Derek, James" Gary shook Derek's hand and Derek immediately noticed how different the man looked from the first and only time Derek had met him. Gary's face had aged ten years since the wedding not quite four months ago and Derek couldn't help but wonder how drastically his own face had changed.
"I'm so glad you're okay, Sweetie girl," Colleen told Sammie, kissing her cheek.
Sammie made another strangled noised, trying to say something, but Derek couldn't understand her and, if Derek couldn't decipher what she met, Gary and Colleen had no chance. Derek and James got out of the way as Sammie, Gary and Colleen visited, giving them space without actually leaving the room.
"Mi dispiace."
Derek dropped the cup he held and water spilled across the tile floor.
"It's not your fault, Sweetie."
Colleen didn't understand the significance of those two words and Derek wanted to cry. The first completely intelligible words his wife had spoken in months. And they were 'I'm sorry.'
James stared at his sister, trying hard to ignore the tears in his eyes, but eventually he reached up and wiped them away with the back of his hand. James and Derek exchanged a look, both counting the minutes until the Youngs left. James grabbed Derek's cell phone off the table, walking out of the room to call his mother at work.
The Youngs stayed for half an hour and the second they left, Derek picked Sammie up out of her chair. Before he helped her to her beck, he hugged her close. Sammie held onto his waist while he kissed her. Her legs felt like they were going to give out beneath her after the therapy session and Sammie eagerly moved towards the bed when Derek stepped in that direction.
"I'm so proud of you, Angel. I love you."
Sammie smiled tiredly at him as he helped her into bed and she was asleep within minutes. Derek watched her sleep, higher than the Empire State Building, until Andria rushed in and he left to talk to her just outside the room where he could see Sammie sleeping through the window. Sammie slept through thrilled, ecstatic conversation, completely unaware of the excitement her two simple words had prompted.
ooo ooo ooo ooo
10 January, 2002
Derek couldn't sleep.
Every nerve in his body was in complete sensory overload.
At the end of the bed, Clooney slept sound asleep, splayed out like a pancake and snoring loud enough to wake a bear, and Crookshanks was curled up on the chair he liked in the corner.
Sammie slept, breathing evenly, just a few inches away from him and every sense he possessed was acutely attuned to her presence. It was his first night sleeping next to his wife in exactly eighty-eight days, a fourth of a year, and he knew he wasn't going to actually get any sleep sleeping next to her tonight. Instead, he lay on his side and stared at her, one hand threaded with hers and just watching her chest move up and down rhythmically.
He couldn't believe she was home, that she was lying in bed next to him, sleeping peacefully. He couldn't turn away, absolutely had to keep looking at her or she'd vanish, it would all be some warped figment of his wishful imagination. God forbid he blink and realize she was really still at the hospital. But he had blinked. He'd blinked several times, though, and she was still here, her hand still warm and soft in his.
Clooney stretched, bumping Derek's leg with his paw and Derek let his eyes drift closed for a moment. Sammie sighed and shifted ever so slightly and Derek jerked his eyes open to see her, scared for a moment, but she just shifted away and stilled. She couldn't toss and turn the way she once had, so she fidgeted somewhat instead.
Derek reached out and gently touched some of the scaring on Sammie's face. The skin felt waxy and knotted beneath his fingertips and his index finger dipped into one of the deeper gashed by her mouth. One side of her face was beautiful, smooth and sweet, marred only by the thin scar under her eye. The other was a gnarled tangle of flesh over crushed bone. It was like Beauty and the Beast all on one face.
She would never stop being beautiful to him. He was so glad she was alive, much less sleeping next to him, that he didn't care what she looked like as long as he could hold her hand. She'd terrified a little girl last week, though. Strangers stared at her a little too long, teenagers laughed and pointed and Derek had to resist the urge to step in and protect her. The one time he had, Sammie had gotten angry with him.
Smiling, Derek squeezed her hand and closed his eyes. He breathed deeply and finally found his way to sleep.
ooo ooo ooo ooo
11 January, 2002
Derek pushed Sammie's wheelchair up the ramp, going slow as he tried to weave through teenagers milling around before the game started. Andria walked behind him, her hand on Derek's upper arm and a huge blanket hanging over her arm.
"Over there, Derek," Andria pointed to the wheelchair area at the front of the area between the upper section and lower section of the bleachers. Their family sat right in front of the wheelchair area in their matching blue shirtseys with the number 99 printed under 'Murdoch.' They usually sat on the fifty-yard line in the upper bleachers, but, in honour of Sammie being present, they seated themselves in front of the handicapped section instead.
Getting the chair in the perfect spot, Derek locked the wheels and squatted next to her until he was at eye level with her and asked her how she was. Sammie struggled to say 'cold,' but eventually managed to push the word out as Andria draped the heavy blanket over her.
Derek could feel the stares on them as people noticed Sammie's face and gawked like she was something loose from a freak show. One giggly teenage girl made a rather loud and nasty comment, at which all of her friends started tittering like birds, and Derek straightened, turning around and staring down at them. The girls silenced immediately, turned and ran away as Sammie reach out from under her blanket and pulled on Derek's hand. Looking over, Derek saw the annoyance in her eyes and gave her a sad, apologetic smile.
"I'm sorry," he tugged the toque down on her head a little before sitting down in the Coleman camping chair next to her. "You warm enough?"
Sammie nodded and watched the game playing out on the pitch, which had started a good five minutes ago. Derek held her mitten-clad hand in his gloved one and watched as James dove across the net to wrap his body around the ball before it passed the goalpost. The crowd erupted in cheers and Derek shouted as Harrison and Andrew both patted James' shoulder before getting down the field for the kick.
Scouts in windbreakers with different school's names embroidered across the back walked up and down the sideline with their clipboards and dossiers on the players they'd come to watch. All of them jotted down some note or another after James' save and Derek grinned, clenching his fist happily. The scout from Southern Methodist University spent most of his time in the Bulldog's end watching James.
By half time, Sammie was shaking.
"Okay, Baby Girl, that's enough for tonight," Derek stood as the boys started walking off the field towards the field house to warm up. Sammie shook her head as Derek pulled the blanket off of her and started folding it.
"No," She said, her voice shuddering as her teeth chattered, but otherwise the world came out properly.
"Sammie, you've been out here for forty minutes. We have to get you someplace warm. You're exhausted," Derek handed Andria the blanket and bent down to unlock the wheels of Sammie's chair. "I'm sorry, Angel. It's too cold and too much excitement for one night. You're going to be asleep before we even get home."
"Durk, no." Despite her protest, no one could deny what Derek had said.
"Did you see that – Where are you going?" James had appeared by Derek's side, having darted away from the team for moment.
"Have to take Sammie home, James."
"There's a whole other half, though!" James looked horrified at the thought of them leaving. "You have to stay! The scouts are here and we're playing awesome! Derek! You have to stay for the second half! You can't leave!"
"James, I'm sorry," Derek's voice was firm as he straightened up. "I have to take Sam home. She can't be out here too long."
"This is the most important game of the year!"
"I know. You can tell me about the second afterwards. I'm sorry, James."
"Fine! Just leave!" James turned stormed away before anyone could say anything. Derek sighed, but didn't chase after him the way he would have a few months ago. Instead, he turned Sammie's wheelchair, grabbed the blanket from Andria while giving her a quick hug and slowly pushed the wheelchair over the cold steel of the bleachers, listening to it rattle and clang as they left.
By the time Derek managed to get Sammie out of her chair, into the car and buckled in properly, they could hear the second half starting and Sammie began to cry. With the chair folded and packed away in the trunk with the emergency bag and blanket, Derek got in behind the wheel. Reaching over, he squeezed Sammie's hand.
"There will be other games, Baby Girl. When it's warmer." He leaned over and kissed her forehead. Sammie cried the entire hour-long drive from Riverside to Evanston. Derek held her hand and stayed quiet, silently cursing the decision to buy a house an hour away from her family.
A good-sized layer of snow covered the ramp from the driveway to the house and Derek had to sweep it off before he could even get Sammie out of the car. Sammie's tears had dried by now and she sat staring at her hands, watching her mittens move as she twitched her fingers back and forth.
It took nearly twenty minutes before they were in the house and, once Derek was sure Sammie was settled for the moment, he took Clooney out for a walk. Derek was helping Sammie into her pajamas when a car stopped outside their house, the loud rumbling of the cherry bomb on the muffler made it immediately identifiable. Clooney ran to the door barking happily as it opened, closed and locked again. Crookshanks watched from the top of a bookshelf as Derek simply picked Sammie up and put her into the bed instead of helping her climb into the bed herself. Her limbs were becoming more uncooperative as exhaustion set in.
"I love you." Derek bent over and kissed her, tucking the beeper into her hand as he turned on the CD player with her favourite Gordon Lightfoot CD inside. "I'm going to go talk to James. Press the button if you need anything."
Sammie just closed her eyes and turned her head away from him.
Derek closed the bedroom door behind him and Sammie squeezed her eyes as tightly shut as possible. She heard Crookshanks jump from the top of the bookshelf to the dresser, then down to the ground and back up onto the bed, perching on the headboard and sitting there.
"If you could read my mind, love, what a tale my thoughts could tell. Just like an old time movie 'bout a ghost from a wishin' well."
Sammie tried to follow along with the lyrics she knew by heart, but she couldn't drag them from the recesses of her brain. She knew this song. She knew she knew this song. But, for all she could recall, she might be hearing it for the first time.
"As long as I'm a ghost that you can't see. If I could read your mind, love, what a tale your thoughts could tell. Just like a paperback novel, the kind the drugstores sell. When you reach the part where the heartaches come the hero would be–"
"You could have dropped her off at Grama's house or something! It was the most important game I've ever played!"
"James, I have to take care of Sammie. She comes before a soccer game."
"Grama would have taken care of her for forty-five minutes! It was just forty-five more minutes! She would have been fine!"
"She's my wife, James!"
"And she's my sister! She's been my sister a helluva lot longer than she's been your wife! She didn't want to leave! She would have wanted you to watch the rest of the game even if it meant taking her to Grama's for a while."
"There will be other soccer games, James! Ones where it's warmer and when Sammie's doing better."
"A movie queen to play the scene of bringing all the good things out in me. But for now, love, let's be real. I never thought I could act this way and I've got to say that I just don't get it."
Sammie tried to focus on the lyrics, but she couldn't remember them and not knowing the words made it easy for the fight between Derek and James to command her attention over Gordon Lightfoot.
"I don't care how long she's been my wife. It doesn't matter! She needs me. I have to take care of her, James. She can't take care of herself!"
Surprising herself, she pulled Derek's pillow over easily and covered her face, pushing her hands against her ears and muffling the argument with the cushion of the pillow. The pillow caught her tears and, instead of rolling away, they pooled between her eyes and the yellow pillowcase. The argument lasted for half an hour and, by the time James slammed out of the house, the pillow was soaked.
o o o o
"Family quarrels are bitter things. They don't go according to any rules. They're not like aches or wounds, they're more like splits in the skin that won't heal because there's not enough material." – F. Scott Fitzgerald
A/N:
I'm not apologizing for my long absence. I needed a break. Writing wasn't fun anymore and I needed a break. And, by the way, to those PM-ing me nasty messages about updating, that really isn't the way to make someone want to write. To those who have been wonderful and supportive, thank you. That meant a lot.
Love, Thalia