November 26, 1998
Stallion Springs, New Mexico
Donna was drunk.
She had astounded herself, when she realized that one glass of wine had turned into the whole bottle. She had never liked alcohol, even just a casual drink with her dinner. Once in a while sure, it was fine, especially when she and Sam were celebrating. She drank for the sake of drinking it, not because she liked the taste, or particularly cared for the way it made her feel.
But once Sam had gone, and she found herself alone almost all the time, she found an occasional glass of wine helped her to calm down when she was frantic and unable to relax. Meditation, or exercise, or some other worthy pursuit should have been her go to, but sometimes, it was just easier to have a drink. The warm liquid would rush past her breastbone, suffusing her insides with heat. Soon her nerves would stop jangling, and a quiet sleepiness would descend onto her head like a halo.
She was ashamed how much better drinking alcohol would make her feel, even if just for a short time.
Today though, today...one glass hadn't touched her disquieting agitation. She kept drinking, one glass after another, waiting for that bubbling warmth to soothe her. She tipped up the bottle, filling the glass for the last time, and dismay came not in the form of shock that she'd drank it all, but shock that after all that, she didn't feel better.
The scientific part of her brain knew alcohol was a depressant, and yet she wondered why, when intoxicated, she cried like an infant. Didn't people drink because they let loose? Had more fun, more laughter? She remembered Al, a long time ago, as an angry drunk. But it made sense somehow. It was a depressant, but imbibed in the correct way, it lowered one's inhibitions. Letting whatever was in pristine control most of the time set free-her weeping inner self, or a burning anger unquenched.
A completely broken heart.
"Dr. Eleese?" Ziggy called into the dark space where she lay on the sofa.
"Go away, Ziggy," she coughed, shocking herself with her slurred words.
"I cannot 'go away.' I am omnipresent both here and within the project."
"What do you want?" she barked.
"I was advised to inform you Admiral Calavicci is on his way to your house."
"Why? No! Tell him to forget it, Ziggy!" she yelled.
"He is imminently arriving, Doctor. I suggest you splash some water on your face," Ziggy quipped.
She couldn't summon the energy to even stand up from the sofa.
"Donna!" she heard Al's roughened voice. She lost track of how many seconds in between the call, and seeing the shadow of his closeness fall across her face. "Why are you doing this to yourself?" He sounded worried, knowing personally how doing so could cause so much damage.
Her face was turned away from him, against the cushions on the back of the sofa. "You tried to pretend like she's always been here. Like there was no change. But she wasn't here before, was she?"
"Who?" he asked, feigning innocence.
"You know who. Dr. Fuller." She heard Al's heavy sigh. She groaned, the room slightly spinning on the edges of her vision. "I always had this strange feeling like she looked familiar. When Sam hired her. I just never guessed why. Especially since she's only 13 years younger than Sam. But her eyes….it was always her eyes...his eyes….looking back at me. To you, she just appeared here, didn't she? Because she didn't exist until Sam went to Pottersville, Louisiana….for Abigail." She said the woman's name like it was a curse word.
She watched his shadow trace up and down as she turned, felt him slide her feet over to sit at the end of the sofa. "You're right, of course. I think you know why I didn't report it all to you."
"Protect Donna. Always protect Donna. I'm tired of living in a rubber room. Just tell me the truth, Al. All of it."
Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Al rub his hand over his face. "He started as Clayton Fuller, who was her father. Poor man leaped back two seconds before he died under a burning house beam collapsing. Then a different man, her fiance. Then her lawyer."
She groaned with impatience. "Does she know? That Sam is her father?"
"No, no. She believes the same thing Abigail believes. That Will Kinman is her father, since that's whose aura Sam was in at the time."
"But Sam knows, right?" she asked.
"Yes. Ziggy figured it out. I saw it change, while we were in the courtroom. But I didn't remember all of it until I stepped out of the imaging chamber. He forgot, once he leaped out the last time. He can't possibly remember her until he comes back, you know, like before. With you."
She took perverse pleasure in that, jealous as a child as she was. At least he had forgotten her too. And Abigail, though she thought, maybe, if Al had mentioned Abigail's name, it would have kindled something. He had just been so desperately in love with her, obsessed with her, to the exclusion of all else. He had almost botched the leap, coming too close to letting Abigail get lynched because he could not resist the urge to be with her. Al had mentioned some theory about magnafluxing again, since Sam had adopted Will's significant stutter, and thus, according to Al, some of Will's feelings for Abigail.
But that was not sufficient to explain it all.
"How come you never had any kids, Al?" she asked, out of the blue, her mouth barely able to form the words. Al just stared at her, shocked. It was several quiet beats before he spoke.
"I was never married to anyone long enough, I guess," he said, with levity she thought he might not have felt.
"Who were you married to the longest?" she asked.
After four beats too long, he said, "Beth."
"Did you not want to have kids?" she asked again.
"I was active military. We both were. I was shipped all over the place. I was married to her for eight years, and we lived in the same house together less than two. How is that fair? Kids need stability. To feel like they have roots. You can't keep ripping them up out of the ground and think they'll just grow." He sat in silence, pondering something dark, something Donna would have recognized had she been sober. "But that's not the same thing as not wanting kids," he finished softly. "That little girl, Teresa Bruckner, made me start to wonder. But I'm too old now."
"You would have been a great dad, Al," she cooed wistfully.
"I don't know about that," he guffawed.
"You've been taking care of me all this time," she said.
She felt him pat her leg. "I'm too young to be your father," he laughed. "Not that I'm glad about that or anything."
She was crying, her arm flung up over her face. "Sam always said he wanted to have kids. But he needed to prove his theories first. Needed to build Quantum Leap. And…." Her voice trailed away into heavy weeping. "I always thought there'd be more time. For goodness sake, we had a time machine! How could there not be enough time? But it just got away from us. And now he's gone and there's no more time….And he has a daughter, with a woman he loved more than anything."
"Oh, no, no, no. I'm not gonna let you do this, do you hear me?" he ordered, reaching up and pulling her up by her elbow. The room swam, and she leaned, sitting up, against the cushions.
"He loves you. You."
"If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?" she asked. When he said nothing, she pressed. "If he loves me, but doesn't remember who I am, does he really love me?"
}QL{
June 5, 1986
Santa Barbara, California
The photographer walks away, and his arms linger around her, pulling her against him. They stand in a tiny glade on the grounds where the reception is taking place. "No more pictures, right?' he asks over her shoulder.
She turns to face him, staying within the circle of his arms. She has a gentle question on her face. "No," she says simply. They had paid a friend of a friend to take a handful of photos of them together, and just them.
"Good," he breathes, lifting his hands to her cheeks and pulling her to kiss him. She knows he has waited to preserve her hair and makeup, light though it is. Her hair is in a simple bun, tiny white flowers woven around the chestnut strands. Her dress is simple, elegant, and flattering. A pure white, short sleeve satin dress without a train, just tiny delicate white flowers embroidered around the hem. She wears flats, for Al, she had said, who she is taller than when she wears heels. She wears a single pearl around her neck that was a gift from Sam for her last birthday. She wears her mother's earrings, killing old and borrowed with one thing, she tells him. Always his efficient scientist, he says. The blue isn't visible, she says.
She would rather stay here, alone with him beside the water, then go back to the party. She knows they will, but she takes this time here, to let this moment fill her inside. "You know how you always ask me, where would I go if I could time travel? I would go here, from wherever I was. Whenever I was. And just stay here, forever," she says.
"Do you think there's a place where time doesn't move forward? Like the edge of an event horizon?" he says, that far away dreaminess in his tone. "The past, the present, and the future all exist at the same time. There is no time. There's only reality. Or how we perceive it. What we perceive affects what is reality."
"We create reality by what we perceive," she answers, understanding what he is theorizing.
His voice is heavy and slightly unsteady when he says, "Because there was never, will never be a time when I don't love you. It's my reality. And if time doesn't exist, then it has been there since the beginning, the Big Bang, and it lasts until the end of the universe."
"You're such a romantic," she says, though her eyes have misted with emotion.
"Who knew quantum physics was so romantic?" he says.
"I did," she says, choking on the lump rising in her throat. "That's why you found me, Sam. Out of the quadrillion squared chances all our molecules would coalesce, you and I found each other. We were scattered over the entire universe, floating for billions of years, atom by atom, quark by quark, but we did."
}QL{
November 26, 1998
Stallion Springs, New Mexico
"I know you don't remember this, but the first place he leaped after he got his bearings was to you. He changed time for you. You were one of the reasons why Quantum Leap was so important to him. Abigail, she thought he was someone else."
"Sam doomed that relationship the leapee had with Abigail, because she could tell that Sam was...not Will. Once he went back, he wasn't what she wanted. And I'm sure Will really never remembered how he could have gotten her pregnant, when the only two times they were ever together he wasn't there."
"What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?"
"He had a connection to her. He leaped into her life three times. I can't compete with that."
"She's married to someone and lives in Chicago. Dr. Fuller told me how happy her mother is with her stepfather. She isn't still crying for Sam. She got over it," Al said.
"Why am I still crying for Sam?" she asked.
I'm sorry…..
"Because, you love him. Despite it all," Al said.
"I could just leave. Move away from here. Start over," she grumbled.
"You could," he said. "But you won't," he said, his eyes narrowing. "The only person I know who has as hard a head as Sam Beckett is you."
She was crying again. "Why should I wait? I don't matter to him, not any more."
She felt his hand on her lower leg again, patting it softly. He sighed, shook his head. It had started with Tamlyn, the wedge slowly being driven between them. Most days, he was glad Sam couldn't remember, because he had no way to prevent it from worsening, no way to make it better. He would never have let Donna stay thinking what she was thinking now. "Can I tell you something?" he asked. He took her silence as lease to continue. "Do you know what keeps me up at night sometimes?"
"Besides Tina?" she drawled.
He flashed a quick smile, then the seriousness returned. "That he's going to leap in somewhere and there'll be a woman-his wife, his girlfriend, his daughter, someone….and her name will be Donna. And he'll ask me something, and I'll have to lie. And I won't be any good at it, and he'll figure it out."
She was holding her breath, she realized, and slowly let it out. He continued. "I hate that you asked me not to tell him. I hate it. But I understand why you did. It mostly makes my job a lot easier. Except when it doesn't. Like when he feels like he's alone and no one cares. He feels like that a lot."
"I know," she said softly. "And it would be so much harder on him, if he knew. He took his vows seriously. Very seriously. Men like that are hard to find. He's pure honesty to a fault."
"He certainly wouldn't have been carrying on with Abigail. And he wouldn't have a 32 year old daughter," Al said.
She let Al's words soak into her brain. She knew what he was trying to do, and his logic was flawless. He had a way of doing that to her. If she was crying here, because Sam had fallen for that girl, to fill whatever need in him needed filling, it was in part because she had made sure, no matter what, that he didn't remember that she existed. Al's very nice way of telling her to stop feeling sorry for herself. Anyone but her would have gotten the blunt, Admiral Calavicci version.
She reached for his hand, gave it a squeeze. "You'd better have a few glasses of water before you go to bed. You're gonna have a whopper of a hangover tomorrow," he said, rising to his feet and releasing her hand.
"Al?" she asked.
He turned back, his eyebrows raised as he waited. "Does Dr. Fuller….Sammy Jo," the words sounded strange, but she had to learn to say them. "Does she know? Suspect? I mean, Larry Stanton was in the waiting room. The man she thought was her father was in the waiting room. She was in the courtroom with Sam and her mother. She's too smart to not even suspect that it might be related."
"She didn't appear here until I left the imaging chamber after Sam leaped out. All the rest of the stuff from the past is new to me. Sometimes it takes a while for the memories to catch up. But she told me she knows Dr. Beckett was the one that proved her mother was innocent, and she found out from Ziggy that her mother would have died in the electric chair if Sam hadn't intervened."
"What about Will Kinman? I remember her being here when that happened, even if you don't. I remember her being here when her father was in the waiting room."
"Verbena was running interference like crazy. And you know how wonky Ziggy gets when stuff like that gets fouled up. She thinks something was strange. But she's chalked it up to something that she can just accept as being strange from PQL perspective, and leave it alone. At least for now."
"Ziggy knows she's Sam's daughter," Donna said.
"But she's not telling, as per standard protocol. So don't worry," Al said.
Her head was starting to ache, she realized. But her head was also full of thoughts. No problems yet, until Sam was home. And whatever problems would develop because Sam had returned would be nothing in comparison to her relief to have him with her again.
Al lingered. She relieved him, saying, "I'll be fine, Al. I'm drinking water. And then I'm going to bed. And I think I'll be in late tomorrow, if you know what I mean."
He stayed still, watched her stand, making sure she was steady before he made his way to the door. "Good night," he called.
The warmth blooming in her chest, she realized, had nothing to do with the alcohol. But it worked, just the same.
}QL{
June 27, 1994
Stallion Springs, New Mexico
She wakes up slowly, feeling a pain in her head like a knife stabbing her temple. The garish fluorescent light overhead is so bright it hurts her eyes, like hot pokers reaching into her skull. She sees the square metal handrail, realizing she is in a hospital bed.
Then she remembers. Driving. The blue flash in her peripheral vision. The sound of breaking glass, crunching metal. Oh god, she thinks. Everything hurt, because of that.
"Did anyone get the license plate of the dump truck that came through here?" she hears, looking sideways without turning her head because it hurts. She sees Al, at her bedside, wearing a red jacket whose brightness rivals the overhead lighting. As her vision blurs, she sees the trail of plastic, leading down to the needle in her arm.
"What happened?" she asks, worried at how bleary she sounds.
Al steps closer, and she gets a better view of his face. He is smiling, but it doesn't disguise the pinched worry on his face. "You...uh...had a really bad accident. In your car. But you're ok. Everything's going to be ok." She wonders why he looks the way he does, if everything is supposed to be ok.
"Did Sam tell you how the meeting went? With Senator Wietzman?" she asks.
"Sam?" he asks. "Oh. No, Honey, I ended up taking the meeting. That was two days ago," he says softly.
"Oh no," she says, feeling the words slur as they come out.
"Yeah, Wietzman would have preferred Sam. By a long shot. But I think it was ok, just the same," he says.
"Two days? I've been out that long?" she says, the words dragging, as if she is speaking in slow motion.
"You hit your head pretty hard," he mumbled.
"Where...where...is Sam?" she asks.
"I kicked him out. Kid hasn't eaten anything in 24 hours," Al said.
"He missed the meeting?" she says in shrill panic, moaning as the pain amplifies when she moves.
"Of course he did. The state police called. He didn't even stop to tell me he was leaving. He called me from the emergency room," Al said.
Her head starts throbbing, in time to her heartbeat. She feels herself drifting in and out of consciousness. "Just rest, Honey," she hears him say softly.
When she wakes again, she sees that the daylight has disappeared. Only the dim light over her bed lights the room. She smells him before she sees him, and it comforts her. She has a vague memory of fear, of believing she would never see him again, and of asking for forgiveness. For what, she doesn't remember.
She feels his fingers on her forehead, the cold metal from his wedding ring tingling at her hairline. "Sam?" she asks, her voice raspy with her dry throat.
"I'm right here," she hears him whisper. He shifts into her line of sight. He has over one day's growth of scruff on his face. His hair is disheveled, the shirt and jacket he is wearing are crumpled and wrinkled. His eyes are puffy, red, with dark smudges above his cheekbones.
"The meeting…" she starts, wincing at the pain in her scratchy throat.
"Doesn't matter," he insists, continuing to smooth her hair back off her forehead. She watches as he grimaces, pressing his eyes tightly closed.
"Sam?" she asks, wondering what is bothering him.
He looks away when he starts to tell her. "When the police called, they didn't have...um...specifics. Just told me to go to the hospital. That the chief gave him my number. That there….was an accident...with fatalities." He is whispering by the end.
"Oh my God," she moans.
"The...uh….the car that hit you was rear ended by a drunk driver. Going way too fast. There were three people in that car...that died. The...uh...the police officer….he...uh...saw your car...and said...he was amazed that you survived," he struggles to finish. She feels him put his lips against her cheek. He is crying when he says, "I wasn't sure. What...what...they were going to tell me...when…"
"Sam," she whispers, raising the hand attached to her IV to his cheek. She is shaking, comprehending that he had driven from the hotel to the hospital thinking he may find her dead when he arrived.
"This was the last...last chance...funding…" She struggles limply.
He pulls up sharply, his eyes dark with pain and his forehead creased. "I don't care. I thought...I thought…" He chokes on a sob, laying his face back against hers. "I thought I'd lost you."
"Oh, Sam," she says, comforting him as he lies there. "It's all right," she whispers.
She understands her importance to him, in this instance.
The deadline for the next fiscal year passes, without the appropriate funding, because as persuasive as he could be, Al could not explain Sam's theory sufficiently to warrant it. And after five years of the same, if not fully funded next time, it will be shut down.
He does not, cannot, blame her for this, even though she blames herself. It could have burnt to the ground, he still would have run out of there. For you, she hears Al tell her once while she is guilt-ridden and stressed. Is it because, deep down, she wishes it would burn? Because she feels him slipping away, closer and closer to this thing he must do, despite her importance to him?
In bitterness that she shares with no one, she asks herself, What if she had died in the crash? He would have been free...Long ago, she had believed their love had done so, their connection, her belief in him. She is never sure, after this, what the truth really is.