Chapter Three:
The ceiling was blank.
She had been staring at it for what seems like hours, and she had yet to find even the slightest marking on the alabaster white ceiling overhead. It was just an empty, blank canvas.
Sort of like her.
Closing her eyes, Sami Brady took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to will the pain away, to make herself feel nothing. Because if she didn't feel it, it wasn't real, and if it wasn't real, then this was all just a dream. Just a horrible, twisted nightmare that she was going to wake up from any minute now.
She had to, because otherwise this would all be real.
And she knew she didn't have the strength to endure this, not now, not after everything she had been through.
There was a tentative knock at her door, and she heard someone enter the room.
"Sami?" Lexie's voice filled the room. "I've brought John back."
When she didn't answer, she heard the doctor sigh, and the sound of heels clacking on the floor, followed by the door closing, told her that Lexie had left. She didn't need to open her eyes to know that John was still in the room, she could practically sense his presence as he stood near the door. His helplessness, a loss for what he could say to make this better, hung heavily in the room.
And Sami, in her attempt to remain detached from her pain, decided she pitied him.
He was probably standing there with one arm folded across his chest, the other propped up to touch his mouth in troubled thought. John was uncertain, and confused as to why she had asked for him, of all people.
Given all the anger that had been between them over the past few years, she couldn't blame him.
In truth, she didn't know exactly why she had asked for him.
Lexie had told her that her family was here, and by that she had meant John, Belle and Brady... they weren't much of a family but they were pretty much all she had left.
Her parents were dead, she hadn't seen Eric or Carrie in several years, and she still hadn't forgiven Bo for giving the order to shoot her mother during Marlena's little attempted escape on the prison rooftop, so it was unlikely that her uncle would have shown up. And her grandfather's heart couldn't take any more stress, so Sami had been relieved when his name wasn't mentioned, and hoped no one had even called him yet.
So that left the Blacks, her pampered little sister, her self-righteous stepbrother, and John.
The man who had broken up her parents' marriage, and constantly stuck his nose into her life as if he still had the right.
As if he was her father or something.
But she'd asked for him, when Lexie told her that he was in the lobby.
Partly because he was there, because he'd bothered to come at all, and partly because… well, she wanted her parents. She wanted her mother to hold her right now, for her father to hold her hand, but that was impossible.
Her parents were dead, they were gone forever.
But John was here.
And he'd come rushing to the hospital as soon as he heard.
Sami was too tired, too utterly drained emotionally, physically and mentally, to be angry or bitter at John, she had enough to be angry and bitter about as it was.
He came, and right now that meant everything.
"Are you going to stand at the door all night?" she rasped, opening her eyes.
John's hand fell away from his mouth, just where she'd known it would be, and he slowly crossed the room to her bedside, brow furrowed intently as he looked her over.
"Thank you for coming," Sami said quietly.
"Of course I came," John replied, sounding surprised that she'd questioned whether he would or not. "Belle and Brady came, too, and so did Rex. We're your family, where else would we be?"
Good question, Sami thought bitterly. Where have you all been every other time I've needed you?
She shook those thoughts aside, though, knowing that resentment wouldn't do her any good right now. There was enough hard stuff to deal with at the moment without dragging her troubled childhood and dysfunctional family into the mix.
"How are you feeling?"
John asked the question tentatively, frowning in concern as he pulled the visitor's chair up alongside her bed and sat down in it, his worried gaze never leaving her.
"Okay," Sami lied pitifully.
From the look on his face, her stepfather didn't believe her in the least, and she couldn't blame him.
She'd already gotten a glimpse of herself in the reflective tray beside her bed and she looked terrible. Her cheek was bruised and she was sporting a cut across her lip, not to mention the casts and bandages covering her various broken, fractured or sprained body parts.
As much as those injuries hurt, even with the drugs Lexie had administered, the physical pain was nothing compared to the gaping emptiness she felt inside.
Only a few hours ago, she'd been adjusting to the fact that she was going to be a mother again, and now it had all been for nothing. As disheartened as she had been by the prospect of being a single parent for a second child, she had been undeniably content with the idea of having another little one around. Will was getting into his teen years now, he didn't need her as much, and he'd always wanted a little brother or sister, but there was no chance of that now.
This baby could have been such a blessing, only how it was gone.
And it was all her fault.
She'd wanted it to go away, she'd been wishing that the "problem" didn't exist, and now her wish had come true.
It was all her fault.
Oh God, Sami thought, a surge of despair rising up in her chest.
She took a few deep, trembling breaths, trying calm down, but it only seemed to make things worse, and squeezing her eyes shut against the tears welling there certainly didn't help, because every time she closed them all she saw was visions of laughing children, flashes of dark brown hair and blue eyes and bright smiles...
"Samantha?"
Distantly, Sami was aware of John's voice, so rich and familiar, echoing around her as she started to hyperventilate, silent sobs racking her slender frame as she clutched the sheets around her in her fists so tightly that her knuckles had to have turned white.
"Sweetheart, are you okay?"
She wanted to shout that of course she wasn't okay, she wanted to kick and scream and fight, but she couldn't stop shaking and the tears were starting to slip past her eyelashes, searing their way down her cheeks.
"Peanut," John whispered, his hand touching her shoulder.
At his old nickname for her, which her father had tried to duplicate over the years, Sami fell into her stepfather's arms, weeping shamelessly, and John's arms came up immediately to wrap around her protectively. She burrowed into his chest as deeply as possible, burying her face in his shoulder and sobbing uncontrollably.
"Oh, Sami…"
John stroked her hair with his strong hands, rocking them both gently as he murmured incoherent words of comfort into her ear, pressing kisses to her temple and just holding her as he had not done in years.
Like a father would hold his daughter.
All these years, she'd fought John so furiously, lashing out at every turn, because it was easier to be angry than to be hurt. That was a lesson she had learned early on in life, one that he had inadvertently helped her learn, but it wouldn't do her much good right now.
Her innocent little miracle, her second chance, was gone.
And all she wanted was her Daddy.
"Shh, baby," he whispered against her hair, his voice thick with emotion. "I'm here, peanut. I'm here."
After pacing the lobby for what seemed like forever, Brady finally spotted his father emerging from Sami's room.
"Dad's back," he said over his shoulder, to Rex and Belle.
Belle was on her feet instantly, hurrying forward to meet their father as he approached, while Rex stood more slowly, his expression guarded. "How is she?" Belle asked immediately. "Is she okay? Does she need anything?"
"She's sleeping," John sighed wearily.
He looked like he could use some sleep himself, Brady noted. There were dark circles under his father's eyes, and the lines around his mouth and eyes seemed more defined suddenly.
Whatever had happened in Sami's room must have been emotionally draining.
"That's probably good for her," Belle murmured. "Right? I mean, sleep is good after something like this?"
"Yeah, Tink," Brady agreed with a faint smile. "Sleep is good."
"How's she handling things?" Rex asked quietly, stepping forward with an awkward shuffle.
"She's hurting," John answered truthfully, and Brady thought he caught a glimmer of wetness in his dark eyes. "She's hurting real bad."
"Does she remember anything?" Brady questioned. "About her fall, I mean."
"Nothing, really," John replied. "She was on her way up to her apartment, coming home from having Lexie administer the pregnancy test, but that's all."
"Maybe that's for the best," Rex murmured.
"How so?" Brady asked.
"Does she really need to remember all the details of her fall?" Rex responded evenly. "She's got enough to deal with right now without having to relive the accident."
"That's true," John nodded. "Lexie says in time she might remember more, or she might not. Sometimes an event like this… something so traumatic, the mind just sort of shuts it out. Sami's mind will just have to decide whether or not she's strong enough to deal with the memories or not."
"Sami's tough," Belle declared softly. "She'll remember when she's ready."
"I'm sure she will, sweetheart," John said, putting an arm around his youngest child and giving her shoulders a light squeeze. He looked around the waiting room. "Lucas went on home?"
"Phillip dragged him," Brady replied.
"I think Lucas was still in shock," Rex added quietly. "He didn't put up much of a fight."
For which Brady had been terribly relieved. He'd been preparing himself to have to argue with Lucas once Phillip agreed to take his older brother home, he'd even had a mental list of all the reasons that it was pointless for Lucas to stay, but he hadn't had to use any of them. Phillip had simply told Lucas that Sami was in good hands, and there was nothing that Lucas could do for her right now. The best thing he could do was go home and think about how he was going to break the news to Will, who was still at camp.
And Lucas, looking strangely numb and disoriented, had let Phillip lead him from the hospital waiting room, murmuring about how Will loved the few weeks he got to spend at camp each summer.
Brady didn't envy Lucas when it came time to tell Will what had happened to his mother.
How could anyone explain this, much less understand it? Will was one of the most insightful and wise kids in Salem, but he was still just a kid.
And it was going to be hard for him to grasp all of this.
Maybe he could use a therapist, Brady thought with a sigh. Maybe they all could. If Marlena was only here…
But Marlena was dead.
His stepmother had turned out to be the Salem Stalker, the person responsible for killing Abe, Jack, Cassie, Maggie, Caroline and Tony. Brady still didn't understand how that was possible, how Marlena of all people could have been the killer. He had so many questions, but they would never be answered now.
There had been a police shootout on the prison roof.
Marlena had been scared, confused, according to his father, and Brady wished with all his heart that John had not had to witness it.
It would be, he knew, an image his father could never get out of his head.
"Should we just go home and come back tomorrow?" Rex asked John uncertainly. "Or…?"
"You can still go in and see her if you want," John told them. "Just try not to wake her."
"Yeah, okay," Rex agreed with a nod. "I, uh, I guess I'll just…"
He squeezed past them, heading in the direction of Sami's room, and Brady looked at his father and sister. "I'm going to go in with him," he said, and John nodded. Brady caught up to Rex just as the younger man was pushing open the door to Sami's room and he slipped in after him.
Inside, Sami was lying pale and motionless, hooked up to the various machines around the bed, and Brady was struck by how small she looked.
And how young.
It was funny, Sami was an adult and several years his senior, but she looked almost childlike as she slept now, peaceful and still.
The bruises, cuts and bandages made the tableau frighteningly morbid, however.
"She's really banged up," Rex observed softly.
"She is," Brady said, swallowing past the lump in his throat. "Poor Sami."
Rex lowered himself into the chair beside the bed, staring at his half-sister's face, and Brady watched as Rex reached out to brush a loose strand of hair away from her eyes. "She hates hospitals," he murmured.
"Yeah," Brady agreed. "She does."
"Cassie hated hospitals, too," Rex said quietly. "She used to say they gave her 'the wiggins', whatever that means."
Despite himself, Brady smiled. "She must have picked that word up from Belle and Mimi."
"Probably," Rex conceded, without looking away from Sami. "She was my best friend, you know? We knew everything about each other. Sami's my sister, too, though… and I hardly even know her. I never took the time to get to know her."
"Yeah, well, Sami can be hard to get to know," Brady told him with a shrug. "She likes it that way."
"Defense mechanism," Rex muttered.
"What?"
"It's a defense mechanism," Rex explained, looking up at Brady with a blank expression. "Like Belle's incessant perkiness."
Brady nodded.
"I just wish she'd let me get to know her," Rex sighed. "I wish she'd let me in. She's my sister."
And my stepsister, Brady mused.
Sami had been great when he was little, she'd played with him and teased him and spent time with him. She hadn't let her anger at his father color her opinion of Brady, and Brady didn't know if that was because he'd been just a little kid or if it had to do with the fact that he was Isabella's son, but he missed those days.
Things had been so much simpler back then.
When he'd come back from boarding school, he'd been a mess of teenager anger and angst, and he vaguely recalled lashing out at Sami the first time he saw her.
That was when everything changed between them.
Not because of what he'd done, not entirely anyway, but rather it was then that Sami stopped seeing him as a cute little kid, an almost-brother, and started to look at him as John Black's adult son.
Things had been troubled between them ever since.
But they had that history, at least. No matter how bitter or nasty they were to one another, they still had his entire childhood to fall back on.
A sort of unspoken, ignored bond that just wouldn't go away.
Rex didn't have that, though.
He had never even met Sami until he was in his late teens, when he and Cassie first came to Salem, and they'd had a rocky relationship from the start, even before they found out they were related, first by Marlena and then by Roman.
They'd been particularly keen on blaming one another for the serial killings, Brady had noticed, but something had changed in recent months.
If he needed proof of that, all he had to do was look at Rex, sitting beside Sami's bed.
Wishing for his sister to let him in.
"Sami and my dad haven't gotten along for years," Brady found himself telling Rex, although he wasn't sure why.
"Yeah, I know," Rex nodded.
"But she asked for him today," Brady continued, looking not at Rex but at his stepsister's sleeping face. "Maybe this whole nightmare has opened her eyes to the fact that she's not alone. That she has a family that wants to love her, if she'd just let them. Eric hasn't been home in years, Sami's going to need the only other brother she has."
"She has you, too," Rex pointed out.
"Yeah."
Brady sighed, reaching over to adjust the blankets for Sami, to make her more comfortable.
He was glad she was resting now, because he knew this entire ordeal was going to sap her of all of her strength. The next few months were going to be rough, but he hoped she knew that she didn't have to face them alone.
You've got a lot of people who love you, Sami, he thought. I just hope we can help you through this.