"Fine." Sam didn't look back as he opened the door to leave. "I'll pick up my things in the morning."
"Don't bother, Sam. I've already packed." She was standing right beside the door as he walked out wordlessly and closed the door behind him.
Regan took Sara and moved back to America the next morning, as though nothing more needed to be said between them. Sara had still been asleep, when they boarded the plane to New York. Regan looked worn and strained, but she kept her head up like a soldier going into battle. Sara only woke long enough to see her daddy wave at their departing Taxi and ask her mommy who that sad looking man was and then went back to sleep. Regan hadn't cried when the doctor told her that she had cancer, but she cried then. Her daughter didn't even recognize her own father.
Sam hadn't known that Regan had left to save him the pain of seeing her die a slow and miserable death. Regan knew though, that even with treatment and chemotherapy, she wouldn't live long enough to see her daughter graduate high school. That was why, when she was hanging on to the last threads of life, she had contacted Sam and had him visit her in the hospital. Sara never knew about that visit.
"It's good to see you." Regan said from her hospital bed. Her face was pale, like all the blood had drained out of her body. "You look good, but then you always were at the top of your game."
"This isn't what I came here for. What is it that you really want?" Sam masked no hidden emotions. He felt detached from his body, like he was on the outside looking in. His voice worked of it's own accord. "Lambert pulled me out Thailand to come here."
"He must have thought it was urgent to do that." She held out her hand, silently pleading for him to take it. "Thailand can wait, if Lambert thinks it more important for you to be here, than there. Take my hand, Sam." Her fingers looked like porcelain claws off of a harpy statue and Sam had no compunction to hold those hands again. "Sam..…" He took her cold and clammy fingers in his rough and warm hand, but didn't dare look at her. "I'm dieing."
"I know." Sam stared hard at her fingernails, keeping himself inert from the pain that wrenched at his insides. "Lambert briefed me on the situation a month ago. He told me that you've known for quite some time and didn't tell anyone…..that you had cancer."
"I've known since that day…..you know the one I'm talking about." Her voice was filled with tears, but she coughed to cover her emotions. Even now, Regan was trying to be brave and hide her weakness. "The doctors told me that it was well past operable by the time I saw the first warning signs, but they told me that medication and chemotherapy might put it into remission. At least for a while, it looked like it would work…"
"Why didn't you stay with me? I could have taken care of you while you were sick."
"Taken me to the countless appointments with doctors and specialists and chemo sessions? Watched as all my hair fell out and I threw up night and day?"
"I could have held your hand while you waited for test results. I could have helped any way possible, but you didn't stick around, or even tell me." Sam felt her shiver and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. "I thought you loved me."
"I would spare you that discomfort, Sam." Regan gasped in pain and clutched at the only contact with him he allowed. Tears welled up in her eyes and escaped her tightly shut lids. Her hair was plastered to her forehead with sweat and Sam felt her strength being sapped away. "I do love you and that is why I left you. You are not a man to be loved. You are a man to be admired from afar…one of real courage and I needed you to stay that way. I don't want to leave this world knowing you're pity." Regan stiffened, her teeth biting through her lower lip as she held back a pained scream.
Sam grabbed her hands with both of his and fell to his knees at the side of her bed. "You can yell all you want. I'm here." He didn't want to let her hands go, but her lip was bleeding and he went to wipe the blood from her trembling chin. "I wouldn't pity you for being sick, but I do for you not trusting me enough to be there for you."
"You would have quit the NSA and come to play nurse to your dieing wife? Missed all that high adventure…"
He cut her off with an angry glare. "That's a load of crap and you know it."
"To tell you the truth…..I didn't know what you would do, but I did know that I was going to die and that I didn't want to put you through all that. I've outlived every expectation ever put on me by any of the doctors I've seen and I've seen quite a few. I'm thirsty." He grabbed the plastic cup that was full of half melted ice chips and raised it to her lips. She sipped the cooling water and laid her head back down. "I only asked you here, so I could ask you to do something for me when I'm gone."
"Anything. What is it?" Sam felt her hand relax in his and he looked at her face to see her smile almost like the angelic smile she had for him on their wedding day, but much paler.
"Take care of Sara for me? She still has a lot of growing up to do."
"You didn't need to ask me that. You know I would do anything for my daughter."
"I just need to know it. Be there for her, Sam. I mean truly be there for her. Listen to her when she talks and try to be a father to her. Show up at a school play or two and try to show interest in what she does, although it may seem juvenile to you in your world. Those sort of things really matter to a girl her age." Rending pain lanced through her body and racked her soul to breaking point. "SAM!" Regan's eyes went wide with terror and then she calmed and looked at him with heartfelt apology in her watery vision. "I'm sorry." She whispered and went still.
The monitor over her bed blared in his ears…..her death knoll a long, high-pitched tone. Her hand was limp in his, yet he held it tightly in his, as though holding on to that would keep the last vestiges of her life from slipping away. A doctor came into the room, with his nurse trailing on his heals. They worked around him, silently checking her pulse, knowing he wouldn't find any and closed the dead woman's eyes. They had known this day was coming for many a month and were not surprised by her passing. The machine was switched off and everything was quiet once more.
"Nurse mark the time of death." They turned to him, as though just noticing his presence. "I'm sure you want some time alone with her."
"No. I'm through here." Sam cleared his head and strode out of the room. "Where is my daughter?"
The doctor looked pointedly at the nurse and then caught up with Sam at the exit. "Regan never allowed Sara to come to the hospital, so I'm sure she's at school today."
Sam went out to his land rover and climbed in behind the wheel. Realizing that he had no idea where Sara went to school or the name of her teacher, he flipped open a portable rolodex and thumbed through a few names and addresses, finding nothing with Sara's school information on it. He gave up trying to remember the school's phone number and dialed work.
A secretary he didn't know the name of, but he knew she baked cookies for the staff on Christmas, answered. "Hello, Mr. Fisher. Please dial your code and I'll connect you to the right line." Sometimes it unnerved him, when they answered the phone already knowing who he was and not even having caller ID installed. "Thank you. I'll have your contact in a jiffy. Please hold."
Sam thought it might have been easier to contact Lambert through his implant, yet he couldn't bring himself to use it on a non-emergency. Besides, it wasn't supposed to be used unless it was for official business. He grimaced at his reflection in the rearview mirror and listened to the Kenny G melody playing while he was on hold. He knew that all his conversations were being monitored and recorded, so he kept as quiet as possible, trying to hear the other person on the line breath. His natural curiosity had him almost blue in the face, breathing so shallow and slow…click…
"Sam? This is Lambert." Sam almost laughed at the way Lambert always answered the phone as though he weren't sure whom he was speaking to and that he always gave Sam's name a little question mark. "I heard the news. I'm sorry for your loss. If there is anything I can do…"
"Thanks, but all I need is a little information."
