Chapter 1 ~

Twelve Months Earlier ~~

Sami DiMera stepped out of the shower quietly and reached for her towel where it hung on the back of the bathroom door. She slowly wrapped it around herself and then sat on the top of the closed toilet seat, wrapping her arms around herself to ward off the sudden chill that was working its way to her very core.

She didn't know how long she sat there unmoving. She could vaguely hear EJ in their bedroom through the door, finishing up a business call most likely, and she knew that he would call for her or come in to check on her any minute. But, still she did not move, and indeed, his voice was heard in very short order.

"Samantha, darling? Are you alright?" He rapped twice at the door before poking his head inside, and his face split into the smile that she had grown to love so dearly over the years. "Ah. There you are." He crossed the room in just a few long strides and scooped her up in his arms (he could still do that almost as easily today as he could when they first got married), took her place on the toilet seat and settled her comfortably in his lap. He continued to chatter away, Samantha's mood going unnoticed.

"How is it that I still miss you even if you are only gone for a few minutes?" he marveled, hugging her close. "Even after all these years?"

Sami felt the corners of her mouth turn up slightly, but only just. Certainly, it was some automatic response that only EJ would be able to elicit in this situation, because she didn't feel like smiling. Not at all.

"And I love it when the children come for dinner, don't you?" EJ laughed at himself. "What am I saying? There is nothing you love better than the children and grandchildren around you for the evening.

"And what about Sydney's news, huh? Our baby girl, having a baby of her own?" He sighed, the special love of a father for his daughter shining brightly through his eyes as he remembered Sydney and Jeremy at the dinner table making their announcement. "Every time one of them gives us that news, it is just as incredible as the last, isn't it?"

He kissed her tenderly on the lips at that and then pulled back slowly. Realizing that Sami hadn't actually kissed him back and that she wasn't overflowing with excitement, a slight frown darkened his brow. "Darling? What is it? What's wrong?"

"I found a lump," Sami whispered as much to herself as to answer her husband's question. Actually, it didn't appear that she had heard her husband at all. It was as if she needed to say it out loud to make it real. To convince herself that she wasn't having an awful nightmare and would be waking up...right now.

EJ's arms tightened in a death grip around her waist, effectively bringing Sami back to the present. She watched the blood drain from his face and instant fear fill his eyes. He searched her face to see if there was any way that he might have misunderstood, and not finding anything to suggest otherwise, Sami felt the panic wash over him even though he fought to stay calm.

"I'll call the doctor," he said softly.

EJ held Samantha's hand tightly and hoped she didn't notice how tense he felt, how scared he was. She needed all of his support today. He shifted his weight, trying to find a comfortable position for his 6'5" frame in the hard, plastic exam room chair. Finding none, he gave up and stifled a sigh.

His only concern was not making this worse for his wife. As scared as he was, it was nothing compared to what she must be feeling. What she would be feeling if the news wasn't what they were praying for.

Three weeks before, Samantha had undergone surgery to remove the lump from her breast two days after she found it. Knowing her history, her surgeon had gotten a new colleague to get her in as soon as possible since he was out of the country, and now they were waiting for the biopsy results.

How could this happen? It had been six years. The doctors had assured them that if she made it five years without the cancer coming back, the chance of it recurring went down drastically, that it was likely that she would remain cancer-free. In all this time, she had continued to get a perfect reports, never finding anything physically or on lab work that would suggest a problem. For once in her life, Samantha had done exactly what she was told to do and continued to work hard to be healthy, and now this?

It's not cancer. It's not. It's benign. That surgeon is going to come in here and tell us that we don't have a thing to worry about. That is simply all there is to it.

In spite of his stern pep-talk, images of Samantha's first battle flooded his mind. They appeared rapidly one after the other with startling clarity, untouched by the passage of time. He remembered the experience—felt its agony—as acutely as he felt it at the time.

If nothing else, his wife was brave, everyone had said. She had fought with dogged determination, refusing to let the side-effects of chemo and radiation sideline her. When her hair fell out, she didn't cry; she simply found all sorts of beautiful and creative ways to cover her head. And when she was ravaged with pain, her eyes sunken and circled with deep rings of black from fatigue, she bore it as patiently as possible, never once letting on how big of a toll it was taking.

They all marveled. This wasn't the Samantha Gene they knew, this woman bearing her trouble so quietly. They watched her smile sweetly at her children and hold and play with their children and wondered: from whence came her strength?

Only he had known the truth. Only he had held hair hair back when she was sick in the days immediately after her treatments, carried her when she was too weak to walk and coaxed and encouraged her to eat—never enough—when she felt too spent to even lift a fork to her mouth. He helped her bathe when she longed to wash the "smell of poison"-as she called it—off of her body, lain awake with her when sleep refused to come and rocked her in his arms as her tears fell when fear reared its ugly head.

He could still feel those tears. He knew it sounded absurd, but EJ could swear that they had burned permanent tracks into his skin. He never could stand to see Samantha cry, and those times had been especially bitter since there was nothing he could do to make the situation alright for her. He couldn't take away the pain or bring the sweet relief of rest. He couldn't calm her fears because his own were choking him to death. He thought he had hidden his own torment well, but he should have known better; Samantha always had known him better than he knew himself.

One night, thinking that she was finally asleep, he had stepped out onto the balcony off of their bedroom. There, in the night air, everything had crashed in on him, and he had fallen to his knees, sobbing. How would he go on if she didn't make it? Yes, he had his children whom he loved more than anything in the world, but Samantha was his life's blood. Without her...

Pain worse than anything he had ever felt had ripped through him at the thought. Without Samantha, he would die. That was all there was to it.

He didn't know how long he had stayed out there, but suddenly she had been beside him, wrapping herself around him and kissing away his tears as they fell. He held onto her for dear life, sure that she would be taken from him at any moment.

When the worst was over, she'd looked him straight in the eye and was very direct. "I'm still here. Don't ever hide from me..."

With great effort, EJ pushed those memories away. They were too painful and would do nothing to keep him positive for today. She had told him then to never hide from her, but today she wouldn't know the fear that was fighting to run rampant in his heart. He turned to see how she was holding up, their eyes met, and a tight smile of irony tilted the corners of his mouth.

So much for his plan to hide from her; she already knew.

She reached up to kiss his jaw and rested her chin lightly on his shoulder before a quick, polite knock was heard at the door. They broke apart expectantly as the surgeon, Dr. Graven, walked in.

"Mr. and Mrs. DiMera. Sorry I'm late." The doctor did not smile or acknowledge them in any way except for a cursory glance in their direction as he took a seat on the rolling stool. "I'm sure you are anxious for your results, and I have them here."

"What...What do they say?" Sami's mouth was suddenly dry, her heart rate doubling, and she felt EJ's arm tighten around her shoulders. They knew from experience—and the extensive research EJ had done—that Dr. Graven's approach meant little in terms of whether the news was good or bad. He was efficient and the best at his job, nothing more. But this was the moment of truth. Her life depended on how he answered that question.

With a tired sigh, Dr. Graven looked at them blandly. "The cancer has returned, and it's more extensive this time. I'm sorry." Derek recited the script appropriate for theses situations, but didn't waste much time in trying to put actions with the words. He didn't have the time, and in his experience, the patient's and their families weren't really listening at this point, anyway. They heard the word "cancer", and everything else ceased to exist. In the end, he would be a very small part of this woman's recovery—if recovery was possible, and he wasn't sure that it was. She would bond with her oncologist; he would give her the emotional support she needed.

"Don't say things you don't mean."

Derek was startled at his patient's response, startled enough that he actually looked at her for the first time. Her chart noted an age in the fifties, but she didn't look a day over forty. Indeed, if he hadn't had access to her medical records, he never would've guessed that she was a cancer survivor. She didn't have a strand of gray in her hair, though it was so blonde it would probably be nearly impossible to tell, and she had no wrinkles in her skin except for very soft laugh lines around her eyes, which had darkened to an impressive shade of navy blue as they glared at him right now.

"I...I beg your pardon?" Derek stammered.

"I said, don't say things you don't mean," she repeated through clenched teeth. "You aren't sorry that I have cancer, so don't patronize me and act like you are."

Speechless for once in his life, Derek said the first thing that came to his mind and immediately wanted to pull his tongue out. "I'm sorry." He waited for the scolding he was sure was coming, but was surprised when Mr. DiMera interrupted quietly.

"You...you said it was aggressive?"

For a second time in less than two minutes, Derek found himself being caught off guard and actually looking at the individual to whom he was speaking. It was true that he gave this kind of news fairly regularly, it was always an unpleasant visit for the patient and their family, and he was sure that they all must've looked something like this man did right now. So why was the utter devastation staring back at him such a shock?

Mr. DiMera looked as if the news was actually crushing him, as if his wife's diagnosis was his own death sentence. If eyes were the window to one's soul, looking into this man's took Derek to a frighteningly dark place—a place he didn't recognize, couldn't comprehend and definitely didn't like. Barely able to suppress a shudder, he brought all his medical training to fore and commanded the professional in himself to retake center stage.

"Yes. I'm sorry. The biopsy shows that it is at least Stage Two, meaning-"

"I know what that means," Mrs. DiMera interrupted. "How is that possible? I just found the lump; it's not like I ignored it for months! In fact, we called that very night!"

Derek nodded and tried to keep the situation firmly in hand. It was unnerving not being in control and maddening that he was having to work at it. He was known for his unflappable personality, his calm in the face of any situation. He had spent a lifetime cultivating the firm command of his emotions, and while he sometimes allowed his temper to get the best of him, it happened rarely and only when he was provoked beyond what he could bear. It certainly was never in public where he would lose face, and he prided himself on that fact. What was it about this woman that stripped him down so easily?

"Yes, Mrs. Dimera; I understand that, which is one of the reasons I say it's aggressive. Considering the fact that we removed the lump almost immediately after you found it, it is not a good thing that we found it to be farily large in size: more than two centimeters. We also did not get clear margins-"

"So, it's already spreading." Mr. DiMera's voice was little more than a tortured whisper, his eyes downcast. His wife was silent, but she glared at Derek accusatorily as if the diagnosis was his fault.

What did she want him to say? It wasn't like he had caused this, and he wasn't sitting here giving her bad news because he hadn't yanked enough chains today, so why not yank hers? Maybe if he gave her the relatively good news, he could get the appointment—and himself—back on solid footing.

"Of course, it's very possible that even though it is spreading through the breast tissue that it hasn't spread any further than that, and we can still stop it from doing so. I would recommend doing a mastectomy as soon as possible. During that procedure we will take some lymph nodes from under your arm for biopsy to see if the cancer has spread there. I also would recommend-"

"What happens if it has spread there?" Mrs. DiMera interrupted again, though her voice held less anger this time and more fear.

It gave Derek an unfamiliar pang in his chest to hear it. He wasn't used to actually noticing things like that about his patients, and he wasn't sure he liked it; it made the messy parts of his job too uncomfortable. He again pushed those feelings away and tried to get back to the cool, detached place from which he normally worked. "Then appointments with your oncologist will be paramount, as you know. He will be able to better discuss your options of treatment if you decide to go with any-"

Again, the minute the words were out of his mouth, Derek wanted to snatch them out of the air and stuff them back into his mouth. Any progress he might have made with this patient evaporated into thin air as a mixture of shock and disbelief passed over her face just before fury marked her entire being, and she cut him off with a downward slash of her hand.

"What do you mean if I decide to seek treatment? Why wouldn't I?" she demanded. Her countenance was one of someone looking for a fight, one of challenge, and without thinking about whether it was wise or not, Derek rose to it. It simply wasn't in his nature not to.

"Mrs. DiMera. You realize that a recurrence of this disease is not a good thing, don't you? You understand that if it has spread to your lymph system— or anywhere else for that matter—we are not going to be able to cure it, right? The odds of getting it into remission would be remote or—depending on where the metastasis was—impossible. You've been through this before; you know what treatment is like. Is that how you want to spend the rest of your days?"

The air in the room after he asked his question crackled with electricity. If looks could kill, Derek knew he would be mortally wounded right now, but he wasn't the bad guy here, and he wasn't going to act like it. He wouldn't back down or apologize for being blunt. Even being through this once before, this woman obviously didn't realize what was at stake, the seriousness of the situation.

Along with being known for unflappable self-control, he was also known for having a well honed "gut feeling", and his gut feeling was telling him that they didn't have all the information; this case was worse than they knew. He needed to make her understand that up front. Ready to keep up the fight if necessary, Derek was surprised for a third time to witness a change in his patient's emotions. She was no less furious with him, but that emotion took a back seat to disgust.

"How I want to spend my...last days...is up to me; don't you think?" She shook her head in disbelief, and continued, addressing him with pity. "You really don't get that some people might think that there are some things worth fighting for no matter how sick they may be, do you?" She paused, and a moment of untold grief filled her eyes. "Do you have children, Dr. Graven?"

Where was she going with this? What did his life have to do with her? "Yes," Derek answered slowly. "My son, Timothy. He's five."

"Ah." Mrs. DiMera's eyes lit with understanding. Derek wasn't sure what she understood, but didn't have to wait long to find out. "Such a fun age. I bet as a doctor, it's hard to do everything you want to with him, huh? You probably miss a lot of soccer games and school programs and stuff...it's hard."

Derek wracked his brain trying to think of the last time he and Timothy had done anything together or the last function he had willingly gone to and flushed with a mixture of embarrassment and anger.

OK; so he wasn't as available as his wife, Analiese, thought he should be. He worked hard and he gave both her and their son a life they never would've had if he didn't. He could afford to give Timothy things he never had as a child, and that made him a good father. He didn't think she would be impressed if he said so, though, and he still didn't understand what any of this had to do with anything.

"I know that because I have a family, too," she said. "See, when people hit middle age and beyond, others start to forget about the life that person lead up to that point; strangers don't even think of it. So what if my children are grown and self-sufficient and are raising children of their own? So what if my husband and I have already been married for nearly thirty years? I still want to be here to experience as much of their lives—as much of their love—as I possibly can."

This conversation was definitely taking an uncomfortable turn, and Derek had the distinct feeling that he was being scolded like a naughty child. "But, you have to understand-"

Mrs. DiMera kept talking as if she hadn't heard him."Do you know what happened the night I found this lump? My youngest daughter told me that she is having a baby. My baby is going to have a baby, and you want me to think about giving up? Are you crazy? I have so much to live for. I don't care how sick I will be; for that reason alone I would fight."

"So I don't care what you say. I am going to do everything I can to beat this. I will fight until my oncologist—not my surgeon—tells me there isn't a reason to fight anymore, do you hear me? I...will...fight this!"

Before Derek could form a reply, Mrs. DiMera swept out of the exam room, leaving him alone with her husband. Their eyes locked, and he wasn't sure if he should apologize or appeal to the man to reason with his wife. If this went as badly as he thought it would, this man and his children would have to watch his wife suffer unspeakably. Surely he wouldn't want to do that.

The decision was taken out of his hands as the other man spoke first. "Your bedside manner needs work," he remarked arrogantly. "You won't build a practice here in Castle Rock with that kind of attitude, no matter how good your credentials are." Mr. DiMera rose from the chair and moved to follow his wife with the air of a king leaving a lowly subject, but before he walked away, he looked at Derek piercingly.

He fixed him again with the gaze of a dying man, and Derek knew that if he never remembered another patient or their spouse again, he would remember this moment as long as he lived, and the next words out of Mr. Dimera's mouth before he left would haunt him just as much.

"But I have to thank you, Dr. Graven, for making her so angry. My wife will fight harder than she ever has in her life just because you implied that she shouldn't. That's how she won before, and that's how she'll win again. I refuse to believe anything else because I can not lose my wife; you understand that? I simply...can not...lose Samantha."

So that was her name: Samantha. Derek realized he hadn't known.

For the rest of the day, the appointment with Samantha DiMera stayed with him, and not only because various colleagues, hearing about the verbal scuffle through the office grapevine, stopped him in the halls to warn him about the dangers of ticking off the biggest hospital contributors in the town of Castle Rock.

It stuck with him because it was obvious that she and her husband had something special together. Something Derek didn't have and never had seen before. They had something that made being at death's door because of chemotherapy just to continuing experiencing it worth it. They had something that it would kill them to lose.

For the first time in a long time, Derek felt something stir inside him, and for the first time in his life, he tried praying to that God Analiese was always harping about. He couldn't tell her, because of the strict privacy laws, but if she knew he had done it, he knew she would be happy. And if Analiese was happy, maybe her God would be too, and he would give these people a miracle.

Because Derek was pretty sure a miracle was what they would need if this wife and mother—so obviously loved—was going to have a chance.