Disclaimer: Still not mine. Wish they were.
Author's Notes: According to Wikipedia, the biggest gaffe made in "Foyle's War" (which is otherwise justifiably lauded for its attention to period detail), is the use of streptomycin in curing Sam's case of anthrax. Because it wasn't even discovered until the following year. In this chapter, I have taken the liberty of substituting regular penicillin, which Wikipedia claims works in combating anthrax cases. And which certainly existed in August, 1942.
I have also taken the liberty of fleshing out some of Paul's personal history in a canon-compliant way. We know from "Bleak Midwinter" that he has no family. Here's my take on how he lost his mother.
I also assigned him an official birthday: January 24, 1910. You'll see shortly why his birthday had to be in January. For the exact date, I owe a(nother) debt of gratitude to my amazing Beta, GiuliettaC, who included information about the website "birthdaypersonality" in her own Author's Notes for chapter four of L'Aimant. Their horoscopic description of someone born on January 24? "Restrained on the outside but fiercely passionate on the inside." Suits Paul to a T, don't you think?
August, 1942
Between the two of them, Paul and the constable had manoeuvred Sam into the back of the police car, then they sped back to the hospital. Paul sat in the back with Sam, cradling her head in his lap, brushing her tangled hair from her forehead. He could feel the unnatural heat radiating off of her skin and her breathing sounded laboured.
A few minutes into the ride, Sam regained consciousness.
"Paul?" she murmured as she blinked, trying to take in her new surroundings.
"I'm right here, Sam," he said, taking hold of one of her hands and holding it tight, "We're taking you to St. Mary's. Don't try to talk. It will be all right."
"Jolly good," she said, making an attempt at her usual, vivacious style of address, but she sounded so weak as she spoke that it brought tears to Paul's eyes.
Getting Sam out of the car and into the hospital was a blur. Paul had the vague impression of having spoken to Edith when they arrived. Then Sam was whisked away to be examined and settled in a bed. Gathering his scattered wits, Paul placed a call to the station. He spoke with Sergeant Brooke, then returned to the nurse's station to wait for further word on Sam.
...
Walking into the ward where Sam had been settled, Christopher Foyle's eyes located his driver immediately. She lay reclining on several pillows, her hair in disarray. Paul Milner was sitting hunched in a chair near the head of her bed, everything about him bespeaking anguished care for the woman lying before him.
He paused for a few moments to watch them together. Sam's head was turned towards Milner, whose features were frozen into a mask of forced cheerfulness that tried desperately to conceal an all-consuming dread without quite succeeding. Christopher remembered that look all too well from Rosalind's last illness, his own struggle, for her sake, to project confidence that everything would come out right in the end, even as it became increasingly clear that wasn't going to be the case. He could feel his features being tugged into the same kind of façade as he began making his way over to Sam's bed.
Paul saw Mr. Foyle first, scrambling to stand as soon as he did. Sam turned her head to follow Paul's eyes.
"Hello, Sir," she said and began making the effort to pull herself into a sitting position.
"Don't…don't move," he ordered gently, gesturing with his hand that she should remain as she was. "How are you?" he enquired.
"I think I'm going to need a couple of days off of work, Sir." As ill as she was, Sam's words still rang with a cheerful resignation.
"As many as that?" The DCS parried Sam's weak quip with a pained attempt at a smile.
"I think I've got flu. I don't know about these, though." She lifted her right arm and indicated the black scabs that pocked her skin, like cigarette burns. None of them, however, had a patch on the angry, livid, black gash across her wrist.
"You remember doing that?" Mr. Foyle asked, indicating the lesion.
"At Vauxhall Farm."
"How did you do that?"
"I cut my wrist on some barbed wire." She remembered the goat she had been stroking when it had happened. "Do you think I've got an infection?"
Foyle looked speculatively at Sam's wrist. He'd seen infections resulting from scratches, but this didn't look like those. He was damned if he knew what it was, though. "Well just rest and let these people look after you," he ordered Sam.
"Right-o, Sir."
"And I'm going to have to borrow my Sergeant, if you don't mind," he added.
"I'll be back as soon as I can, Sam." Paul followed Mr. Foyle out of the ward, pausing at the door to look back. Sam's eyes were closed; she looked as though she had already fallen asleep. The two men were quiet as they walked out of the hospital and climbed into the waiting Wolseley.
"Did the doctor say anything?" Foyle asked his Sergeant.
"They don't really know what's wrong. They keep throwing out different names; it never seems to be the same name twice." Paul rubbed his temple distractedly. Once Sam had been settled in a hospital gown and a bed she had appeared significantly more comfortable even though none of the other symptoms had shown any real signs of ameliorating. Despite her fever, she was perfectly lucid. "Whatever this is, Elsie Jenkins died of it," he concluded helplessly.
"The Home Guard picked up that man, Styles," Mr. Foyle said. "The one who was watching Vauxhall Farm. I think he'll know something about this whole mess."
...
Paul sat next to Mr. Foyle, surveying Henry Styles from across the table in the interrogation room. If he hadn't seen it with his own eyes the day before, he would never have guessed that the heavy-set, mild mannered, nervous man in front of him could either have run so fast or have managed to get the best of Sergeant Brooke in a scuffle. Styles had in fact knocked Brooke for six, which probably spoke volumes regarding what desperation could make people do.
He sat, listening, as Mr. Foyle went about convincing Styles that he was not the main target of their investigation and that they needed his help. The words seemed to reach Paul's ears as though from a great distance. All he could see was Sam lying in her hospital bed, exhausted and breathless, the black sores marring her fair skin…
Then Styles began expounding on what was causing all of this and re-captured Paul's full attention. It was something called anthrax. Some kind of bacterium that was being developed as a weapon, for the war. Something that the experimenters had lost control of and let loose in the vicinity of Vauxhall Farm. Where Elsie Jenkins had worked. And where Sam had scratched her wrist. And Elsie Jenkins was dead…
Mr. Foyle went by himself to the base that Styles told them about, to get more information, to find something that would help Sam. He seemed to read Paul's state of mind from his face, advising him to stay at the station and get a start on writing the report regarding the new developments in the Ashford case. Sergeant Brooke had been instructed to call the hospital every hour for updates on Sam's condition.
...
Paul sat at his desk for a long time, trying to occupy himself with reports and paperwork, and finding himself utterly unable to concentrate on the task at hand. He found his mind wandering along paths of memory that he hadn't trod in years. With a sudden clarity of recall that only served to further unnerve him, Paul remembered when his mother had died of the Spanish Flu in 1919. It had been the middle of February. He had turned nine just a few weeks earlier. His father had been de-mobbed and returned home after being away at the Front for the better part of two years. It was quite wonderful, though a little strange, to have both of his parents in the house when it had been just Paul and his mother for such a long time. But having Dad home in time to be there for his birthday – the first one that Paul could truly remember without the shadow of war darkening it – had been like having an extra present, though one that didn't come wrapped.
And then after supper one evening, Elizabeth Milner had started shivering violently, teeth chattering, with a high fever. Paul had lain in bed for hours, unable to sleep, listening to his father moving about, conferring with the doctor when he arrived. The next morning, he wasn't allowed in his mother's room, but he had kept vigil in the upstairs hallway when he wasn't running errands for his father – making tea, fetching clean towels, filling hot water bottles, heating up soup… It had all seemed completely unreal. He had never known his mother to be ill before. Whenever Paul had fallen ill in the past, Elizabeth had always joked as she'd tended to him: What a good thing it is that mothers aren't allowed to get sick.
By the next morning, he could hear his mother's laboured breathing from the hallway, painful gasps and gurgles that made him feel nauseated. Paul had stood in the doorway of his parents' room, looking in; his mother's face had gone a kind of blueish grey – almost unrecognizable. She was dead by teatime. He remembered the stark agony in his father's face as he had struggled to absorb the sudden loss of the woman he loved…
And then the most startling and appalling thought obliterated all others, momentarily taking Paul's breath away. In all their time together thus far, he had never told Sam that he loved her. And in this moment he realized, as though for the first time, the true depth of his feelings for Sam. It was as though a fog-bank had rolled away, revealing the clear outline of a magnificent castle, where only a shapeless bulk had loomed moments before. Paul knew, rationally, that he would continue to exist without Sam in his life, but she had become so integral to every part of him that spoke of joy, of peace, and of hope, that he didn't see how he would be able to truly live without her.
Frantically, Paul scoured his memory of the recent months, of all the words that had passed between himself and Sam. There had been words of affection, words of tenderness, but never words of love. He cursed his own innate caution and the circumspection with which he had been feeling his way forward in their relationship. Had Sam been waiting for him to say the words, perhaps growing impatient in the interval? What if she were to die, now, without ever knowing that he loved her? How could he possibly go on without her if she didn't come through this?
"Sergeant Milner?" Paul looked up and saw Mr. Foyle standing in his doorway.
"Sir?" He hauled himself to his feet, relieved at having his train of thought interrupted and hoping that the DCS had brought good news with him. "Did they tell you anything?"
Mr. Foyle tilted his head for a few moments, as though choosing his words. "In a manner of speaking. They gave me some medicine that may save her. Penicillin. I've already dropped it off at St. Mary's. The doctor said that he'd already given Sam a dose before I came – on his own initiative – and that he would give her another in few hours."
"Has there been any change?"
"Not yet." Both men stood in uneasy silence for a few moments. "Get your hat, Milner," the DCS said, "I think we can wrap up the investigation into Tom Jenkins' death before the day is out."
Paul grabbed his hat from its stand and followed Mr. Foyle out to the car. As it got under way, he felt a pang, wishing that he had remained at the station, waiting for word about Sam. Better yet, he wished he could be at St. Mary's… He'd been too distracted all afternoon to be of much use to anybody, one way or the other.
"It doesn't seem the sort of thing we should be doing given the circumstances, does it, Sir?" he ventured from the back of the Wolseley, watching the back of Mr. Foyle's neck as the car negotiated the streets of Hastings, headed in the direction of Hythe.
"Well, we might as well, there's little else we can do." Christopher Foyle spoke with resignation and pragmatism. From his own painful experience, he could guess Milner's wretched state of mind. But Foyle also knew the panacea of action and purpose as a distraction from the masochism of chasing one's dark thoughts around in an endless circle. Closing this case and ensuring that Martin Ashford went free would be a beneficial use of their time this afternoon, while the medical staff of St. Mary's worked to save Sam.
"I can't believe she might die," Paul said forcing the words out with a quiet desperation, hoping to hear himself contradicted, "She'll pull through, won't she, Sir?"
Mr. Foyle pivoted slightly in his seat so that he could look his Sergeant more directly in the face as he replied. "One of the scientists I spoke to said that a person's general constitution could make all the difference. I can't think of anyone I know with a hardier constitution than Sam, can you?" The corners of Paul's mouth gave a half-hearted twitch. It was true that he found it hard to imagine anyone more generally healthy than Sam (or anyone with a more voracious appetite), but he also remembered too vividly how ill she had looked in her bed at St. Mary's; the contrast was too stark to offer any real comfort.
...
Their destination was the home of the local veterinarian, Ted Cartwright, and his son, Leonard. The interview went surprisingly well, considering that it culminated with Leonard's arrest for the murder of Tom Jenkins. After some preliminary prevarications, Leonard admitted to sending Mr. Foyle the anonymous letter. Then he explained how Tom had tried to kill him rather than share a piece of floating wreckage when their ship had gone down in the icy North Sea. So Leonard, who had miraculously survived despite Tom's best efforts, had paid him back on land the first chance he got. Tom had been a nasty piece of work; a bully who had beaten his wife. Leonard went quietly with Paul after Mr. Foyle had formally put him under arrest.
When they reached the station, Sergeant Brooke greeted them with welcome news: Dr. Brindley reported that Sam was responding well to the penicillin and appeared to have taken a turn for the better. Paul gripped the edge of the front desk, relief rushing through him with such force that the bottom seemed to drop out of his stomach and made his knees momentarily wobble. It took a minute to regain his composure, but once he had, Paul managed to put some serious effort into the accumulation of paperwork caused by the release of Martin Ashford and the arrest of Leonard Cartwright.
Nevertheless, he asked for Mr. Foyle's permission to leave work a half hour before his usual quitting time. When it was granted, he headed straight for St. Mary's. Once he had gained the entrance hall, however, he stood uncertainly, wondering how to proceed. He could see from a prominently displayed notice that it was well past regular visiting hours, and he wondered whether or not the nurse at the desk would make an exception for him, given that he lacked the official position of a close relative.
"Paul?" He turned his head and saw Edith walking towards him, her face alight. "I just heard that Martin has been released. Did you come all this way to tell me?"
"No…I – I came to see my friend, Miss Stewart. Samantha Stewart. You were here when I brought her in earlier today."
"Yes, of course. I remember." Edith's face lost some of its beatific delight. "She's doing much, much better. She's been moved to another ward."
"Please, Edie, I know it's past time for visitors, but can you let me in to see her? I need to see her." He needed the reassurance of his own eyes that Sam was on the mend and that her usual rude health was reasserting itself.
Edith studied Paul's face for a moment. She could discern what he hadn't told her – just how much Paul cared about this young woman and how much more they meant to each other than simply "friends." She gave a small inward sigh of resignation. "I owe you so much for what you've done for Martin," she replied with a smile. "Come with me." And she preceded him through a set of doors and down a corridor to the correct ward.
Paul thanked Edith at the door, then made a beeline for Sam's bed, finding a chair and settling himself in it. He sat and studied Sam. She was sleeping peacefully and naturally, her breathing even and regular. Someone had brushed her hair and tied it back neatly; the late afternoon sun made it burnished gold. Her deathly pallor was gone and so, it appeared, were the strange black sores that had broken through her skin. Paul sat for a long time, drinking in the beautiful picture that Sam presented.
Presently, her breathing altered slightly and her eyelashes quivered; a moment later she was blinking and awake.
"Paul?" Her voice was still slightly thick from sleep and she seemed to be inwardly debating whether or not the man seated beside her bed was a pleasant figment of her imagination.
"Sam…" He reached forward and captured one of her hands, "How are you feeling?"
"Horrible," she groaned, with the merest hint of theatrics. Paul smiled sympathetically. No doubt Sam was still feeling rather rotten after everything that she had been through, but at the same time, she sounded so much more like her old self, which helped to solidify his reinstated peace of mind.
"You gave us all a terrible scare, you know." Paul strove, not quite successfully, to make his statement lightly teasing.
"I'm sorry," she replied, squeezing his hand.
"There's no need for you to apologize, Sam."
"I hate to think that I upset you."
"I thought I might lose you." As he spoke, Paul brought up his other hand, sandwiching Sam's hand between both of his, anchoring her more firmly to him. "And I can't even begin to tell you how the idea terrified me." He paused, then continued. "I love you, Sam. I realized today that I'd never told you that. I think I've loved you for quite some time. I can't think why I haven't said it before today."
"Perhaps we've been too busy just…enjoying each other's company." Sam's cheeks were flushed, but this time, Paul suspected that the reason was something other than anthrax.
"You're everything to me, Sam. I don't think I could face the world if you weren't in it. And I want you in my life, always."
"I want that too, Paul. I love you, so much."
"How long have you been waiting to hear me say it?" he asked.
"It doesn't matter," Sam smiled. "I knew that you would tell me in your own time. And I knew that I couldn't bully you into saying anything." After all, a declaration of love and devotion wasn't something that you could force out of anyone. And if you did force them to say the words, it would undermine the very sentiments being expressed.
Paul started to smile in return, but his expression died only half formed. This conversation felt like a…proposal of marriage. But that was the one thing that he couldn't offer Sam; the one set of words that he still couldn't say.
"What's wrong, Darling?" Sam queried, noting the change in Paul's expression.
"I wish I had…more to offer you." He caressed her ring finger with his thumb and she understood his meaning.
"You will one day." Her eyes grew brighter. Sam held this moment in her mind, sensing its weight and appreciating its import. "I feel…" She trailed off, momentarily lost for words.
"How do you feel?"
"I feel…as though I'm at a crossroads."
"And which path are you going to take?"
"The one that you're on, Paul."