Fredward Benson, Week One – Day Three

They've silently formulated a schedule amongst each other. Sam's mother, Mrs. Benson, or Spencer comes on Mondays. It's Carly's turn on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Freddie visits Sam on Wednesdays and Fridays. The whole group comes on Saturdays, and they leave Sam to rest on Sundays. It's an unspoken arrangement, yet one everyone agrees upon. Silence, which has once been a rare thing in all of their lives, is now suddenly thrust upon them ever since that horrible day of Sam's accident.

It's Freddie's turn today. He enters the room quietly after the doctor tells him her unchanging condition and leaves to the next room down the corridor. It's the second week, but the boy is still unnerved by Sam's fragile state. He will never get used to it.

Instead of sitting down on the chair by her bedside, he channels his mom's nursing habits just for this moment as he flits around the room, absently arranging the fresh batch of flowers he has brought for her in the glass vase, opening the blinds of the curtains, straightening the picture that hangs crookedly by the door. But like everything else, soon there is nothing to fix, except for the girl lying on that bed – and as desperately as he wishes he could, Sam is someone he can't fix. She is broken a hell lot more than what he, Carly, adults, and even doctors with their fancy technology can repair.

She's always been difficult, he thinks bitterly, sitting down heavily onto his chair. His chair – he hates how each person has their own personal chair that they've brought from home into this room. It makes things more permanent, sore bottoms be damned. And he doesn't want a breakable Sam to be a permanent thing. Never. The boy reaches out to hold her hand – the one free of needles – gently in his warm ones. "C'mon, Sam," he urges, his whisper finally breaking the silence other than the monitor that continues to faintly beep. "It's been five days. I know you like sleeping, but this is a little ridiculous, don't you think?" Freddie hates his attempt at lighthearted humor, yet he is forced to try.

He waits for her familiar punch on the arm that she so readily gives whenever she thinks he's lame – or whenever she's bored, in general. He waits, but none comes. He knows that none will come for a long time, but a small part of his falters, breaks. Because he's still waiting for her to open her eyes and declare her boredom of 'playing brain-dead', like the blonde-haired demon she is. His eyes flutter shut warily for a long, long moment, feeling much older than his seventeen year old self, before he forces a smile on his face.

"Alright Sam," he begins, brown eyes watching Sam's face for a flicker of recognition of his presence. There is none. "It's Wednesday today, just in case you didn't know. School's going to start in a few weeks, and if you keep this up, you'll miss the beginning of our senior year. Senior year, Sam!" He pauses, a sudden thought making him shake his head wryly at the motionless blonde. "On the other hand, you'd like that, right?"

Freddie takes a moment to simply watch her. He wonders what she's thinking of, where she is – the doctors had said there was activity going on in her brain. Thumb brushing over her limp knuckles, he leans over to carefully brush a curl away from her forehead. "You're a mystery, Sam, you know that? Of course, I'd known it before, but you've managed to stump the doctors and their – what would you call it? – 'geeky technology'. Congratulations. I'd give you some ham, if you were awake and all." Again, the desperate bait that he can't help but dangle in her face.

No response.

"Fine, moving on then. Yesterday was our iCarly rehearsal, but, well, you can guess how that went. We just drew a total blank. It's never the same whenever you're gone, Sam. Nobody was in the mood for anything, really, so I ended up going home, while Carly helped Spencer with his new sculpture. Everyone's pretty beat up about it. Can't you stop playing this game, Sam?" Pleading – he was doing it again despite himself. Hell, he'd go on his knees and beg, shower her with tonnes of Fat Cakes for a lifetime if she just woke up so he could see her piercing blue eyes again.

He drones on and on about trivial matters that Sam would usually have a snide remark ready, more than half his sentences containing her name in them. They were to remind her of her name so that she wouldn't forget, as if chanting it over and over would somehow miraculously bring their favourite blonde back from her trance. Freddie soon gets tired of the sound of his voice, so he lapses back into the silence that has forced them to become familiar with. All the physical and emotional pain she'd put him through is nothing compared to the pain he's feeling now.

Silence truly is a scary thing.

He doesn't realize his hour of visiting time is up until an amiable nurse comes in with various liquid packs she has to change. It's her food. He lingers long enough to see how the liquified food is pushed through the needles that poke through her skin, and he wants to yell, because this is all wrong. Sam shouldn't be fed in such a way. She should be sitting up, almost inhaling everything she's offered despite her dislike for hospital food.

He watches for a minute before turning away from the scene in front of him. Freddie walks down the corridor, his old-fashioned beeper that his mother had somehow discovered in her trunk last month going off. Only his mother could ever think beepers, especially out-dated ones such as these, were more effective than cellphones. But even before he can check his pager, he almost collides with his mother herself.

"Fredward! What have I told you about looking ahead when you're walking?" He cringes at her loud voice which turns heads as people pass them, most of them looking with curiosity. It'll be over soon, he thinks it over like a mantra, knowing that he'd only face public humiliation for a short moment before he'd be forced to hear her lecture on saftey and heigene in the car. At least nobody could jeer at him there. He gets himself ready for the next long minutes, but what his mother says next makes him tense. "We have to be especially careful now – I don't want you to end up like Samantha now."

He knows his mother is simply being concerned, yet this flares a spark of irritation in him. "Mom!" Face set into a deep scowl, his mother stops in mid-sentence in shock at her son's outburst. "It's not Sam's fault that the car had hit her! We saw her looking both ways, and if it was safe for her to cross the fucking-,"

"Now, Freddie-,"

"- road. We all know that the dumbass of a driver-,"

"Fredward!"

"- was the one that kept going even if the damned red light was still on!" By now, everyone has stopped their activities to watch them in interest, some being less tactless than others by full-out staring. But Freddie is beyond caring. He's so sick of people assuming it was all Sam's fault – it wasn't, damn it. He can't fully blame the careless driver, as much as he wants to; his nature is to turn everything to his responsibility. If only they'd stuck with Carly's suggestion of discussing ideas for iCarly in her flat instead of listening to his option of going to the Groovy Smoothie. And of course Sam had opted for his choice – as long as she'd been getting a smoothie.

He senses his mother's disapproval for those small swear words and his rising voice, and stops himself in time before he ends up ranting. "Sorry – it's been an exhausting week," he says to his mother through gritted teeth, and glances over his shoulder unconsciously at the direction of Sam's room. Had she been lucid, she would have been proud of him for that. She had always been proud of him whenever he was in, as she said, 'Rebellious Freddie Mode'. Freddie sighs, uncurling the fist he hasn't known his hands had formed. He can feel his mother looking at him while he purposely looks at the ceiling.

When she begins walking out of the hospital, he follows.

Samantha Puckett – Week One, Day Three

It's strange how things work out. I swear I've eaten half my weight of Fat Cakes since I've been here – the empty packets scattered around me are proof. But every time I reach into my hoodie pocket, there's at least one packet emerging along with my hand. I'm not complaining about it, hell no. But I'm suspicious.

And these Fat Cakes are weird – one bite, and they're your average Fat Cakes, sweet and crumbly. But the next bite would have a taste that reminded me all too strongly of hospital food. Or the lunches that Mrs. B likes to make for poor Freddork. I'm not sure if I like these Fat Cakes all too much; at first, it was amusing. Exciting, even, to make me wonder if the next bite will taste like, rainbows or something just as ridiculous, or something shitty.

After eating more than a dozen though, has made me realize that the Fat Cakes are either Fat Cake-flavored or taste like food served at the hospital. So that got boring. Strangely enough, I'm not even hungry, even if I haven't drunk in ages. It's like my body is constantly hydrated without needing me to force water into my system. Odd.

I've been checking my wristwatch with the design of an eyeball for its face every so often, but the darn thing must've been broken somehow, since the needles aren't moving at all. So I've pretty much lost track of time; Carly and Freddork are going to be so peeved off about that. Although I wonder why they even bother with me sometimes – they know I'm not the most punctual person around. I'm pretty sure I'm really late though, much later than I usually am. I should probably try to get out of this place.

You know, if I haven't already fucking tried a hundred times already.

I've tried everything, really. Throwing packets of Fat Cakes around, both empty and full – they don't bounce off anything. It's like a barren of white, with no boundaries. Makes me feel small. And lost. And bored.

The most annoying thing is, though, that constant faint beeping I hear everywhere I go. I'm stuck in, literally, the middle of nowhere, yet I can hear that annoying sound. And being in the middle of nowhere, you'd expect it to be quiet. But when I'm not hearing the beeping, there's all these mulled voices that I can never figure out around me. It bugs me, and at the same time, comforts me – at least I'm not alone.

I get tired of walking, so I sit down. I'm not afraid of getting lost, because I know I'm already lost anyway. I still had food with me – so what did I care? Carly and Freddie would just have to deal, damn it. Maybe if they were worried, they'd try to find me – not that I think they can. We could always meet up later anyway, to discuss…

To discuss…

Why was I meeting them again? I scratch my head, feeling confused and disoriented again. Freddie. Carly. Wasn't I going to hang with them to do something? A school project, maybe. Except school hasn't started yet, and we weren't given summer homework, as far as I remember – not that I care if we do or not. Then why was I so worked up to meet them at…

At…

Groovy Smoothie. That word suddenly popped out at me, and I frowned. It was probably a funky name for a type of smoothie. I plopped down onto my back, my eyes staring at the blank space of white nothingness. Words and images were all jumbled up in my head, and it didn't help that the unnecessary beeping didn't shut up already.

I really needed to stop spacing out.

Disclaimer: I do not own iCarly. I only own this plot, and the random OOC characters and their characterizations.

A/N: I'm back! Firstly, I'd like to thank every one of you for favoriting and/or reviewing my story, it meant a lot to me. 3. Secondly, how was this chapter? I'm pretty on the line about it – I don't particularly like or dislike it. What do you guys think of it? If there's any problems you have about it, please tell me so that I won't make the same mistake in the next chapter. And if you like it – well, I'd always like to hear that too. *laughs* Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this!

….*pssttt* And should I continue the story, or give up now? Thanks!