You Are Dr. Fred Benson D. Sc.
How can you face her again after breaking your promise to be at her moon launch? You, of course, watched it on TV with the rest of the world, but you should have been there. You know you should have—you don't like being a man who breaks promises to friends, even if you were in the middle of a scientific break through . . . well, what turned out to be an almost scientific break through. That's what you're ashamed about, you won't even be able to show her a Nobel Prize and say, "See, I would have been there but this came up." Instead, you have nothing.
You leave her the occasional message—keeping them brief in your current spineless state of existence. You see her on Oprah, talking about the old show and her friendship with one of the decade's hottest new stars. You know you should be there with her, too, in the audience, but that week you are swamped with reports that are due to be handed over to the head of department—you watch the show with one eye in a microscope. You try to call her, but she is out.
You could be making a harder effort to contact her, but you let small excuses get in the way. She has a BBQ and you must reject the invitation through the grapevine in which your were invited, due to an incredible series of breakthroughs. Now you can't even dial her number--you barely even eat, you shower only to keep yourself awake for a few more hours, so sure that is all it will take to crack it.
Everything, even your cowardice when it comes to her, is put on hold by these discoveries. Your lab partners agree; at this rate you will have the cure for cancer in time for the Nobel Prize after all. Then, an old friend calls you to tell you that you are invited to a funeral.
She wasn't your mom, but you've known her for several years, and the thought of what her death would do to one of the daughters she left behind makes you drop everything. Your lab partners are competent and more than willing to take over the research until you get back. You put on your black suit and board a plane. Your heart is breaking for her—you can't imagine losing your own mom, no matter how much you might want to some times.
The first person you see when you arrive at the funeral home in Seattle is your first love. She is red and puffy in the eyes, but seems to have taken charge of everything in order to help your mutual friends through this horrible day. It was a car crash, they tell you, she was driving, her boyfriend survived. This man is found crying beside the twins. They don't seem to notice him as they sit, holding each other's hands. One twin is sobbing out of control, her husband seems to be helping keep things running smoothly, the other twin is as silent as the space in which she likes to fly. She is staring at the closed coffin, her eyes glazed over and her mouth a tight, straight line.
You stop in front of them, feel the tears sting at the back of your eyes as you take in the sounds of Melanie's grief and the sight of Sam's. "I'm—" You start and your voice actually cracks. Suddenly you remember a random night, nearly fifteen years previous, when the woman in that coffin spontaneously decided to paint her bathroom purple and coerced you all into helping her, but she didn't care about perfection, you all pretty much just spattered it on the walls. It had been the most fun you ever spent on a Sunday before in your life. "I'm so sorry." You manage to choke out.
Your words bring her out of her own head. She looks up at you for a moment, stands and stares at you. You take her elbows, "Sam, I can't imagine--" You start, but she pulls out of your hold. "I'm fine." She says and sits back down to console her sister.
For lack of knowing what else to do, you walk into the dining room, where food is being served on long tables draped with paper cloths. A small child in a black, polka-dotted dress and tap-dance shoes runs under your feet, and you twist to avoid plowing over her. The girl giggles and runs away. Her father hurries after her, hissing through his beard that play time is later, now is the time to be respectful.
"What can I do to help?" you ask your busy brunette friend as she tears the plastic wrap from a dish of food. She looks up at you and stops you from touching any of the unwrapped dishes. "No!" She says, smacking your hand. "Go back in there and take care of Sam!"
"What?" You ask, massaging your stinging skin. "Why me? You know more about that stuff!"
The door bursts open and the polka-dotted little girl comes running back in, her tap shoes clicking loudly over the tiled floor. She runs around her aunt first, who can only stretch and twist to keep the food on the platter she is holding, and then around you and back out the door. When you look back at the aunt, she merely snaps her fingers and points after her niece, silently demanding you go back into the parlor. You go, forlorn.
You sit next to your estranged friend; she ignores you and holds her sobbing sister in silence. After five or six awkward minutes, Mel's husband comes from the dining room, you suspect, under strict orders from the boss to take Mel to someplace quiet, away from Sam. After her charge is taken from her, she sits for only a second longer beside you before springing up and going outside.
You follow in determination, knocking into one of her inked cousins, who she had once made tattoo you against your will when you lost a bet, neglecting to mention it was temporary ink. You say hello but do not slow down. The sun is very bright on the pavement after the respectfully dimmed lights. You squint as you circle the building to the neatly trimmed yard on the side. She is sitting on the picnic table, her feet on the bench, her elbows holding her skirt around her knees.
"Go away." She threatens when you round the corner. You pause in your tracks but do no obey. "Sam."
She looks at you with an expression that says exactly where you can go and what you can do when you got there. Helpless, you do as she wishes, and suffer the wrath of the boss, who is just upset that she can do nothing either. No one knows what to do here, all any of you can do is watch from the sidelines as she goes through the service with an iron mask. The entire scene is made worse by the sight of her identical twin sister, who gives the contrast of her emotions.
In your car, following the two between you and the hearse, your phone rings. You answer automatically when you see that is the lab, then you wish you had left it to voice mail. Another breakthrough and you are needed, you should want to be there for all of this. You tell your partner to keep up the good work, and that no you aren't needed, and no you probably won't be back for another few days. You listen to the arguments for your immediate and speedy return, but they are pebbles against your resolve to see her safely through this dark time. You have a bad feelings about what would happen if you don't. You can let someone down in the small things—if a moon launch can be counted as small—you can not let someone suffer death alone.
...
She's sitting on her great uncle's tombstone. This entire day has been a perfect blend of respectful ceremony and deliberate anarchy to tradition; it has been so Puckett. You approach her silently, and when she tells you to eat shit and die, you stand up to her. "I just want to talk to you."
"Now is not the time." She snaps.
"Now is the best time," you say in exasperation.
"I don't want to hear it." She says angrily and you swear the muscles in her arms bunch as if she nearly covered her ears like a child. You let off the gas of your attack, come at this in a more gentle tone. "I can imagine everyone's given you the 'I know what you're going through' speech--but they're full of shit. How dare they compare losing a mom at ten or twenty-three, or dad at two? At thirty it's completely different. Am I close?"
She lifts her head. Her eyes are red, but she looks skeptical and angry. "Is that all you came over here to say?" the level of venom in her voice confuses you.
"What else am I supposed to say?" It isn't anger that makes your voice hard, but she seems to take it as such. "I don't need this right now."' She retorts.
"I'm just trying to be here for you." You state.
She snorts. You hold up your hands, refusing to turn this into a fight. "If you don't want me…" you turn and start to walk away, back toward the tent and half buried coffin. The parking lot beyond, beside the church, is half empty. Her twin and the movie star are watching from the perimeter.
She doesn't ask you to stop and to come sit with her for a while. You don't realize you are counting the steps you take away from her until your shiny shoe lands on the white gravel on seventy-seven. You stop next to your friends, who are looking at you like a failure, and you shrug. "She won't talk to me."
You have really began to resent them for pushing this responsibility off on you--why, because the pair of you were in space together for a week, over a year ago? Because, of the four of you, she has seen the least of you? None of it makes sense. You even consider returning to the lab after all. You might as well help science if no one wants your help here.
"Stop it." Your brunette says dangerously. You are taken aback. "What?"
"You do this, Freddie! You never try when it comes to Sam! If you don't now, we may all lose her."
"Don't do that!" You throw back at her angrily. She steps back, "What did I do?"
"Putting this on me! Since when am I her babysitter?"
Melanie taps your shoulder, you turn and receive a solid punch in the eye that is expertly traveled through and sends you stumbling backwards. For the first time since you met this sister, she actually seems like the one she resembles: bruising you with little-to-no effort.
Collapsed against the car, you hold your face as the twin you have rarely spoken to storms away, her husband in her wake. The movie star sighs, shakes her head and visibly gives up.
"Just forget it." Removing her stilettos, she tiptoes into the graveyard to talk to her friend. Suddenly you see what they were trying to do, and you win a Nobel Prize after all—the Greatest Ass in History.
AN: I know the title is iWon't Cry as if it is Sam...But I didn't want to go to the dark place to write it from her POV... naturally this was a challenge to write from Freddie's POV. She wanted him there as more than a friend and he was too stupid to realize it...
