Now I don't really know when I fell asleep or how long I had been asleep but I do know what woke me up. Sam was throwing up again. I got up from the couch and turned off the T.V. Saved by the Bell theme music announcing yet another episode instantly silent and Sam's retching echoing throughout the room. I heard him whimper cranking my worry up a couple of notches. "Sam?" a groan was my response. I pop in the bathroom. "Hey what's going on?" I ask my hand resting on his forehead and I didn't like the heat coming from it. "Sam you need a doctor."

He grimaced and nodded, "I think it's my appendix. At first I thought it was just cramps but it keeps getting worse." And fear grips my heart because a bad appendix was bad news. He groaned again through clenched teeth. "The pain it's all in one spot." He gestures to the lower right of his belly.

"Sam?" I squeak. As I see a tear squeeze out of his tightly closed lids. This was very bad. "Okay… okay…well can you walk?"

Sam let out a pained chuckle, "What are you going to carry me?" I scoffed at how crass he was being about the whole situation. "Seriously, we don't really have a choice. I think I can manage." He holds out a hand for me to help him up and I grasp it, it's clammy. We do okay until he's almost all the way up and then he cries out in pain crumpling forward, his body slamming into mine with the force of a football player, taking me down with him, "Shit Sam!" I yelp as we crashed on the floor. Sam was practically crying now.

"Gah, it hurts." he whimpers. And I now there is no way he's making it by walking under his own steam.

"Shhh," I sooth and I pull my cell out of my back pocket. I frantically search through my contacts till I find Brady's number and punch send. "It's gonna be okay." I murmer as I listen to the phone ring.

"Yo" Brady answers coolly.

"Brady!" I cry in relief, "I need you to come back to your room right now something's wrong with Sam."

Brady must sense the urgency in my voice and doesn't even question me, "Yeah, yeah I'll be right there." And he hangs up all the while Sam has curled in on himself, whimpering.

"Sam? Sam just squeeze my hand" I thrust my own hand in his huge hand, "Just breath through it. Okay you just need to hold on a little longer." Sam gives me a tight nod and closes his eyes, his hands clamped over his belly. Brady came bursting in about five minutes later.

He helped me get Sam to the ER where they did end up taking out his appendix. The Doctor told us after the surgery that he was really close to having a ruptured appendix and if that had been the case the conversation would have been very different.

I was sitting by Sam's bed doing some anatomy homework when he woke up. "Hey." He growls his voice gravelly from sleep.

A smile spreads across my face as I shut my book, "Hi there sleepy head, how are ya feeling?" I ask running my hands through his hair.

He shrugs "Better than I did, but not great."

"The doctor said you were pretty dehydrated. He said we brought you in just in time… Sam you can't let this stuff go like that… you could have died."

"Jess it wasn't that bad-"

"YES IT WAS!" I cut him off harshly, "I knew something was wrong and you just blew me off and … Sam I was so scared" now I start crying which is really embarrassing.

"Jess?"

With tears streaming down my face I shake my head, "I'm sorry."

Sam sits up grimacing as his stiches pull "Jess it's okay, I'm okay I'm not going anywhere." I slid on to Sam's bed and let him rub my back until he fell asleep with me curled against him and it really did feel like everything was going to be alright.

THE END