----------=BigCloset Retro Classic!=----------
Sometimes the scariest journeys are
those very ones that we must take alone.

Samantha
by
Sarah Lynn Morgan

---

 
Admin Note: Originally published on BigCloset TopShelf on Saturday 01-19-2008 at 05:52:49 pm, this retro classic was pulled out of the closet, and re-presented for our newer readers. ~Sephrena
 
 
 

Mostly, he just felt bad. It was not that the pain was as bad as it had been at first, because they gave him something for that. It was not very pleasant, though. It made him feel funny, and a little sick to his stomach, but did keep the pain to a dull ache, as long as he didn’t move too much.

Hot tears that had run down his cheek, quickly turned cold on his neck and pillow. He needed to blow his nose too, but he still hurt too much to make it any worse by moving just to clear his nose.

He wished his mom and dad could be here. The nurses and doctors, had gone out of their way to make him feel better, and were always popping in to say something nice to him; but, even though they were very nice he did not know them. He knew that his mother could not make the pain go away, but still, he needed her.

The worst part of all, however, was that now he couldn’t sleep. He’d tried not to cry because it hurt, just like the doctors and nurses told him it would. He’d also tried to be brave, when they’d tried to explain how badly he was hurt. He’d even tried not to be sad that his mother and father had not been able to get back from their trip to Europe to be with him yet. But, it was so hard to be brave when he felt so scared, and when he was so very alone. Most of all, he admitted to himself, he was just so very tired of trying to be brave.

Now, as if things could ever be worse, they told him that his mother could not possibly be back till tomorrow, because of some security thing about flights from Europe; and just now, when he’d finally gotten comfortable enough to fall asleep, he had the nightmare, that frightened him badly every time.

He had no idea why it made him feel so scared. It was not like there were monsters, or anything. It was just stupid really. All he could remember of the dream was a loud noise like someone dropping an enormous box of junk. Then there was a really bright white flash that made everything go white so that he could no longer see anything. Then finally, the thing that caused him to feel afraid, there was this awful screaming. He couldn’t tell who was screaming like that, but it seemed like it was very high pitched like a girl; but he had no idea who it was supposed to be.

It was scary, and in the dream he felt like he wanted to run from it, but he couldn’t make himself move. That was another part, which along with the screaming woke him up.

It had been the same dream since yesterday, when he’d first been really awake enough to be able to actually fall asleep. Squeezing his eyes tighter, he felt the tears begin to flow freely once more.

If anyone else had been in the room, they might just have heard the quiet little whisper amid the sad little noises that were coming from his throat, but no one was there to hear the child softly pleading: “Please, just come home…”

 
 
 
 
 

“Sam!” his mother called from upstairs.

“Yes, mother!” he called out loudly, as he quickly folded the dress over on itself, and closed the old steamer trunk with a thump.

“What are you doing down there, Sweetie?” her voice asked accompanied by the squeak of the door at the top of the cellar stairs.

“Nothing, Mom. I’m Just looking through some of the old junk,” he told her honestly.

She was now on the stairs. “Well for goodness sake, just be careful that you don’t get hurt in that junk.” She was smiling at him rather sadly. “Don’t make a mess, either.” She looked around at the clutter from the bottom of the stairs, “Although, I’m not sure if anyone would notice if you did.”

He smiled, as he bent down to pick up a shoebox, and place it on the pile to his left. “Is anything wrong, Mother?”

She smiled a little more, in spite of how she was feeling just then, because he was still the only boy she’d ever known who called his mother ‘mother’. “Come upstairs for a minute, Sam. I need to talk to you,” she finished as she turned back toward the first floor.

“Is anything wrong?” he repeated. “Did I do something bad, Mother?” He sounded worried as he began to walk toward the stairs, which caused her to stop and look down at him.

“Good heavens, Sam. No.” She shook her head, and hesitated a moment, “Well, yes, I’m afraid that something is wrong, but it’s nothing you did. Sweetie, I can’t even remember the last time I was actually mad at you. Come on up stairs with mom for a minute.” She turned as she finished.

The trip was a short one; he was soon standing beside her where she’d seated herself at the kitchen table.

“It’s your grandmother,” she said, as she pulled him into her lap. Sam didn’t mind that, even though most of his friends would have been too big for their mothers to do the same. “She is very ill Sam, and your father and I have to go see her.”

Sam was young but he understood that his Grandmother was probably dying. “So, I have to stay here?” he asked simply.

“Unless you want to go, Sam, but your father and I think it best if you stay here with Mrs. Francis to look after you. I have to tell you, that if you do go you’ll probably be spending days and nights in a hospital waiting room, with everyone telling you to sit still and read the nice hundred year old French magazines over and over.” Even now, she could smile a little, as she tried to cheer him and break the bad news all at the same time.

It was not a surprise to Sam. He’d never really liked his grandmother, probably because she didn’t really like him. He understood now, that she didn’t like any child, even her own daughter, who just looked sad when he asked her any questions about it. Finally two years before, Sam and she had come to an accord when he was about eight, and she was on a rare visit. She agreed to ignore him most of the time, and only to say something rude whenever she couldn’t avoid talking to him at all; and, he agreed to ignore her in those times he could not possibly find some excuse to be somewhere outside of her presence.

“I’m sorry about Grandmother Daumier, Mother,” he said simply, meaning every word of it. For her part, his mother just pulled him to her and hugged him tight in another affirmation that she did not share the family aversion to showing affection to those around them. It was also so that he could not see the moisture in her eyes.

“Come on, Sweetie, let’s go pack a bag for you,” she said, letting him down in preparation of standing up.

“Can’t I stay here, with someone?” he asked, already knowing that there was no hope.

“I don’t see how, Sam. Helen has to take care of her own family too, as well as you; but, she’ll be able to run you over here if you need anything, because she’ll need to let you feed Zipper, and my fish.” She didn’t even ask if he could take care of her aquariums, because she knew he was just about as good at that as she was.

“I understand, Mom, but can’t I take Zipper with me?” he asked, stooping down to pet the black cat, with the white paws and muzzle who’d been his constant friend and companion for the last four years. “He’ll be so lonely!”

“No Sam, she said, her voice finally reflecting a little of the worry she must be feeling. “You know that her son Jeffrey is allergic to cats. No, Helen said that it was you alone, or we’d have to put the both of you in the pound until we get back from France.” She put her arm around his shoulders, and began leading him upstairs.

“Mom?”

“What is it, Sam?”

“I was just wondering, how much does it cost for one kid and one cat at the pound? I can share a cage with Zipper, if it will save you some money. I already know where I can get a full time job, and…”

His mother actually chuckled. “I wish you’d stop growing up so fast, Sam.” She gave his shoulders an appreciative squeeze. “I can’t believe that my little man will be ten next month...”

 
 
 
 
 

Great! Now his head hurt more from crying, and he really needed to blow his nose. Propping himself up, he gingerly pulled himself over to the nightstand. The Kleenex tissues were stacked in a pile on the nightstand, and even though they were wet in one corner from the ice bucket standing nearby, they did the job, making his headache ease quite a bit.

After wiping his eyes, he tried to pull himself up a little more, and adjust the hospital gown they had him in. Mrs. Francis, who had come to visit him yesterday, had said that she would bring him some pyjamas when she came this evening, but the nurse had told her that because of his injuries, he’d be much better off in something that did not cover his lower body for now.

The cold shoulder and chest of the gown felt so wet and uncomfortable, that it was worth it to try and get at least a fresh one. Catching the very top corner of the drawer of the nightstand with the tips of his fingers, where he’d seen the nurse take clothes out for him, he thankfully found the gowns in there. There was a stack of pink gowns closest to him, with fewer blue gowns on the other side of those.

Leaning against the safety rails of the bed, he had to stretch as far as he could to reach the gowns, until a sharp pain that shot from his leg up into his groin caused him to rethink, and to rest a little. Pulling himself over a little further, despite the fact that the pain was throbbing again, he pressed his cheek against the cold bars on the side of the bed, and reached blindly for first the gown he finally got his hand on, and just grabbed what he could.

Pushing himself up further turned out to be much more painful than pulling himself down. It caused him to gasp, and to ease himself back onto the bed for some time before he got up the courage to push the button to raise the bed up a little higher, which fortunately, turned out to be a lot less painful.

Having caught his breath, and the pain having subsided somewhat, he looked down to find that he had not one but two hospital gowns in his hand, one each of the pink and blue.

Sam looked at them sitting in his lap for a while. He knew it would hurt, and that he should call the nurse, but he just preferred to do it himself. After all, that’s what being brave was all about.

Looking down at the gowns, he wished that he were at home. He closed his eyes, and waited for the pain to fade away enough for him to lean forward and reach gingerly behind himself...

 
 
 
 
 

“Sam!” his mother called him from near the front door. “I told Helen that we would be there in fifteen minutes. I have to pick up your father at the airport, so we need to hurry.”

“O.K. Mother!” he called down. “I’ll be down there in just a few minutes.” He looked down at the panties and the skirt in his hand. He had kept them in his room for some time, and did not want to be without them, but he was not sure that he should try to slip them in his bag.

He knew his mother knew about them. She had asked him one time if he had been in her drawers, which of course he had. He had not been able to lie to her, but somehow the words just would not come. Therefore, like an idiot, he just stood there and stared at her in fear, and waiting for her to explode. Of course, she had not yelled at him at all. She never did.

She was upset with him for being in her things, but she had told him that it was normal for boys to be curious about things on the ‘other side.’ She told him that when he got a just a little older, he would realize ‘which side’ he was going to be on. His mother had said that since he was an only child, she knew he had no one close whom he could ask ‘the really hard questions.’ She told him that no matter what, he could come and talk to either her or his dad, and he needed to remember that. He remembered that he had only nodded his head, and that it surprised him that when his mother had wiped his cheek, there had been tears there.

It had been a full year after that, when he’d gone into his drawer and found the skirt and blouse he’d been keeping there, washed and neatly folded in the bottom of his drawer. There wasn’t really a note. Just a little paper with a heart drawn around the words ‘Love you, Mom.’

Sam sighed, and put the things back in the drawer, where he now kept a selection of things from the basement. He always knew when his mother found something not really inside her comfort level, because it would usually disappear when his mother did the laundry. In return, he’d also from time to time found small stacks of girl’s underwear and socks in the drawer.

No way could he take anything nice with him. It would be so much better if he could, but knowing that he’d be staying at his mother’s friend’s house for some time, he was old enough to realize that it would certainly lead to problems.

“Coming now, Mom,” he called as he closed first his drawer, and then picked up the small case and Zipper off of his bed. His neighbor, Cathy, a high school girl, had agreed to look after Zipper for him. She was very nice, and he knew that he would be well cared for, and even loved. Zipper seemed to know it too, because he was purring as Sam carried him down the stairs. “Don’t worry, Zipper-head. I’ll be over almost every day to play with you…” As always, Zippers eyes answered only with love and acceptance…

 
 
 
 
 

Sam wasn’t able to get the tie at his back. Fortunately, he found that it was much easier to slip the knot at his neck, and then the whole gown off over his head. It hurt a lot less that way. Unfortunately, it had also knocked the blue gown off of the bed. At least he had the cold, wet gown off of his body, but it was like an icebox in the hospital room. Looking down at the pink gown, he was glad, because that was the color he had preferred anyway. Carefully, he slipped it on, and tying it at the neck, the tucked it gingerly around his body and the bandages at his hip and leg.

Closing his eyes, finally, he felt completely exhausted. He felt like he had been running through the surf at the beach. You can do it; you just can’t do it for very long.

“Hello.” A voice from the door startled him a little. He’d been just about to fall asleep, in spite of the fact that he had not had any medicine for some hours. Looking up, he could see a little girl standing at the door. She was obviously another patient, as she was in a small white dressing gown, with pink butterflies all over it, carrying a doll that had seen better days by its leg.

“Are you very sick?” the little girl asked.

“I’m not sick at all. I sort of had an accident; I got creamed by a car.”

The little girl’s eyes got very wide, and he could see her body give a little shake at the news. She had finally met a kid who had suffered the often-touted fate of a child who got hit by a car. It was a shock. Looking Sam over once more, she intoned, “Momma said that’s what can happen, if you don’t stay out of the road.” The child said it matter-of-factly, as if fitting the new data into her limited worldview.

“She was right,” Sam tried to smile at her, realizing that she was at most five or six. “Unfortunately, I found out that they can get you when you aren’t in the road too. I was in our friend’s front yard.”

“That’s terrible. Did you get hurt bad?” she asked again.

He wanted to tell her that he’d been very close to never waking up, but he was sure that would frighten her. “NO, I’ll be okay. Just got my leg a little messed up is all.”

“Good.” The little girl pronounced, as she purposely strode into the room. “The nurses told me that I can’t bother anyone who is very sick. They said that I would not be able to go to the playroom, if I did.”

Sam smiled a little at her. He would have laughed, but he was feeling so very tired at the time.

“I heard you crying.” the little girl said to him from just the other side of the bars. “Does it hurt very much to get hit by the car?” she asked, full of concern, now that she could see he had a little blood on the bandages at his hip.

“Yes,” he said with a sigh, “but that’s not why I was crying. I had a terrible nightmare, and I miss my mom and dad.”

Looking around, she realized that there were none of the cards and toys and flowers that filled her own room. Suddenly, her eyes grew very large. “Were your mommy and daddy in the car?”

“What? Oh, No! They are okay. It was some lady in the car, and she didn’t even get hurt. No, my parents are on a trip to Europe. My Grandmother’s sick too.”

The little girl was very relieved to hear that, and was smiling at him once more. “I’m glad, but I’m sorry that your mom and dad are not here. When will they come to see you?”

“Tomorrow.”

“What’s ‘your rope?’”

Sam smiled a little more. “Big place, very far away. You have to go by plane.”

“What’s your name?” she asked him finally.

“My name is Sam," he told her, only to be startled by a little squeal and giggle from her, which caused him to lift his head to see her better.

“That’s my name, too!” She giggled. “Samantha Michaels!”

“That’s a very pretty name. Watch out for the bed,” he said pushing the button to lift his body back up a little more; not that he could find a comfortable position, but at least talking would be easier.

Samantha giggled merrily, as she told him, “You have a very pretty name too, Sam.”

Sam smiled and reached out his hand to her, but just then a loud adult voice called out from the hall “Samantha? OH God, tell me she didn’t get to the elevator, again! Sam, where are you, Honey?”

“I got’a go.” The little girl giggled again, and made a mad dash for the door. Halfway there, however, she suddenly turned and ran back to place the doll she’d been carrying on the bed. “Missy can stay with you until your mom and dad can bring your doll.” With that she ducked back out the door.

Sam looked down at the doll, and reached down to set it upright in the bed beside him. It was very pretty, and obviously fairly expensive. Clearly, someone loved the little girl very much, and he could see why.

Just then, a black woman walked quickly into the room, and placed a tray of food on his table. She had that same bored unhappy look that a lot of the folks working in the halls seemed to carry, he noticed. Looking around, she got his water jug, and added a little water to it for him before she even spoke.

Sam was trying to sit up a little, and was making one more attempt to pull the flap of the gown around behind him, but it was just no use.

“Do you need me to call the nurse for you?” the lady asked him, as she filled a glass on his tray, and set the picture back on his nightstand.

“No Ma’am. I was just trying to adjust this tie in the back, is all.” He leaned back.

Not only was she not supposed to help with patients beyond a certain point, but also she had another thirty meals to get out in the next ten minutes. It was always hardest with children. “Lean forward, Sweetheart.” She said, causing Sam to grunt softly in pain as she quickly tied the middle tie, leaving the lower one undone around the bandages that swaddled his lower back, before easing him back onto the bed.

“Is that better?” she asked him.

“Yes, Ma’am. Thank you so very much.

“Have you been crying?” the woman asked, taking a wet cloth, and wiping his eyes gently.

“A little.” He said truthfully.

“I’ll call the nurse for you,” she said, shaking her head. “Can I get you anything else?” she asked, but hardly waited for him to shake his head, before she left the room with that same high-speed walk that food service people in hospitals always seem to use.

“Thank you,” he called, but she may or may not have lifted a hand in reply as she sped past his door frame.

The food smelled good, and he tried to eat a little, but somehow, what smelled good on the plate, tasted odd and upset his stomach when he tried to eat it. He sipped the water, grateful for that at least. He’d been pretty thirsty since he woken up.

Mae, the Food Services worker on this floor for today, was only filling in for one of her sick co-workers on her day off. 'Just serve lunch,' she mimicked her boss's words in her head, and she could get back to her own family.

“Hey, Mae.” One of the nurses at the desk said to her, as she walked over to the desk from her cart.

“Is the girl in Three-oh-four, all alone?” Mae asked the younger woman.

The nurse frowned a little, and began to look toward the charts, she was just coming in from the start of shift meeting, and she was not sure. “I think that’s the kid whose parents are in Europe. I’ll check.”

Mae shook her head again. “She said that she was not in pain, but she is, so I filled her water, and retied her gown.”

“Thank you, Mae I’ll check on her as soon as I can.” Wendy was a good nurse, but right now they were looking for Samantha Michaels, and she was covering the whole ward for a few minutes.

 
 
 
 
 

“Helen! We are here!” his mother called out, as the door was opened by one of the twin girls who were just about to start school.

“There you are,” Helen said, coming in from the kitchen, lifting an apron from around her neck. “I’m so sorry, Sue, I would have come and gotten him myself, but Jeffery had the good sense to volunteer for me to make twelve dozen cookies for his school tonight, and he didn’t tell me till this morning. You wouldn’t like to trade and take him with you, would you?”

Sam’s mother shook her head, but said nothing, as any answer she might give would be impolitic; so, she just set the heavier of Sam’s two cases on the floor.

“Jeffery! Come in and help Sam with his bags!” Then leaning down to Sam, said, “I’m sorry about your Grams, Sam.”

“Thank you, Ma’am” he managed, as Jeffery called out loudly, from in front of the TV where he was playing a game, and his other sister was crying behind him to watch something coming on.

“Mom, can’t the twerp do that for himself?” Jeffery asked. “I’m at the good spot where I can get to the next level!”

Helen looked like she wanted to hold the apron over her head. “Jeff, you turn that damned thing off in ten seconds, or it will be in the trash in fifteen.”

Sam could not see into the living room very clearly, having picked up both of his bags, but he could hear a loud mumbling rant of complaint, and several bangs as Jeffery finally conceded the TV to his little sister.

Clearly, this was the problem here. Jeffery was actually a year younger than Sam, but he was quite a bit bigger as well. He was also what people on TV might call a little bastard. In all the time that Sam had known of him, he had never missed an opportunity to say something mean or stupid, when something nice would have done just as well. For the world, Sam could not imagine why his parents had not just left him on the side of some road a long way from home.

“Hey, Squirt,” Jeffery said, as he snatched the small bag from Sam’s hand and raced up the stairs to throw it through the door of his room.

“Jeffery Daniels!” His mother yelled aghast, as he raced back across the landing and into the bathroom to slam the door closed.

“Is this going to be okay?” Sam’s mother asked quietly.

“OH, don’t worry,” Helen said. “When I catch him, I’ll make him regret it. Seriously, Sue, he’s just having a psychotic break from all of the sweet cookie dough he’s been sneaking. I’ll tie him to a chair for about an hour or two, and that should take care of it.” Helen didn’t notice that her smile did nothing to assuage the worried look on her friend’s face.

“Don’t do that,” His mother finally, said, with a glance back up the stairs. “It’s much better to use a tree outside to block out some of the screaming.”

Despite having been friends for years, Helen neither caught on to the odd tone in his mother’s voice, nor realized the phrase that was so out of character for her. Helen just laughed as she turned to take the bag from Sam, and headed up the stairs. Sam could only stare at his mother.

“We made up a bed for you in Jeffery’s room, Sam. Don’t worry about a thing. We are going to have a lot of fun. Come on up, when you’ve said goodbye.”

His mother’s face was anything but happy. “Will you be okay, Sam?”

“I’ll be just fine, Mother. Don’t worry.” He wished he were as confident as he sounded. “Jeffery spends all of his time playing video games, and trying to peek up the neighbor girl’s skirt.”

“OH, God,” she said, as she hugged him to her breast. “Do you want to come with us?” she asked with rather more bluntness than he expected, now that they were alone.

He had to admit that it did sound better to him right now, but he knew that his parents would be very busy. “NO, Mom. I’ll be fine. This place Is great. I can play games, and Helen is very nice. I’ll be fine… Really.”

 
 
 
 
 

He pushed the bed table away from him as he awakened from the nightmare yet again. It was only his weakened state that prevented him from spilling the drinks all over himself. As it was, he had gotten his new dryer gown wet again. With a chill, he pulled the thin sheet up to his neck, to fight off the cold.

When he closed his eyes, he could still hear the screams. They made his insides shudder, even as very faint echoes.

“Are you, okay?” a pretty blond nurse asked as she came in from the doorway. “Mae said that she thought you might need me. Are you in pain?”

“A little.” he said quietly, too tired, and frightened to remember to be brave.

Looking at the flush on his cheeks, she looked concerned, and walked the rest of the way around the bed, to check his I.V., and to check his head with the back of her hand. “Are you feeling feverish?” She could not suppress a small frown that centered around her eyes.

“I don’t think so,” He answered a little weakly, as he tired to tuck the sheet around himself a little more because his gown felt damp.

Popping on a plastic cap, she stuck the thermometer in his ear, and took his temperature. It was a little elevated, but considering what the poor kid had been through ... Noting the temp on his chart, and the readings on the I.I. unit, she turned back to him before pulling up his sheet, to check his bandages.

“Do you have to go?” she Asked him as she gently checked the bandages that went from his knee, up to his hips, and around his groin. She also checked the tube that came from under the bandages near his groin, to make sure that it was clear.

“Do you feel like you have to pee at all?” She frowned again.

“No,” he said, realizing that was strange.

“Well don’t worry about that, it’s a good thing. We have a catheter in, so if you feel the need, you can just go. You won’t wet yourself.” She finished off by pulling the old blue gown away from his side where he’d left it, and then just as gingerly lifted the sheet a little more to check the bruises on his side, which was when she saw the fresh gown.

“Did Mae change you?” knowing that there was no way Mae would do such a thing. Even on the children’s ward, it would mean big trouble for Mae to help a patient that way, and Mae had been here a long while.

“No, Ma’am. I did that myself. I was wet, and cold.” Sam grunted as the woman gently probed his side.

“Well, you Listen to me, Buster. Don’t do that again. You could have ripped open your stitches, or hurt yourself inside.” She continued to look at him, clearly annoyed and worried, until he nodded his ascent. “Well you remember it. I’m not kidding, Sam. We already have one troublemaker on this ward named Sam, and I don’t need another one.”

He somehow got the strength to nod again, as she eased him back down on his back.

“Would you like me to help you change into another gown?” she asked.

For a moment, he was afraid that she might make him, whether he said yes or no, but he shook his head anyway.

“Are you sure? I can give you a blue one, if you like.” She asked, again.

“No, Ma’am. This one is still dry enough, if you don’t mind.”

She looked at him for a long moment then, clearly still worried about something. “Are you very cold?”

Sam almost sighed out loud at finally getting a question he could answer without fear of being in trouble. “Yes I am,” he said with a little shiver.

“Then, why are you sweating, Sweetie?” she asked.

Sam felt ashamed for some reason. He was ashamed that he was having nightmares, as if he was still a little kid, and not almost ten. However, he felt it was better to tell her, than to have them give him a whole bunch of tests, only to find out a week from now that someone had tried to run over him with a car.

He couldn’t raise his eyes, but he did manage to say “I keep having nightmares.” He hesitated a moment or two ... “Well, one nightmare. Every time I fall asleep, it’s the same one. I can’t sleep.”

“Tell me about it, Sam.” she asked, noting that he was looking down, and absently stroking the front of the pink gown he had now exposed.

“It’s silly, really,” he said, “First there is this loud noise, like a box of junk being thrown out of a window or something. Then everything goes white, sort of like a camera flash. The next thing I know, it sounds like a girl is screaming; screaming real loud and hys…”

“Hysterical?” Jane asked him

“Yeah,” he said, the tears were already flowing, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Then I try to run, but I can’t get away. I don’t even know who’s screaming, but ...” He gulped, obviously getting very upset, even though Jane was now holding his hand, and rubbing his arm trying to calm him. “It really scares me, I don’t know ...” He paused as she wiped the tears from his eyes. “I don’t know why.”

For several moments, Jane said nothing, mostly because she was fighting the urge to cry herself. The poor kid. This was the hard part of the children’s ward, and why she was looking to transfer out. Every once in a while, you got some really nice kid, and no matter how hard the staff tried, it just did not come out well. First the little girl last week, Jessica, had succumbed after a long hard battle with pneumonia. Now it was this kid, who had been so horribly injured, just because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. When she saw the head nurse about it, she had told her that she would give her two more weeks, and then she was out of this ward for at least six months, or she was out the door.

Taking a breath herself, she began to stroke his hair, being careful not to press on the large swelling on the left side. “That’s perfectly normal, Sam. They should have warned you about this. You know the medicine that we are giving you for pain?”

He nodded his head slightly, but did not speak.

“Well, it is very common that after you’ve been on pain medicine for a couple of days to get depressed, and to even have funny dreams. Add in the little fever, and the fact that you decided to try and wrestle a car, I’d be very surprised If you didn’t have a silly dream or two.”

She could see the relief beginning to spread on his face. Leaning over, she put her hand on his uninjured shoulder, and said, “So, just don’t let it worry you. There is nothing wrong. The dreams will go away in a few days, or maybe a week. As long as you know they are normal, and what is causing them, right? I don’t want you to let them frighten you any more. O.K?” She did her very best to smile, but it was hard.

Sam nodded, the relief in him clearly readable in this expression. “The medicine?”

“The medicine!” she answered, still just watching him.

“Would you like another blanket?” she asked him finally, managing something of an automated smile.

“Yes, Ma’am. Thank you very much. I’m freezing.”

Blood loss, traumatic injury, She’d bet he was. “Well I’ll bring you back a warm blanket. It’s just hospital humor, you know. We turn the A.C. Down to freezing, and give all the patients the thinnest sheets we can buy. I can’t figure it out myself, unless they are trying to keep everyone fresh, so don’t let it throw you.” She wanted to add that it was likely that many of her coworkers liked it that way because they used to work in morgues, but edited herself, for an injured child’s sake.

Patting the bottom of his foot very gently, she told him, “Please try and eat a little bit. You haven’t had any solid food for days, and this shouldn’t be too hard for you to take. Do you want me to feed you?”

Sam was horrified at the thought of the pretty nurse feeding him. “That’s okay. I’ll try, but It really doesn’t taste very good to me. It makes me feel a little sick.”

“Ah, I see you are getting the full treatment here,” Jane said, now with more genuine smile. “You see, many people happen to think that the food in hospitals is terrible.” She shook her head emphatically. “Not so! I eat lunch here every day, and I can tell you that the food is mostly excellent. It’s better than I can make, I can tell you.” She dropped her voice to a conspiratorial level, “NO! You see, we give you guys something in your medicine to make you feel terrible if you try to eat anything. It keeps the patients from complaining for things like blankets, and snacks, and pizza and stuff.”

Sam actually smiled back, which was Jane’s cue that he’d be okay for now.

She was only gone for a matter of a moment or two, when she came back in to spread two warm blankets gently over him, and pushing the tray back up so that he could easily reach. “Are you sure you don’t need my help?” she asked, only to have him reach for the orange Jell-O, which, of course, turned out to be some odd peach/tangerine combination, which would have made him sick if he’d been perfectly fine. It seemed to go down okay, though, and at least remind him that he had been hungry; so, he reached for the soup that had smelled so good, pleasantly to find that the cover had kept warm.

Jane gave him an approving smile. “OK, Samantha. Now you be a good girl, and eat as much as you can, and I’ll be back to take away the carcass in just a little while…”

Sam almost smiled again, as he tried very hard to eat a little for the nice nurse, who he found he liked very much.

Outside the door, the nurse was shaking her head. ‘Now why in the hell did I say that?’ Jane said inside her head as she walked back to the nurse’s station. Once there, she punched up a list on the computer and quickly found the number that she was looking for, and punched the in-house button, and then the five digits that would get her through.

“Mental health.” The admin said, sounding more like a patient suffering from severe depression than a staff-member.

“This is Jane Keating on the third floor. Is Doctor Shelley there?”

 
 
 
 
 

It was just better not to be in the house. Sam had asked if Helen could let him bring his bike back with him, and she had said he could. Therefore, when they were finished with Zipper and the fish, Sam got one of his games that he promised Jeffery, and Helen helped him to load the bike.

He was not allowed to ride far away, but anywhere out of the house was better. Jeffery, if he hadn’t already destroyed the game, was inside playing it. Helen fully realized that separation was the best option left to him. Sam just spent his time outside, keeping out of the way. Things weren’t going well in France it seemed. His father had told him that they would probably be back soon. All he could say to that was that he was fine, and to tell Mother that he was very sorry. He had at least another half hour, before he had to go in for dinner. He decided to ride around the block one more time.

 
 
 
 
 

The afternoon sun was shining in the windows now. He was still feeling too badly to watch TV or anything, but at least he was warm.

“Hi there!” A lady in a pink smock said softly but cheerily from the door. “I’m Tilley,” the woman introduced herself, more to see if the patient in 304 was up to company, than anything else. This poor little one did not look well, but she was awake enough to say Hi back.

Tilley smiled, and walked into the room pushing a little cart. “So, what are you in for?” she said, smiling warmly.

Sam couldn’t tell who she was, but noticed that she was about the same age as the kitchen worker, whatever that was.

Sam tried to talk, but at first his throat was dry, so Tilley handed him a little plastic cup of iced water, from which he took a sip. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I got hit by a car.”

“Oh, lord.” she said softly under her breath. She’d heard a little about this one. Then more loudly, she said “So tell me. Your neighbor had a dog, who liked to chase cars, and it looked like so much fun you thought you give it a try?” Her eyebrows had begun a slow climb at the first words, and did not reach the top until well after she had finished talking.

Sam smiled a little. She was very nice.

“Well, Like I said, I’m Tilley, and I’m the cosmologist here two days a week. One day a week I volunteer as a cosmetologist, and I like to come down to the munchkin ward to see if any of you little people need a Bongo, or a Mohawk, or a shaved head or something. I have you on my list today,” she said, looking down at a paper that he was sure was his dinner menu. “Ah, here it is. Room 3-0-4. Tattoo on the Butt!”

Sam laughed. It hurt so much that it made him cry a little, but he did laugh.

Just then, Samantha from next door came dashing into the room, followed by a woman he assumed was her mother. “Sam! Guess What?” She dashed past Tilley, only to be stopped by the bed rail. “I get to go home!”

“That’s great, Samantha.” Sam told her, truly glad that someone had gotten out.

“Yeah! My mother said that they had to take me home today, or send me to the France ... for ... leggings?”

It took Sam several moments to make the connection. “The French Foreign Legion?” he asked.

“That’s it!” She giggled. “Perhaps I can tell your parents that they should come and take you home too.” She suddenly looked so sad and worried for her friend.

Sam smiled again. “Thank you Samantha. If you could, I’d appreciate that, but I hope they don’t have to send you to France.” He reached out his right hand, to touch hers where it rested on the bars.

“Oh, Mom said she’d miss me!” Samantha rolled her eyes. “Well, I have to ask for my doll back now; if you're through with it,” she finished, only to be interrupted by her mother.

“Samantha tells me that your parent’s are out of the country?” the woman asked, looking about the room, and then back at Sam with some sympathy for his confirmation.

“Yes, Ma’am.” he said, feeling very tired. “They are in France, with my grandmother. She’s very ill.”

Sam could see the mother’s eyes flash a little. “They are coming back, right?”

“Yes Ma’am.” Sam said closing his eyes, and trying to sit up a little straighter. “They were held up on the plane, because of some security thing. I’m not really sure why, but they should be here tomorrow morning.”

“OH ...” The woman said, her anger vanishing. Everyone had heard that flights been held up because of some terrorist threat. That explained it. The speculation she’d heard, was that the parents had stayed at the side of some old biddy, because she was a millionaire, and had left their own little girl critically ill to be where the money was… Typical gossip, thank God.

“Samantha,” the woman said to her daughter. If you’d like, you can leave that doll with your friend. We can get you another one tomorrow. Isn’t that what you wanted anyway?”

Sam felt like crying, as the little girl grinned at him, and pushed the doll back through the bars to set it up by his side. “Samantha, you don’t have to leave your doll,” he said, trying to push it back through the bars, only to have her place it a little further down the bed out of his reach.

“No, Sam, I want you to have it. She can keep you company till your Mummy gets here. You can even call her Samantha now, just like me.”

Her mother spoke up from the door. “We have to go now, Samantha.”

Samantha’s face grew serious. “I hope you feel better soon. I’m glad that you aren’t very sick, like my other friend, Jessica.” The little girl said, causing Tilley to make a sudden noise in her throat and turn to move her cart out of the girl’s way. “Goodbye, Samantha!” the little girl said to him with a big mischievous grin.

“Good Bye, Sam,” he said, as she dashed past her mother into the hall.

“She is very, sweet,” Sam said to her mother. “Please take her doll with you.”

“You are very sweet too, Samantha,” her mother told him.

“Sam.” He corrected her.

“You keep the doll, Sam. I hope you feel better soon. I’m sure the parents of such a sweet girl are the kind of people who will find a way to get here as fast as they possibly can.”

“Thank you, Ma’am.” Sam did not try to correct her, because he felt so vulnerable to any kindness just then.

“It was nice to meet you, Sam.” She said simply, and turned out the door to corral her own little problem.

Tilley was still there when they left. On an impulse, the woman gently ran her fingers through his hair. “How long have you been here, Sweetheart?”

He realized that he did not know. He remembered a few things before yesterday, but he really had no idea. “I’m sorry, Tilley. I don’t really know.”

“Would you like me to wash your hair for you?” She smiled, as she gently ran her hand through it. “You have such pretty hair, but they haven’t washed it yet. I have some really good stuff that works much better than the stuff the hospital uses.”

The truth was, his head was itching, and he would love to feel it cleaned.

“Perhaps I can trim it, too, if the tomboy in you won’t object.”

“I’m not sure if I should ...” Sam began, worried about it.

“Don’t worry, Samantha. I volunteer in this ward. NO one will get a big bill from the beauty salon. Here, you lay back, and I’ll just put this basin under your head, and we can get your hair nice and clean. There you go ...”

In the end she did ‘trim’ his hair ‘a little’. At one point, as she was drying it, another nurse popped her head into the room. “Is everything okay in here?” she’d asked, but like her face, there was no humor in her voice. Sam had just nodded, and she’d gone away.

When his hair was dry, the warmth of the dryer feeling very nice, except for where he had a bump on his left side, Tilley finally pronounced him finished. “There you are. That looks very much nicer, if I do say so myself.” Would you like to look?” she asked him cheerily.

He was not quite sure why she was making quite the fuss, but he had to admit he felt much better now, so he nodded that he would like to see. Quickly, Tilley moved the stuff off of the bed table, and then lifted the top to reveal a large mirror underneath the lid.

“Well what do you think?” Tilley asked, grinning happily at him. “That not only has to feel better, but I think that it came out very cute.”

She waited for him to respond for several seconds longer than normal. “Not as cute as a tattoo on your butt,” She whispered to him, “but I think it’s just lovely.”

Sam could only stare. The woman had cut his hair like a girl. It was much fuller than it had been, by virtue of her work with sprays and a hairdryer, but she had also trimmed it into a girl’s style. He knew a girl in his school who wore hers the very same way. Everyone thought she was very pretty, including Sam. All he could do was gawk.

Then, when Tilley moved out of the light, he saw something else. The whole side of his face was bruised, from the back of his jaw, to his ear. No wonder his head hurt. Involuntarily, his hand reached up toward the bruise.

Tilley had been unsure if the child had seen her face yet, but her reaction to the mirror removed all doubt. “Oh, don’t you worry about that, Sweetheart. I’ve seen some pretty big bruises on this ward, and I promise you that all of them fade away sooner than you’d think.” Not sure if she should continue to tease the child, it was not always easy to tell, but usually it worked better than anything else she did. “They’re not like the tattoos I put on people's butts. Those are permanent.”

The child didn’t really respond, which worried her. “Would you like me to help you with that bruise, Samantha?” she asked, as she carefully turned his head by his jaw, as her other hand tactfully closed the mirror.

Tilley could see that there were tears in the girl’s eyes, as she reached for a tissue to dab them for her. She’d known that the girl had been crying earlier just by looking at her, and now it seemed the poor little thing was about to cry again. “Let Tilley show you a little trick.”

She turned to dig out a small pack of foundation from a bag of such items that were donated to her by a large store in a nearby mall. Mostly, the bag contained samples that would have been thrown out in a week anyway. Once found, on impulse, she pulled out several other items as well. “Now you be a good girl, and hold very still for Tilley, I’d hate to see you with an eye patch too,” she told him, as she first smeared in a little spot on the inside of her wrist to check the color, and then began to brush it very gently on the girl's face…

All the while, Tilley kept up some small talk about his school, and his friends; some of which Sam frankly did not understand. She’d do something to his face, which he liked the feeling of, and then she’d say something such as, “Perhaps a little color around the eyes, and a little mascara.”

In the end she only took a few minutes, and although his face felt a little odd, he sort of liked it. He definitely liked the smells of the items she used. Of course he knew that she was putting makeup on him, having tried to do the same himself, and that he should really stop her, but he simply couldn’t. In fact, it felt very nice, just as he’d felt much better when he put on the pink gown.

He’d been very pleased by the warm thrill that ran through him when she showed him what she’d done with his hair. Now, her attentions to his face, and the anticipation of what she might be doing, made him forget even his pain.

“There you are,” Tilley said, once more ready for an unveiling. “Now I’ll show you how adorable you are, but you have to promise that you won’t make that face again, okay?”

Sam nodded, and turned to stare at the top of the bed-table as if the mirror were already up.

With a little flourish, Tilley said “Ta-dah!” and lifted the top of the table. Sam even forgot to breathe; but that in no way prevented the slow smile from creeping across his face. Slowly he turned his head from side to side, in wonder at what the mirror showed him. As an afterthought, he turned his head further, and could tell that the bruise was still there, but only barely, as Tilley had done such a nice Job.

“Well, Isn’t she beautiful?” Tilley asked looking in the mirror beside him.

“Yes,” he said, even as his face broke out into a large but very tired grin.

“There you go,” Tilley said, genuinely pleased that she had finally been able to cheer the poor little thing up. It was smiles like the one she saw in the mirror that kept her coming in on days like today, when she was really far too tired. “And it’s about time, too. I’ve just about used up all of my tricks, except for that tattoo thing.” That caused Sam to grin up at her even more, as he quickly turned back to stare in fascination at the girl he’d so longed to see.

“Well! I must be going. I promised my husband that I’d be home early. Do you like it, Samantha?” she asked while packing the sample cosmetic items she’d use into a small pink bag which she placed in the bed table, knowing all the while that the girl surely did.

“Yes, I like it so much, Tilley. Thank you. It’s nicest thing that anyone has ever done for me. It’s so much better than when I tried myself,” he said, completely awestruck.

“Well I don’t believe that, but don’t worry about saying thank you. Your beautiful smile already thanked me more than enough.” She held out her hand, which Sam took out of reflex. “I hope I’m wrong, but I guess you will be here when I come back in a few days. Would you mind if I came to see you again? Just to say hello, perhaps when you’re feeling better?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Sam said, finally tearing his eyes away from the mirror. “I’d like that very, very much.”

Tilley felt touched by the little one’s sincerity and politeness, as she finally pushed the button that would slowly lower the girl down to a more restful position. Tilley Could see how tired she was, although the whole process had only taken about twenty-five minutes.

“I’ll enjoy it even more,” Tilley said quietly, as the girl sighed, and closed her eyes.

Out in the corridor, Tilley paused to say a silent prayer that the poor little thing would be all right. Tilley could tell that she was running a fever, and that she was in a bad way. Just seeing the way that the poor thing had tried to perk up, to be nice to the other little girl… It truly amazed her, the courage and resilience of children.

At the Nurse's station, Tilley was forbidden to make notations in a patients chart, or even to look inside. She was not staff, and the patient’s privacy had to come first; so, following along with a little system they had worked out, Tilley simply took out a little red heart shaped sticker, and pressed it on the chart for ‘Sam’ in 304. Around the heart she drew another with her pen, and simply noted the date, the time, “W. H.” and “Love, Tilley.”

“HI, Tilley!” Jane said, as she hurried back into the station, from her hour lunch, and another hour of training. “How is it going? Still saving the world one hairdo at a time?”

Tilley laughed. “You know, Jane. I think that today, just maybe I did!”

Jane smiled, but thought no more of it, as she went in search of her relief to let her know she could go, and then to check on her patients. She especially wanted to check in on the boy in 304.

 
 
 
 
 

“I’m so sorry, Sam.” Helen told the boy, as he lay on Jeffery’s bed, one arm over his eyes.

“It’s okay.”

“Jeffery will sleep on the couch, and you can have the room from now on.”

“Please don’t do that, Helen. It’s just going to make him madder, and want to do more mean things.” Sam moved his arm to look at her. “I don’t want to make too much of a big thing out of this. I’ll just be more careful from now on.”

'Meaner? Be more careful?' Helen wanted to scream. Helen knew that Sam was scared of Jeffery, but how could he possibly think her son meaner. The ‘fight’ had begun over a video game. It was some silly thing where two people fight on the screen. It all started when Sam chose to be a female character, which set Jeffery to teasing, according to the girls. Then, when Sam beat him three games in a row, Jeffery had gotten up, and stormed away.

Sam, true to his nature, had offered to choose another character, but her son, true to his petulant nature, had simply stormed out. It would have been bad enough if her son had left it at that, but a few moments later Jeffery had walked up behind Sam and hit him in the head with a book.

Thank the gods that the girls had screamed, causing Sam to flinch out of the way, or almost out of the way.

Helen was upset, but she also found it very easy to be honest with the likable child. “Sam, I’m sorry, but obviously I’m going to have to deal with Jeffery, no matter what. What he did wasn’t just wrong.” She sounded so sad. “It was mean, and it was dangerous. Do you understand?”

Sam nodded that he surely did.

“Well, from now on, I want you to stay away from Jeffery as best you can, and I want you to be close to me as much as you can.”

Sam could understand that. When Helen had made Jeffery apologize, no sooner had he thought her attention was turned when he’d mouthed the words ‘You’re dead, you little queer.’

Helen had seen him.

“With any luck, it will only be for a few more days. As for tomorrow, Rob will be taking Jeffery to see the doctor. If you would like, you can run out to the mall with the girls and me. I know it’s probably not your idea of fun, watching girls shop, but I’d love to have you.”

“That sounds nice, Helen.”

“Well, you try and get some sleep. Do you need another aspirin?”

Sam shook his head, instantly wishing he hadn’t.

Helen was worried, but the blow seemed to have missed its mark. On impulse, she leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. She felt a little guilt for wishing Jeffery could be like Sam, but it was just impossible not to like the quiet and intelligent child. Unlike her own son, any time she left him alone she knew that she was certain to find him somewhere reading, or quietly entertaining the girls in some way. When he was around her, he’d always offer to help her with whatever she was working on.

Helen thought that Sue might be having a run of rum luck just now, but she sure had good fortune where it really counted. She patted the boy, and quietly left the room.

 
 
 
 
 

Dr. Shelly checked the room number and the chart for the third time, before she once more walked over beside the sleeping child in the bed. Gingerly, she checked the name of the bracelet, along with some of the other basic information noted on the chart, and on the logs that were kept right in the room. There was no doubt that this was Sam.

Not surprisingly, he was sleeping lightly after all he had been through. That was about the only thing that did not surprise her. She knew that there would be very serious issues down the road, which was why she had already been consulted on the case. It fact, it might well come to this down the road, if the patient expressed very strong indications that it might be a viable protocol, but that was very rare in a case of injury like this one. Most of the time, there were reconstructive techniques, and a maintenance regiment of male hormones that would allow the patient to lead an almost normal life.

The thought gave her a small abdominal twinge as the other side of her brain asked, ‘Who are you kidding?’

There were indications, however, and then there were indications. The diagnosis phase, in this case seemed to have gone right out the window. She could only assume here, that someone had badly jumped the gun, and very badly indeed - as in Lawsuit badly.

As she looked, at the pink gown, the hair, and light touches of makeup about the face; she was sure that she was watching a little girl sleeping. She was a pretty little girl at that. Like most children, she looked like an angel as she slept. Unless, of course, she happened to move a little in her sleep; which obviously caused her to groan and frown from the pain that any movement caused her.

Dr. Shelly hated to wake the child, but given what her friend Jane had told her on the phone, it was probably lucky that she would be able to waken the child and question him about the dreams while they were still fresh in his mind. In the meantime, Ariel took advantage of a quiet minute to read quickly over everything new in the file. Today, it included some additional information from testing he’d had at what was obviously a private school. The intelligence test caused her brows to rise more than slightly.

“There it is.” Jane said softly from behind Ariel, as the ward nurse quickly walked in to greet, Doctor Shelley. They had been friends since they were Sam’s age. “I was wondering who had run off with Sam’s chart. I have to give him his pain med; he’s already fifteen minutes overdue because I’ve been alone ...” Jane stopped and just stared at the child, her jaw dropping slowly lower, and lower. “Oh my word,” she finally said to no one in particular.

“What the hell is going on around here?” she asked as she bent down to look over the child more closely. “Arial, surely you ... ?” She asked involuntarily, but neither the roll of Doctor Shelley’s eyes, nor her own instinct lent any credence the suspicion. “Tilley!” Jane said to herself, as she stood to cover her eyes for a moment.

When she removed her hand, Arial just held up the folder and point to the little red heart stuck under his name, before she lowered it to finish reading the last notations.

“Oh my word,” the overworked nurse groaned once more, very quietly.

“You had better give him the meds,” Dr. Shelley told her just as quietly. “I don’t think he’s very comfortable. Isn’t the IV analgesic effective?”

Jane walked over and slipped the syringe into the IV, while shaking her head. “Not enough. Dr. Riley wanted him to have something extra for the evening, so that he could sleep a little more, and because he is supposed to be in to examine him again this evening. I think he wants to change his bandages himself, given the nature of the surgery”

She said all this in soft flat tones, so as not to disturb Sam, who had begun to move around a little, and then had stopped moving all together, as his eyes began to move rapidly underneath his lids.

Doctor Shelley, motioned for Jane to come over with her by the door, where it took less than five minutes for Jane to tell her everything that she had surmised, including the fact that it was Sam himself who had changed into the pink gown.

“Do you have your usual good rapport with him, Jane?” she asked, and got the expected nod in return. “Well, then I want you to wake him. He knows you, and I’d like you to wake him for me. Then I want you to find Tilley. If she’s not still in the hospital, then I want you to call her yourself, and ask her if she can’t come in, to call me for just five minutes please. I really need to know what’s going on here.”

Jane nodded again, and then followed Ariel over to the bedside.

“Sam.” Jane said softly, to the child, who was now moving in small fits, and was crying in his sleep. A little louder “Sam, It’s Nurse Jane, can you wake up for me? You’re having another nightmare, Sweetheart. Wake up.” She was now gently rubbing the child’s good right shoulder.

Sam opened his eyes with a little jump, and looked from one to the other of them before closing his eyes and squeezing out the tears that had collected there.

“There you are Sam.” Jane said in as soothing a voice as she was able, “You are back with me, and everything is just fine. Would you like a drink?”

The boy nodded weakly, and lifted his hand to wipe a tear away, but Ariel pressed a tissue into his hand, and helped him dab it gently from his eyes. Tilley had used the waterproof stuff, 'of course,' she thought.

Jane asked him gently as he drank, “Was it the same dream you told me about, Sam?”

The boy nodded before taking the cup from her, and drinking the rest of the water slowly.

“That’s very good, Sam. You need to drink as much as you can,” Jane told him, causing him to look more clearly at her.

Thanks to the drink he spoke normally. “Hello, Jane. Thank you for the tissue,” he told her, at which she nodded. “Did I yell or something?”

Jane shook her head, as she quickly refilled the cup, and said, “Sam, this is a friend of mine, Doctor Shelley. We went to school together, and I asked her if she would come and talk to you about your dreams. Were you having a dream when we woke you?”

Sam nodded

“Was it the same?” she asked.

Sam nodded again.

“I’m sorry about that, but Dr. Shelley knows more about bad dreams than anyone else I know. As for me, I have to run along for a few minutes, but I’ll be back in just a little while. Do you need anything right now, Sweetie?”

“No, Ma’am. Thank you for the water,” He said as he tried to lift himself further in the bed, which clearly caused a good deal of pain.

“Here.” Jane pressed the button to lower his head a little, and then with Ariel’s help, slid him up before once more raising the bed to a near sitting position. “I’ve already given you something more for the pain, Sam, so you should be feeling much more comfortable in just a few minutes, okay?”

He nodded at her in tired gratitude.

She reached out to him, and quickly fixed a few hairs on the side of his head. “I really like your hair.”

Jane could sense Ariel stiffen on the other side of the bed as soon as the words were out of her mouth. ‘Not too bright’, she said to herself.

“Thank you,” he said, as she turned and walked out.

“Do you feel like talking, Sam?” Dr. Shelley asked with a large warm smile. She was very good with children. “I’m glad to meet you finally. I’m one of the doctors who will be helping you, but you don’t need to call me Doctor Shelley. You can call me Ariel”

“Thank you, Ma’am. I’m sorry I fell asleep ... Ariel?”

“That’s right, ‘Ariel’, just like the little Disney character. Actually, my father named me Bugs, but I had it changed as soon as I got old enough.”

Sam felt his cheeks pull back to form a smile. “I wish that my dentist was as funny as you guys around here.” He leaned back to look up at her.

“OH, So you’re a fan too?” She pulled a stool from the corner, so that she could sit down and see him more at eye level. “Do you mind?” she asked, placing a small recorder on the table. “I hate taking notes.”
,
“It’s okay,” he told her.

“You have a very pretty smile, Sam. Has anyone ever told you that?”

The child blushed, and shook his head.

“Well, you do. It’s very pretty.” She smiled at him only briefly, though not before noting that the compliment pleased him. “Can you please tell me about your dream, and why it’s making you cry?”

“Yes Ma’am, I’ll try. I’m sorry if I worried Miss Jane. It’s really just a silly dream. I’m not sure why it scares me.” He paused for a moment and lifted up the Kleenex again to carefully dab his eyes.

“Here,” Ariel lifted the top of the bed table to expose the mirror for him to use, all the while her eyes recording a permanent record in detail of what he did, no less so than the recorder she’d had to move in the process. Of course, that record included the small smile Sam had made when he’d looked into his own face, as he carefully dabbed the corners of his eyes, and the slightly worried approval-seeking smile he’d given her as he closed the lid.

“This isn’t the first time you’ve worn makeup, Sam?”

He shook his head, clearly a little embarrassed by the revelation.

“Well, It’s very pretty,” she assured him, even though she’d intended to ignore how he was dressed until they discussed the dream. She knew it was best to show some acceptance before changing the subject, to help clear his mind for the task ahead. “I feel sad that you are having nightmares. How does it start?”

Sam took a breath. “I’m outside, I think, when I hear this loud noise…”

“Is it the one that you told Jane sounded like a box of junk being thrown through a window?” she asked him, carefully avoiding a small smile.

“Yes, Ma’am. That’s the best I can describe it.”

“I think you did it very nicely, Sam. Then what happens?”

“Then there comes a flash of light. It’s like a camera flash, but it’s very white. Everything just disappears in the flash.”

“So you can see something before the flash of light?” She asked gently prompting to see what he could remember.

Slowly, “Yes…” The boy said, closing his eyes. “I can see the front yard of Rob and Helen’s house, I think.”

“That’s very good, Sam.” She was encouraged that he could bring up additional details. The amnesia would be a lot less problematic if he could work through it quickly. “Tell me about this flash.”

“I can’t really say anything else, except for it being like a flash, and I can’t see anything else. It’s not like things are turned white, It’s just that I can’t see anything but white.”

“Is there anything else about the flash?” she asked him gently, wondering if he might remember the pain.

Sam seemed to be thinking very hard. “Maybe...” he said softly. “I think there is also a funny taste that goes along with the flash. It’s like electricity, or something.” He looked at her.

Ariel nodded, to encourage him further.

“Then,” Sam continued, his eyes clearly tearing up a little, and his expression changing. “There is this screaming. It’s very high, like a girl shrieking in a horror movie or something.”

“Why does the screaming upset you, Sam?”

“I’m not sure, I just know it does.”

“Do you need another tissue?” she asked, handing him one anyway, even as he nodded.

She watched him a moment, as he lightly dabbed the corners of his eyes again, and blew his nose gently.

“Please go on, Sam.”

“There isn’t anything else, except for the fact that I want to run away, I don’t know why, but I can’t move. I can’t get away from the screaming.”

“That’s not very nice, is it?” She patted his hand.

“NO.”

“What frightens you, Sam? The screaming, or the fact that you can’t move?”

“Both. The screaming is the worst, at first at least; but, the longer I can’t run, the worse that gets, too.”

“Is the dream always the same, Sam?”

“Yes ... kind of ...” He frowned, as if trying to remember something.

“Tell me, Sam.”

“It’s just that, this last time, it was kind of like more than one person was screaming. That’s new, and I kind of feel like someone was talking to me.” He shook his head, which made him gently put his hand up to the side that had the lump under his hair.

Ariel just watched him for a few moments. Of course, a good portion of the story had been told by the paramedics, so there was hardly anyone in the hospital who did not know at least some of the details. The police officer who’d brought the boy’s aunt in to see the child had added even more.

In any prison in the free world, it was illegal to question a subject who’d been given the drugs that Sam had, she thought, but sometimes it made things much easier. She supposed it was time to help him remember. “Sam, how much do you remember of the accident?” she asked very gently, watching his eyes very carefully; so carefully in fact, that she did not notice Jane leaning against the door to 304.

Sam shook his head a little. “I don’t think I know what happened, Ariel. I think I remember being scared, and someone telling me it’s okay, but I can’t really remember anything.”

Ariel, smiled at him, and gently took his hand. “Well, you remember a lot more than you think you do, Sam.”

“I don’t understand, Ma’am.”

“Did you tell the little girl from next door, Samantha, that you were in your yard when the car hit you?” she asked, surprising him.

It surprised him a lot, in fact. “Yes, I did. How did you know that?”

“She told her mother about you when the nurses were there helping her to get ready to go home.” She looked at him, to see if the light was dawning yet, which was the downside of the same drugs. They sometimes slowed this part down quite a bit.

Dr. Shelley finally continued “Do you know what Hysterical Amnesia is, Sam?”

“That’s when you forget, like when you hit your head ...” he said, subconsciously reaching to gently touch the hair on the side of his head. “Do I have Amnesia?” he asked after a full thirty seconds of silence.

“Yes, Sam. When something happens that is very scary, it is very common for a person not to be able to remember it very clearly for a little while. The memories usually come back. We don’t know why, exactly, but we believe that it helps the person to rest, or to focus on things other than what scares them.” She waited still longer after that.

“It’s not really a dream, is it, Doctor Shelley?” he asked her very softly, then began to cry.

“OH, it’s okay, now, Sam. It’s all over now,” she said, and very gently moved up to the bed to hold the child. After several minutes, and a cold cloth provided by Jane, he seemed to recover himself much more quickly than Ariel would have though possible.

Allowing him to lean back, she placed the cloth on his forehead, and sat to watch him once more, as Jane took his right hand, to hold in hers. “You are one smart ... person, Sam. You figured that out very fast.”

“Can you please tell me what happened?” he asked them pleadingly.

'That is the question, isn’t it,' Ariel thought to herself. 'Will he be able to face the reality of what had happened to him and all the awful consequences therein? In the end, one thing was for sure, the poor kid needs real sleep. He needs his rest very badly right now, and thrashing about in a nightmare could be dangerous. From what the surgeon said, it was an approximate miracle that he’d not bled out or died of trauma in the first place.' “Yes Sam, I think I can tell you a little now…”

 
 
 
 
 

Officer Paul Preston stopped reading addresses as he came around the corner. He no longer needed to. There was a crowd gathered around a late model Honda which had piled into someone’s front yard. Hitting the button for the siren, he quickly pulled over to the end of the driveway.

“Over here! Please hurry!” An older man in a bathrobe frantically waved him on before he could even get out of the car. He could see that the Honda was piled up on some fencing and some things that had been in the front yard, only to be stopped by a car parked in the driveway. To one side was a man holding a woman who’d obviously been injured, her hands being wrapped in towels by another younger woman.

“Is she the driver?” he asked, only to have the woman wrapping her hands shake her head, and point to another very elderly woman who was sitting at a picnic table surrounded by several other adults. One of them was holding a cloth on her forehead.

Keying his Mike, as he walked toward the woman standing nearest the car, he called “Dispatch, this is four.”

“Four.”

“Be advised that there are at least two victims at this location, and I need another ambulance.”

“Affirmative, Four.” There was a pause. “Be advised also, Four. A second ambulance and rescue crew have already been dispatched. We just got several calls about a trapped child.”

Officer Preston didn’t hesitate, nor even think before he changed direction, and ran toward the car. Even If he had time to do no more than react, the man who jumped up from the front of the Honda would have sped him in that direction anyway.

“Hurry, please! I can’t get her out, and I think she’s bleeding to death!”

With that the woman with the towels began wailing and fighting to get at the trapped child, but fortunately she was held back enough by the man who was probably her husband that she succeeded in little more than falling to her knees.

Quickly rushing to drop to his knees beside the kneeling man, Officer Preston shone his light under the front of the car.

“Jesus, Christ.” he said to anyone who cared to hear. There was a child on a bicycle pinned under, and between the two cars. At first, he thought she was already gone there was so much blood, but even as he looked the child began to struggle and wail out in pain. That of course caused the woman, obviously the mother, to begin to shriek even louder from the ground where she now lay.

“Dispatch, Four.”

“Go four.”

Officer Preston was rushing around the back of the car, to try and reach the child’s head and face.

“I need life-flight One dispatched to my location. I now have three injuries, one serious, and one critical. The child is on a bicycle, and is pinned between ...” The child moaned, and her little hand reached out for him. “Can you hear me, Honey? I’m a Police officer. Help is here, and I’m going to get you out.”

The child answered with a feeble cry and an even feebler grasp of his hand as he took her small fingers in his.

“His name is Sam.” The man holding the woman called to him.

Officer Preston didn’t have time to even notice as he looked at the long brown hair on the child, who looked to be about eight or so.

“Sam?” He called out “I’m here to help you, so just try to hold still.”

“Go ahead unit Four?” The radio on his shoulder blared.

“Dispatch.” He managed to reach the button with his other hand. “I repeat. I need that chopper dispatched; I have a small girl piled between a bicycle and two cars. I can’t really reach her, and there is a lot of blood. Tell the Paramedics to move!” Then to the man on the other side of the car he called out, “Can you see where she’s bleeding?” he asked under the car.

The man shook his head, but continued to try and press a towel against the wounds that he could see.

Officer Paul Preston’s heart sank. He could hear the ambulance, but this one didn’t look like she’d make it either way. He also knew that he didn’t actually have the authority to call for the medical chopper, but after twenty plus years, he knew that they would send it anyway.

A very weak cry came from under the car. “It’s okay, Sam.” He called encouragingly. “The ambulance is almost here. I’m right here with you. I know it hurts, but you are going to be okay. You just hold on, and Officer Preston will take care of you. Your Mom and Dad are right beside the car with you, too ...”

Looking at her little face, which now slightly turned toward him, 'Jesus, she looks just like my youngest daughter.'

“They're almost here, Honey. Just hang on to my hand, and everything will be okay.” He said this, even though the little hand in his had gone completely limp.

The rescue teams had obviously been informed, because the fire truck and ambulance had not even stopped before several men had jumped out of them, and began racing to where the officer lay. He was pushed aside, as a paramedic risked his own life to crawl bodily under the car.

The officer watched for a moment, and then, unable to watch any more, walked over to the man holding the woman who seemed to be passed out.

“Are You the father?”

“No.” The man’s answer surprised him. “His parents are in Europe, and Sam is staying with us. Will he be okay?”

Officer Preston could feel his expression go flat, even as he tried not to let it. “I hope so, sir. The boys will do everything humanly possible.” He said this, even as the men of a second fire truck ran up, and another crew of paramedics split up to tend the woman at his feet, and the old woman at the picnic table. “Can you tell me what happened?”

The man, shook his head, and said. “Not much. I heard the noise, and ran out to find Helen ...” he indicated the woman in his arms, “screaming and trying to claw the front of the car apart with her bare hands. I didn’t even realize at first that Sam was under there.” The man began to fall apart, causing officer Preston to tell him to ‘go on’ rather loudly. “I couldn’t get him out. If I moved him, even slightly, he started screaming…”

It was obvious that he’d get no more information out of this one, even as two more officers hurried up to him. “Paul?” the oldest asked, who was also wearing a sergeant’s stripes.

Preston just shook his head before either said anything else. Both men understood. “That’s the driver over there. I haven’t spoken to her yet.” Then turning to the younger man in uniform, “And, could you please move some of these people away?”

Both men nodded, and went about their jobs, the younger man looking much more shaken. Officer Preston turned back to look at the man holding the woman. He didn’t think any less of the young officer, any more than he thought of the man who was now sobbing as well. If he could, he’d be doing the same thing.

“Officer?” A soft female voice drew his attention. The girl who’d been holding the towel on the woman’s hands was now standing, with her job being taken by the paramedic, and another firefighter at his feet.

“Who are you, Miss?” he asked her.

“My name is Mindy Collins. I live just two doors down that way. If it helps, I saw what happened.”

“Good.” He said giving her his attention now. “Good. What can you tell me?”

The girl nodded, up at him with that soulful look of someone still in shock “Sam was sitting on his bike right here on the walkway. I had just begun walking home, and had gotten to right over there, when Mrs. Francis came out to call Sam in for dinner. I looked back, and he waved at me. I had just decided to invite him to the mall with me tomorrow ...” The girl paused to swallow a small sob of her own. “Well, just then, Old Mrs. Johnston came flying across the street from that driveway over there and right into Mr. and Mrs. Francis’s front yard.”

The girl paused long enough for him to prompt her a little. “Just tell me what you can.”

She was crying now. “Sam didn’t even have time to turn around. Mrs. Johnston came crashing through the fence, running over everything. She never even hit the brakes; the car motor was racing as if she floored it. She pushed Sam over against the other car.”

The girl was crying now, but she was still struggling to get it all out. “When the car stopped, Sam was quiet for a moment, and then started to scream. So did I. Then Mrs. Johnston started to try and put the car in reverse, and back up, even though we were all screaming at her to stop. Mr. Adams, that’s him in the bathrobe, ran over and grabbed her out of the car, and turned off the key. By then, Helen must have realized what we all saw, and ran over to try and get Sam out. She was screaming, and trying to tear the car off of him.”

It was obvious that the girl wanted to tell him something else, but she was now crying and unable to continue further. Then she simply said, “I couldn’t move,” as she began to cry freely.

“It’s going to be okay, Mindy. Please just go over and sit down on the porch for now.”

Just then, the girl’s mother cam up to them, and started to take Mindy over to the stairs where she had heard the officer direct her daughter. He felt the need to apologize to her too. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to need to take a statement from your daughter when she’s up to it.”

The woman nodded, but then without preamble said. “She’s not even supposed to be driving! They took her damned license two years ago. I don’t even think she knows what planet she’s on, let alone what front lawn! She was a hundred and eight when I was a little girl for Christ’s sake.” The woman was angry, a sure mother’s reaction. Officer Preston didn’t think any less of her for it, either.

“I don’t Care!” a loud voice came from behind him. Turning around, officer Preston could see the paramedic who’d crawled past him, a large bloodstain covering his shirt, breast to belly. “We don’t have time for the damned crane. If we don’t get it off of him now, he doesn’t have any chance at all. Now help me, or get out of the way…”

“Shit!” Preston said loudly, as a dozen men lined up around the car, and grabbed it along the bottom. Preston, realizing what they were going to try, never noticed the wind from the chopper that was landing in the yard next door. He simply ran over to grab his piece of the car as someone shouted “Go!” The men lifted the front of the small car, and aided by adrenaline, pushed it back a good six feet.

“Pack it! Pack it!” the paramedic started yelling, as they all tried at once to get the girl ... no, boy .. untangled from the bicycle. Jesus, it looked like he was impaled. Officer Preston turned away just before the men eased the child on to the stretcher and began racing toward the chopper. Even as they ran, the paramedic crawled up to kneel on the stretcher, were he fought to insert needles and apply a trauma collars in a race to save the small life that was quickly slipping away beneath his fingers.

The poor kid didn’t move or make a sound.

Walking away, he’d almost gotten his voice, when Tom Ralston, the other sergeant, walked up to him. “Fucking hell, Paul!” Tom said. “The woman doesn’t even know where she is. She thinks that someone left his or her bicycle in her driveway. It was the neighbor’s car. That poor woman left her keys in the ignition to run back into the house. The old woman probably thinks Reagan is still president, too.” He was clearly upset, and continued only after a pause. “That’s only natural, I suppose, because that’s about when her license was revoked for being a menace in anything with wheels. I pulled her record up, and I wouldn’t trust her in a wheelchair.”

Officer Preston just nodded.

“How is the kid?” Tom asked him.

Officer Preston just shook his head, waiting for his throat to loosen up, so that he could call dispatch, and let them know that was going on.

“What do you want to do?” Officer Ralston asked.

Looking over at the table, where the old woman was having a band-aid placed on her forehead, he thought better of saying the first words that came to mind. “Take her in.” he said softly, looking the ground. “Nothing will come of it, but maybe we can get her someplace where she can’t hurt herself or anyone else.”

Tom Ralston nodded. His eyes said that he would have arrested her, if Paul had not.

“Go easy though,” Paul finished, “no, cuffs, or leg restraints.” Both officers made something akin to a grimace at the attempted humor.

Shaking his head, he continued. “Just get the poor old soul out of here Tom, and when you get her in the car, read her her rights. No need for anyone to give her any details yet. Other than that, you can tell her you are President Reagan for all I care...”

 
 
 
 
 

“Are you okay now?” Ariel asked him.

“Yes, Ma’am” his voice sounded none too steady as he gratefully accepted more water from Jane, who was now stroking his shoulders but looking at Ariel.

“Well if you want to know more, someday, there are statements and things.” She did not tell him that there was an abbreviated copy of the neighbor girl’s statement in the file. “If you don’t want to know more when you are feeling better, then that’s okay, too.”

It had been hard for her to read, and she was sure that he’d never see them.

“Is Helen, going to be okay?” he asked her

“Yes, Sam. I promise you. She’ll be fine. She just cut her hands trying to tear that car off of you piece by piece. She had surgery on one of them yesterday, and the doctor called to tell us, to tell you, that she’ll be just fine.”

“Isn’t she here?” he asked her.

“No, Sam. She’s at Saint Vincent’s, down near were you live. They brought you to us in the helicopter.” Ariel continued to reassure any worry he raised.

“But I don’t understand?” He asked her. “I thought Aunt Helen was here?”

“She was, Sam. She wouldn’t let them take her away for the surgery until she saw that you were out of surgery, and that you were going to be okay.”

Sam began to tear up a little again. “She’s not really my aunt, but she’s been friends with my mom forever. She’s very nice to me.” The pain medication was now kicking in, and his pupils were quite a bit larger. “Please tell her, I’m sorry.”

“Sam!” Jane cut in gently, which was okay with Ariel. “You have nothing to apologize for. You did nothing wrong, and it wasn’t your fault.”

Sam just ran his hands down the front of the pink gown, to let them know that being foolish enough to stand on a front walk was not all that he was talking about.

“OH!” Ariel said dramatically, for humor. “So now you want to talk about your keen fashion sense, do you?”

Sam Smiled weakly at her, but did not otherwise move.

“Well, I sure would like to hear about it…”

“And so would I.” Jane chimed in.

Then, Ariel finished. “…, but I’m not sure if we shouldn’t let you rest now. Besides, I think we know that the culprit is named Tilley”

“Please, don’t be mad at Tilley.” Sam was wide-awake now. “I don’t think she knew, and she made me feel so much better.”

“What do you mean, Sam?” Ariel asked quietly.

Sam proceeded to explain about ‘Samantha’, and the pink gown, and the doll. “You see, I think she thought I was a Samantha, too.”

Jane gave a look that her long time friend easily read as her ‘Well, Dah!’ look, but one look at Ariel communicated to her equally well that she should remain silent.

Ariel looked at him for quite a long time “Why didn’t you tell her Sam?”

“Because, it made me feel better,” he said simply.

She watched him a little more, and waited for him to look at her again. “Is that why you put on the pink dressing gown?”

“Yes.” He nodded his head. “I was feeling lonely, and sad from all the nightmares, and cold and wet from crying and sweating. It just made me feel better. It always does.”

“It always does?” Ariel asked him, trying to ignore Jane, who was beginning to look like she might pop.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Call me Ariel, if you like, Sam.” she told him once more. He was so polite, but at least he did nod.

“When do you wear pink hospital gowns, Sam?” she asked, getting a smile out of him.

“I have some of my mother’s old things. They are very nice. No shoes.”

“No shoes?” Ariel tried to keep the surprise out of her voice.

“They don’t fit. I can never seem to find any shoes.”

“Does your mother know you use her things?”

“She knows. They are not the things that she uses now. They were her old things when she was in school.”

“Did she give them to you, Sam?” Ariel asked.

“No.” he said. “But she did keep telling me that I could talk to her about anything I wanted to. A few years ago, I found that she had washed and folded them, and put them back in my drawer.”

“Well that was a very nice way of letting you know that she was there for you. Did you talk to her?”

“A little ... but not really.”

“Why not, Sam? It certainly sounds like she would understand, and could help you to understand, too. Were you afraid she wouldn’t?”

“No.” He obviously was trying to explain it all as well as he could. “Its just that I knew if we did talk, that even though she would understand, she would have a lot of reasons for me to stop. I was only afraid that she might ask me to stop. I would feel so sad if she did that. She would feel bad if I didn’t.”

Ariel was now staring at him, which fortunately he could not see, because his eyes had finally closed. “Well, you need some rest now, Sam, but I’ll stop by this evening, and we can talk about all of that as long as you like then.”

He nodded slightly. “Is my mother coming tomorrow?” He asked, sleepily.

Jane answered, finally, “She said she was, but she is still trying very hard. It’s not her fault she hasn’t been able to get back yet.”

“You talked to her?” He opened his eyes a little.

“Both your doctor, and I talk to her every day, Sam,” Nurse Jane told him.

“Will you tell her I love her, and to please hurry home?”

“I already have, Sam” Jane was slowly lowering the bed now. “I already have.”

 
 
 
 
 

Doctor Timothy Brice was a leading trauma surgeon. Like many Surgeons, the good doctor was just shy of misanthropic. To him, most operations on children just meant that he had a little less space to work.

When, however, it came to those times that he himself wasn’t quite sure, it was different. At times like those, it was hard to keep his professional outlook, and just cut and sew as fast as he could.

One of the hospital’s O.R. staff, not a member of his team, was holding up a film for him to take one last look. He did not know the woman, and looking through the films one more time, he knew little else. “What a mess,” he whispered, and had to content himself with a quick recount of the chunks of debris that he could see in the wound. Seven were all that…

Dr. Brice jumped, as suddenly someone grasped his hand. He was about to snap at whomever it was for contamination, when looking down, he was shocked that it was the boy. He just stared at him, his eyes a very distant, but still very frightened.

Not knowing what else to say, Doctor Brice had told him that he would do everything he could. In retrospect, he knew that most of his colleagues would have told such a young child that he was going to be just fine, and not to worry. It was only when he saw the little guys tortured eyes that he realized that he should have been a little more persuasive.

“I know.” the poor kid gasped weakly.

He had passed out from the pain at that point, because they had to moved him After that, the anesthesiologist had made sure that he did not regain consciousness for a full three days after the surgery.

His senior scrub nurse, a woman who had almost fifteen more years in surgery than he did, had to leave the theater to get him a clean pair of gloves. This was in spite of the fact, that there were three more pairs on her tray.

“Anthony.” Brice said to the assisting surgeon in a slightly less confident voice, “You go after the femoral artery. I’ll do what I can with his bladder and debriding the wound, and see what we have left to work with. Then you’ll help me, and then we’ll finish the leg together. Hope no one had any big dates… Smart and very fast, people. You’re the best trauma team in the state, so let’s prove it.”

He turned to the nurse standing close enough to be touching his left side, who was already holding the instruments he would ask for. “Let’s go, Melanie. Small straight blade and a Deever retractor. Grab yourself some forceps as well, cause I’m going to need your little hands. Irrigate, and suction…”

 
 
 
 
 

Doctor Brice was feeling much better than he had in many days. Weekends can be busy times for Trauma Surgeons. Inexplicably, they'd had sufficient coverage for him to be able to go home last night, and actually sleep for ten hours. This morning he’d had only one elective surgery that he’d agreed to perform for a friend who wanted to honeymoon in Hawaii, of all places. This had turned out to be a good afternoon.

It had not been so four days ago. It had started on a Thursday, with and almost ten-hour operation on the patient he was going to see. Friday and Saturday had been the usual slaughterhouse, while on Sunday, he and his whole team had been airlifted across the state to work on a patient that could not be moved. All but one had been saved, but cramming sixty hours of surgery into seventy-two was enough for any man, which was why he’d taken himself and his whole team out of the rotation for twenty-four hours of rest.

It also gave him another chance to look in on the young fellow who had started it all. Both times he’d seen him, it had been brief, and he’d had to make do with the reports on his vitals and condition that he gotten on his PDA every four hours. He’d told an older colleague who congratulated him on pulling the kid through, that as much as he would love to take the credit; it was purely Sam himself who deserved the praise. He’d seldom seen anyone fight so hard, and bounce back so fast. It was amazing.

Doctor Brice still had little idea what he would say when he walked through the door to 304. His first look at the child robbed him of even that.

 
 
 

At about that same time out in the hallway, “Doctor Shelly?” Tilley asked, the confusion in her voice clear, “I didn’t do anything I haven’t done before. They told me that if I had the time to help to wash one of the kids hair, to go ahead.”

Jane spoke up, as much to offset the terrible looks Nurse Johnston was giving Tilley, as anything else. “Tilley, you are not in trouble here. Everyone knows that you help out, and we all appreciate it. In fact, you should know that you did more to cheer him up than all the rest of us put together.”

Tilley was use to thinking of herself as not quite the equal of the people she worked with when it came to sheer wit. They were, after all, the doctors and nurses of a major hospital staff. Most of them realized that she was a smart as anyone else, but she found it best to use humor and compassion as her best assets. Unless, of course, it was a time like right now.

“What did you say?” Tilley stared at Jane, more than a little confused.

Ariel spoke up now, in a prison yard whisper. “He — is — a — boy. He’s male.”

“No ... She ...” Tilley was at a lost. “Doctor Shelley, you must be talking about someone else. The little girl I worked on was named Samantha. I heard about how badly she was hurt and, I knew that Jane was all alone, and ...”

“Tilley!” Ariel could well understand the woman’s confusion, but she needed to get to the bottom of this before everyone in the world got involved. “Please try to understand. I understand most of what happened, and I don’t blame you for anything.” She finished until the poor woman held her gaze in return. “Now, if you could just tell me what happened, in as much detail as you can remember about how Sam spoke and reacted to you, I could really use your help.”

“Oh my God.” Tilley at least now held her gaze. “You aren’t down here because of what I ...”

“Tilley, No.” Ariel smiled at her, but it was a stomach cramp that caused her to do so. “I had already been consulted on the boy’s case, and had come down to see him.” She struggled for a way to say it. “The truth is that we may need to continue what you did. You were not wrong, and based on the nature of his injury, and what I’ve learned about him, you probably just took a step that the rest of us were not ready for, even though it seems that Sam was.”

Ariel gave her as much time for that to sink in as she could, but she had very little time. “Now, please, Tilley. Tell me what you can.”

They had already gone over it twice when Doctor Brice walked up.

“Would somebody please tell me what in the name of God is going on around here?” He was less than pleased, to say the least. “I left a post op patient with you twenty-four hours ago. Please don’t tell me that one of you jumped the gun that ...”

Ariel had to head him off. “He did it himself.”

Doctor Brice was not a man who looked confused very often, but he obviously still had some natural aptitude for it. “What?!!”

“He did it himself, Tim.” Ariel was so good breaking news to people gently and subtly, and with a minimum amount of pain. It always showed, when she had the time for it.

“You’re kidding?” Doctor Brice just stared.

“I’m not,” she told him. “It happened like this. Don’t you move one inch, Tilley. It seems, Doctor Brice, that you did such a good job that Sam felt he was strong enough to try and change himself this morning.”

“You’re kidding!”

“I’m not. Well, Tilley here heard that Jane was all alone on the ward for four hours, and came down to wipe noses, and change diapers where she could. When she got to Sam ...”

 
 
 

“Sam.” Doctor Brice had stood over him for several minutes, checking vitals, and charts, before he decided to wake him. It was just about the time Jane had come in to help him in his examination. He wanted to be as gentle with the boy as he possibly could, but knowing he’d have to move him at least a little.

As startled as he had been by the boy’s appearance, he had other concerns now. “Sam?”

The boy woke, and a quick look at his eyes showed that he was fairly heavily medicated. Good. “Hi Sam, We meet again. Do you remember me?”

Sam tried to focus, but he was so tired. “No ...”

“That’s okay, Sam. No need you should. I would have been surprised if you had. I’m the doctor who operated on you, and I wanted to see how you are feeling.”

The boy tried to sit up, but Doctor Brice rested a hand on his chest to stop him. “Just try to relax, Sam.” He said this as Jane walked into the room with a tray full of bandages. “I’m not going to do anything really, just check some bandages and some stitches and things. Nurse Jane is going to help me, so if you hurt at all, just tell us, okay?”

With that, as Jane began to tug the pink gown up to his waist, he began to probe the child all over, beginning with limbs, and head, and neck. The leg that had been most badly damaged seemed to have excellent circulation, which was good. There were cuts, and an impressive collection of bruises, but in most areas Doctor Brice was pleased. Children heal fast.

What was not pleasing was that in the last four hours, the boy’s temp had begun to climb. He could tell whenever he touched him. He could not really probe the child’s lower abdomen as much as he wanted, because of the pain that would result from his injuries there. Brice knew he was not very good at connecting with people on an emotional level usually, but his hands were as soft and sensitive as any artist, and even his gentle ministrations showed that the boy was far too sensitive as yet.

Doctor Brice pulled on some gloves, and with almost the same level of care he used in surgery, he began to cut away some of the bandages…

Sam was so sleepy that he lay very still throughout the whole procedure, at times falling asleep. Doctor Brice might be terrible at saying the right thing, but his hands were where his gifts lay. The leg looked very good, thankfully. The wound in his groin looked as good as they could hope for, but it was still an awful injury. He had lost ... so much.

The catheter entered through a small incision that was just below his penis, the circulation to that organ having been restored fairly easily, but although the tissue seemed healthy, it would likely remain non-functional. There was a slight irritation at the catheter, but it looked less like infection than a slight irritation at the use of the latex catheter which Brice had chosen in an effort to make the boy more comfortable.

It was not his specialty, but given what they had, it would be a lot easier on the child to have a female reconstruction. 'SRS is not the right term,' he supposed, 'since some random old woman has already pretty much done most of that on her own. Anyway,' he went, though, 'I can see at least two more surgeries just to make the plumbing work. There was just too much damage to get it all done at one time.' It had taken all of his team's skills to get the boy off of the table alive.

The one thing that he had done was to go after every piece of foreign matter that had been lodged there. Unfortunately there had been a trashcan in the front yard, obviously, and some of the wound had been contaminated. X-rays, from right after the surgery had shown no significant foreign bodies remained ... but a coffee ground, or a bit of paper...

He paused over the file and his notes, while Jane tidied up the new bandages, and settled the patient for sleep.

“Nurse?” Jane looked at him, from where she was gently stroking his forehead with her thumb, and arranging his hair more neatly. He sighed slightly. “Cute little thing, isn’t he.”

Jane’s eyes showed something like gratitude, as she continued to rub is forehead.

“Sam?” he said, moving up to see if the boy was asleep, but his eyes opened to look back at his. He had pretty eyes, too. “I like your haircut. It’s very pretty.” There that should make Ariel happ ...

Doctor Brice was surprised when the boy actually smiled at him. “Thank you,” he said sleepily.

“Sam, how do you feel? Is there more pain?” He was sure it was a stupid question.

Sam looked thoughtful, and then just shrugged a little. “I’m not sure.”

“Sorry, Sam, it was silly question. Can you at least tell me when it hurts the most?”

Sam almost smiled again. “When I lay in a bed.”

Doctor Brice took a full second behind Jane to laugh.

“I told you he was very smart,” Jane said to him, only to have the doctor nod.

“Sam, does your tummy hurt up here.” He said touching him above his stomach. He had badly wanted to do a quick exploratory for the liver and spleen, but the boy’s condition had been against him.

Sam nodded. His eyes were mostly closed.

Brice stood up and looked down at him. He was going to tell the nurse to clean off his face, but it really was no problem if it kept his spirits up. He was going to offer to answer any questions the boy might have, but that was obviously not a worry right now. Then thinking for just a moment more, he leaned down and said. “Good night, Sam. You try and get as much sleep as you can. I’ll come back and see you early tomorrow morning before I go into surgery. Okay?”

The little hand came up, reaching for his. “Thank you for helping me,” Sam said.

Now leaning on the bedrails, “That was my pleasure Sam.” Then, as an afterthought, he asked “Is that what you’d like to be called?”

The boy nodded ever so slightly, but whispered “Samantha.”

“Night little one ... Samantha. No bad dreams tonight.” He turned off the exam lights, and waved the nurse out.
,
“How long do you have left?”

Looking at her watch, “I’ve about forty minutes before the full double,” she looked over at the nurses’ station, too, “but I’m just about done here.”

Looking over at the two relieving nurses who had already gone over the files and had begun checking in on patients, he knew that although she was tired, Jane probably did have less of a load right now than she’d had all day. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to write up some notes, and look something up. I’d like you to go down to the pharmacy, and have them make up the new IV, that I’ve specified. I’m adding two antibiotics, and I want you to personally make sure he gets them now, as opposed to later.”

She nodded, knowing that the doctor was very displeased about something he saw. The fever would be fairly common in the absence of infections, given the nature to the surgery and the injuries, but the doctor clearly felt something else might be the cause. It was the mark of a great one. They always seemed to just know things.

“Lastly, If you could, call down and find out if Doctor Anderson is in the hospital, The Post Op. Specialist, and not the Podiatrist.”

Jane smiled tiredly.

“If he’s here, have the operator find him for me. If he’s not, find out when he’s expected, and how soon I can see him.”

“Right away, Doctor.” she said, but did not move, as she felt he had something to say.

He looked back briefly. “He really is special, isn’t he?” He said this, watching her carefully.

“Most of them are, Doctor, but yeah, he’s very special.” she told him sincerely.

“He’s cute, too.” he said, turning away and shaking his head.

“Yes he is. Any further orders?”

“No. Just tell Tilley I said thank you, and tell her to feel free to come by any time she thinks she can cheer him up?”

She was on the elevator before he’d begun to type in the change order for the prescription.

 
 
 
 
 

The sun was a bright horizontal beam to the floor when Jane walked on to the floor the next morning. Technically she was not due on till tomorrow, but since she’d had to drop in anyway ...

There were a Paramedic, and a firefighter in the hallway by the station. Beyond them, she could see that Tilley was in the playroom, reading a story to three of the more active children, clearly having stopped in before her regular job as well.

“All of the guys pitched in to buy it for her. We thought she was a girl.” the man said, clearly disappointed. “Now you’re telling me she’s a boy? Willie had to cut panties off of her before they could ... well get her out.” The man was holding up a large white stuffed teddy bear, with large lashes around its eyes, and pink ribbon around its neck matching the pink bow at its head.

The dark haired nurse on the floor, chuckled, and shook her head at the man. “Don’t worry about it, boys. I didn’t tell you because you brought the wrong bear. Come on in, and you can see for yourself. I promise you, the gift will be just fine. Come and see.” Then to Jane, she continued with, “Hi Jane. I thought you had the eight tomorrow?”

“I do. What’s going on?”

“Nothing much, these guys came in to say hello to Sam. Apparently he’s something of a celebrity with them, or they need the reinforcement of their self-image…”

Jane followed them to the door of 304, where Kelly knocked on the door and called out “Still not hungry, Samantha?”

Sam looked even paler, but there were other changes as well. Tilley had obviously refreshed his makeup now, leaving him with a little foundation and blusher for his cheek, and some mascara, mostly. There was also some candy colored gloss on his lips, which was probably a good idea it being so dry in here. What was more though, someone had obviously found him a cotton nightgown, white with pink flowers all over it, and a pink ribbon with which someone tied back his obviously freshly brushed hair.

“Sam.” Kelly introduced them, “These are two of the men who helped you when you got hurt. Would you like to say hello?”

Sam was propped up on his side, slightly, with pillows behind his back, but he was mostly sitting up in the raised bed. “Hello,” he said softly, his large eyes blinking slowly, along with a little smile for the men.

“Aaahmmm ...” The firefighter said.

The paramedic did better. “Hi, Samantha. My name is Joe, and some of my friends and I wanted to bring you a little present, and see how you were feeling.”

Jane smirked, because the stupid bear was half the size of Sam himself.

Sam smiled weakly, and held up his hand to the man, who took it to lift it the rest of the way, before carefully tucking the bear next to the child’s tummy. Sam rested his hand about it with a comfortable sigh, as he settled back a little more. “Thank you, Joe. He’s very pretty, but you didn’t have to, you know.”

The paramedic just shook his head, while the firefighter finally found his voice. “Well I can tell you something else we know, Samantha. There are a couple of dozen firefighters, paramedics, and cops back in your home town who think you are one of the bravest little girls they’ve ever met. Willie, the paramedic who went under the car to get you, told us that you woke up and asked him to please get out from under the car before he got hurt too. He really wanted to be here, so he asked us to bring this to you instead. Everyone pitched in for it, and we all signed the card.”

Sam glanced over at the corner of the room, where there were now four vases of flowers and a couple of balloons, from people Sam did not know, like an officer Paul something.

Sam looked down at the bear, absently stroking the soft plush fur. The bear smelled mildly of some wonderful perfume. Looking up, Sam began to push himself back up a little, causing both the on duty nurse, and Jane to dive for the bed at the same time to help him.

“Thank you,” he said to both nurses. “I’m sorry to be so much trouble.” In someone older it wouldn’t have sounded as sincere.

Both of the women mumbled in return, that he should let them do the work, and stop apologizing.

“I’m sorry, I don’t remember very much,” Sam said slowly, and paused for a breath or two, “but I do remember the man under the car. He looked very scared.”

“I Imagine he did,” the large firefighter said softly.

Looking from one man to the other, Sam asked quietly “Could you please give him something for me?”

The adults all looked at each other a little confused, but the men nodded.

Pushing himself up just a little more with his elbow, while wincing in pain, Sam lifted his other arm to the big fireman, who happened to be the closer of the pair at that moment, IV tubes and all. The man hesitated for just a moment, and then gently leaned down to place a hand behind the child’s back, to return the hug.

For his part, Sam just held on to the big man’s neck for a moment or two, before he turned to kiss his cheek, and whispered, “Thank you.” Then with a sigh, Sam lay back down, with the help of the big man, his eyes closed, and slowly wrapped himself around the bear with a comfortable sigh.

The girls fixed his hair, and made sure he was as comfortable as possible, but it was the paramedic who spoke first. “We’ll be going now, Samantha. You have to promise to try to get better as fast as you can. If you need anything, well you just ask one of these nice ladies to call anyone from Engine Company Twenty-one, and we’ll take care of the rest. Okay?”

Sam did not open his eyes. “Thank you. Don’t get into trouble, giving Willie my message.”

They all smiled at that, but no one laughed

“He needs his rest, Guys.” Kelly said, with a proprietary hand on the back of Sam’s neck.

The big man especially, who looked like he’d have no trouble picking up all three of them and running up several flights of stairs, just walked out of the room in silence while wiping his eyes.

 
 
 

“What’s his temp?” Jane asked, looking at the chart.

“One oh-one, but it’s come down a full degree. Doctors Anderson and Brice were in here an hour ago. They said he should try to eat, but he threw up when I tried to feed him. That was bad. I just changed him, and I’m leaving him to rest for now.”

“How is he sleeping?” Jane asked, she herself stroking Sam's hair beside the pretty bow.

“Good. No night terrors or dreams at all. He did have a bad couple of hours, when the fever was high, and he complained that his thoughts were ‘silly and running all over the place’, but once the fever came down lower, he fell right to sleep.”

“Well that’s good at least.” “Is he being fed through the IV?” she asked, looking up at the other bag.

Kelly nodded. “Too dangerous to risk emesis. Too much damage. No more throwing up for now at least.”

“Is it peritonitis?” she asked finally.

“Jane, they just don’t know. However, whatever it was, his temp is dropping and his fluid output is still good. He’s sleeping more or less normally for someone who’s getting half the drugstore. It’s not all discouraging news.”

“I have to run down to see my mother, or I’d stay,” Jane said to the woman, without taking her eyes off the child.

“NO you wouldn’t. We’d toss your ass right out onto the sidewalk if you tried.”

“Will you at least call me if he gets any worse?” Jane asked the woman.

Kelley just looked at her for several moments. “No. I’m going off duty now. If you like, I’ll tell the guys to give you one call to check in a little later, but if you come back here today, they’ll call security. Go home. See your mother and rest.”

Jane nodded, and slowly walked out of the room, only pausing to see if they’d gotten the spelling right on the bouquet of balloons she’d had sent to his room… She was so glad that others had finally realized he was alone, too.

 
 
 
 
 

The next morning, Ariel found her feet headed toward Sam’s door before even going to the station. As soon as she turned the last corner, Ariel felt her heart rise up in her throat. Standing at the doorway to 304 were both Doctor Brice, and Doctor Anderson, the head of the post-op team. In the hallway, just across from the door, working on what looked like a ventilator, was Doctor Peterson, from respiratory.

Ariel felt the momentum of her previous pace pushing her the last few feet, but it was involuntary momentum alone that got her there. Peering Inside, not wanting to interrupt the doctors, she could see Jane was crying while she gently used a washcloth to wipe the child’s face clean. He was in a pink hospital gown again.

When Doctor Anderson walked over to consult with Doctor Peterson, Ariel said good morning to Doctor Brice with the only words she could think of. “What the hell happened, Tim?”

Doctor Brice rubbed his head. “The usual, I guess. The wound was not that dirty, but what was there; well some of it wasn’t good. Last night he started having trouble breathing, and his pO2 began to drop. Then hematology reported that his pH had crept up a point or two.”

“Well?” She asked without further explanation.

Brice shook his head again, and said nothing for a long time.

“Where are his parents?” She asked. “I’d better talk to them.”

“Use your phone. They’re still stuck in England.”

Ariel never lost it around the hospital, but now she was as close as she ever came. “Tim, please tell me you’re fucking joking. They are still not here? It’s been a week.”

Doctor Brice nodded this time. “Look, Ariel. We are giving him everything we can think of, in as high a dose as we dare. He’s still fighting as hard as he can. The antibiotics could kick in at any time, and knock this stuff right out of him.”

“Could it be something left in the wound?” She asked very gently.

Doctor Brice looked up, and with a calm that surprised her he answered. “Yes. It’s always possible. I’ve talked it over with my people though, and looked at the tapes of the operation. Even though we were moving as fast as we could to get him off the table alive, none of us feel that that is very likely. I checked everything, and I do mean everything, five times. Anthony, Doctor Handy, checked it twice behind me.” He paused to look at the floor again, which struck Ariel. He was a brilliant surgeon, and one of the most confident men she’d ever met; far more likely to have a god complex than to suffer doubts.

After a minute he looked at her again. “I can tell you only one thing. My gut tells me that it’s not a major piece of debris in the wound. Perhaps the kid had a stomach virus, or a kidney infection. In talking to the uncle, it seems he was under some stress. I just don’t know, but it feels like something he carried with him, more than an abscess or debris peritonitis. Nothing shows in the latest films, but either way, he’s too weak to go in again to have a look-see. He’d never survive the round trip.”

Ariel felt a sickening electric rush run up her middle, that for just a moment she thought might make her throw up.

Brice began to walk away. “Well, what are you going to do now?” she asked him, wishing her voice had not sounded so needy.

Brice stopped, and turned to look at her. “You know that I learned to be a trauma surgeon as a Colonel in the army, right?”

She nodded, many of the best in that field started out the same way.

“I’m going to do the only thing I know to do for him. I have a friend over at Aldergrove in England. I think he’s a general now. I saved his kid’s life over in Iraq. He runs the military airlift command, or at least the army’s transports out of western England. Maybe he can find someone who can get his parents back in time.”

Brice walked away, as Ariel turned back to see the other doctors just disappearing behind the doors of the staff elevator. Walking in, she could see that Jane was standing with one hand on her eyes, and one hand holding Sam’s. At least he looked like he was sleeping well enough, although there was a lot more noise to his breathing. He was clutching an enormous girl bear, and although the makeup was gone, he still had the pink ribbon in his neatly brushed hair.

Rubbing Jane’s shoulders for a few moments, and reaching out to press the backs of her fingers to the awful bruise near his ear, Ariel watched him breathing for just a short time. Then, taking Jane by the arm she said, “Come on,” and pulled her along with her until she found an empty waiting room.

Jane just looked at her, with hollow sad eyes before she spoke. “I can’t do this again,” seemed to come from somewhere deep inside her.

“Jane, listen to me!” Ariel hoped this would sound better than she was feeling herself right then. “You have to push back. I know that this has been a bad few weeks, and that Sam is very special, but you have to push back.” She could see the tears welling up in her friend’s eyes. “It has been hard these last few weeks, and you have nothing to apologize for; but, he needs a good nurse right now more than a friend, and even though you’re hurting very badly, you’re still one of the best there is.”

Jane nodded, accepting the advice, and the criticism without comment.

Ariel just looked at the woman, feeling that she herself needed to find someplace to sit and cry for a while, too, and she didn’t even have the added burden of the little girl Jessica, whom she’d never even seen.

“Well?” she asked Jane, hoping that she was ready to pull herself together.

“He kept asking for his parents.” Jane began to sob now, tears spilling freely. “I told him that it wasn’t time for them to be here yet. The poor kid has no idea what day it is, so he didn’t really know I ... I lied.”

Ariel just held her friend tight. Sometimes that was all you could do, too…

 
 
 
 
 

Throughout the morning there was no real change. Then Ariel called, and found only that the couple who had been watching him had come in to see him, but that he never woke up. The women had apparently wanted to stay, but with her own hands bandaged, and the risk of infection ... She stopped calling, and tried to do a few critical things in her inbox. She was a good enough psychiatrist to know that she was waiting for the news, one-way or the other.

Around three that afternoon, she found herself on the second floor, drifting by the little chapel there. Although she genuinely loved the old Priest who looked after the patients and staff, she had not been in a church to pray since she was little girl. That was why she never actually decided to go in, but her hand pushed the door open anyway, and her body followed just the same.

Inside, she found Jane kneeling in a pew, with sister Mary sitting beside her and talking quietly. Ariel didn’t know the sister as well as the father, but like everyone else in the hospital, she just knew that the sister was an elderly nun who came in on Wednesdays to look after things on Father Owens’s day off. She was a nice old lady who didn’t move around much anymore, a very sweet and saintly woman.

Ariel had a thought it was better to turn and leave them in private. She knew that Sam was still holding his own for now, and that perhaps this was a better time for Jane to have quiet. She thought that all the way until the cool wood of the pew pressed into the backs of her legs.

“Doctor Shelley.” The sister greeted her in her perpetually kind way. Jane did not look up.

“Hello, Sister,” she said, as Jane blindly reached out and grasped her hand.

“Did you come for Jane, or did you come to pray for the little girl, too?” Sister Mary asked.

It was too much. The thought that she might have come for herself could hardly form in her tired mind. Ariel wanted to curse as she felt a tear roll down her cheek when the sister referred to ‘the little girl’. She should be stronger. “Not really sister, I wouldn’t know what to say,” she said flatly, feeling guilty to speak so to the gentle old woman.

Sister Mary nodded, then after a moment said, “Father is up with the girl now. The Aunt and Uncle asked for him. When he’s finished with the child, he said that he was going to come down to say a mass for him in about a half hour. If you’d like to stay, several of the sisters from the convent, and many friends from the staff are coming over pray for her too.”

Ariel nodded, not comforted by the news in the least - another tear falling now.

Sister Mary continued in the same soft kind voice. “I think you should know, that I believe that it’s just those times when you don’t know what to say, that God has to listen most closely to what we have inside our hearts. If you’d like, you can say what comes from there, and I’ll try to help you.”

Ariel felt the anguish rising up inside her like bile, and spreading the weakening sickness into her limbs. She was unsure if she could even get up now without either falling down or throwing up. Angrily wiping away yet another tear that had betrayed her by falling on her cheek, she looked back at the sister. Even though she could hear several people entering behind them, she no longer cared. “And say what, Sister? Am I the one who needs to tell God that one floor up from here a small beautiful child who never harmed anyone is fighting a losing battle for his life. A child who is thoughtful and funny, and sad and lonely, needs his help? Do I have to inform God, that because of some asshole murdering terrorists, he isn’t even going to have his family with him in the last few hours of a life so short it never even got to happen?”

Ariel could only stare in horror at the kindly old Nun. She was crying freely now, but she no longer cared about that either. “For the love of Christ, Sister. How closely does God have to listen to me, to know enough about the pain, and the confusion, and loneliness that SHE has endured? Doesn't he know that none of it is her fault, and it shouldn’t be offset by just a few miserable minutes of meager understanding; especially, if it had to be accompanied by crippling injuries and pain?”

The pleading note that had crept into her voice made her struggle to control her tone. “Tell me if you have a prayer for that, sister. Please. Tell me how to ask God, the all-knowing and all-loving father, to give that poor little broken creature what little life he has left to him in which to be happy. And, you ask, that his doctors and nurses, very fallible and tired people who have fought with everything they know, be given just a little more wisdom in this late hour.”

Ariel felt her body lean forward to rest her head on her hands next to Jane's. “Why do I have to ask him to please, please not take away this one small life before I’ve found some way of giving him the little peace and happiness that this beautiful creation of God deserves?”

Sister Mary looked back into the eyes of the many people standing there, before answering her. “You don’t have to, Dear, and he already knows.” Then, the sister painfully eased herself into a kneeling position, too, and asked, “Perhaps you girls remember this one? 'Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name ..."

 
 
 
 
 

The quiet hours of the morning are the worst. Even when you are hot, you can still feel the chill of the night in your bones. Sounds, in those hours either echo through the corridors in blaring discord, or die away in an unnatural hush. Inside, a person’s thoughts are louder than at any other time of the day.

The staff all went about their work. Those who most felt the pain looked at each other with little looks of question or answer; working with each other calmly and efficiently, but still unable to feel the breaking of each one’s individual solitude. Silence was their closest bond; all save for two, a kindly old priest long familiar with the quiet hours of the morning, and a woman for whom other people’s children were a poor substitute for the ones that she could not bear on her own.

That was how Ariel ran into the priest in the vending room. “Sister Mary tells me that I should probably let you take over the job of writing my Prayers and Sermons, Doctor Shelley,” Father said quietly over the hum and clank of the coffee machine.

“Please, Father. I’m sure God has more than enough to be mad at me about already.”

“Well know I that feeling, my child,” the old priest said sadly. “In fact, whenever I have a coffee out of this machine, it seems to me is like a little taste of my eternal reward for all my many failures.”

Ariel wanted to laugh, but she no longer had it in her. “If you truly deserve this coffee, Father, then I am going to have to stop talking to you.”

“Probably, True, Ariel, that’s probably true.” He shook his very sadly indeed, “But before you cast me off, perhaps there is something we could speak on, as a professional courtesy, our both being in the same business and all.”

“I’ve really no more to say to you than I did to Sister Mary, Father. No matter how detached you try to be, no matter how much you try to keep your heart from interfering so that your brain can do its job, there comes along someone like the little one upstairs, and all that goes out in one flush. There are half a dozen people in this hospital, father, and all trained and seasoned professionals, who are hurting too. Everyone feels like they’re losing a family member. I can only hope they don’t feel anywhere near as useless as I do right now ..., for Samantha’s sake.”

“Ariel, If you’re useless, it doesn’t say much for me, being in the same business, now does it?”

“I hope not,” she said with another almost smile, sipping the coffee in penance.

“Ariel, I’ve personally watched you pull a dozen people back from the brink. People who were ready to toss God's greatest gift away in their despair ... people who were so lost inside themselves that they didn't even recognize who they were. If only I had your half your record, I’d be a bishop and they’d replace this damned infernal machine,” he said, setting his own coffee aside after only the second small sip.

“What if I’ve helped a thousand, Father, would one more be too much to ask?” Her eyes had more of the little girl than the doctor in them.

“One more is always too much to ask, Ariel. But now, if you’re not keeping score, and you’re just asking for the one that’s right in front of you, then it never is. I myself have been asking all day.”

She nodded and sipped again, the hot bitter liquid scalding her throat and turning her stomach in a simply different way.

“Father, there is nothing I want more than to have someone like that little one up there for my own. I never can. I’d take him home in a second. I never will. I just hope it’s not too much to ask that I can give this one the one thing that he really needs to be happy.”

“Hope is a good start, Ariel. I’ve found that It’s a nice way to fill in all those little places in between the things that you know, and want, and dream.”

“Ugh! Enough hell on earth for one night!” she said, dropping the half-full cup into the trash.

The father waited a moment before continuing. “Those other two are up there with him now, Anderson and Brice; they are trying some new potion, they tell me. They may also try to wean him off the more powerful analgesics, whatever that means. Would you like to go up and see?”

Ariel just shook her head.

“Perhaps then, you should get some sleep?”

Ariel just nodded, as she headed for the staff elevator.

“Have they heard from the parents?”

“No Father. No one knows where they are. One of the girls in the phone exchange called the Air Force Military Airlift Command. They actually laughed at her.”

The father shook his head. “Well, at least we know where to send that old coffee machine when God decides that we’ve suffered enough, and they finally send us the new one. Nothing is too good for our boys in uniform.”

“Oh, my God, Father,” she said, in a voice that was uniquely void of any emotion. “You might just be right about what awaits you. For what it’s worth though ... Amen.”

"Airmen," he answered.

All he could see was the top of her head as the elevator doors closed. As they did, it occurred to him to ask why we can accept our own suffering so much better than that of those we love. It was only one of a long list of questions for that particular day, a day that was not particularly different from far too many very much like it.

“Peace be with you, child. Know it or not, your palace in heaven will have many rooms for children…”

 
 
 
 
 

“I was wondering where you were,” Doctor Franklin, the hospital director, said to Brice as he walked into the room carrying two Styrofoam cups of hot tea. For his part, the surgeon never moved from the slouched position on the chair, his eyes covered by his hand to protect them from the brightness of the sun shining through the windows.

“You know, I already lost one good one up here. I was damned unhappy to find that the head of my number one trauma team had pulled himself out of the rotation again as well.”

Brice looked up at him, not understanding what the hell he was talking about after a long night of difficult and subtle choices.

Franklin did not hesitate. “That pretty young nurse, Jane. Her supervisor had to approve a leave and a transfer.”

Brice shook his head, his own disappointment at the news agreeing completely with the administrators.

“It’s not unexpected, really. I don’t know how they hold out as long as they do. Ariel told me that the fact that someone like Jane actually gets attached to the patients is what makes them respond so well to them; and, unfortunately, what makes her vulnerable to burnout and self-devaluation.”

Brice, nodded and spoke in a tired voice. “She’s a good one, and young. She’ll bounce back.”

“Of course she will.” Franklin said, as if Brice had irritated him by changing the subject. “You, on the other hand are older, if not wiser.”

Brice looked up at the man now, looking tired and disappointed. Franklin handed him the second cup of tea he carried, knowing that he liked that better than coffee, because it did not make his hands shake.

“And your point, Doctor Franklin?” Brice asked him, without any real rancor.

“Just this. I don’t like to come in and find out that my best surgeon has taken his team out of the rotation because he’s been up all night with a sick kid. You are smarter than that. We have good staff for this. You, on the other hand, could save three or four others today. There are less than a handful in this hospital about whom I can say that.”

Franklin paused to take a sip, as Brice did the same. “You are one of the top ten trauma surgeons in this country, but sometimes you can be the dumbest bright person I know.”

“The kid needed us, Franklin.” Brice put the tea down, and slumped back into the chair. “And I only took myself out. My team can still take cases if they are needed. Anthony is more than capable of leading the team. It’s the main reason I decided to step aside and let him take a day. He’s working out very well.” Brice paused long enough that Franklin thought he was finished when he spoke again in the same tired voice. “However, you are right about one thing… I am one of the top ten surgeons in this country, so go and fuck yourself, Franklin. Just don’t use any of my instruments; I need them to stay sterile.”

Franklin laughed at him. “I administer this hospital, and its cast of thousands, Doctor Brice. What the hell else do you imagine that I do to fill my mornings? And, I have my own instrument for that procedure, thank you, although it is far from sterile” He felt himself shake his head at the surgeon, even though he could not be seen. “Don’t forget, that I don’t need you to tell me that I never had a hope of becoming half the doctor you are, Brice. God knows, I can’t even remember how I got to be zookeeper around this place, but I know ...”

“You are damned good at it, you poor bastard.” Brice meant every word without malice.

“Thank you, I am. However, if you’ll please listen to someone older than you are, we have the only trauma center that makes plenty of money in the region, because we always, and I mean always, have a top team at the ready. We have the highest survival rate of any trauma unit between here and Afghanistan, and double most of them. One of the main reasons is that I let the doctors who are much better at medicine than I am deal with the patients, while I spend my days keeping the lawyers, businessmen, and trivialists off their backs. The second is that when I see them wasting themselves, or getting themselves into positions that can only cause them pain, I damned well point it out.”

“I was only trying to keep your survival rate up,” Brice said, putting a cloth over his eyes.

“Is that what you think?” Franklin asked. “I guess you are too tired for me to be subtle. Look Brice, if you hadn’t come in to take care of this girl last night, I’d be having a whole different conversation with you right now, but damn it, somewhere around one or two this morning, you should have sacked yourself out.” He reached over, and got the doctor a fresh clean cloth, and handed it to him. “Anderson has at least three Post-op residents, who are better at this than you are.”

Brice just nodded. Franklin knew that if he were less tired, or if they had been sitting on his back deck, Brice would be giving him hell about now; even though they’d both attack anyone who even suggested that Anderson’s staff wasn’t top notch.

“Please, now. Go and get yourself a light breakfast and a resident bedroom for at least six hours. Call Amy, and tell her that you are alive, and that I told you if you tried to drive yourself home, I threatened to sick nurse Mayhew from physical therapy on you.”

Brice heard Franklin move, but didn’t even look as he gathered his strength to do what his good friend, and good boss had told him. He'd already done everything else he could think of.

“Good morning.” Franklin said, in a gentle tone that Brice knew he save for patients, rather than staff. “Here, Sweetheart, I’ll get that for… What the heck? Why don’t you have water? Here, I’ll just get you some from the tap. It’s pretty good, since I had a purifier installed a few years back. Served water from the front garden hose to the board for a month till they approved it ... There you are.”

Brice pulled the cloth off of his eyes, to see Franklin standing at the bed, holding a cup to the girl’s lips.

“Not too fast, now. Dry throat, Hugh?”

“Th ... Thank you.” Sam whispered.

“You’re certainly welcome, Sweetheart.” Franklin said, as he leaned over to help adjust the pillow behind the girl's back, and help her roll over slightly to cuddle closer to the large white bear in her bed.

Brice stood up, and watched both doctor Franklin and Sam. He knew that Franklin was, contrary to his experience of hospital administration, an excellent and kindly doctor who would much prefer to be with his patients than in his office. Everyone who’d ever met the man did.

“Are you feeling better this morning?” Franklin asked as he first felt the child’s forehead with the backs of his fingers, and then began a quick and through check, palpating, checking bandages, and even reaching out to take Brice’s own stethoscope out of his pocket in order to take advantage of Sam lying on his side, and to listen carefully to his lungs at his back.

Sam just nodded, and rolled slightly and more fully onto his right side as doctor Franklin gently lifted first his badly injured leg onto the bear and a pillow, and then the IV tubes going into his arm. Lastly, he grasped the exposed toes and foot to check for the warm pink glow.

“I sure am glad to hear that,” Franklin continued to tuck the child in now. “Not only did you give everyone a scare around here, but you kept my doctors up all night, Samantha.”

At that moment, Nurse Kelly hurried into the room, obviously in response to the button, and obviously surprised to see her hospital director kneeling down to check the catheter reservoir, and compare the volume to the charts he held in his hand.

“Ah, Kelley. Good morning, to you,” Franklin said cheerily “Would you please be kind enough to call down, and let Jane know that I’ll authorize her the overtime to start her shift early? She has a patient up here that needs her as much as she needs him. Would you then get this patient some cold water, and call the kitchens and ask them if it wouldn’t be too much trouble to send up a small bowl of that creamed chicken soup that they served yesterday, which was so delicious.”

He handed Brice back his stethoscope. "Lastly, Nurse, call security and have this vagrant removed from this floor.”

Kelley was all smiles as she watched Sam turn to look at Doctor Brice where he had moved to stare down at Sam from beside the older doctor.

“HI, Samantha.” Brice said softly. “Do you even remember me?”

The child frowned slightly. Slowly Sam held his arm, tubes and all, as Doctor Brice quickly leaned down close to the child. Sam used his hand to cover the lower part of Brice’s face for a moment or two. “You’re the Doctor who told me you’d do your best,” Sam said with the slightest of smiles.

“You remember that?” Brice said in wonder. “That’s right, Sam. That was me.”

“How did you do?” Sam asked softly.

“I think we did just fine, Sam.” Brice said, now holding the child’s hand. “I think we did just fine.”

Sam closed his eyes, and nodded his head slightly with sigh of gladness at being off is back. “Are my mom and dad here?”

Franklin answered for them all. “Not quite yet, Sam, but they are on the plane right now. I had a friend of mine call this morning, and thanks to a friend of Doctor Brice’s, they caught a ride several hours a go. I asked one of the maintenance people to pick them up at the base as soon as they land, and he’ll bring them right here. It will just be a few more hours now, Sam, but they are definitely on their way.”

“I thought tomorrow would never come ...” Sam said softly, with another small sigh.

“Me too, Sam.” Doctor Brice answered for all of them quietly, “Me, too.”

 
 

Out in the hall, and on his way toward the elevators and then the fifth floor psychiatric suites, he called to Nurse Kelly’s back. “OH, and Miss Kelley. If you get a moment, you might also call Mrs. Tilley too, and let her know that after Sam’s had a couple more hours rest, she’d be more than welcome to come in and say hello.”

Kelly turned to stare at the man in astonishment. “How did you ... ?”

“I know everything,” he said, stepping backward into the elevator, on his way to tell Ariel that he’d already arranged for her relief and that she was on her way to a bed of her own. As the doors closed, he could see Kelly still staring at him. “Make sure you pass that along as well, Miss Kelley.”

 
 
 
 
 

It was late afternoon now. Fortunately most of the scary stuff had been removed from the room. Along with a visit from Tilley, several nurses had changed, washed, fed, and generally made Sam as comfortable as humanly possible. He was sleeping now, comfortably on his side, tucked around an absurdly large white bear.

That was what his mother saw as she quietly rushed into the room; the fear of what she might see brushing her past anyone and everyone who might have given her any news of the child’s status and well-being. The father, only a moment behind her, almost ran into her back, as she stood half way between the door and the bed, staring down at the child resting there.

For several moments, the father thought they’d barged into the wrong room; but when he took his wife’s arm to move her, she simply stood staring down at the child.

Looking down for himself, he could see that the little girl sleeping there, in a pink nightgown, and with a pink bow in her hair, and even a touch of makeup on her lips and eyes, well she looked like a little angel, but he wanted to find…

“Sam?” his wife said, moving not away, but toward the bed. “Sam, It’s Mummy.” His wife’s voice was completely choked off then, as she gently lifted the child’s head, and wrapped her arm around his back, and kissed his face.

“Moth..? MOM!” Sam tried to move, but she held him in place as his father came to the bedside to stare down at the child in amazement. “Daddy?” Sam asked from somewhere under his quietly sobbing mother.

“I’m right here, Sam. I’m here too,” he told his child, as he took the small reaching hand, complete with pink nails and a pretty floral scent.

 
 
 
 

Sue stood, stared back at the two male doctors and a nurse, while the staff psychiatrist finished explaining. “... and, it’s as simple as that. As we tried to tell you over the phone, Sam kind of took over that part of his treatment himself. I can only tell you what I told him, very briefly. Right now is a time for recovery. Later on, Sam, your husband, and you will all have to face some pretty monumental decisions on where we go from here. In the interim, however, I think it best to follow Sam’s lead in what seems to make him so happy.

Sue glanced back, and could see Sam sitting up almost straight in his nightgown, a big bow on his head. His hair had been brushed to a pretty lustrous shine, the little makeup someone had applied to his eyes and lips, giving him that big-eyed innocent beauty that tends to melt the hearts of even the most stolid adult in the face of a pretty happy child. From the clothes, to the makeup, to the oversized bear that Sam was hugging in his lap with both arms, it appeared to be a normal, happy, pretty little girl in the bed.

Sam was definitely happy. Even though she could tell that he was in pain, he seemed even more so than at any time she could remember in the last three or four years; As Sam laughed and talked to his father in an animated fashion, and listened in wide eyed wonder as his father told Sam how they’d been forced to travel on an Air Force tanker plane to finally get home. Only at one point, when she’d helped him sit up, and he caught her looking him over critically, did the old Sam return.

“Are you mad at me Mom?” he’d asked in that little voice, almost causing her heart to seize in her chest. While her husband cleared his throat behind her several times, while she had taken his small face in her hands, “Listen to me, Sam. I still can’t remember when the last time I was ever mad at you ...” She swallowed hard then, and said it. “I just can’t get over how pretty you look today.”

The smile that slowly spread all over her child’s face seemed brighter than the morning sun.

Turning back to the doctors “He’s always done this, you know.”

Ariel just nodded, as she’d already explained that she had spent a lot of time talking with Sam about it.

“I always told him that he could talk to me about it, but somehow he seemed to prefer to go about things on his own. It made him happy, I knew ...”

Ariel didn’t feel the need to resort to euphemisms. “I’m sure you did your best, Sue. To tell you honestly, you did far better than most. Still, it would have been better if you’d both opened up and talked. Sam was too scared that you might ask him to stop, and he didn’t want to face the choice of either losing the one thing that made him feel good occasionally, or the thought of hurting you both by not doing what you asked. He loves you very much. The good news is that Sam is still very young. There is plenty of time to work this all out for the best. Nothing has been lost, and a lot has been gained.”

Sue nodded to the woman, grateful for the reassurance. She turned to Doctor Brice. “I Don’t know how we can ever thank you ... and your staff.” She nodded slightly toward the young nurse. She’d only had to watch for a matter of moments to know that both she and the doctor had stepped in to provide Sam the love, and motherly tenderness that he’d so desperately needed.

Oddly, the thought went through Brice’s mind that if she’d seen him last week, he would have responded completely differently. Perhaps even a few hours ago, when he’d called his wife and told her that he did indeed believe that it was a good time to start a family of their own.

“That really had less to do with me than it did with Sam,” he said simply.

“I don’t believe that in the least, Doctor Brice,” she said, hugging his neck for the second time since they’d met that afternoon.

“Well, Sam did all the hard stuff, really. There was no doubt that he was very seriously injured, but I think I can speak for everyone when I say that you don’t need to dwell on anything so scary. I was confident in Sam the whole time.” Fortunately, she was hugging him, so she couldn’t see the look of outright astonishment from the other members of the staff.

Sue let go of the doctor when she felt Ariel’s hands on her shoulders, turning her toward the bed. “Well in that case.” Doctor Shelly said, proudly, “I'd like to introduce you to a very sweet young lady named Samantha. Samantha, this is your mother.”

Both Samantha and her mother were giggling when Sue reached out her hand and said. “I have waited for such a long time to meet you, Sweetheart.”

 
 
 
 
 

Post:

“Would you like to redo your room, Samantha?” Sue asked as she pushed her daughter's wheelchair through the lobby. They were accompanied by a nurse, and an older Police sergeant who was also pushing a little trolley filled with Samantha’s flowers, and stuffed animals, and other assorted items that had collected in her room.

“That would be nice,” she said, smiling up at her mother.

“You know too, Honey, I was thinking that you’re not stuck with the name ‘Samantha’ just because you started out with the name ‘Sam’.”

Samantha thought about that for just a moment, before she answered a little more slowly than usual. “I know, Mother, but I kind of like the name Samantha. It’s sort of what I’ve always called myself.”

“Really?” Her mother smiled down at her.

"Yes. All I ever really wanted was to hear you call me that, too. It's so much nicer that way.” Samantha's smile left no doubt in her mother's mind, and thus she was forever more.

Fin

Sarah Lynn Morgan
 
 
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