A conversation eight years in the making

Seized by panic, Sam stood in the doorway and watched her mother writhing on the floor in pain, unable to gather herself. She quickly snapped out of her paralysis and got on her knees next to her mother and asked her what was wrong.

“It’s my stomach, go and call an ambulance,” Evelyn struggled out, each word causing her excruciating pain.

Sam ran to do so. Her nerves were on edge but she was able to maintain her composure and give accurate details to the emergency services operator. She returned to the bathroom and sat on the floor next to her mother while they waited for the ambulance to arrive, feeling helpless and rapidly losing her grip. She looked at her mother lying on the floor in pain and, fearing that she was going to lose her mother like she'd lost her father, was overcome with regret over all of the years of silence between them.

After what seemed like eternity, the ambulance arrived. Sam let them into the house and stood back and watched while they got her mother onto a gurney and wheeled her out of the house to the ambulance. Alone in the house, Sam could no longer hold herself together and felt herself cracking apart. She was nearing the point at which her mental faculties would completely desert her when she remembered Eric telling her that as much as he hated them he had purchased a cell phone so that she could contact him if ever she needed him. Eric was fast asleep but when he heard the phone ringing he knew it was Sam and that it was something serious and he sprang up.

"Sam what is it?" He asked, panic stricken.

"My mom was sick, I had to call an ambulance for her and..."

She broke down crying and couldn’t go on talking. She held onto the phone and wailed into the mouthpiece feeling entirely engulfed.

“Sam, don’t worry, I’ll be right there!”

Eric scrambled out of bed and threw on the jeans and shoes that he'd worn to Sam's house the previous day. He ran out of the house without any concern for his parents wondering where he was going. When he walked to Sam's house it normally took him thirty minutes to get there, running the entire way there at full speed he arrived in just over ten minutes.

“SAM!” He burst into the house and yelled out.

Receiving no answer he set about frantically looking for her and found her in the first room he checked, the kitchen, where she was sitting on the floor against the wall with the phone dangling next to her, tears dripping listlessly down face. Sam was in a state of such deep distress that she didn't hear Eric calling her name. Only when he squatted down to check on her did she became aware of his presence. She threw her arms around him, wrapped them as tightly as she could, buried her head in his shoulder and let everything out. For Eric, Sam's outpouring was heartbreaking. He started shedding tears of his own, unable to reconcile himself to the unfairness of Sam being made to feel so much hurt.

"Why are you crying?" Sam asked him when her crying subsided and she pulled away from him.

“Because it pains me to see you like this.”

Moved by his love for her, Sam took his face in her hands and kissed him.

“What happened? Why are you like this?” Eric asked her.

“This morning I heard my mother screaming,” she started, still tremulous from her first outpouring of tears, “when I went to check on her I found her lying on the bathroom floor with…with blood coming out of her mouth…”

Recounting the events of the morning, Sam suffered a second breakdown and needed to return to the refuge of Eric's arms. Drained and overwhelmed, Eric searched for the right words to say to her that would calm her but could come up with nothing better than empty reassurances.

“Don’t worry Sam, it’ll be alright.”

“What if it’s not? What if I lose her too like I lost my father?”

Now that he knew what was going through her mind, that she was terrified of being left all alone, Eric understood that he had to make sure Sam had no doubts about her importance to him.

“It’s too soon for you to be thinking like that. Listen, tonight we’ll go to the hospital to see her but until then it’s pointless you torturing yourself like this by focusing on the worst possible outcome.”

“Will you come with me?” She asked, so softly it was almost inaudible.

“Of course, I'll stay with you as long as you need me to,” he said, looking deeply into her eyes.

“I’m tired,” Sam mumbled, depleted by all of the drama.

“Then have a rest, I’ll be here when you wake up.”

“And the hospital?”

“I’ll phone them, and when you wake up I’ll have an answer for you about when we can go see her.”

Having Eric there with her, and trusting that he wouldn't leave, Sam fell asleep within moments of lowering her head onto his lap. Eric sat and stroked Sam's hair delicately while he used the time that she was asleep to contemplate the situation they found themselves in. If Sam's mother died it would destroy Sam, if she survived it would almost certainly mean the end of their precious Saturdays.

Gently, he lifted Sam's head up from his lap and slid out from underneath her. He laid her head down on the couch and went to her bedroom to retrieve the comforter off of her bed that he threw over her. He didn't want to think any more about the ramifications of Sam's mother's illness so he went into the music room to work on a nocturne that they had been composing but had been struggling to finish. He worked assiduously on the piece, taking breaks only to call the hospital and to check on Sam, who was sleeping deeply.

Sam slept for hours, and woke up when the sunlight was waning. She heard music and instantly recognized it as Chopin's Raindrop prelude. Eric's playing was near flawless. In the five short months that they had known each other he had far surpassed her. She sat in the lounge and listened to Eric playing until he was done, feeling a sense of pride at having been successful in getting him to realize his potential.

"How long was I asleep?" She asked Eric when he was done playing and came to the lounge to check on her.

"Close to seven hours."

"What have you been doing all this time?"

"I was practicing mostly, and I finished that nocturne that we've been working on."

"Really? How did it turn out?"

“I’ll play it for you when we get back.”

“We can go to the hospital?”

“Yeah, I kept calling and they said that we can visit her tonight.”

“When?”

“In about an hour. I phoned the bus depot, the next bus that stops at the hospital should be coming through here in about half an hour, so we should get moving.”

On the journey to the hospital Sam was apprehensive as she grew increasingly fearful of what condition she was going to find her mother in when they got to the hospital. Eric sensed her apprehension, and kept a reassuring arm around her shoulders for the duration of the trip. At the hospital Sam's apprehension grew to dread and Eric had to talk her out of going home without seeing her mother. He walked her slowly to her mother's room and, once there, the sight of her mother sleeping peacefully had the effect of dissipating all of Sam's anxiety.

“She’s sleeping,” she whispered to Eric, his hands on her shoulders steadying her.

“So wake her up,” Eric whispered back.

“I can’t do that.”

“Sure you can.”

“But with all she’s been through maybe she wants a long rest. Yeah, I think we should go…”

Just as Sam turned to head for the door she heard her mother shifting in her bed.

“Sam, is that you?” Evelyn asked soporifically.

“Yeah mom, it’s me,” Sam answered, walking over to her mother's bedside.

Reeling from the unexpected sight of her daughter in her hospital room, it took Evelyn a moment to notice that there were in fact two people in the room.

“And who’s this?” She asked Sam.

“This is Eric, my, err…boyfriend.”

Sam felt strange referring to Eric as her boyfriend. She’d never done it before and now that she had the word sounded inadequate for describing what he was to her.

“Your boyfriend?” Evelyn asked, stunned.

“Yes.”

“You have a boyfriend?”

“Yes.”

Evelyn needed a few seconds to digest the news that her introverted daughter had a boyfriend.

“Eric, hi, nice to meet you,” she said to him with an outstretched hand after she’d recovered from her bewilderment.

Eric stepped forward and shook Evelyn’s proffered hand and reciprocated her ‘nice to meet you’ with an amiable smile. Like Sam the situation had him feeling shy and uneasy, not only because of the existence of their relationship coming to light but also because of how beautiful Evelyn was.

“How long have you two been seeing each other?” Evelyn asked, returning her attention to Sam.

“About five months,” Sam answered guiltily.

“Five months! How is that possible?!”

“On Saturdays when you go to work Eric and I spend the day together at our house.”

Evelyn regarded her daughter and noticed a glow about her that she was seeing for the first time. Her daughter had gone through something special, she had fallen in love, and for five months she had been oblivious to it. She realized how invisible her daughter had been to her, that she had been invisible to her for years, her marvelous daughter who did nothing wrong and every day did her best for the both of them. Evelyn felt sick with herself for having ignored Sam for so long and couldn't stop herself from crying at the realization of the fact that her daughter had grown up while she wasn't looking. Sam, unsure as to what had provoked her mother's reaction, did the only thing she could think to do and sat on the bed next to her and held her. Feeling increasingly like an intruder, Eric quietly slipped out of the room.

Sam and her mother spoke in the room for well over an hour. Sam explained to her mother what she and Eric did on Saturdays to assuage her fears of them doing things that were untoward, and Evelyn, believing that her daughter was mature enough to hear the truth, told her the big secret that she'd been keeping from her, that her father had been cheating on her and that the woman that he'd been cheating on her with had been with him in the car and had also been killed in the accident.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Sam asked, beset by a multitude of emotions ranging from anger to disbelief.

"Because it would've hurt you, I couldn't do that to you."

"How long did you know?"

"Months."

"And you said nothing?" Sam asked, to which Evelyn shook her head.

Overwhelmed by sympathy for her mother, Sam broke down crying and needed her mother to hold her. The enormity of her mother's sacrifice was more than she could bear. Had her mother not chosen to keep this from her things could have been so different, she could have been there for her more and they wouldn't have lost the last eight years, precious time that they could never get back.

Sam recounted her conversation with her mother to Eric on the bus ride home, hoping that after hearing all of it Eric would be understanding when she told him that she couldn't run away with him like they'd talked about.

"I know, but when I leave I'm going to make sure that I'm still close to you, so there's nothing for you to worry about," Eric answered when she told him.

His answer was, in truth, exactly what she expected. She trusted that he would always do whatever he needed to do to ensure her happiness, and given that, Sam felt that it was appropriate for them to take the last remaining step. They returned home and sat down in the lounge to watch a movie. Thirty minutes into the movie, Sam started kissing Eric on his neck. It was uncharacteristic for her, and Eric, caught off guard, did nothing. He left her to continue until she maneuvered herself on top of him, which, for Sam, was too out of character for him to ignore.

"Sam, what are you doing?"

"I want to do this."

He understood what she was talking about, but couldn't shake the feeling that her behavior was the product of her unsettled state of mind.

"Why now?”

“Because I love you, and I want it to be with you.”

Trusting that Sam wasn't doing this for the wrong reasons, Eric assented with a nod of his head and they nervously made their way to Sam's bedroom. Sam laid down on the bed on her back, putting herself in Eric's hands. Terrified by the thought of hurting her, Eric proceeded with the utmost caution, stopping whenever Sam winced and continuing slower and gentler after being assured by her that she was okay.

After losing her virginity, Sam felt a rush of emotion and succumbed to tears.

"Are you okay?" Eric asked, fearing that she was in pain.

"I'm fine, today's just been a lot."

Eric took Sam in his arms and they fell asleep with him holding her. He stayed with Sam just like he promised he would. He walked to her house after school and went with her to visit her mother in the evenings. During this time Sam looked as happy as Eric had seen her. She was worried about her mother but their conversations were drawing them closer and at home she had Eric, who, despite the trouble it could cause him with his parents, refused to leave her alone. They made love every night for four nights, and couldn't imagine being any closer to each other. With Sam's mother knowing about them things were going to change, but Eric knew that he and Sam were going to be fine. What he didn't know, what he couldn't possibly imagine, was what would happen if Sam's mother were to die.