Descent, part 1

When the phone rang at nine o'clock at night Eric and Sam knew that it was most likely the hospital and that it was most likely bad news. They were in bed at the time; Eric went to answer the phone and Sam followed close behind him. She didn't need to hear him say the words, the look on his face and the way he returned the phone to the receiver told her that the worst had come to pass, and she broke. Unreachable to Eric, he knelt by her side after she had put her hands to her head and collapsed to the floor in tears, hoping to be noticed by her and reached out to. She cried violently until she had nothing left to cry. Eric looked into her eyes and could see in them nothing that registered his presence. He could only wait and sat on the floor in front of her prepared to remain there for as long as it took for Sam to recover her senses. The look in her eyes frightened him. He sat and stared into them in search of the smallest flicker that would be a sign that Sam was still in there somewhere. Unable to stand just sitting and waiting, Eric took Sam's hand in his and began quietly calling out her name. Indifferent to the amount of time passing, the numbness in his legs or the heretofore ineffectuality of his efforts, he called out to her tirelessly until he felt a twitch in his hand and saw a glimmer of consciousness in her eyes. She moved toward him listlessly and put her arms around him. From the frailty of her Eric knew that it was only a small piece of her that he had managed to retrieve and that it was going to be a long time before he had her back in one piece.