Descent, part 2

Evelyn died of liver failure, the result of her daily drinking. Eric couldn't reconcile himself to the unfairness of it. Had it been his mother that had died Eric would not have felt the slightest prick of grief. Sam wasn't like him, in fact she was nothing like him. Sam had no capacity for hate, she had develop no feelings of resentment toward her mother for the quality of their relationship. She had spent the years since her father died waiting and hoping for change, which, when it finally came, was cruelly taken away from her forever. Her mother's death left Sam broken, and Eric terrified. For days he never left her side and when she slept he stayed awake and watched over her, often crying softly in the dark. His worry didn't go unnoticed by Sam, and she felt terrible for what she was putting him through. She tried her best to at least appear as if she was improving but even that was more than she was capable of. She was drowning in her grief, and she couldn't put Eric through the torture of waiting indefinitely for her to recover. Eric couldn't maintain his vigil forever, and when he fell asleep having stayed awake for three days straight, Sam acted.

Eric had only been asleep for less than two hours. When he woke up Sam wasn't next to him in bed, and he heard the faint sound of running water. He went out into the hallway and saw the bathroom door closed and immediately feared that Sam had done something to herself.

“Sam?” He knocked on the door and called, without receiving a response.

“SAM?” He called louder, this time banging on the door with his fist. Again there was no response, just the sound of running water.

“SAM?!!”

He tried to enter and discovered that the door was locked, sending a cold shiver throughout his body. Now convinced that Sam was in there and in trouble, Eric started kicking the door with all of his strength. He attacked the door relentlessly with his kicks until he succeeded in dislodging a hinge and could get a look inside, and what he saw caused him to attack the door with uncontrolled ferocity. He got inside the bathroom and wasted no time opening the shower door and pulling Sam out. She had slit her wrists and was unconscious. Eric knew that it was important he remain calm. He pulled the hand towel off the rail and tore it into two pieces and used them to tie off her wrists, then he removed his T-shirt and used it to tie her hands to the towel rail so the blood would run down her arms and away from the cuts. With Sam's wounds taken care of he ran to call an ambulance and then returned to sit beside Sam in the bathroom while he waited for the paramedics to arrive. Having been repressing his emotions for days, Eric broke down and cried in a way that he hadn't since the night when his mother had almost run him over. He had felt that Sam was slipping away from him and now he couldn't help but feel like he'd lost her, that if she managed to survive she was never going to be the same Sam who had made him feel love deeper than he had thought possible.