Make Sure it's Forever - Part Two
Penelope Hill
He encouraged the man to sleep after that. The drink still had a tight hold on his metabolism, and the middle of the night was no time to start work on old wounds and festering anxieties. Samwise, the doctor, issued a bunch of mild painkillers, ordered his patient to rest and left him to do so; Sam, the friend, stretched out on the dark couch and barely slept a wink, his attention taut for any sign of distress or a resurgence of inner violence. Neither materialised, which he hoped was a good sign. Early in the morning he checked on his still-sleeping company and slipped out, mentally assembling a checklist for the days to come.
He went back to his penthouse, fed his fish, watered his plants, and packed a shoulder bag. Then he added a few extras to his medical kit, threw both items in the back of his car and hit the mall. He took less than an hour to collect all the things on his list and by nine-thirty was back at apartment twelve, using the door key he’d found tossed away among the debris on the living room table.
Al was awake and waiting for him, an angry, tense look on his face. He’d thrown on a pair of jeans but done little else to face the world; his chin was unshaven, and his eyes were bloodshot. He looked like hell and he was pacing up and down like a caged tiger. His head jerked around as Sam manoeuvred in through the door, having dropped most of his purchases into the kitchen as he passed.
"You locked me in," Al growled, without preliminaries or greeting. "Never lock me in, you hear? Don’t you trust me, Sam?" The last was laced with bitter irony, every word an angry strike. Sam shrugged.
"You, I trust," he said mildly, placing his remaining bags on the table. "The drink - no way. Al - I’m trying to help you, remember? You’ve been pouring that poison down your throat so long, it’s making your decisions, not you."
"I need a drink," the man insisted, stepping closer and giving his company a belligerent stare.
"No, you don’t," Sam shot back, equally determined. Their eyes met, but it was Calavicci who turned away first.
"Damn you, Beckett," he decided with a sigh, throwing himself onto the couch. "How about a cigar?"
"Just as bad," his doctor noted with a small grin. He dipped into the paper bag he’d brought with him and extracted a single metal tube. "Havanas, right? Hand-rolled by Cuban women, and all that? Breakfast first, though. You eat - then you smoke."
"I’m not hungry," Al announced, deliberately not looking at his company.
"So starve," Sam shrugged. "It’ll just make everything feel worse, that’s all." He paused and looked at his patient with sudden concern. "You got stomach ache? Ulcers? Feel nauseated?"
"Yes, no, yes," the man answered irritably. "I need a drink."
"Nope." Sam dropped to his knees beside the couch, his manner all business. "What you need is treatment. Vitamins - a decent diet, rest, support - "
"Oh, go to hell," Al groaned, grabbing at a cushion and hiding under it.
"Not without you, Tomcat." Sam’s voice was gentle, his intonation firm. He reached out and untangled the undamaged arm from the cushion, taking his patient’s pulse with professional determination. Alonzo pushed the padding away and stared at him with puzzled intensity.
"Why do you call me that?" he demanded, offering no protest as Sam reached for the damaged arm and began to unwrap his careful bandage.
"Because," Samwise smiled, "it suits you." Alley cat by nature, F14 pilot by choice ... What else could I call him ...? "This might hurt."
It did. Al winced as the bandage came away with its crust of blood, then winced again as he lifted his head and saw the extent of the damage. "Jeezus," he breathed, and looked away, decidedly shaken. "Did I ...? I guess I did, didn’t I?"
"Yup." Sam was deliberately matter-of-fact about it, trying not to show his own reaction to the savage pattern of cuts and tears. "Clench your fist, will you? Tight as you can."
His patient did so, drawing a sharp breath of pain as wounded muscle protested at the demand. Sam laid his own hand in the reflexively uncurled palm. "Again," he commanded gently. There was a moment of hesitation, and then Al closed his hand around the firmness of his doctor’s fingers, not a rapid clench, but a slow, careful movement that studied each complaint of pain before it pushed past it to complete its task. The fingers closed and tightened, applying pressure to the hand they enclosed; Sam turned his head from the study of the damaged arm to catch the look in his patient’s eyes. A determined look, driven by self-anger and laced with an awareness of pain. The look of a man who knew how to follow through - no matter what it might cost himself. "That’s enough," Sam decided. The pressure relaxed immediately, its perpetrator gasping a little for breath. "There’s no apparent damage to the major nerves, anyway. You’ve got a good grip, you know that?"
"Good enough to pull an F14 out of a five-gee dive," Al growled, the words inexplicably bitter. "Forget it," he added savagely as Sam turned to ask the obvious question. The tone of the words and the sudden ice in the speaker’s eyes were enough to halt the threatened query. The question could wait. The damaged flesh could not.
He lathered a layer of antiseptic salve over his stitchwork and replaced the dirty bandage with a clean one; the man watched him work with sullen patience, deliberately repressing the inevitable reactions to the stirrings of pain the doctor could not avoid. It was like treating a stone wall, nothing showing, nothing said; just those eyes, intense and unsettling, fixed on his face. He finished the work and laid the injured arm carefully across its owner’s stomach, resisting the temptation to caress the silk-brushed skin as he did so. One wrong touch now and he could kiss goodbye to all the progress he may have made - or maybe not, he told himself with an inner wince. Al looked at the line of clean white bandage and chewed distractedly at his lower lip.
"You’re good, kid. I’ll give you that." The words were resentful, tinged with bitterness, although Sam was well aware that neither emotion was directed at him. "What makes you think I won’t just cut my throat the next time?"
"Because there won’t be a next time," Sam answered firmly, getting to his feet. "Will there?"
"I don’t know," Al admitted, still staring at his arm. "The jury’s still out on that one, I guess." He closed his eyes, leaning back into the support of the couch where he shuddered involuntarily. "What day is it?"
"Saturday," Sam replied crisply. "Want me to check your appointment book?"
"Very funny." The growl was not amused. Al lifted himself up on his good arm to glare at his company. "Why are you doing this?" he demanded, his face clouding over with confusion and anxiety. "What the hell gives you the right to come in here, without any kind of invitation, and take charge of my life? Run out of pet projects, kid? Decided to write a paper on ex-astronauts who can’t face life on the ground? You should stick to facts and physics, Sam. Physics don’t - don’t - " The words had been delivered in angry tones, but the final phrase got lost in a sudden grimace of distress. Alonzo jack-knifed over and retched with violence. There was very little for him to bring up, and he choked and coughed on what there was, spasmed by undirected pain. Sam stepped across and caught his shoulders, bracing him as the vehemence of the reaction threatened to tear him apart. Eventually he hung gasping in the supportive grip, each intake of breath becoming a fought-back sob.
"It’s okay," Sam offered gently, feeling the man under his hands trembling with reaction. "Let it out, Al. It’s just the poison. Let it go."
The dark-haired man began to weep in earnest, wrenching free of supportive arms and moving to huddle at the far end of the couch. "Leave me alone," he begged in wretched tones. "Just leave me alone ..."
Sam did just as he was asked, heading for the kitchen to collect a bucket and a cloth. He cleaned up without a word, while Al fought to suppress his misery and regain a measure of self-control. He had gathered himself into a tight ball, his arms wrapped around his knees and his head buried against them, while his body was racked by the intensity of his convulsions. Eventually he managed to quell the attack; he lifted red-rimmed eyes to stare defensively at the man who now stood watching him with studious attention.
"I suppose," he accused, "you think I’m pitiful, don’t you?"
"No." Sam shook his head, coming over to offer his patient the use of a damp cloth with which to clean his face. "I don’t. You’re sick, Tomcat. That’s all. The alcohol is a poison, and your need for it a disease. Not a weakness, not a failing, but a disease. And diseases can be cured." Most of them, anyway, he added to himself, conscious of Chelsea’s ghost still hovering at his elbow. Al quirked a small, ironic smile.
"That’s easy for you to say, kid. What if I don’t want this cure of yours? Have you thought about that?"
"Yes. I have. I don’t like what this poison has done to you, Al, and I seriously doubt that you do either. Maybe - maybe there is something that you just can’t face on your own. Maybe you have reason to hate yourself, and the world, and everyone in it - but I don’t believe that, and if it’s true, then I might decide to join you. Because you’re a survivor, Al Calavicci. Because you went through hell, and came out the other side when a great many others didn’t. Maybe that’s it, huh? ’Nam catching up on you when you least expected it? Whatever it is - you won’t have to face it alone. Not this time."
Al lowered his chin to his arms and stared at the sincerity written on his company’s face; then he sighed, a deep, soul-driven sigh that reached all the way to the depths and then some. "Kid," he said softly, "you don’t know half of what you’re talking about. You don’t want what I carry. Not even a piece of it. As for ’Nam - you weren’t there, so you won’t understand. And I’m glad for you . Because it would have taken your bright soul and shattered it into a zillion bits and pieces. Cut you to ribbons, inside and out. Me? I had a shield, or thought I had. Someone waiting. Depending on me to come home. Safe. Whole. Sane." His eyes closed and his face grew bleak beyond words. "She just couldn’t wait forever, kid. It happens. And you go on living, all on the outside. But inside - inside you get real brittle. All it takes is a few simple blows, a couple of setbacks, and all that bloodied glass is cracked forever ..." His voice tailed off, and the next breath he drew in was a slow shudder of pain. Sam clenched his fists in a silent sense of helplessness. He wanted - he wanted to reach out and take the man in his arms, to enfold him and comfort him, to hold him forever. But he knew that that was the last thing he could do right now. Maybe later. Maybe when there was trust instead of suspicion, when the need was all there was, and the right time came to be ...
"My sister died in ’Nam," he offered softly. "You’re right. I never understood why. Maybe I never will. But I want to try. We used to - to dream, you know? Make plans, promises, things we’d do when the future came? She came home without one. Don’t throw yours away, Al."
"It’s too late, kid." The voice was tired, resigned. "I chased all my dreams, and they were nothing but stardust under my wings. I have touched the rim of the starlight, and all that remains is dirt beneath my feet. Nowhere to go but down. I threw it all away ..."
Sam blinked, hearing the sudden flare of poetry in the words, the images it conjured in his head. I have touched the rim of the starlight ... Surely a man who could encompass such a thought was not entirely lost to despair?
"Tomcat," he said with tentative care. "All I have is dreams. And no solid earth to plant them in. I don’t know how to make them real. I don’t know where to begin, where to take them. Will you teach me? I’m walking this golden road, and it’s leading me nowhere. I need a navigator, Al. I need a pilot. Someone who has seen the stars and can show me how to follow them ..."
He let his words tail away, suddenly conscious of the plea he had placed in them, of the naked vulnerability he had laid bare. Alonzo was staring at him, a shipwreck of a man suddenly faced with a distant sail, his eyes shadowed and his expression wary. "Kid," his voice considered slowly. "You get me through this, and I’ll help you chart a course to the edge of the universe and back. If you’ve got the heart for it. If you can face what it’ll cost you. Because it will cost. It always does ..."
They let the moment slide, one man dragged away by a sense of physical misery, the other by a sense of practical need. Sam went back to consider breakfast, decided that his patient was unlikely to keep much down and settled on feeding him dry toast and glasses of Gatorade. Which wasn’t much of a breakfast, but met the immediate requirements to fight alcohol-induced dehydration and get something in his stomach. With the second glass - Al drank the first with reluctant grimaces - he issued the tablets he had prescribed. Painkillers, and an anxiolytic tranquilliser; a mild dose, just enough to take the edge off the man’s induced depression. It wasn’t a drug that Sam liked prescribing to anybody, but Calavicci needed help not just well-meaning gestures; the pills were effective in small, controlled doses and hopefully would not be needed for long. He didn’t even tell the man what they were - just insisted he take them, which he did. On his practically empty stomach they had an almost instant effect - which was to send him back to sleep, a state which smoothed a great many of the anxious lines from his face. Sam picked him up and put him back to bed, where he sat and watched him for a while, considering the things they both had said.
Al woke to face a late lunch - soup and crusty French bread, which he devoured with unexpected appetite, then proceeded to sulk, huddled into the bedclothes and refusing to answer when he was spoken to. Samwise left him to it, heading back to his apartment to collect some final things he thought he might need. He still locked the door behind him, although he winced as he did it. It had finally occurred to him just why Al didn’t like being locked in anywhere, and the thought made his skin crawl. Can’t pace in a tiger cage, the man had said, just before he collapsed. Not a simple metaphor but a stark truth. Sam recalled pictures of the things from old magazine articles; another curse of his photographic memory. Cramped cages, suspended above the ground, too low for a man to stand up in, too narrow for him to lie down ... It was odd to consider that a man who had endured that had gone on to even more cramped conditions; back to the cluttered cockpits of fighter planes, to the tight enclosed space of the shuttle’s interior, and even to the intimate embrace of a Hamilton Standard spacesuit. Of course, such things were designed to protect the men they enclosed, not contain them, and beyond their limits would have stretched endless vistas that Sam could only try to imagine. The sensation to avoid, then, was not one of claustrophobic enclosure, but that of having no control over it ... of being locked in without choice. Which was part of the problem with the drink, of course. It had taken away Al’s choices, his sense of self-control ...
Oh god, Sam realised, just after he realised that. That’s exactly what I did to him, that night ... Only there had always been a choice that night - he could have slugged Sam one, told him to keep his hands to himself and chucked him out onto the sidewalk. And he hadn’t. Had, in fact, responded to the imposition of intimacy almost before he was aware of what was going on ... Sam stood in the centre of his living room and shook himself, hard. Dwelling on that was not going to help anybody. He’d made a promise. A firm promise. No matter what temptation hovered there, stirred him; that the sound of the man’s voice did uncomfortable things to the pit of his stomach, or that the feel of his skin was a pure pleasure to linger on ... He had promised. The man was a wreck, not an object of desire. He needed support from someone who’d not take advantage of his vulnerability, who’d hold him because he needed to be held and for no other motive. Or else he might as well tip the man back down the slope up which he was trying to haul him, and leave him there.
Chelsea’s ghost came to lean on his shoulder, and smiled a broad white smile.
Ain’t life a bitch, Sam-baby? She gives you what you think you want, and then tells you you can’t touch ...
The rest of Saturday came and went, a long drawn-out day in which Sam spent much of his time reading with one eye and watching his patient sleep with the other. He got through three of his pile of standby books, including the piece by an old tutor that he’d promised to comment on. He made his notes in Latin, just to keep his hand in, and then annotated the physics text with doodled diagrams in the margins. He made three mistakes - which proved he was distracted if nothing else - and went back to correct them with exaggerated care. If only the mistakes you made in life were as easy to correct as that, he thought, and made yet another jotting in his mental notebook concerning the nature of time and the limits with which it surrounded the universe.
By the time the evening had dragged around he was quietly relieved that it had passed by as easily as it had. He knew that his chosen task would not be so simple in the days yet to come. He woke a reluctant Commodore, fed him more soup, a handful of vitamins, and another dose of pills, then let him drift back to sleep under their influence. The last of the alcohol would be working through his system, and he’d probably have the hangover he didn’t have this day when the morning came.
He did, too. Sam woke early and worked through his regular exercise routine before wandering through to check on the occupant of the bedroom. Al woke, groaned, and proceeded to bury himself deep in the bedclothes, wincing when Sam opened the curtains to check on the progress of the day.
"Hot shower, I think," the doctor suggested brightly. His patient groaned even deeper and steadfastly refused to stir. Sam grinned, went back to the kitchen, and reappeared with a concoction he’d prepared for just such a contingency. "You drink it - then I leave you alone," he announced. Al thought about it, then grumpily put out his hand for the glass.
"You considered a career in torture, Sam?" he asked plaintively. Sam shook his head. He knew the man felt lousy, but wallowing in it was not a solution.
"You don’t think I’m enjoying this, surely?" he queried. Al appeared from under the covers, screwed up his eyes in the impact of the light, and glared at him.
"Yes," he accused, lifting the proffered cure-all and downing it in three determined gulps. Perhaps he had hopes of it coming straight up again, but it didn’t. "And there’s no need to shout. God - I need a drink ..."
"No," Sam corrected softly. "You don’t. Just a little more time. Give it an hour - and then catch that shower. You need that."
He made it an hour and a half, finally emerging to trail through his own living room like a wounded martyr in crumpled pyjamas, pausing halfway across to stare at the results of Sam’s occupation.
The room was now clean - almost sparklingly so - from the polished wood of the table to the gleam of the dark leather and the shine on the windows. All signs of bloodshed had been scrubbed from the pale carpet, which was probably cleaner now than it had been for a while. Books were piled high on the tabletop, along with a scatter of papers, and the side unit now supported a compact TV, which was currently showing a muted cartoon. Sam was immersed in a textbook, making notes with one hand, eating chips with the other, and still managing to watch the TV as he did so. It was all clearly too much for the hungover Italian. He groaned, shook his head and headed for the hall; then he paused and looked back.
"Do I still have a clean robe in the bathroom?" he asked suspiciously. Sam glanced up and nodded.
"Two," he announced. "I washed them both yesterday."
"Oh, good," Al acknowledged vaguely. "I thought for a minute I might have to walk back this way buck naked ..."
Now Sam looked up in alarm, only to find the man had vanished into the hall. He stared at the door with wary concern, then found himself chuckling softly. Al had been joking, a comprehension that did a lot to unknot some of the tension that had settled in his stomach. It was unknotted a lot more by a sudden vision of the man doing just as he’d threatened ... He took a deep breath and went back to his textbook, firmly reminding himself that there was no way he could insist that Al needed any help in the shower ...
Except that he had to check, and did so, pausing by the kitchen door and calling out a gentle reminder to try to keep the bandages dry if possible. The man in the bathroom gave a grunt of acknowledgement to that, then another when Sam enquired as to whether he wanted coffee or not. The scientist assumed the answer was consent, so he went and set up the percolator, spoon-feeding it with the supplies he’d bought the previous day.
Al reappeared some time later, his hair whorled like damp silk, his face shaved and his whole demeanour looking decidedly improved. He padded into the living room, wrapped in the heavier of the two robes, and eyed the steaming pot of coffee with a sigh. "I’ll get dressed," he decided, heading for the bedroom. Sam followed him.
"I need to check that bandage," he said at the circumspect look he received. Al relaxed immediately.
"Sorry, kid," he apologised, acknowledging his sudden suspicion and accepting it as simple paranoia. "I guess I’m a little on edge here."
"I guess so." Sam sat on the edge of the bed and slapped the space next to him with firm intent. "Hey - " he added, as the man hesitated. "I keep my promises, okay? Besides - who the hell do you think washed all that crap off you Friday night? The tooth fairy?"
Al winced, and so did Sam, suddenly seeing the unintended double meaning in the words. "I suppose not," the gravelled voice considered, eyeing his company with new, more focused, eyes. "I was pretty far gone, huh?"
"That’s putting it mildly," his doctor recalled with a wry snort. "You going to trust me, or what?"
The man sighed, then shrugged out of the robe, laying its folds over his lap as he sat and extended his arm. Sam reached for his medical bag, using the action to conceal his sudden disconcertion. This wasn’t the dead-weight drunk he’d manhandled and tended two nights before. Not even the red-eyed wreck he’d sat with the previous day. This was a man who might pass for healthy on the street, a surface return to his Tomcat, sleek and dangerous. Only his eyes betrayed him, haunted and anxious; that and the faint tremble of his hand as he extended it into his companion’s care. Sam’s own hand was trembling too, and he fought down his reaction with determined effort.
"Are you feeling better?" he asked, focusing on the careful work dictated by the treatment of the injury.
"I feel like hell, kid." Al watched him work, but still turned away as the bandage peeled back to reveal his handiwork. "Like I’ve been pinned out in the sun to dry, you know? Washed up and washed out. Burned up on reentry."
"It’ll pass," Sam assured him, knowing it wasn’t going to be that easy, but wanting to offer some comfort.
"Yeah?" The response was cynical, but the edge to it was cut from misery, not intended rejection. Besides, the man was no fool, and probably knew what he might still have to face.
"Yeah," Sam echoed softly. Al gave him a confused look.
"I don’t understand you, Sam," he said. "You come waltzing back into my life after so many years, pick me up, look me over, brush me down - and not one word of judgement, or accusation, or any of the things you could say. Would have every right to say. I don’t get it."
No, Sam thought to himself, concentrating on cleaning and dressing the puckered wounds in preference to meeting his patient’s eyes. Neither do I, Tomcat. But I did judge you. That first night. Said a couple of stupid things and nearly lost you because of them. I’ve no right to say anything just yet. I don’t know your story and I’ve no idea if I ever will.
"Would yelling at you help?" he asked, trying to make light of the issue.
"Maybe." Al wasn’t sure. "Make a change from me doing it. I always know what I’m going to say." Since Sam had finished his work he tipped himself back onto the bed and stared morosely at the ceiling. "Look at yourself, Calavicci. What kind of a man are you? You cheat on your women, you drive away your friends, and you can’t face up to your own failures ... Thought you were a hero once. Too busy looking at the sky to see the future sneaking up on your tail. Hell," he growled, "life ain’t better for looking at it through the bottom of a bottle, but it sure gives you a different excuse for feeling miserable ..."
Sam turned and looked at him with concern. There was a lot of history behind those embittered words, and most of it was tangled in even older wounds. Dealing with it was going to be like trying to unravel barbed wire from around an unexploded bomb. "Maybe you should try yelling at me," he suggested warily. "For a change."
The man tipped up his head and studied his company with a frown. "Nah," he decided after a moment, going back to his consideration of the ceiling. "Be like yelling at a puppy dog. All wounded innocence and eagerness to please ..." He chuckled, a reflexive expression of amusement, not genuine humour. "That’s you all over, isn’t it, Beckett? Rin-Tin-Tin, Lassie - and Samwise. Big, soulful eyes, and working miracles. So surprised when life turns out to be a crock of shit after all ... People are a lot like quarks, you know. Up, down, left, right, and altogether strange. Incomprehensible."
"But - kind of charming," Sam capped, without thinking. It was the wrong thing to say. The Commodore tensed and closed his eyes.
"Get outta here, kid," he growled. "Before I make you, okay?"
"Okay." Sam got to his feet and picked up his bag. "Don’t let your coffee get cold."
The only answer he got was a grunt.
The rest of the day was an uncomfortable one. Al threw on some clothes, and eventually came out for his coffee. Then he prowled with restless impatience, unable to settle to anything, plagued by his headache and the inevitable craving for the poison that consumed him. He paced, and he sat, and then he paced again, filling the room with cigar smoke as he did so. Sam endured it as best he could, not letting the man’s unsettlement irritate him, knowing it to be his state of mind and not a deliberate attempt to annoy. He tried conversation, but all he got was monosyllabic answers or reluctant grunts. The intake of nicotine probably helped, but it was no real substitute for the toxins the man’s body was demanding. Eventually, Al reached a kind of breaking point; he snatched up a jacket and headed for the door.
Sam was there before him, barring his passage with determination.
"Let me out, kid," Al demanded, a dangerous note in his voice. Sam shook his head and stood his ground.
"No way," he answered. "Are you going to give up that easily?"
"Let me out," the man repeated, frustration bubbling up into his eyes. "Or are you going to make me do it?"
Samwise set his stance and glared back, welcoming the flare of anger after the morning’s bleak despair. If he could just turn all that fire in the right direction ... "You want to try?" he asked, his voice soft and unarguable. "You really want to take me on, Calavicci?"
"Think I’m past it, kid?"
No, Tomcat. No way. But you’re in no fit state to fight, as you’re about to find out. And I’m a seventh Dan. I can take you down if I have to. Might have to, if you make me. Just don’t make me hurt you too much ...
The attack came with a growl of anger, the sound of confusion and rage. Al launched himself forward, intent on getting past his watchdog; Sam simply stepped sideways and threw him back into the room. The man’s own momentum carried him most of the way, but he picked himself up and charged in a second time. Again Sam chose a throw over a kick. He really didn’t want to hurt the man if he could avoid it. And Al needed to know just how determined his self-appointed guardian was prepared to be.
Alonzo tumbled into the couch, his eyes writ deep with savagery. He wasn’t pulling his punches, and he came back the third time with clear intention to strike, not just escape. This time Sam deflected the blows - which hadn’t been as uncoordinated as he was expecting them to be - and somehow managed to turn the action into a hold, pinning his attacker against the wall and keeping him there.
"Let me go," Al hissed, struggling like a hooked fish. He was strong - stronger than Sam had considered he might be - and he twisted and fought with undirected force. The younger man held on - held on with equal determination until the struggle became a squirm, and then finally a gasp of distress. "Sam," his captive pleaded, "please ..."
The pain in his voice hurt more than any of the impacts of his aggression.
"I’m sorry, Tomcat." Sam picked him up bodily and carried him over to the couch, dumping him down and holding him there until he stopped resisting the insistence. "You are going nowhere, until I say so, okay? And don’t look at me like that. Running out on this isn’t going to solve anything, right? Right?"
"Right," Al admitted softly, nursing his wounded arm and looking vaguely ashamed.
"Okay." Sam sat down on the arm of the couch and studied his erstwhile opponent. "Now - listen to me, will you? And stop listening to the alcohol. You don’t need it. You want to fight something? Fight that. Get angry - but for the right reasons, and the right causes. I want your promise - right now, and no arguments - that you will never take another drink, unless I say you can. When I’m sure that you can keep that promise - will keep that promise - then, and only then, will I let you out of here without an escort. I want to trust you, Al, I really do. But I can only do that if I’m sure that you and I are fighting on the same side."
Al slid down into the curve of the couch, watching the speaker with startled eyes. "I - I don’t know if I can ..." he admitted, the realisation worrying him. "Sam - I ..."
The scientist was taking no prisoners. No matter that the man’s expression was one of anxious terror; no matter that his mind darted this way and that in search of an easier avenue of escape. There were no easy answers to find and this was the only way to deal with it. "Promise me," he insisted, reaching down to clasp the man’s shoulder. Al’s look became a hunted one, transfixed, like a rabbit caught in a car headlight. "Promise me," Sam repeated, emphasising each word.
This had to work. Another might speak the words without meaning them, might seek to deceive both his protector and himself with lies and beguiling intentions; but Alonzo Calavicci was the kind of man who kept his promises, no matter what effort and pain it might cost. He’d promised himself he’d make it back from hell and had done so, where others had broken and fallen by the wayside. This promise was just as important, just as binding - and just as dependent on a faith and trust that there would be someone there for him. Someone who would have to be just as good at keeping their promises, or else the man would shatter entirely, without hope of recall.
"I - " Al made one last protest, held against the truth and fighting against its pain. Then he sighed, closed his eyes and surrendered to the conflict, finally recruited into his own war, the one he had been trying to avoid for far too long. "I promise, Sam," he whispered.
"What?" The insistence was necessary, although the question made its speaker flinch inside.
"I promise - " The man took a deep breath, crawled into the barbed wire of his life. "I promise - no more drink. No matter what. Not unless - unless you say so. Damn you, Sam!" The anger exploded outward with a painful cry. Al sat up, wrenching away from his companion’s grip. "That’s all I need, you crazy bastard. More guilt. More pressure. Why did you make me do that ...?"
"Because running away isn’t the solution," Sam told him softly. "Because you’re a survivor who needs to fight for something, and you’re tearing yourself apart trying to give in. You hate what you’re doing to yourself, and you know it."
Al let his shoulders slump, looking away, not wanting to meet the eyes that considered him with such understanding. "I’ve got nothing to fight for, kid," he said, with a resurgence of his earlier bitterness. "Nothing left to give, okay?" He lifted his undamaged arm and ran his hand over his eyes with weary resignation. "No dreams left, no causes to champion. I’m not worth a hill of shit. Just marking time and going through the motions ... Hell," he added, the sound of it like a moan of pain, "I can’t even walk past a crazy Samaritan who’s still wet behind the ears ..."
Sam suppressed a smile, hearing the echo of the man’s innate irrepressibility surface above the ocean of his despair. "Lassie here happens to be a master of Tae Kwan Do," he pointed out. "And I don’t believe you. You’ve got a lot to offer the world. Experience, a sharp mind, a sense of honour, determination - come on, Tomcat. If men like you give in, where’s the point in the rest of us reaching for anything? You made it all the way from hell to the stars. If I can make it half that distance, I’ll have done something to be proud of."
"You?" The distraught figure finally looked at his company. "You’re gonna break lightspeed without breaking a sweat. Sure, I made it. Empty achievement, Sam. Nothing left to show for it. A few memories, a few moments to haunt me forever ... but what then? An empty life, no-one to come home to, and ghosts, tormenting me ..." His eyes became intense, hollow with aching regret. "It should have been me, Sam. Not those kids. They had everything to live for. Their whole life ahead of them. All I have left is the past ..."
Sam stared at him, knowing he was facing part of the canker that ate at this man’s soul. Some event, some tragedy that had wounded his spirit and been left to fester. Had no-one cared? Or had he been hurt so badly that he had walked away from those who might have helped him then? Walked away ... walked away from his career, his life? He didn’t dare ask. Not then. Not yet. Alonzo was too fragile, too vulnerable to face the details of his own distress.
"Don’t leave out today, Al," he offered instead, echoing Chelsea’s advice because he finally understood it. "Today is the day to face, the day to savour. Because, in the end, today is the only day we have."
His patient - his company, his friend - gazed at him with unreadable intensity. After a moment he reached out his hand in a gesture of hesitant trust. "Help me, Sam," he requested wretchedly. "I - I don’t think I can make it on my own ..."
Sam reached back. Took that hesitant palm into his own and wrapped it with determined fingers. "Sure thing, Tomcat," he promised. Because without you, I’m not so sure that I can make it either ...
Monday morning was a pain. A real pain. Sam left his patient sleeping and charged into work, barely pausing to say good morning to anyone. He picked up the files he was supposed to be dealing with, bundled them into a case and headed back for the parking lot. He was intercepted by the Project Chief, a long streak of a man by the name of Commander Walker, whose record in the Navy was exemplary purely by dint of being totally unnoteworthy. Sam found himself eyeing the man and matching him to the one he had left behind on the estate. Walker, smart, uniformed and utterly by the book, hardly measured up at all.
"Ah, Beckett. There you are. Coming to the briefing this morning?"
"No," Sam answered, trying to move past him. "I have - other plans."
"Oh?" Walker sounded surprised. "I thought you made every briefing."
"Not this one." Sam wondered how he could get away without being impolite. Al, he realised, wouldn’t have bothered trying. He’d have told the fishface to hop it, and left.
"Well," the Commander said, "that does make it awkward. You see - I was rather hoping you’d speak to Doctor Drayson this morning. He has some sort of problem with the orbital data he’s been collecting ..."
"Already on it," Sam replied with relief. "I saw him Friday. And - " he added with inspiration, "I’m taking it up with the Commodore. He’s got the experience to back up the theoretics on this."
Walker blinked in surprise. "Commodore Calavicci? You’re sure about that, Doctor Beckett?"
"Of course." He made it sound like something he took for granted. "He is the only astronaut on the team. Unless you can think of someone better qualified?"
"Ah - " Walker was clearly thrown by his confidence. "No. I suppose not. I just didn’t think - the Commodore’s not an easy man to deal with, you know."
I noticed, Sam thought to himself. "I’ve heard that." He shrugged. "But Al and I go back a long way. We studied together at MIT."
"Oh." The Project Chief was thrown even further by this snippet of information. "I - wasn’t aware of that. I mean, you keep yourself to yourself so much ..."
A mistake I’m trying to correct, Commander. "I’ve been a little busy - working on my string theory and everything. But that’s been published, and - I’ve taken the time to look up some old friends."
"I see." Walker accepted that as explanation. "Well, if anyone can get through to Calavicci, it’ll be an old friend. Damn shame really."
"How do you mean?" Sam’s reaction was defensive. He’d seen no evidence that the Navy officer had tried getting ‘through’ to the man concerned.
Walker shrugged. "The whole business. The accident - his resignation ... Didn’t you know about that? Well - maybe not. But the enquiry cleared him, so he had no reason to ..." The Commander tailed off, perhaps realising that the scientist was looking at him with anxious intensity. "Look, Doctor Beckett. I’m not one to judge anyone unfairly, but - if Calavicci had had the guts to face all that shit, he’d probably be standing right where I am now. He lost it, that’s all. It happens. It’s not right, but it happens. Especially to men who went through what he did, back - you know where. But," he shrugged, "if you can’t cut the mustard, you don’t order beef, right?"
"Wrong," Sam answered tightly, keeping the level of his hostility under control with determined effort. The man’s callous dismissal of the situation took his breath away. As if explaining the problem also meant it had been addressed. Walker had judged his fellow officer, tried him, judged him, and sentenced him on the basis of it not being his place to deal with it. Shallow sympathy and nobody’s inclination to intervene explained a hell of a lot about Al’s current state of mind. Not that Samwise was any less guilty of that than anybody else, but at least he’d been prepared to admit it. And do something about it. "You are so wrong, Commander Walker." That man has more guts than you’d know what to do with. He should have said it out loud, but he had to work with this man, and he hated upsetting the applecart. He turned and walked away, heading for his car, wondering, as he did so, how he could possibly let a man like the Project Chief walk over him as often as he did, and yet be prepared to face up to what still awaited him back at the apartment.
I never really cared before now, he realised with inner bleakness. Al was right. I just put out my hands and let the golden apples fall into them. I never learned to fight for what I wanted. Never had to. The only things I ever got really mad about were the ones I couldn’t do anything about in the first place. Like Kate. Like Mom. Like Chelsea ...
He pulled himself to a halt beside his car and looked down at the face that was reflected in the wing mirror.
And now I’m nursing a wounded Tomcat who’s busy scalding himself in a fire I know nothing about ... You never start small, do you, Sam? Have to begin with the moon and go on from there. Time you took a long, hard look at where you’re going, kiddo ...
He smiled wryly at the unconscious echo of his refound friend’s turn of phrase. His reflection smiled back with easy charm.
Won’t work on him, Samwise Beckett. You’re the wrong shape, and the wrong sex, and you should never have put your hands anywhere near the cookie jar. Be grateful for what you get. He needs you. Just don’t go letting on how much you need him too ...
He stopped by the military office and asked for a set of transcripts to be pulled for him. Walker’s reference had set him thinking, and if there was one thing he was good at, it was thinking. His ability to pursue research wasn’t bad, either. He found what he was looking for in the fourth file they located on the records database, and thanked the clerk profusely for his assistance. He collected the papers off the printer and committed them to memory, intending to study them later. He knew he daren’t take them into the apartment, but he didn’t need to once he’d looked them over. They were set in his mind, carved in stone and photographic recall. He went over them in his head as he drove back to the estate, cross-referencing what they said in stark words with the bitter half-hints he already had.
It wasn’t an enjoyable drive.
It had been a bright morning over the midwest; a routine test flight handled, at the last minute, by one of the most experienced pilots on the team. The scheduled route and the scheduled pilot had been changed at the last minute by an unavoidable combination of circumstances. Calavicci, assigned command of the test group after the success of his second shuttle flight, had taken the matter into his own hands in preference to cancelling it. Three planes went up that day - two as planned; the chase plane, and Calavicci in the F14 that carried the testing gear and the experimental fly-by-wire control system. The third had been a two-seat trainer, sneaked into the sky by a pair of hot-headed trainees on a dare. Fate, and bad timing, had conspired to bring the three of them together in exactly the wrong combination. The pilot of the chase plane, filming the flight, had caught the whole thing. The trainer, jinking across the planned route, and the failure of the control system to respond in time. Wings practically clipped - may well have done, although the transcript seemed unwilling to commit to the fact. Calavicci, a veteran flyer, had cut the control system altogether, and somehow managed to pull his labouring plane out of its enforced dive barely a hundred feet from the desert floor. The trainee panicked.
Sam listened to the words he had seen on paper, hearing them spoken in the tones of command with which he was sure they had been delivered. A curt, forceful message, sent by a man who had surely had enough on his hands just saving his own skin. The experienced pilot had been enough on the ball to instruct the tumbling novice as to what he had to do, close enough to analyse the situation and advise accordingly. The advice was never taken. Thirty seconds later the trainer was a smattering of wreckage painted across empty desert.
And a day after that, Calavicci’s naval career was history.
He felt responsible, Sam comprehended bleakly. He’d authorised the change in flight plan, had pushed the test ahead, choosing to fly himself in preference to delaying the test schedule. He probably thought he should have avoided the near collision but for the sluggish system that had intervened between his skill and the response of the plane. The enquiry had cleared him of all blame - had, in fact, commended his reactions and his clear-headed behaviour - but by then the damage had been done. He’d saved his own life, but been forced to watch as two young men had taken their own. He’d achieved his dreams, had reached for the stars, and may already have been wondering why the only route left to him seemed to be down. But this - this was the one blow he could not take. It wasn’t a matter of guts - far from it, in fact, since submitting his resignation must have been one of the hardest decisions he had ever taken - but a question of angered guilt. Of too much of a sense of responsibility, of taking the weight of those young lives onto old shoulders because, while others forgave and commended his actions, he could not forgive himself.
"Oh, Tomcat," Sam murmured to himself as he pulled in through the gates of the estate. "All you needed was someone who believed in you. Someone to tell you it wasn’t your fault ..." But there had been no-one. His fourth marriage had ended well before the incident, for whatever reason that might have been, and the Navy had not fought to hold on to him, despite his record, his distinguished career. Perhaps he hadn’t let them fight, or perhaps those who might have done had assumed - like Walker - that he was no longer worth fighting for.
Or perhaps they had, but just hadn’t know how. They’d given him the place on StarBright, hadn’t they? Someone at NASA had insisted on it, along with a personal request from the Pentagon. They’d not let go of him entirely ... Work hadn’t been Al’s answer. Sam wondered what difference he might have made had he extended the simple hand of friendship that day at the vending machine. A big difference perhaps, but for his own guilt, and his expectations of rejection. Too caught up in myself again, Sam sighed, taking the steps up to the third floor two at a time, as usual. Chelsea’s ghost was waiting for him at the fire door.
Hey, Sam-baby. Nobody told you this was going to be easy ...
Al reacted with a nervous start when Samwise breezed in through the living room door. He was pacing again, barefoot and pale against the royal blue of his shirt. "Oh, it’s you, kid," he acknowledged, relaxing with an effort and trying to reassume his cloak of alley cat confidence. Sam wasn’t convinced for an instant. He dropped his armful of files on the table, then turned to consider his patient with concern.
"How are you feeling?" he asked, noting the unnatural brightness of the man’s eyes and the restless way he moved. His arms were folded defensively around himself, and his right hand was massaging nervously at the muscles of the arm that lay beneath it. Hard enough to hurt, by the look of the action.
"I’m okay." The answer was tight, too quickly given, too guarded. "I thought you’d gone to work."
"I had." Sam decided not to push matters overmuch. "But there was no need to stay in the office. Did you take those pills I left?"
"What pills?"
Samwise sighed and went to push open the bedroom door. Sure enough, the glass of water and the saucer with the pills and the note beneath it were still sitting exactly where he’d left them. He went in, scooped the pills off the saucer, and came out again, thrusting his cupped hand forward as he did so. "These pills. Don’t get stubborn on me, Al. You need these. Trust me." He forced a smile. "I’m a doctor."
"Yeah, right." Al snatched at the contents of his hand and downed them dry. "Among other things."
The smile became a little more genuine at that. "Feel up to some work?" Sam asked brightly. "Drayson’s wrestling with his orbital data, and I’d like your opinion on the figures. They don’t look right to me."
"You’d like my opinion?" Al sounded surprised - and complimented. "I guess I could take a look. Give me something to do, I suppose."
"Great. That’s the file, there. I’m still trying to solve this energy differential. Mind if I pick your brains over that, too?"
The Commodore actually laughed. "Sam," he said wryly, "you’re as transparent as a sheet of glass, you know that? Okay, kid - keep me occupied. I probably need to be ..."
They looked at both problems for most of the day, Sam somewhat delighted to find that - despite his distracted and restless state - Calavicci proved to be a shrewd and intelligent man to work with. Usually, Sam tended to pull his intellectual punches, having found that most of his colleagues had to struggle to keep up with his agile mind. Al was having none of that, and it was sheer pleasure to work with someone prepared to wrestle with off-the-wall ideas and conceptual challenges on no more than a moment’s notice. Sam always worked like that, his mind on three separate issues and a fourth part of him trying to cross-reference them with everything else he knew. His present company had a little difficulty in concentrating on any one thing for long, but the scientist’s butterfly approach was probably sufficiently stimulating for neither of them to notice it. Lunchtime came and went without recognition as they sketched equations off the paper and onto the tabletop. The afternoon skated by. Sam was in his element, finally reacting against a mind that - while perhaps nowhere near the level of genius he possessed - was perfectly willing, and able, to challenge him.
This is what I need, Samwise celebrated happily, absorbed in an unexpected intellectual heaven. He had worked with others - renowned scientists, learned men, and heavyweight intellectuals - who might have stretched him more, but few who’d added such experienced and practical insight to his polished theoretics. "Won’t work," was a common comment, offered with amusement and followed by a detailed reason why. Things Sam had never accounted for, practicalities and makeshift solutions, information garnered in the field, data accumulated over years of working with actualities: it was no wonder NASA and the Navy valued this man’s contributions. Sam just wondered at the turn of fate that had kept them from finding out for so long just how well they sparked off each other ...
It was beginning to grow dark when Al pushed himself away from the table with a distracted effort. "I need a break, kid," he explained, stubbing out the remains of his latest cigar in the ashtray and running a weary hand across the back of his neck. "I know you can do this for hours, but I need - " He broke off, correcting himself before Sam had a chance to do so. "A cup of coffee. Want one?"
"Sure." Sam bent back to his figures, barely watching as his friend walked toward the door. Perhaps he should have done so, but he was absorbed in the mechanics of solar wind effects against orbital decay corrections. He heard the kitchen door open, and scribbled down another set of quadratics, frowning over their solutions. Perhaps if he took account of the gravitational interactions ...
Something hit the floor with a terrific crash. Flatware shattered, and a man’s voice cried out in terror.
"Al!" Sam was out of his chair and through the door in seconds, cursing himself for having relaxed his guard. The kitchen door was open, and he paused briefly in the doorway to assess the situation.
The floor was slicked with water and broken cups; the entire contents of the draining board appeared to have been swept to one side, spilling containers of sugar and salt, spices and herbs across the worktops. The damage was nothing compared to the state of its perpetrator; Al was huddled in the corner of the room, his arms thrown protectively over his head and his whole body shaking with violent spasms.
"Go away," he was moaning, a desperate sound of pain. "Make them go away ..."
"Al?" Sam closed the distance between them with rapid steps. A cautious hand reached to the man’s shoulder simply made him flinch and shrink back into his refuge.
"Noooo ..." The sound of it hurt, a fearful, panicked note in what had, moments before, been perfectly rational tones.
"Al - " Sam insisted, steeling himself to take hold of rigid shoulders and pull the man toward him. Al resisted briefly, his eyes darting this way and that until they focused, with confused recognition, on the man he fought to avoid.
"Sam?" The speaking of his name was almost like a prayer, a spark of hope in the midst of sudden despair. The rigid resistance melted away, and Sam suddenly found himself cradling the shaking figure, holding him as he had wanted to hold him ever since this whole business had begun.
"It’s okay," he murmured, wrapping comforting arms around distraught shoulders. "Everything’s going to be okay ..."
Al’s skin was fevered, his eyes were bright and unfocused, and he could not stop shaking. He rested his head against his supporter’s shoulder and gulped for breath in panicked gasps.
"Help me, Sam," he begged, a request that turned his companion’s heart over. "Make them go away ..."
"Make who go away?" Sam asked softly, knowing the reason for the plea but not the specifics of what the man had thought he’d seen.
"The - the bugs. The maggots. They’re everywhere. Crawling ..."
Sam tightened his hold, feeling the tenseness that held his patient, the uncontrolled shivers that threatened to tear him apart. "They’re not real, Al," he offered gently. "They can’t hurt you."
But they could. Not the hallucinations, of course not, but the violent reaction, the metabolic overload that caused them. That was the danger now.
He lifted the man up, and Al clung to him, holding on with desperation as if he were the only thing that existed and to lose contact would be to lose hold on everything. Sam schooled the concern from his face and guided him back into the living room, feeling the violence of that first attack slowly subside.
"Breathe slow," he advised. "Take one breath at a time. That’s it. Come back to me, Al. Come on. You can do it. Just relax ..."
He lowered the man to the couch, reaching to bundle a cushion for his head. Unable to disentangle himself completely, he found himself kneeling on the floor, one arm still cradling the trembling figure, Al’s own hold tight and tense, just like his closed eyes. Oh god, Samwise thought with inner pain. I should have seen the signs.
"That’s it. Easy now. Just relax ..." He went on murmuring in reassuring tones, conveying calm as best he could. Inside he was shaking - with reaction, with apprehension. He’d relaxed his guard, had let his delight in the work overshadow his awareness of the situation - and the naked terror in that unexpected cry had cut him to the soul.
"Sam?" The question was a faint tremble of sound, a plea from the heart.
"I’m here."
"Don’t leave me, Sam. Don’t let me drown ..."
Sam reached to enfold the hand that groped for his, met the panic in distraught eyes. "Don’t worry, Tomcat," he promised firmly. "I won’t leave you. I promise. I’ll always be here when you need me."
Whatever it takes. I love you, Tomcat. And what a hell of a way to find that out ...
Continued in Part Three ...
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Disclaimer:This story has been written for love rather than profit and is not intended to violate any copyrights held by Donald P Bellasario, Bellasarius Productions, or any other holders of Quantum Leap trademarks or copyrights.
© 1994 by AAA Press. Written and reproduced by Penelope Hill. Artwork by Joan Jobson