“You really must care about him.”
Sam glanced up from his seat at the bedside of his comatose counterpart, seeing Doctor Marshall poking a head into the room.
“Uh, yeah.” Sam gave a joyless smirk. “He’s my world.”
“How long were you two together?” asked the doctor. Sam’s eyes widened, and Doctor Marshall lifted his hands defensively. “Uh, you don’t need to answer that, if you’re uncomfortable.”
“Then I’d rather not,” Sam said, because he most certainly was made uncomfortable by that question.
Doctor Marshall nodded. “All right then, I won’t pry further. I came in to let you know that Sam’s family has arrived.”
Sam scrambled to his feet. “Really?”
He’d had no clue how long he’d been sitting here. If his family was driving all the way from Elk Ridge, Indiana, it would have taken them at least twelve hours to get here, and that was without breaks. He wouldn’t have expected them to arrive until late in the night. Had it really been that long?
The thought of seeing them — his father in particular — made his head swim. It was 1972, and if he recalled correctly, his father was going to die some time this year. But now, instead of Sam grieving his Dad, it was going to be the other way around.
Sam hurried to the reception, but found himself hesitating as he caught sight of his mother, his father, and his sister.
He’d put his foot in his mouth with them before, and now was hardly the time to be doing it again, not while they were in such vulnerable states of grief. He’d need to play it safe, play the role of the woman he appeared to be. It occurred to him that he needed more of a cover story than just claiming to know him very well.
So, who is Yolanda Bennett to Sam Beckett?
Sam thought back to Doctor Marshall’s question. He’d made the assumption that Yolanda and Sam were an item. Perhaps he could use that, as distasteful as it seemed to him.
Having tentatively made up his mind, he approached the three members of his family.
“H-hi,” he said, extending a hand to whoever would take it. “I’m Yolanda… Sam’s girlfriend.”
At the word, Sam felt a shiver in his spine. His life was just too strange sometimes.
John Beckett looked Sam up and down for a moment, before accepting the handshake.
“Girlfriend?” he asked with surprise. “My boy never mentioned such a thing…”
He wheezed, causing Sam’s muscles to tense up, and thoughts of his Dad’s coronary arteries constricted with plaque flashed through his mind.
“Y-yeah, I guess we hadn’t made it official just yet.” Lying like this to his loved ones was much, much harder than he’d hoped.
He nodded to his mother, and moved his hand in her direction. “Missus Beckett, it’s lovely to meet you.”
Thelma Beckett took his hand in both of hers. “Thank you for keeping him company while we were coming here…” she said, visibly holding back tears.
Really, I was waiting for you three.
He finally locked eyes with his little sister, Katie. She was fifteen, and the innocence from the last time he’d seen her was gone — and for good reason, now that she was effectively an only child.
“You must be Katie,” he said, offering her a sad smile. “I’m so sorry.”
Katie attempted a polite smile, but it quivered and dropped. “Where is he?” she choked out, before beginning to sob. Sam’s heart broke as she buried her face in her mother’s shoulder.
Sam gestured to the corridor from which he’d entered. “This way.”
* * *
Sam hung back as his family members crowded around the other Sam’s bed. All he wanted to do was hug each of them and tell them he was okay, but that would have been a lie.
Doctor Marshall was standing beside him near the door, watching the scene. Sam could tell his professional distance was faltering, and it was because he’d met Sam multiple times by this point. The 19-year-old was not an MD yet, but he was studying medicine. And there were few MIT staff that didn’t have some awareness of the genius teen who was already preparing a PhD-level thesis in Quantum Physics. News of this accident was surely making a ripple across campus.
“He was so bright. He had the world at his feet, that Sam Beckett. He could have done so much,” Doctor Marshall murmured.
Sam licked his lips. “Yes… he certainly could have.”
And he did. But now, all that’s been undone.
All three of his family members were crying, he realised. Even his Dad, which was not something that happened often.
Doctor Marshall gave Sam a pat on the back. “I’ll let you all say your goodbyes,” he said, before leaving the room.
Sam returned his attention to the sounds of sobbing, weeping, gasping.
Gasping?
Sam’s eyes darted to his father, who had stepped back from the bed, and was laden with a cold sweat. He seemed to be struggling to pull in air, but he was deliberately attempting to downplay what were clearly the symptoms of…
Sam dashed to his father. “Dad, you’re having a heart attack!”
John Beckett stared at him with a puzzled expression.
“Who are you callin’… agh,” he keeled over, clutching his chest, and squeezing his eyes shut. “Okay, you might be right about that.”
Sam led his father to an empty bed alongside his other self’s, before pushing the call button on the wall. He reached into his purse, pulling out the aspirin bottle he’d put in there that morning.
“Here, chew on these, and lie back,” he said, shaking a few into his palm.
John Beckett, for all his stubbornness, at least seemed to follow his directions this time, and popped the pills in his mouth, before laying flat on the bed, still gasping for air. Sam eyed a defibrillator among the equipment in the room, and wheeled it to the bed as Doctor Marshall appeared in the door.
“What’s happening?”
“Myocardial infarction,” Sam barked. “Hurry. I can’t let him die too. Not today.”
Sam glanced at his Dad, and noticed his eyes beginning to roll back.
“Dad… don’t leave me… not again,” he choked out, pressing his fingers against his father’s neck to feel for a pulse. “Oh god, he’s going into cardiac arrest.”
Doctor Marshall burst into action, not bothering to ask how Yolanda knew what to do in this situation. Working together, he and Sam were able to restart John Beckett’s heart, get him breathing, and stabilise him, dosing him with blood thinners. All the while, Katie and Thelma Beckett watched on in horror.
This only bought them time, of course.
“He needs bypass surgery,” Sam mumbled, realising that it was the only known treatment for this heart condition available in 1972, and it was still in its early stages. “But even his chances of making it out of the surgery are iffy at best.”
It was safe to say that this was most definitely the worst leap of Sam’s career. And it had started out so innocently.
“Miss Bennett, are you a nurse…?” asked Doctor Marshall, who was staring at him with wide eyes.
Sam glanced back, not sure he had it in him to keep pretending. “I’ve studied medicine,” he said truthfully.
“The moment I saw you look at Sam’s chart… the look you got, your understanding. I wondered about it.” He placed a reassuring hand on Sam’s arm. “You saved this man’s life today. I think Sam would be grateful.”
Sam is feeling a lot of things right now. Grateful? Not so sure about that one.