Chapter 39
As Sam B was whisked away by an ambulance, the uninsured ‘Richie’ hung back at the house, washing the blood off his face and changing back into his hippie clothes.
The swelling had kicked in now, and Sam A’s face both looked and felt like it was about to pop. His vision was low through his swollen eyes, with the burgeoning bruises beginning to become apparent among a few cuts and abrasions. Other parts of his body were in pain too, but he and Sam B had inspected one another, and found nothing serious. Well, other than the broken bone.
He sat gingerly on Bobby’s couch feeling very sorry for himself.
“I found an ice pack,” Marsha announced as she emerged from the kitchen. She tossed the pack to Sam, who gratefully placed it against his face.
Alicia and Mike were next to make themselves known, carrying a med kit from the bus.
“We’ll get you fixed up right as rain, Al,” Alicia said as she began pulling out alcohol swabs, Steri-Strips, bandages, and other first aid supplies.
As he was showered with care, and Mike watched on with interest, Sam A found himself, once again, feeling lucky to have these people who cared about him so much, and he wished that his counterpart could feel just a bit of that.
Finally, as he was patched up—remarkably well for two non-medically trained people, though he verbally assisted them at times—Marsha took a seat beside him and looked at him expectantly.
He smiled at her sheepishly. “What?”
Marsha exchanged a look with Alicia, then returned her gaze to Sam.
“Sam told us what you were doing,” she said, her voice failing to betray an emotion. “Why would you try to take Richie to the war like that?”
Heh, he gets to use our real name, Sam thought with slight resentment, but shook off the feeling. He met Marsha’s eye as best he could through the swollen tissue of his face.
“At the time, it seemed like the best option,” he said, unsure of how much Sam B had told her about the situation. “If Bobby went to Vietnam today, he would have died.”
“So you took it upon yourself to take his place, and put Richie in danger… and you didn’t even tell us?” Sam could see Marsha was trying not to get angry with her star child saviour, but the mask was beginning to slip now.
Sam sighed. “Okay, it was a hasty decision,” he admitted, “but sometimes it’s hard to know the right way forward. It looked like… Sam… was about to get Bobby in trouble he never wanted. At the time, it seemed like the option that would cause the least harm and do the most good for everybody. That is, until he broke his wrist.”
“Sam didn’t seem to think it was the best option,” Marsha chided.
“Well, Sam was going to let Bobby go to jail, while his wife drank herself to death,” Sam A snapped. He took a moment to compose himself, breathing deeply.
“His wife?” Alicia piped up. “Is she here?”
“Yeah, Brenda’s here,” Sam said, nodding. “In the bedroom, sleeping off two and a half bottles of wine. She’s gonna have a bad day today.” He sighed, realising the convoluted mess that would have to be explained to her when she came to.
Alicia looked towards the hall, chuckling. “Oh, I know what that’s like.” She headed for the kitchen. “Looks like we got two patients to care for, then.”
As Sam turned to watch her go, he caught sight of Al standing in the corner, hand in hand with…
Verbena? His jaw dropped. He hadn’t seen her since… when? He couldn’t recall.
How long had they been standing there, watching this exchange? He gave them a puzzled look, though he figured with all the swelling, the expression might not have been understood.
As Al realised Sam had spotted them, he waved. “Hi, Sam. Sorry to lurk in the corner like this,” he said sheepishly. “You remember Doctor Beeks?”
Sam glanced at Marsha. “Uh, I gotta—”
“—Mothership time?” Marsha intuited. “I understand. Go commune with your people.”
Marsha, you are really something. With a grin, he stood and moved to the corner, where he leaned against the wall, still holding the ice pack against his cheek.
“Verbena, it’s good to see you,” he said quietly as he squinted at her slightly blurred form. “Well, as best I can, anyway… under the circumstances. What’s going on?”
Verbena and Al exchanged a look.
“She’s observing you in a professional context,” Al explained.
“Professional—? Ohh,” Sam snorted. “I get it. You want me and Mister Angry to make up, right?”
Verbena chuckled, though Sam didn’t hear her voice.
“Sorry Sam,” said Al, “I can only enable her audio if she’s got something mega important to say. Too much power.”
Sam nodded in understanding. “It’s alright.” He looked into her eyes and smiled warmly. “I don’t know if it’s possible, Verbena. We have a fundamental disagreement. But I appreciate the effort.”
Verbena returned his smile, and nodded. She said something to Al.
“She says she’ll do her best, and she hopes that swelling goes down soon,” he relayed. “Listen Sam, we’re gonna go check on your counterpart.”
“Okay, Al,” Sam said, and looked back at Verbena. “Thank you, Doctor Beeks. And I, uh, hope Sam B doesn’t bite your head off.” He tried to wink, but at Verbena’s reaction, it might have looked more like a pained wince.
As Al was entering the sequence to transport himself to Sam B, a hoot from the device gave him pause.
“Oh! Good timing. Sam, Richie’s agreed to turn himself in.”
“I understand,” Sam said. “When do you want me to do that?”
“Not just yet, Ziggy still thinks there might be things to do before you go getting locked up.”
Sam moved the ice pack to the other side of his face. “Alright, I’ll await the signal. I’ll see you later, Al. And you, Verbena. Thank you guys for being here for me. I mean it. For that matter, send Gooshie and Tina my thanks, too. You’ve all been working so hard on this one.”
He caught a flicker of sadness pass over Verbena’s face, but it disappeared as quickly as it came on.
“We will, Sam,” Al said. “You just hang in there and keep that ice up.”
And with that, they were gone.
* * *
Sam B felt kind of good. Of course, that was only because of the strong painkillers in his system filing down the hard edges of his normally prickly mood. He was in a hospital room, letting himself drift on the dreamy morphine haze. Probably a lot nicer than whatever Sam A had gone through, at any rate.
The hospital was some military place; he hadn’t been paying enough attention to see what it was called. They all seemed pretty busy, which he assumed was why he was alone now as staff rushed back and forth past the window in the door.
“Hey, how’s it going, Sam?” came Al’s voice. Sam turned his head to see both him and Verbena standing beside him.
He lifted his arm to give a thumbs up, but a surge of pain cutting through the drugs made him realise he was lifting the broken arm. The bone hadn’t yet been set—he was still waiting for someone to come in and do that job. They said they’d be a minute. For all Sam knew it could have been less than a minute so far, but it felt like longer. Well, as long as the morphine kept him from being in excruciating pain, he was alright.
“Hey buddy,” he said with a grin and a loose tip of his head. “Hi Verbena.” He blinked. “Wait a sec… Verbena? How come you’re here?”
For a second, he thought he might have leaped home, and his heart fluttered, until he saw the tight grip on Verbena’s hand Al had. No such luck; she was a hologram.
Al’s face screwed up. “Oh, great. I’ve had about enough of seeing you all drugged up,” he grumbled.
“I dunno what you expected,” Sam said, chuckling. “I’m in a lotta pain ya know. I mean, I was anyway.” He turned his head back to the ceiling, closing his eyes, already forgetting that Verbena was present. “So what’s the news?”
“Uh, well, Richie agreed to make the statement… so Bobby’s gonna be just fine. Richie’s gonna end up doing some time, though.”
“That’s a shame,” Sam mumbled.
“Anyway, we came here so Verbena could take a look at you, but I don’t think that’s gonna be much help when you’re like this…”
“Like what?”
“All hopped up on morphine.”
Sam shrugged. “What’s she need?”
“She just wants to understand you better. And the uh, nature of your conflict with Sam A.”
Sam burst into laughter at this, and found it difficult to calm himself enough to respond.
“Well, he did break my arm,” he said between giggles. “And he said he didn’t care if either of us lives or dies. He’s a real jerk, you know?”
The interaction was interrupted when the door opened and a woman in a nurse’s uniform came into the room.
“Morning, Mister Deleon,” she said brightly. “I’m Nurse Simon, and I’m here to set your bone, okay?”
“That was more than a minute,” Sam muttered. “They told me they’d be a minute.”
The nurse, a brunette who looked strangely familiar to Sam, moved to his side and began her work.
“I’m sorry about that,” she said as she prepared the plaster. “We’re a bit short staffed today. I’m normally not even in this wing of the hospital, and it’s technically my break.” She chuckled, gesturing to his arm. “I guess you’re the only one who gets a break around here, and you didn’t even want it, huh?”
As Sam snorted at the joke, it struck him that Al had not made a lewd remark about this beautiful nurse, and he looked over to the hologram, only to find his eyes wide and mouth open as he stared at her. And was that a trace of tears glistening in his eyes?
Even through the morphine, Sam realised that such a reaction was unusual, and as the nurse set his bone into place and began wrapping the plaster strips around it, he looked down at her ID badge.
“…Beth…”
Beth Simon? That didn’t sound right.
“That’s my name,” she confirmed. “Well, it’s good to see that black eye didn’t damage your vision. You get in a fight there, Mister Deleon?”
He definitely knew this woman. And so did Al.
“Yeah, I got in a fight,” Sam said. “But you should see the other guy.” He grinned up at her.
Beth met his eyes and blinked a couple of times.
“Have we met?” she asked, furrowing her brow as she searched his glazed eyes.
“No, Sam!” Al cried out. “You haven’t, okay?”
“Uh… no,” Sam said, trusting his friend.
“Huh,” Beth said, shaking her head. “I don’t know why, you just remind me of someone. Never mind.”
“Uh, well, I have an identical twin. Maybe you’ve met him.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“He, uh… he was the other guy,” Sam whispered, cupping his hand to her ear.
Beth raised an eyebrow. “Your twin brother broke your arm?”
Sam hitched a shoulder. “Well yeah, but before that, I was winning.” He winked at her, before leaning back and closing his eyes.
It wasn’t until Nurse Beth Simon was finishing up that he started to realise where he knew her from. It was a leap, a while back.
“Beth Cala…” he mumbled, as it finally came to him that this woman tending to his broken arm was, in fact, Al’s first wife. “…vicci…”
The details from the leap where he’d met her slowly ebbed into his mind. It was here in San Diego. Al had begged him to stop her from marrying some other guy while he was a POW. But he’d realised, almost too late, that it wasn’t what he’d been there to do.
And now, here she was, with a new surname. It had been—what, a year, maybe? She looked almost the same. Longer hair, but the face was unmistakable now that he recalled it.
Beth froze, looking him in the eye. “What did you just say…?”
“Sam, shut up!” Al said urgently. Sam flicked his gaze to the Observer, and realised he looked positively devastated to be here in her presence.
“Uh, look,” Sam said quickly. “I’m just babbling. You know, with the morphine. Don’t worry about anything that comes outta this mouth.” He finished with a crooked smile, playing up the drug high.
Beth, still looking a little disturbed, nodded slowly. “Uh, yeah. Yeah. Anyway… I’m all done here, so you just rest up and someone will be in later to check up on you.”
She hurried out of the room, giving him a curious look before she closed the door behind her.
It might have been the morphine, but Sam found tears rolling down his cheeks as he thought about Beth and her new husband.
“I could have done it,” he murmured. “I was there. I could have done something.” Through the blur of tears, he looked back to Al. “Sorry, Al.”
“Don’t worry about that, Sam,” he said. But Verbena leaned in to Al and said something inaudible to him. He looked at her, bewildered, before turning back to Sam. “There’ll be other chances to make a difference, Sam. If you keep on going.”
Keep on going?
“You’re the only guy who can, you know,” Al added, before tapping something on the handlink.
Verbena stepped towards Sam, smiling. “You’ve helped a hundred Als in your leaps, Sam. And maybe, some day, you’ll have another chance with Beth.”
Sam brushed away a tear. “Y-yeah. Maybe.”
He realised, with great surprise, that if anything could convince him to choose leaping over going home, that the promise of helping his best friend might be it.
“That feeling you have now,” Verbena continued, “the feeling of wanting to help Al. That’s where you and Sam A intersect. That’s where you can find common ground with him.”
Sam directed his gaze to Al, who looked a wreck.
Yeah. Maybe if he had to leap, if he could make things better for the people he loved, he could at least make it worthwhile that way. Even if he was still stuck in time.
“Thanks Verbena,” he said softly. As he laid back, falling into a renewed haze, he heard Verbena whisper something to Al, before they both left the Imaging Chamber.