X-Delivered: at request of mdb on zipper X-SMAP-Received-From: outside Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 01:01:53 -0400 (EDT) From: Ann Marie Tajuddin To: ql-archive@cisco.com, patten@earth.ast.smith.edu Subject: path 9 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Ann Marie Tajuddin Off the Beaten Path 9 "Off the Beaten Path" pt. IX May, 1988 Nant, NC Sam took a step back, uncertainty asserting itself into every pore of the situation. The stakes had just been raised, and he would have liked nothing more than to have the option of folding. "Oh, Al, I'm not so sure I can... I mean, how could I possibly make your situation any worse than it already is on _purpose_? I couldn't..." Al sighed and stood up as well. "I don't know what to tell you, but I do know things could have gotten even more miserable for me if you _hadn't_ shown up." "You could have pulled yourself out," Sam protested desperately. "We were real close to divorce, Sam. Please don't let that happen." He took a step forward. "Please." Sam looked carefully at him. "What else aren't you telling me?" he asked, not really certain he wanted to know the answer. "Nothing. I think that maybe-" "Al!" Sam interrupted. "What is it?" "Can't you ever let anything go?" he asked, waving his right hand around in front of him. "Nothing as important as you," Sam replied matter-of-factly. Al made a face. "Don't get sappy," he commanded. "I'm not." Sam had the air of having stated the obvious. They stared at each other for another minute and then Al rolled his eyes and sat back down. "I had a dream the other night," he said, so quietly that Sam had to move closer to hear. Sam rested his hands on the back of the chair. "I don't get it," he said after a moment. Al raised his eyes. "As in, the kind I'm probably having right now across town." Sam's face fell. "Al..." Al got back up and traced an oval pattern around the room as he walked, paying little mind to the furniture. Sam watched him pass straight through both beds. "I just don''t know if I can handle this a third time, Sam. The first time, Beth had to practically give up her life to...take care of my problems." "You probably don't give yourself enough credit," Sam pointed out. "Let's face it, I was a mess," Al muttered in disgust. "I think you're forgetting that helping you through that wasn't necessarily something Beth _had_ to do. She wanted to do it. That's what it means to be in love." Al didn''t look at him, but continued as if Sam hadn't even spoken. "Then, the second time, it almost destroyed our marriage. And now... I just don''t think I can take it again." "Did you tell Beth?" "She knows," Al confirmed. "Did she blame you?" Sam asked suddenly. Al stopped in mid-pace. "No!" He looked taken aback. "Did she get angry?" he said levelly. "No." "Did she seem discouraged?" Al eyed his partner curiously, wondering where this line of questioning was going. "No..." Sam smiled. "Then I''d say yu'll be just fine. Wouln't you?" ^----^----^----^----^ June, 2000 Stallions Gate, NM Al sat behind his desk, eyes closed, lights off. His conversation with Sam had been _hard_. Dredging up all those memories, all those feelings, had been almost as difficult as when the dream had forced him to do the same thing. He didn't like to think of his actions now as hiding out, exactly, but he didn't feel in the mood for company. In the stillness, he actually began to feel ashamed - ashamed that he'd almost let Eve die because he was so scared of losing Sam. In retrospect, had Al needed to choose between Sam and one of his girls, as much as he cared about Sam, there would have been no question. He hadn't been thinking all that clearly at the time, but that was no excuse. Then Beth had mentioned Justin to him. There was someone he hadn't thought of in a long time. It was a time in his life he hadn't wanted to think of at all, but this leap forced it on him. ^Al rushed through the hallways, barely seeing the blur of people as they passed by, hardly noticing when he bumped an intern. They'd been trying to call him for hours, they said, and they were still trying to find Beth. He'd been pulled out of a meeting to come down to the hospital to see his oldest daughter. Marina had always been "Daddy's Little Girl". Julia and he got along splendidly, Meg wanted to follow in Beth's footsteps, and Emma was purely mama's daughter, but Marina was his treasure. Whenever the girls wanted something out of him, she was the one they sent to ask. She looked the most like him, too: long, dark curls, large, deep eyes, small form. She was a very strong-willed individual. She rarely complained and hardly ever got upset. In fact, the one manner in which she was _least_ like him was her incredible level of patience. That, she got from her mother. She was undoubtedly the mother hen type. And what she lacked in natural ability, she made up for in pure determination. So when Al rounded the corner and saw her lying in the bed, an IV taped to her arm, bruises on her face, and tears in her eyes, it was all he could do to remain standing. Without stopping to think, Al raced to her side, sat on the edge of the bed, and leaned over to gather her into his arms. She started sobbing and the sheer terror he could feel from her made his heart break. She seemed suddenly so small and fragile, a complete opposite from how she normally was. She was 13, but she may as well have still been a little baby to Al. When he finally pried himself away from her, he remained by her side, stroking her hair and face and doing his best to offer as much reassurance as he could. He held her hands in his as the doctors told him it could be months before she would walk again, if ever. They had wanted to tell him in private, but he couldn't bear to leave her and he said they were always completely honest with their children and she'd find out anyway. It was half way through the explanation when Beth appeared - they'd finally located her. She was calm and soft as she spoke to Marina, but Al could see the panic in her eyes that was only slightly beginning to abate. He held his daughter with his right hand, and kept a reassuring touch on her shoulder with his left. When Al asked what had happened, the nurse said she'd been hit by a car. She then produced a man - Justin Waters. Beth, standing closest to the stranger, shook his hand. When Al started to pull himself free to do the same, Justin just shook his head. "No need for handshakes, sir," he said in a lilting drawl. "You just stay with your daughter." Justin told them how the driver had missed seeing her come across the busy intersection as he was turning right (legally) on a red light. He had swerved in an attempt to avoid her, but caught her with the right front side of the car. Justin said he then called the hospital from a pay phone and administered first aid until the ambulance arrived. It was the nurse who informed the Calaviccis that he had saved her life with his first aid knowledge. It was also she who told them that a bystander said Justin had risked his own life, rushing out into the resulting confused tangle of traffic, to retrieve her. Justin merely denied he'd done anything spectacular. "Is there some way we can thank you?" Al asked him after the stories had been told and Marina was starting to drift off into sleep, partly induced by drugs her adrenaline level had kept from being effective earlier. "Something we can do?" "No, please, sir. Ma'am." He glanced at their daughter. "I had a little girl myself. She died of leukemia about four months ago." He looked back at Al and Beth, who were clenching each others' hands. "Just...hold onto her." "We will," Beth murmured, smiling sadly in apology for his loss as he turned to go. When they were finally left alone and Marina was asleep, Beth started crying in Al's arms. They never saw Justin Waters again.^ In the dark, Al laid his arm across the desk, his fingertips resting against a cool, smooth surface. He smiled, knowing it was the picture of him, Beth, and their children. The group of people he'd once told Eve Geller were not a family had proven him wrong. ^"Don't you have a family? "Not tonight." "What, do you rent them on the weekends?"^ And he was so glad they had. Al ran his fingers across the frame, closing his eyes even though he couldn't see anything anyway. He had heard what Justin told him, but he hadn't _listened_. He hadn't held onto them, not just for the crisis, but for every moment of his life. And he hadn't learned, until much, much later, the true value of a family. Al leaned back in his chair, barely registering when the door opened. "Al?" Beth called. "Don't turn on the light," he responded. "Well...are you okay?" Her silhouette hadn't moved. "I told Sam everything." She let the door close behind her and felt her way to the chair across from him and sat heavily in it. "Everything?" she echoed. He nodded, even though he knew she couldn't see it. "Don't you ever get tired of knowing exactly when I need you to show up so I can talk?" He knew she had to be smiling. "Sam and I, we know you, Al." "Don't you ever get tired of putting your life on hold for _me_?" Now he sounded troubled. "I love you," she replied simply. "I was just sitting here...thinking about when Marina had her accident. It was about that time that all the trouble began to start." "She knew it, too. It used to bother her, and...there was a time when she blamed herself." "I didn't realize that," he said quietly. Beth reached out, finding his hand and covering it with her own. "Why don't you give her a call? I'm sure she'd love to hear from you." He smiled. "I may do that." ^----^----^----^----^ May, 1988 Nant, NC Sam looked across the table at Eve. He'd spent his entire night thinking about Al and hadn't given a single thought to how he was going to get Eve to come to terms with the deaths of her mother and sister. Even worse, with all the time he'd invested into worrying about Al, he didn't have any clues in that direction, either. Eve hadn't said a lot to him that morning, as if she was trying to gauge his mood. He was so busy trying to do the same for her that neither of them were really getting anywhere. "Eve," Sam said finally. She looked up. "I'm not going to get all angry and yell at you," he informed her. She fingered her toast. "I know." "But we do need to talk." She shrank a little more inside of herself. "I know," she repeated. "Running away from things rarely accomplishes anything," he told her. "It just makes it worse. And everything you spend time fleeing builds up and up until it all crashes down on you." She nodded, staring at her hands. These were the consequences she'd said she didn't care about, and she'd endure it. But this homecoming wasn't what she'd expected it to be. Sam sighed heavily. "Are you listening to me, Eve?" "When can we go home?" "At this rate? It'll be a while," he muttered. "What?" "Nothing. Eve..." He leaned forward, folding his hands and resting them on the table. "I want you to pay close attention to what I'm saying. Listen very carefully. The situation we had, at home, was bad enough that you felt you had no other options than to leave. I'm certain the life you've been living for the pat two months wasn't one you'd want to go back to." *At least I had control,* she thought. *At least it was _my_ life.* "No," was what she said. "I'm sorry, Daddy." He cleared his throat. "It's not that simple. I know you're sorry. I know what you've been through... But we have to change things." "I don't - I don't understand." Sam pursed his lips. He'd never done anything as drastic as Eve, but where she'd lost a mother and a sister, he'd lost a father and (as he could still remember Tom's death, though only vaguely) a brother. "Eve, it's okay for things to change when someone you love dies. It's okay for _you_ to change. And...it's okay to mourn for them." Eve flinched and bent her head. Sam reached across the table and touched her arm. "It's also okay to go on without them." "You didn't!" she yelled suddenly, snapping her head up and standing up so violently that her chair was knocked to the floor. People began to watch. "Wha-what?" "You didn't go on living and you decided neither could I! You stopped the world when they died, but mine didn't have to stop, too!" She was enraged, trembling and exposed, but she didn't even seem to notice the looks she was getting. "Didn't you love them enough to make them proud of you?" He thought that was a curious statement to make, but, before he could say anything, she turned and ran from the room. *Running again,* Sam thought as he rose to his own feet. *It's all she knows how to do. And I'm sure she learned it from her father.* "Eve, wait! I'm sorry!" he called, but she refused to stop. He ran after. "We need to talk about these things! This is why..." He let his words trail off as she ran into the suffocating heat, vanishing from sight before he could tell where she'd gone. +Just a couple quick notes: 1.reminder that ^ represents flashbacks 2.sorry if some of the apostrophes or other stuff gets messed up. This chapter's formatting got really screwy and I can't tell what shows up as what anymore...hopefully it'll get better from here. 3.THANK YOU so much for your kind comments...I've had several and I'm very glad to hear that people are enjoying these stories like I enjoy writing them. The reason these parts are coming out kinda slow is b/c I've just hit full steam on my next story...at this rate, it may be ready to post by June, July LATEST. -again, thanks! amkt