Chapter 9
I was doing cartwheels inside my mind. He liked me? Slipping on penguin poop was worth it. He liked me! Sam Beckett actually fancied me. I wanted to shout from the rooftops — well, the top of the helicopter.
As soon as I could manage to get my bearings straight. How hard did I hit my head? Jeez.
I felt the chopper slowing and within a few minutes we were doing the opposite of what we had done on the island. I was strapped into the basket and lowered down. On the island there had been only penguins. Here there was a small reception committee waiting for me.
This time I closed my eyes and pretended to be unconscious out of sheer embarrassment.
I was shifted onto a gurney and then people were running, and I was swiftly taken down the corridors and into Daniel’s clinic.
I could hear several voices talking around me.
Everyone was worried about me. I wanted to shrivel up and die.
I was never going to let them know I had slipped on bird poop.
I needed to come up with a more dramatic story — maybe that I had tried to fight a leopard seal barehanded.
Daniel’s serious voice sounded close. “Viktor?”
Like a student caught red-handed, my eyes snapped open. “Da?”
A cheer went up all around me. Daniel was smiling down at me. “You’re such a pain in the butt, you know that?” he said, his stethoscope tracking down my chest.
“I know.” I grinned. My eyes sought out the man responsible for my sudden jubilant mood.
And there he was. Standing slightly off to the side. Sam.
As soon as our eyes met he flattened his lips and I knew he was fighting something big. Sam Beckett never showed emotions in front of anyone — hardly even in front of me — and I had put him through such anguish.
Daniel’s clinic was small and smelled of antiseptic and recycled air. He had me on the narrow bed closest to the door, a blood pressure cuff still velcroed around my upper arm.
“Follow my finger.” He moved it left, right, up, down. I tracked it without effort.
“Good. Any nausea?”
“No.”
“Headache?”
“Some. Back of the skull.”
“On a scale of one to ten.”
“Three. Maybe four.”
He made a note on his iPad. “Vision blurry at any point since you came in?”
“No.”
“Any confusion? Disorientation?”
“Daniel. I know who I am, I know where I am, and I know exactly how embarrassing this whole situation is.”
He huffed a short breath through his nose. “Lucid. Noted.” He pressed two fingers along the back of my skull and I hissed. “Sorry. The concussion is mild. You took a hard knock but everything checks out, Viktor. No lasting effects.”
I let out a slow breath.
“I want you back here in twenty-four hours.” He set the iPad down. “I’m starting an IV. Your core temp took a hit and you are dehydrated.”
Daniel glanced across the room at Sam. “I’m guessing you want to take him to your room while he recovers.”
A single nod.
The cannula went into the back of my left hand with a small sharp sting. The drip line ran clear. Daniel taped it down with two strips of medical tape and hung the bag on the hook above the bed.
I turned my head. Sam was in the chair against the opposite wall, forearms resting on his knees. He was not looking at anything in the room. He was looking at me. Our eyes met and held for a moment before I looked at the ceiling.
“Daniel.” I kept my voice even. “The pilot who flew in. How did you even manage to get a medevac out here that fast?”
Daniel was typing something on his iPad. He did not look up. “Rest now. That’s not your concern.”
“It is a little bit my concern. I was the one in the basket.”
“Viktor.” He set the iPad down and looked at me with the particular expression he reserved for patients who were pushing their luck. “Rest.”
I looked at him for another moment. He looked back, entirely unmoved. I let it go.
“Okay. But did you check Sam?”
“Going to do it now.”
The drip ran. Daniel moved around the clinic, running his tests on Sam, and logging away on his iPad. They spoke in low murmurs and it felt soothing to my ears.
“Hey.” I looked back at the ceiling. “Don’t use any of this for your NASA research. These are not accurate vitals.”
I heard a snort. “If you’re worried about that, you’re definitely fine.”
Finally I asked the question that I was too afraid to know the answer to. “Are they going to fire me?”
“Who?” Daniel asked at the same as Sam said, “No.”
I kept my eyes on the ceiling. “I didn’t finish the study. We barely got started. You know how hard it is to get funding…and I just blew it away.”
“No, you didn’t. You had a medical crisis. It happens,” Daniel appeared at my bedside.
“We will go back.” Sam came over to stand next to Daniel.
“We will?” I asked with hope in my voice.
He nodded. “Accidents happen. We are in Antarctica.”
“And you will come too?”
“Yes.” He said with no hesitation.
I blew a breath. If he was willing to do it again then I was okay. We were okay. I hadn’t destroyed our friendship and whatever else we had started…
The ceiling started to feel very far away.
“Daniel.” My voice came out slower than I intended. “Why am I getting sleepy again?”
He checked the drip line, checked my pupils with a small light. “Mild sedative. I added it to the drip. You need a few hours before I discharge you.”
“You could have told me.”
“You would have argued.”
I could not actually dispute that. The ceiling moved another inch further away.
***
A few hours later when I woke up, I was already in Sam’s room.
His room was set up for two like every room at Waypoint, even though he lived alone.
There was no window. I was glad for it. I was still a little sensitive to light, and the darkness was even and quiet.
Sam fussed over me and adjusted my blanket.
I grabbed his wrist before he could move away. “I’m good. I’m fine. Sit down. Can we talk?”
Sam studied my face. Whatever he found there, he seemed satisfied. He nodded and sat down next to me on the bed, his wrist still in my hand.
I studied him carefully in return. He had been under a lot of stress, and all the attention had been on me. Sam was the kind of man who wouldn’t complain even if his leg was broken.
“Are you okay?” I asked him. “And don’t even think of lying to me.”
“I’m fine.”
“Good,” I said, and then we fell into silence.
I didn’t know where to start. Even though I had heard his confession in the chopper, he didn’t know I had heard it. He had said he needed time to process — that was why he had stepped out of the tent. But then the whole fiasco happened, and I didn’t know if he had gotten enough time.
“Sam… what happened in the tent last night… do you regret it?”
His expression hardened. I could sense it was not directed at me. “No. Not one bit. You?”
“Me neither.” I blew a breath and looked up at the ceiling. “To be honest, I’ve been kind of fighting it. I don’t know if you had noticed, but I kind of had a crush on you.” I chuckled. “For a long, long, long time.”
“I… I wasn’t sure.” He looked down at his wrist where my thumb was tracing a circle over the thin skin. He kept his gaze down as he spoke haltingly. “I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable with my… misplaced feelings. I’m older than you—”
“You talk as if you are my grandpa or something.” I snorted. “You are older than me by a few years, and honestly that is hot as hell.”
Sam looked up at me, surprised.
“What? You didn’t know that?”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t it bother you that I’m not your age? I am this grumpy bastard. I’m not fun to be around…”
“Sam.” I raised my other hand to stop him.
“Whoever told you all of this, they were wrong, okay? I know your folks were never kind to you, but it looks like they filled your head with all kinds of garbage. If you weren’t fun to be around, then why would I stick with you all these years?
It’s not as if you held a gun to my head. ”
His expression softened. “I am sorry for leaving you alone.”
“Well, I’m sorry for slipping on bird pee.”
Sam’s mouth opened in surprise. Oh, shit. I wasn’t supposed to let that slip. But I had never been able to keep secrets which is why it was a fucking Oscar-worthy act that I had managed to keep my feelings bottled up so long.
“You… you slipped?”
I fidgeted. “Um, yeah.”
“On Guano gravy?”
My face split into a grin at the way he said it. “Yeah, it’s so embarrassing. Swear that you won’t tell anyone?”
He was still staring at me.
“Sam? Promise me! Can you imagine Grant’s reaction?” I groaned.
He started laughing quietly. His shoulders shook and I could feel the bed shaking. Ah, damn. See, now I couldn’t even feel bad about my pathetic accident. If I could make Sam laugh, I would do pretty much anything.
“You look so handsome when you laugh like this,” I murmured watching him, my heart full of so many feelings.
His eyes went wide as if I had said something shocking.
“Hmm, get used to it. I’ve a decade worth of shit I didn’t get to say.”
He ducked his head and ah, damn, a tint of pink spread on his cheekbones. Fuck, Sam was blushing? And I had caused this? Gah. I couldn’t get enough of this man.
“You…” He cleared his throat.
“I what?” I grinned.
“You look…”
I waited. Sam’s face turned red. Oh, I was going to so enjoy this.
“You should sleep now.” He tried to pull his hand out of my grasp. “The Doctor —”
“No! Complete your sentence. I look what?”
“You already know.”
“How would I know?” I replied innocently. “All these years I thought you were a monk or something. And then one fine day my mouth is suddenly full of your cock—”
Sam planted a hand on my mouth and we both burst out laughing.