Veronica, July 2005
"Bunny" Sam's croaky voice filtered into my sleep, I slowly opened my eyes and it took a moment for them to adjust to my surroundings, machines beeping, the sound of footsteps continuously walking by and the uncomfortable, vinyl chair that I fell asleep in only a few hours before. I move my head and searing pain runs down my neck but I don't bring attention to it, Sam's pain is far more worse than mine.
"How do you feel?" I ask him, my hand still in his, neither of us wanting to let go. In the morning light his bruising looks much worse, the deep purplish hue on the right side of his face has settled in and I can see now that his cheek is swollen beneath the cut. There's an IV drip, attached to his left arm, which I saw a nurse change throughout the night.
"Hazy, like I'm dreaming this." He explains, his eyes looking around the room as if trying to figure out where he is. "You're my soulmate Bunny, you believe in that don't you?"
"Being with you opened me up to believing in that my Bear, you're my soulmate, you complete me." I tell him, tears pin pricking my eyes. When I thought I lost him it was like a part of me had been ripped away. The corners of his mouth lift slightly into a weak smile.
"Alex died." He says, surprising me, does he remember what happened in the underground station? Did he see Alex die?
"How did you know?" I ask
"Lucas told me, he said there was a bomb explosion at the underground and it killed Alex." He explains. Lucas relayed the news of Alex's death to me but surely he had no way of telling Sam, it was almost near impossible for me to even get to see Sam last night, it was only because of Nick fighting for me that I was considered but Lucas wouldn't be able to reach Sam.
"When did he tell you this?" I ask him, confused by what he's saying.
"In 2020, I called him because I was looking for you, he told me we became friends again at Alex's funeral, he also said I broke his nose for cheating on you." He tells me as if all of this happened. The doctor last night told me he was heavily sedated, this has to be a dream he had when he was out of it but to him it feels so real and I don't want to take that away from him. "Lucas wants to apologise to you, for how he treated you. Please let him, you deserve that apology."
"Lucas apologised to me back when we were in high school, it's all water under the bridge." I tell him and he gives me that weak smile again, as if satisfied. I run my hand through his thick hair, its filled with dust and small bits of debris, giving his dark brown stands a greying look. "Tell me more about 2020."
"I didn't like it there, you weren't my girl, you were so closed off and didn't believe in love at all, like how you were when you first came back and Bridget didn't even stay by your side after the accident, she just left you." He closes his eyes as he recalls what happened and suddenly it all starts to make sense to me, it wasn't a dream at all.
"Was that the day that I crashed my car?" I ask him, realising where he went to.
"Yes baby, you cut your head and needed stitches." He tells me. I never really gave a second thought to what happened after the accident but I'm happy to hear I walked away with only a cut to the head.
There's a knock on the opened door and I look over to see the same doctor from last night, her hair is thrown up into a messy bun and I can see the bags under her eyes.
