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Date Posted: 17:42:55 03/05/01 Mon
Author: Lakota
Subject: Waiting for you - Chapter 18c

Waiting for You Chapter 18c

Note** There is a phenomenon of people who have been in combat and survived large casualties in their squads, divisions, etc. It is a feeling of guilt for having survived while others who have been friends died. In time most over come it, others never do completely.


What happens in this chapter is parallel in time to the previous chapter. I didn’t want to switch back and forth between the two locations where the stories are occurring simultaneously. As reference this chapter begins at approximately the same time as Mike and Carrie have made their New Year’s resolutions to no longer interfere with their siblings’ lives – choosing to let whatever is to be remain uninfluenced by them other than loving and supporting the parties involved.

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11:20 pm, Outdoor Terrace - 28th Floor of the Grand Hotel


Sami was surprised to hear the tone in Lucas’ voice. Though he was telling her to go away, rather than anger there was a weary, defeated quality to it. He continued to stare straight ahead never looking at her since she’d first let him know of her presence. She wanted to be angry with him for saying such a thing to her. He was giving her the excuse she needed to once and for all walk away from him – rationalizing that she would only be doing what he had asked. Her practical side told her to take the opportunity and be done with everything. But, there was something indefinable that made that impossible for her to do.

“Lucas…you’ve been out here awhile. Aren’t you getting a little chilly? You have had a fever recently.”

Sami began to walk toward Lucas, the soft rustling of her gown telling him of her approach. The closer she moved, the closer he moved to the brick retaining wall that came waist high to him and was the only thing between him and the edge of the twenty-eight story drop.

“Do you think you should get so close to the edge, Lucas?”

“It’s fine. I’ve jumped from an airplane that was higher up than this. You’re the one with the fear of heights, remember?”

Sami realized that it wasn’t the height that frightened her but the calm, empty tone of Lucas’ voice.

“Maybe, just to humor me you could step back a little………”

“You know, I’ve been standing here awhile thinking about tonight. Here I am in New York City……on New Year’s Eve……at the top of a ritzy hotel….listening and dancing to Tommy Dorsey’s Orchestra…...eating foods like caviar and oysters on the half shell……drinking champagne…….and sharing it with the most wonderful, beautiful girl I’ve wanted to be with again for so long. I’ve also noticed that even with the power cutback for the war effort, the city lights stretch out so far into the distance they almost seem to join the stars on the horizon…like, they’re all one.”

This was definitely not the Lucas Sami was used to. She felt her heartbeat increase the longer he talked on in a tone devoid of any emotion. She kept wishing Carrie or Mike would come looking for her – tell her what to do.

“Lucas, why don’t we go back downstairs and have some more food and champagne? We don’t want to miss bringing in the New Year.”

“I can’t go back there.”

“Of course you can. Here, take my hand and we’ll go back inside where it’s warm.”

Sami reached her hand out to Lucas though he refused to turn and see her gesture.

“I finally realized…everything is in its place…except me. I don’t belong here.”

Thinking that if she could keep him talking he might turn to her, she asked the obvious question.

“Where do you belong, Lucas?”

He stood continuing to look out across the Manhattan skyline before answering her with total conviction in every word.

“…at the bottom of the English Channel…with the rest of my crew.”

Of all the answers Sami might have thought Lucas would give her, this one had never crossed her mind. Stunned into silence momentarily, her mind raced trying to understand where all of this was coming from. She knew it wasn’t a ploy by Lucas for sympathy. He was completely convinced of what he was saying.

“I don’t understand, Lucas. Tell me what you mean.”

“It’s okay. I understand – that’s what matters.”

She tried taking another step toward him without the dress giving her away and was successful. She wanted to talk to him in a quieter voice, coaxing him if possible to tell her what had brought him to this belief.

“Please, tell me. I want to know why you feel this way.”

She saw him glance at her from his right peripheral vision momentarily. It made her feel some relief because she knew he was beginning to listen to her rather than speak only to the night before him.

“Sami, you don’t want to know, trust me. War isn’t the image John Wayne portrays on the movie screen. It isn’t all clean and neat when people die in combat.”

When a person knows someone as well as Sami had Lucas, there are defining moments when everything begins to come together piece by piece based on the littlest of hints. She knew she had begun to tap the source of that pained look she’d seen in his troubled eyes the moment he’d stepped down from the train on Wednesday. She knew whatever she said had to convince him she wouldn’t stop him from telling everything if he chose to.

“Eric said the same thing when he was home for Christmas. Late one night we sat downstairs and he told me some of what he’d seen. He couldn’t carry it around inside him any more. I listened to him……I’ll listen to you….no interruptions, I promise.”

Sami held her breath wondering if she’d persuaded Lucas of her sincerity. For what seemed an eternity Lucas remained stationary. A small gust of wind blew across the terrace ruffling his hair and seeming to release him from his trance. He began to walk toward the retaining wall once again. Sami wanted to scream or yell at him to stop, but no sound would come forth. He stopped and placed his left hand on the top of the wall looking over the edge at the busy streets that lay below. Sami’s shaking hands covered her mouth while she stood unable to look away from Lucas. He inhaled a deep breath of the cold night air and resume looking straight ahead of him.

“There are nine on a crew of a B-17 bomber. After basic training they sent me to Douglas, Arizona and within a week I was assigned to a crew.”

Sami softly exhaled her long-held breath and closed her eyes momentarily, thanking whoever was listening to her silent plea - getting Lucas to begin talking.

“When we finished there, we were sent to flight school in Utah and finally, they shipped us out to England. We spent nearly every minute together for months on end and became a family of brothers, almost. I am…….was…..one of the younger crew members. The captain was twenty-eight….the ‘old man’ we called him. Did you know I’m the only crewmember who wasn’t married? Two of the guys got hitched to English girls while we were there. I went to both weddings. The rest of the guys had wives in the States ……three of them had kids…..really little ones. The guys would pass around the new snapshots of them when they came in mail call.”

Sami could see Lucas begin to relax as his narrative began. Whatever he had carried around inside him had begun to surface. To stop him now would be cruel. She hoped no one would come out onto the terrace until Lucas had finished.

“During all the months of the night bombing runs, we were hit a quite few times but those amazing airplanes can withstand just about anything. We’d get back to the airfield in England, the ground crew would rivet metal patches over the bullet and flack holes and we’d be up flying within forty-eight hours. That first daylight mission over Dresden two weeks ago had us all a little apprehensive. We knew we were a pretty good-sized target for German fighters as well as ground artillery. We’d left the drop zone and were headed back across France to base when we got hit so hard the whole plane lurched. I saw the third engine feather with smoke coming out of it from where I sat at the back of the aircraft. I had the best view to assess the damage to the wing and engine. We began losing altitude and I started having trouble seeing out the window from all the smoke. The captain told us the fuel line had been hit so we were losing pressure, fuel and altitude simultaneously. I knew it was the worst hit we’d ever taken. Other bombers from our squadron stayed with us risking being hit as they dropped lower to keep even with us. The captain ordered me to check the waist gunners because he couldn’t get a response from them. I climbed down into the main body of the plane and found one of them okay. The other was hit but it wasn’t a mortal wound. The captain’s original plan was to get us to the British mainland and just try to crash land the plane on friendly soil. We were losing fuel so fast he came over the intercom and told me we’d have to ditch the plane in the Channel and take our chances British or American Air Sea Rescue would pick us up before the Germans knew we were in the water. The cloudbank was thick and low. The other bombers couldn’t stay any longer for fear of endangering themselves but they forwarded our last known coordinates to help in locating us once we were down. There was another huge explosion in the plane and a second engine had caught fire. The captain told me, since I was the only one whose headset was working for him to communicate with, to get the door open and prepare for the crew to bail…….I know that’s what he said.”

For the first time in Lucas’ narration he showed a sign of emotion, of uncertainty.

“The door was so hot to the touch but I got it open as it slammed me against the metal doorframe. The flames came up into the open hatch. I put my hand in front of my eyes to protect them…..that’s how I burned my hand. I felt a pain shooting up my arm and I realized I’d broken it as I struggled with the door opening it. I turned to Sergeant Foster, the wounded gunner, and told him I’d go first and help him once we hit the water – keep him afloat since he couldn’t move his right leg. The communications were all screwed up. The other gunners and navigator couldn’t hear the captain at all. I told everyone we were to bail out – that was the order. I timed my jump in between flashes of flame, cleared the aircraft and opened the parachute. Hitting water can hurt I found out when you have a broken arm. I nearly passed out from the pain. I inflated the life jacket and looked up so I could count the other eight chutes when they came out.”

Lucas stopped and took a deep breath of air. Sami stood in the same spot unmoving – fearful that should she do anything to distract Lucas he would stop. It was obvious he was fighting his emotions as the story progressed.

“I kept waiting for those chutes to appear out the side of the plane and heard myself saying ‘get out, get out’ as though they could hear me. Finally, I saw two come out….only, when the chutes deployed they were smoking …they were on fire. I…..I …..watched them drop out of the sky knowing they’d be dead when they hit the water from the impact. I kept hoping …praying…..that they didn’t know what was happening …….but…..I think they did.

Remembering the night Lucas has been feverish and calling out in his sleep toward morning, Sami knew now what the “get out” was he had been mumbling in his tortured slumber referred to.

“There came this horrible, grinding noise from the sky where the plane was and I looked up to see ……………………it was like her death throes…………..that beautiful plane………I saw this red ball of flame and I could feel the heat from it a minute afterward…….it just disintegrated………the plane and the guys in it. All I could do was watch. I felt helpless……useless. I kept thinking I should be there with them not watching the whole thing. They were my friends. I shouldn’t have left them behind.”

Lucas was visibly shaken admitting aloud what had gone through his mind time after time since seeing the plane explode. Sami started to say something to him. From her angle she could see the tears streaming down his face as he relived the horror of his friends’ deaths. He gathered himself, took a deep, shaky breath and continued.

“The water and the skies were so quiet after that. I felt like an apple kids bob for at Halloween as I floated in the cold water. I tried to make some sense of what had happened. It was then I saw this small white piece of paper floating near me and I reached for it. I don’t know why I did with all the debris that fell from the sky after the explosion. I suddenly knew what it was as I started to open it. Somehow in all the chaos, the first letter you sent me that I always kept in the left side of my bomber jacket, had come out….probably when I hit the water. I had wrapped it in wax paper months before, thinking if I ever really did have to ditch, the ink wouldn’t run. It’s been my good luck charm since last March. I suddenly knew why I had survived. It was because of you. You were watching over me…that letter was the proof of it. I knew I was gonna get out alive. Nothing could keep me from coming back to you….to working out everything between us……………I looked up in the sky and saw the rescue plane……like a sign that I was right.”

To her surprise at that moment Lucas turned from the direction he had been facing the entire time Sami had been there and looked squarely into her eyes.

“Now, I know I was wrong. You didn’t send that letter or any of the others, did you?”

Sami’s eyes grew large with surprise at Lucas accusatory question. How had he figured it out when she’d been so careful the past two days to not give anything away? She thought of denying the truth but looking in his eyes she knew the time had come to end the charade. It wasn’t how she had planned it…..not that she had ever really had a carefully, thought-out plan. She looked into the deep brown eyes that had loved her every bit as the rest of him had and she closed her eyes and shook her head in answer to him.”

“…..no….” came the soft whisper from her lips.

Lucas nodded his head and smile the most painful smile Sami could ever remember seeing on his face.

“I thought so.”

“How….how did you..”

“I didn’t until tonight….. when you filled out the raffle ticket. I thought the writing was different. It was when you signed your name and you didn’t put the little circle over the “i” the way you always did at the end of your letters that I knew.”

“I see. I wasn’t thinking. I guess the excitement of the party, the evening….I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything, Sami. I’ve had this coming from you for a long time. I just never figured you as the ‘payback’ kind.”

“That’s NOT what this was. I knew nothing about the letters until Christmas Eve.”

“Sami, please, the kinds of details about our families, the names of places we used to hang out. No stranger could know that kind of stuff.”

“It wasn’t a stranger. It was Belle.”

“Belle? Your kid sister? Why would she want to do something like that?” There was a disbelieving tone in Lucas’ voice.

“Because………because she had to write to a service man or woman from Salem as her penmanship and English class assignment. She saw your name on the list and got this hair-brained idea to write you one letter only as me. She didn’t expect the response you sent her and she kept writing because she didn’t know how to stop. Ohhhh, that’s not completely true. She didn’t want to stop. She loved the letters from you. She told me to tell you that.”

“I still don’t understand what she thought forging your name on letters to me would accomplish. Didn’t she think someone would find out eventually?”

“I’m not sure she thought that far ahead. If it hadn’t been for you being sent home to recover, who knows how long she would have kept writing. She panicked when the letter came telling her you were being shipped stateside.”

“The one I sent just before Christmas?”

“Yes. She came and confessed everything, swearing me to secrecy…..no one else knows back home. Here, it’s just Carrie and Mike who know. I called Carrie and told her what happened on Christmas Day.”

Lucas looked off into the night searching for understanding of all the events that had happened in the past half an hour.

“Why, Sami? Why?”

“I think Carrie had the answer when I asked her the same thing about how Belle could do this. She is a young, idealistic romantic - a dangerous combination to be sure. She is convinced that we belong together and saw an opportunity to play her version of Cupid.”

“Why did you come to New York? It would have been the perfect revenge to let me walk into Salem full of ideals of us being together and then you could have pulled the emotional rug right out from underneath me in front of everyone.”

“What? I never, ever wanted to do anything like that to you.”

“I had it coming, Sami, after humiliating you at the prom by having you walk in on Nichole Walker and I having sex in the girls’ locker room….”

“WHY do we have to bring all of that up again?”

“Because it happened, Sami, and because of that I lost you. No matter what I tried you wouldn’t see me or talk to me. You shut me out….completely. I made a stupid, terrible mistake that……….I……..can’t……..undo……………………….GOD!”

Lucas whirled around and swept a small terra cotta planter containing a red poinsettia from the ledge shattering it on the terrace floor in his frustration. At the same time the planter broke, Sami realized for the first time ever the agony Lucas had been living with for four years. He buried his head in his hand and she could hear the soft sobs coming from him. She pulled herself to her full height and prepared to confess something she had held secret for nearly four years.

“I don’t blame you for what happened, Lucas. Oh, I was hurt, there’s no question of that but ….I’ve never told what I’m about to tell you to any one, not my mother or Carrie or anyone. About a week after the prom I wanted to talk things out with you, to get some answers. I went to the Kiriakis mansion one afternoon. Henderson answered the door and I told him I wanted to see you privately. He left me standing in the entryway while he went into the living room. After a few minutes he came and ushered me into the room. You weren’t there - - Kate was. She smiled and came to give me a hug telling me how sorry she was I had learned about you and Nicole …….’that way’ as she put it.”

Lucas turned his head suddenly to look at Sami with astonishment.

“Nicole and I? WHAT?”

“She agreed that what had happened was humiliating. She was disappointed that you’d been a coward not to just tell me outright but that it was better I found out some way than be kept thinking you’d ever have a serious relationship with me. She told me how she could see the signs that you felt trapped. There were all those college coeds at Salem U and because I had made you keep going steady, you grew more tempted because you couldn’t date any of them. She told me two years was enough of an age difference that you were more mature and wanted …things……from a girl I wasn’t ready to give. She said it wasn’t anything in particular about me, it was just the way young men were. Nicole was older and that attracted you to her. She made me see that it was my holding on to a relationship that was over that made you do something so drastic to bring it to an end.”

“Sami… that is….”

She held her trembling hand up to keep him from speaking until she could unburden her long-kept secret.

“Kate left me to think a few minutes. She was a woman much more experienced than I was and she was your mother. If she didn’t know you and what made you do things, who would? I felt terrible that I had ‘trapped’ you, to use her words. I waited until Kate returned to the room. I told her that I would promise to not see or talk to you again. I knew if I did that, eventually, you’d give up and move on. She thought it would work and agreed it would be our secret. When I got ready to leave I saw you coming from the pool to the main house. I almost lost my resolve but Kate told me I had to start that minute. I’ve kept that promise until last Wednesday.”

“My mother………my own mother… manipulated, played God with us because she wanted me to stay away from the girl I loved and she didn’t think was good enough for me.”

“No, Lucas, it wasn’t like that. You were interested in Nichole…..I understand. She was a beautiful girl. Why wouldn’t you have been attracted to a sophisticated model compared to a high school senior?”

“Oh, my God, that sounds like my mother talking again. Everything makes sense now. It’s true, I was fleetingly taken with Nichole. I’d had a few drinks with some of the guys in between dances at the prom. I got a note saying to meet you in the locker room. When I walked in you were sitting back in the shadows on the bench with you hair down the way you have it tonight. I couldn’t help myself. You seemed to want me the same way I wanted you. I started to kiss you and almost stopped. It just didn’t seem like this is where our ……first time…..should be. Things got progressively hotter. The next thing I knew, there was someone standing there watching us. I turned to look and I thought I was going insane because it was you. When you turned on the light, it was Nicole I was with…..same hair style. She’d never worn it that way before. The look on your face I’ve never forgotten. Sami, Nicole may have been beautiful but she didn’t like to roller skate, or beat me at a game of gin fair and square or just sit and talk by the hour. The second it happened, Sami, I knew I’d lost your trust but I also thought if I could talk to you, maybe in time we’d be together but I couldn’t get near you ever again. Now, I know why.”

Sami and Lucas stood immobilized absorbing the duplicitous nature of Kate’s deed. Lucas remembered Nichole had been promoted the following September after the prom disaster to a fashion editor position on Bella magazine at Kate’s recommendation.

“Well, maybe in some strange way Belle did us a favor. At least we have the complete picture of what happened and you don’t have to carry that secret around any more.”

“Yeah, I guess. Are you going to Kate with what you know?”

“No, it isn’t necessary. We’ve been estranged since Austin’s death. I keep in touch with Victor and Phillip but Mother and I don’t speak or write. Austin was the one she favored. I didn’t hold that against him. He’d had it hard growing up and Mom was constantly trying to ease her guilty conscience for leaving them with Kurtis. I don’t want to lose the progress I’ve made as a more independent human being since I left her at the mansion. I think I’ve grown up.”

“I think you have, too and, Lucas, be glad you’re alive…..I am that you are.”

“Well, you better get back inside. It’s almost midnight. You don’t want to miss the countdown, champagne and hoopla.”

“Aren’t you coming with me?”

“Nah, you go ahead. One more thing……before you go. I want to thank you for coming to New York to tell me about the letters before I went home. I know you didn’t have to do that.”

“You’re welcome and, yes, I did have to do it. I won’t ever tell anyone about the letters….neither will Belle.”

Lucas only nodded.

“Hey, you’d better get inside before you turn as blue as your dress. It’s getting colder out here.”

“All right.”

Sami turned toward the doors leading back to the warmth of the hotel and slowly began to put distance between Lucas and her again…literally. Lucas turned back to look out over the skyscrapers. Wherever he went from here in life it would be without Sami - - that much he knew.

Sami had nearly reached the double doors when she halted in her steps and stared at the clock visible in the hallway of the hotel. The new year was less than five minutes away.. She kept staring at it, not opening the doors. A perplexed look crossed her face.

“I don’t want to do this…………….I don’t want to do this…again.”

Not wanting to watch Sami walk away, Lucas faced the opposite direction, ran his fingers through his hair, adjusted his sling and took a few lungs worth of air before preparing to re-enter the hotel where he would resume his façade of happiness hoping eventually it would become the real thing given enough time and healing. He thought he heard the soft swooching of Sami’s dress but decided it was just a breeze when from behind him he heard her voice.

“And I quote ‘I don’t know when I’ll be back, Sami, but when I am, I’ll finally be able to erase the last image I have of your face at the dance that night. I want to put my arms around you and hold you until you smile at me again. I know it’s silly but I want to hear you say you forgive me even though you’ve written me those words today’ end quote. Lucas?”

He slowly began to turn until he could see Sami standing fifteen feet from him. She outstretched her arms to him.

“I forgive you, Lucas. Will you forgive me?”

For the first time in four years the look she used to have in her eyes whenever she saw him coming her way was back. He turned his head slightly to be sure he was really seeing it and began to walk toward her. Faintly through the night the sounds of car horns, noisemakers and firecrackers could be heard as the seconds ticked off ending the old year and ushering in the new. When he had closed the gap to four feet Lucas stopped.

“If I cross these last few feet, Sami, there’s no turning back…no running out this time. We talk, spend time together…lots of time…..we don’t hide things from each other any more no matter how painful that might be . I don’t want anything less than that.”

“I agree.”

They could hear people shouting the countdown as it drifted up on the night wind. Lucas walked the four remaining steps until Sami put her arms around him as the stroke of midnight chimed from St. Patrick’s cathedral nearby. Lucas could smell the perfume Sami always wore. He began to bring his left arm around her waist and slowly folded her into an embrace as she did the same. They stood and held each other for a minute or more before Lucas stepped back and looked into Sami’s face. What he saw nearly stopped his heart. She was smiling.

“Happy New Year, Lucas.”

“Happy New Year, Sami.”

He slowly leaned down toward her beautiful face waiting to see if she pulled back. When he was assured she wouldn’t he gently kissed her as he held the spun gold of her hair in his fingers. When he had been unable to breathe a second longer, he released her lips and buried his face in her hair, continuing the hug.

“I’m home. I really, really home.”

He could feel Sami nod her head.

“What do you say we go inside and celebrate with a glass of champagne, a dance and get out of this freezing night air?”

“I say, ‘let’s do it’.”


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Mike and Carrie were preparing to dance again. They had decided to give Sami and Lucas another half an hour and then they’d begin go scour the hotel. Even if they weren’t planning to intrude in their siblings’ lives, being missing for close to an hour was different…they’d agreed. Just as they began to head for the dance floor Carrie saw the subjects of concern enter the ballroom.

“Mike….look.’

“What is it?”

“Look….Sami and Lucas.”

“I’ll be…”

They were tightly holding hands with smiles a mile wide. They headed in Mike and Carrie’s direction and stopped to each kiss Carrie wishing her a “Happy New Year.”

They each embraced Mike and gave him a similar greeting before motioning they should all head to the dance floor. Mike and Carrie looked at one another in stunned silence. Lucas enfolded Sami in his arms as the music began. Carrie looked at Mike with an expression of sheer enjoyment.

“Okay, Brady….just….just don’t say ‘I told you so’.”

:What? Me? Never.”

She smiled at Mike and led him by the hand to the dance floor hear her sister and Lucas. They danced to their two favorite Tommy Dorsey ballads back to back – “Embraceable You” and his theme song “Getting Sentimental over You”.

1944 seemed to be off to a wonderful start.

Lakota

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