My tears spill harder.
My heart feels like it's splitting open in my chest.
From inside the room, Sam's voice finally breaks through — cracked, trembling, barely recognizable.
"I'm so sorry..." she cries. "I'm so sorry I didn't tell you sooner. When Dr. Wilcott told me..." Sam's voice cracks, thin as paper. "I felt everything inside me drop. Like my whole world just... stopped."
She's sobbing now, breath hitching, every word scraped raw.
"I didn't want to accept it. I didn't know how to face it—how to face everyone with it."
She swallows, but the sound is broken.
"I kept thinking, if I don't tell you... if I don't say it... then maybe it won't be real."
Another sob breaks loose.
"Maybe I could pretend for just a little longer that it wasn't happening again. That I wasn't about to live in a hospital for months... hooked up to machines... getting poison pumped into me until it wipes out everything inside me—what's left of me."
Her voice collapses, trembling.
"I didn't want you to look at me like that again," she whispers. "I didn't want to see you break because of me."
Her voice fractures completely, collapsing into broken weeping.
The sound of her crying — it's the kind that guts you, high and sharp and hopeless, a sound that says she's been terrified and alone with this for too long.
My heart plummets.
"Oh sweetheart..." Charlene sobs, voice shredded.
Then Zach — God... His voice.
"You should've told us," he whispers. It's not angry. It's not loud. It's just shattered. "You should've come to us. Tome. You didn't need to carry this alone. You don't ever have to carry something like this alone."
He breaks — just a little — on the last word.
"I didn't want you to worry about me again," Sam whimpers.
"I'm your big brother," Zach says, voice rough with helplessness, "I'm supposed to worry. I'm supposed to know when you're hurting. I'm supposed to protect you... and right now I don't even know how to fix this."
Sam tries to speak, but all that comes out is another sob — aching, frightened, small.
"I'm sorry, Zachy," she cries. "I was so scared. I didn't know how to say it."
"I know," he says, broken and earnest. "I know you were. And I'm scared too. But we're going to fight this — do you hear me? We're going to fight this with you. Every step."
Charlene sobs harder, grief shaking through her.
I slide down the wall outside the room, shaking, one hand clamped over my mouth as tears stream uncontrollably. Every word they say feels like a punch to the chest. I can't breathe around it.
Inside, the crying continues — grief, fear, love... all tangled into something unbearable.
A family unraveling after battling so much already.
A family who doesnotdeserve another war like this.
And nothing, absolutely nothing, feels more terrifying.
