Why not? - English

13-03 Car Wash Chaos

Sam had volunteered to play the role of the man in distress, which really surprised me. I was more expecting him to play the hero, as he was used to and as Steele had originally planned. Instead, he was reluctant to play the lead role because he said he didn't necessarily feel like a hero. He quickly realized that he was getting at least as much attention as a man in distress when Steele demanded more and more desperation. It had been too weird and if Sam hadn't been Sam under our current circumstances, his poor acting would have tempted me into the occasional tease. Instead, I had preferred to stay quiet and try to get my wavering feelings under control, because it was difficult to figure out whether watching him amuse me or make me sad. It was somehow both at the same time, but the pain of how much fun it would have been to tease him about it, to argue with him for fun and knowing that we couldn't do that anymore was just too great.

But what surprised me most was why had he left Ellie to Juno from the start? Juno was his thing. His man toy. Nobody but Ben had ever driven Juno because Sam never assigned anyone to it. He was always the first to do it himself. Almost as if he didn't want anyone else to lay hands on Juno. Then why didn't he jump onto Juno himself during the mission, but instead came into the Neptune with me? He had driven out with Titan, but had come to me when the alarm sounded and willingly stood behind me, letting me take the wheel, content to cajole and calm Sarah down.

Just like the other day when he was deployed with James, he had willingly just driven the ambulance instead of flying and carrying out a daring rescue mission, as he had done before when his nephew was in danger.

The emergency call had come today in and this time it was Sarah who was in danger. In my head, as in Sam's, a switch had flipped and switched us to professional. That was also the reason why I helped him out of the water and into Neptune. As soon as we were doing an exercise, or servicing cars and equipment, or at the latest in an operation, we worked perfectly.

It was only afterwards that the thoughts caught up with me. In that case, a smile when I thought of Sam's bad acting of cries for help. A wistful sigh that after all these weeks of distance I had been allowed to touch him again while helping him into the boat and he had touched me - despite the fact that we were both wearing gloves and the padded rescue suit. I was satisfied with little. His scent, which I hadn't noticed since we danced because I simply avoided getting too close to him so as not to open up the still open wounds even further.

This mission today had once again shown me that Sam always remained professional, even when it came to his family, but here too I could hear in his voice how worried and increasingly nervous he had become the longer we needed to get to Sarah.

That was exactly what happened with James the other day when I was flying with Helen in Wallaby2 and Sam radioed to tell Tom that it was time to find James. I had heard the concern in his voice. It was also about his nephew, just like this time it was about his niece.

How would he react if I were in danger? Which could happen any day. Or what if we had a child and he was in danger? Family was everything to him. He would certainly be even more inclined to do something dangerous if it meant being able to save someone he loved quicker.

Which made me wonder why he had so easily relinquished control and not secured the flight in Wallaby2 on both occasions to be first on the scene and make sure his loved ones were okay?

I had seen how he had hugged James to make sure he was okay and how happy he was about it. Today I'd seen him do the same thing to Sarah as soon as we got back to the quay before leaving me to lecture her and wordlessly walking back to Steele himself, who was still lamenting on Titan about the bad shots.

After Steele finally found the right version of his film and showed it in the evening, we were finally able to call it a day. I couldn't get home fast enough.