With all this negative energy washing over him, Samuel felt the uncomfortable grip of sadness taking hold of his chest, squeezing all the hope and promise out of him until there was nothing but wretchedness left. He was ashamed of himself and what he had done, with his actions not giving him any advantage in the post-dollar world. Sitting back down on his bed, Samuel couldn’t help but feel that everything he had done in the past forty-eight hours had been for nothing. He had betrayed people for his own selfish gain and as he sat in his apartment, he felt more alone and disadvantaged than ever.
“Hello?”
“Hey dad,” Samuel whispered into his cell phone, calling his father in a moment of desperation. “Did I wake you?”
“No, it’s okay son,” Charles lied on the other end of the line, sounds of him shuffling around and likely climbing out of his bed muffling his voice as Charles Westchester snuck out of his bedroom, trying not to disturb his sleeping wife. “Are you all right? I’ve been trying to call for hours.”
“I know,” Samuel apologized so distracted by what he and Austin were doing in his apartment that he had let his phone battery die once more. “I’m sorry. It’s all been a bit crazy.”
“Why were you on the news? We saw what happened to the Trident building. How did everything get so out of control?”
Samuel paused. He had received nearly twenty missed calls from his parents in the time since leaving their house in Freeport and just now. He had intended to speak to them earlier, but with everything going on it was just one of those things that had slipped through the cracks. But he knew he could always turn to his father. In moments of panic or desperation in Samuel’s life, he had always been able to rely on the old man for guidance and support. Their relationship might be unlike a conventional father and son in many ways, but when Samuel needed a parent’s understanding ear or kind words, his father was always there and never came with any judgement.
“I really messed up dad,” Samuel exhaled deeply, trying to keep his voice down as he was very aware of Austin sleeping in his living room. “I thought I could help people – save people – but I only ended up making it worse. I put people in danger. I left people to die. I feel like it’s all my fault.”
“Samuel, my boy. You know I mean this with the best intentions, but this has always been a rather self-involved personality trait of yours. You can’t take responsibility for everything. Sometimes things happen that are outside our control and we just have to deal with that and learn to roll with the punches. This is one of those times, son. You can’t take the blame for all of this, even trying to is a ridiculous fallacy.”
“But I could have done better,” Samuel argued back. “I could’ve made different choices and certain people might be better off now. They might have not had to suffer.” He thought of several names in particular as he spoke; R Hauser who had jumped from the Trident window, Antony Calvert-Lewin who was left without a seat on the shuttle from JFK and Sandy, who had been left to die in a burning building.
“Perhaps,” his father answered him. “But answer me this: would you still be in the same position now if you hadn’t made those choices? Everyone thinks like that son, but we can’t live our lives by what if’s and maybe’s, nor can we live in the past. Especially in times like this we have to stick to our guns and keep pressing forward. There might be moments we look back on and think we could’ve done better, but so long as we reach the endpoint in one piece, it’s almost always worth it.”
“Almost always?”
“It will be worth it, Samuel,” Charles reassured his son, hearing the anxiety in Samuel’s tone. “We simply don’t have the luxury of regret at a time like this. Things are going to continue to change and not for the better. I can’t even think what the end of next week will look like, but I do know if I make it there with your mother by my side and the knowledge that both you and your sister are safe, then I will be happy. Now is the time to realize what is important to you and go after that. Don’t waste your minutes worrying about things you cannot change. Time is precious and we need to understand that now more than ever.”
Samuel sighed into the phone. He understood the logic behind what Charles was saying, but it still didn’t shift the guilt he felt inside. Every time he did a terrible thing, he felt ashamed, but for some reason it still didn’t stop him from acting very similarly when another difficult situation presented itself. Up until this disaster, Samuel had always tried to see the positive things in life and had always thought of himself as a good person, but maybe that wasn’t the case.
Maybe this was the moment in his life where he realized he was one of the characters that people didn’t side with in movies or on television, perhaps he was one of the guys that people wished would die at the end of the next episode, viewers feeling no sympathy or sorrow for them. Glancing upwards, Samuel caught sight of his reflection in the mirror and grimaced. If he really was that sort of person, then this was the moment where he had the chance to change. He could keep going forward as he
