Page 74 of Without You, Scotch and Sammy 2

“Alright,” Joseph interrupts. “Lets continue. Criminal history. I have your records, but is there anything either of you would like to confess to?”

My heart thunders in my chest, but Sam chuckles and turns back. “No sir. Neither of us are jail birds.”

“In fact, your daddy and brother are both in law enforcement, correct?”

“Yes, sir. My dad retired a few years back and now he and my mom are vacationing somewhere in the tropics. And my older brother is currently police chief, and he hasn’t had to arrest me in years.”

Joseph and I both laugh, but his is a whole lot more carefree than my nervous chortle as I squeeze Sam’s hand in punishment. Sam smiles charmingly, leans into me and kisses my brow casually. “Relax.”

“Stop it.”

He squeezes my hand in answer, then turns back to Joseph with a winning smile. “No brushes with the law, sir.”

“Any relationship issues? Separations. Mediations. Extra-marital affairs. Reason to think you’ll be separating in the future, or at all in the past.”

Sam’s hand squeezes mine again. “No sir. I love my wife as much today as I did the day I married her, and that will never change.”

I bite my lip as he crushes my heart. Tears burn the backs of my eyes and my stomach drops at his easy – and fake – answer. Joseph looks at me and waits, and I shake my head quickly. “Exactly what he said.”

He smiles broadly. “You know, it’s so uncommon these days to find people who married as young as you guys did. Even rarer to find them still together more than a decade later.”

Sam smiles the fakest smile I’ve ever seen in my life, but to the rest of the world, it just looks like a smile. “We’re the easiest thing there ever was, Mr. Clay. It’s easy to love your best friend. Even easier to stay faithful to a woman as amazing as Sammy. Being married to her was never a hardship.”

“That’s sweet, Mr. Turner. I’m glad to hear it.” Joseph glances down and shuffles some more papers, then looking up, he stops on Sam. “Can we talk medical history for a moment? I know it might feel irrelevant, but mental health, even a decade ago, definitely needs to be addressed.”

I look over at Sam in confusion, but he continues to smile. “I don’t mind, Mr. Clay. It was a long time ago, and I’m okay with it now.”

“You were on anti-depressants for three years straight, Sam. That’s not small potatoes.”

He shrugs casually. “I was in law school. I was a newly married man. I was a teenager, then a young adult. It was just a really hard time of transition, so I needed a little help to get me out of a funk. I successfully transitioned off them and I haven’t needed them since.”

“You were seeing a therapist?”

“Yes sir. My family pushed me to see a therapist for a little while. In the end, she declared I could decrease those meetings too, until eventually, we stopped. That was all a very long time ago.”

“But years of treatment--”

“There’s something like forty-four million adults in our country who suffer depression or other mild forms of mental health. Only about half of them seek help. I sought and received help, and in that time, I learned coping mechanisms and I dealt with it. That should be praised, Mr. Clay, not judged. I’ve not needed medication since. I haven’t self-medicated with drugs or alcohol. With the help of my beautiful wife, I was able to overcome and move on with my life.”

Joseph nods and scribbles down more notes, but he smiles. “You’re right, Sam. And I didn’t mean to sound judgmental. I just want to make sure you’re fit to take in a baby. Emotionally. Mentally. Physically.”

“I’m fit as a fiddle, Mr. Clay. And I love my daughter. I’ll take care of her until my dying day.”

“Speaking of,” Joseph chuckles awkwardly. “Family history. Any family medical history I should know about?”

Sam thinks for a moment, but eventually shakes his head. “No sir. My parents are still alive. My grandparents died of old age.”

“No diabetes in the family? Heart issues? Cancer? Nothing degenerative?”

“No, sir. We’re all healthy.”

Joseph turns to me. “And you? Any medical issues in your family? As you know, we need to ask. If your folks, their folks, and their folks before them all passed away in their forties, then perhaps that’s a cause for concern.”

“I understand. But no, no issues. Both of my parents are still alive. No cancer. No diabetes. No heart attacks.”

“Okay. What about your own medical history?” He looks over my file, then pulling out the single sheet of paper I had printed days ago, he scans it. “One previous pregnancy.”

I swallow the lump in my throat as Sam’s hand painfully squeezes mine. “Yes, sir. Way back when we were newlyweds.”

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