Nate didn't pause in his step when Sam awoke, even as his jaw clenched involuntarily at the way his voice sounded. "We're in a clinic. One of the nurses at the hospital mentioned this place and an associate of mine backed it up. The doctors here, they have a better chance at helping us than any others." Nate never lied to his son. Treated Sam as the intelligent eight year old boy he and his ex-wife had raised him to be, that he'd always shown to naturally be. When Sam asked him a question, Nate was always straight to him. Evasive, perhaps a little. He was eight after all and as honest as he wanted to be with his son, there were some hard truths a child never had to deal with. However, Nate never lied. And he had a strong feeling, that as much as life had changed him in the alternate reality, he doubted that his alternate self was anymore capable of lying to Sam, sick with a deadly illness, than he was capable of lying to him. Well or otherwise.
He'd hoped that ... he didn't know what he had hoped. That perhaps Parker had been lying. Eliot had been lying. Even though all of it, he knew deep in his bones-despite the fact that it hadn't happened-was something Blackpoole would do. Moreover, what father ever wanted to believe, no matter how steeped in reality they were, that their child was dying from an incurable illness. So he had gone to the hospital hoping and had done his best not to show how that failed hope affected him, to his son. How desperate he was suddenly becoming for this last option to be one that worked, and that if it didn't. If it didn't, that they found another one.
He was struggling with this, Nate was. Because he hadn't expected this. He hadn't been prepared for this the way his other self had been. Would have been if he were here, having to deal with this all over again. However, despite a slight showing of wanting, needing help or something else to Sophie; Nate was outwardly handling it all fine. Despite his touseled hair, shaking fingers, and the lines that bracketed his mouth and the tension in his frame, but even that, even those, for the most he hid. It was inwardly that he had to worry about. Because there he was a fucking mess. But there he couldn't focus on right now.
Holding his son tightly, but carefully against him he walked towards where he had been told Dr. Bones should be waiting.