Sam was the first to discover that Megan Walsh (Beth Nixon) was far from the saccharine school teacher she pretended to be and was, in fact, a deeply devious paedophile.
When the jigsaw pieces began to slot together, he learned the devastating truth: she was actively abusing Will Driscoll (Lucas Hodgson-Wale) and had been for some time.
As predatory as she is, Megan is equally as vicious and sought to eliminate the threat that Sam posed to her secret, while also seeking to destroy him for daring to stand up to her.
When she discovered a secret camera that Sam had planted in her flat, she gleefully staged a performance, with her ‘knocking Will back’.
Catching him in the act of retrieving the camera, Megan tore into him, her voice chilling and sinister, and threatened to publicly brand Sam as a voyeuristic pervert.
With a seemingly uncanny ability to zero-in on her targets weak point, she then took aim at his academic reputation, sabotaging both his school work and his grades.
As the youngster felt his identity, so long defined by his academic prowess and intelligence, being stripped away, he turned to ADHD medication to help bolster his abilities, but ended up seriously ill from abusing the pills. Collapsing in the street, he was rushed to hospital.
Megan proved her evil knows no bounds when she followed him to his hospital bed and continued to terrorise him, threatening him to keep his mouth shut or things would get even worse. Sam was truly terrified, but Megan had made a grave mistake: she’d let Sam’s fiercely protective step-mum, Leanne Battersby (Jane Danson), witness her.
Leanne managed to coax the truth out of Sam, and thus, Megan’s downfall was set in motion. But the damage to Sam had been done, and it became clear that there was something very wrong.
His paranoia soon gave way to auditory and visual hallucinations, especially of Will threatening to hurt him. Soon, though, his primary hallucination began to take the form of a deeply insidious version of Roy Cropper (David Neilson).
While the Roy we know and love is a kind and gentle soul who values his friendship and routine chess games with Sam, the hallucinated version is twisted, threatening and macabre, constantly warning him that people are trying to hurt him.
Things hit a fever pitch when Sam was faced with both the real Roy and the version that was haunting him. Striking Roy and fleeing, Sam was eventually found by Carla Connor-Swain (Alison King), who immediately recognised the psychosis he was experiencing. Nick, Leanne and Toyah Battersby (Georgia Taylor) later delivered a terrified Sam to the hospital, now fully aware of how ill he’d become.
Next week sees Nick unable to manage the sheer pain he feels as he faces a long and arduous journey to see Sam come to terms with his illness and begin treatment.
Faced with Eva Price (Catherine Tyldesley) and Ben Driscoll (Aaron McCusker), who reveal that they’d noticed Sam acting strangely, Nick pours forth with raw emotion, leading David Platt (Jack P Shepherd) to gently recommend that they give Nick some space.
Nick goes one further, though, and demands everybody leave. As Toyah delicately approaches him, he makes it clear that he wants her gone, too.
Will Nick continue to push away his loved ones when he so desperately needs them, now more than ever?
