Burn Notice: I don't own it, I just like to play with it.
Around the Bend
By WritePassion
Thanksgiving was a time to count blessings and be grateful for the good things that happened in the past year. While there were some tragedies, including the death of Michael's brother Nate, the team finally had one good thing to celebrate: the people who burned Michael were gone, everyone from Carla to Card. A new phase of his life was beginning, and he and Fiona looked forward to it with joy and a little apprehension. None of them knew what the future held, if they would go back to helping the average guy with a problem, or if Michael would return to the CIA. With time on his hands and nothing pressing, Michael took Sam's advice: he would sit on the decision over the next couple of months and sort it out.
The little party at Carlito's ended at a decent hour. Jesse had a job to take care of the next day, so he made a short night of it. He took Maddie home, which left Sam and Elsa alone. They followed Michael and Fiona to the parking lot. Everyone felt good about the future and they celebrated it, but they were always cautious. No one knew what might come around the bend.
"Hey, we'll see you guys tomorrow for breakfast, okay?" Sam called over three cars parked between the Cadillac and Charger.
"Sounds good." Michael replied with a smile.
"Feels good to not have a job for awhile, huh." Sam grinned at him.
Michael chuckled. "I don't know what I'm going to do with myself. I've forgotten what it's like to be idle for any length of time."
"Well then, that proves it. You needed this," Elsa said, and she got into the passenger side of Sam's car.
"She's right, Mikey. Have a good night, and we'll see you tomorrow."
"Yeah, see you then."
Sam went around to the driver's side and hesitated with his hand on the door handle. A strange feeling came over him, and he glanced up over the roof to watch his friends drive away. A chill rushed up his spine but it wasn't cold outside. Later on, he would wonder if it was a premonition and he wished he'd said something – wished he'd given them a more proper goodbye. He shook away the anxiety, got in, and drove them back to Elsa's house.
That infernal beeping was going to drive Sam nuts if it didn't stop. He tried to concentrate past it and his ears picked up other sounds. Voices spoke far away. A shoe squeaked on the floor. Metal clattered and echoed down a hall. His fingers brushed the surface beneath him and he detected the low thread count of the linens. He wasn't in his own bed, that was for sure. He would have heard Elsa breathing beside him, unless it was daytime and he was only napping. It didn't smell like Elsa's bedroom or the hotel room. Something was definitely off here. Sam opened his eyes just a bit. A light over the bed illuminated the room along with sunlight coming through the slits in the closed blinds. It didn't take long to figure out that he was in a hospital, and he was a patient. The bigger question was, why?
How did I wind up here? Think, what was the last thing you remember doing? His mind was a jumble and nothing became clear. He knew enough to realize that whoever put him there had him on some heavy drugs, and that was probably preventing him from focusing. Elsa. Where was she? How long had he been there? Too many questions darting around in his tired mind. Unable to cope, he shut down and fell back into unconsciousness.
"Mr. Axe? Mr. Axe, can you hear me?"
He opened his heavy eyelids and took notice of a woman with clear dark skin and flowing black hair, wearing a nice blouse and a straight skirt, standing before him. A stethoscope hung around her neck with a lanyard, and at the end of the metal clip, a plastic ID badge. Dr. Stacy Estevez.
"How are you feeling today, Mr. Axe?" Her voice had a tinge of an accent.
"I... I don't know. What am I doing here?"
"You still don't remember what happened?" The doctor looked a little worried, when he could see her face clearly. He blinked when she shone a light in his eyes. She shook her head and made some notes on a chart, then glanced at the screen next to his bed. She flipped through the papers on the clipboard and read something before turning back to him. "I'm going to have Dr. Brady come and talk to you. He should be here soon."
"Who's Dr. Brady?"
"Dr. Brady is a psychologist. He'll talk to you about what happened, Mr. Axe." She turned at the sound of a knock on the door frame. "Good timing, Doctor!" She patted Sam's arm and said, "I'll be back tonight to check on you. Have a good day, Mr. Axe."
"Yeah, thanks." The word triggered something in his memory, but it was gone in an instant. His eyes roved from the other doctor to a board on the wall. In neat red printing, someone wrote the date. It was November 26. Thanksgiving was almost a week earlier. He knew that much. His eyelids felt too heavy to keep open, so he closed them. He lay unmoving and listened to the muffled conversation on the other side of the room.
"He should have been able to remember something by now," Dr. Estevez whispered. "He didn't have that much of the drug in his system."
"Maybe the head injury was worse than we first thought," Dr. Brady suggested.
"We have to run another CAT scan to see if there's progress anyway. I'll have them look at that section again."
"Good plan. I'll let you know what we talk about," Dr. Brady said, ending the conversation and stepping into the room. "Mr. Axe, are you awake?"
"Mm, yeah." Sam opened his eyes and looked up at the tall, well-built black man. "Why wouldn't that other doctor tell me why I'm here?"
"She wants me to talk to you about that. Mind if I sit awhile?"
"Go right ahead, as long as I get some answers outta this."
Dr. Brady pulled a chair close to the bed, sat in it, and rested his own version of Sam's chart on his knee. "Can you tell me your name?"
"That's easy. Sam Axe. I live in Miami, in my girlfriend Elsa's hotel, although lately I've been staying at her house, and..."
"That's fine, Mr. Axe." Dr. Brady smiled, showing a set of straight, healthy teeth. "I'd like to go over a few things."
Dr. Brady had a lot of questions, and Sam had almost all the answers. However, when the doctor asked what happened the night of November 22th, he had no clue. "It was... Thanksgiving day." He tried to remember what he'd done. "Elsa and I got up, took a walk, had breakfast, spent some time with her son Evan, had some alone time..." He smiled at the memory. "Then we went out with friends... but after that, everything's a blank. I know I didn't drink much that night. Did we crash?"
"Yes, you did. You don't remember that part?"
Sam shook his head. "No. I think... I think I remember saying goodbye to Mike and Fi. Yeah, I do. I got in the car, but something wasn't... ahh, I don't know. It's not coming back to me!" He stopped speaking and as the silence deepened he grew more frustrated. His right hand balled into a fist and he pounded it into the mattress, but a shooting pain kept him from hitting it as hard as he would have liked. Sam looked down at his hand, then brought it up and flexed and tightened it.
"You'll be a little sore for awhile."
Sam noted bandages on his wrist and arm, and his curiosity forced him to pull at the dressings. Dr. Brady stood and put a hand on his to get him to stop. "You shouldn't be doing that, Mr. Axe."
"Why not? I wanna know what happened to me! Why won't anyone tell me?" He pulled out of Brady's grip and one of the bandages fell away to reveal a deep gash on his forearm. Ugly stitches closed it, but the flesh around it was swollen and red yet.
"We were hoping you could tell us, but apparently your memory of that night hasn't returned." He removed the rest of the bandages and made a mental note to tell the nurse to re-dress the wounds after their session.
Sam was usually good at curbing intense emotions when necessary, but he felt a rising tide that was so big, he feared that he couldn't defeat it. He felt an overwhelming desire to cry and he held it off by sheer will.
Dr. Brady sighed and sat down again. "Sam, you were in an accident." When he had his patient's complete attention with eyes full of disbelief trained on him, the doctor continued. "According to the police, you and your girlfriend Elsa were riding in a car, and you went through a red light. The other driver had also been impaired and was traveling at a high rate of speed when he broadsided your vehicle on the passenger side." Dr. Brady paused and looked from the paperwork to Sam. "If he'd been going any faster, you wouldn't be here right now."
The reality of what Dr. Brady was saying hit Sam like a giant wave that crashed into him and dragged him down to the bottom of the sea. "Elsa..."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Axe... Sam." Dr. Brady blinked. "She's dead."
"No. No, that... that can't be. You're lying." A trap door opened beneath him and he felt himself falling through it into a cold, empty unknown.
"I wish I was." He looked at his distressed patient with pity.
"I want to see Elsa. Now!" He felt like he couldn't breathe and that the ceiling was crashing down on him.
"You can't. She's gone, Sam."
Panic etched into his features and he began to babble. "No, this can't be happening. I would never drive drunk. I know I wasn't drunk that night! Everything else is a blur, but that much I know. I would never do anything to hurt Elsa!"
Dr. Brady stood and used his powerful arms to hold Sam down, but the older man was stronger than he anticipated. Sam got off a good left hook and smashed his fist against the doctor's face. He pulled the lines out with his action, and alarm bells going off caused a flurry from the staff.
"Doctor!"
"Get something to calm him down, right now!"
Within seconds, the nurse injected something into Sam, but it wasn't easy. And he refused to go down easy, too. He cried and thrashed and denied that anything they were telling him was the truth. "Get Mike in here, he'll tell you. I would never... never do anything..." He drifted off into a sedated state, and the nurse cleaned up the mess Sam made.
Dr. Brady patted his arm, not holding Sam's violence against him. "We'll talk later, Sam."
In the afternoon the doctor returned. Sam didn't say much. Brady saw him holding back his anger, his jaw working, the muscles tense. It was probably best for him to do the talking and if Sam felt like interjecting, he would. He paused, glanced down at the chart balancing on his knee, and returned his gaze to his patient. "When you were brought here, a battery of toxicology tests were run because you weren't impaired enough from drinking to have caused you to black out or stop where you did. The results came back today."
"What did they say?"
"You had an unidentified drug in your system. Were you taking anything, prescription-wise or... illegal?"
"The only thing I ever imbibe in is alcohol. I hardly ever take an aspirin, just ask Elsa..." His voice tapered off and he shielded his eyes with his wrist. He didn't want to answer any more of this man's questions. He just wanted to be left alone to mourn.
"Perhaps as you regain your memory, you'll be able to recall more details of what happened before the accident. Until then, these results will be going to the police for their investigation."
"I don't understand." Sam pressed himself into the mattress and stared at him. "What investigation?"
"Depending upon what they find, Sam, you could be charged with manslaughter or reckless homicide."
Sam didn't know what was going on, but it seemed as if his life was spiraling out of control at an alarming rate. If only he could remember what happened! Every time he tried, he saw vague shadows of an evening spent in some restaurant. The mojitos were always good there, but he restrained himself that night because he was driving. "How'd I remember that?"
"What, Sam?"
He told Dr. Brady what came back to him. "We were at Car... yeah, Carlitio's. Elsa and me, and my friends Michael Westen and Fiona Glenanne." He scrunched up his face. "Yeah, and Jesse... Jesse Porter was there, but he left early with Maddie, Mike's mom. It was the four of us, having some drinks and relaxing."
"What did you drink?"
"I had two mojitos all night, as far as I know. But there was something funny about that second one. I didn't even finish it. It was like there was too much mint in it." His eyes widened. "How can I bring that all back like it just happened, and I can't remember what happened after?"
While Sam related what he could, Dr. Brady wrote furiously on a legal pad. "Some of this might be very helpful in determining what impaired you. Is there anything else?"
"Not at the moment, but if I think of something, I'll let you know, Doc." His body felt so weak again. "I think I need a nap."
"That's okay. I'm sure you need it now." Dr. Brady stood and patted Sam's shoulder. "I'll come back later and we'll talk again if you feel like it."
"Maybe after some sleep I'll find some more." He closed his eyes briefly, opened them and asked, "Do you know where Mike and Fi are? If they knew I was in here, I would think they'd come to see me."
"I'll check on that. Rest now, Sam." He stepped back from the bed and left the room.
Sam felt a wave of tiredness roll over him. His right leg itched, but when he reached out to try to scratch it, he discovered that he couldn't move his leg without a shooting pain running up the nerves to his brain. It took his breath away and he fell back against the pillows and grimaced until it was over. The movement caused something to beep faster, and a nurse came in to check on him.
"The doctor said you could have something for that pain," she said.
Sam watched her prepare the syringe and stick it into the port, and in a few minutes he wasn't feeling a thing.
