Set after (during?) S02E13 "Tiny." Outrageously AU. Enjoy.
The nurse taps the door with the side of her pinky knuckle, but doesn't wait for an answer to go in. The man is sitting in the bed, back propped stiff upright with a wrinkled set of pillows, his brown hair flopping in front of his eyes, unbrushed again.
"Hello, good morning, how are we feeling today?" The nurse is brusque despite her best attempts otherwise; the man never answers her questions anyway. She takes his blood pressure, his pulse, shines a small flashlight into his eyes without turning his head away from the television. The remote hangs limply in his hand, and an infomercial plays on mute.
"Can you hear me? Do you know what day it is?" Her voice is loud and slow, like she's talking to a child that speaks a different language. "Can you tell me your name today?"
The man just shifts back into the pillows and stares at the wall behind the television. The nurse sighs, finishes her tests, and shoulders through the curtain that's pulled around his bed. There's no patient in the second bed, but the man pulls the curtain shut when no one is looking, so the staff leaves it.
The resident that meets her in the hall is young, a brunette with dark eyes and light skin. "Any luck today?"
"None." The nurse scribbles a few notes in shorthand on the white board outside the door. "As far as I know, our Doe has never said a word to anyone in his life.
"We can keep him for another 24, but Frankie is trying to get him a bed now, before we have to turn him out. Nancy says it's the right call, but I'm not sure. There's something off about him, I can't put my finger on it. What do you think, Mel?"
The pretty resident looks down at the clipboard in her hands. Hearing normal, CT scan normal, all neurological tests come up as normal as can be, considering. She sighs. "I think- I think you're right." The man's nice haircut and tailored suit has her sure he's not homeless, but he was delivered to them with no ID, no next of kin, and they're no closer to figuring out who he is than they were two days ago.
"He's not sick, that's something. Everything is functioning up there, anyway." The nurse shrugs. "We should consider filing a missing persons on him."
The resident- Mel- nods. "It's not a bad idea. Do you want to get Frankie on that one too?"
"Yeah, I'll tell him. You can try your luck, if you want. People talk to you."
Mel smiles as the nurse turns and walks toward the reception desk. She tucks the clipboard under her arm and raps on the door sharply, announcing her presence with a sing-song "Doctor Silva!" before she opens the door. The curtain is still pulled shut, so she pushes is aside and pulls the black nurse's stool up to the side of the bed.
"Good morning! How are you today?"
The man inclines his head slightly toward her, meeting her eyes. Something about the way he moves is slightly unsettling. Reptilian. She's pleased, though, that he's at least showing a response.
Mel scoots the chair slightly closer. "Can you tell me where you are?"
The man drops the remote on the sheets with a soft thud and reaches up to touch his collarbones, his fingertips trailing over his neck, his shoulders. Finally, the palm of his hand comes to rest wrapped around the back of his neck. He squeezes his eyes shut, his face a map of confusion and pain. Gently, he shakes his head.
"That's alright, it's alright." Mel leans forward and considers putting her hand on top of his. She settles for resting a friendly palm on his shoulder for a moment. "Can you tell me your name?" Another minute head shake from the man. "That's alright, too. Can you speak at all?"
He opens his eyes again to regard her with a pained look. The hospital gown hangs off his slim shoulders. His top teeth catch his bottom lip, and, despite his apparent age, he looks childlike.
"I-"
Mel leans forward further, not sure if she's heard the word or not; he barely moved his mouth.
"I think- yes."
"Excellent!" She decides it would be appropriate to gently grasp his hand and gives it a brief shake. She has a wide, toothy grin. "What's the last thing you remember?"
He shrugs. "Nothing. I don't-" his face falls, "I don't remember anything." The blankets rustle when he moves his hand out from under hers to gesture. "Anything before this, anyway." It surprises Mel slightly to discover he's got a gentle, drawling accent, though she can't place its origin.
"Well-" She scoots back as he subtly signals his discomfort with her proximity, turning his shoulders away from her. "What would you like to be called?" Again, a shrug. "We can pick a name together. How about James-" no response- "John? Michael?" no response- "Ro-"
A sideways gesture, thumb pointed toward the ceiling and index finger pointed accusingly toward her, cuts her off mid syllable. "You can't give a grown man a new name."
She's taken aback and shifts uncomfortably. "I suppose you're right." The man twists his mouth in an expression that doesn't quite resemble a smile. He's got her on edge now, with the way he's looking at her, so predatory it seems practiced, and she's wondering whether coming in alone was the right decision. Even though she knows she's taller than him, his gaze makes her feel small.
But he breaks eye contact and looks back down to the dip in the sheets between his legs. "I understand. Names are important."
"Yes," she says, standing up, seeking comfort in the small repetitions of medical work. She picks up a blood pressure cuff, even though she's sure he's had his blood pressure checked already. "Names are important."
"Doctor Silva, you said?"
Mel licks her lips and nods.
"What's your given name?" After a moment of silence, he clarifies, "Your first name."
"Mel. Melissa."
"Ah." He rolls his tongue around his mouth, like he's cleaning something sticky off his teeth. "Melissa."
"Raise your arm, please." Maybe it's not such a good thing to be the one people talk to.
He doesn't protest the blood pressure cuff she velcros around his upper arm. He only looks away, back toward the muted TV, his mouth a thin, pink, emotionless line.
Mel runs through the rest of the workup in silence, looking down at the floor.
The brusque nurse comes in the next morning, beige canvas sack in one hand, neatly folded suit in the other. "Alright, today's the day! Are you excited?"
The man gives her a distinctly venomous look.
She chooses to ignore it. "We had your clothes cleaned, and there's a few more outfits in the bag." The nurse hands the bag over to him, and he digs through the contents- used slacks, jeans, graphic print t-shirts, socks, underwear, a lonely white button down dress shirt, along with simple grooming necessities. "Go ahead and get dressed, honey, and we'll get your on your way." Her eyes search his face.
He takes the folded suit but doesn't move to change into it.
"Ah, yeah, here you go." She walks away, pulling the curtain shut behind her, and the man hears the heavy door close with a soft click.
He contemplates the suit in his hands. The world spins, subtly but noticeably, when he looks at it- this only happens with certain things, the spinning, and it's unpredictable. The suit sets it off, as does the clock tower outside the window; television is generally alright, but sometimes a movie or show will catch him off guard. People don't follow any pattern. Some are safe, like the nurse, but some, like the pretty young resident, bring on the dizziness.
Nothing causes the vertigo worse, though, than the sight of his own face. He had to shut the curtain to keep his reflection in the bathroom mirror from making him positively seasick.
He shoves the blankets off and gets out of bed, feet quiet on the cold linoleum floor. Putting on the suit seems familiar, ritualistic, something he's done many times before; he has no memory of how he came to own the suit, but he's sure he's had it for a while. The man doesn't remember learning to speak, either, but he knows the language here. Maybe not with the local accent, but- and, of course, he knows enough to recognize a beautiful woman, and realize he's old enough to be her father.
Beyond what he knows, he has what he feels: he feels afraid, inexplicably angry, like he's in the wrong place, wrong time. The man briefly entertains the notion that he's a time traveler from another dimension, then puts the thought aside.
He feels- he feels like he's lost something, something he should be searching for. It's an uncomfortable, deep longing that comes from his marrow, so inextricably in the core of him that the search seems to be the thread that holds his being together. If he could only remember what he was looking for here, he could unravel the mystery of his self.
He's ginger in putting weight down on his right leg. It hurts, though he's not sure why. Likely an old injury, from the bone-deep ache of it.
Fully dressed now, he grabs the canvas bag and limps to the door, opening it to see two residents, a doctor, the nurse and the young man from the front desk standing in a loose circle in the hallway, conferencing quietly but animatedly. They hush quickly when they see him.
The nurse puts an arm around his shoulders- not friendly, but matronly- and turns him away from the circle of gossips, guiding him toward the elevators. "What a lovely suit. Your car is here, let's get you downstairs, and you'll be on your way out. Aren't you excited to leave? Is your leg hurting you? We can see if we can get you something for that-"
Her voice fades as they walk down the hallway, the little clot of medical workers staring unabashedly in their direction.
"So Mel says she talked to him, huh?" One of the residents says to no one in particular.
"Yeah," the other resident responds. "I don't know if I believe her though. He doesn't look like he's got much going on up there."
"Neurological, you think?"
"I have no idea. You saw his chart, everything was on the up and up. Stories like this make the 5 o'clock news. 'Rich old guy passes out on the train, wakes up with no memory.' Bet he's just some hedge fund manager who couldn't take the stress anymore."
"Whatever he is, he gives me the creeps," the front desk boy interjects. "I believe Mel talked to him, I can see why she didn't want to go back in there."
"Come on, you've seen enough crazies to know better. He's so little! I bet you could take him, if it came to it, Frankie."
"Yeah, especially with that limp!"
Frankie shakes his head seriously. "I don't beat up crazy old men, guys."
They all titter, and the doctor rubs her hands together. "Alright, come on, he's on his way to state by now. Let's get back to work."
They all nod and slowly disperse, each person in turn shooting a more or less conspicuous glance at the empty hallway in front of the elevators.
The man is safely tucked into the back seat of the black livery cab. The driver was instructed to activate the child locks, which he did, and locked the windows as well for good measure. It doesn't escape the man that it's the kind of cab with scratched plexiglass between the driver and the passenger compartments.
He watches out the window, increasingly distressed by the enormous structures around them- they must be hundreds of feet tall, maybe thousands, made all of metal and glass. The smaller buildings are made of brick, which is more familiar but no less daunting. And the people! The volume of people here is terrifying on a scale to match the buildings.
"Alright back there? Would you like some air?"
The man cups a hand around his ear to indicate that he can't hear the driver. It's only a small lie. He's sure he'd feel less like a trapped animal if only there wasn't the closed barrier in front of him.
It works, and the driver reaches back expertly to push open the little sliding door in the plexiglass, keeping his eyes on the busy road. "I said, would you like some air?"
"Oh, no thank you." Quick, talk to keep the door open. "Are you from- here?"
The driver scoffs. "What, you can't tell?" He puts on a slightly thicker version of his already strange accent, "Eyy, fuhgeddaboudit!" A pause. "No?" His smile falls away when he gets no recognition from his passenger. "They said you didn't talk."
The man smiles, toothy and strange. "Not to them, anyway."
The driver shakes his head like he's not surprised. "You damn loonies, I always end up driving your kind around this town, and it's not hardly just the ones that come from there," he thrusts his thumb over his shoulder back towards the hospital, "either. Whole damn city is full of nut jobs. I tell you though, at least you're among your kind." He snorts a low, slimy laugh.
The man giggles, high pitched and not quite right, not quite human. It's the kind of sound that sets nerves on edge from outside the ring of firelight in a forest clearing on a moonless night. "What's your name?"
"Frank-why?" Said like it's one word.
The third Frank. Does no one have their own name in this place? "Thinking. About your name, that is. About my name." The car comes to a slow roll in traffic. "Are we stopping here?"
"Hell no. At least, I hope not. This is just traffic." The driver gets a blank expression from his passenger. "Damn, you really aren't from around here, are you? I can't take this shit right now. What planet did you grow up on?" The last is more to himself than his passenger. He reaches over his shoulder again to close the door in the plexiglass.
"Please- please don't shut that."
The driver ignores the request, but fumbles for the handle of the little divider.
It's not a conscious choice, not really anyway. The man wishes he could do something about the idiot driver, and like magic, he can- his hand whips into the front seat palm first, quick as a toad's tongue, and cracks the imbecile directly in the temple, hard enough to put him out with one blow. The car rolls slowly into another as the driver crumples, forehead to steering wheel.
The man doesn't have much time to contemplate the reflexes he didn't know he had. He braces his back against one passenger door and kicks the opposite window with his good leg three times before it shatters into little rectangular pieces. Not like normal glass at all.
He hurls himself shoulders first out the broken window and tumbles onto the street without an inch of grace. He throws himself to his feet. The adrenaline soaking his muscles cushions the ache in his leg enough that he hardly feels it as he darts through traffic into the dense park across the street.
He looks back just in time to see a woman step out of her car pointing some kind of black box in his direction. He doesn't have enough time to entertain thoughts of what it might be.