"Who are you?"
His words hit her like a train. She felt her eyes widening in shock, but during the two seconds it took her to process his words and get her tongue into motion, he had more to say.
"Bren?"
"Yes, Booth, that's me," she sighed, letting a little relief slip out in her words. "It's Bones."
"My pregnant wife?"
"We talked about having a baby right before you went into surgery. But I'm not pregnant, Booth." She could correct him on the "wife" part when she wasn't worried about his cerebellar peduncles making proper connections. And when the previous relief wasn't eating its way out of their conversation.
"And my brother? Did he go to jail for killing your hitman?"
"No, Booth, Jared hasn't killed anyone. He stopped by the day before last to see how you were doing before he left for India. That's all part of your dream."
"But it seemed so real."
"I know, I know, Booth. You've probably been having vivid dreams for four days now, and you've never reacted to anesthesia like that before. But you're okay now."
"And The Lab?"
"That's where we work, me and Cam and Angela and Hodgins. You work for the FBI, remember?"
"No. Last I remember I was closing up The Lab after Motley Crue."
"Motley Crue?"
"Yeah."
If looks could talk, she'd have been saying 'I don't know what that means.' But instead, Brennan's concerned expression translated into the only thing she could think of. She pressed the nurse's button above Booth's head and spun around as one of the women in scrubs came running.
"You're awake," the new face stated.
"Yes, he is," Brennan replied curtly. "I don't think Dr. Jursic is here but can you page the neurosurgeon on call? He doesn't remember anything."
"What don't I remember?" Booth questioned as the nurse left the room.
"Do you know who you are?" she replied, turning back to him.
"Seeley Booth."
"What do you do for a living?"
"It's getting hazier," he answered. "We run a night club together. The Lab."
"Tell me about your family."
"You. And my brother, the cop. Or ex-cop, now, since the murder. And you have Max, he's family, too. Even if he is a crooked politician." A reminiscent smirk graced Booth's face for an instant, but was quickly gone.
"And your son?"
"I thought you said you weren't pregnant yet?"
"No, I'm not. What about Parker?"
"Who's Parker?"
"You have a six-year-old son, Booth. His name is Parker. He and his mother Rebecca have been by to visit twice."
His look answered Brennan's worst fears. He had very little grasp on reality. She jumped as she felt another presence in the room.
"Richard Griever," the new face said. "We got a neuro page."
"Yes," Brennan responded quickly. "He's woken up but has little orientation, hopefully a transient anemia, but I am not licensed to properly make any diagnoses."
"Alright, Mr. Booth," the doctor replied, picking up the chart to see his info.
"Special Agent Booth," Brennan corrected him. It was the least she could do for his dignity. Had he remembered, Booth would have been the first to say this himself.
"Okay, Agent Booth, can you tell me where you are?"
Booth looked around cautiously. "This looks like a hospital, but… I'm not sure I know how I got here."
"Do you know what year it is?"
"2009," he hesitated.
"Good," Dr. Griever replied. "How about the month?"
"Mm..may?"
"Yes. Agent Booth, what else do you remember?"
"What must have been a very strange dream. I don't actually own a night club, do I?" he wondered quietly, more as a statement than as a question.
"Not that I know of," the doctor replied. "You work for the FBI. My notes say your partner brought you in five days ago with hallucinations. You had a tumor removed from your cerebellum, a pilocytic astrocytoma – we got the entire thing out and pathology says it was benign. You reacted poorly to the anesthesia and for that reason you were out for a couple extra days, but we expect you to have a full recovery."
"And why don't I remember working for the FBI?"
"Hopefully that's temporary. There are no documented cases of anesthesia-induced memory loss, and we operated too far from your hippocampus to have caused any surgical slip-ups, but if your memory doesn't start to return in the next few days, we'll run an EEG to see if there are any disconnects from the cerebellum back to the basal ganglia. It would more likely cause motor problems, but the basal ganglia loop back to the cerebellum does affect memory in some ways, so it's not entirely impossible. We'll do everything we can to help you get your life back to normal."
"Okay," Booth mumbled, obviously anywhere but 'normal.' Brennan looked at him with watery eyes before turning to stand up with the doctor.
"So you think that this is most likely transient," Brennan stated as she walked toward the door with Dr. Griever.
"Yes, that's usually the case, particularly with surgeries that are considered so routine and successful. I'll have one of the nurses monitor him for significant changes, and when his operating surgeon arrives in the morning, we'll make sure we do a full work up. But his vitals are stable and our MRIs this week came back clean, so there's no cause for alarm yet."
"Thank you," Brennan replied. "I'll page you again if I feel there are significant changes in his condition."
"Please feel free."
Brennan wiped a finger under her left eye before turning around to return to Booth. "Booth," she began, "I'm going to give Cam and Angela a call to let them know you're awake. Do you remember them? Should they come visit? Cam, Angela, Hodgins, and Sweets? Or maybe you want to see your son?"
"Angela," he murmured, "isn't really the club hostess, is she?"
"No. She works with me in the lab."
"Which isn't the name of our night club."
"No, it's what we call the medico-legal lab at the Jeffersonian. She's our artist, she reconstructs faces of homicide victims."
"And Sweets isn't the bartender?"
"No, he's our therapist."
"And Hodgins doesn't write crime novels?"
"No, I do that. Hodgins is our entomologist."
"Ento-what?"
"He studies insects."
"Oh."
"Do you want visitors?"
"I don't care."
"I'll call them to let them know you're awake. Maybe they'll be able to wait until morning to visit."
Brennan got up to walk closer toward the nurses' station to make her phone call, but paused in the doorway when she heard Booth mumble something else.
"Can you sit with me, when you're done? Hold my hand?"
"Yes, Seeley. I'll be right back."
_________________________________________________________________________________
Brennan woke around four a.m. with a stiff neck. She glanced around and realized she'd fallen asleep with her head on Booth's chest, still sitting in the chair beside his bed. She looked up at her partner, still sleeping soundly. At least this time he's not in a coma, she thought wearily. She unwrapped his fingers from her hand to move back to the couch on the other side of the room, but he stirred at her movement and she sat down on the edge of the bed to watch him resettle.
"I was so happy," he murmured, his eyes still closed. "And then I woke up to a life I don't even know, a son who doesn't have you as a mother, the job of a cop and not of a club owner."
"Booth, you'll remember it all again," she whispered. "You love Parker more than anything else in your life. And your job makes the world a better place – we're a team that brings justice and closure to the families of people who have been killed."
"Do I love Parker more than you?"
"Parker is your son," Brennan replied, stifling her frustration with his question and his state of mind. "There is no love that compares to that which you have for a child of your own. You told me that."
"And you and I?"
"We're partners. You work for the FBI and I work for the Jeffersonian Institute. You're my best friend. I even asked you to donate your sperm to father a baby. Which so far, hasn't turned out all that great, by the way."
"Right before I woke up from that dream, you sat in my lap and told me I was going to be a father. I was so happy. I knew that you – and our child – were all I needed to be the luckiest man in the world. I don't know if I loved you before this whole brain surgery thing – I can't remember anything from then, apparently – but your being here is the only thing keeping me from wanting to go back to dreaming."
"Booth," Brennan gasped softly, her eyes watering up again, "I'm not going to leave your side. Whatever you need to come back from this, it's yours. You just need to come back from this. I won't know how to live if you don't."
She swung her legs in the same direction as Booth's and carefully maneuvered herself to his side, resting her head once again on his chest.
"I love you," he whispered, already asleep again.
She propped her head up to look at him, startled he said such a thing. Her eyes softened when she felt his chest rise with a corresponding snore. She smiled. It couldn't hurt to tell him the truth now, she reasoned. He won't even remember it tomorrow.
"I love you, too," she murmured, swearing that she saw Booth smile in his sleep before she leaned her head back to his shoulder and joined him in his dreaming.
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A/N (did I get that right?): Thanks for reading, this, guys -- I have only been on FF for a week or two but I love the support. I'm haven't decided whether I'm going to continue, but I'm leaving the options open and when my other life calms down I will have more time to think about it. Happy B&B dreaming until then...