Written for the "brain damage" square of angst_bingo. I apologize to everyone for the tears this will probably cause.
"Doctor Harper?"
Owen jumps up, on high alert. Worry and terror and hope squirm and fight in his gut. He feels the blood drain from his face, his limbs tense, his body rush with adrenaline. Fight or flight response for something he can neither fight nor run from.
"How is she? Is she all right?"
"We managed to remove the malignancy, Doctor Harper. She is asleep in a recovery room."
"Take me to her. I need to see her."
The tired surgeon gestures towards the chairs lining the wall. "Sit down a moment, Doctor Harper. There are some things you should know."
Owen plops himself very deliberately into a chair, entire body tense and ready to move, mind working overtime, trying to come up with anything that he might need to be informed of.
"What's going on?"
"Ms. Russell—"
"Katie. Her name's Katie. She hates 'Ms. Russell'."
The doctor nods indulgently, smiling a smile that Owen knows is fake; he has the same one in his store of doctorly expressions. "Katie's tumour was very large and strangely shaped. There's a ninety percent chance that she will wake with brain damage of some sort. Unfortunately, we cannot tell until she is awake how she will be affected. She's been put into a drug-induced coma so that she may rest and heal."
"Well, take me to her. I'll sit with her."
Katie is in a sterile white room that Owen has been in many times before. But this time it's different, because she's in here, and it's someone he knows. Her head is wrapped in bandages and she breathes deeply. She'd cried as they shaved the back of her head. When they put her under, she barely recognized him. He doesn't know what will happen when she wakes up.
She's breathing slowly, and the rhythmic beep of the heart monitor calms Owen's nerves. He stares at his fiancée's pale face and wills her eyes to open. They don't, and the doctor part of him rolls its eyes and reminds him that she is in a medically induced coma and won't be waking up until they stop the drugs.
He falls asleep beside the bed, her hand clutched in his, his head resting against her side. The nurses don't wake him when they come in to check on her. One places a thin cotton blanket around Owen's shoulders and he doesn't stir.
When he wakes up, he doesn't remove the blanket. Instead, he stays where he is and stares at her face, hoping that she'll be okay. He barely eats the food one worried nurse brings to him.
"Listen, Katie," he whispers to her. "I don't care what you're like when you wake up. I'm not leaving you, I promise. I know what you dreamt the other night, but I won't let that happen. I won't."
He stays by her side for four days, until one nurse finally convinces him to go home and shower, telling him they're going to take Katie off her sedatives and allow her to wake up on her own. He does as he's told, more out of hope that business and then sleep will bring tomorrow faster than out of any willingness to wash.
Owen isn't even there when they stop the medication. He falls asleep and doesn't wake up until six at night. When he gets there, though, she's still sleeping. He grips her hand again and stares at her face and doesn't leave her side for two days.
He's half asleep, staring into middle distance in the direction of Katie's face, when her eyelids flutter and her mouth twitches in the familiar expression of her 'waking up face.' He slams his hand down on the call button for the nurse without taking his eyes off her.
"She's waking up," he says quietly when the nurse bustles in. "She might need water or something. Katie?"
The nurse slips into the adjoining bathroom to get some water at the sink. Owen squeezes Katie's hand gently and tries not to blink. He can't miss anything. Blue eyes flutter open and stare blearily up at the ceiling. Owen somehow manages to get his throat to work.
"Katie?" he whispers hoarsely. She looks toward the sound of his voice. "Katie, you're okay. The doctors removed the tumour. Katie?"
"What's wrong?" The nurse enters with a glass of water and a straw.
"She's not talking. She's looking at me but she's not talking." Owen feels a panic attack coming on, dread tight in his chest. "Katie?"
His beautiful fiancée stares blankly at him from the bed. She doesn't look tired or drugged or confused; she just looks gone. The bottom drops out of Owen's stomach and he suddenly feels like he's lost something precious.
It's still hard, even after a few months. Katie can no longer talk, so Owen fills the silence with horribly awkward babble. She stares at him, and he can see nothing of the old Katie in her gaze. She can respond to and obey commands, and the doctors say she can understand everything well enough for that, it's everything else that's been messed up.
She spends most of her time staring off into middle distance, as if her essence has slunk away to hide, leaving Owen with a shell. He helps her eat, helps her walk, helps her do everything. It's exhausting. At night, he curls up behind her in their bed and pets her hair, pretending that she's herself again, pretending everything's all right.
Working at the hospital and taking care of Katie take up all his time. He can feel the stress and tension in his body when he walks. He feels like he's unravelling. It's something he has no idea how to stop. Jewel, the young nurse that he's employed to care for Katie while he's at work is sweet, but she's no help to him when he's looking for the familiar light in Katie's eyes and sees nothing.
It's weirdly reminiscent of his mum; he remembers months of watching her sitting on the sofa with a bottle in her hand, glazed eyes staring into space for hours on end, saying nothing, moving nowhere. He'd made all the dinners back then, done all the laundry, cleaned flats and painted fences for money. His mum had been a woozy husk and he nearly watched her fade away, until she somehow became present again long enough to kick him out. He can't stand to think of that happening to Katie, can't stand the idea of her fading into nothing. He doesn't know what he'd do.
Things are harder than before in so many ways. Katie's beautiful wedding dress sits in the back of their closet and Owen tries not to look at it when he opens the door. It only serves as another harsh reminder of what he's lost and who his Katie used to be. She's helpless and he's hopeless and there's nothing in his life but her care and his work. The pressure of taking care of Katie and the pressure of his job are beating against him and he's almost unsurprised when he cracks.
"One more bite, Katie, come on," he coaxes, helping Katie bring the fork up to her mouth. But her lips don't open and she stares sideways at him as he presses the broccoli against her unyielding mouth. "Come on."
But she doesn't respond and Owen feels something bubbling up inside him, his chest tight, his throat and eyes burning. He catches a whimper before it escapes and it transforms into a growl. He feels everything tense up, his frustration coming to a boil and spilling over the tight lid he's been keeping on everything since Katie woke up.
"Learn how to do it your own goddamn self!" He yanks the fork out of Katie's loose grasp and tosses it onto the table. He pounds the wood with a fist. "Just move! Just do something. Say something to me, please!" He kicks the leg of the table and it scoots back a few inches, screeching across the floor. "Be Katie again. You're fucking nothing now and I hate it. I hate this life, this emptiness. You can't do anything. I have to do it all for you and it's ruined us. It's ruined me! I hate it!"
Silence rings in his ears as he stares at her, his breath coming in shaky little pants. Her eyes are full of tears as she gazes at him, and his heart sinks. He was yelling at her, and she can do nothing. He's yelling at her for no reason but his own useless frustration and anger. It's not her fault. It's not anyone's fault. It's all so messed up.
He grabs her hands and brings them to his mouth. "I'm sorry, love. I didn't mean any of that. God, you know I don't. This is all just so bloody awful and I don't ever think I'm helping you enough and it makes me angry. I hate that I can't have a conversation with you in the morning or do a crossword puzzle with you before bed at night. I miss everything about us and it just pisses me off. I'm sorry. Katie. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it."
Her big blue eyes gaze at him, tears slipping down her cheeks, and he doesn't know if he sees sadness or forgiveness or nothing in them.
Three more months go by and Owen can feel himself breaking down. He's grieving, missing Katie even though they still live together in the same house. But the emotional and physical toll of caring for her and trying to work is pulling him down. He's so exhausted that he nearly loses a patient. His boss reprimands him and he slinks out of the office and into a bar. He comes back rat-arsed and Jewel scolds him gently, then sits him down on the sofa with a glass of water and some Paracetamol and suggests some alternatives to this painful lifestyle. He scoffs and sends her home and crawls into bed with his brain reeling.
After another week of sleepless nights and creeping depression and anxiety over possible mistakes at work, Owen makes some calls. When he hangs up, he checks to see that Katie is still on the sofa, shuts the bedroom door, sits on the edge of his bed, and finally lets himself cry.
"This is your new home," he says to Katie, swallowing the lump in his throat and trying to shove the shame away to somewhere he can't feel it. "These people can take care of you, love."
She stares at him as she sits in a plush chair in her new room at the care home. Owen blinks back tears and wishes things could be different. He pushes a fallen lock of hair back over Katie's ear and brushes her cheek with the back of his hand. He lifts her chin with a finger and kisses her gently on the mouth. He wonders if he imagined that she kissed him back.
"I'll visit you, Katie. I promise." He kisses her again. "I'll see you later."
Shame rattles in his gut as he walks down the hall. The car park is cold and nearly empty when he steps outside.
She knows she used to feel whole. She knows before this she was a junior doctor who smiled and laughed and had so many friends and the most wonderful fiancé in the world. Now she's never sure exactly who she is. She's never exactly sure of anything anymore. Sometimes she writes the names of things on little sticky notes and putting them around the flat. She always takes them down and throws them away before Owen can see.
Things keep deteriorating. She doesn't know why she can't remember where the shop is, or how to tie her shoelaces, or whether she ate breakfast or not. She hates that Owen can't help her when she's like that. She hates that he watches her sleep at night and worries. After a few weeks of this, they decide to get some testing done.
"We're both doctors," Owen laments in the waiting room of the neurology lab. "Why can't we figure this out?"
"Maybe the tests will tell us something. You're not a neuroscientist, Owen. You know about the brain, but you don't know everything like these people do."
"I wish I knew everything," he mutters bitterly, and she kisses him to cheer him up.
The tests turn up nothing, and nothing, and nothing, and the doctors keep telling them it's early onset Alzheimer's. Katie doesn't understand how this could happen to her. She's only twenty-four. She watches Owen become more and more desperate, needing to figure this out. She's slowly losing herself, but it's reassuring to have his hand in hers. It's reassuring to know that he's going to keep pushing.
"We should postpone the wedding until all this is over," she suggests one night. "Have it in December or something."
"No," Owen shakes his head. "No. I promised you a summer wedding, Katie. I want you to have it, no matter what."
She kisses him.
Planning the wedding and holding herself together takes up most of her time, while Owen's days are taken up by work and worry. They trundle along in an attempt at calmness until Katie forgets where they live on a trip out to look at table centres and has to call Owen to pick her up. She sobs into the phone while Owen tries his best to calm her. He holds her hand on the drive back to their flat, and when they get inside, he holds onto her in the middle of the living room and they both cry.
"We'll get them to run more tests," Owen whispers into her hair. "They have to figure out what's wrong."
"Okay."
She stares at the doctor as he explains what's wrong, but nothing he says is registering. She's in love with the man sitting beside her, the man holding her hand. She's going to marry him. There's something growing in her head and the man sitting beside her is squeezing her hand so hard it's going numb.
The man beside her smiles at her gently. His face is familiar; she feels a rush of affection when she looks at him. "Do you understand?" She can't respond and his expression blanks out to fear. "Katie?"
The man is staring at her. She knows she feels deeply for him. She knows she knows him well. She wants to say his name, to comfort him and wipe the worry from his face. She reaches to find what she calls him, but it disappears. There's nothing there where his name should be and fear wells up in her chest.
She can feel herself falling apart. She squeezes his hand and tries to blink away the tears. "I can't remember your name!"
The sight of his face falling from confusion to stark realization and despair is agonizing. But he just pulls her into a hug from his seat.
"I'll move you to the rush list, Katie. We'll start your surgery as soon as possible."
Katie feels cold and tiny in her hospital gown in the prep room. Owen paces the small space until she catches his hand and he comes to sit beside her, letting her lean her head on his shoulder. A nurse comes in and explains to them that she must have her head shaved so the doctors can get at the tumour.
The clipping shears make a horrid buzzing sound that makes Katie's ears ring. When the blades touch her scalp, she feels a tear slide down her cheek, and suddenly she can't stop. She's sobbing at the fact that she's losing her beautiful blonde hair when she's about to have her life saved and it's ridiculous. But Owen's just holding her and letting her sob against him as the nurse shaves away great hunks of hair. The nurse leaves when she's done, and Katie and Owen are left to gather themselves together. They sit on the blue examination table together and hold each other. When a knock sounds on the door, Owen straightens up.
"We're ready for you," he states. "Doctor Harper, if you'd like to stay with her until she's sedated you may."
"Katie?" Owen inquires.
"Please."
The medication makes her feel funny. Her world is slipping sideways and everything is black around the edges. Someone is holding her hand and whispering to her, but his voice is far away and she can't understand what he's saying. Her last thought before she slides into unconsciousness is why does the strange man's face seem so sad?
She dreams of strange creatures and far off galaxies, planets full of water and stone, and a song in her head that she cannot hear. Then something levels out, and her dreams morph slowly into the sweet scene at her parents' house, a memory of last Christmas when Owen came to see her. She steps into her parent's house and "Katie?"
"Katie?"
She opens her eyes slowly, and is glad for the dim light above so her eyes don't hurt. "Katie?" She turns her eyes towards the familiar sound of Owen's voice. Her throat doesn't seem to want to cooperate.
"Katie, you're okay. The doctors removed the tumour." Joy blooms inside her chest, quickly stamped out by the fact that she can't seem to figure out how to speak. Open mouth, vibrate voice box, respond. She tries to mentally command herself to go through the required actions. Nothing. She screams against the inside of her mind. "Katie?"
The doctors can't seem to figure out what's wrong with her. She's again subjected to multiple tests, and they send her home with Owen to wait. She discovers that she can do the things Owen asks her to do, if he explains to her very slowly what it is he wants her to do. She can almost eat by herself, but it doesn't work well, and she has to rely on Owen to help her. She has to rely on Owen for everything.
She wouldn't mind it so much if she could talk to him. But that's the one thing she can't seem to gain control of at all. When she tries, it's like she's calling a phone whose cord has been cut. It's like her mind's connection to her body has been frayed and separated in places.
Katie can't stand this. She's used to running around, used to laughing and singing and talking to Owen every morning about the news or last night's telly. Now she can barely move, she can't talk, she can't do anything. Having Owen help her all the time reminds her that she's damaged, she's weak.
She wants to scream. She wants to hit something. She claws at the inside of her head, screaming at the silence. It's frustrating when she's can't do all the simple things in life she always thought were so easy. She can't change the channel on the telly, or read her favourite books, or even eat her food by herself. She's angry, and there's no way to get it out but to take it out on herself. She spends nights screaming in her mind, raging and furious at her lot in life.
Even when Owen yells at her, she can't help but scream back in her own mind, "I can't help it! It's not my fault and all of this is shit and I'm the one who has to deal with it so fuck you! I hate you! I love you for taking care of me but I hate this! Please don't leave me. I can't stand this life."
But nothing comes out, and she can do nothing but watch his devastated face and cry as he pleads with her to forgive him.
She can't deal with any of this. It's all so fucked up and painful. Everything is frustrating, everything is awful and impossible and she doesn't want to live with it but she has to. She has to keep living because there's no other choice, and her life is so twisted that every decision has been taken out of her hands.
The worst part is watching Owen slowly disintegrating over the long, slow months. It hurts her heart to watch the lines form on his face, to see the shadow under his eyes become darker and darker. The nurse that takes care of her while Owen is working is a nice, pretty little Filipino woman who watches bad daytime telly and fills the silences with ramble about news or her friends' silly anecdotes. But the nurse doesn't take away the exhaustion and sadness in Owen's eyes. She doesn't stop Owen from pacing, or crawling into bed at night and lying awake for hours. She doesn't stop his expression from getting darker and bleaker every day.
One night, Owen doesn't come back at his usual time. Katie is worried, and terrified that something's happened to him. Jewel frowns at the clock but continues whistling as she washes dishes. Inside, Katie is pacing and wishing she could do something. After a few hours, Jewel helps her into bed, and she can do nothing to protest. She's still awake when Owen comes stumbling in, and hears Jewel's stern scolding through the closed door. Then they speak in hushed voices and she can make nothing out, so she closes her eyes and drifts off to sleep.
"It's time to wake up, darling." Owen's voice greets her.
She opens her eyes and is met with Owen's pale face looking blotchy and hungover. He helps her up and bathes her and makes her breakfast. By the time she's done eating, Owen has gone and been replaced by a chipper Jewel who natters on about her friend who did something crazy at Nando's the other night. Katie doesn't care. The bleak face of her fiancé is stuck in her mind.
By the end of the week, Owen looks like he's about to collapse. He doesn't eat much anymore, and Katie can see his ribs through his t-shirt. Purple streaks decorate the area under his eyes, and his face is ashen. He almost looks ill, except that Katie knows Owen has an insanely good immune system and never gets sick. Owen goes into the bedroom, leaving her in front of the telly. Katie sincerely hopes he's about to take a nap. He needs it. She hears a strange, muffled sound and wishes she could call out and ask if he's okay.
Owen bustles in and out for the next week, and Katie can tell from the way he looks at her that something's going to happen. When he packs up a few boxes and puts them in the car, she isn't sure what's going on. But she thinks about everything as they're driving along and manages to put two and two together moments before they round the corner into the car park of the care home.
She wishes she could struggle, she wishes she could scream or cry or say something. But she can't, because her mind sits in an unresponsive shell. The nurses all smile and introduce themselves but she doesn't care. When they leave, it's just her and Owen together in the tiny room. The walls are an ugly green and full of thumbtack holes.
Owen takes her hands in his. "This is your new home," he tells her. She can see tears shining in his eyes and wishes she could kiss them away. "These people can take care of you, love."
She wants to tell him that she loves him, that it's okay, that she hates watching the stress and exhaustion slowly killing him. But she can do nothing but look into his face as he tries to explain to her something she already understands.
He brushes her hair back over her ear and leans in. The feeling of his lips against hers makes her want to cry, and she screams at her body until she can kiss him back, just a bit. His lips are warm and dry and his breath feels good against her face.
He stands up slowly, his hand still holding hers. "I'll visit you, Katie. I promise." He kisses her again, more quickly this time, and she wants to grab him and cling to him. His hand slides out of her grip. "I'll see you later."
She watches Owen's back as he walks out of the room, his shoulders curved inward, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his leather jacket. He looks back at her, and his face looks saddened and older than he has any rights to look. She wants to cry out to him, to hold him. But there's nothing she can do, and he just blinks miserably at her. His eyes hold depths of weary sadness she's never looked so far into before. Then he turns and walks out into the empty hall, leaving her alone in her chair with an empty husk for a body. She desperately wishes she thought he was going to come back like he promised, but she can't convince herself to believe that lie.