A/N: Thank you Ruth for the awesome beta.
This was first posted on livejournal, in case you should find it familiar.
Long Way Down, Long Way Home
Chapter Three
by
Steffi
Dimly he heard a child's voice, it was light and very, very far away. Only a whisper in the darkness surrounding him. Another voice was added:
"Who's that? How did he get here?"
That was, indeed, a very good question. How had he gotten here? And where the hell was 'here'? He felt sick – had he fallen? His head hurt, there was a throbbing pain behind his temple. His limbs felt heavy and stiff, the skin horribly tight. Cold crept up his body. The ground beneath him was soft, and damp. Was he in a forest? Were those leaves he was lying on? How long had he been here?
"Quick, go get Mom!" the first voice shrieked. It sounded frightened. A rustle next to him, someone had gotten closer. "Hello?" the child asked, he wanted to reply but then he lost himself in the dark again, and everything got quiet.
Vaguely he could hear the sound of engines, people were talking in a fluster. Great, where was he now? Things were different. He was no longer bedded on leaves, but on something else, equally soft. He was a little warmer, too. Was he in a car? There was a jolt, a rumble as the car or whatever this was took a turn. It was then he noticed the siren. An ambulance? He dozed off again.
The next time he regained consciousness the noise of the engine and the rumble were gone. Things had definitely gotten quieter, in fact, it was perfectly still but for a dull and rather annoying beeping sound coming from his left side. Then it dawned on him. Oh Christ, was he in hospital?
Contently he noticed his violent headache was gone, and whatever they'd done to his arms and legs, they'd stopped hurting quite so much. Well, at least that was something.
Then something else occurred to him: he didn't have the faintest idea who he was. Let alone how and why he'd been brought here.
That couldn't be, could it?
He tried to remember, remember something, anything but his attempts remained futile, there wasn't anything. Not even the slightest clue, nothing. It was like someone had swept his mind blank. Like someone had reformatted a computer hard drive.
He opened his eyes abruptly and blinked, his vision was blurry and it took a moment until it slowly began to clear up. At first the brightness almost blinded him; the bed, the walls, the ceiling, the furniture – everything was so white and sterile. Oh yes, he definitely was in a hospital. He realised his arms and legs were bandaged.
Over the back of a chair close to the bed someone had placed a pair of jeans and a blue t-shirt. The clothes were dirty with soot, fire had burned a hole into the fabric of the shirt. Did those clothes belong to him?
God, what had happened to him? What the hell was going on? He heard the beeping from the monitor next to him getting faster, he broke out into a sweat, his pulse was racing.
Something must have alarmed the nurses – he wasn't an expert (or at least he didn't think he was) but he mused the nurses around here didn't possess psychic abilities. A young woman with short, black hair came running into the room, glancing quickly at the monitor, before she rushed to his side and asked:
"What's wrong? Are you in pain?"
He shook his head, struggling for air.
He didn't know who he was. God, why couldn't he remember? How was it possible that everything was just...gone?
"Please, would you please calm down!" The nurse reached for his hand. He read her name on the batch, it said 'Mary' – the name seemed familiar, but he couldn't place it.
"I – I can't remember anything!"
He'd meant to make it a scream, to holler it, to clarify this wasn't a fucking joke, but instead it came out as a broken, barely audible whisper. Was this his voice? Was that what he sounded like? He'd expected something else, though he wasn't sure what exactly.
For the fraction of a second the nurse stared at him completely stunned, helpless, before she collected herself again. She started stroking his arm, at least the part that wasn't thickly bandaged. Her voice adapted a warm, deep tone:
"Just calm down, okay? I will call for the doctor, I'm sure he can help. I need you to calm down, do you understand?"
He nodded though he hadn't, in fact, understood anything. Calm down? What did she know – she still knew who she was! He forced himself to breathe in and out, to take deep breaths. Steady. Stay calm. There must be a way to set things straight. Really, there must be. Someone's bound to know who you are. Then everything will come back to you, you've seen it on TV before – have you? Have you seen it on TV before?
When nurse Mary finally returned with the doctor his pulse had gone back to normal at least – well, almost normal. He even felt a little dozy, probably due to the painkillers. The doctor was an elderly guy who was bald except for some wisps that were fighting their ground at the sides of the man's head.
"Nurse Mary said you believe you've got amnesia?"
"Well I can't remember anything so my guess would be, yes." he snapped. Oh hell, was he always like that? Belligerent? If that was true he'd definitely have to do something about it.
"Calm down..." the doctor said and raised his hands in a pacifying gesture, almost like a priest.
"You go calm yourself down," he snarled. Oh, that had been mean.
The doctor sighed.
"I know it's scary but you need to calm down. Your anger will get you nowhere. " The doctor made a short pause. "I won't lie to you, amnesia's not easy to treat. Almost impossible. We'll run you through neurological tests as soon as your burns have healed, but I'm afraid there's nothing you can do but wait and see. Usually the memory returns sooner or later."
"And what if it doesn't?"
The doctor didn't reply.
Burns. Had he been in a fire? Nurse Mary told him that he'd been found in a forest near a house that had burnt down to the ground the day before. His eyebrows went up in surprise and he asked:
"What the hell would I have been doing in an old, burning house?"
"That's what we've been asking ourselves. The police suspects it was arson. We notified the authorities about your case, should someone ask for you. They told us there was a man at the site of crime, claiming his brother had died in the fire. We assume he was talking about you."
The thoughts in his head began to spin. He had a brother? Where was he? Why wasn't he here? Did they maybe not like each other? Why would his brother believe he was dead? And if the guy had indeed been his brother, why did no one know who he was, where he came from? Mary seemed to have guessed his thoughts, because she quickly added:
"The man they found, he was in shock, and wouldn't answer any of their questions. He wouldn't even give his name, least of all yours. He disappeared in the following night. They're investigating him, and you as well."
Oh, that was just perfect. So, not only was he someone who'd apparently been abandoned by his family, on top of that his family was a bunch of criminals. Heck, he was a criminal. Arson – what was next? Credit card fraud? He sighed.
"No one else's been asking for me?" he asked. Nurse Mary shook her head, "No, sorry."
"No one?"
"No one," she paused, then continued quietly: "We've given your photo to the newspapers but so far no one could identify you. "
He didn't answer. So, in conclusion, maybe one fine day he'd remember who he was and where he came from, but until then he'd be stranded her, without identity. Neat.
"The police would like to question you.", Mary said.
Two police officers came to talk to him the next day. They asked him a lot of questions; what had he been doing by the house? Had he set it on fire? If not him, who else? Could he remember how he'd gotten into the forest?
He had no answers; was tempted to make things up instead – and that scared him.
The other man whom they'd found at the site, the man that had called the fire brigade – who was that? The man had refused to reveal his name, had told them his brother had been in the house – did that mean anything to him?
No, it didn't.
They ran neurological tests, told him to take it easy – of course they did that, after all, they weren't in his fucked up situation. When they transferred him to the neurological ward after ten days (after the burns had healed reasonably, though he'd probably carry away some scars) he wasn't any further than the day he'd woken up here, in hospital. They told him this was perfectly normal – but he had no idea how things would turn out, and he was beginning to get really scared. He was near panicking.
Usually there were relatives, family members to support you and hold your hand as time went on. People who told you everything would be all right, that helped you returning to your old life. Usually you had a driver's license people could identify you from. Usually someone recognised you from the photo in the newspapers.
His family on the other hand apparently either believed he was dead or did not care to see him. He hadn't carried any form of ID with him when they'd found him – he couldn't offer an explanation for that, and neither could the nurses and doctors. Most likely he'd lost his wallet in the house, if he'd indeed been in there. And the appeal in the newspapers had remained fruitless.
They were running out of options. He couldn't stay here for the rest of his days, and what if his memory never returned? What would he do?
One of the male nurses from the neurological ward seemed to be thinking along the same lines. One day he asked if it wouldn't be better to go by a temporary name? Something like Tom perhaps?
From that moment on he was Tom. Not Tommy, he hated it when the orderly, whose name was Sean, called him by that stupid nickname. Sean usually dropped by when there was nothing else to do and then he brought Tom books and magazines. He said that sometimes all it took for memories to return was a book one had read before. Of course they couldn't be certain what kind of books Tom had read in his life, if he'd read books at all – but it was worth the try, and it was definitely better than just to sit and wait and do nothing.
Tom liked Sean. Sean was all right.
There was something that bothered him, though. Or maybe bothered was too strong, it was more subtle than that. He had a funny feeling whenever Sean entered the room, and it wasn't even Sean himself, it was the badge he wore, with his name. "Sean" – it made Tom flinch every time he read the name but he couldn't make head nor tails of it.
He tried desperately to remember. With every day he stayed at the hospital he felt more and more that he was running out of time. Sometimes he would be staring at a spot on the wall, trying to let his mind wander in whatever direction it thought to be right, sometimes he ordered himself to fucking remember already – but his attempts were in vain. It was like something was blocking his memory - he tried to remember, but he couldn't. There was this invisible barrier that wouldn't give in.
"Maybe it's no coincidence." Sean said one day, "Maybe your subconscious does it on purpose. Maybe your past is too horrible to remember?"
"You think?"
Sean shrugged: "It's possible. But I'm not a therapist, just an orderly."
Sometimes while Tom was watching TV it occurred he actually remembered something – or more, he didn't actually remember as such, but it sometimes happened that he tuned into a film and instantly knew what the film was called, who was in it and how it was going to end. It most often happened to him when he watched scary or horror movies – which led him to believe he was a fan of brutal and scary films. And an arsonist on top. Oh, and his family was ignoring him, of course.
But he could never remember where and when he'd seen the films before, or with whom – and that almost drove him insane. He was so close, so damn close to retrieving a piece of his past but at the last step, the access to his memory, remained denied to him. Maybe Sean was right after all, and his subconscious was trying to protect him.
At least the police passed on making a report for arson. The building had been old, and uninhabited for a while, and Tom presumed the effort of proving someone guilty who couldn't remember a damn thing was just too much. Especially considering nobody really cared about the house.
Of course he was relieved about that, but in comparison to his other problems the impending report had seemed irrelevant anyway. So, he was no longer a criminal to the police. Didn't change the fact he'd most likely set a house on fire. Why had he done something like that? What explanation was there? Why did no one know who the hell he was?
People didn't just appear out of thin air. They had a life they could return to, no matter how hard and hopeless it seemed. They had other people who belonged to them.
But he didn't. He was all on his own, and he didn't have a life, none that he knew of. He would have to try and rustle one up. He had no idea how. He couldn't just drop by a supermarket and buy one.
Life was something you built, like a house. But neither did he have construction plans, nor the means and tools – and no one who would help him.
In fact, his future looked rather grim.
-TBC- .
