A/N: Enjoy, everyone!
Forget Me Not
Chapter 4
Heero,
I haven't heard from you in a while. I guess it's just because you're so busy… at least, that's what I'm hoping. I hope you're still getting these letters. The emails you send are so impersonal….
Emily's dad's really sick, looks like cancer. I'm hoping they'll be able to treat him quickly, but without his business my father's going to have a tough time keeping up, especially in this market. All he can talk about when I'm home is how much my 'education' is costing, and why I wouldn't go into business instead. Can you imagine? Just the thought of a business course, let alone math, makes me want to close my head in a desk drawer. Hopefully we'll get past this quickly and I can move out in the summer.
You had better at least visit for my birthday. It's been ages since I've seen you. Don't you miss me? I hate waking up in an empty bed, or getting breakfast at Bonjour on my own on the way to class… I just want to hold you and kiss your face and smell that cologne you always wear. My heart aches all the time for you.
Don't get too lonely. I'm always here if you want to talk to me, you know that.
Love you,
Relena
"Where in god's name have you two been?" Dr. Winner was, in a few words, fucking furious. His eyes were practically blazing as he threw open the door, sticking an arm out stiffly for us to walk in. Duo hung his head, glancing back over his shoulder and giving me the best cross between a puppy-dog and "I'm sorry" look I'd seen.
At least that I could remember.
"No, please, take a seat. I'm here until ten." Quatre was easily as angry as I could have ever imagined him. Seeing the anxiety in the young man's generally happy face made me feel uneasy, like a child who knew they were about to be thoroughly chastised. "I can't believe you would just take off like that. Don't you have any sense? What if you'd had another migraine, or fallen into seizures?" Sighing, he ran a hand through his blonde hair and motioned for us to actually sit down, joining us. "I'm sorry, gentlemen, I just take my job very seriously and I don't appreciate being usurped." Shooting Duo a cutting glare, he continued, Duo slouching down further into his chair in embarrassment. "That said, tell me how it went. Any success? What did you see?"
"We just wandered around for a while, and then visited the cemetery." I tried to be as succinct as possible, closing my eyes as I talked, begging my brain to spit up something familiar. All I got was what I'd eaten for breakfast that morning and the reminder that I had no cell phone.
"Anything come back at all? Any familiarities or sensations?" His faithful clipboard was out, the yellow lined paper already half-full with notes.
"Not really. When we left I wanted coffee and I just started walking like I knew where I was going…. It's hard to explain." I paused, and he looked up at me, nodding at me slightly to continue. "It's like… I knew the place was there, but I couldn't tell you how to get there, or what the place was called, or how I knew. It's fucking frustrating." I cringed at my choice of words but the doctor was completely unfazed, continuing to write.
"I understand what you must feel, but it's good that you're getting any kind of familiarity with your surroundings. With the city upside-down I'm sure it's not easy, but I have good news: since you managed to go around today without any issues, I think you should be fine to leave for New York at the end of the week." I should have been excited, I suppose, but for some reason hearing the name of the city didn't elicit any kind of adventure in me, as it clearly did for Duo, who was once again fidgeting next to me. "I'll have to run those tests this evening like I said, and that will determine if your brain will be fit for the flight. I don't have any doubts that you should be alright." He stood up and checked his beeper as it chirped in his pocket.
"Looks like something just opened up in the MRI schedule. You ready to go in now? It's an easy procedure, it shouldn't take too long." I nodded, standing up and looking back to Duo.
"You should go and get your stuff in order. I imagine whoever it is that's your boss now will want to know where you're going. Tell them I'll pay you later, that the time there will be indefinite." Duo nodded, clapped his hands together briefly and took off out the door in front of us. I rolled my eyes and took off the jacket I wore, tossing it over the end of the hospital bed and following after Quatre.
The corridors smelled like sanitizer and the smell of flowers that wafted out of the neighboring rooms. We took an elevator down two stories and I realized, quickly, that I was still one of the luckier ones. People lay on beds in the hallways, hooked up to all manner of tubes and monitors, some groaning in pain. Others were crammed into the rooms I could peer into as we passed, three or four people sharing a room half the size of mine.
I began to feel guilty. I had money; that much was obvious, but how much? How had I earned this special treatment? I was beginning to reach my boiling point, and I consciously made an effort to remain relaxed. The last damn thing I needed was another headache.
"Come right on in. They'll need you to change back into a gown and get ready. I'll be back in a few minutes." Smiling again, Dr. Winner left, and the nurses on duty approached, one young man handing me a gown and the other explaining, as I changed behind a curtain, what the contrast agent would do in my blood and how the procedure worked. I felt like I had heard it all before, and since my company made medical equipment it seemed likely I really had.
Clambering less than gracefully into the gurney, I waited as the doctor came back, sitting behind a glass panel and pressing a button to talk to me, saying he was beginning the procedure. I felt, vaguely, like a subject on the television show House MD, and it was disconcerting.
"Don't move around if you can help it. I'm going to ask you questions, and you don't have to answer, but think about your answer in your brain. I'm hoping we can see what brain areas are affected by different memories. You ready?"
I fought the urge to nod, instead saying "Yes." The noise from the machine was strange and loud, but I learned to ignore it, instead listening for Quatre's voice.
"Alright, Heero. When you were at the cemetery today, what did you feel when you saw the graves there?" I thought hard about it, the feelings of doubt and irritation, the emptiness at knowing so little about my own past, and next to nothing about my future. "Great. Now, when you left this afternoon, how did it feel when you realized you were going to get the coffee? What did you think about when you became conscious that you were heading for a place you didn't really know?" How fucking badly I wished I had at least gotten a coffee, I wanted to say, but instead I thought about the overwhelming feeling of wrong that had washed over me as I'd stood outside, looking at the half-collapsed buildings.
"Alright, that's probably enough for now, Heero. I'm going to let the machine finish the scan and we'll move on to blood work and your evaluation." I changed back into the clothes Duo had brought me, thankful for the full coverage only real pants could bring, giving a glare to the nurse, who stared at me just a little bit longer than necessary. Following the doctor back to my room, a nurse was found waiting there to take my blood samples.
"Well, I have great news and bad news. The bad news is that your explicit memory seems to be quite damaged, or very well hidden. The brain areas we would expect to be active when you think about the death of a parent or major loss such as that simply aren't reacting at this point." I frowned, but Quatre continued. "The great news is that your implicit memory is functioning very well. That feeling of 'knowing' you got when you walked down the street means that somewhere your brain is storing a lot more information beyond what you do at work. It's remembering learned behaviors that aren't necessarily something you do every day." He put down his trusty clipboard and stood up, ready to leave the room. The nurse pulled the needle from the arm and held a cotton ball against the vein hard, stopping the blood flow.
"I'm not 100% sure what's going on, but I'll be more confident about it when we get you back to New York. There's little chance you've been there recently, we couldn't find anything in your bank records about plane tickets there for over a year. It means that anything you remember from there is stored, useful memory, not every day, frequently used data." The words were pouring out of his mouth at such a rate I stopped paying much attention beyond the first half. He was clearly excited and loved his field, but I was exhausted. It must have showed, because the nurse excused herself and Quatre followed.
I collapsed into bed, but the only thing I could wonder was what was in New York I would be visiting for. As far as I had read the company had no interests there, keeping mainly to east Asia and the west coast of the United States.
Just as I had felt that morning, I could just tell something was there I should remember. Something important… I just couldn't tell what.
