A/N: Apologies for the delay in updating this story. As always feedback and constructive criticism are all greatly appreciated.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own The Big Bang Theory.
Leaving the laundry room in the basement the two friends ascended the staircase in silence, Sheldon with his laundry basket tucked beneath his right arm and Penny immersed in thoughts of Leonard. Reaching the fourth floor she glanced at her wrist watch and sighed. She was home considerably later than she'd told Stuart who had offered to babysit for James while she attended her acting class. As it was in the end she'd never made the class, finding herself instead at the cosy Italian restaurant on Lake Street that she and Leonard had frequented most weekends.
"Hey Sheldon." Penny called across the hall to her neighbour poised with his key in his hand at the door to 4A. "I meant what I said downstairs we're gonna find him." she said with renewed determination. "I don't care what Howard or anyone else thinks. I'm not giving up on Leonard."
Sheldon shrugged. Despite their exchange in the laundry room and her efforts to convince him that hope still remained, somehow he couldn't bring himself to share in her optimism. Penny was just about to invite him over to join her for a late dinner when she heard the door to her apartment unlock from the inside.
"Daddy?" she gasped her jaw dropping at the sight of her tall, slender grey haired father dressed in his familiar casual attire of jeans, a striped shirt and beige baseball cap grinning in the doorway. "Oh my God what are you doing here?"
"Since when do I need a reason to come visit my daughter and my favourite Grandson?" he replied before opening his arms and beckoning her into his embrace. From over his shoulder Penny saw Stuart get up from the couch and pull on his jacket.
"I'd better be going." he announced. "I gave the little fella his bottle and his bath. He's fast asleep now." he added with a satisfied smile.
"Here you take this son." Wyatt said producing a $20 bill from his wallet and forcing it in the hand of the departing Stuart. "Thanks for helping my Penny out. I really appreciate it."
Despite his own personal hardship, Stuart was reluctant to accept payment for doing something which simply didn't feel like work. He loved taking care of James.
"Daddy, I can pay my own baby sitter you know." Penny cut in, shooting her father a warning look.
"Right, that's why there's a stack of unpaid bills in your kitchen." Wyatt remarked nodding in the direction of the pile of unopened envelopes that had caught his attention on the kitchen island. "Please take the money and I hope things pick up for you at your store soon." he smiled.
Choosing to ignore her father's comment Penny escorted Stuart to the door, thanking him again for his help. With Daryl currently busy in a paid acting role, she'd come to rely on him even more so over the last few weeks.
"Is Mom not here with you?" Penny asked after returning from checking in on James, pleased to find him sleeping contently in his crib in the bedroom.
"No, she had to work so I came by myself. So, are you pleased to see your old Dad?" he grinned.
Clearing a pile of laundry from the couch, Penny lowered herself down to sit beside her father. She couldn't help but wonder the reason for his unannounced visit, a trip that had seen him journeying all the way from Omaha in Nebraska.
"Sure, I just wasn't expecting you that's all." Penny said while eyeing the cluttered apartment and wishing she'd found the time that morning to at vacuum. "I just wish you'd called me."
Wyatt cleared his throat. "Actually sweetheart I was wondering whether you'd given any thought to what we discussed a few weeks ago on the phone?" he began cautiously. "About you and James moving back home to Nebraska."
Letting out a mildly irritated sigh Penny rose from the couch and headed toward the kitchen. "Do you want some coffee?" she asked.
"Penny, you know your Mom and I are really worried about you." Wyatt admitted as he watched his daughter go about filling the kettle at the sink before opening the refrigerator to retrieve the milk only to discover that the carton was empty. Along with not finding the time for cleaning and doing laundry, with her car currently undergoing repairs in the garage she hadn't been able to get to the grocery store either. There were only so many times she could let herself into Sheldon's apartment to 'borrow' milk without the paranoid theoretical physicist finding out.
"Look Daddy I know that you and Mom mean well, but James and I are fine. This is our home. Besides all my friends are here." she said with a shrug. "It's almost like you think I can't cope or something."
Wyatt had hoped that Penny might have had a change of heart. Much like himself, his daughter was stubbornly independent and reluctant to accept the offer of help. He knew that her dream of becoming an actress was dependent upon her staying in Los Angeles. There certainly wasn't much in the way of acting work in Omaha.
"Sweetheart, you've admitted yourself how hard it is being a single Mom and it's even more difficult when you're struggling so very hard to make ends meet." Wyatt continued. "I'm pleased that you've have your friends around to help you, but surely things would be so much easier for you if you moved home to Nebraska." he said motioning at the surrounding mess which served to illustrate his point. "At least if you came home you'd have me and your Mom to help out whenever you needed. And with us to babysit James you'd be able to work more hours...perhaps you could even think about going back to school to get your diploma." he added as a casual and largely ill-considered afterthought.
"So I'm a little behind with my bills and chores, it's no big deal." Penny came back in reply with increasing annoyance at her father and in particular his idea for her to go back to school. 'Since when did an actress need a high school diploma?' She thought to herself.
"Honey, won't you at least give it some thought?" Wyatt pressed gently. "I'm planning on staying a few days so you can think it over."
"And what about Leonard?" Penny said quietly. It grieved her that somehow he as James's father had so far not been mentioned at all. "Where does he fit into all this?"
Despite the fact that Leonard had never actually met with her parents, Penny knew how much they had approved of him while they were dating. As a well-educated man in a steady professional job he was a far cry from the guys that she'd dated while at home in Omaha. Devoid of undesirable attributes such as neck tattoos and outstanding police warrants, more than once she had heard her father refer to him as 'a keeper'.
"Sweetheart,I know this last year has been incredibly difficult for you and that you still have feelings for Leonard and you're hoping that he'll come back someday but..."
"But what?" Penny interrupted unintentionally raising her voice. A lack of sleep and constant worry had left her exhausted and with an even shorter fuse than usual."You don't think he is coming back do you? You probably think I should forget about him and move on, right?"
Before Wyatt could reply they heard the sound of James crying began to come from the bedroom.
"Dammit!" Penny cursed.
Wyatt offered to tend to his grandson, returning some minutes holding him after failing to get him to settle back to sleep.
"Oh, my gosh. I can't believe it! Really? Oh, I'm so excited, thank you, thank you so much. Okay, bye." He heard Penny say speaking excitedly on her cell phone.
With a beaming smile she hung up the call and turned toward her father to impart her good news. "That was my agent I got the part on the haemorrhoid commercial!" she squealed. "I start Monday."
There was a prolonged silence. In the arms of his Grandfather James had ceased crying and was now sucking contentedly on his pacifier.
"Well aren't you gonna congratulate me?" Penny questioned after waiting to allow her father to absorb the news, her smile quickly fading to be replaced by a disappointed frown. To her getting the part on a commercial was a big deal, perhaps even the big break that she had been chasing for the last seven years. Aside from a part in a low budget horror movie that had never been released, this commercial was to be her first paid acting job.
"I guess not." she muttered beneath her breath, turning her back on her father and proceeding to busy herself by sifting through the pile of envelopes on the kitchen island. At least now she would have some income and would not need to resort to asking her parents for help.
"Sweetheart, I'm pleased for you really I am." Wyatt began "But I still think the best thing for you both right now is to come home to Nebraska. Your Mom thinks so too. And as for Leonard of course I don't expect you to forget him.."
Wyatt stopped abruptly mid-sentence. His daughter was holding one of the envelopes in an outstretched hand, staring at in disbelief.
"Penny, what is it?"
"It's Leonard. It's Leonard writing." she answered in choked whisper.
"What?...Are you sure?" Wyatt said. Moving closer and peering over her shoulder he saw the brown handwritten envelope bearing a mailing date of almost a month ago.
Penny nodded. "It's his writing. I know it...It must have got mixed up with all my bills."
And with her heart pounding wildly in her chest she tore open the envelope, removed the letter from inside and began to read...
"Dammit!" Leonard cursed to himself jabbing impatiently at the buttons of the vending machine that had just swallowed up the last of his change, but was refusing to dispense his coffee.
"Here there's a knack to it."
Hearing the once familiar voice Leonard turned around to face the pretty red headed doctor and experienced an overwhelming sense of gratitude that she hadn't revealed him to Mrs Brown and Janie earlier in the ER.
"Here allow me." she said.
Nudging Leonard aside Stephanie thumped the front of machine with precision. Successful in her resuscitation attempt it whirred loudly, producing a steaming black coffee in a Styrofoam cup.
"Stephanie, I need to thank you." Leonard began nervously after retrieving the cup and watching Stephanie insert some coins for a much needed beverage of her own. "You could have told Mrs Brown who I was earlier, but you didn't."
Taking a sip of coffee Stephanie Barnett studied her ex-boyfriend. She had no idea as to why he was no longer in Pasadena or for what reason he was assuming a false identity, but whatever it was it had to serious. "Yeah, well I figured the poor woman is going through enough right now. She clearly thinks a lot of you." she told him. "So, are you gonna tell me what's been going on?"
Just then two nurses in blue scrubs passed by in the hall, throwing suspicious glances in their direction. "This place is a hotbed of gossip." Stephanie said. "Maybe we should go somewhere a little less public."
Following her along the hall and out into the stairwell, together they climbed a flight of stairs that led up onto the hospital roof.
"I come up here sometimes when I need to think." Stephanie admitted. "It's about the only place around here that you can escape and won't be found."
Reaching in the pocket of her physician's coat she pulled out a packet of cigarettes.
"You didn't smoke when we were you know...together." Leonard remarked as he watched her rip off the cellophane wrapper, place a cigarette between her lips and light up. It had been almost three years since they'd dated and evidently much had changed since then, not least the fact that she was no longer a surgical resident at Fremont Memorial Hospital back in California.
"Before I left Pasadena I heard that you got together with that blond neighbour of yours, you know the one that liked to wander into your apartment of a morning in her underwear.. Penny wasn't it?" Stephanie remembered. "I can't say I was surprised. It was obvious she had a thing for you."
Hearing Penny's name spoken aloud for the first time in a year Leonard's gaze dropped to the ground. "Yeah we did, but it didn't work out. We broke up." he told her quietly, not wishing to elaborate on why their relationship had come to its abrupt and painful end. "It hit me pretty hard."
"Well, I'm sorry to hear that. Really." Stephanie said. While there certainly wasn't any love lost between herself and Penny to whom she'd taken an instant dislike, she took no pleasure in seeing Leonard upset. "So, do you want to tell me what this is all about?" she continued.
Leonard shrugged. "I guess I just wanted to escape from be being who I was." he began to explain. "I didn't want to be Leonard Hofstadter. To me he was the guy who allowed himself to be treated as a doormat by his roommate, who was nothing but one big disappointment to his mother and that managed to completely screw up the best relationship that he ever had." he added.
"So you just decided to leave? Does anybody know where you are?" Stephanie asked apparently unperturbed by his revelation.
Leonard shook his head. "In the beginning all I could think was how my friends were going to be so much better off with me gone. To be honest I thought my Mother wouldn't even care...Maybe she'd even be glad that I wasn't around to disappoint her anymore."
"And now?"
"And now I'm just ashamed of what I did, I think about how must have hurt everyone." he admitted, finding some relief in finally being able to share his guilt with another. "To me it feels like I can't go back, even though I think about it all the time. There's just too much water under the bridge."
Discarding her cigarette on the ground and grinding it out with her foot, Stephanie resisted the urge to immediately light another. So far the stress of her current job had hampered any effort she'd made to give up. "So what you're saying is you're torn between wanting to go back and being afraid in case your friends reject you?" she said pointedly. In one short sentence she had managed to encapsulate what Leonard was feeling. "Have you considered that it might be worth the risk?"
But there was something that he hadn't yet shared. The one thing that above all else was keeping him from returning home.
"It's Penny right?" Stephanie stated knowingly. "She's the real reason you're scared to go back."
For a moment Leonard was silent. "She's moved on. She has a new guy in her life." he answered eventually before moving away from the stairwell door toward the steel railing that ran along the edge of the roof. "I knew I wouldn't be able to handle going back there to see her with him, so in the end I decided to write her a letter." he said while staring up at the frosty night sky. "But I know that I left it way too late, she'd never forgive me now."
"And you know this for certain? That she's moved on...that she wouldn't be able to forgive you?" Stephanie pressed. "Don't you think you should hear Penny's side of the story? I mean whatever happened to cause the breakup she must have loved you before then, right?"
Leonard felt his stomach lurch as he recalled Penny's horrified expression on the night he had had told her he loved her.
"That's just it I don't think she did love me... At least she never told me she did. It was only a few weeks after we'd broken up that she hooked up with this new guy. I saw them together..."
"Well, did you ever think that you might have gotten it wrong?" Stephanie suggested. "I'm betting you didn't hang around long to enough to find out, right?"
Just then they were interrupted by the sound of the pager beeping in Stephanie's coat pocket. "Mrs Brown's son is out of surgery." she said after reading the text on the display screen. "He's been transferred to the ICU. I should go."
Pocketing the pager she made quickly toward the roof door.
"Stephanie...Will he be ok?" she heard an Leonard call after him.
She wanted to tell him yes, but she'd seen countless patients with similar injuries come through surgery and not make it. "I don't know." she answered honestly. "The fact that he's survived the surgery is a reason to remain positive. All we can do now is hope... and pray. We seem to do a lot of that round here."
As a scientist coming from a family of scientists, Leonard had been brought up to believe only in that which had a scientific basis. Christmas nor any other religious festival was ever celebrated in the Hofstadter household. He would certainly never describe himself as having a faith, and yet that night feeling alone and lost Leonard found himself in the calm and solitude of the hospital chapel.
"Ben?" a voice echoed behind him.
Shifting around from where he was seated on a rickety wooden chair, Leonard's eyes met with Janie standing at the entrance of the chapel. "I didn't know you prayed." she said wearily as she ventured in and took a seat beside him. "I've never seen you in church on Sunday."
Choosing to ignore Janie's remark about church, Leonard enquired after Mrs Brown's son who he knew now been out of surgery for over an hour.
"I don't know. They don't seem to be able to tell us anything. You know my heart goes out to Maggie..I mean having to see her son like that..all those tubes and wires." she shuddered. "You know I just can't understand Henry... Why isn't he here? if that were my Tommy lying in that bed wild horses wouldn't keep me away." she added defiantly. For her many faults and fiery temper nobody could deny that Janie was an excellent mother.
For some time the two friends sat in silent contemplation. "Listen, I should be getting back why don't you come with me? I'm sure Maggie would appreciate your support. You know she thinks the world of you." Janie said. "I know you're not, but I know she thinks of you as her son."
Rising to his feet Leonard stepped toward a row of candles set beside the small alter.
"Ben, is everything ok?" he heard her ask, her voice full of concern. "What is it?"
Moving over to him she placed her hand on his back, discovering then that he was trembling and that his face was damp with fresh tears. "Is it this place?" she wondered out loud, surmising that the events of that night and their presence at a hospital had stirred a painful memory, perhaps of a loved one being sick or injured. Turning to face her Leonard removed his spectacles and wiped the tears from his face with the sleeve of his jacket.
"Whatever it is you can tell me." Janie coaxed. "Hey, we're friends now, right?" she smiled.
And so Leonard began to confess who he was and the circumstances surrounding him leaving Pasadena. All the while Janie listened in silence.
"So let me get this straight." She started after allowing herself a period of time to gather her thoughts. Completely unexpected, it felt like she'd been hit by a truck. "Your real name is Dr Leonard Hofstadter and a year ago you were working as an experimental physicist at a university in Pasadena, California? Only you decided you'd had enough of your life and left to start a new one." she summarised in a succinct fashion. "And you left without telling anyone why or where you were going.. people who probably cared and loved you and spent weeks and months trying to find you...not knowing whether you were dead or alive." She snapped, her rising anger fuelled by the anguish that she herself had been faced with when her own husband had disappeared without as much as a note left on the kitchen table.
"Believe me I'm not proud of what I did Janie. I'm so ashamed that most days I can barely look at myself in the mirror." Leonard admitted truthfully
With her arms folded tightly across her chest Janie let out an angry snort. "You seriously expect me to buy that? All this coming from someone who's spent this last year lying to the very people that took him in and gave him a job and to me and to my eleven year-old son." she spat out. "What kind of person does that?"
Leonard looked up to meet with Janie's fierce stare. While he hadn't expected sympathy, the severity of her reaction had caught him off guard. "Janie, I promise I never intended to hurt anyone." he defended, discovering that in that moment he was unable to raise his voice above a whisper. "I know I have, but it wasn't my intention."
"So are you going back to California? Is that why you've suddenly decided to come clean about who you really are?" Janie demanded, turning her back on him in a determined effort to hide the hot angry tears that spilled down her cheeks. "Well are you?"
In a state of confusion and with a million thoughts racing through his mind Leonard simply didn't have an answer for her. "I don't know...maybe...I'm not sure of anything right now." he stammered.
Unwilling to listen anymore to what she perceived as lies and excuses Janie stood up.
"Where are you going?" Leonard called out as he watched her stride out of the chapel at a pace and into the crowded hall. "Janie!"
Catching up with her by the elevator he grabbed her by the arm, turning her to face him.
"You're not going to say anything to Mrs Brown right now are you?" he demanded, stricken with panic at the thought of Janie going to her while her son was still clinging to life in an ICU bed. "I know she and Henry need to know... and I don't care whether they decide to disown me and kick me out when I tell them..maybe I deserve it, but now isn't the right time...not with everything that's happened tonight."
"Have you any idea what you've done?" Janie wept. "How hurt my Tommy is going to be when he finds out you're not who you say you are? You know you're the first man since his Daddy left that he's actually trusted and looked up to."
In many ways it hurt Leonard more to think of Tommy coming to know the truth than it did Mr and Mrs Brown who were now like surrogate parents. Maybe just maybe they would understand.
"No, Maggie and Henry have a right to know." Janie concluded decisively swiping away her tears. "One thing's for sure I'm not going to keep this secret."
"Keep what secret? What are you talking about?"
There behind them both his eyes blood shot from the whiskey he'd consumed and his hair and suit dishevelled after having fallen asleep was Mr Brown.
"Henry!" Janie gasped. "Thank God you're here."
A silence descended as Mr Brown stared in dismay first at Janie, then toward Leonard, searching their faces for an answer.
"Keep what secret?"