Chapter Fourteen – "Wooshed Away"
Previously – Doctor Who has attempted to put Zendall back into the reality that they originally came from. The key word here is "attempted" for something appears to have gone dreadfully wrong.
------------------------
Kendall sank into her chair and stared resentfully at the unopened menu before her. She and JR were having brunch at the Valley Inn, but she was even less hungry than usual.
"French toast?" JR attempted to tempt her. "Come on, honey. You've got to eat!"
"Honey has got to do one thing and one thing only," she thought darkly. "Find Doctor Who and kill him in cold blood."
The day had not gone well for Kendall. She had awoken, fully expecting to find the love of her life on the pillow right next to her and their baby cooing in the nursery. But Zach and Spike were nowhere in sight. Instead she found out she was Mrs. Adam Chandler, Jr. "That Extraterrestrial Idiot put me in the wrong reality," she thought for the thousandth time that day. "Not even the wrong reality I was used to. This is a whole different wrong reality. Zach was right about that lunatic Doctor. I should have listened. Omigod, Zach! I wonder what reality that monster shoved Zach into!"
"At least drink some orange juice," JR cajoled.
"Get stuffed," she thought, remembering how his attempt on Babe's life had landed her (Kendall) in Intensive Care a few months back. That was in the other reality, her true reality, wasn't it? Zach had saved her and Spike then, almost getting himself killed in the process. He had barricaded her hospital room and he wouldn't let them deliver Spike before he was ready to be born. Omigod, Spike!
"Kendall, look at me," JR asked of her. "This can't go on!"
"You got that right," she thought, keeping her eyes downcast.
"I loved Spike too!" JR said brokenly. "Anyway, I would have loved him. I wasn't even going to ask for a DNA test!"
Tears refilled Kendall's eyes.
She had stumbled into the nursery that morning looking for her baby. There was the crib she remembered from her true reality. But it was empty. So empty. Why was the crib empty?
"Where's Spike?" she had screamed hysterically. But JR only held her while she hit his chest with her fists and said nothing, leaving her to think the worst.
"I won't let you give up on life!" JR was telling her now. "And neither will Erica! Oh, good! There she is now! Erica! Erica! Over here!"
Without raising her head, Kendall sensed her Mother's presence, as she and her companion sat down at their table.
"How is she doing?" Erica asked JR, as if Kendall wasn't there.
"She was looking for sleeping pills this morning," JR reported, as if Kendall wasn't there. "Right after she went into the empty nursery."
"Damn right I was looking for sleeping pills," Kendall thought miserably. "I couldn't even find a freakin' aspirin!" She knew that somehow she had to steady herself. "Spike is alive and well somewhere. Zach is alive and well somewhere. All I need to do is to find out where that somewhere is and get myself there as fast as humanly possible." Despite her mounting panic and despair, she continued talking herself down. "If I fall apart, I won't be able to do anything to help myself out of this hell. When I go to sleep, Zach will be in my dream, and we'll figure a way out of this. Until then I've got to stay strong." Easier said than done. Especially since Doctor Who had warned them that if they accidentally wound up in separate realities, they might not be able to meet anymore in their dreams.
"Kendall, you must snap out of this!" Erica cried out, shaking her without touching her, as only she could. "Zach, tell her!"
Slowly, Kendall raised her eyes. Zach Slater was sitting next to Erica, a tormented look on his face. Was that only because he was with Erica, or was there a better reason?
"You are so perfect," she thought, missing her own Zach even more as she gazed longingly at this reality's Zach Slater. "You're so everything. I have probably loved the real version of you since before I was born. Seeing you now, sitting across from me, looking exactly like him, is like dying. You've got his hair and eyes and his nose and his mouth. You've got his body. You've got his expression of rueful world-weariness. But who the hell are you, and where the hell is he?"
For his part, Zach tried to find differences between this Kendall and his Kendall. Same features, same build. But the fire had gone out of this woman. He was looking at only the shell of his one and only love. "Damn you, Doctor Who!" he thought bitterly. What had that maniac done to them? Where was she?
When he had awakened and begun to understand the nature of this new, horrific reality, Erica had only been too willing to fill him in on what her older daughter was going through. She had lost Spike, and there was no setting that right. Hearing those words from Erica had nearly killed Zach on the spot. Then Erica had told him the rest of it, assuming, of course, that he already knew, which of course he didn't. According to Erica, Kendall had never really been pregnant, although she had named the baby she thought she was carrying and began furnishing a nursery for him. Erica couldn't begin to understand why her daughter had done that or why she had mourned for him so intensely when Dr. Madden told her it was a false pregnancy. But Zach understood. In any reality, any Kendall's love for any Spike would shine through. What agony this Kendall must be going through! Pity for this lovely stranger filled his entire being. He knew that if this Kendall was anything like his Kendall nothing he could say to her would make any difference.
"You've got to take care of yourself, Kendall," he nevertheless told her, meaning it.
"Why?" she asked him, her voice so filled with sheer agony, it went straight to his already shattered heart. "What difference does it make now? What difference does anything make now?"
At his wit's end, he ran his hand through his hair, as if doing that could help him come up with the right thing to say.
"I dunno," he admitted finally. "Something good might happen. It can't be midnight forever!"
He didn't sound convinced of that, however, which struck Kendall as odd.
"Coffee?" the waiter asked innocently.
"NO!" Zach and Kendall cried out in unison and with such vehemence that Erica and JR exchanged shocked glances.
"I – I haven't been sleeping too well lately, "Kendall explained haltingly, desperately trying to read Zach's troubled face. "And I need to sleep more than I need to breathe."
"Why, Kendall?" he asked her, afraid to hope what he was hoping.
She knew the answer. The only answer.
"Because I need to dream."
He nodded slowly, his eyes becoming less tragic with every passing moment. "I need to dream too."
"Dreams are good," Erica opined brightly, keeping up her end of the conversation.
"What do you dream about, Kendall?" Zach asked tensely, looking only at her.
"The man I love," she replied, her gaze never wavering from his. "The man I have always loved. The man I will love throughout all eternity."
"That's my girl!" JR laughed a little too hard. "See that Erica? I'm even in my wife's dreams!"
"His wife?" Zach soundlessly mouthed to Kendall.
"Well, I should hope I'm in my husband's dreams as well!" Erica said, squeezing Zach's arm.
"Her husband?" Kendall soundlessly mouthed to Zach.
"Excuse me, I need to wash my hands," Zach said, abruptly getting up from the table.
"Excuse me, I need to freshen up," Kendall said, abruptly getting up from the table.
They casually walked off in separate directions, circled back and met each other in the lobby.
"Is it you? Is it really you?" they both asked each other.
"YES!" they both answered.
Not bothering to look around at who else happened to be in the Valley Inn's lobby, Zach swept Kendall off her feet, kissed her soundly and carried her to the front desk.
"We need a room," Zach told the desk clerk. "Now."
"Zach," Kendall whispered to him, "I don't think that's such a good idea. My Mother and JR are right back there in the dining room. We can't --"
"Sure we can. She isn't your Mother, and that's isn't JR. This isn't our reality. Or even the reality we just left. This is a colossal screw-up."
"Put me down. I mean it. I adore you, but I mean it!"
He kissed her soundly again and then did as he was ordered. She then took his hand firmly in her own, led him to a couch in the lobby and yanked him down so he was sitting next to her.
"Zach," she said seriously, "this is the reality we woke up to. We've got to deal with that."
He couldn't agree more.
"Let's start dealing with it upstairs," he suggested, pulling her onto his lap.
She laughed for the first time that day. "Believe me, I'd love to, but we need to talk, and I don't know how long we have before our better halves hunt us down." She grew pensive and sad. "Zach, I lost Spike. Did Erica tell you that?"
He couldn't talk fast enough. "You didn't lose Spike. You never had Spike. You had a false pregnancy and went over the edge when you found out you weren't going to have Junior's heir."
Kendall couldn't take that in immediately. "Man, I'm even more messed up here than I was in the other realities!"
Zach would not let that go unchallenged. "You are not messed up, Lovely. You are completely the opposite of messed up. The only thing you've been lacking lately is me."
"And Spike," she added, her voice catching in her throat. "Zach, we've got to find a way back to our true reality! We can't go on living without our baby!"
"Look, Spike hasn't been born yet," he felt compelled to point out. "Let's go upstairs and do our best to remedy that. Who knows? Nine months from now we could produce a brand new bouncing Spike. Spike Slater!"
Did he sound like he wanted to stay in this colossal screw-up of a reality without even trying to escape?
"This isn't the place for us," she said, in case he was entertaining any thought that it was. "Zach, you're married to my Mother. How can we ever be together here?"
He shrugged. "This is Pine Valley. I bet in this reality marriages come and go as easily as they do in ours. Besides, I took you away from my Son, so it's only fair that you take me away from your Mother. It kind of evens things out."
"That isn't remotely funny," she sighed, reluctantly getting off of his lap and standing up. "And what about my husband? You know what an ugly temper JR has!"
Zach grinned, standing up also. "Ah, yes, Junior's temper. Let's think back. Why did I let him live after he arranged for a construction site to fall on your head?"
Kendall remembered. "Dixie begged you not to kill him. And, not for nothing, he wasn't trying to kill me. He was after Babe. His wife. See any pattern there? Anyway it was stupid Dixie who saved his stupid life."
Zach nodded. "And do you see Dixie anywhere in this reality?"
"Not so far," Kendall allowed. "But anybody we ever knew could show up, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised."
At that very moment, Kendall noticed that Zach was looking at somebody over her shoulder. There was an expression of stunned joy on his face that Kendall only understood when she turned around. Ethan was walking into the Valley Inn, smiling and waving at Zach. His Father.
------------------------
Oh, my! Ethan isn't dead in this new reality! Will that be enough to keep Zendall from searching for the way home? Time will tell, but I won't! Yet! Please return for the next thrilling episode, and in the meantime, please review this thrilling episode!