Thanks as always to everyone who's been reading and reviewing this story. I apologise for taking so long to get this chapter out. I haven't abandoned it, I just don't have as much writing time as I would like at the moment!
Chapter 20.
Jack paused in the hallway outside Aaron's room. It looked like a bomb had exploded inside one of his nephew's toyboxes, scattering cars, action figures, and Legos across every available surface.
Claire was standing in the middle of the clutter, surveying it with a helpless expression. "How does a four-year-old even get this much stuff?" she asked him, brandishing a stuffed whale at the mess to emphasise her point.
The corners of Jack's lips quirked into a grin, earning him a petulant glare. "One of life's great mysteries."
He took a few tentative steps into the room, picking a pair of plastic dinosaurs up off the floor. "Where do you want these?"
"Just add them to the pile," his sister instructed him with a heavy sigh, gesturing to the mound of toys at the foot of the bed.
They worked in silence, Jack sorting the toys and Claire sealing them into boxes, which they stacked at the top of the stairs.
"What's Kate doing?" Claire asked him after a while.
Jack smiled at the image of her sacked out on the couch with Aaron. They were supposed to be watching a movie with him but neither of them had made it much past the credits. "Taking a nap."
"I remember those days," Claire said with mock wistfulness. She cringed when she realised how insensitive this must sound. "Sorry."
Jack brushed off her apology, clearing the last of the toys from the chair so that he could sit down. "When you had amnesia, how long did it take you to get your memories back?"
Seeming to decide that now was as good a time as any to take a break, Claire followed suit, perching on the edge of the bed. "I'm still missing a few days here and there," she admitted, "but I remember the important parts."
A bubble of hope rose inside Jack's chest. "How?"
"I went to see a psychologist," she explained with a wry smile. "Libby."
It took Jack a moment to remember where he'd heard that name before. "From the plane?" He knew from what Kate told him that Libby was one of the people who'd survived the crash, but not the island.
"Yeah," Claire agreed, averting her eyes to the carpet as she grappled with the painful memories that threatened to resurface. "She hypnotised me."
"And that worked?" Jack pressed, struggling to keep the scepticism from his voice.
"It did for me."
It sounded like a longshot, but he was willing to try anything if it meant getting that part of himself back. "In that case, maybe I'll give it a try."
"I could come with you," she offered. "I mean, unless you'd rather take Kate."
He shook his head. He couldn't do that, not when she'd already been to hell and back because of him. "Thanks, but I think this is something I need to do on my own."
"Everything looks great," the OB had assured them while reviewing Kate's latest sonogram. "Keep doing what you're doing, and you should have a healthy baby in about three months."
"Three months…" Kate repeated as they left her office. "That feels really soon."
"What are we gonna do with a baby?" Jack mused, punching the button to recall the lift. He tried to make it sound like he was joking, but he couldn't deny that their lack of preparedness was a very real concern. "We don't even have a crib."
The doors slid open and he followed Kate inside, settling in beside her against the back wall.
"So let's go to the store right now and buy one," Kate suggested. She flashed him a teasing smile. "Unless you have something better to do?"
It took Jack a moment to register the significance of her words. "One?" he repeated, wondering if he was being too literal.
"We're only having one baby," she laughed.
"One baby," he agreed, "but he's gonna need a crib at each house."
They hadn't talked much about how they were going to parent their son now that they were a couple; until he heard otherwise from her, he was going to assume that the original agreement to split custody still stood.
"It doesn't have to be like that," she insisted. "Not if you're serious about this – about us."
Jack bit back a grin. It was exactly what he'd hoped she would say. "Just so we're clear, are you asking me to move in with you?"
"Why not?" she pressed. "You practically live at my place now anyway."
"You don't think it's too soon?" he checked, reluctant to rush into anything at the expense of their relationship.
"It's probably too soon for us to be having a baby, but here we are," she reminded him, cradling her belly in both hands. "So how about it?"
He pretended to consider her proposal, even though he already knew what his answer would be. "Let's see, shack up with the mother of my child or keep living in my old house with my mom?"
He gave up the charade, allowing her to see how excited he was about the three of them cohabitating together as a real family. "How soon can I move in?"
She lit up with joy in response, launching herself at him and throwing her arms around his neck. "How soon can you pack up your stuff?"
"So what brings you here today, Jack?"
After consulting with some of his old colleagues from the hospital, Jack had managed to get a referral for a psychiatrist who specialised in recovered memory therapy.
Now here he was a week later, sitting on the pristine white couch in her office, trying to settle on a story that wouldn't make him sound psychotic.
Several moments passed while he deliberated on his response. So much had happened since that day he woke up in the hospital in Tunisia; sometimes it was hard for him to believe that he was even still the same man.
"Well," he began, "six months ago, I was in a plane crash."
It wasn't the whole truth, but it was the closest he could get without calling his sanity into question.
"A plane crash," Dr. Thurman repeated. "That must have been terrifying."
Jack wished that he could agree with her. "That's just it," he confessed. "I don't remember. I don't remember any of it."
The crash, the island, getting rescued, going back… It all felt so unreal, like a book that he'd read, the story of someone else's life.
Dr. Thurman regarded him with a kind smile. "It's not uncommon to experience memory loss after a traumatic event."
"It's not just the crash," he explained.
Part of him wondered if he had made a mistake coming here, if she would really be able to help him. His situation wasn't exactly covered in the DSM.
"When they found me in the desert, I didn't even know who I was, where I came from, who my family were… My mother, my sister, the woman I love – they were all strangers to me."
"That couldn't've been easy for you."
"It's not," he agreed.
"What about after you got home? Have you remembered anything since you've been back?"
He'd had a few more dreams about the island, but nothing concrete. "Not enough."
He wanted more than just glimpses of the man he used to be. He wanted his life back, every wonderful, terrible moment of it.
"We'll come back to that in a moment," Dr. Thurman said, scribbling something down on the legal pad balanced on her lap, "but first, I have to ask you – were you injured in the crash?"
He guessed right away where she was headed with this line of questioning and he couldn't say he blamed her. If one of his patients had presented with the same symptoms, he would be looking for signs of traumatic brain injury too.
"I sustained a near fatal abdominal wound," he admitted, "but my MRIs and CT scans all came back clear. I've been over the results myself, and there's nothing wrong with my brain, Dr. Thurman. Which means all of those memories I thought I lost must still be in there somewhere."
"You're the neurosurgeon, so if you say there's no sign of a TBI, I'm not going to argue with you," she agreed. "But if there's nothing physically wrong with you, then in your professional opinion, what do think happened to you?"
Jack knew from looking back over his academic transcripts that he had taken a few intro psych courses before entering med school, but most of that was lost on him now. "Psychiatry isn't exactly my specialty, but my guess is that something is blocking them. I came here today because I need you to help me unblock them."