He can see her beautiful green eyes approaching his face
"Beckett! What are you doing?" Castle's first words out loud in several days are confusing to the medical technician standing in the room
In his mind he hears her say "I am kissing you. That's what I am doing. You have a problem with that?"
Castle responds out loud again "Well I do not go around kissing another man's 'wife. So yeah I have a problem with that"
The moment that he feels her lips meet his lips, there is a jolt of electricity and his arms reach upright toward Kate. But instead there is no one there.
Richard Castle has awakened from the coma he has been residing in for the last three days. He has a headache but his eyes are open and he is alert
"Welcome back Mr. Castle the technician standing close to him says. My name is Oscar and I am the laboratory technician and I will be drawing some blood in a minute, but first let me go and get the doctor. He is going to be glad to see you awake"
"Where am I?" Rick questions
"You are in a private medical facility outside the city. It's for special people like you to recover from serious head injury"
Oscar leaves the room to go tell the staff that Castle's awake
The doctor enters the room "Mr. Castle I am Doctor Sydney Evans and I am so very glad to see you awake. How are you feeling?
"Well my head definitely hurts in fact it is pounding. What happened?"
"Do you remember anything?"
Castle pauses a minute "No. I uh...the last thing I can remember. I had a fight with Kate Beckett. I walked out of her apartment and we are no longer partners or even friends"
"Mr. Castle I can tell you that you and Ms. Beckett are still partners. In fact you two more than just partners. You two are married"
Castle is startled by this revelation. "Married? That is not possible. We had a fight and I walked out of our relationship. The way I left it, she would never been willing to speak to me again, let alone to ever forgiven me"
"Well, Rick I will assure you that you did get together
Castle looks out the window for a moment processing the data just given to him "So when did we supposedly get married?"
"It was about 3 weeks ago. In fact you surprised everyone. No one knew you two were a couple and while in Las Vegas, you popped the question and ya'll just did the deed"
"Doctor, I really don't remember that. I do remember her and I talking about our relationship and I had been hoping we could be together, but then I overheard her admit that she knew I loved her, but she didn't feel the same about me"
The confusion in Rick's brain is not processing memories in order or even accurately
"The fight you mentioned occurred several months ago but now the two of you have been dating away from the precinct from around that time"
Not willing to listen to any more information about Kate, "How did I get here? And where exactly is here?"
"This is a recovery hospital. This is where we took Andrea. She is totally recovered now and ready to tackle the world"
"Who is Andrea?"
"Rick, do you remember the threat with the smallpox virus?
"NO"
"Do you remember the UN building being a target for terrorists?"
"NO"
"Do you not remember. You threw yourself on top of a model helicopter that was going to spray a deadly toxin into the AC system"
"NO. Doctor, I don't remember anything after Kate and I fought"
"You do have big empty space in you memories, don't you?"
"I guess I do. Can I see my daughter and mother now?"
"We will get them in soon. You need to understand that this is a secure facility and only a few people even know it's here. So we limit visitors to those with clearance"
Castle's face falls when he realizes that the two women in his life are not being allowed in to see him
Doctor Evans looks out the hallway door and sees another doctor coming their way
"Rick, we will get them all in soon, but right now, we need to fix your memories. Another member of our team s coming in right now to see you"
The room door opens and another man enters "Hello Rick. Do you remember me?"
"No. I am afraid not. Who are you?"
"My name is Burke. Doctor Carver Burke and we are going to see if we can fix some memory issues today."
"Hello Doctor Burke. It is nice to meet you." Castle extends his hand in friendship
Dr. Burke and Castle spend an extended period of time visiting about the events prior to today. Castle tells the doctor about seeing Kate in his dreams and that she is married to someone, because Castle saw her ring and was positive it was not from him. Burke decided not to push the issue at this time and would be giving Rick space to process the events that seem to be missing from his mind
Back in the doctor's lounge Dr. Burke and Doctor Evans are comparing notes.
Dr. Burke makes his first observations about Castle. "It appears that during his attempts to come out of the coma he did see Kate and her ring. It also appears that the last interaction with her he can remember was the fight where they broke up and she almost got killed. But he is not remembering anything past that."
"Has he given any indication that his former involvement with the company has been compromised?"
"No. The blocking that was done to him back then seems to be holding. His memories of his CIA training has been well suppressed" Burke answers
"It's too bad that these mental training techniques are what caused his coma in the first place"
"Do you think this trauma might cause any of his CIA memories to come back to the surface?"
"I certainly hope not. When he was allowed into Agent Turner's group for research we took a giant chance of what he saw getting out. But the blocking techniques we used back then were every good. I think they are still holding."
Doctor Evans finally asks "Can we do something, anything to fix the memories of his current life? We need him back with his family. You do know that he and Kate were planning to have a formal wedding next week in the Hamptons"
"Yeah I know. I was invited"
Doctor Evans looks out to the corridor. "Yes, we need Katherine Beckett back to her normal life so the research using her, Angie and Andrea as the test subjects can continue"