Gillian could read Cal's mind. He was startled to discover that and then created instances in which he could prove it. If he stopped sentences mid way she could finish them and correctly too. Sometimes she would just give a little nod or utter an 'I know' and he knew she knew exactly what he was talking about. It was amazing, impressive, but also scary. He wondered if he was able to hide anything from her. She didn't seem to push him about something he didn't want to talk about. Like the other morning. He was embarrassed and disappointed with himself and despite her telling him it didn't matter or that she shouldn't have pushed him when he was still not quite 'there' (meaning well or a hundred percent) he still felt responsible for a monumental failure. It ate at him.
She said it wasn't a big deal. But it was. It was, if not Cal's first memory of them being 'together', then at least their first time 'together' in a while. Since the accident. Funky memory or not, even if Cal remembered everything, it would still be devastating to him. And it wasn't like Gillian didn't know, it wasn't like she didn't realise, it was more that she just seemed to so easily put it behind her. She had moved on already. Cal was dwelling a little. All right, a big bit.
Adam sensed Cal's despondent attitude and pushed him harder, then relented and gave him the afternoon off. Holly let him go outside to sit in the sun, though she refused to let him walk there himself even though he could. He could walk the bars now without needing the support and he was lifting weights at a whole new level. He wanted out. His rehabilitation wouldn't be over, not by a long shot, but as soon as he was trusted to walk around the house on his own without falling he was allowed to go home. He managed it as far as the bathroom in his room without completely losing it. He could wash his own hair now and he had managed a shave without slitting his throat (although he found scars hidden underneath it that looked surgical and he wrote it down in his note book under the list of things he was going to ask Gillian about one day). He was making progress even it felt monumentally slow at times.
Now all he had to do was work on him and Gillian. Which he had no idea how to fix. She was slightly distant with him. She still came to see him just not quite as much. She left a little earlier in the mornings and arrived a little later in the afternoons. She used work and Lewis as an excuse and while they were quite plausible, they felt like excuses nonetheless. Cal wanted things to go back to how they were before she jumped him and maybe under that duress he could blame her. But he didn't want to. He felt just as confused now as when he had first woken up. All right maybe not that confused but still...
Gillian arrived late in the afternoon. She seemed slightly flustered and explained it had been a busy day at work. Apparently there were tensions between one of their newbies, Paul, and Eli and she was working her way to the bottom of it before they had a fist fight. Cal only half listened to her. He had exciting news.
"What is it?" Gillian asked good-naturedly, clearly not bothered he had railroaded over her topic of conversation.
"They're going to let me go home."
"Oh?" Gillian raised her eyebrows surprised. "Really? That's great news."
"Yeah," Cal grinned at her, pleased. Despite everything, when he saw her, he just wanted to smile silly.
"When?"
"Not sure about the date yet. Suppose when they get their pape-a work done."
"Sure," Gillian nodded. She had an overwhelming urge to cry. She could feel her shoulders tense up with the effort of trying not to get too excited.
"But there are two provisions."
"Oh?" Gillian repeated, though this time a little less enthusiastically.
"I have to have somewhere to go."
Gillian nodded. After a moment she realised Cal was waiting for her to say something else. To offer. "Of course you can come home."
"Well I didn't want to assume."
"It's your home too Cal," she told him with feeling. "You're more than welcome there. You don't have to ask."
"All right great," he gave her a grin.
Gillian wasn't quite ready for smiling yet. "What's the other provision?" She asked suspiciously.
"I have to see a shrink. If not someone from here than someone else that I have to find before I leave," Cal responded in an unimpressed tone. That was as far as he let his distaste go though, considering last time this had been brought up it had resulted in a yelling match. He sighed. "I suppose that's somethin' though. Before they were insisitin' I talk to someone on their pay roll."
Gillian studied something on the floor.
"What did you do?" Cal asked her gently, his spidey senses alerting him to the fact that she was hiding something, and doing a very poor job of it.
She looked up to meet his eye. "I may have told them you already had a psychiatrist you saw on a semi-permanent quasi-regular basis."
Cal gave her a bizarre expression. "What the hell does that mean?"
Gillian braced herself and explained. "You've been to see a shrink before."
Cal watched her impassively. He had already been prepared for that information from that argument, but he hadn't given much thought to it, having been far more worried about the actual argument than the small details. Which was unlike him. But now that it was back he wasn't going to let it go again. "When?"
"Several years ago."
"Why?"
"You were, well I thought you were and I think you went to disprove me or something."
"Could I get full sentences please?" Cal requested firmly. "I'm not clear on what you're talkin' about at all."
"Several years ago," Gillian stopped to think about what she was going to say next and realised the story didn't start with Mitchell or Lewis's birth, which is when Cal had told her about going to see someone to talk to, but back before then. "We dated for a year and then we broke up."
"We broke up?" Cal cut in shocked.
"Yeah for about six months."
He looked appalled. "Why?"
Gillian winced slightly. "It's a complicated story."
"I've got time for you to unravel it. You got somewhere to be?" Cal shot back.
"I wanted to try adoption again," Gillian started slowly, watching his face carefully for reactions to her words. Cal nodded. "And you didn't want to have more kids," she added haltingly.
Cal blinked a few times in rapid succession. "So I broke it off with you?" He frowned, looked disgusted with himself.
"No it wasn't as simple as that," Gillian tried to explain. "We were going separate ways and so we literally went separate ways."
"That's stupid. I'd have more kids with you," he told her sincerely.
"I know but at the time you felt it was not something you wanted and so we spent some time apart."
"Hold on," Cal raised a hand slightly to stop her. "So then what happened with the adoption? Did you change your mind?" And how he hoped that was true but also wished it wasn't. What a selfish bastard he could be. Should he find it comforting that he hadn't changed?
"They weren't interested in me."
"What a load of bollocks," Cal complained. "Not interested in you."
Gillian held up a hand to forestall him. "Old argument," she explained. "One that we don't need to go over again."
Cal bit his tongue. "All right then, so we broke up and I landed in a therapist's office?" Seemed a bit high school.
"Well actually, we got back together first and I was worried about you so you kind of went because of me."
"You made me go?"
"No, I thought you were suffering from depression," Gillian started off slowly, unsure how he was going to react and trying to be careful. She didn't want to edit the story but she wanted to protect him from it. Their break-up was not one of her finer moments and she did feel responsible for it despite all the time that had gone by and the mutual promises they had made to not feel blame and put it behind them. "And so you went to prove me wrong or get a second opinion and after a few sessions you were doing great." Better than great. It solved so many issues and behaviours. It made him open to her and willing to talk and so... damn wonderful. Really, it had changed everything.
Cal watched her. She looked so... hopeful, he decided on. Or optimistic. Or... hopeful. Hopeful that he would accept her story or was she showing the hope she had felt at the time when clearly, everything had changed? "And was I?" He asked rhetorically because it was clear from her demeanour that he was or had been and had gotten better. He didn't know how he felt about that. He didn't remember feeling depressed. Sure, things weren't entirely great back then (which was really only a few months ago for him). And he had gotten grumpier as the years had gone by... and maybe a little despondent about the world but... did that mean he was depressed? Probably. If Gillian said so, she was probably right. She usually was about those kinds of things. And it did happen to run in the family didn't it?
"Well... I guess," Gillian started to hedge.
Cal figured she was reading him but he was just reeling from the information, not necessarily rejecting it. He reached for her hand and gave her a reassuring squeeze. "So I got betta?"
"Yes," she drew the word out.
"I didn't?" Cal guessed.
"No you did," Gillian affirmed.
"But?" Cal sensed.
"It's an even longer story."
"Go ahead," Cal suggested. He wasn't even sure what the original point of this story was but if she was sharing information he was certainly going to press for as much as he could get. He could sort it all out later.
"Well several years after that it occurred again."
"How come?"
Gillian hesitated. Cal could see saw the clear indecision in her eyes and something else. Fear. "Go on," he urged. "You may as well."
"You were diagnosed with cancer."
"Cance-a?!" Cal exclaimed. "Bloody hell Gill!" And then he stopped because of the pain he saw in her face. He might well be shocked and scared by the knowledge but she had lived it. He held her hand tighter. "What kind of cance-a?"
"Throat," she nearly whispered.
"The little scars here," he raised his free hand to his jaw, suddenly realising. Gillian nodded. "What happened?" He asked her.
She gave him a brief rundown of him finding a lump, getting diagnosed, how it had been stage one and easy to treat. He'd had surgery. The whole thing had been over within a few months. But he had been strong for her and because he had repressed his own fears and anger it had compounded and, internalised, those feelings led to depression. Cal nodded along as she talked, dumbfounded and awed. She wasn't kidding, hell no one had been kidding, when they said they had been through a lot. And here she was, still by his side, just one more traumatic event after the other; one more shitty situation he had put her through, purposeful or not. She hadn't even told him about Lewis's birth yet. Or the other situations he suspected were in their back catalogue, the ones she talked around because she didn't want to overwhelm him with that yet. He was starting to understand and respect her decision; the way she was handling things.
"Anything else I should be aware of?"
"There are so many things Cal," Gillian told him emotionally.
Cal brought her hand to his lips. He saw her in a whole new light now. In fact, he saw their relationship in a whole new light. Maybe he saw it a little how she did. No wonder she was so cut up about his memory loss. It wasn't just that he had forgotten their marriage, it was all those little incidences, and the really big ones, that had made their relationship strong. He understood now. Good lord the sheer thought of it...
"So there's a shrink out there who knows me," Cal remembered what they had been talking about in the first place. Along with that one memory snapping back into place, he was also doing much better at remembering things just since he had woken up. Gillian nodded. She seemed very subdued now. "Who's that then?"
"You never told me who."
'Typical,' Cal thought. That sounded completely like something he would do. "Can you find out for me?"
"I'll try," Gillian promised.
They were silent for a moment. Gillian's gaze drifted; Cal could see she was connecting with a memory and felt a flare of frustration. He wanted to remember too! He wanted to.
"Gill?" He nudged her gently.
"Yeah?" She looked up again. Her blue eyes connecting heavily with his. They took a second to soften into her question.
"You told Rockwell I was already unda the care of a psychiatrist so I could go home soona didn't you?" Which meant she must have already talked to Rockwell before the neurologist, who was overseeing Cal's care, had come to see Cal himself.
"Yes."
"Thanks."