5 February 2010

"Walk me through it," Claudia said.

Nick sighed and leaned back against the door, scrubbing his hand wearily across his face. Walk her through it? He had no idea where to even begin.

"I drove Jen home last night after we finished giving our statements. She was perfectly fine."

"Was she fine?" Claudia interrupted. "I'd think she'd be a bit rattled, after everything."

"It's Jen," Nick answered with a shrug. "She takes everything in her stride. She was fine."

"Ok, then what happened?"

People had been asking Nick that question rather a lot over the last twenty four hours.

"I didn't hear from her again. When she didn't turn up at the station this morning I rang her mobile. She didn't answer. That's not like Jen."

"So you decided to come check on her."

"We're on desk duty anyway," he reminded her grimly. "She's due to meet with the brass this afternoon. It's not like her to be late, and she can't miss that meeting."

There were other reasons, too, other reasons Nick was worried about her, other reasons why he was the one who'd volunteered to drive out to Jen's and check up on her, but Sergeant Lee didn't need to know all that.

"Ok, so you came over. What then?"

"She answered the door, and she was still in her pajamas." She had, in fact, been wearing an old shirt of his he'd forgotten he'd even left at Jen's and a very brief pair of shorts, and Nick knew from experience Jen preferred not to sleep in anything at all. It had taken him hard, seeing her like that, dressed like it was a Saturday morning and they had nothing to do but spend the whole day in bed. Those days were long gone, now.

"She told me she didn't know who I was, or where she was. She kept saying I think there's been a mistake."

It hit him like a ton of bricks, hearing Jen say she didn't know who he was. There had been a moment, that night in Matt's kitchen what seemed like a lifetime ago, when she had turned to look at him and he had caught her eye and he had wondered, just for a moment, if she'd forgotten him. If she'd look at him and see a stranger, not the man who had been her husband, shared her bed for over a year. They'd been apart for a long time, and maybe, he'd thought, maybe he hadn't meant as much to her as she'd meant to him. Maybe his face wasn't etched on her memory the way hers was on his; maybe, he'd thought, the whole bloody thing had faded from her mind, replaced by more immediate worries. But then her eyes had snapped up to his, and he'd seen it all, every minute of every day they'd spent together and her shock and her recognition, and he'd let out the breath he'd been holding. Jen hadn't forgotten him then, no more than he'd forgotten her.

Only now, she had.

"Did you ask her if she'd been injured? Check for head wounds?"

Nick shook his head. "I would have done," he said, "if she'd just lost her memory, but I don't think this is just amnesia. She hasn't forgotten who she is. I mean, she's forgotten who Jen is. But she's got a head full of memories. They just belong to someone else."

Claudia frowned. That frown troubled him, a very great deal. He had been holding on to the hope that Claudia might know something he didn't, that somewhere in the course of her work she would have encountered something like this, or at least read about it, that she might have a name for Jen's condition and a clear path to treatment. That frown told him otherwise.

"Right," she said. "And who does she think she is?"

"Mrs. Jean Beazley," Nick said, looking down at his hastily scrawled notes from their brief interview. "A housekeeper from Ballarat."

"Well, let's go and speak to Mrs. Beazley, shall we?"

Nick had intercepted Claudia at the door, stepped out to talk with her on the front steps before letting her in the house. He didn't want to risk Jen overhearing something that might upset her. The time had come to face her though, and so he swung the door open, and gestured for Claudia to step inside.

It was strange, being in Jen's house again. He'd not come back since that day in the car when everything fell apart; Jen hadn't wanted him there, he was sure. But he thought about it, sometimes, what might happen if Jen changed her mind, if she gave him another chance, if he drove her home and she reached across and grabbed his hand, and asked him to come inside. Those thoughts had been pleasant; this was anything but. He could see her, Jen, sitting there at the kitchen table, but she looked at him with the eyes of a stranger, and when she spoke he did not recognize her. Something was wrong with her, but he had no idea what, and no idea how to fix it, and fear filled his lungs, heavy and thick, the fear that there would be no third chance for them. The fear that it was too late, that Jen was lost, and all his patience, all his years of waiting, had been for naught.

They entered the kitchen together, Nick and Claudia. Jen - Jean, whoever - was sitting at the kitchen table, looking strangely prim in her neat black skirt, her hair caught up in a style Nick had never known Jen to wear. At the sound of their footsteps she rose, and looked towards Nick expectantly.

"Mrs. Beazley," he said, politely. Whatever had happened to Jen, the woman who had taken her place had a formal, courteous way of speaking, and he tried to emulate it for her sake, not wanting to upset her. "This is Sergeant Claudia Lee. Claudia, This is Mrs. Beazley."

Claudia seemed to have picked up on his careful turn of phrase; she smiled, and held out her hand for a shake.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Beazley," she said. You gotta give it to her, Nick thought. She's handling this well. What he'd just told Claudia was the strangest story he'd ever heard, but she wasn't making a fuss, wasn't tense or anxious, was instead calm and steady, the way Claudia always was.

"Has Detective Buchanan explained everything?" Jen asked, somewhat anxiously. Her eyes were huge and round and worried, and she smoothed her hands absently over her skirt, her movements betraying her nerves. It all seemed so genuine, and that was the part Nick couldn't understand. Where had she got this idea of Mrs. Beazley from? How could she become someone else so completely, with no trace of his confident Jen left behind?

"He has," Claudia answered. "Why don't we have a seat? I have a few questions, if you don't mind."

"Of course."

The ladies settled at the table, and Nick shuffled off to make a cup of tea for Claudia. He felt surplus to requirements, at the moment; there was nothing more he could tell Claudia, and it would be up to the ladies to sort things out amongst themselves.

"First of all, I don't think we need to be so formal. Please, call me Claudia. May I call you Jean?"

"Yes, I think that would be all right."

"Jean, I'd like to ask you, can you tell me what day it is?"

Nick's back was turned to the table while he poured Claudia's tea, and he froze for a moment, listening hard. That question had been on his own list but he'd never gotten there, somehow. He'd been distracted by thoughts of Ballarat, her nephew the constable, the easy way she'd spoken of the war as if the memory of it was fresh, when it had been over before Nick had even been born. Jen was quiet for a heartbeat, and he wondered in that instant if she didn't know, if that one question would be enough to unravel this whole mystery. He was wrong.

"It's Friday, the fifth of February," she answered.

How could she know the date, but not her own name?

"And the year?" Claudia prompted her gently.

"1960."

"Shit," Nick swore before he could stop himself. The answer had caught him off guard; he'd been in the act of turning towards the table with Claudia's tea in hand, but he'd jumped when he heard Jen say 1960, and he'd spilled hot tea all over himself. The ladies looked at him sharply; Claudia's expression was understanding, but Jen just looked scandalized, as if she couldn't believe he'd had the audacity to swear in front of her.

"Sorry."

"Is there something I need to know?" Jen asked, a little testily.

"It is Friday, the fifth of February," Claudia answered, turning back to her. "But the year is 2010."

Nick had topped off Claudia's cup to make up for the bit he'd spilled, and he was in the act of walking back to the table with it when she delivered that blow. He paused for a moment, holding his breath, wondering how Jen would take this news. Would she shriek? Insist it was an impossibility? Would she think that Nick and Claudia were the ones who had gone mad? Would she go running from the table?

In the end she did none of those things; instead she laughed.

"Well, that's just ridiculous," she said dismissively.

This whole bloody thing is ridiculous, Nick thought. He didn't say anything, though; he'd leave this up to the professional. Instead he passed Claudia her tea cup, and settled himself down in one of the empty chairs at the table.

"Is it?" Claudia asked gently. "Look around you, Jean. The appliances, our clothes, our phones," she gestured towards the table where Jen's mobile lay, forgotten. "Does this look like your kitchen at home?"

"I….well…" for a moment Jen's gaze danced around the kitchen, and Nick saw it, saw the horror dawning in her eyes, the fear. It gutted him to see her afraid, Jen who was never afraid of anything, to see her fighting this battle alone and knowing he could not help her. He was meant to be by her side, always, her partner, her friend, the one she could always count on, the one who never leave her behind. Only now Jen had left him, had wandered down a path where he could not follow.

"I suppose it is a bit different," Jen confessed in a small voice. "But the idea that I've somehow traveled fifty years into the future is preposterous. I just...please. I just want to go home." She sounded a bit desperate as she said it, and it broke his heart to hear it, the longing, the hopelessness in her voice. You are home, he thought. You are right where you belong. You just aren't who you're supposed to be.

"And we'd like to help you, Jean. I'm going to speak to Detective Buchanan alone for a moment, and then we're going to see what we can do. All right?"

Jen just stared at her, aghast, but Claudia rose from the table and Nick followed suit. The house wasn't very big, and there weren't many places to hide, so he led her into Jen's bedroom and closed the door behind them.

"Well?" he asked.

"I've never heard of anything like this."

That's what I was afraid of, he thought.

"What are we gonna do, Claudia?"

For a moment Claudia watched him, her eyes sharp and calculating, and he could almost feel the wheels turning in her mind. He knew how this must look to her, his concern for Jen, his certainty that whatever must be done for her he would do it himself, his obvious dedication to her. And Claudia wasn't a fool; maybe this wasn't the first time she'd noticed his devotion. If that were true he supposed he owed her a debt for keeping her silence. If anyone ever found out what had passed between him and Jen they'd both be ruined, but Sergeant Lee had never said a word about it.

"Really, we ought to take her to hospital. I'd like for them to run some tests; it's possible she's suffered some sort of neurological event."

"What happens if she hasn't? If she's just...like this?"

That thought terrified him, shook him to his very core, left him stuffing his hands in his pockets to hide their trembling. What if Jen was gone? Forever? What if she would never remember him, not the first time they'd met or the second, not the nights they'd fallen asleep together, not the quiet words they'd whispered to one another, not that day in the car when he'd said let's get married and she'd looked at him like he was breaking her heart in two? What if she never remembered her work as a detective, never recalled the job that meant more to her than he did? What if none of it ever came back?

We're all just memories in the end, the thought occurred to him. And without them, we're nothing at all.

If Jen didn't remember her parents, or where she'd gone to school, or wild nights with friends, or the boy she'd shot and killed her first year working with homicide, or Muhammad Hartono or Wesley Claybourne, if Jen didn't remember, how could she still be Jen? How could she be anything other than a stranger?

"They'll probably want to send her to a facility."

"No."

That absolutely, positively could not be allowed to happen. If Jen was committed, she'd lose her badge. It would be the end of the road for Detective Mapplethorpe. All the years Waverly had spent grooming her, preparing her to follow in the Commander's footsteps, to sit in the big chair one day, it would all be lost. And Jen had given up everything - given up him - in pursuit of that dream. He couldn't let that sacrifice go to waste.

"They might - might - agree to release her into the care of a private physician and her family."

"So we do that then," Nick said. "We take her for the tests, and if they don't find anything wrong with her, we take her home. You and I can look after her."

"Nick, you're not family, and I'm not really qualified -"

"Her mother's dead and her dad buggered off years ago. All she's got is a crazy aunt in Canberra. And really, do you think anyone out there is qualified to deal with this?"

For a second he thought she might tell him no. Might point out that she had a job to do, one that did not allow her time to work one-on-one with a single patient indefinitely, might point out that Nick was not, and would not ever be, family. The plan sounded insane to his own ears, but Jen had leave time owing, and the brass would be more willing to give it to her in the aftermath of the shooting, and maybe, he thought, maybe they could find a way through this. Maybe if he just spent more time with her, told her more about herself, maybe it would all come back. Or maybe the doctors would find blood on her brain, or something, and she'd be dead within a week.

Christ, get ahold of yourself.

"All right," Claudia said. "All right, we'll try it your way. But if I say she needs to be transferred to a facility, I need to know that you'll back me up."

"If they let us take her home, and you think she's a danger to herself, I won't stop you. Just, let's give it some time, yeah?"

"Yeah," Claudia agreed. "Now, do you want to tell her we're taking her to hospital, or do you want me to?"