Chapter 12: Meant Everything Again

With a little coaxing Artie gets Quinn to sit down on the small leather couch in his room. He parks his wheelchair next to her, keeping close by her to offer comfort. I want to sit next to her, to reach out and let her know that it's okay, but I don't. She doesn't need that right now. She is confused enough.

I spin the spare chair at Artie's desk around so I'm sitting across from Quinn and I give her a hesitant smile.

Quinn lets out a shaky breath and presses her fingers to the bridge of her nose, taking a moment to center herself. Then she puts her hands down and looks at me. "Explain. Please."

I glance at Artie, who nods at me, and then I begin. "I was hit by a car. I didn't break anything, a few cuts and some bruised ribs. But I hit my head really hard. I have retrograde amnesia; I can't remember anything from before the accident."

Quinn stays quiet for a moment before asking quietly, "When was this?"

"Five years ago."

"And you've been here all this time?" Her question is hushed, but she shakes her head and continues speaking before I can respond. "When? When was the accident?"

"January, five years ago. The…" I pause, remembering. "The seventeenth, I think. The doctor said I was unconscious in the hospital for three days before I woke up."

Artie and I watch as she calculates in her head and then nods sadly. "That… that makes sense. That was the day you… the last time Santana heard from you." Her eyes suddenly grow wide and she looks at Artie, "Does she know who San-?"

"I told her, yeah."

Quinn nods, looking back at me again. "You don't remember the accident though? Nothing about it?"

I shake my head, feeling bad for her. "No. I don't know what happened, how I got hit by that car. I know it was a hit-and-run, someone else called the ambulance. They didn't find the person." I shrug the last sentence, apologetic that I can't offer her more.

A silence stretches as Quinn tries to work this out. Her eyes move, blinking and shifting, as her thoughts flow inside her head. I can tell she's only partially here. She's listening to my words, but not really seeing me, she's remembering what she went through.

"Wait," she says, blinking back her unfocused look and centering her gaze on me. "You were in a hospital?"

"Yeah."

"No, no that isn't right. You can't have been."

I am one hundred percent sure I spent time in a hospital after the accident, or else I wouldn't have ended up where I am now. I tell Quinn as much.

"No," she repeats. "No, you weren't. We checked, I checked."

"What?" I ask hesitantly, knowing she's about to explain her side of things, knowing she's about to explain everything that happened that I can't remember. I'm ready to hear this, but at the same time, I'm worried for what I'll learn.

She opens her mouth to speak, but then looks at Artie. "How much did you explain to her?"

He frowns sadly, "Not a whole lot, just that she went missing and you guys looked for her but couldn't find her. That she and San had an argument and she disappeared. You… you were there with Santana, you know what happened. I only know second-hand."

"Okay," Quinn nods, clearly bracing herself. She looks back at me, "I'm going to tell you what happened, and you're going to fill things in for me, okay? Because that doesn't make sense, we looked for you. If you were in the hospital we would have found you."

This makes my heart flutter a little bit, knowing people had looked for me. When the days started going by and the hospital staff said no one had come looking for me… it was a hard pill to swallow.

"Okay," she repeats and then starts her side of the story. "You and Santana were in an argument. She had to go and spend a week in a hotel for work and you didn't like it."

"Why?" I interrupt. But right away I can see she doesn't like my question. She winces, face breaking a little bit. She must not want to get into the reason behind the argument. "Sorry, go on."

She gives an unhappy breath, unsure if she should offer more of an explanation. But she must decide against it because she continues with her story, "She'd been gone… two days? Three?" Quinn shakes her uncertainty away, "She'd been gone on the trip a few days. You kept calling her but she ignored you. She needed space to calm down, she's always been like that…"

"Quinn," Artie prompts when she lapses into silence, eyes growing moist.

"Sorry," she says thickly. She swallows down the waver in her voice and begins again. "Then you just stopped calling. She said she thought you realized she needed space. Then she went and listened to the messages you left her.

"I…" Quinn stumbles over her next words. "She let me hear them." She looks almost apologetic, like she's stepped inside our privacy, this other woman and mine's. "The first few were just you, telling her you were sorry and trying to get her to come back, saying you two needed to work through everything.

"She called me right after she listened to the last one, about a day after you left it on her phone. It… it sounded like you had given up… that you were leaving her."

"What?" Artie barks out, snapping his attention from watching me to staring open-mouthed at Quinn. "What?" he repeats, a little softer but just as urgent. "No one told me that, that she left a message saying she was leaving."

Quinn chews her lips, looking sadly at him. "She only told me. She didn't tell any of you, because she didn't know what it meant. Brittany left a message that sounded like she was leaving, to get away from Santana, but the bus ticket…"

"Bus ticket?" I ask her.

Quinn looks torn, glancing back and forth between the two of us. She finishes addressing Artie first, "She didn't know what to think, okay? And she was emotional. It sounded like Britt was leaving, but the bus ticket meant otherwise. She didn't know what it meant, so she asked me not to tell you guys about the message."

"I just… I don't understand why she left then," he whispers, glancing at me, talking about the old me, the one I don't remember.

"Imagine how Santana felt," Quinn says softly.

"Quinn?" I say gently, drawing her focus back to me. She hasn't finished the story yet, I still don't understand everything.

She smiles at me, but not with her eyes. It's only a reflex, more for herself than meant to comfort me. "She called me when she realized you were gone. I flew over as fast as I could; I had moved to Tucson a few months before. But I went and met her at her work conference as soon as I could.

"San… she was so broken and confused when I got there," Quinn goes on, and I can see her trying to keep her hands from shaking as she remembers. "She didn't know if you had left her or… she didn't know what to think. Neither did I. But we figured maybe you had needed to get away for a little while, like Santana had. We had a credit card trace, but you had only bought one thing recently."

"A bus ticket?" The story is confusing for me but I'm taking in everything she gives me.

Quinn nods, "From Riverside to Bakersfield." On my blank looks she elaborates. "You and Santana lived in an apartment in Riverside; her conference was in Bakersfield. You… it looked like you were going after her, to make up, to apologize."

Her head droops, "But you never showed up. You weren't at the conference and you weren't at home. You were just… gone. We didn't know if the ticket was a dud or if you had gone after her but had gotten lost.

"You didn't answer your phone, for Santana or for me. Your car was still at the apartment, and you had only taken a few clothes with you. It didn't feel like you had left her. You were just gone. No note, no anything."

"Brittany would have left a note," Artie adds quietly, like this the thought he's held on to for a long time, reassuring him the old me didn't abandon my family.

I can see how distressed Quinn is getting, the way her eyes are growing damp and her hands are clutching desperately at her knees. She's upset, but she's trying to hold everything back.

I wish I had the answers she needs, I wish I could explain to her why I had left.

"She thought maybe something had happened to you, that you had gotten lost or hurt or something. We called around, asked if people had heard from you. She called your work, to see if you were hiding there, but they didn't know where you were. I filed the missing persons report, checked the nearest hospitals."

"I was in a hospital," I insist.

She shakes her head angrily as a few tears spill over, "I called around near where the conference was held, to see if you had made it there or not, but no one knew. I called the hospitals there and I called the hospitals near where you lived. I had to be the one to call your work and see if you had come in in a way they weren't expecting you to, not through the staff doors but in an ambulance, because Santana couldn't…"

Her words choke off and Artie reaches for her as she cries, one hand taking hers and the other reaching to rub back. I feel awful. I feel like the most horrible creature on the planet because I'm the one making her this upset but I don't know how to help.

Quinn takes a moment to let everything out before pulling away from Artie's touch. She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand before looking at me with the most hurt expression and asks brokenly, "What happened to you?"

"I woke up in a hospital in Santa Clarita," I explain. "That's where the accident was. They even took me there, where it happened, to see if it would jog any memories. It was near a coffee place; there was a Laundromat and a convenience store too. But nothing was familiar."

Now Quinn doesn't look sad, she looks lost. Her face is red and tear-stained, but her expression is one of confusion. "Santa Clar… what were you doing there?"

"I don't know," I remind her gently.

Artie speaks for the first time in a little while. "Maybe she got off the bus?"

"What?" Quinn asks, turning towards him.

"Is that anywhere near where they lived? The next city over or…?"

Quinn blinks and then stalls; I can see the thoughts flying rapidly across her face. "That's half way in between. We… we didn't think to check… we just assumed…" She reaches forward, kneeling on the ground in front of me to hug me around the middle, "I'm sorry, Brittany. I'm sorry we couldn't find you."

I hug her back and rub her arms, speaking into her hair, "I'm sorry I couldn't find you either."

She pulls back after a long moment. "How come you couldn't find us?" she asks softly. "I know you don't remember, but how come you… how come you couldn't…"

"I didn't have any ID with me. I didn't have a place to start. There was no driver's license, no cell phone, so I couldn't contact Santana. I…" I trail off, looking to Artie. I'm not sure if I should tell her I wasn't wearing a wedding ring when they brought me to the hospital. It the look Artie gave me when I told him was heartbreaking, I'm afraid of what it will do to Quinn.

"You didn't have anything with you?"

I shake my head, "No. No bag, no phone, no wallet. I had nowhere to start, no clue to know who I was when I woke up."

I give her a final squeeze and she pulls away slowly, easing back into her seat and wiping at her eyes. "You packed a bag when you left, some of your things were gone."

I give her a half smile, unsure what to say. "I'm sorry I can't tell you more."

"I can't believe you're alive, that you're okay and alive and here," her eyes, despite the tears, brighten. She gives a tearful laugh as she asks, "How did you end up here?"

"I… I kind of got offered a job, that's how Artie found me. He was getting a tour of the labs and saw me there."

"Labs?"

Artie shakes his head, "She works at Duncan BioTech."

Quinn's face pinches slightly, "The pharmaceutical development company?"

Artie and I both nod, "I've been working here since the accident. I get to wear a lab coat, work with cool machinery. It's fun."

Quinn gives a small, sad giggle, "I can't see it." I frown so she continues, "I can't see you sitting still all day like that, looking into microscopes or working at computers all day. I can't see you sitting still for so long."

"It took a lot of practice. Artie said I was a nurse?"

She smiles, "Yeah. Yeah you were. You loved it. I… San worried about you sometimes, being around sick and dying and broken people so often, she thought it might… break your spirit, your innocence, seeing people so vulnerable and exposed like that." Her eyes are so soft, the way she thinks back and remembers the old me, remembers Santana. "But she told me that she'd never seen you so happy, that working there made you-"

"Shine brighter," Artier finishes for her. "She told me that too, when I went to go see her after…"

There's an uncomfortable pause as both of them reflect back, when they first saw this other woman after I disappeared, remembering how shattered she must have been. How confused and hurt and heartbroken.

"How did you go from the hospital to lab work?" Quinn asks me softly after a while, her eyes focused down on her lap. "If you didn't know who you were, how did you get hired?"

"I was there for a month and a half." Quinn's face pinches and she goes to speak, but I stop her. "I didn't… I didn't have anywhere to go. The doctor wanted to make sure there wasn't any more damage, wanted to see if I'd be able to remember anything. He kept me there a long time because he knew I didn't have anywhere to go, really.

"While I was there I," I shake my head, laughing at how ridiculous the whole story is, "I met Grant Duncan. His father owns the company." Artie's jaw drops a little. "We talked a lot, he was there often because his um, his ex-step mother? She was sick. And eventually he offered me the job, said he could get me a place to stay and somewhere to work, since I didn't have anything else."

Quinn shakes her head, like's she's unsurprised I managed this. "Still Brittany, always the charmer." Her voice still sounds raw from crying, but she's smiling now, she isn't panicking or upset like she was earlier.

"Quinn," Artie starts, and I can see he looks hesitant. He shares a look with me, like he's checking what he's going to say with me before he speaks. "The reason we called you… I wanted to get in touch with Santana."

She sighs, heavy and light at the same time. "Right. Right, she needs to know you're okay."

"Are," I try, my voice wavering with my hesitation. It's been five years, are they sure she's going to want to see her presumably dead-or-abandoning wife? "Are you sure that this is… is the right thing to do?"

Quinn looks at me for a long moment, curious and studying. Eventually she says, "What do you mean?"

"Well. I… none of you knew what happened to me. If I left her or… is she going to, to want to see me?"

Quinn's answer is immediate, "She'll want to see you, Britt. She'll want to know you're alive, just like I did, just like Artie did."

I must still look unsure, because Quinn reaches across the space to take my hands in hers. "Trust me, okay? Santana… she needs this, she'll need to see you."

I guess it will be like closure. I won't be able to tell her exactly why I left in the first place, how I ended up in the situation for the car to hit me, but seeing me will allow her to know that I'm alive. It won't help in the not knowing if I left her, walked out on her, but it will give her closure, knowing I wasn't hurt or killed somehow.

"When?" Artie asks. "Quinn, you're staying in a hotel? We could head out tomor-"

"No!" The word bursts so quickly from her lips that even she's a little taken aback by it, surprising herself with her force. "No," she tries again more gently. "Wait. Wait, not right now. Can…" she trails off, searching Artie's face for something. He sits still, and I can see she doesn't receive whatever she's looking for.

She turns her gaze to me, eyes slowly reading my face. "Can… can this wait a few days?"

"Why?" I ask nervously.

"I just… I know when to do this. Not tomorrow. Next week, next week will be better. Trust me."

"Quinn?" Artie asks, his voice skeptical.

Quinn gives a half smile, "Santana's waited five years to know if Brittany's okay; she can wait one more week."