A/N: Sorry for the slow update, I sort of regret having 4 stories going. ENJOY! (And thanks SO much for the reviews!)
July 13th
The clock's ticking broke her bones.
The doctor's steps trampled her.
The whir of speech slapped her.
Unikitty wanted to go home.
Her two best friends in the whole universe, both unconscious, lay in adjacent hospital rooms across her seat in the waiting room. Lucy had only been out for a few minutes, and was bound to wake up at any moment. She didn't know much of Emmet's condition, except that his surgery would take hours.
Surgery.
When Unikitty was upset, her grief either morphed to terrible anger, or shrunk to pitiful sadness.
Death, it seemed, grabbed her by the throat; her body convulsed involuntarily as she thought of her best friends, her lip quivered when she saw a doctor, and tears streamed down her face while her bursts of panic nearly stole her consciousness.
Grabbing onto the cold, metal bar of the chair, she sucked in a deep breath of distilled air. It cleared her blurred, off-set vision, but only drained her stressed, pressured mind further. She was trapped, walls closed around her, she couldn't move, where were her friends? Emmet? Lucy?
"Ma'am?" A nurse tugged Unikitty back to reality, which wasn't much more pleasant than her panic.
"Is it Emmet? Lucy?" Unikitty's terrible optimism won out as her thoughts turned to miracles.
The nurse, a tall, blonde woman, motioned with a cock of her head towards Lucy's room. "Lucy just woke up, you can see her now." It was the first good news Unikitty heard, and it just weakened her thunderstorm of anxiety.
The nurse led her into the small room, and Unikitty began shivering on the instant she passed the stark-white door. However, any concerns of temperature left as soon as she spotted her best friend, lying in a hospital bed, weak, but awake.
"Wyldstyle!" Unikitty blew a few celebratory fireworks into the air and dashed to the bedside. "How are you feeling?"
Lucy linked her arms above her head and stretched, a content yet tired smile on her face. "Pretty ok, what happened?"
The question nearly punched Unikitty in the gut, but her common sense blocked the hit. Surely, passing out would lead to some momentary lapses in memory. "You know, after we…got to the car crash, you and Emmet got into the ambulance, and when we got to the hospital they told me you fainted. Why are you looking at me like that?"
Unikitty's question was not without good reason. Lucy was staring at her best friend with a peculiar face of indifference, confusion, and bewilderment. "Uh, I don't know what you're talking about." She shifted in her bed, propping herself up against the pillows. "Who's Emmet?"
Shadows danced before Unikitty's eyes, mocking her, and the floor bounced up and down beneath her feet. "Wyl-Wyldstyle, if you're playing a joke on me, it's really not funny." Her breath had nerves of its own as her wheezes of air throbbed in her jaw.
Lucy shook her head, growing more concerned for Unikitty's state of mind. "I have seriously never heard of Emmet in my life, I don't know who you're talking about."
Unikitty would've been the next person to pass out, if it weren't for the nurse taking over.
"Ma'am, do you have any memory of Emmet? Emmet Brickowski?"
Lucy, to humor her companions, ran through the reels of her memory like a slideshow. Emmet, Emmet, what a strange name, she thought. Maybe she had known him in school, or with Vitruvius? Nope, she had no idea. "No, I haven't met anyone named Emmet."
A whimper came from Unikitty's side of the bed. It was from fear – fear for herself, her best friend, Emmet, and her whole future.
The nurse attempted to calm Unikitty down. Her cheeks were as white as the walls and her lips as unsteady as heart monitor on a convulsing patient. "Let me go get a doctor, just rest, Ma'am." She left her patient, who was both indifferent to the situation and concerned for her best friend.
"Unikitty, will you just tell me who Emmet is?" Lucy asked, trying to get something resembling information out of her stark-white friend.
Unikitty whimpered.
"Hello, what's going on in here?" A doctor walked in, and just by his stature alone, Unikitty felt somewhat calmer. His nametag read Dr. Michael Kennedy. His hair was nearly as white as Unikitty's face, but he had not lost his youthful character, for he looked like a man who regularly won bar fights.
From her bed, Lucy shrugged. "Unikitty says I should remember a guy named Emmet, but I don't know who that is." Lucy figured that, because of whatever recent car crash, Unikitty was a little dazed. After all, she would remember someone named Emmet, right? Everyone seemed pretty concerned about it.
Dr. Kennedy raised an eyebrow. "Ok, I'm going to ask you a few questions, is that alright?"
After a quick glance at Unikitty, who was now near hyperventilation, Lucy nodded. "Uh, yeah, sure, whatever." She sat up, preparing herself for whatever weird questions the doctor could have ready for her.
"What's your full name?"
"Lucy Amelia Emerald."
He seemed pleased, or, relieved, by this answer. "Alright, what's the name of this city?"
"Syspocalypstar."
A little, happy check mark dashed across his paper. "Uh-huh. Ok, name your three closest friends."
Lucy considered the question for a moment. "Unikitty, Sweet Mayhem, and…I guess Benny."
Another whimper from Unikitty.
Dr. Kennedy moved to Unikitty's side, gently patting her on the shoulder. "Don't worry," He advised in a hushed tone. "Your friend certainly hasn't lost all of her memory."
He turned back to Lucy. "Alright, what was the latest crisis in your life?"
Lucy shrugged. "Uh, well, minus whatever car crash you guys keep talking about, I'd say when we had to go to the Systar System."
"Ok." Dr. Kennedy had a conclusion, not that it was a pleasant one, but he had one. "Lucy, during the Kragle incident, who was The Special?"
While Lucy's immediate reaction had been a confident, if not somewhat cocky, smirk, her expression flat-lined like a pompous student who was just told they had the lowest grade in the class. "Uh, I…it was…hold on." She leaned back in bed, dashing through memory lane for the piece of her memory that seemed so vital, yet lay so far out of reach. After a solid, slow minute had gone by, she admitted, somewhat defeated, "I don't remember."
"Alright." Dr. Kennedy's indifferent reaction scared Unikitty. "Who are your ex-boyfriends?"
"Is this necessary?"
"Yes."
With a sigh, Lucy relented. "Fine. Uh, Batman, I dated a guy named Logan for a few months, and I went on one date with a guy I met through Unikitty, Mason."
"Who are you dating at present?"
"No one."
The noise that squeaked out of Unikitty's mouth was terribly pitiful, even Dr. Kennedy, who was trained to not let his cases get the better of his emotions, felt for her. "Alright, last question. Do you know any Emmet Brickowski?"
Lucy answered the question with complete confidence. "Nope, no idea."
Not giving poor Unikitty a chance to whimper or whine, Dr. Kennedy stood up. "Unikitty, perhaps we should discuss this outside. I am not a phycologist, and that is where I will be referring Lucy." He bowed courteously to Lucy, who finally started to look like a patient instead of a disinterested student.
"Wait, what's wrong with me?" She demanded. She shifted her eyes to Unikitty. "Who's Emmet?"
Unikitty reached over and hugged her best friend. "I-I don't...just don't worry, o-ok? I'll be ri-right back." She followed Dr. Kennedy out the door, shivering and growing blanker than an uninspired writer's notebook.
Dr. Kennedy didn't give Unikitty a chance to jump in, what with her stuttering and quivering. "Miss, I believe Lucy has Dissociative Amnesia." The words dropped to the room like a five-hundred-pound barbell, cracking and crushing the floor to bits of dust.
"Wha-what's th-tha-t?" Unikitty's ability to form words slipped away, lurking into shadows, and covering itself with a mask. This was not good. Anything involving amnesia was not good, no matter the word before it.
Dr. Kennedy tapped his clip-board to a slow, monotonous beat as he spoke with an officious air. "Dissociative Amnesia is like amnesia, but a bit...better. Let me ask you this; Were Lucy and Emmet close?"
The question nearly brought Unikitty's joy back. She smiled, and her clenched muscles let go, like walking from booming sunlight to calm shade. "Yeah, of course. They've been dating for years, they love each other." For her own sanity, Unikitty used present tense.
"Exactly." Dr. Kennedy pointed to her with the tip of his blue pen. "Now, the car crash was horrific, was it not?"
Shuddering, Unikitty nodded. "Yeah, I've never seen Lucy so broken up."
Again, he approved of her answer. "Well, for Lucy, seeing her boyfriend in such a state close to death was like experiencing it for herself. Her brain found the event to terrible to handle, so, for her own safety and state of mind, her brain buried the memories of Emmet all together."
Not good, not good. Unikitty gripped the wall as if it were her best friend. What was happening to Lucy? Why? How could it be fixed? Too many questions sprinted through Unikitty's mind, and she didn't have enough answers. "Is..." She swallowed the lump of sobs in her throat down. "...is she going to remember him?"
"It's hard to tell," he replied. "She could regain her memories by the evening, in a few months, or never. She could get all of them, or bits and pieces. We just don't know. A visit to Dr. Rhyan, the phycologist, will tell us more."
Her head lost three pounds as Unikitty let her eyes shut. "Dr. Kennedy, I wanna go home." Finally, after holding everything in and letting it transfer as anxiety, Unikitty allowed herself silently sob.
Dr. Kennedy pat her on the head. "Don't worry, Unikitty. There's a very good chance that Lucy will regain her memories. In the meantime, let's send her to Dr. Rhyan, alright?"
"What about Emmet?" Her other best friend, whose life was still hanging in the balance, was at least a different crisis. It was like switching from math class to social studies; not exactly better, but at least it was a variety. She could ignore one crisis and focus on the other. "Is he coming out of surgery soon?"
Dr. Kennedy checked his chart again. "Emmet Brickowski was diagnosed with a broken leg, a severe one at that, and internal bleeding. However, I assisted the operation of the internal bleeding, and I do not believe anything is fatal."
Thank goodness.
Unikitty said her silent thanks. "He's gonna be ok?" Silent, warm tears spilled from her hopeful eyes.
He nodded, his green eyes somewhat comforting. "Yes, I believe so. He'll need a wheel chair and crutches for some time, and the recovery will be slow, but nothing I saw was fatal."
Unikitty didn't respond.
"Miss?" Dr. Kennedy waved a hand in front of her face. "Unikitty? He's going to be fine."
"No," she countered, her cheeks fading from rose to ghost faster than Dr. Kennedy had ever seen in all his years of medicine. "He won't be ok. Not when he finds out. How...how do I tell him about Lucy?"
"In time, Unikitty. In time. For now, let's take Miss Lucy over to Dr. Rhyan, shall we?"
#
Step, step, turn. Step, step, step, turn. Unikitty counted the steps and counted the turns, remembering and forgetting the numbers as she went. "Emmet, Emmet, wake up." Her breath mumbled and rolled out of her lips, barely fighting against the clicking carts nurses rolled through hallways and the screaming of children getting shots.
"Unikitty!" A much-needed distraction showed up, into the form of Sweet, Batman, and the rest of the gang. "We got here as fast as we could, how's Emmet?"
Unikitty turned to Sweet. "Emmet's still in surgery, he has a broken leg and internal bleeding. But...there's more." She didn't want to say it. The words, she knew, would taste bad on her lips, like antibiotics. If she said it, if she told them, it would be true. She could pretend it wasn't real if she didn't tell them.
"What is it, Unikitty? "Sweet took a step out of the group, whispering gently to Unikitty. "Is it Lucy?"
Nodding, she whimpered, "She lost her memory of Emmet."
Dr. Kennedy walked towards the stunned, silent, disbelieving crowd. "I'm terribly sorry about this. I'm Dr. Kennedy. I assume you are all Lucy and Emmet's friends?"
A high, unsteady voice piped up from the middle of the group, belonging to Benny. "What happened to Wyldstyle?"
The tap of his pen against his clipboard was driving Unikitty's nails into the floor. Dr. Kennedy's voice enunciated his words, as if he was telling a riveting story by a campfire, as he explained the condition of their friend. "Well, it appears that seeing Emmet in such a state, so close to death, was too painful for Lucy to handle. For her own sake, her mind buried Emmet's memory. Not destroyed, but buried."
"Doctor!" A short, brown-haired nurse bellowed from across the waiting room, as if she were six feet tall. "The patient just woke up."
Dr. Kennedy smiled. "Well, Unikitty," he addressed the whimpering princess before him as if she were a small child who was lost in the grocery store. While she wouldn't admit it, it made her feel a bit better. "Would you like to say hello to Emmet?"
She hardly had time to nod before crashing through the nurse and into Emmet's room. "EMMET!"
Emmet had never looked worse.
His face, clouded over with white fog, coughed and swallowed as through he had shards of rock stuck in his throat. He appeared thinner, sickly, even. Tears streamed down Unikitty's face, from relief, fear, anguish, every negative emotion in the book.
"Hey, Unikitty," he managed to squeak out. As he lifted his hand to wave, half a dozen wires and cords came up with it.
Unikitty sprinted to his side, nestling her head into his weak embrace. "Emmet, you're ok! You scared me! Don't ever do that again, I'm taking away your license!"
Chuckling, Emmet returned his friend's hug. "Aw, thanks, Unikitty." His voice was rapidly regaining vigor, and his color only struggled to catch up. "Hey, where's Lucy?" His fragile smile faltered. "She looked pretty upset before I passed out. Is she ok?"
Unikitty swallowed, now she was the one with cut glass in her throat. Her pathetic laugh sounded hollow and false in her own ears as she looked everywhere but his eyes. "Well, Emmet, about that..."