Chapter 3
The Medical Side of Things
A.N. - I apologize to any of you who know more about medicine than I do and find a lot of flaws in my explanations. I tried my best, but obviously I'm not a doctor.
_________________________
The elevator ride to the medical floor was very strange for Will. He hated elevators, but he found himself wishing that the ascent would last just a few moments longer. Sydney needed just a few more seconds to be ready.
Or maybe Will needed a few more seconds to be ready.
The elevator stopped and they heard the familiar "ding" letting them know that they had arrived. Sydney clutched Will's hand.
"Are you ok?" he asked her.
"I guess so," she replied quietly.
A split-second later, when the doors opened, Kendall was standing there, waiting.
"Agent Bristow," he began, seemingly lost for words. Will could almost see the wheels spinning in his head as he tried to decide how he should speak to her. "You're father has no doubt told you that we have a few tests we would like you to undergo..."
She nodded.
"Mr. Tippin is going to be accompanying her," announced Jack. For a moment, Kendall looked as if he were going to object, but he just lowered his head and nodded.
"Agent Bristow, Mr. Tippin, if you'll follow me."
The three of them walked down the long, white hall, leaving Jack alone.
They reached one of the plain, white doors that lined the right side of the hallway. None of them had numbers, a few had small signs. This door had nothing. "Agent Bristow, if you'll just go on in. She is expecting you." She looked at Will. "I need to speak with Mr. Tippin for a moment."
"It's ok, Syd. I'll be right there."
Reluctantly, she opened the door and walked inside.
Kendall took a deep breath. "Assuming all goes as expected, Agents Dixon and Weiss and Marshall will be waiting in the conference room. Do you think...is she ready for that?" Kendall asked.
Will was slightly taken aback. Two years working with Kendall and he had never seen him do anything like this. Will smiled slightly. "Yeah, that'd be great."
Kendall nodded. "Good luck." He walked away.
Will opened the door. Sydney sat on one side of a large, wooden desk. A woman that Will recognized sat on the other.
"Ah, Mr. Tippin. How are you?" she asked, as she stood up to shake Will's hand. "As you likely remember, I am Dr. McCarthy. Have a seat. Sydney wanted me to wait until you got here..."
He did remember. When everyone had believed he was the second double, she had performed some of the tests on him. Those memories were horrible for Will, but Dr. McCarthy had never been rude to him. She had explained everything she was doing. She had been kind to him when it would have been much easier to treat him as a criminal, to be suspicious instead of caring.
Sydney was in good hands.
"I know this must be incredibly difficult for you, Ms. Bristow, and I apologize for this, but we are going to have to do a pretty intensive work-up today. We'll start with some blood tests and go from there." She smiled warmly as she said it, as if this were just a routine check-up.
Sydney nodded. "Alright then. We'll get started right now if you'll follow me."
******************
Sydney and Danny and Will had gone out to dinner on a Thursday night. Thursday was an odd evening to go out to dinner, but they were all busy and they had to take advantage of whatever time they could find.
They returned to Danny's apartment, grabbed some snacks from the fridge, and sat down in front of the television for some Must-See TV. Danny switched on ER - a favorite show of his because of the medicine, a favorite show of Sydney's because of George Clooney.
In one of the scenes, the camera zoomed in as one of the nurses put an IV in someone's arm. Sydney's eyes had squeezed shut and her body had visibly tensed up.
"Syd, it's just an IV," Danny said, through a laugh.
"And it's fake, too," added Will.
"I know. I just hate needles," she explained.
Will and Danny exchanged glances and laughed.
*****************
Some things never change, Will thought, as he watched them prod her with needles and take multiple blood samples. Here was a woman who had been tortured in more ways than he cared to imagine and lived to tell the tale. She could deliver fatal blows and fight her way out of nearly any situation. Yet when it came down to it, she still flinched at the site of a needle pointed at one of her veins.
Will stayed as close to her as they allowed him to be the entire day. He held her hand through all of the questions Dr. McCarthy asked her, he stood in the back room with the radiologist during her X-Rays, and he watched her helplessly through the glass as she went through regression therapy.
That, by far, was the most difficult thing to watch.
The woman administering the test had sat in the small room with Sydney, Will and Dr. McCarthy had stood on the other side of the glass. "Sydney, tell me what you're seeing. Remember, you're perfectly safe," she said
She said nothing, but her head started moving slowly from side to side. It gained speed until it was jerking rapidly back and forth.
"What's going on?" Will asked in a panic.
Nobody answered him.
Sydney was trying to speak, but hardly any words were coming out. She spoke quickly, and she sounded panicked. After each word came a long pause filled by a series of irregular, shallow breaths. "Sloane............... doctors............. Hong Kong............. no...............please don't............. no.............NO!!!!" She screamed the last word, and Will could see genuine terror on her face. Her head was still shaking violently back and forth.
Will felt sick to his stomach. She was reliving the most awful experience of her life and he was standing there, watching it. Just as he was getting ready to burst through the door and save her, she stopped shaking. The woman who had hypnotized her came into the side room.
"She's ok. She's....whoever did this to her, they did a hell of a job suppressing the memory," the woman said.
"Why was she shaking like that?" Will asked.
"In her mind she was seeing flashbacks. Random scenes from the past two years...they were being replayed in her mind, in no particular order. There were probably hundreds of images being fired off in her brain at once. She was moving her head like that because she was trying to see them all. It's like trying to watch five different TV shows on five different television sets at the same time."
Will nodded. "Will she be able to piece them together?"
"Usually suppressed memories can be put together again, but it can take weeks, sometimes months, and more regression therapy."
"What was she yelling out? Those weren't memories were they?" He already knew the answer, but more than anything he wanted her to say no. He didn't want to think about why Sydney would have been screaming those words.
The young woman looked as if she didn't want to answer. After a moment she took a deep breath and nodded.
Will rushed to the door and went inside. Tears were streaming down Sydney's bright red cheeks. Her hands shook as she tried to cover her face with them.
"I can't remember!" she cried as he embraced her. "I just...I can't remember..."
"Shhh.....it's ok." He held her for a moment.
Dr. McCarthy entered. "Sydney, you only have one more stop today. Dr. Barnett wants to speak with you," she said softly.
Sydney nodded as she used her sleeves to wipe the tears off of her cheeks. They walked to Dr. Barnett's office. Sydney went in.
"Will, I'd like to speak with you in my office for a moment. I've called Agents Kendall and Bristow down as well." He followed her into her office, where Jack and Kendall already sat.
"Gentlemen," she said, as she moved to her large, leather chair on the opposite side of the desk. "I hope that the information I have here will make some kind of sense to you, because frankly, we don't know how it all fits together."
The men nodded. Will had no idea what to expect. All day, the doctors had offered no hints as to Sydney's condition. She put the file on her desk, opened it, and looked at it for a moment before speaking.
"I can tell you conclusively that she is not a double. There were no gene-therapy drugs found in her blood, the optical scans came up negative. Also, we have reason to believe that Sydney was held under force..."
"Which would indicate she has not been disloyal," Jack interrupted.
"Like I said, we only know the medical side of things. We found slight bruising around her ankles and wrists, where restraints might have been. Her fingernails...they were cut very short..."
"What?" asked Will.
"If she had been fighting back, scratching, they would have done anything they could to stop her," explained Jack.
"We found signs of several fractures. It's difficult to tell which ones she may have had previous to her disappearance, but some looked like they occurred within the last year and a half. She weighs around 15 pounds less than she did at the time of her disappearance, her skin is pretty pale, she clearly hasn't had much exercise..."
"Excuse me, Dr. McCarthy," interrupted Kendall. "To play the devil's advocate for a moment here, as compelling as this evidence is, it doesn't prove that she wasn't a willing participant. It only proves that she wanted it to look that way."
"We also found traces of a sedative in her blood stream. This particular sedative, given in high doses, has certain side effects that we used to determine how long she may have been under its effects."
"And?" asked Jack.
Dr. McCarthy took a deep breath. "Two years."
Although it probably wasn't appropriate to be happy at a time like this, everyone in the room was relieved to hear this news.
"How did the regression therapy go?" asked Jack.
"Not well," she said as she shook her head. "Her memory has been severely suppressed. It could be months before we'll be able to get any conclusive answers from Sydney."
"Is that all?" Kendall asked.
"One last thing. It is our medical opinion that Sydney was sedated, either fully unconscious or completely disoriented for the majority of her absence. That's why this confuses us so much. The scar on her abdomen.........I didn't think it could be from a cesarean section. It isn't in the typical position, it wasn't the usual size..." she paused. She looked flustered, and she took a moment to regain her composure. "It appears that Sydney was pregnant during her absence."
**************
It must be genetically programmed into women that no matter whether or not they have children, they must stop in the Baby Gap during any trip to the mall.
This trip to the mall was no different. Will had been dragged into the store with Francie and Sydney who walked from rack to rack oohing and ahhing at the miniature overalls and tiny jeans.
"Will, these are totally your shoes!" Sydney exclaimed as she showed him the four inch sneakers.
As he observed Sydney and Francie laughing and smiling at little babies in strollers, he couldn't help but think about how happy they would be when they finally had babies of their own. They would both be able to leave with bags full of Baby Gap goodies.
They would have been perfect mothers.
Francie never got that chance.
And Will had a feeling that when Sydney found out about what happened to her while she was gone, she might never want to go in a Baby Gap again.
*************
The phone in Dr. McCarthy's office rang, breaking the silence. After a short conversation, she hung up the phone. "Dr. Barnett wants to come speak with us, but would one of you be willing to go and sit with Sydney?"
Jack and Will looked at each other. "You go, I've been with her all day," Will said, even though he would have rather gone himself. Jack seemed all to eager to see his daughter and left the room immediately. Moments later Dr. Barnett walked in and took his seat.
"How is she?" Will asked.
"I haven't written a formal evaluation yet, but she is doing far better than I expected."
"Is she in denial?" asked Dr. McCarthy.
"No. She knows that two years have passed. She accepts it. She just doesn't understand it - how it happened or why."
"Is she ready to return to work?" asked Kendall.
"I think we have to let her go back to work. In her mind, two days have passed since she disappeared. We need to make this as easy as we can for her, which means that she needs things to be the same as they were before. Obviously some things can't be the same..."
Everyone knew what she was talking about.
She continued. "But work, friends, things like that. Even though it's different now, she needs connections to two years ago." She paused for a moment. "Also, when she disappeared, all of you went into overdrive to try and find her. I would expect that as she learns the details of what happened to her, she will do the same. She'll become obsessed with finding the people responsible for it. Be patient with her, let her come back, and I would guess that within days she'll be pushing to get back into the field."
After a few minutes, the meeting ended and Will and Kendall met up with Jack and Sydney. Once again, Will found himself in the elevator, wishing that the ride could last a moment longer. It was completely silent.
"What did the doctor say?" Sydney asked, after the silence became too awkward for her to handle. No one answered.
"You're fine, Syd," Will said finally, not wanting her to worry. She seemed to be satisfied with that answer for the time being. "Are you looking forward to seeing everyone?"
"Of course I am, but..."
"But what?" Will asked.
"I just saw them two days ago."
He put his hand on her shoulder. "Believe me, Syd. They're looking forward to seeing you."
_________________________________________
The end for now. Like I said, sorry if the medical stuff is vague/not plausible.
Also, to everyone who has been asking if this is going to be s/w......without giving to much away I will say this: It might be. However, if you read any of my other stories you'll see that I am diehard s/v......so I guess you'll just have to wait and see what happens :)
Thank you to everyone that has already posted reviews! They really do make my day! Please review this chapter, too! I'll try and get another chapter up soon...
The Medical Side of Things
A.N. - I apologize to any of you who know more about medicine than I do and find a lot of flaws in my explanations. I tried my best, but obviously I'm not a doctor.
_________________________
The elevator ride to the medical floor was very strange for Will. He hated elevators, but he found himself wishing that the ascent would last just a few moments longer. Sydney needed just a few more seconds to be ready.
Or maybe Will needed a few more seconds to be ready.
The elevator stopped and they heard the familiar "ding" letting them know that they had arrived. Sydney clutched Will's hand.
"Are you ok?" he asked her.
"I guess so," she replied quietly.
A split-second later, when the doors opened, Kendall was standing there, waiting.
"Agent Bristow," he began, seemingly lost for words. Will could almost see the wheels spinning in his head as he tried to decide how he should speak to her. "You're father has no doubt told you that we have a few tests we would like you to undergo..."
She nodded.
"Mr. Tippin is going to be accompanying her," announced Jack. For a moment, Kendall looked as if he were going to object, but he just lowered his head and nodded.
"Agent Bristow, Mr. Tippin, if you'll follow me."
The three of them walked down the long, white hall, leaving Jack alone.
They reached one of the plain, white doors that lined the right side of the hallway. None of them had numbers, a few had small signs. This door had nothing. "Agent Bristow, if you'll just go on in. She is expecting you." She looked at Will. "I need to speak with Mr. Tippin for a moment."
"It's ok, Syd. I'll be right there."
Reluctantly, she opened the door and walked inside.
Kendall took a deep breath. "Assuming all goes as expected, Agents Dixon and Weiss and Marshall will be waiting in the conference room. Do you think...is she ready for that?" Kendall asked.
Will was slightly taken aback. Two years working with Kendall and he had never seen him do anything like this. Will smiled slightly. "Yeah, that'd be great."
Kendall nodded. "Good luck." He walked away.
Will opened the door. Sydney sat on one side of a large, wooden desk. A woman that Will recognized sat on the other.
"Ah, Mr. Tippin. How are you?" she asked, as she stood up to shake Will's hand. "As you likely remember, I am Dr. McCarthy. Have a seat. Sydney wanted me to wait until you got here..."
He did remember. When everyone had believed he was the second double, she had performed some of the tests on him. Those memories were horrible for Will, but Dr. McCarthy had never been rude to him. She had explained everything she was doing. She had been kind to him when it would have been much easier to treat him as a criminal, to be suspicious instead of caring.
Sydney was in good hands.
"I know this must be incredibly difficult for you, Ms. Bristow, and I apologize for this, but we are going to have to do a pretty intensive work-up today. We'll start with some blood tests and go from there." She smiled warmly as she said it, as if this were just a routine check-up.
Sydney nodded. "Alright then. We'll get started right now if you'll follow me."
******************
Sydney and Danny and Will had gone out to dinner on a Thursday night. Thursday was an odd evening to go out to dinner, but they were all busy and they had to take advantage of whatever time they could find.
They returned to Danny's apartment, grabbed some snacks from the fridge, and sat down in front of the television for some Must-See TV. Danny switched on ER - a favorite show of his because of the medicine, a favorite show of Sydney's because of George Clooney.
In one of the scenes, the camera zoomed in as one of the nurses put an IV in someone's arm. Sydney's eyes had squeezed shut and her body had visibly tensed up.
"Syd, it's just an IV," Danny said, through a laugh.
"And it's fake, too," added Will.
"I know. I just hate needles," she explained.
Will and Danny exchanged glances and laughed.
*****************
Some things never change, Will thought, as he watched them prod her with needles and take multiple blood samples. Here was a woman who had been tortured in more ways than he cared to imagine and lived to tell the tale. She could deliver fatal blows and fight her way out of nearly any situation. Yet when it came down to it, she still flinched at the site of a needle pointed at one of her veins.
Will stayed as close to her as they allowed him to be the entire day. He held her hand through all of the questions Dr. McCarthy asked her, he stood in the back room with the radiologist during her X-Rays, and he watched her helplessly through the glass as she went through regression therapy.
That, by far, was the most difficult thing to watch.
The woman administering the test had sat in the small room with Sydney, Will and Dr. McCarthy had stood on the other side of the glass. "Sydney, tell me what you're seeing. Remember, you're perfectly safe," she said
She said nothing, but her head started moving slowly from side to side. It gained speed until it was jerking rapidly back and forth.
"What's going on?" Will asked in a panic.
Nobody answered him.
Sydney was trying to speak, but hardly any words were coming out. She spoke quickly, and she sounded panicked. After each word came a long pause filled by a series of irregular, shallow breaths. "Sloane............... doctors............. Hong Kong............. no...............please don't............. no.............NO!!!!" She screamed the last word, and Will could see genuine terror on her face. Her head was still shaking violently back and forth.
Will felt sick to his stomach. She was reliving the most awful experience of her life and he was standing there, watching it. Just as he was getting ready to burst through the door and save her, she stopped shaking. The woman who had hypnotized her came into the side room.
"She's ok. She's....whoever did this to her, they did a hell of a job suppressing the memory," the woman said.
"Why was she shaking like that?" Will asked.
"In her mind she was seeing flashbacks. Random scenes from the past two years...they were being replayed in her mind, in no particular order. There were probably hundreds of images being fired off in her brain at once. She was moving her head like that because she was trying to see them all. It's like trying to watch five different TV shows on five different television sets at the same time."
Will nodded. "Will she be able to piece them together?"
"Usually suppressed memories can be put together again, but it can take weeks, sometimes months, and more regression therapy."
"What was she yelling out? Those weren't memories were they?" He already knew the answer, but more than anything he wanted her to say no. He didn't want to think about why Sydney would have been screaming those words.
The young woman looked as if she didn't want to answer. After a moment she took a deep breath and nodded.
Will rushed to the door and went inside. Tears were streaming down Sydney's bright red cheeks. Her hands shook as she tried to cover her face with them.
"I can't remember!" she cried as he embraced her. "I just...I can't remember..."
"Shhh.....it's ok." He held her for a moment.
Dr. McCarthy entered. "Sydney, you only have one more stop today. Dr. Barnett wants to speak with you," she said softly.
Sydney nodded as she used her sleeves to wipe the tears off of her cheeks. They walked to Dr. Barnett's office. Sydney went in.
"Will, I'd like to speak with you in my office for a moment. I've called Agents Kendall and Bristow down as well." He followed her into her office, where Jack and Kendall already sat.
"Gentlemen," she said, as she moved to her large, leather chair on the opposite side of the desk. "I hope that the information I have here will make some kind of sense to you, because frankly, we don't know how it all fits together."
The men nodded. Will had no idea what to expect. All day, the doctors had offered no hints as to Sydney's condition. She put the file on her desk, opened it, and looked at it for a moment before speaking.
"I can tell you conclusively that she is not a double. There were no gene-therapy drugs found in her blood, the optical scans came up negative. Also, we have reason to believe that Sydney was held under force..."
"Which would indicate she has not been disloyal," Jack interrupted.
"Like I said, we only know the medical side of things. We found slight bruising around her ankles and wrists, where restraints might have been. Her fingernails...they were cut very short..."
"What?" asked Will.
"If she had been fighting back, scratching, they would have done anything they could to stop her," explained Jack.
"We found signs of several fractures. It's difficult to tell which ones she may have had previous to her disappearance, but some looked like they occurred within the last year and a half. She weighs around 15 pounds less than she did at the time of her disappearance, her skin is pretty pale, she clearly hasn't had much exercise..."
"Excuse me, Dr. McCarthy," interrupted Kendall. "To play the devil's advocate for a moment here, as compelling as this evidence is, it doesn't prove that she wasn't a willing participant. It only proves that she wanted it to look that way."
"We also found traces of a sedative in her blood stream. This particular sedative, given in high doses, has certain side effects that we used to determine how long she may have been under its effects."
"And?" asked Jack.
Dr. McCarthy took a deep breath. "Two years."
Although it probably wasn't appropriate to be happy at a time like this, everyone in the room was relieved to hear this news.
"How did the regression therapy go?" asked Jack.
"Not well," she said as she shook her head. "Her memory has been severely suppressed. It could be months before we'll be able to get any conclusive answers from Sydney."
"Is that all?" Kendall asked.
"One last thing. It is our medical opinion that Sydney was sedated, either fully unconscious or completely disoriented for the majority of her absence. That's why this confuses us so much. The scar on her abdomen.........I didn't think it could be from a cesarean section. It isn't in the typical position, it wasn't the usual size..." she paused. She looked flustered, and she took a moment to regain her composure. "It appears that Sydney was pregnant during her absence."
**************
It must be genetically programmed into women that no matter whether or not they have children, they must stop in the Baby Gap during any trip to the mall.
This trip to the mall was no different. Will had been dragged into the store with Francie and Sydney who walked from rack to rack oohing and ahhing at the miniature overalls and tiny jeans.
"Will, these are totally your shoes!" Sydney exclaimed as she showed him the four inch sneakers.
As he observed Sydney and Francie laughing and smiling at little babies in strollers, he couldn't help but think about how happy they would be when they finally had babies of their own. They would both be able to leave with bags full of Baby Gap goodies.
They would have been perfect mothers.
Francie never got that chance.
And Will had a feeling that when Sydney found out about what happened to her while she was gone, she might never want to go in a Baby Gap again.
*************
The phone in Dr. McCarthy's office rang, breaking the silence. After a short conversation, she hung up the phone. "Dr. Barnett wants to come speak with us, but would one of you be willing to go and sit with Sydney?"
Jack and Will looked at each other. "You go, I've been with her all day," Will said, even though he would have rather gone himself. Jack seemed all to eager to see his daughter and left the room immediately. Moments later Dr. Barnett walked in and took his seat.
"How is she?" Will asked.
"I haven't written a formal evaluation yet, but she is doing far better than I expected."
"Is she in denial?" asked Dr. McCarthy.
"No. She knows that two years have passed. She accepts it. She just doesn't understand it - how it happened or why."
"Is she ready to return to work?" asked Kendall.
"I think we have to let her go back to work. In her mind, two days have passed since she disappeared. We need to make this as easy as we can for her, which means that she needs things to be the same as they were before. Obviously some things can't be the same..."
Everyone knew what she was talking about.
She continued. "But work, friends, things like that. Even though it's different now, she needs connections to two years ago." She paused for a moment. "Also, when she disappeared, all of you went into overdrive to try and find her. I would expect that as she learns the details of what happened to her, she will do the same. She'll become obsessed with finding the people responsible for it. Be patient with her, let her come back, and I would guess that within days she'll be pushing to get back into the field."
After a few minutes, the meeting ended and Will and Kendall met up with Jack and Sydney. Once again, Will found himself in the elevator, wishing that the ride could last a moment longer. It was completely silent.
"What did the doctor say?" Sydney asked, after the silence became too awkward for her to handle. No one answered.
"You're fine, Syd," Will said finally, not wanting her to worry. She seemed to be satisfied with that answer for the time being. "Are you looking forward to seeing everyone?"
"Of course I am, but..."
"But what?" Will asked.
"I just saw them two days ago."
He put his hand on her shoulder. "Believe me, Syd. They're looking forward to seeing you."
_________________________________________
The end for now. Like I said, sorry if the medical stuff is vague/not plausible.
Also, to everyone who has been asking if this is going to be s/w......without giving to much away I will say this: It might be. However, if you read any of my other stories you'll see that I am diehard s/v......so I guess you'll just have to wait and see what happens :)
Thank you to everyone that has already posted reviews! They really do make my day! Please review this chapter, too! I'll try and get another chapter up soon...