Altered Reality

Chapter Two

Sighing, John Brady pinched the bridge of his nose as he collapsed into the stiff leather chair, both physically and emotionally exhausted.

It was the day he'd always dreamed of, the glimmer of light at the end of the proverbial dark tunnel that the past three years of his life had been. Through the bad times, he had constantly looked forward to this, hoped for it, prayed for it, promised the kids that it would come despite his own doubts.

Marlena was not only coherent, but stable, and after a few days of observation, he would finally be able to take her home.

Oh, Doc, he thought. You don't know how long we've waited for this.

And the truth was, she really didn't know. She didn't know a lot of things, but they would just have to help her adjust to reality again, show patience and understanding when she got confused or scared. It wasn't going to be easy, Lexie had reiterated that from the start, but John had faith that they could get through this, all of them, together.

As a family.

He had two other children by two other women, one of whom he had married and still missed all these years after her death, but it had always been Marlena for him. Practically from the moment they first met, he had known that she was the one for him, there was just something about her that mesmerized him.

The day she'd become his wife for the first time, he'd thought it was the happiest day of his life, but he'd learned as time went on that things could only get better, even if they had to get worse first, a sentiment that they'd put into their vows at their second wedding.

So many times over the past few years, he had looked back on their life together in sad reflection, and wanted to hang his head and cry. There was always hope, so Lexie told him each morning on his daily visits to see his wife at the sanitarium, but sometimes it was hard to believe that. The days had been long and exhausting, and painfully lonely, despite being surrounded by friends and family.

For the first year after Marlena had been committed, he had been in deep depression, feeling lost and confused, and he'd hated himself for wallowing in his own grief when his children needed him, but in the end it had been his children who got him through it.

Carrie and Eric had both moved away from Salem, to Israel and Los Angeles respectively, well before her breakdown, and Cassie had been a freshmen at NYU when it happened, but all three of them had been willing to move home again if he so much as gave the word.

He never had, because as tempting as it was to draw his children to him and keep them close, John knew they needed to live their own lives. Besides, he'd had Sami, Brady, Rex and Belle, all of whom still remained in Salem, and that had been more than enough.

Those kids were his lifeline.

Out of all them, Belle had probably taken it the hardest, simply because she was the youngest at seventeen, an age where she needed her mother to help her get ready for dates with her boyfriend Philip, to take her prom dress shopping and come to watch her cheer at the football games at school. She had gone through a selfish and angry phase for the first six months or so, during which John had been at wit's end with what to do with her, but Sami had eventually stepped in and gotten through to her little sister.

After that Belle had done everything she could to try and make life easier for John, including enrolling at Salem University after finishing up high school, despite his urging for her to choose whatever college she wanted. She had been adamant about them being together as a family, and Brady had confided to him that he thought Belle needed the security more than the others because she was the most emotionally weak, so John hadn't argued when she informed him that she was going to live at home with him instead of in a dorm.

Though he'd never said anything to the kids, they knew that without Marlena the house always seemed empty to him somehow.

Maybe it was because they were men, and men had some primal urge to keep their emotions bottled up, but Rex and Brady had always been composed on the surface. Underneath, though, they had both been suffering just as much as the rest of the family, particularly Rex.

While all of them were wrestling with confusion, guilt, fear, frustration and anger, normal reactions according to Lexie and Dr. Harris, the family therapist who had helped them adjust during that first year, Rex had to deal with the painful knowledge that Marlena hadn't even believed he was really her son. The delusion that she had simply carried him and Cassie, that they were really the children of Kate and 'Roman', had weighed heavily on his shoulders for the past year or two.

But it was Sami whose strength continued to awe John to this day, because despite how busy she was at Basic Black, despite having a husband and a son to take care of, she still managed to find the time to step into the maternal role of the family in Marlena's absence. She had kept the family from falling apart, really, whether it was simply checking up on him and her siblings on a daily basis or organizing family dinners every Friday night and enforcing a perfect attendance rule.

Though she was technically his middle daughter, Sami was the first child he'd ever witnessed being born, and sometimes when he looked at her now he was stunned at what a beautiful and capable woman that breathtaking little baby had grown into. He didn't really know why she was able to deal with Marlena's illness better than the rest of her siblings, maybe it was just that Brady strength that shone through so brilliantly in her, but he supposed it had a lot to do with the fact that she had been forced to grow up at a very young age, when she got pregnant with Will.

Whatever the reason, John knew without a doubt that he could never had made it through the past three years without her.

Behind him, the door opened, and he looked up as Lexie Carver stepped into the room, making her way to sit down at the desk in front of him. She placed her clipboard down, then folded her hands and looked at him expectantly, her dark eyes studying him with sympathetic understanding.

"How do you feel?" she finally asked.

"Excited, relieved," John answered, running a hand through his dark hair. "And nervous, too."

"That's to be expected," Lexie assured him with a nod. "This is going to be difficult, John, not just for Marlena, but for you and the kids, too."

"The past few years have been nothing but hard on them," John sighed.

"I know," Lexie replied gently. "Rex has been so mixed up, it breaks my heart to see my nephew hurting like that."

"Me, too," John murmured.

Though Rex and Cassie were his stepchildren, twins born out of Marlena's relationship with Tony DiMera back during the time that John had been married to Isabella, he had always considered them his and made sure that they knew he loved them just as much as he did Carrie, Sami, Brady and Belle. The twins had been so young when Tony was killed in a car accident that they didn't really remember him, but Lexie and their grandfather Stefano, the head of the Salem-base computer company DiMera Tech, had always done their best to help them feel close to their deceased father.

"He worries about you, you know," Lexie said seriously. "They all do."

"I know," John responded, nodding grimly. "I worry about them, too."

"Of course, you do," Lexie stated with a tired smile. "You're their father, that's your job."

"I am their father," John agreed somberly. "But sometimes I feel like they've been forced to take care of me instead of the other way around. Belle is still living at home because the kids don't want me to be alone, the boys find excuses to drop in on me at the station, and Sami keeps finding reasons to get us all together for family activities."

"They do those things as much for their own needs as for yours, John," Lexie reminded him patiently. "And family is important in situations like this. That's how you've all made it through these past few years, depending on one another and supporting each other. Not just you and the kids, but your parents, Bo, Hope and the boys, too."

"Yeah," John agreed. His parents had been a source of unwavering strength for him through the rough patches, and his nephew Shawn had definitely been there for Belle and Brady when they needed him, while little Zack was always good for cheering him up when he was feeling down.

But the best support came at the station, where he worked alongside not only his little brother Bo and his sister-in-law Hope, but his best friend Abe, as well. All three of them had been there whenever he needed them, day or night, without complaint, and for that he would be eternally grateful to them all.

"We've been blessed," John mused aloud. "Not only in our family, but in our friends, too. I'm never going to be able to thank you enough for all you've done for us, Lexie."

"It's my job to help Marlena get better," Lexie replied. "And it's the least I could do to help make this all a little easier on you and the kids, considering you're practically family."

John smiled faintly at the young doctor, touched by her words. She was much younger than her half-brother Tony had been, so she was still fairly young when Rex and Cassie were born, but she'd never been lacking in her duties as an aunt.

Her marriage to Dr. Brandon Carver, Abe's only son, had brought her even closer to the family, and when their son Theo was born, John had been honored when they asked him to be the baby's godfather. Though Rex and Cassie considered Shawn Brady to be their cousin, even if it was only be marriage, they'd been excited about Theo's birth, and Rex had even agreed to baby-sitting his little cousin a few times when Lexie needed a break and Brandon was busy at the emergency room.

"This is for real, then?" John asked anxiously, despite the fact that he knew Lexie would never give him false hope. "She can really come home, right? This isn't a dream?"

"No, John, it's not a dream," Lexie promised, smiling wearily. "Marlena can go home, but we'll need to keep her here for a few days, maybe a week, to keep her under observation, just to make sure that the drug is working and that there are no adverse side-affects."

"Okay," John nodded, then paused, biting his lip. "She won't have to stay in her room, will she?"

He'd seen the frantic look in his wife's eyes as she looked around at the white, padded walls, and he didn't think that she could survive a week living in there now that she was lucid without going crazy all over again.

"No," Lexie answered. "We'll get her set up in one of the recovery rooms, I think she'll be much more comfortable there."

"And we can still visit her?" John inquired. "The kids and I? Maybe Will if Sami and Lucas feel he's up to it?"

"I'm not sure if it's a good idea to bring Will," Lexie hesitated. "I know Sami agonized over the decision not to bring him in the past, so it's probably best if that reunion waits until after Marlena's release. It was difficult for Sami and Lucas to explain Marlena's illness to him when she was committed, and he was very confused, so it's impossible to know how he'll react to Marlena coming home after so long since he was so young when she got sick."

"You've got a point," John agreed with a sigh. "Best to ease him into it, right?"

"Tell Sami to give me a call tomorrow," Lexie instructed. "I'd like to sit down with both her and Lucas to talk about how to go about things with Will, since this is such a delicate situation. It's not going to be easy for him to adjust."

"I know," John said gravely. "He's a strong little boy, but this illness is a hard thing to wrap his mind around. Sometimes I don't even understand, I ask myself why us, why Marlena, why our family, so I'm sure Will's asked the same questions, too. But he's such a perceptive kid, he doesn't talk about his Grandma Marlena to Sami, he knows it would upset her, so he talks to his father, except Lucas doesn't know how to explain things any better than the rest of us."

"He's a good father," Lexie observed. "And a good husband, too."

"Yeah," John agreed with a grunt. "He is."

He had liked Lucas Roberts well enough when the kids were younger, despite the playboy reputation that the he'd gained in his teenage years. Since he was not only the son of Bill Horton, but Victor's stepson, Lucas had been a regular playmate for the twins during their childhood, and he and Eric had developed a rivalry that continued to this day, even if it had softened to a more friendly manner.

It was Sami's relationship with Lucas that had always amused John, though, because those two had been little terrors to one another. While most little girls might start crying if a boy pulled her hair on the playground, Sami had taken to kicking Lucas in the shins, which only seemed to fascinate the boy, so he was constantly tormenting her as a child. The two of them had thoroughly enjoying terrorizing one another, and more than once Sami had come home from the park covered in dirt only to explain that Lucas had put a frog in her hair, so she bit him.

In some ways, those had been simpler days, because for a little while John could pretend that his little girl was never going to grow up, that she was never going to start liking boys, but it had been inevitable.

When he was thirteen, Lucas had started to attend a prestigious military boarding school out of state, returning to Salem for the holidays and summer break, and that's when the real trouble started. When he was back in town on break, he spent most of his time with his family, either enjoying the time with Kate, Victor and little Philip at the Kiriakis mansion, or visiting with his father and half-siblings Mike and Jenn over at the Horton house where his stepmother Laura always had fresh cookies ready when he came over, but summer break was what changed things.

One day out the blue, really, Lucas had arrived back in town, and John had been there to witness the spark of interest that passed between him and Sami firsthand. Since Eric and Rex were both at their soccer practices, Brady was at baseball practice and Carrie was at her summer job down at the pool where she was working as a lifeguard, John had decided to take the girls for ice cream while Marlena ran some errands.

As much as he loved playing with his sons, spending time with his daughters was always a treat, because the three girls were so animated in everything that they did. Although Cassie and Belle were closer in age, it was Sami and Cassie who were closer in temperament, and at twelve and eight the age difference didn't really matter that much anyway, so the two of them had brought a smile to his face as they excitedly babbled on about some new movie they wanted to see, while Belle was too engrossed in her ice cream sundae to notice.

There had been a jingle when the door opened, and in had walked Bill Horton with his seventeen year-old daughter Jennifer and fourteen year-old son Lucas, who he had just picked up from the train station. He and Kate had agreed that he could have their son for his first weekend home since Sunday would be Mike's twenty-first birthday, and Jennifer had gone with him to the train station to pick up her little brother.

John had waved them over, inviting them to join them since the large booth had plenty of room for three more, and had proceeded to ask Lucas how his final exams went, before settling into conversation with Bill and Jennifer about Mike's decision to apply to medical school after graduation. In the midst of their discussion, Lucas had turned to eye the girls appraisingly, a small smirk making its way onto his lips as he zeroed in on Sami, and made some snarky comment about wondering how she'd managed to leave her Barbie dolls at home.

Bill had groaned, rolling his eyes, and opened his mouth to lecture his son on his behavior, when Sami beat him to it, simply snorting and shaking her head so that her soft blond hair fall across her face. John couldn't remember what her answer had been exactly, only that it had been so glib, and so perfectly Sami, that Lucas had been effectively silenced as he stared at her like he'd never seen anything quite like her before.

And thus was the beginning of a beautiful, albeit strange, friendship between Sami and Lucas.

For the next few years, whenever Lucas came home from boarding school, he and Sami were joined at the hip, whether it was hanging out at the Pub, playing the newest video games that Stefano sent copies of, swimming in the pool at the Kiriakis mansion, or just watching television together. By the time that Lucas graduated and moved home to Salem for good, accepting a rather cushy job at Titan from his stepfather Victor, he and Sami were rarely apart. They were even able to hang out at work once Sami was given an internship at Titan the summer after she turned sixteen.

Still, it had never really occurred to John that their friendship might one day take a romantic turn. Lucas had always been a bit of a playboy, dating one girl after the next, mostly models who worked with Titan Publishing, and Sami had dated the occasional boy from school, never really that interested in anyone in particular. Their relationship had been so natural, so instinctive, that it had seemed almost sibling-like at times, but things had changed between them somehow the night of Sami's junior prom, because the next thing anyone in town knew the two of them were dating.

While John doubted he'd ever know the full story of what happened that night, and he wasn't sure he wanted to, the fact that a month later Sami had discovered she was pregnant didn't leave a whole lot to the imagination.

Sometimes it's hard to believe it hasn't even been ten years, John thought with a sigh. His little girl had grown up so much, so fast, that it seemed like she'd gone from a kid to an adult in the blink of an eye. Lucas had been the same way, just a boy one minute and a man the next, so it was clear that the two of them had helped one another along the way, left their childhood behind them and walked hand-in-hand into a new and daunting life as parents.

"Do you want to call the kids and give them the good news?" Lexie offered, gesturing to the phone on her desk.

"No," John declined, shaking his head. "I think this is something I want to tell them in person, all of them at once. So we can sit down and discuss this as a family."

"That's probably a good idea," Lexie conceded evenly. "They're going to have a lot of questions."

"Got any advice on what to tell them?" John asked with a weak smile. "I feel like I'm stumbling myself, I don't have a clue how to help them get okay with this."

"Honestly?" Lexie replied. "Just keep talking to them, keep the lines of communication open. That's going to be important in the coming days, because you're all going to be feeling some anxiety and frustration as you help Marlena reintegrate back into her life, maybe even a little anger, and that's perfectly normal, but you've got to be honest with yourselves and with one another. It's okay to feel all those things and they need you to not only tell them that, but to show them that it's okay."

"Lead by example, huh?" John sighed.

"Exactly," Lexie said with an encouraging nod.

"And if it's obvious to them that I don't have a clue of what to do?"

"Then you'll all be clueless together," Lexie told him reassuringly. "I wish I could tell you that everything will work out smoothly, that there won't be any kinks in the road ahead, but I can't. There's no handbook for how to deal with recovering from schizophrenia, John, for patients or their families. The best anyone can do is just take it one day at a time."

"You're right," John blew out a long hiss of air, rubbing his jaw wearily.

"Of course I'm right," Lexie retorted lightly. "I'm the doctor here, remember? Don't worry, you'll do fine."

The intercom on her desk beeped, and she reached over to press the button. "Yes?"

"Dr. Carver?" John recognized the voice of Lexie's secretary Brenda, a regular face on his daily visits to see his wife. "Mrs. Brady is out of the showers and dressed now, waiting in meeting room three."

"Thank you, Brenda," Lexie said, removing her hand from the intercom and rising to her feet. "Ready to go try and help Marlena remember pieces of her life?"

"Yeah," John responded, following her to the door. "I'm ready."