Chapter Seven
While Amy was out with Raj, Sheldon was sitting down to lunch in the university cafeteria.
"How was the appointment yesterday?" Howard asked Leonard, prompting him to pull out an ultrasound photo.
"Really good, everyone's healthy."
"Awww, look at that, she has your wavy black lines," Howard said, examining the picture. Leonard grinned.
Sheldon did his best to tune out the conversation. Prior to the accident, he and Amy had had several serious discussions about starting a family of their own. She had even stopped taking her birth control and he had started researching the best neighborhoods to raise kids. Now it was all on hold, and it bothered him. More unfinished business.
"You okay, buddy?"
He looked up from his lunch to see his friends staring at him, he suspected with concern.
"Yes, I'm fine."
"How has Amy been?" Howard asked.
"She's getting adequate rest and making great strides to catch up in her field. When I left she was settled on the couch with a cup of tea and a stack of Neuron back issues."
"So she still hasn't remembered anything?" asked Leonard.
"No," Sheldon sighed.
"I'd enjoy this while you can if I were you," Howard said.
"Excuse me?"
"Oh come on, you've got gold here," he explained. "I'd kill for Bernie to not remember all the dumb things I've done."
Sheldon frowned deeply and went back to picking at his food. Previously he was considering sharing some of the difficulties they'd been having. How he suspected Amy's recovering brain and/or her medications were causing mood swings without her noticing. How he was constantly afraid of saying the wrong thing to her, of healing proving to be impossible, of the statistical probability of another accident in the near-future. How the only relief seemed to come at night when she allowed some semblance of the closeness they previously enjoyed. But Howard's statement suggested his friends were unlikely to understand.
"So she just sits there in the apartment all day?" Leonard asked after a beat.
"Yes."
"And she's okay with that?"
"Yes, we have an agreement." Howard and Leonard exchanged glances.
"Maybe I'll ask Penny to swing by and check on her," Leonard said, reaching for his phone, but Sheldon stopped him, pulling out his own phone instead.
"That's not necessary. Amy texted me six minutes ago confirming she's eating lunch, and if she's following the suggested schedule I drew up, she'll be laying down for a nap next." While he spoke, he pulled up the tracking app to prove to his friends everything was as it should be. Just as he was turning the screen towards them, though, he did a double take.
She wasn't at the apartment. The little dot representing Amy was hovering over Griffith Observatory.
It seemed every possible unpleasant emotion burned within him as Sheldon gathered his things from his office, boarded the bus, returned to his apartment, and settled onto the couch to await Amy's return, but her words in the ensuing argument hit him like dousing of water. She didn't see him as her husband? Did that mean she didn't want to be with him? How had the conversation gone so wrong so fast? He was only trying to protect her. How horrible to have created the very thing he dreaded in the process.
"Don't say you want to take a step back. Please don't." Feeling the potential for another panic attack, he tried desperately to control his breathing and sat back down heavily on the couch.
"I like you, Sheldon," her voice was soft now and she moved to sit in the chair. "I liked you from the first moment we met in that coffee shop, and my feelings have only increased since then. I want this to work, but I can't-Why are you smiling?"
He hadn't realized he was until she cut herself off.
"Sorry. You said something similar in our wedding vows."
"We wrote our own vows?"
"Of course. The traditional vows were inadequate to describe my commitment to you, and you objected to the line about obeying me." Amy's mouth twitched into a small smile as well, but she quickly turned serious again.
"Sheldon, you have to understand how scary this all has been for me. I woke up one day and found out I married you, I moved into your building, I work at Caltech with you, and I won the Nobel Prize in physics. I thought you were just teasing before when you said I assisted you, but it's starting to feel like that might be the truth."
"You feel that the things that were yours have been subsumed into the things that are ours," he said.
"Yes!"
Sheldon nodded. This was familiar too. She expressed the same sentiment back when he had her removed from her study. It was a bit disappointing she didn't recognize her own words repeated back to her, but at least he could manage this.
"Amy, how far did you get in your Neuron readings?" Sheldon asked.
"Not very far," she admitted. "I only read a few of them. I got distracted looking through our wedding album and watching reruns of Little House."
Sheldon sifted through the stack of issues on the side table until he found the one he wanted and handed it over. He watched Amy's jaw drop as she read her own name on the cover.
"If I had wanted a lackey who only bolstered my own research, I would have married a grad student years before we met. Or maybe just stayed with Leonard."
"Penny might have had something to say about that," she commented, flipping through the journal.
"The point being," Sheldon pressed on, "you're a highly respected scientist in your own right, and your contributions to my work and my life have been nothing short of invaluable. I don't want to stifle you. I'm sorry that hasn't been clear."
"Thank you, Sheldon," she said, putting down the journal and moving from the chair to the seat beside him on the couch. "It's just, after finding that agreement, I-"
"What agreement?" he interrupted her.
"On my computer," she said, grabbing the laptop from the coffee table and opening it. Sheldon leaned closer to view the document she pulled up.
"Oh, Amy, this is the old Relationship Agreement. We haven't followed this version in years."
"We haven't?"
"No, this was the first version I wrote for us." He gently took her laptop from her and navigated to their shared drive, all the while shaking his head. Why had she saved that? Sentimentality? Situations like this were the reason he'd added that No Nostalgia clause. He pulled up their marriage contract and handed the laptop back. "I think you'll find this document more to your liking."
"We have a coital schedule?" she asked, making him curse inwardly. He really should have known she'd scroll to that section first.
"Well, I do. It's not strict." His eye twitched. The accident had thrown them so far off that schedule, they would probably have to take some extra days off work to catch up. "That's not important right now."
"Maybe to you it's not."
"Anyway, I have a suggestion, and I hope you'll keep an open mind."
"Very well," she agreed, though he sensed a bit of trepidation. After everything she just shared, he knew he would have to tread carefully.
"As you can see, the marriage contract has no precedent for amnesia, and clearly the stay-at-home agreement isn't working. What if we wrote a new document right now to outline how we move forward?"
Amy's brow furrowed and she looked back and forth between her laptop screen, the agreement on the table, and his face.
"We write it together?" she finally asked.
"Yes."
"Then okay," she agreed. The relief he felt in that moment was so overwhelming, he had to quash the urge to hug her. There would be time for that afterwards, after they decided what physical contact was acceptable. Instead, he reached into his bag for his own laptop. She shifted closer to him, her chin almost resting on his shoulder as she watched him close some unneeded files and pull up a blank word document.
"Can I ask a quick question before we get started?"
"What is it?"
"Why do I keep finding photos of the Wright brothers edited into our wedding party?"
That night they got into bed and curled around each other, just as they had all week, but this time it felt different. More comfortable. Sheldon chalked it up to the several satisfying hours spent drafting their brand new Memory Impairment Recovery Agreement. It hadn't been easy, Amy still fought him on several points, but it felt like progress in a way nothing else had since her return from the hospital.
"Tell me a memory," she murmured into his neck.
"Amy . . ." he answered in a low, admonishing tone.
"Not a big memory," she clarified, her hand idly playing with the buttons on his pajama top. "Just one of your favorites. Please?"
"Very well," Sheldon sighed and pulled her closer. "A few years ago, there was a symposium at Richard Feynman's house, and I wasn't invited to go. It happened to fall on one of our date nights, and I spent our entire dinner feeling miserable. Then you offered to build a fort with me."
"A fort? Like with pillows?"
"Mmm-hmm, and blankets. We used all of Leonard's sheets. It was magnificent. Our very own fort just for us, where we could never be excluded again."
"Sounds wonderful."
Sheldon stared at the ceiling in the dark, reveling for a moment in the memory. The way her hair glowed in the Christmas lights, how her smile was so bright and wide he couldn't help but smile back until his cheeks ached, the sound of her even breathing as he fell asleep near her for the very first time. That day had started out so awful, and he had been so certain nothing would make it better, but then she did. She made him completely forget about the snubbing. How had she done that? What strange power did she possess? Why wasn't he terrified of it?
He wanted to tell her that was the first time he could see it, really see it. Her vision of the future. That they could live together, get married, be a family. It wasn't some vague thing in the distance. It was right there in front of him, ready to be claimed. But he could feel her going completely lax against him and knew now wasn't the time.
"It was," he said, and he pulled the comforter up until they were almost completely covered.
Author's Note:
Did you know The Fortification Implementation is my favorite episode? Cause it is. It's shocking that I haven't written fic about it prior to this. Or maybe it's not, because I cannot even think about that episode without crying. I'm actually crying right now. I just have a lot of Feelings about the fort.
Anyway, I know the previous chapter was more angst-filled than some of you were expecting, so if you're still here with me now please know I appreciate you.
Special thanks to my new beta reader Lord Stark for all your input and encouragement.
