A/N: Sorry about this one. The update pace is going to be slow because it takes me a while to think about how things fit. I get a burst of inspiration, write quite a bit and then I need to think. This one deserves to be done right, and I'm trying. Thanks for all the support on it.

Disclaimer: I don't own Chuck


Chuck lay in his bed, watching Zondra – Dr. Rizzo – look at his chart. Every once in a while, she'd make a grunt and nod, looking at something. "Huh," she muttered.

"Can I ask you a weird question?" Zondra lifted her head and stared at Chuck. "You know what, never mind."

Zondra let out a sigh. "Sorry, I'm a little nervous."

Chuck's eyes widened. "You… you're… you, Zondra Rizzo, are nervous?" Chuck realized what he said, blew out a breath, and lowered his head back into the pillow and stared at the ceiling. "After I recover from the physical the injury, they're gonna transfer me directly to the psych ward."

"And why would we do that?" Zondra asked.

"See, I know your tricks," Chuck said, lifting his head again, to look at her. "I tell you why, and then you will."

"How can I treat you, if I don't know everything?" Zondra asked. "I mean, isn't it enough that your mother is down here, terrifying people? Isn't it enough that your sister is a little scary?"

"She really is, isn't she?" Chuck asked.

"Yeah," Zondra replied, a bit forcefully. "And then… I'm taking over the case from the all-star…"

"What happened to you two?" Chuck asked, and then winced. He had to stop. He had to… he knew he really couldn't, but he really should.

"Tell you what… you tell me yours, I'll tell you mine."

"Nope," Chuck said crossing his arms. "I get the feeling that if I do tell you, you won't tell me."

Zondra grinned at him. She sat down in the chair beside the bed. "Okay, Chuck, she's the absolute best I ever worked with, and it was killing me because of how hard I had to struggle. Things came naturally to her. Me… I had to work twice as hard."

"So, you resented her?" Chuck asked.

Zondra nodded. "Jealousy isn't a good look, and I have no idea how to apologize to her."

"Oh," Chuck replied, thinking. "So, weird question… do you two know someone named Amy?"

"There was a professor named Amy that we both hated," Zondra told him. Chuck groaned. "Okay, what is going on?"

"How much time do you have?" Chuck asked. Zondra gave him a level look. "So, after I hit my head, I had… a dream."

}o{

"Holy shit," Zondra said, sometime later. She was silent for a moment, trying to gather her thoughts. "Do I look the same?"

"I think," Chuck told her. "You know how in dreams someone doesn't look like themselves, but yet you know they are?" Zondra nodded. "I don't know if that's what happened, or… I somehow knew what you looked like."

"This is fascinating," Zondra replied. "Chuck, I'd like to be your doctor, and I think it would be best if we discussed all things with your sister and… your… Sarah?"

"She's not my Sarah," Chuck told Zondra. Zondra grinned. "Wait, do you mean my Sarah as in, the Sarah from my dream, or my Sarah as in… some type of relationship?" Zondra's grin only grew. "Listen, both of those things… they aren't true."

"Okay, we can deal with all that later," Zondra began.

"I don't think my love life, or lack thereof, is a topic for us," Chuck protested.

"It is if affects your brain," Zondra replied.

"I don't think that's true," Chuck countered. Zondra tilted her head and gave him a look. "But for now, we'll table this."

"Good. Now, let's discuss the elephant in the room that isn't blonde." Chuck groaned. "You, working." Chuck shut his eyes. "I'm going to have to ask you to not, for a bit, until we figure things out. Also, we're gonna have to be careful about what you watch, using your phone, that sort of thing. We have to figure out it this one a one-time thing, or something more."

"How long will that take?" Chuck asked.

"Could take a few months," Zondra told him. "I'm sorry."

"Hey, I'm alive, right?"

"You are," Zondra said. She grinned. "I scared the shit out of you in that dream, didn't I?"

"Terrified me," Chuck admitted. Zondra smiled at that. "You enjoy terrifying your patients?"

"I've never terrified anyone before," Zondra said with a shrug, heading to the door.

"You sure about that?" Zondra just laughed.

"I'll see you later tonight," Zondra told him. "We'll see about getting you discharged. You are okay with me being your doctor, right?"

"I am," Chuck replied, "Dr. Rizzo."

"It's Zondra, Chuck," she told him.

"Zondra… thanks." She smiled, nodded, and left the room.

}o{

"How are you feeling?" Sarah asked sometime later. Chuck rubbed his eyes, having dozed off. "Feel like lunch?" She held up his tray.

"You bringing me food… is that a date?" She tilted her head slightly, and smiled. "Because if it is, you can't be mad if I take you hiking, and it's a granola bar and some trail mix, if all I'm getting is hospital food." Sarah laughed as she sat the tray on his bedside table. She pulled it over for him to eat. Sitting down beside him, she reached into her bag, and pulled out a burger. "Extra pickles?" he asked. She gave him a look and he just shrugged.

"Okay, talk to me," she said gently. "You know, maybe if you got it out, you could start to process it better."

"How the hell do I know all these things… all these people… that I've never met?"

"Did you know that every face in your dream is someone you have seen?" Sarah asked him, taking a bite of her burger.

"Really?" Chuck asked. "No, I did not."

"So, if you saw someone's face in what you went through, that meant at some point, you had seen them. Think about how many faces we see every day. Think about all the things we hear. Sometimes our brain puts things together."

"What about other times?" Chuck asked.

"Sometimes a tree is just a damn tree," she muttered. Chuck started laughing and couldn't stop over that. "Can I say I find it all fascinating? Like, I know this sounds nerdy as hell, but first, everything I know about you is fascinating. The stuff I've heard from Bryce and your sister, and now this dream or coma… it's just fascinating."

"Sarah Walker is a nerd," Chuck said in a low voice, grinning.

"Shut up," she told him, swatting him on the arm, laughing. Her eyes went wide. "I'm so sorry."

"It's absolutely fine," Chuck told her. "You were always shoulder-bumping me or hip-bumping me in my dream. You'd smooth my tie, or my shirt." She lifted an eyebrow. "That's not a euphemism, either!" She began to crack up. He blew out a breath. "Some things are so similar… and some… some aren't even close."

"I can't imagine what you're going through," Sarah said shaking her head. "I mean, first off, your brain has taken all of these things you've seen here. And when you are hurt, it's trying to save you, and building these scenarios so that it can try to protect you… at least I think it is."

"Uh, ma'am, you're the brain doctor," Chuck pointed out.

"We don't know everything about the brain," Sarah said with a shrug. "Sorry, that's not very encouraging."

"Actually it is," Chuck replied. He cleared his throat. "Before we were… together, you would always tell me the truth about things, no matter how bad it was. And then, once we were… together, we made a pact. No secrets, no lies."

"Sounds like a good pact," Sarah said softly. "Sounds like dream me thought a lot of you."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, from what I understand, being a spy was pretty much all I knew, right?" Chuck nodded. "So, what's a spy's most valuable commodity?"

"Knowledge," Chuck replied.

"Yep. So, if I agreed to no secrets, no lies-"

"It was actually your idea," Chuck blurted out. Sarah just sat there, studying him. "God, I have to be creeping you out."

"Why? I mean, you do know I'm not her, right?"

"I do, it's just… how did I get some things so right about you… and others, so wrong?"

Sarah was silent for a moment. "Okay, you know when you meet someone for the first time, and you quickly get a gut feeling about them?" Chuck nodded. "Now, what if you had heard things about them, here or there? Don't you think that would influence you?"

"Well, yeah," Chuck replied.

"So, we all have intuition," Sarah told him. "Some of us listen to it more than others. And, there is science behind it. To the point the US Office of Naval Research call it our spidey-sense."

"I feel like you're trying to flirt with me," Chuck said. His eyes went wide, and he clamped his mouth shut. Sarah was laughing. "God, I just can't shut up around you."

"Well, maybe it's your intuition, that you can trust me," Sarah said warmly. "So, intuition is the ability to know something without analytic reasoning, bridging the gap between the conscious and non-conscious parts of our mind."

"Okay," Chuck said, nodding.

"If this bores you, let me know," Sarah told him. Chuck couldn't help but chuckle. "What?"

"In the dream, I was always going on about my nerdy stuff, and worried about boring you. I'm just sort of enjoying the juxtaposition here."

Sarah smiled at him. "So, Dr. Judith Orloff, who is the Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA, is doing some fascinating work. According to her, scientists believe intuition operates through the entire right side of our brain, the hippocampus, and through our gut."

"Our gut?"

"Yes," Sarah said a little excited, making Chuck grin. "Our digestive system has neurons as well." She shifted in her chair, the excitement growing. "And this is where it gets interesting for us ladies. Women's corpus collosum, the connective white matter that connects our left and right brain hemispheres together, is thicker than men's."

"Is that good?" Chuck asked.

"Oh, yes," Sarah replied. "This more substantial brain super-highway gives women better and faster abilities to access each hemisphere, further integrating our emotion and gut feelings with the more logical left hemisphere into our decision-making process. Basically, women's brains have superpowers, and are actually optimized for rapid intuitive decision making."

"So, women's intuition is a real thing?"

"Yep," Sarah replied. "Women are also psychologically more in touch with their emotions." She paused. "Probably because we've been given more cultural permission to be this way."

"Damn Western society," Chuck said. Sarah nodded.

"So, all of this leads to women being more likely to integrate hunches, emotional 'hits' about people and logic. Because men have a thinner corpus collosum they are more compartmentalized in their thinking, and less able to move back and forth from intuition to logic."

"Huh," Chuck said. "Interesting."

"What?" Sarah asked. "No secrets, no lies, Chuck."

He grinned at her. "So, in the… dream, every time they wanted the Intersect to work, and it wouldn't it was because I was too emotional…"

"And the Intersect dealt with facts and logic, right?" Chuck nodded. "Sounds like your brain was maybe trying to tell you something."

"Wild," Chuck said. "You know, there was a time I was kidnapped."

"Is this when I beat up half of Thailand?" Sarah asked, chuckling.

"All of it," Chuck corrected, making her laugh harder. "But at the time I was in a dream like state there, and I knew something was off."

"Wait, do you think you're in a dream now?" Sarah asked him.

"No, and there's a good reason why," Chuck told her. "Everything has a back-story. I know how and why I am where I am. Now, am I remembering the dream? Sure."

"Which is wild unto itself," Sarah told him. "Most of our dreams we forget when we wake up. Within five minutes of waking up, we forget something like ninety percent."

"Could it be the seizures?" Chuck asked.

"I have no idea," Sarah admitted. "I would think you are less likely to remember with the seizures." Chuck sat there quietly. "Hey, wanna get out of here for a minute?"

"Sure, you gonna push?" Chuck asked.

"Nope, you're gonna walk."

"I have pants on under the gown so you can't see my ass," Chuck quipped. "I'm sorry, it's just so natural to say that kind of stuff to you."

"Do you hear me complaining?" Sarah asked him. "Now, give me your hand, we're going for a walk." She held out her hand, and he took it. For the first time since he woke up, that undercurrent of a feeling he was having, that things would never be right again, went away.


A/N: I know you want a next time….so do I. I unfortunately have nothing else written. Take care of yourself. See you soon.