Christmas 2020

Blood Pudding

Chapter Six: For To Redeem Us All?

I'm not dead.

— Then again, maybe I am.

I'm blinded by lights. Light. Light? Not Christmas lights.

Maybe I am dead. Maybe it was me climbing those stairs, up, up, into the light, climbing the stairway to heaven.

Huh. Never liked that song. A skoosh maudlin. Impenetrable. Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven...What's that even mean? It makes me wonder.

Anyway, either I'm not dead or heaven stinks of antiseptic.

Or, maybe I didn't go to heaven. Hell might stink of antiseptic, now that I consider it. It wouldn't be that surprising. I always imagined the stink of brimstone there, but who knows?

"Chuck!"

I open my eyes, look, and see her. Her.

Ellie, my sister.

She leaps up from the chair beside my bed. I blink at her, still struggling with the light.

"Ellie? El?" I whisper her name. She has on scrubs beneath a white doctor's coat. 'UCLA' is stiched above the pocket.

She leans down and hugs me, urgently but carefully, and I realize she's crying.

"El, it's okay. I'm here. I'm not dead."

She stands back and brushes her hair from her face, tears from her cheeks. She sobs, speaks. "No, you're not dead. You've always been tougher than you looked, little brother." Another sob but it sounds grateful, relieved. "But you have been in a coma, Chuck, for almost two weeks. It's a new year.."

"Two weeks? A coma?" I ask both questions weakly. Trying to lift my head takes all my energy; I never imagined my head was so heavy. I give up and just look up at my sister, around at the room, white and clean and beeping. Devices surround me, screens, lights, and sounds. I realize I am the cause of the beeps — everything is attached to me.

"Yes, it was touch and go for a while, the stab wound, all the blood loss, and then your head…"

I scan the room again as she speaks. "Where's Sarah, El? Where is she? Is she here? Is she okay?" I try to get up but barely manage to stir my arms.

"No, you don't," Ellie says, pushing my arms down firmly. "She's not here, Chuck. She saved you, got you here; threatened the medics with a knife to get into your ambulance and ride with you. But she's not here. Not now." Ellie makes an odd face but I ignore it.

She's gone. Again. Gone. Absconditus. Why not just admit it: my ex. I didn't think I could feel worse but I do. The worst. I fight back sudden tears, change subjects, not wanting to weep in front of Ellie. My head feels like someone split it and glued it back together. I try to force Sarah from my mind.

"What's happened, Ellie? My head?"

Ellie studies me for a moment, noting the change of subject, then grabs one arm of the chair by the bed, and she pulls it even closer. She sits down and starts to talk, her voice low.

"We're in a private ICU of the UCLA Medical Center. — You lost a lot of blood, Chuck, from that stab wound. But you also hit your head, hard, on something. The desk in that office. The blow caused swelling in your brain. It cracked your skull, and a long, thin sliver of the edge of the desktop, the corner, like a nail, was driven through the crack, driven into your brain. A one in a billion thing. Almost impossible. — Luckily, they had a top neurosurgeon here; I couldn't get here in time. He did a masterful job on you, Chuck. Got the sliver out. But we weren't sure you'd…" She pauses, looks down.

"Wake up?"

She nods, lifts her head. "And, Chuck — it's gone or broken. Same difference, I guess."

I look at her, disbelieving. My voice is soft. "It? The Intersect?" My gift and my curse. Gone too.

She nods again. "You remember the tests I did on you in the past? Well, when it was in there or working, part of your brain was abnormally active, extremely active, constantly active, awake or asleep, — your temporal lobe. Only Intersects have registered that sort of activity. It showed up on various tests I did on you. It showed up on Sarah's tests when she had it, Morgan's."

Sarah! It's gone! But she's gone too.

"We've run tests, fairly extensive. That pattern of extreme activity is gone, vanished. That region of your brain was where that sliver lodged after your fall.

"The long sliver entered your cerebellum, pierced up into the temporal lobe and even into the parietal. While it was in your head, you probably couldn't move much, couldn't feel much, I'm guessing, and maybe you hallucinated?"

I don't answer.

She goes on, ignoring my non-response. "Maybe that was good, given the stab wound, the pain it would have normally caused. Anyway, the neurosurgeon extracted the sliver brilliantly, cleanly apparently, but with the brain, you never know. Sometimes the smallest thing will cause massive damage, sometimes a big thing does almost none. But the brain swelling has gone down, you've gotten physically stronger; you're healing well. We were hoping you'd wake up, be okay. Be yourself. — You moved. How do you feel?"

I take inventory of myself, scanning around inside myself and trying to move myself a little, carefully, shoulders, arms, hands, legs, feet. My middle burns like a campfire pit, my head imprisons a marching band. But I can move; I am not physically numb.

I nod. "I think I'm okay."

Ellie sighs and I see her shoulders relax a bit. "Good. We'll do more testing when you're stronger. But let me do a few things now."

I swallow my questions and answer Ellie's. When she finishes her questions, I follow her hands with my eyes, let her shine a small light into them. When she clicks off the light, I look around the room, blinking, my vision blurred by the afterimage.

I'm in an ordinary hospital room. Rectangular. No windows. Bare white walls. Then I look, see her. Her.

She's standing on the table next to my bed.

The angel from Brighton's office, the broken angel. Except unbroken. I can't tell that she ever was broken. She's whole.

Ellie notices me staring at the angel. "Sarah — she said she found you holding that, her, when she made it back to the office. We cleaned her up — she was covered in blood — and stationed her on the table. We hoped it was a good omen, that she was...your guardian, watching over you."

I glance at Ellie and then stare at the angel again. There's a silence in the room that seems to outsize the room. One size too big for it.

"So, let me get this straight," I finally say. "A sliver of a desk gets embedded in my head during a fall, and it apparently does no serious damage to me but it rids me of the Intersect."

Ellie shrugs. "Yes. And I'm more or less certain you can never download it again." Another long silence ensues.

Ellie stands and shifts her weight from one foot to the other several times, bracing herself. The air between us thickens like motor oil. I turn from Ellie and stare at the angel, the winged angel.

"Chuck," Ellie says after a while, and the tone of her voice commands my gaze back to her. "How long were you using that stuff?"

Stuff? I don't understand. "Huh? El? What do you mean?"

"The Laudanol. How long, Chuck?" Ellie keeps her voice low, scans the room, and waits.

I remember the name, the drug. I shake my head at Ellie. "Never. I don't use drugs, Ellie. Well, I drink between missions, abuse ice cream some, but I don't take drugs. Only aspirin."

Ellie's eyes narrow; she swallows, then almost hisses, an accusation. "Tox screens found Laudanol — a new variant of it — in your system, Chuck. No mistake. The screens show you'd been using it for a long time."

And then I understand. The sympathy of the devil. The Director. The CIA doctors, the psychiatrists. The pills. The fucking aspirin.

"The Bayer."

Now Ellie stares at me, her eyes large. "The what?" Her question is quiet but intense.

"A few missions in, the CIA gave me aspirin. I thought it was, aspirin, anyway, Bayer or something. I'd been having headaches. After the first bottle, the Director would give me another each time she assigned me a new mission. It was...I don't know...our thing. Her being nice.

"Just before I would leave her office, she'd dig a bottle from her desk and toss it to me and say 'Good luck, Bartowski.' I thought it was her way of showing she liked me. I guess I later came to suspect she was manipulating my missions, sequencing them deliberately, upping the ante — but not that, not this…"

Nausea claims me. Drugged? For years? Then, overwhelming my nausea, anger begins to boil.

"The pills were Laudanol," Ellie repeats herself. "General Beckman's lab people confirmed it. Tested, confirmed. They're still testing it; we should have a full report soon. —You didn't know?"

I shake my head. Ellie stiffens; her face reddens; her brows contract; her eyes glow: She is a Fury.

She speaks after a moment, each word intense, staccato, a blue flame. "That's...what...Sarah...said. She told me — kept telling me, insisting — that you didn't know. it explained everything, she said...

"But I wasn't sure…I had a hard time imagining you taking them without knowing what they were. I argued with her. I was wrong — about that, about you, Chuck. I thought you were taking them to forget Sarah. You were so desperate when she left you alone in Burbank, when you decided to work for the Director...I saw you change in stages; the changes were awful but they seemed natural."

My anger grows but I focus it on another object. "Sarah? Where is she?! Where did she go?! Why did she save me and then leave?!" Weak, I still manage a near-shout.

Ellie burns for a moment more — then she looks at me, her eyes cool, she slumps slightly. When she speaks, her voice is softer. She drops her head; she puts a hand on my shoulder. "Calm down, Chuck! Manage your anger. That shit's still in your system; it'll take another week or so for it to clear. You've been, you're going to suffer...withdrawal."

"Withdrawal? Nothing new," it's now my turn to hiss; it's all I've got, "I've been in withdrawal for five years." I manage to move my shoulder, angrily removing it from beneath Ellie's hand. She frowns, hurt by the gesture.

"Why didn't you tell me Sarah had come to visit you?" I almost spit the accusation.

Ellie blinks several times, transforms; it takes a minute. Her earlier rage completely dissipates. She is no longer a Fury. Just my sister. A guilty look settles on her whitened and whitening face. "You knew?" she finally asks as she settles without looking into the chair.

I nod, trusting and not trusting my anger, my tongue. Laudanol. I speak through tight lips. "I knew. I found a sheet of paper at your place with Sarah's handwriting on it." I don't tell her what Sarah had written.

Ellie drops her head, and her hair obscures her face, but then she lifts her head and meets my eyes. "Yes, she was there. She visited often, if irregularly. We are friends, Chuck. She came to talk to me about you, about the two of you, mostly."

I wait for more, still not trusting my anger, choking it down even as it boils up inside me.

"She wanted to go back to you, Chuck...but — but the CIA Director informed her it was a bad idea. She told Sarah that your psych evals showed that you were coping without her and that her return to you, especially deprived of her memory, as she still was, would only spoil the delicate psychic balance you had achieved. The Director counseled Sarah to wait until she had her memories back…She kept insisting on that every time Sarah asked about you..."

"Fuck the Director," I whisper, my teeth clenched. "Fuck her eternally."

Ellie stops for a moment, regards me, then her gaze turns inward, her look of guilt intensifies. She takes a deep breath. "I'm afraid I'm partly to blame too, Chuck." She smiles bitterly in self-reproach. "You stopped visiting much even before you and I had that fight, remember?" I nod and she continues. "And, when you did visit, you seemed...colder...less...available, less yourself each time. Your eyes...changed. Got hard. You looked at people sometimes, Devon, even me, ...even Clara, like we were just...things." She looks at me, into my eyes. I glance away.

She goes on. "I told Sarah about that — and she worried it confirmed what the Director had told her. We argued, but I went along with Sarah on that eventually. After all, you never tried to contact Sarah..." She pauses, shaking her head. " — But then, later, I tried to get you to see her anyway, remember? That's what you and I fought about that day, your last visit, that fight...You scared Devon; Clara ran from you. I was afraid we were going to lose you completely; I was getting desperate, confused. You were worse each time I saw you. I thought Sarah might be the only one who could help you, even if she was, maybe, also a danger to you. I certainly hadn't helped you. I couldn't stand by and watch you become Agent Bartowski." She stares at me as she finishes, her final words ringing in the room.

I wince internally. Agent Me.

I try to process all this, holding myself in check. I go back to the beginning for a moment. "So, Sarah wanted to come back even without her memories, come back to me?" Ellie nods once. "But the Director discouraged her, all-but ordered her not to?" Another nod. "And I seemed...altered...and you told Sarah that? And it made her believe the Director was right?" Nod.

I breathe out. Breathe in. "Tell me about the Laudanol, El. It didn't affect me as it did back in Burbank, before, did it?"

Ellie scoots toward the edge of her chair. "No. Sarah told me about Burbank." Ellie's eyes focus in the distance."Sarah said the CIA must've changed the Laudanol and must've changed the dosage and delivery. She said the CIA changed the pill itself — so you would not recognize it and the Intersect would not flash. It must've been designed to build up in your system very slowly, its effects cumulative, but so slow they were undetectable as artificial. So that the changes seemed...natural. The Director must've been playing the long game, betting that, with patience, she could create the super-spy that the CIA lusted for since they first heard of the Intersect. Graham's wet dream. The Laudanol was to numb you slowly while increasing your...susceptibility to...orders, and to anger, rage, violence."

"And I thought it was just the job, hardening me?" It's both a question and confession.

Ellie shrugs and scoots back, slouches slightly in the chair, looks at me. "Yes." Her word is both an answer and acknowledgment. "Me too."

She's still for a moment, then straightens. "A while ago Sarah told me about Miami."

I don't expect that change in conversation. I drop my eyes. "She told you?"

"She did. She flew from Miami directly to Chicago to tell me, to cry on my shoulder."

"She what?" I try again to move, sit up, but fail.

"Stay still, Chuck! You'll pull stitches, hurt yourself."

"You knew about Miami? Did you talk to Sarah about it? Why didn't you tell me?"

"When did you visit? Call? You cut me off, Chuck, all of us. You even stopped sending Clara birthday cards, Christmas presents." She pauses. "And Sarah asked me not to."

"Why would she do that?"

"What were you like in Miami, Chuck? Were you...yourself?"

I recollect Miami, replaying the memories, hurting. After a while, I shake my head. "No — not exactly."

Ellie sighs heavily, mirroring my headshake. "Sarah needs to tell you this part, Chuck, not me. She was so desperate for you in Miami, but you were so...strange. You did not speak. You! Chuck Bartowski! Mr. Articulate! It freaked her out, broke her heart."

I watch as Ellie fights to stop herself from saying more and I want to scream. "It was the Laudanol, El, that, and the other lies the Director told me! The Director told me the same sorts of things about Sarah that she told Sarah about me. I was half-unable, half-afraid to speak in Miami. I wanted to talk to her, but…I couldn't..."

"Sarah figured it out, Chuck, just before she left a few days ago. All of it. I didn't exactly believe her; if I had, I'd be with her." The Fury makes her second, brief appearance, then disappears. "She told me...— but no, I will let her tell you when she gets back."

"Where is she, Ellie? Is she coming back?"

"She promised she would be back."

At first, Ellie's face betrays nothing, and then I see doubt, worry creep into her expression — she can't keep them at bay. She's no spy.

"Where did Sarah go, Ellie?"

I hear the answer distinctly in my head a split-second before Ellie says it aloud: "Langley. She flew to DC."

My heart nosedives.

A/N: One chapter to go.