Chapter 53


Larrin half groaned and half whined as her head was pounding like the time she drank way too much of the expensive tequila at Wolf's 18th party but with the memory blank she had when she drank Smirnoff vodka of the time she and Merrick got drinks after he came back from being deployed. She wondered is she still had her boots on like that time as she'd gone straight to bed fully dressed with her boots still on. It was the only time she'd slept with her shoes on.

She tried to open her eyes but they were way too heavy and the slight sliver of vision she got told her the room was way to bright for her poor eyes. All she could do was question how drunk had she been last night and why her brothers would even let her drink so much. She also had to wonder what the hell they'd been up to as she hurt all over, she really hoped they hadn't done anything stupid again like steal a street sign. Mum had flipped her lid when she found the stop sign in the living room or the dirt they'd tracked into the house because of it. Thief extraordinaires the Taylor siblings were not and those signs were a real bitch to pull out of the ground.

She took a moment to garner what little strength she had and slowly open her eyes. Her head went a little woozy as it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to lighting. But when her vision cleared and the pain of bright lighting faded to a hum in behind her eyeballs to match the tempo of her pounding headache; panic and disorientation set in.

"What-" she stopped as her dry throat cut out her speech but it was clear she was not in her bedroom but a hospital. She slowly took in the room, the IV line and when she tried to get up her whole body screamed at her to not move. Something that was not a good sign at all, none of this was good. Not good at all. She normally wasn't one to panic but she was now as she was in the hospital, in pain and had no memory of how she got there.

"Hey,"

Larrin looked to the source and saw a man leaning over the bed; looking down at her. She frowned as he didn't look like a doctor. Doctors wore lab coats and button down dress shirts and usually used a hair brush. This man looked like a wild bushman who'd managed to pull on pants, a Henley top and a jacket instead of the usual uniform of stubby short shorts and bonds singlet.

"My name is Tex. Just take a slow and easy breath in and then out for me ok?" he asked her, she looked at him with wide eyes as he didn't sound Australian. He had Southwestern Accent with a slight drawl that made her think of Texas given he said his name was 'Tex'. She didn't know why but he looked familiar to her but she couldn't figure out where. Memory lapses were not something that happened to her. "Breathe. In through the nose and out" he told her with an amused smile, as he made the motions with his hands emphasised his own breathing as if to show her how it was done. Larrin had no clue who this man was but did as he asked because it seemed like the right thing to do given the situation.

As she breathed in slowly and shakily exhaling, the man named Tex found a switch as the upper part of the bed started the raise up. She felt slightly nauseated by the movement but felt better at being more upright than before. It also made breathing a lot easier to do, and she had a better view of the room.

"That's better, right?" Tex asked her, she gave a nod as her mouth and throat were too dry to speak and because she was sure she was hallucinating as the woman in the bed next to hers looked exactly like Dr Rachel Scott. This had to be bad, really bad which made her want to cry as she worried about where her brothers were but before she could even digest that thought three women rushed into the room. One was dressed as a nurse in scrubs while the other wore US Navy t-shirt and Digi BDUs under a lab coat. Two out of the three women also looked familiar and it was giving Larrin a bad sense of Deja Vu. It was one thing to have it for one person but now she was topping to three people now. She looked at the woman who'd stayed back, she was 5'6 redhead in US Navy BDUs.

"Hey, over here." The doctor said gently getting Larrin's attention away from the woman who stayed back. Tex had stepped back to give them space as the nurse was checking over her IV and vitals monitor. It was then Larrin got a good look at her arm, the one that refused to move.

"Oh my god, what happened to me?" Larrin croaked as she saw the bandage and the splints, she also didn't miss the small cuts and bruises over her arms and hands. Her knuckles were bruised like she'd been in a fight.

"It's a long story which we'll get to. My name is Dr -" the Doctor started but Larrin cut her off.

"Are my brothers ok? Why do you all sound American?" Larrin asked as she wanted to know her family was ok before she was being given a run down of her situation. The nurse handed Larrin a cup with a straw and told her to sip slowly. She did as told grateful for the water.

"Can you tell me your name?" Doctor asked ignoring Larrin's questions as she was in full assessment mode. Larrin would have been annoyed but she knew the Doctor had to be looking for something, probably signs of a concussion. Something Larrin would tell her to tick 'yes' box on as her head was pounding and feeling incredibly hard to string coherent thoughts together.

"It's-" Larrin paused for a moment as took her a second to remember her own name. "Ah Larrin Taylor, why is that struggle?" She asked more herself than the others around her as she tried hard to remember what happened but nothing came to her.

"Long story, I still need to ask you a few more questions and then I'll tell you everything I know ok?" the doctor said to her.

"Ok." Larrin said as she realised she was not going to win this battle of will with the Doctor as she was determined to get answers from Larrin.

"Can you tell me the date?" the Doctor asked. Larrin stopped at the question as she'd expected to be asked for her birthday. But now that she thought about it, she was drawing more blanks.

"No," Larrin said feeling incredibly unsettled as she couldn't think of the last thing that happened to her.

"What's the last thing you remember?" the Doctor asked.

"I don't know." Larrin answered with a huff of impatience to cover the fact that she was scared. She also really wanted to know how they all knew her and why she couldn't remember how she'd been injured or ended up in the hospital.

"It's ok." The Doctor assured her but Larrin didn't feel comforted by the sentiment at all as she couldn't help but feel afraid of what she wasn't being told. Her mind racing a million miles an hour to fill in the blanks and nothing she could come up with was good.


"Doc, how is she?" Wolf said as he raced into the hospital floor where Larrin was being kept. Doc was at the nurses station finishing up some notes and talking to a nurse when she stopped and turned to him.

"She's still awake, but as predicted she's lost a pretty good chunk of her memory. I gave her some pain meds for the arm and her headache so she's a little out of it. But you can talk to her." Doc assured him.

"How much time did she lose?" Wolf asked her.

"Can't say for certain but I filled in the blanks for her." Doc said, she knew she had overstepped her bounds as a Doctor. She was ready for Wolf to be pissed at her but they had answers Larrin needed and Doc felt the young woman deserved the truth. It hadn't been easy to talk to Larrin about it but she felt since she lacked a strong personal connection to Larrin. There was an emotional disconnect that helped both of them as Doc wasn't hurt when Larrin lashed out.

"On what? Everything?" Wolf asked for clarification.

"Yes, now I know you'll be pissed at me but you have no idea what it's like to wake up and have no memory. Her condition is much worse than clear cut amnesia as her memory is fragmented. She remembers faces but doesn't know why they are familiar. She thought that you and your brothers were dead or seriously injured after a night of drinking. So I told her as much as I knew which was that she travelled here to the US to visit you. I told her about the pandemic that hit the world. She met up with a man named Julian Heldt who was a turned out to be a serial killer. I told her that she escaped him once but he followed her here-"

"You're right, I am pissed. I didn't want her knowing any of that! You don't see the guilt she carried over that and killing those men in self defence." Wolf told Doc in an angry whisper. He wanted to spare his sister the burden she had been carrying before. She had tried to leave it behind her and now Doc had told her everything Wolf had not wanted her to know and things he wanted to tell Larrin himself.

"What you don't understand is that she doesn't remember it happening. Just like I don't, so there is a sense of detachment like it happened to someone else not her. It's just a story to her. A really crazy story." Doc argued to make him see sense, so that he could understand how to bridge the gaps with Larrin.

"Maybe it is for you, but Larrin isn't like that and you had no right to tell her what you did." Wolf told her. Doc took a step back and gave nod conceding to him as she didn't want to fight with him. She also knew he wouldn't understand until he spoke with Larrin and saw for himself that she wasn't so tortured as she was before.

"You're right, and I'm not sorry. She deserved the truth. Trust me, she was more upset about your family and wanting to see you than what happened the past five months. Go see for yourself." Doc told him as she gestured for him to go to Larrin and Rachel's room. Wolf didn't say another word as he walked away from her.

He knew in some small way she was right, but he couldn't help but feel deeply concerned for Larrin. He was afraid of what was left in her, how he was going to help her. Doc talking to Larrin without him, took away his sense of control on the situation. He didn't like that. He stopped at the doorway to the room and saw Larrin sitting up in bed staring off into space. Dr Scott and Tex weren't in the room but then he'd seen them in the courtyard getting some fresh air and sunshine. Tex had said that Larrin had felt overloaded by everything and needed space. It was why he'd been so panicked but upset by her being alone in the room.

"Larrin." he said, his sister turned and face him. She looked tired and a little spaced out, her hair was a bedraggled mess that in combination with her injuries made her look a little wild and vulnerable. "How you feeling?" he asked her as he came into the room.

"I have a broken arm, three broken ribs, a concussion. I'm not only in a hospital but in a completely other country with no memory of how I got here. How do you think I feel?" she asked in a calm manner but he could see she was angry, upset and slightly panicked.

"A little sore?" Wolf offered with a sympathetic smile trying to lighten the mood with some levity.

"They've been telling me some pretty tall tales and I'm hallucinating." Larrin said in a low voice to him.

"What are you seeing? Gumby?" he asked, that made her smile as they used to watch Gumby as kids and he figured if anything would wig him out it would be seeing that bright green character jumping around the room.

"No, I swear I saw Dr Rachel Scott in the bed over from me." she told him in a low voice as she could have sworn she saw one of her idols in the next bed over before the nurse drew the curtain closed between them. But she was still in disbelief and she couldn't really trust her memory as it was filled with huge blanks. Sure the Doc had talked with her filling in what she could but she struggled to really grasp some of the information. It was that she couldn't understand her reasons and frankly she just couldn't imagine herself doing anything like what the Doctor had said.

"She's real." Wolf assured her.

"I'm sharing a hospital room with the Dr Rachel Scott-" Larrin started but Wolf cut her off as he felt like she was going to repeat Dr Scott's resume to him again. They'd done this conversation.

"Yes, she was shot and then kidnapped by some bad people. You traded yourself for her release and other reasons." Wolf said deciding to go with the truth as he didn't want to confuse her and Doc was right. Larrin deserved the truth as it would save her a lot of heartache and he wouldn't have to lie to her.

"Yeah they told me. It's all a pretty crazy story." Larrin said as she rubbed a hand across her forehead, not sure how to feel about it all. She had so many questions but didn't know where to start.

"It happened." Wolf told her.

"Even the killing four guys?" Larrin asked as she felt pretty conflicted about knowing she'd killed people even if it was in self defense. The problem she had was they she was understood she should feel remorseful or guilty but she just felt nothing. She had no memory of it. It was hard to summon guilt for something she couldn't see herself doing let alone not have even a fragment of a memory. She did believe the tracker in the arm and trading herself to the bad guy but only because she had the broken arm and the incision in her arm. She couldn't refute it when there was evidence to the fact and people to corroborate it. She couldn't imagine herself being in some elaborate ruse as she was just not that important for this much effort if it wasn't real. That and she had shivers down her spine at the mention of the man's name which was just weird.

"It was in self defense, you were just trying to survive." Wolf told her, he didn't want to see her like she had been before she left. That state of mind scared him but all he saw was his normal emotionally stable if somewhat apathetic sister. Yes, she looked distressed but it wasn't the same as it was more about the memory blanks than about what she'd been told. He could tell as she looked like she was straining her brain to remember anything.

"I know, I just don't remember all of it. I remember being in the forest alone, cold and afraid but then I felt the same when Dad made us do those camping expeditions. I think my brain is just filling in the blanks to make sense of things as that memory could be from an episode of Nikita or Stargate." She said thoughtfully, 'camping expeditions' was what they called their escape and survival training.

"Don't worry about it." Wolf said as he could see it was exhausting her.

"Doc says that the memories might come back if I have the right triggers but she said not to get my hopes up. I remember shooting a guy but I was told by some dude called Tex that I hit the wall." Larrin told him with a wry grin, she really struggled to see herself as violent but she had hoped she'd be a little more proficient at it.

"We live with Tex." Wolf offered breaking Larrin out of her thoughts.

"We do?" she asked thought she didn't feel surprised but that.

"Yeah, him and five other people." Wolf said still counting Kara and Danny into the equation as they hadn't moved next door yet.

"Wow, what about Australia? Have you spoken to Mum and the others?" she asked him, Wolf shook his head.

"The pandemic destroyed the infrastructure for international communications. But the American Military are working on it." he told her,

"How long will that take?" Larrin asked him.

"I don't know." Wolf said. they lapsed into silence as Wolf didn't want to explain that it was a low priority to the Americans to call their Allies when they were trying to just survive. Of course it would broached at a later time when they could manufacture the cure and had to spread it to eradicate the virus but for now it wasn't important. Even he felt bitter about it as he and Larrin like many other displaced citizens of other countries were given no reassurances. Instead they'd been hunted like animals and subjugated for the entertainment of criminals. It wasn't fair that after everything that had passed not some kind of compensation was given to them like a free plane ride home. But that begged the question of if they had a home to go to.

"You know, I can't remember why I even came here." Larrin said breaking the silence. She rubbed her hand down her face and winced as it didn't hurt persay but it wasn't comforting as the gesture should have felt to her.

"You got kicked out of your PhD program." Wolf told her,

"What!?" Larrin demanded as her jaw dropped in shock. She felt like someone had dropped a bombshell on her and she thought partial amnesia and waking up in a different country was a shock.

"That's what you told me." Wolf said as he couldn't believe out of everything she'd been told she was freaking out over being kicked out of her PhD.

"No, no, no, no." Larrin shaking her head in disbelief as Wolf had to be lying. Of all the things he had to tell her, it was that she'd been kicked out her Phd program. Just the thought of hours and hours of studying and pretending to be friends with the competitive assholes.

"Yep," Wolf said, Larrin let out a string of curse words that made him feel a little uncomfortable. "Calm down." he told her as Larrin only cursed when she really drunk or in serious pain.

"Calm down?" she asked him incredulously. "That's my whole life, PhD, then medical school-"

"Yeah, I know the ten year plan you've had since you were six but we'll work it out." Wolf assured her.

"Work out what? It's a post apocalyptic world where I have no access to my money- where is my passport? What did I do that got me kicked out?" Larrin asked him as she couldn't remember any of that though in fairness she could barely remember a lot of things. It was like her memory was a gelatinous blob of indiscriminate memories. Nothing stuck out and anything that did come to mind was so generic it was hard to tell if her brain imagined it up to cope with the memory loss or if it was real.

"Does it really matter?" Wolf asked with an incredulous smile as he was still reeling that she was more upset about her PhD than having spent the last few months in the forest escaping murderers.

"Yes!" Larrin said practically shouting at him which made him want to laugh but he could see she was upset.

"I can't remember." Wolf told her honestly.

"Try!" She demanded.