(9 Days Later)

Yawning groggily, Lucy reached to brush away the insect that was persistently tickling her ear. She immediately yanked her hand back as she realized her mistake. Unless bugs had suddenly taken to sporting stubbly beards, it was no insect whose cheek was currently pressed against the side of her head.

Fully alert now, she lay as still as possible so as not to wake the man that she now realized was spooning her from behind. She'd been avoiding him for weeks – outright lying to him for weeks – in order to protect her secrets, yet somehow she'd ended up in bed with him. There was no way that this could possibly end well now. "Way to go, Preston. Could you be a bigger idiot?" she muttered to herself.

Though sorely tempted to just try to sneak out before he woke up, Lucy couldn't bring herself to do so. He deserved better than that. Besides, she'd spent enough time playing the coward already. Ready or not, she needed to 'woman up', tell him what she should have months ago, and pray like crazy that he didn't react too terribly. "Right – like there's any chance of that happening," she sighed heavily, resigning herself to what would doubtless turn out to be a nasty argument. Mentally rehearsing the words that needed said (regardless of how well he chose to receive them), Lucy began to drift again towards sleep.

The sound of someone speaking stirred Wyatt from his nap. Blinking a few times to clear his sleep-blurred vision, he surveyed the room. He could have sworn that he'd heard a voice, but there was no one there. Figuring that it must just have been someone passing by outside of Lucy's hospital room – a particularly loud nurse or visitor perhaps – he let his overly fatigued eyes fall closed again.

After over a week of doing very little but pacing and snoozing in an uncomfortable chair beside Lucy's bed (he couldn't bear the thought of not being there when she woke up, and had only taken the briefest of breaks each day to shower and change clothes), Wyatt had finally given in to the doctor's suggestion that he simply join Lucy in said bed and try to get some solid rest for a change.

It had turned out to be the perfect solution, and one that Wyatt wished now that he'd surrendered to days ago. Finally being able to hold Lucy in his arms – to feel her heart beating, the steady rise and fall of her breathing, and the occasional light fluttering of their as yet unborn child – had instantly turned down the volume on the terror that had been screaming relentlessly inside his head since the night that he'd learned of her illness. Now he just needed her to wake up so that they could get to work on getting her well, and silence that terror for good.

Trying not to let his mind wander to the grim possibility that that might never happen (she'd been asleep for so long now, and with each passing day, the chances of her ever waking up again grew slimmer), Wyatt tightened his hold on Lucy, and nuzzled her ear. "Come on, Sleeping Beauty," he whispered to her, just as he had several times a day every one of the nine days that she'd been asleep so far. "Time to wake up now. Please?"

Jolted out of her near slumberous daze by the deep rumble of her bed partner's voice in her ear, Lucy instinctively tried to leap from the bed, only to slam belly-first into the metal railing surrounding it. "What the…?" Her eyes bounced wildly between the constraining rails and the mound that was now her stomach.

Recoiling in panicked bewilderment, Lucy fell right back against the man from whom she'd been trying to escape, startling herself all over again. With a very undignified squeal, she scrambled to her knees and scurried towards the foot of the bed.

Too stunned at first by the fact that Lucy was awake to actually speak or move, Wyatt watched in wide-eyed astonishment as she bounced around the bed like a human pinball. It was only when her IV stand – which she was unwittingly dragging along with her – crashed against the railing that his brain finally kicked in again. "Lucy, stop! You're going to hurt yourself!" Lurching forward, he snagged her firmly by the hips, and yanked her back towards him.

"Let me go!" she shrieked. Thrashing against him, she accidentally dislodged one of the many monitors attached to her body, causing a shrill alarm to sound from the corresponding machine. The unexpected clamor only served to agitate her further.

Wyatt simultaneously tried to still Lucy and reach around her to switch off the blaring alarm. Before he could do either, however, a nurse sprinted into the room, frantically hollering instructions over her shoulder to somebody out in the hallway. Recognizing Lucy's escalating confusion and fear, Wyatt pleaded with the nurse to turn off the offending machine and cease her unnecessary yelling immediately.

"Hey, it's OK, Babydoll," he murmured to Lucy softly, attempting to soothe her. He relaxed his hold on her, and turned her around in his arms so that she could see his face (and so that he could finally gaze into those wide-awake, whisky-colored eyes of hers that he'd missed so desperately). "It's just me, see?" he assured her. Carding his fingers gently through her tangled curls, he pressed a lingering, grateful kiss to her forehead, followed by several quick kisses to her cheeks, chin, and the tip of her nose. "I've got you. You're OK," he breathed in relief.

Lucy froze, and stared at him for several long moments with an expression that Wyatt couldn't quite interpret.

"Sorry about all the ruckus," the nurse apologized as she finally managed to disable Lucy's heart monitor. "The alarms on these machines are a real pain in the rear sometimes, I know, but we have to take them seriously, just in case. Better safe than sorry, right?" she chuckled half-heartedly, trying to lighten the mood in the room a bit.

The unexpected sound of the nurse's laughter drew Lucy's attention away from Wyatt. As she took in her entire surroundings for the first time, the puzzle pieces finally started to fall into place. Noting the series of wires and tubes leading away from the various machines at the bedside, she traced their path with her eyes to where they ultimately connected to her own body. "Wyatt?" she squeaked, panic flaring again in her chest. "Why am I in the hospital?" She turned back towards him, searching his face anxiously for answers.

"You had a seizure," he explained as calmly as possible, choosing to spare her the finer details, including the fact that she'd been unconscious for over a week. The last thing that Wyatt wanted to do right now was to compound Lucy's obvious distress. He continued to run his hands slowly through her hair, drawing as much comfort from the simple act as he hoped that she was. "You passed out at work, but thankfully Jiya was with you, and got you here pretty fast. We've all just been waiting for you to wake up."

Though she tried to recall the incident in question, Lucy's mind drew a complete blank. "A seizure? Like an epileptic seizure?" To the best of her knowledge, she'd never had one of those in her entire life. So why would she suddenly have one now? "Do the doctors know what caused it?"

"They're pretty much par for the course with aggressive brain tumors like yours, unfortunately," the nurse chimed in as she scribbled a few notes on Lucy's patient chart. "Honestly, I'm surprised that your oncologist didn't prescribe you anti-seizure meds months ago."

As focused as he was on Lucy, Wyatt noticed straightaway the widening of her eyes, and the way that the color seemed to rapidly leech from her face. Something about what the nurse had just said had clearly upset her, but which part? "Luce? What is it?" He instinctively tightened his hold on her as he waited for her to respond.

Her mind racing at the speed of sound, however, Lucy could barely form a coherent thought, let alone the words to answer him.

"Anyway, Dr. Ramsey started you on them as soon as we got you stable, and he'll want you to stay on them, at least until your baby's born," the nurse continued confidently. "There are some possible side effects that he'll want to go over with you, but trust me, honey – the meds are a lot safer for you and your little one than having another big seizure like this one."

The terror that flared in Lucy's eyes at the mention of the baby was absolutely unmistakable. Irritated with himself for being so slow to realize the likely source of her fear, Wyatt quickly attempted to reassure her.

"Lucy, I'm not upset with you, OK – honestly I'm not." Conscious of the nurse's continued presence, he spoke just loud enough for Lucy to hear him. "I admit I was hurt at first that you didn't tell me, but I get it now. With cancer in the mix…yeah, I probably would have pushed you to make a different choice," he conceded regretfully. "But only because this…" He smoothed a hand lovingly over the place where their child currently rested inside her body to emphasize his words. "…Makes it that much harder for you to get well. And you have to do that, Lucy. You can't keep prioritizing the baby's health over yours, or else…well, there's just no other option, alright?"

For some unknown reason Lucy didn't seem at all reassured by his words. If anything, she appeared to be even more frightened than before. "Talk to me," Wyatt urged, leaning his forehead against hers. "It's the only way to get over the hump, remember?"

Lucy's jaw worked up and down as she tried to put her thoughts into words, but no words actually came out. When her breathing suddenly became erratic, and her whole body started to tremble, Wyatt began to fear the worst. Was this the start of another seizure already? But she'd only just awoken from the last one!

Not wanting to risk scaring Lucy even more by asking his question out loud, yet knowing that something definitely wasn't right with her, Wyatt sought the nurse's attention. He tilted his head pointedly towards the wheezing, shivering woman in his arms, silently begging the nurse to do something to help.

"Are you alright, Ms. Preston?" The nurse hurried to Lucy's side, giving her a quick visual once-over, and taking her wrist in hand to check her pulse. "Do you feel faint? Would you like to lie back down?"

Lucy continued to gasp for breath, but fervently shook her head 'no'. Turning abruptly away from the nurse, she buried her face in Wyatt's chest, flung her arms around his waist, and then proceeded to sob as if she'd just lost everything in the world that she'd ever held dear.

Completely baffled, Wyatt looked to the nurse for an explanation.

"Waking up is always a little hard after such a long sleep," she advised. "Don't worry – Ms. Preston probably just needs a little time to process all this. Why don't I give you two a few minutes alone, and see if I can't round up Dr. Ramsey in the meantime, OK? He'll definitely want to talk to her now that she's awake, and probably run a fresh batch of tests, too."

Wyatt nodded appreciatively at the nurse as she slipped from the room. Uncertain, however, as to how to help Lucy, he simply held her as tightly as possible, and rocked her gently until her tears and sniffles and hiccups finally subsided.

"Wyatt?" Lucy asked timidly some minutes later, turning her head to the side so that he could hear her. "Is it true what that nurse said?"

"Hmm?" he murmured, tucking his chin against the top of her head, and smoothing his hands up and down her back. "Which part?"

"All of it." She pulled away from him then, and scooted down along the bed, needing a certain amount of physical distance from him in order to say what was on her mind. "The thing is, I don't remember any of it."

Wyatt wasn't quite following her train of thought. "You don't remember what the nurse said?"

"No, I mean I don't…." Lucy shook her head in an attempt to dispel what surely must be some kind of glitch in her own thinking, but it didn't help in the slightest. "I have a brain tumor – a cancerous one? And I'm pregnant?" She pressed her hands to her swollen stomach, gawking at it in near horror. "How is this even possible? I didn't…I haven't…Noah and I…I mean, we've never…."

"Noah? What's he got to do with…?" His jaw falling open as the meaning behind Lucy's words finally sank in, Wyatt stared at her in stupefaction. Dr. Ramsey had warned him that Lucy might not recall the time immediately preceding her seizure. But if what Lucy was saying now was true, then she'd lost several months worth of memories, not just a few measly hours. No wonder she'd had such a huge meltdown. Wyatt was on the verge of having one now, too. How had this happened? Was it the seizure, or was the cancer eating away at her mind that quickly? "God damn it!" he cursed, not even realizing that he'd spoken the words aloud. They needed to get her started on treatment now – before she lost anything else – before she lost everything that made her her – before he lost her.

At the sound of Wyatt's curse – a curse that didn't come anywhere close to expressing how she felt about the situation, Lucy raised her watery, red-rimmed eyes again to his. "What happened to me, Wyatt?" she asked, her voice quavering. "And why don't I remember any of it?"

Inhaling deeply despite the growing ache in his chest, Wyatt willed himself to remain level-headed for her sake. He gripped both of her hands gently in his own, and smoothed his thumbs calmingly along the insides of her wrists. "I'm so sorry, Lucy. I know this must feel like some crazy nightmare to you right now. But we're going to figure it out, and then we're going to fix it, alright? I promise – we're going to fix everything."

He waited for her acknowledgement before clambering from the bed. "Good. Now the first thing we need to do is get the doctor in here to answer some questions. I'll be right back," he assured her, reluctantly releasing her hands.

Watching as he strode from the room, Lucy marveled for the umpteenth time at what an amazing man Wyatt was. The poor guy probably had a list a mile long of things that he'd rather be doing, yet here he was, committing himself to helping her, with no benefit whatsoever to himself. God, she loved him so much. Why, if she had to wake up to an alternate reality, couldn't it have been one in which he loved her, too?

Snorting at her own ridiculousness, Lucy promptly chased that thought from her mind. There was literally no timeline, no universe, no possible reality whatsoever in which Wyatt Logan would ever give his heart to anyone other than the wife that he'd so tragically lost. He'd made it more than clear – from practically the moment that he'd realized that time travel was real – that next to taking out Garcia Flynn, getting Jessica back was his top priority. Even if his efforts to do so hadn't worked yet, it was only a matter of time before they did.

No, there was absolutely no way that Wyatt could or would ever be hers, and to even wish otherwise was, quite simply, foolish. Lucy might be a lot of things, but she definitely wasn't a fool. Besides, she mused, scooting back towards the head of the bed, and tucking the pillows behind her now aching back – she had far more important things to concern herself with right now than love, if what that nurse had said earlier were to be believed. Like surviving long enough to meet the child that she had absolutely no recollection whatsoever of conceiving, for instance. Dear lord, how had her life become so complicated, she wondered. Closing her weary, tear-filled eyes, she willed Wyatt to hurry back with the doctor. She needed answers, and she needed them now.