Author's Note: Thanks for the reviews, glad you are enjoying it. Hope you like this chapter. Sorry if my medical knowledge is wrong and I don't own anything.
Also, I want to apologize for the long wait, I got sidetracked. I have other story ideas in my head and I'm debating what to do with them.
Wash was in the middle of a debriefing with Guzman and Taylor when her comm. beeped. She reached for it and stepped out of the Command Centre to take it.
"Washington." She answered and listened in as a nurse spoke through the unit.
"Lt. Washington, Dr. Shannon wanted me to alert you that Natalie has awoken and..." The rest was useless to Wash, all she cared about was that her daughter was finally awake.
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Natalie saw the doctor's face and she knew what it meant, it was serious. Even without the look it wasn't hard to figure out, she couldn't move her muscles and she had an odd sensation.
"What's wrong? Tell me." Natalie begged.
Her eyes pleaded for answers and Dr. Shannon looked down at her hand resting on her uninjured arm, then met her eyes with a slight sigh, "You've suffered severe nerve damage. The accident caused trauma to both your skull and your spinal cord."
"But you fixed it, right?" The check-up had just began – they hadn't fully gone into details of what treatment was done, but based on her bandaged head and hand, she'd assumed she'd had surgery or at least some form of medical treatment.
"We performed the surgery to fix your cranial bone, but at the time we didn't know the extent of your nerve damage. We knew it was third-degree, borderline on fourth, but without you being awake, we couldn't identify if it effected your autonomic function, your sensory or your motor function."
"But you have?" Her question-statement was full of hope.
Elisabeth smiled back at Natalie, "Yes, that's what those tests were for, to rule out the type of damage. We did; your autonomic functions are functioning fine, which is great news because your autonomic nerves control your organs. Such as your blood pressure, your heart rate, your breathing and your digestion."
Elisabeth grew sober, "Your sensory functions and motor functions, however, were severely damaged. Your sensory nerves seem to be worse – the numbing sensation and the tingling feeling when something makes contact with your skin is due to the loss of those nerves. The peripheral nerves are used to send signals to and from the spinal cord and brain, such as the feeling of pain. It's the same with your motor functions, your brain sends signals telling your muscles to move, but those nerves were damaged by the fragments of your bone. The nerves were damaged so much, that you lost most of your motor controls."
Seeing her face react to the news, Dr. Shannon added, "But you are lucky, there wasn't severe damage to your spinal cord – you aren't paralyzed."
"What's that mean? I mean for me?" Tears began to well up in her eyes at the thought. She couldn't imagine a life without being with the dinosaurs or climbing trees. For her, the end of her ability to move, meant no OTG, which had become her home, not Terra Nova.
"We'll talk about treatment plans when your mother arrives." Elisabeth stated looking into the desperate young eyes. "I would like to discuss your accident."
"My accident?"
"Yes. Do you remember how you were injured?"
Natalie knitted her eyebrows together as she attempted to recall the event, but she just got nothing. "No."
It wasn't uncommon and with a severe brain injury, she wasn't surprised. "Can you recall how you got to Terra Nova? Or anything prior to that?"
Natalie was going to shake her head when she found herself unable to do so, "No...but I remeber being with Lucas."
"That's your last memory?" Elisabeth probed, gently. She knew it would be difficult to figure out the extent of her amnesia unless they spoke with this Lucas. Since it was another person and she'd been OTG, Elisabeth assumed she had lost all memory of her being OTG.
"Yea, we were at our cave, he was going to the falls." Natalie was so caught up in recalling the events she forgot to lie. "He told me to stay behind, he didn't normally do that." She paused, concentrating so hard her head ached. "I left, after he did. I wanted to prove something, but I don't remember. I-I don't remember anything else."
"It's alright. You did good." Elisabeth reassured her. "Your mom should be here soon, one of my nurses called her – I'll let her in when she arrives, I'm sure she'll be happy to see you awake." Elisabeth now had a puzzle to solve, who was Lucas? What was he doing with her OTG?
Natalie snorted in response, she doubted her mom would be there, she had the colony to worry about. She may be second-in-command, but she worked just as hard as Taylor – and for both of them, the colony always came first.
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Wash had been briefed by a nurse on Natalie's condition when she arrived. The nurse then directed her to the room, not that Wash needed any instructions as she had entered that room several days throughout her coma.
"Mom?" Shock was on Natalie's face when she saw her mother enter the room, a stoical look marring her face.
Wash stood in the doorway as she spoke, "Natalie, you're awake." The relief was evident in her voice, but Natalie didn't notice it.
"Yea, why are you here?" Natalie didn't expect her mother want to see her, she knew she was so disappointed in her.
Wash knew immediately the hidden question, why do you care? "Just because I don't approve of your choices doesn't mean I will stop being your mother. You will always be my daughter, and I will always care about you, no matter what you do."
"But I betrayed the colony...the colony always comes first." She was so confused, yet so certain about her statements.
Wash shook her head, her daughter still thought that, "You've always come first. I came here so you could have a future, so you could live and be healthy, and not-"
"But I didn't come! I waited–for years. I was all alone. You abandoned me."
"That never happened." Alicia's tone was sharp, determined to correct her daughter. "You got sick. Hope Plaza wouldn't let you through unless you had a clean bill of health and you didn't. I had no control over that, but I never stopped sending for you."
"Maybe you did." Hope that she finally accepted the truth blossomed inside Wash, but it ended with a firm statement. "But I don't care. When I finally got here, I wanted us to be a family, the four of us. Lucas, Taylor, me and you, but you lied to me. Taylor lied to me. You told me he went missing." Her last words were barely above a whisper. "You guys lied to me."
"You were eight, you were too young to understand what had happened that day."
"But what about later? When I was older?"
"You left when you were barely eleven. You still wouldn't of understood." Wash remembered that day like it was yesterday. She was so caught up in the Sixers leaving, she didn't notice her daughter had disappeared till she got home and found the place empty.
"What about now? Explain it to me." Wash didn't immediately answer and Natalie grew impatient. "Please."
"You're thirteen." It was a simple statement, but it nearly made Natalie snap. "Even if I were to explain, you wouldn't understand what happened. You chose to believe what you want, and what you want if for Lucas to be the boy you once knew. But Nat, he's not that person anymore. Somalia changed him, he hates Taylor for what happened and you can't change that. You need to stop searching for the good in him and accept that facts."
"So give up on him? Leave him out there to die? Act like he's the villain from a movie? He's not. He is good. You have to believe in him."
Wash loved the innocence her daughter had and the belief there's good in everyone. But sometimes, it made it impossible for her to see the truth, "Natalie, I believe in the facts. I'm not saying he's a villain, I'm saying-" She cut herself off with a sigh.
"What? What are you saying?"
"He may have good in him, but Nat, that doesn't mean he won't do bad things. He has plans, plans we can't allow to happen."
Natalie knew what plans she was referring to, or at least she thought she did, "You mean making the portal go both ways? How's that bad?"
"He'll destroy this world. All the animals you love, they'll be killed." Wash knew the last part would destroy Natalie – she knew how much she loved the wildlife – but she had to get her to understand.
Her eyes welled up with tears and one streaked down her face, "No. No. No. He-He wouldn't." Tears began to stream down her face uncontrollably. Wash reached out and placed a confronting hand on her daughter's wrist. "No-he, why? Why would he?" Her voice was slightly disoriented by her soft sobs.
Alicia brushed a strand of her daughter's black hair out of her face, "I'm sorry." Was all she could offer. It was better than saying he was doing it for revenge or money.
Wash continued to comfort her daughter as the news settled in and her world shifted.
It was one step, they had many to go, but a step forward was better than one back.