Author's Note: Sorry for the delay. Been dealing with a minor case of writer's block and work being absolutely insane for the last couple of months. I'm hoping that when it slows down in a few weeks that I'll be able to update more frequently.

The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend -Henry David Thoreau

August 30, 2014

Seth tapped his foot impatiently, hastily turning pages of the magazine. Not that he was actually reading it, he was just using it to distract himself for the last hour. He hated waiting rooms. Absolutely abhorred them. It would have been a lot better if he was allowed to go into the room with Dean. Not only could he keep the eccentric man calm but it would be a hell of a lot better for his own nerves if he could be there to see firsthand how things were progressing.

He wasn't expecting Dean to pass these tests.

There was no way it was remotely possible.

It was only day twelve since he'd suffered the severe concussion. That wasn't nearly enough time for a high grade concussion to heal. Given what he saw so far, recovery looked to be a long way off. The dirty blonde was still prone to the crippling headaches and had the sensitivity to light and noise at times. Plus he was still exhibiting those odd mood swings that made it tense and uncomfortable to be around him when they struck.

His memory hadn't shown any signs of returning yet either.

So no, he wasn't naïve enough to let himself believe that Dean would burst out of the testing room, announcing loudly that he had a clean bill of health. Hell he really didn't think that this appointment was anything but a formality. Nothing more than a basic necessity of the protocol. Pretty much a waste of their time. They'd walk out of here with another appointment for an evaluation in a couple of weeks.

But deep down, he was still concerned.

What Seth was worried about was whether or not there was even the slightest bit of improvement. To him, he didn't see any signs that the older man was getting any better. Things were exactly the same as they had been since Ambrose was released from the hospital. That was troublesome. It could be an indicator that his stupid decision to curb stomp Dean's head into a pile of cinderblocks had done irreversible damage.

He pulled his attention away from the magazine and cast a quick glance around the room again. For a waiting room, it wasn't too bad and didn't have that usual sterile hospital feel. They had a coffee machine, vending machine and tons of magazines to keep you occupied. The chairs weren't the usual hard plastic ones but nicely padded and had some room to them. Guess they had to be since most people who came to the Neurologist with someone would be waiting for a while for them to conduct the litany of tests.

The pages started getting turned quicker. It was killing him to be relegated to nothing more than sitting there, left completely in the dark about how things were going. He could ask the lady behind the desk again if there was any news. But the last time he had done that, she made it clear to him that he would know as soon as the doctor was finished and that her patience with him was wearing thin. So he didn't want to press his luck by asking again and getting kicked out of the waiting room.

He really needed to do something to get his mind off this. Standing and dropping his magazine into the unoccupied chair beside him, he stretched and headed over to the coffee machine. Selecting what he wanted, he wasn't hopeful that it would be any good. His first sip confirmed that hunch. The liquid in his cup that was trying to pass itself off as coffee was more like a bitter sludge that would probably melt his insides.

"Mr. Rollins?"

The voice startled him and he jostled the cup, sloshing some of the nasty liquid out of the cup and onto his shirt. He grimaced but ignored the sticky stain, crossing over to the receptionist. "You called? Is the testing done?"

"It is." She looked relieved that she would no longer have to deal with him. "You can join Dr. Stevens and Mr. Ambrose in room two."

"Thank you!" The words were sincere as the door next to the desk buzzed to allow him through, tossing his half full cup of nasty coffee in the garbage bin in the hallway.

His heart hammered in his chest, palms sweaty as he made the short journey down the hall to the room the receptionist indicated. When he entered, Dr. Stevens and Dean were already seated at the long table. Seth took a seat next to his former brother and gave the dirty blonde a quick once over. It didn't surprise him that Dean was casually leaning in his chair, feet thrown up on the table and arms crossed over his chest, fingers drumming absently against his biceps. But despite the all too familiar scene, he was paler than normal and looked tired despite the fact that he'd been getting more rest than he was used to.

"Thank you for joining us Mr. Rollins." The Neurologist was on the younger side, probably a few years older than them, not yet beaten down by the gravity of what he did for a living. "Usually, we don't divulge patient information to anyone but the patient and their family. However in this case, Mr. Ambrose insisted that you're his brother and that you needed to hear what's going on with his health."

"Because he wouldn't believe me if he didn't hear it for himself." Dean bit out tersely, rolling his eyes. "It's a really annoying habit of his."

One of those sharp, twisting pangs of guilt stabbed into him again but he pushed it aside, needing to focus on what the doctor had to say. "Well thank you for bending the rules in this case. How did things go?"

"Honestly, given the circumstances, we were quite surprised at how well this round of testing went. There has been significant improvement since the initial results of testing that the hospital performed a couple of days after the injury occurred."

He blinked, "Are you saying that he's recovered?"

"No, far from it but he's further ahead than we expected him to be at this stage in the recovery process." Dr. Stevens consulted the file in front of him. "Initially the concussion rated between a second and third grade. I feel comfortable in downgrading that prognosis to a solid grade two."

That really didn't sound like much of an improvement in Seth's opinion. "That's a big difference?"

"It is." The doctor informed them earnestly. "In cases such as these where the patient suffered a severe frontal and rear lobe trauma, we don't usually see any moderate improvement until we've reached the thirty day mark or longer. But in this case, we are seeing marked improvement a lot sooner than we expected."

"Told ya!" Dean had a victorious smirk. "I'm indestructible. I'll be back in the ring before you know it."

The doctor shook his head slightly, obviously used to dealing with difficult patients who inferred what they wanted to. "Now, as I already explained to Dean, this is by no means me clearing Mr. Ambrose to resume heavy physical activity. He's still to follow the guidelines of the protocol and to return at the thirty day mark to gauge his progress. But these results are very encouraging that we'll see a successful recovery."

It sounded good, amazing even. But he still had concerns and felt the need to voice them aloud because he knew that Dean wouldn't mention them. "How come he's still getting the headaches, sensitivity and has memory loss if he's making strides in recovering?"

"Concussions are hard to predict but the headaches and sensitivity are very common conditions that slowly lessen over time. Based on the results of these tests that we conducted today, I have no reason not to expect that you'll see them start to ease soon."

Dean huffed, "Great, we done? I really need to use the bathroom."

"By all means," Dr. Stevens gestured toward to the door. "It's the third door on the left in the hall."

The dirty blonde muttered something about the doc being grilled under his breath but got up and headed out of the room with a pointed look at the two men.

Seth leaned forward, feeling like the doctor had dismissed his patient for a reason and that the self-professed lunatic knew that. He needed to get to the bottom of this as soon as he possibly could. "Ok, give it to me straight. What aren't you telling me doc?"

"You asked about his memory loss." The doctor consulted his file again. "That is a perplexing detail."

"Perplexing?"

"Usually, in these type of cases, concussion related amnesia tends to dissipate in a few days to a week unless there's a further issue. Given what these test results show us, his mental facilities are not impaired in any shape. He's not exhibiting signs of disorientation or confusion. There are no indicators that his brain function has slowed or that his neurons aren't responding properly."

"What does that mean?" All that technical medical jargon was doing was giving him a headache and a gnawing pit of dread in his stomach." Are you saying that that there's something else wrong with him?"

The doctor sighed, "Medically, there is no reason that his memory shouldn't have improved, if not returned completely, by this stage of his recovery."

Seth digested that, confused and unsettled. "Then why doesn't he remember anything from the last several months?"

"Traumatic incidents can cause the individual that experienced them to repress certain details or completely forgot entire blocks of time. It's a highly common defense mechanism employed when something's happened that the person can not deal with. Only when the person is mentally, emotionally and physically ready to confront the truth does the wall they built around the memory begin to crumble."

He took a deep breath, slightly relieved but also not entirely convinced that what he was being told was true. "Dean's had a pretty rough life. Been through some horrible things and he's never hidden from them before. Always confronted his past head on. So why would he avoid remembering it now?"

"No one, not even Mr. Ambrose himself, knows why he's repressing the events of the last few months."

"What? That doesn't make any sense." Seth licked his dry lips. "How could he not know?"

The doctor gave him a long, hard look. "I'm not a psychologist or Psychiatrist Mr. Rollins. I can only tell you what I've witnessed in the few cases I've come across that dealt with this. But from what I've seen, the person repressing the memories isn't actually aware that they're doing it. Some people choose to try to fill it in with slightly altered, more pleasant versions of what they think happened while others, such as we're seeing with Dean, just block it out completely until they're ready to accept what happened."

It made a hell of a lot of sense. Dean had finally had some stability in his otherwise crazy life. He had people he could depend on, that he cared about and trusted implicitly before Seth's betrayal destroyed that. Of course he'd prefer to recall those times and forgot the months of torment and destruction that followed. Really couldn't blame him for not wanting to remember that.

Hell, Seth wished he could forget it ever happened himself.

"I'm confident that once Mr. Ambrose feels secure enough to deal with the issues, his memory will return."

"You don't have an idea of when that will be?"

"As I said, only Dean will know when he's ready to deal with those memories." Dr. Stevens closed the file. "All things considered, your friend is progressing better than we could have expected and I'm encouraged that he'll continue to improve. At this point, unless something drastic happened to cause a set-back, I feel that there's no reason that he won't be able to resume his life as it was before the injury."

Seth ran his hands through his hair. It was great news. Much better than he had been expecting. He had been afraid to even hope that they'd get a good prognosis at this point in time. So why didn't he feel as relieved as he should?

The door to the room opened and Dean came back in, smirk on his face and a bottle of water in his hand. "So I killed as much time as I could, you manage to keep my brother from convincing himself that I'm not getting better?"

"I think I managed to alleviate the fears he expressed."

"Yeah, you did help me a lot." He agreed quickly, not wanting the dirty blonde to pick up on anything that he was feeling. "Thank you again. Do we need to set his next appointment up now?"

"That's already been taken care of." Ambrose piped up, looking like a kid in a candy store for some reason about that fact.

"You actually made a doctor's appointment?" The shock was easy to hear. "This isn't like the time you said you paid that parking ticket but you really just threw it away, is it?"

"No, now can we get the hell out of here?" Dean's tone bordered on a whine. "I'm starting to get itchy."

That brought a genuine grin to Seth's lips. It was nice to see that some thing's never changed. Whenever the former US champion was someplace he didn't want to be, he claimed that he got itchy. If you ignored him, well, things could get ugly. There was a mall in Laredo Texas that they were banned from ever returning to that would testify to that.

Dr. Steven's stood. "I'll see you next time."

"Yeah, great, now can we go?" The dirty blonde's hand splayed over his collarbone and began tapping frantically. Blue eyes flicked around the room. "Like right now. I need fresh air."

"We're going man." Seth stood and followed behind the other man out of the conference room and down the hallway.

As they were leaving, Dean threw a cheeky wink toward the receptionist who giggled like a giddy school girl instead of the evil, sarcastic witch that she had been to Seth. An all too familiar smug smirk was painted on the face of the dirty blonde. Those damn dimples that always signaled trouble prominently displayed and blue eyes twinkled mischievously.

He skidded to a halt once they were in the parking lot, rounded on the other man and threw a disbelieving look at his former brother. "You better not have done what I think you did."

"What?" There was all kinds of feigned innocence in that query and subsequent denial. "I didn't do anything."

"What you're telling me is that while you were supposedly killing time so the doctor could answer my questions, you didn't hit on the receptionist."

Dean wiggled slightly, gaze lowering to the blacktop beneath his feet. "Well, I mean, I had to do something cause it was taking so long."

"And reading a magazine never crossed your mind?"

"If you remember," The annoyance was plain in his voice, "I'm not currently allowed to read because the damn paper says it's too much stimulation. It never said I couldn't hit on chicks or get their phone numbers."

Seth face palmed, hating the fact that the self-professed lunatic had found a loophole to exploit in the protocol. It made him wonder how many more he'd found and when he'd try to put them to use. "Are you actually going to call her?"

"Nope." The head of tousled blonde curls shook. "She's not my type. It was just something to do to keep myself occupied."

"Oh, that's just perfect." He complained. "You do know she's going to be even more hostile next time we're here because of that, right?"

"Why?"

"Because you lead her on…"

Blue eyes rolled, "I did nothing of the sort. I was just being my usual charming self. Not my fault that she read more into it and handed over her number without me even having to ask for it. What was I supposed to do, be an asshole and tell her that I didn't want it? Crush her self-esteem?"

"Well you could always stop flirting and getting numbers from women that you have no intention of actually dating. I know you enjoy it but it always ends up backfiring in the long run." Seth tried to reason with the older man. "I really don't want a replay of what happened with that bartender when we were down in FCW."

There was a chuckle as the eccentric man slipped into the passenger seat, "Damn that chick was crazy. But, hey, no big deal. It all worked itself out in the end."

Seth just sighed as he slid behind the wheel and clicked his seatbelt into place. One of the things that he learned over the years it was that it was better to just let the topic drop. If he kept admonishing and pushing the other man about it, it would just motivate Dean to do something crazier, like actually call this chick. So he deftly changed the subject to a more neutral one. "I'm hungry. Do you want to swing by a drive through and get some food or wait until we get home and I'll cook something?"

Dean just gave him a look like he was stupid, "Do I really need to answer that?"

"No, you don't." A defeated groan passed his lips, " I assume I can't talk you into stopping someplace that won't entirely clog our arteries either."

"You'd assume correctly." There was a teasing smirk that followed. "I appreciate you playing chef and all but my body's not used to all that healthy shit you cook. It needs preservatives, grease and mystery meat thrown in every now and then to function properly. Since it's been a while since I've last had anything that fits that criteria, I need a double cheeseburger and the largest order of fries that we can get."

That actually sounded appealing to Seth but he'd never let the dirty blonde know that or else he'd try to take advantage of it. "I'll agree to it this time since we got good news but it's not going to become a routine."

"Whatever you say little bro."