Author's notes:

Thank you to the great writer Sue Shay for her beta-reading, insight, and encouragement on this and other projects! Want to read a Lisbon-and-Jane romance accented with warm humor in each chapter? Then check out Sue's current project, "Ready or Not."

I do not own the TV show The Mentalist and get no compensation from it. This story is written purely for entertainment purposes only.

Notes on the chapter title follow the end of the chapter. Readers who have seen 4x10, "Fugue in Red," will recognize the role-reversal of the first hospital scene from that episode.

Chapter 5: Night And Day

"Are you my husband?"

Jane leaped up from the bed as if someone had electrified it. Lisbon stared at him with a perplexed look.

"What?" he at last sputtered.

"I asked if you were my husband," Lisbon restated.

For a moment all he could do was hum and haw.

"You don't recognize me, do you?" he asked.

"I'm sorry, the doctors tell me I've been through a lot recently," Lisbon said with a smile. "But I mean no offense. You seem like a fine gentleman, a quite good-looking one I might add, and when you came in you sat directly on the bed next to me instead of in the chair over there. So I assumed with the ring on your finger that we were married."

"No, we…are…not…married."

Jane saw Lisbon's eyes cloud over as conflict raged within her. Her smile faded to a frown.

"But we're in a relationship. And you're married to someone else," she said. Disapproval tinged her voice.

"I'm…not…currently…married."

"But your ring."

"I've been widowed almost ten years. I wear the ring in memory of my wife."

The frown flipped over to a smile again.

"So we're in a relationship."

"Not the kind you appear to be thinking right now."

"But we're on our way to one. I haven't missed out on anything," Lisbon said. Her voice rose in expectation as her head nodded in encouragement.

"Ahhhhhm" was all Jane could produce from his mouth. Of all people, why can't I string any words together!

"Tell me your name," she said. Lisbon tugged on Jane's suit jacket.

"Are you playing a trick on me?" Jane asked. If Lisbon wanted revenge on him, she certainly was doing a good job of making him squirm.

"I wish I was." She shook her head in sorrow.

Jane looked at her as if one of the two of them had just dropped into an alien world. Which one of them he was unsure of.

"I should have talked more with your doctor before I came in here," he said as he looked around to the door.

"No, please stay and talk to me. I really enjoy your company. Tell me your name."

Lisbon patted the side of the bed where Jane had been sitting, and her warm smile drew him back like a magnet. As soon as he sat on the bed again, she leaned towards him. Despite, or maybe because of, the strangeness of the situation, Jane felt giddy and he reciprocated her smile.

"I'm Patrick Jane. I work for you as a consultant at the California Bureau of Investigation."

"So you and I catch bad guys? That sounds like fun!"

"Fun? It's a lot of hard work. Often it's dangerous," he replied.

"But I suspect us working together makes it worthwhile. I'll bet we're a regular dynamic duo!"

Jane had no idea whatsoever how to answer that. Lisbon was bringing up the kind of feelings that Jane had worked very hard over the years to suppress. His primary business was hunting down Red John, and his secondary business was helping Teresa Lisbon bring other law breakers to justice. The exact nature of his feelings for her was a topic that he had shunted off to the outermost corners of his mind, partly out of concern for Lisbon herself, partly out of respect for Angela, and partly out of his own concern for what those feelings might lead to.

"I'm sorry. I really should have talked more with your doctor before coming in to see you. She also said that I needed to follow up with her after I spoke with you."

As Jane started to rise, Lisbon grasped his arm to stop him.

"Wait. I did see something tonight."

Jane sat back down but Lisbon left her hand wrapped around his elbow.

"You did?"

"Yes. The first thing I remember when I was in the forest."

"Oh?"

"What I saw was you, your eyes to be exact."

"Oh," Jane said. Did he feel like his face was blushing? Please let my self-control return!

"And then when I was on that cart…"

"You mean the gurney?"

"Yes. When those people were moving me through the forest I felt so alone, but you came to me again."

"I was worried about you."

Lisbon moved her hand to rub the top of his shoulder.

"After that you rode with me to the hospital."

"You remember that?"

"I do. You held my hand."

"You know me, Lisbon. Any excuse to hold a pretty girl's hand."

Oh no! Where had that come from? And why couldn't his brain keep control of what came out of his mouth?

Lisbon grinned.

"Now I'm feeling a lot better!"

"Good," was all Jane could mumble with any reasonable sense of restraint.

"But you know what, Mr. Jane?"

"Mr. Jane" sounded so odd, so awkward to his ears that he didn't dwell on his own insecurities anymore. In its own weird way it got him to relax.

"What?"

"When we got here to the hospital, when they were going to take me away from you, I panicked."

"You did seem upset."

"But I calmed down when you promised you would wait for me. Then you squeezed my finger three times. Something about that reassured me. I knew I didn't need to worry anymore."

"I wasn't going to be anywhere else other than here for you, Lisbon."

"I may not remember you from before, but I can tell you are a good friend. It makes me feel better about whoever I really am that someone like you is in my life. You're a good man, Patrick Jane."

Jane laughed.

"Don't go drawing that conclusion. If you could remember back twelve hours ago, or a day ago, or a month ago, you'd have a different opinion."

"People who are close to each other always have their ups and downs. But somehow I just know about you, Mr. Jane."

She was starting from scratch. She knew no past, and her present flashed by in a frightening blur of people, machines, and rooms. The void in her mind terrified her; there was nothing she could latch onto save for one person, the first thing she remembered, the moonlight man.

Since entering the hospital, she had learned a few things. One of the doctors called her Teresa Lisbon. That was a nice name, but that was all she had to hang on to about herself. She made sure to remember that, it would be her starting point.

Once when she was left alone in an examining room, she glanced around only to be startled by someone staring at her. It took a moment to realize that she was looking at herself in a mirror. Intrigued, she walked over to it to get a closer look.

What she saw seemed…nice. She appeared to be in good physical health, something confirmed by a doctor in the emergency room. As for her age, she was neither a teenager nor a senior citizen. While her height appeared shorter than average, she was still in the typical range. All in all she saw a vital woman, someone who lived an active life.

After all the action that had gone on around her for the last few hours, now she sat alone in a hospital room on a bed. The loneliness scared her. It kept her from doing anything other than rocking back and forth, holding her crucifix, yearning for something to happen. Waiting for someone. Waiting for the moonlight man to come back to her. She had been waiting hours for him but didn't want to give up hope.

Then she looked up.

The moonlight man was in the room with her now. Him. The man whose eyes she had first seen in the forest. The kind man. The man who called her Teresa and held her hand and squeezed her finger three times.

Now she knew his name. Patrick Jane. She made sure to focus on the name so she would remember it too. His smile, his eyes, his care for her all imprinted on her heart.

Since her first memory of him in the moonlight, really her first memory at all, she had seen many other people. There were doctors, nurses, technicians, police, but the only person who really mattered was Patrick Jane. He had promised he would come back to her and he did!

Something cloudy in her mind, resting just beyond what her thoughts could grasp, drew her to him. When she called him a good man he said she would think differently if her memory went back further. He said that with such warmth that he made her believe two things. One was that he must have indeed done things that upset her. The other was that no matter what he had done to upset her, they shared a special bond. What was that bond? She could tell by the way he reacted to her that something between them lurked beneath the surface, something present yet unsaid. She sensed what it was, and it made her tingle with anticipation.

That was the only good thing she could cling to right now.

To be continued.

Author's notes:

Thank you for reading, following, and reviewing the story!

Over the years many artists have performed the classic "Night and Day" since Cole Porter wrote it in 1932. Those artists have included Ella Fitzgerald, Fred Astaire, and Frank Sinatra. My favorite version however comes from the British duo "Everything But the Girl" who recorded the song in 1983. In the song, the narrator expresses the desire to be with his or her beloved "day and night."