Learn to Have Been

June 2014

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He was found on I-27, walking in faded green scrubs pants and a New York Knicks t-shirt, no hat, his nose and cheeks sunburned, his hair shaved so close that his scalp had already begun to peel.

Jake Campbell was a volunteer firefighter with Suffolk County who took one look at this skeletonized John Doe and drove him in to the hospital himself, not sure the confused man could wait for an ambulance. Interstate 27 was sometimes called the Sunrise Highway, and it was clear to Jake that this guy had seen too many sunrises out here and needed immediate treatment.

But it was a long ride.

Campbell didn't like the look of the man in his passenger seat, didn't care for the way his eyes slid away from a thing like he couldn't hang on to it. Campbell asked careful and slow questions, told him as many times as he required that they were driving in to a hospital, and he even put a hand on the man's shoulder when he violently flinched as a crazy vacationer flew past them in a black Mercedes.

Didn't seem to help. It wasn't right, whatever happened to this man, wasn't right at all.

Campbell got on his radio when he was closer to town, put the word out about the man in his truck, had dispatch call the chief. The guy rubbed at the top of his head and made a strange noise, like bewilderment, and then he turned to Campbell and cleared his throat.

"Where am I?"

"East Patchogue," Campbell said easily. "I'm Jake. You know who you are?"

"I'm supposed to get married," the man said, but his words fell off at the end and Campbell couldn't be sure. They were the first words in any kind of sentence structure, and so he figured the guy was bound to be jumbled still.

At the hospital, the man still hadn't produced a name, though he tried; Campbell could see the trying in him, and he felt pity for the guy. He'd been formidable once, most likely; he had a tall frame and wide shoulders, lines around his eyes and the corners of his mouth that meant he'd smiled a lot. But he was too thin and there were scars around his neck, like someone had taken rope and twisted, and his voice was a wreck when it came.

Campbell didn't want to just drop him off and leave him, but he'd been on his way to work, so he hung out in the hallway until the chief came. Brady patted him on the shoulder and said he'd take it from there.

It took Campbell a while before he got the sight of that man out of his mind's eye, like the walking dead.

X

Chief Brady was the one to identify him. It was his first John Doe, but he'd never expected to come face-to-face with the missing and kidnapped Richard Castle, though he'd been thinking about the man quite a lot since the news had broken nearly three weeks ago.

So when Brady had pushed aside the curtain in the Emergency Department, he nearly had a heart attack. The man on the gurney gave him a lopsided look, as if something registered, and Brady hustled inside, yanked the curtain closed around them.

"Rick."

The man's mouth opened and then closed again, but he gave a slow nod. It wasn't a good confirmation, had no real authority behind it, but Richard Castle cleared his throat and said, "That's me."

If there was surprise in his voice, Brady pretended to ignore it.

The missing Richard Castle, right here in the East Patchogue, New York, 11772; it wasn't even a real township, just a hamlet with a census-designation. What was he doing here?

Regardless, Brady would need a couple of guys up here, stand guard. Who knew what had happened to Rick Castle? He was cooperative but he didn't have answers, and Brady knew it was over his head, out of his league. Just as they'd proven it to him nearly two years ago when a body had dropped into Richard Castle's pool.

"Well, Mr Castle, let me ring up your people, get a deputy up here outside your door. How's the neck?" Brady made a motion at his own throat, and Richard Castle brought a hand up to his neck, surprised.

"I don't - don't know. Is it bad?"

Brady blinked. "No. Not bad. See what the doc says."

He gave a nod of good-bye and moved back through the curtain, his mouth dry.

He called Detective Beckett first, straight off, and she answered at the 12th precinct in Manhattan with a kind of quiver to her voice that made Brady feel both sick and exultant at the same time.

"Detective Beckett this is Chief Brady-"

"You have news?" she rushed in. He'd talked to her once after the accident, called her up on his own because the idea that Richard Castle had been killed in a fiery accident just seemed impossible. That'd been when he'd heard about the kidnapping, and he'd promised her whatever help she needed from him, both of them expecting that day would never come.

So of course Brady found his own voice shaking when he told her the news. "It's news alright. He's shown up here, side of the road; he's okay but dehydrated and possibly had a previous brain injury."

"Shown up-"

"Richard Castle. He's alive. He's here. East Patchogue State Hospital, ma'am, and-"

He didn't know how much of that she heard, because she was at the hospital in only forty-nine minutes, even though Chief Brady knew for sure that it took at least an hour and a half if you were lucky and there wasn't any construction - and with the harsh winter they'd had, there was always construction.

"He's here?" she said.

Brady was still adjusting to the fact that she was here; she looked breathless and harried but somehow beautiful, which maybe he shouldn't be seeing at all. So Brady nodded and led her towards the doctors' break room on the neurology floor, wanting to fill her in before the big reveal. Richard Castle had been moved while she'd been in transit, and at least now there were two officers and a door for privacy.

Beckett didn't sit, and Brady went back out and rounded up the doctor and brought him back to the detective, made the introductions.

She took it like a stoic, eyes flat as steel as she listened to every word the attending said, and then she went into Castle's room alone and the door closed after her and that was it.

Chief Brady never saw their reunion, didn't know if Rick Castle knew her, but he must have. He must have because Detective Beckett had him transferred to Columbia University Neurology Center the very next day and she never left his side. After that, Brady didn't know what happened to them, but he heard the case was still open, that they were still hunting the kidnapper.

X

Alexis crossed her arms over her chest just to keep her hands still, keep her heart in the cage of her ribs where it belonged. Every breath was choked by the furious pounding of her pulse because she couldn't quite believe it.

She was the one who met them in the ambulance bay at Columbia, and she was the one who saw him first when those doors opened. Her father was so thin; he'd lost so much weight that his cheekbones made his face look wrong, his nose was too prominent and his jaw jutted out. His eyes were the same, that same squint to them when he looked at her, and she clasped her hands together, the smile bubbling up to her lips.

Kate got out of the rear of the bus before the gurney, and the moment Alexis saw her father fully, the moment he was let down to the pavement, he smiled back at her.

She cried when he said her name, flew into his outstretched arms, the three of them tangled at the gurney because Kate, of course, wouldn't let go of him either. How could she? How could either of them ever? Alexis had to step back when the attendants rolled him through the bay and up the ramp, into the receiving lobby of the ambulance bay, but she didn't go far. She was right there.

"Hey, pumpkin," he said, kept saying, over and over. "Hey, it's okay. It's okay now."

She walked with the gurney as the attendants rolled him along, holding his hand even as Kate walked on his other side. Their eyes kept meeting over his words, the way he repeated himself as if he didn't realize it, but whatever knowledge they had, they couldn't speak aloud.

She didn't want to say. Her father knew her, and he knew Kate, and that was enough.

Gram was in the room when they wheeled him in, and she broke out into messy tears when Castle curled his hand around her wrist. Alexis turned her head away, her lungs stretched tight and she saw Kate watching him ravenously, her eyes cataloging every detail, absorbing it all.

That was when Alexis figured out that Kate had arranged it this way on purpose, for a reason, and not just to protect her and her grandmother. That Kate was protecting him.

Allowing people into his world one at a time, noting his reactions and his memory, studying and analyzing.

There was more to this reunion than Alexis knew; something had happened to him and Kate was afraid.

"Dad," she choked out, unable to help it.

Her father untangled from Gram and held his arms out to her; she came into his side and fell over him, snuggling into his neck because he smelled like antiseptic and himself too, both things, and she had been lost and adrift in the idea of never having him again. Even if there were things wrong, even if it wasn't all right, it was, it was. It was okay, like he'd said. It was okay.

His arm came up around her, hooking and landing her there, and the fuzzy short hair at his scalp itched her cheek and she was crying now; she hadn't meant to, but she was crying.

"It's okay," he rasped at her ear. His voice was so cracked; it sounded like someone else, but the sounds were his, the arm was his, the smell was his. "It's okay. Whatever happened, I don't remember a thing, Alexis, so don't cry. It happened and it's done and we're going forward. Don't cry, pumpkin."

She nodded against him, she was still crying. "The car was on fire," she said. Of all the stupid things-

"I heard." He didn't say anything more, and Alexis waited, thinking that there should be more - there was always more with her father - but he just petted her hair down with his hand heavy at her head. After a moment, he seemed to sense that more was required because he said, "I hope Pi has been - a support to you."

Alexis laughed, heard Kate and Gram with their startled laughter as well, and Alexis pulled back, swiping at the tears with the heels of her hands. "Da-ad."

But he wasn't looking at her like he'd made a joke. He was looking at her like he'd meant it.

Alexis's breath caught. "Dad. I broke up with Pi. Months ago. I - you knew that. I moved back in with you and Kate."

"Oh, good," her father said in a rush. Relief spilled over his face, earnest and eager. "I'm so glad. I really don't think he's right for you, Alexis. I really - really am so glad. He's nice enough, and I tried. Those bees. I tried, Alexis. I could talk about bees, I guess, for you."

She was hurt somehow; it hurt that he was saying this. Not about Pi, but how her father wasn't - it wasn't right. "Since you like him so much, should I bring him in to visit?" she muttered. She hadn't meant to sound nasty, but it came out like that. The banality of her dad's conversation was throwing her; his sincerity.

But he only gave her a bare grimace. He thought she meant it; he didn't hear the sarcasm in her voice. "The bongo drums have to stay outside the door. If he comes. I have this persistent headache."

Kate sucked in a breath and Alexis glanced over at her, realized that Kate hadn't been sure it was still there - those memories.

"Castle?"

He didn't respond at first, a blip of nothing that made Alexis's heart squeeze, but then he turned a smile to Kate, openly sweet, a smile Alexis had never seen on his face before. Not that he wasn't sweet. Her father was generous and compassionate but he wasn't... this.

"Yeah, I remember the drums. And waking in that hospital to you hovering right there. You saved my life," he murmured. His fingers snagged Kate's and hung on, but Alexis had to look away.

She wasn't sure she was allowed to see that, the naked adoration on his face, the way he seemed to be subsumed in Kate.

"I'm sorry I don't remember what happened to me. The accident," he said then. "I'm so sorry. It's just - there's nothing."

"Oh, darling, no need to apologize," Martha said grandly, pushing past Alexis to hug him again. "You're here. That's all we want. You're back where you belong."

But Alexis wasn't sure if all of him was back.

He smiled up at them like a little boy, a guileless, clueless little boy, and Alexis didn't know what they were supposed to do now.

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