Chapter 5

Billy found himself in the passenger seat of a small blue car being driven by Tommy. He felt an unexplainable fear of vehicles, wishing he could remember where the fear came from but kept it to himself as he let the man drive him. He looked out the passenger window, an urge to be flying alongside them making him smile.

Looking past where he wanted to be flying, he took in the small town they drove through.

"Do you recognize anything out there?" Tommy asked, noticing the teen looking out the window.

"No," Billy admitted. "Where are we?"

"Lynnville, Indiana," Tommy informed. "I work in a small clinic here in town, called Pivot Clinic."

Billy slowly shook his head, the names meaning nothing to him. "Sorry, nothing."

"Well, after we get you checked out, we're gonna head over to the station and see if anyone has listed you as missing," Tommy said. "Who knows how long you were out in the woods behind the house."

Billy let out a large yawn, the morning rushing by him as the heaviness of sleep tried to catch him.

"Hey, no sleeping," Tommy warned, reaching over to grab hold of Billy's knee to give it a shake. "You've gotta stay awake for this, Billy."

"Yes sir," Billy tried, looking up as he blinked a few times. He sat up in the chair and rubbed his eyes.

"What's the last thing you remember?" Tommy asked. "Get yourself talking to help keep you awake."

"I woke up in a bush," Billy said, going back to this morning. "I blame the bush."

"What, for the lump?"

"And the bruises," Billy added, looking at the man driving. "It was not dirt on my arms, they were blue and green and hurt."

"Bruises don't heal up that quickly," Tommy pointed out. He paused for a moment before asking, "When did you wake up in a bush?"

"This morning?" Billy offered, unsure. "I remember it taking me a bit to get to my feet, but..." his voice fell away as he realized he couldn't say for certain that it all had happened only this morning.

"I think you were stumbling around in those woods for a while," Tommy admitted with worry in his voice. He slowed the car down and turned on a blinker before turning them across the quiet street into a white and blue building's parking lot. Pulling the car into a parking spot he killed the engine and unbuckled himself. "Come on, let's get you checked over. How's your head?" Tommy asked, stopping to look at the teen.

Billy hit the latch for his seat belt and reached back to where the bump was in his hair, not sure if he was imagining it had gotten smaller or not. "It doesn't hurt as bad now," he admitted.

Tommy gave him one last look before turning away to open the car door.

Billy took his hand away from the back of his head, holding his hand so he could look at it as he wondered how long in the woods he had been. If he had been lost there for multiple days, shouldn't he feel hungrier than he had when they ate breakfast?

He tossed the thought away, rationalizing with how much was missing from his memory he wasn't sure what he could believe from his own mind. He pushed open the car door and got out, shutting the door after himself as he followed the nurse into the front door.

"Morning, Tom," a male voice called out from the front desk only for the blonde haired man to look up at Billy with surprise. "Oh, who's this?"

Billy stepped farther behind Tommy, not wanting to be seen.

"Hey Marc, this is Billy," Tommy said, turning around. "Where'd you go?"

Billy looked up at the man, realizing he would be seen as the man flinched in surprise.

"There you are," Tommy said, the hint of confusion on his face. "Marc's our receptionist for the summer, nurse in training the rest of the year. We're gonna hate it when school starts back up and he'll have to leave us."

"One more year, Tom," Marc reminded with a smile. He turned to look over the counter at the black haired teen and asked, "So what happened to you? Tom run you over with that old car out there?"

"Actually a little more serious than that," Tommy admitted. "My brothers found him in the woods. I wanna get him checked out and then I'm gonna have to leave you to take him to the police."

"Oh!" Marc exclaimed, scrambling out of the chair and grabbing paper to quickly attach to a clipboard. He stepped around the table with a pen in hand and asked, "What do you need of me, Mr. Fulton."

Tommy let out a laugh as he motioned for Billy to follow him down a hallway. "Come on you two," he said.

Billy gave the back of the man's head a look, the last name Fulton ringing half of a bell in the mess that was his memory. He shook his head, instantly regretting it, and followed Tommy with Marc following him.

Tommy led them into a room and pulled out a chair, motioning to Billy to sit down. "Now, because our patient isn't currently bleeding, or in pain," he looked down at Billy and asked, "You're not, are you?"

"No, sir," Billy offered, slowly understanding Tommy was letting Marc take over the examination. He took a deep breath as he realized he was putting his trust into people he didn't know, but he didn't know anyone anymore.

Tommy looked back at Marc and continued, "Then what are you going to do?"

"Start with temperature, height, and weight," Marc said.

"From your point, no, you start with name, age, and any medical history," Tommy said, eyeing the blonde. "You're lucky, he's got amnesia, a broken phone, no wallet, and the remnants of a concussion. My best guess would be his age is about 15 or 16."

Marc scribbled a few things down on his clipboard before looking up at Tommy and asking, "And now we get my data?"

Tommy nodded his head, letting the blonde turn around to grab a thermometer from the table. He looked down at Danny and smiled at him. "Marc's got one more year of medical school before he'll be in proper training."

"Good luck," Billy wished the younger man. The hint of a memory tried to break its way through, forcing him to close his eyes in pain as the back of his head pulsed where the lump was.

"Billy, are you okay?" Tommy's voice asked.

Billy realized his hands were holding his head. He forced them down as the pain subsided again before daring to open his eyes, looking down at his stained jeans. He raised his head up to see both men watching him with worry on their faces. "I think so," Billy tried. "I thought I had a memory for a second, about…" his voice fell away as he tried to recall what triggered the pain.

Tommy placed a hand on Billy's shoulder, stopping him. "Don't push it," Tommy warned. "Your memory will come back. Just give it some time."

"Can I get your temperature now?" Marc asked, holding up a thermometer.

Billy opened his mouth, getting the device stabbed under his tongue. He closed his lips as Marc kept a hand on the device, the two freezing as they waited for it to beep. Billy looked up at the blonde, noticing his blue eyes looking down at the device he was holding.

The device finally let out a beep, letting Billy open his mouth so Marc could pull it out. Turning it so he could read it, he said, "96, that's low, but not worryingly so."

"While you're getting all of that from him, I'll go ahead and get some other things ready," Tommy said, taking a step away from Billy's chair. He looked at the teen and admitted, "Because we don't know how long you were in the woods, I wanna run a blood test."

Billy felt a strange fear against the idea of the man seeing his blood, but he pushed it down and nodded his head. He watched Tommy leave the room before turning back to Marc as the man straightened a measuring stick off of a scale.

-.-.-.-

Billy sipped at the box apple juice he had been given, watching the two men from a stool as they read the results of the blood test. They had handed him the remote for the TV, and he had skimmed through the local channels, but had left it on some game show as he worried about what the two were whispering about. He knew they were trying to use the TV as cover, but he could hear them without any problems. He didn't fully understand what they said though, something about ecto-contamination in his blood. He wasn't sure what that was, but from the way they talked amongst themselves it was bad.

Billy looked down at the hands holding the juice box, thinking he felt fine. Even the bump on the back of his head had dropped to just a small nub. He reached back to check it again, finding almost no pain when he poked at it now. The only problem he could think of was his lack of memories.

The juice box slipped through his hand, startling him enough to reach out with his other hand and grab it before it could fall to the floor. He looked back at his hands, wondering how it could have fallen through his palm.

He dropped the hand and looked back at the TV, watching a bald man with a goatee talking to an orange man with blonde hair before the camera changed to show models holding numbered suitcases.

"They're not answering," Tommy whispered, getting Billy's attention back as he sat a phone back down in its receiver. "You've got friends down there. Their place is just south of here, right?"

"Yeah," Marc said with a nod of his head. "Get onto old Petersburg and follow that down. You can't miss the house, it's got neon outside and everything."

"Really?" Tommy asked, surprise in his voice.

"It's like twenty minutes at most."

"Give me those copies," Tommy said as he pushed himself to his feet. He took the manila folder from the man before asking, "You sure you can hold down the fort? I don't know when I'll be back."

"Worst comes to worst, I've got the hospital on speed dial," Marc said with a laugh. His smiled fell as he wished, "Good luck. I've heard the family's a little…eccentric."

"Their field of study got validated this past year. Can't fully blame them," Tommy said. He turned to Billy, getting the teen to turn his head back to the TV. "Hey Billy, we've gotta go see some people. You up for a bit of a road trip?"

"Uh, sure," Billy said, sucking down the last of the apple juice he had been deliberately only sipping at. He got to his feet and grabbed for the remote, turning off the TV as the man declined a large amount of money. He threw away the empty box and followed Tommy back to the front door. They got to his car before he asked, "Where are we going?"

"We're heading to Amity Park," Tommy offered, unlocking the doors.

Billy pulled open the door as a sharp pain entered the back of his head. Resting his head against the doorframe, he closed his eyes and waited for the pain to subside like it had been doing.

"Hey, Billy, are you okay?" Tommy asked.

Billy opened his eyes and looked through the glass to see Tommy staring up at him with worry. He took a breath and forced back the pain, blinking his eyes as he said, "Sorry. I'm good."

"I'm getting worried about you, kid," Tommy admitted.

Billy let himself in the car, buckling himself into the passenger seat as he closed the door. "Where'd you say we were going?"

"Amity Park," Tommy repeated. "Your blood's got some ecto-contamination and the best doctors of that field live down there."

"Ecto-contamination?" Billy echoed, the long word feeling familiar on his tongue. "What's that?"

Tommy backed them out of the parking spot, turning them to head back out onto the main road. After a moment Tommy asked, "Do you remember what ghosts are?"

"Sorta?" Billy said, the back of his head hurting as he struggled to figure out what his brain was trying to remember. "Somebody I knew was big into them, I think?"

"At the beginning of the year, the whole world found out they were real," Tommy tried to explain. "But with what they did, a few people got what those experts called ecto-contamination. It's ghost's ectoplasm in the bloodstream. Most people only ever got a low level contamination, one that their body was able to fight off with no problem. You've got a high level contamination, I've never even heard of anyone having one as high as you. You don't look like you're having any ill effects, but it's worrying enough I want you to be checked out by them."

Billy looked back at his hand the juice box had fallen through, wondering if that counted as an ill effect. Putting the hand under his thigh, he thought against telling the man and instead looked up at him and asked, "So who are these experts?"

"The Fenton's," Tommy said, shifting so he could pull his cell phone from his pocket. "I'm gonna try calling them again, at least to let them know we're on our way."

"Fenton's?" Billy echoed, the name ringing bells in his head. He closed his eyes, trying to push back the pain and force up why the name felt familiar. In his mind's eye a large neon sign burned itself into him, reading Fenton Works. It was on a house but he couldn't make out the shape of it or anything around it. Oddly enough, he felt like he had seen the sign from almost any angle, even above.

The pain subsided, letting him open his eyes and lean back in the chair as Tommy started speaking like he was talking to an answering machine.

"I'm sorry for bothering ya'll again," Tommy prefaced with. "This is Dr. Fulton from Lynnville. I'm heading down to your place right now with the patent I had called about a bit ago. I was hoping-" He was cut off, a bit of a smile pulled at his lips. "That's quite alright, Dr. Fenton. Did you get a chance to listen to my first message?"

Billy turned to look out the window as they drove through a small town, watching the people walking past shops.

"Oh I'm so sorry," Tommy offered, getting Billy to turn back to see the man have surprise on his face. "Have the police been invol-Actually!" Tommy cut himself off as he threw a glance at Billy with a smile on his face. Looking back at the road he continued, "My patent has dissociative amnesia, he doesn't even remember his name. Don't get your hopes up too high though. Have people still looking but we're on our way down now. We'll be there in less than half an hour." Tommy ended the call, dropping his cell into a cup holder between the front seats.

"What happened?" Billy asked.

"The Fenton's kid went missing last night," Tommy said. "The timeline doesn't add up for it to be you, but since we've gotta go see them anyway they can at least see if they can ID you."

"I hope he's okay," Billy offered, looking down at his lap. He hoped his own family was out looking for him, worried he might be making them worry about him. He closed his eyes and struggled to try and remember anything about his own family, what his parents might look like. The pain in the back of his head grew but he fought through it, desperate for any idea who his family might be or even who he was. A tear escaped his eye, running down his cheek and dropping onto his pants.

"Hey, are you okay?" Tommy asked, worry in his voice.

"Yeah, sorry," Billy tried, quickly wiping his face with the back of his wrist. Looking out the window as they left town and got onto a highway he admitted, "I hope I'm not worrying my family too much."

"If they're decent people, they will be worried," Tommy pointed out.

AN: Two tidbits of trivia came out of this chapter. I learned that no longer do doctors worry if you go to sleep right after you've had a concussion. I left it in since this is taking place in 2006 and back then, they still worried about that. But I also ended up on a long list of game shows to find ones that aired in 2006. That was like the year game shows skipped! All the ones I was thinking about either ended the year or two before or didn't start until 2007! Even shows that were rebooted, sometimes just skipped 2006 entirely! Ended up having Danny watching an episode of Deal or No Deal that Trump ended up in because that episode was the most recent to the summer of '06.