A/N: All character thoughts are in italic. All recognizable characters belong to Janet; I'm just taking them on an adventure they will never forget. Thanks again to Susan for proofing this. Any mistakes noted are all mine, probably after I dinked with the chapter after she finished proofing.

Chapter 11

Tank and Bobby entered the private consultation room where Lester paced nervously. "Hey man, what's –"

Lester held up his hand to his mouth to make a quiet sound, then pulled out a piece of paper and scrawled on it. He handed it to Bobby, then went to lock the door.

Bobby nodded in understanding, smirking at Tank. He pulled out a bug detector and walked a grid around the small room that smelled faintly of antiseptic and rubber gloves. "It's all clean in here. I'm gonna leave this on so it will emit a strong wave frequency scrambler, but we'll need to hurry so it won't mess with all of the ICU monitors." He looked at Lester and raised his eyebrows, crossing his arms over his chest. "I'm assuming this is gonna be good, since you asked me to bring this here."

Lester pulled out a chair from the round table, flipped it around backward, and straddled it. Leaning his elbows on the back of the chair, he blew a deep breath out and widened his eyes. "Dude, if you only knew the half of it. I'm not sure I know everything, but something hinky is going down in Plumville, if you know what I mean."

Tank raised his eyebrows at Santos and gave him a look of impatient disbelief. "Uh, no. We don't know what you mean. Try explaining it to us."

Les rolled his eyes. "Calm your tits man, I'm getting to it. Here's the deal. You said Steph was waking up, right?" He looked to Tank for validation. "Soooo. I'm in there after you, thinking this is gonna be great. Beautiful will wake up, see me, and I'll talk to her for a little bit. Only, that's not what happened."

Lester got up and started pacing nervously again. "Man, there's just no way to say this, so here goes. I watched her start mumbling something, so I tried to calm her down and talk to her. Instead, she does this full body thing that freaked me out." Les paused, looking at Tank, then Bobby. "She twisted her body so that it looked like her hands were bound behind her and she stiffened up like a freaking board, guys." He paused. "The worst part? She starts muttering Ranger's military data in SERE mode. She even had his inflections down. I'm telling you, it made the hair stand up on the back of my arms. It's like I was watching and listening to Ranger in Columbia again."

Bobby steepled the fingers of his hands together in front of his face, mulling over what Lester said. Tank leaned back in his chair, making it creak from strain, then crossed his arms and scowled at Lester.

"You trying to tell me we got a Freaky Friday situation on our hands, Santos? What the hell have you been drinking?" Tank growled.

Lester made an exasperated face at Tank. "I don't know what kind of situation we got, dude. I'm just telling you what I saw and heard. I think Core team needs to camp out in Steph's room for a while until we get a handle on whatever is going on. You all know that if anyone finds out some of the stuff I just heard coming out of her mouth, we will have to do some damage control."

Bobby winced in understanding. "Fuck. She's a dead woman if what you're saying is true."

xxxxxx

The first thing that Stephanie became aware of was a symphony of snoring surrounding her. The next and more emergent thing that drew her awareness was the uncomfortable pins and needles tingly feeling in the right side of her chest. She became aware of a dull ache in her right thigh, but it was more of a nuisance than anything else. Opening her eyes, she blinked a few times to clear them.

Oh boy. I'm obviously in a hospital room. What happened this time?

She tried to roll over towards the snores.

Jeez, I'm as weak as a wet paper bag. What the hell happened?

She managed to shift herself to her left side enough to see Tank, Lester, and Bobby sprawled out in rather uncomfortable positions in waiting chairs sleeping. They all looked a little rough around the edges and very rumpled. She raised her eyebrows at that and wondered just how long everyone had been there.

She cleared her throat and was surprised at how weak and raspy it was. "Guys. Ahem…. Hey."

Tank shifted awake in his chair and blinked a couple of times, trying to figure out what woke him. He glanced over to make sure Stephanie was still alright and nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw her clear blue eyes smiling back at him in recognition. Getting up, he walked over and squatted down in front of her. He reached out and gently squeezed her shoulder.

"Welcome back, Little Girl. We were a little worried if we would get to see those big blue eyes anytime soon."

Stephanie smiled back at him. "Hey Big Guy. Good to see you. Want to fill me in on why I'm here?"

Tank stood back up to pull his chair closer, and woke up Lester and Bobby in the process. Shaking his head, he pointed at Steph and grinned. "Look who finally decided she needed to join our party, gentlemen."

Lester and Bobby quickly jumped up, both grinning widely. Following Tank's lead, they scooted their chairs closer to Steph's head of the bed in order to talk to her.

Clearing her throat again, she looked over at Bobby. "Hey Bobby. Is it ok if I have some water? I feel like I've been in the hottest jungles of South America and I'm dry as a bone."

Lester shot Tank and Bobby a look that Stephanie couldn't interpret. He tried to cover whatever he wanted to communicate with a smile back at her. Leaning over her, he slowly raised her head of the bed to a semi sitting position. Pouring her a glass of water, he helped her with the straw.

"There you go, Steph."

Steph cleared her throat again after emptying her glass and sighed happily. "Thanks Les. That was almost better than pineapple upside down cake."

Sitting back down in his chair, Lester propped his elbows on his knees, leaning towards her. His face wore a mask of seriousness that Steph wasn't used to seeing on him. "Before we tell you what we know about what happened, what exactly do you remember?"

Steph stared up at the industrial tiled ceiling and muttered "That is the million-dollar question, folks." She wondered briefly if she would ever be able to successfully count all of the little holes in one of those tiles. Maybe if she started to count, the guys would forget about asking her what she remembered.

She squinched her eyes shut as Tank cleared his throat pointedly at her.

No such luck then, Plum.

Taking a big deep breath of air to bolster her courage, she opened her eyes and stared at her hands.

"Well, I remember sitting out in that damn tree doing surveillance for Ranger. I remember trying to move around and getting my pants stuck on a tree branch. I remember Ranger climbing up to help get me down." Making a face of concentration, Steph paused for a second, then shook her head. "I remember a big flash of light, and then some really bizarre dreams until I woke up to see you all snoring in my room."

Tank scooted his chair up next to the side of Steph's bed and gently held her hand, moving Lester out of his way. Taking over from Les, Tank smiled down at her.

"There's no way to sugar coat this, Little Girl. I'm not sure what happened before we got there, but here's what Les and I saw. Ranger was trying to climb down outta that tree with you when the tree branch you two were on was struck by lightning. All the doctors that looked you both over said if it had struck you directly, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now."

Tank had to clear his throat and look away for a moment to maintain control over his emotions, as Stephanie let that tidbit of information sink in. Once he had it back together, he looked back at Steph and gave her a half smile.

"You two were knocked outta the tree and managed to skewer yourselves together on a hunk of tree branch. It went through your right thigh and Ranger's left. Steph, you all were in a coma."

Stephanie's eyes widened in shock as she took all of this in. Pausing a couple of beats, she whispered, "How long? How long was I in a coma, Tank?"

"Almost 3 days Steph. The doctors weren't expecting you to wake up. The neurologist called you a miracle."

A wave of panic raced across Stephanie's face. "Oh, God. My parents…..my Grandma! I need to talk to them! I need –"

Bobby, standing on the opposite side of Tank and Lester, reached down and grabbed her free hand. "Steph, it's ok. We contacted them immediately after this all happened. They've been up here visiting twice a day and I call them with every update. We will call and let them know you're awake, but we wanted to talk to you first."

Bobby smiled reassuringly at her. "You said you had some bizarre dreams. Can you tell us about them? It may be you trying to process what happened to your body, and help you remember."

Chuckling, Steph shook her head. "I don't think those dreams were helping me remember anything, but I'll tell you about them. I think they're related to hitting my head on the ground, personally."

Gently rolling her shoulders to get more comfortable, she shook her head to clear the last remnants of fog that remained. She picked at the edge of the bedsheet nervously.

"So, just to be clear here, I'm not making this stuff up and remember you asked me to tell you about my dreams. Ground rules here guys are no laughing and no using this stuff against me. Deal?"

All three of her Merry Men nodded, their faces silently communicating their sincerity.

She sighed deeply. "Okay. So I know this sounds really, really weird, but I dreamed I was a little boy fighting with his sister over a stuffed rabbit. I remember really wanting to beat the shit out of this dream sister, but couldn't make myself do what I wanted – stupid brat kept calling me Dodo."

Lester's eyebrows shot up and he leaned forward. "What else do you remember about that dream, Steph?"

She shrugged. "Not much. I remember that dream me decided to – I think I called her Cee, come to think of it. I remember dream me decided it was better to just let her have the rabbit."

Lester schooled his face in order to not betray the emotions he was feeling. "Huh. Okay what else do you remember?"

Steph gave him a half smile. "Funny you should ask that. Another weird-assed dream had me dreaming I was freakin' Ranger, except I wasn't grown Ranger, I was pissed at the world teenage Ranger." She paused. "There was a man and woman in the dream, too. The woman I really wanted to be my mom but the man was a grade-A asshat. Told dream me that I had to go live with an Abuela, whatever that is. Then I was in Miami of all places – still dreaming I was pissed off teenage Ranger, mind you – but this time I was pissed at you, Lester." She giggled and shook her head. "Even in my dreams, you're a man whore. I dreamed you stole some girl away from me, and then I tried to kick your ass."

Lester's mouth thinned to a straight line. "What was her name, beautiful? Do you remember the girl's name?"

"Uh, I think her name was Nia, or Nita. Nooo… wait. Anita, that's it. Not sure why it matters, though."

Lester rolled his head, cracking his neck and closed his eyes for a moment. Bobby reached over and patted Steph's knee gently, and asked "Okay Steph. Anything else you remember while you were out?"

"Well, yeah. I dreamed about eating cinnamon pecan pancakes for Christmas – that was an awesome one. But there were some real nightmares in there too. I dreamed I was thug Ranger. I think there was one where I dreamed how he got that scar on his chin. I was on a school playground when I fell. I, uh. I also dreamed I was army Ranger, and that sucked." Steph closed her eyes and rubbed her hands down her face, in an attempt to wipe away those memories.

"What happened in that dream, Steph? You know you can tell Les, Tank, and me."

Taking a deep breath, she nodded. "Okay, okay. I dreamed I was chained up in a dirty one room hut with Tank and Lester. In the dream, I was beaten up and, and –" Steph shuddered and squeezed her eyes shut to keep from crying.

"In the dream, these people in black hoods put electric cables on me and kept shocking me, yelling at me to tell them why we were there. They took toothpicks and shoved them up under my toenails. They had clamps on my, uh, my privates and kept twisting them tighter and tighter. They threatened to kill Tank and Lester in front of me if I didn't talk." A tear slipped down her cheek as she glanced over at both of them. "I just kept repeating Ranger's name and a bunch of numbers over and over. I remember someone grabbing me by my hair and pulling my head back. I remember a red hot poker coming at me, thinking this was it when doors flew open and a bunch of big guys with green paint on their faces came in and shot the guys in the black hoods. I knew they were the good guys, but I woke up then."

Bobby moved over to sit on the side of the bed next to Stephanie. She was pale and the tears that she tried to hold back now flowed freely. He handed her a tissue.

Steph wiped her eyes and nose, then looked at Bobby. "You know, after talking about it, it probably was from the lighting and the injuries from the fall. Don't you think?" she asked hopefully.

Bobby looked down where he was holding her hand. "Steph, I'm not sure how to tell you this, but we don't think you were dreaming. We think you were remembering."

Pausing a beat, Stephanie let out a nervous giggle. "No. Freaking. Way."

Lester stood up and paced the floor, then stopped and looked at her. "Oh, yes way. Her name was Anita Mendez and she was my girl in Miami. Her parents wouldn't allow me to see her, so I had her ask Ranger to take her to the Spring dance. She was supposed to tell him she was meeting me there, but Ranger didn't believe her and got pissed when he walked in on us kissing. He tried to pull her away from me, and pulled back to hit me when she jumped on his back and punched the shit out of him. Blacked his eye, Steph. He was so pissed at me, he didn't talk to me for almost six months."

Stephanie's eyes widened in shock. She never mentioned the blacked eye or the detail about getting beat up by the girl.

Tank cleared his throat. "He's right, Little Girl. We really were there in Columbia with Ranger. That's no dream." He looked grimly at Lester, then Bobby. "Little girl, we got a big problem on our hands. That shit you just told us? No one knows about it. It was a black ops mission that officially has no record. Yet, you gave details that only someone there would be able to. Do you understand what this means?

Stephanie slowly lowered the head of her bed almost flat and crooked her arm over her eyes. Sighing yet again, she nodded. "Yep. I am officially screwed, boys. Now what am I going to do?"

-tbc-