Disclaimers: The characters are the property of Spelling/Goldberg Entertainment. No copyright infringement is intended. The story is the property of the author and her twisted imagination. This was my original disclaimer for years and years. I thought I'd go back to it for the first chapter of this story.

Summary: Jill Danko suffers a traumatic brain injury following a bus/truck accident.

A/N: This is a re-write of one of my earlier stories that I'd posted on .net. It was a favorite among my faithful followers. A common theme in almost 100 percent of my stories is how much angst can I put Mike and Jill Danko through? As it turns out, quite a lot. I think my followers loved this story because it shows the tender side of Mike, which is why we all watched the show. The tenderness between this couple is what I love writing about. This story is rated M for the first chapter and a future chapter. Please read and review.

A/N #2: As is par for the course in most of my stories, the chapters are very long.

A/N #3: This story takes places after the events of 'Lots of Trees and a Running
Stream,' which is from Season 2.

Chapter 1: Before

It was a warm spring night. Mike Danko was sound asleep when he heard a loud boom of thunder which rattled the windows. Knowing her terrified his wife Jill was of storms, he instinctively turned over and reached for her to pull her into the warmth of his arms, only to find her side of the bed empty. He sat up and looked around the darkened bedroom for her.

"Jill?" He called out into the darkness as lightning flashed and thunder once again shook the apartment.

His eyes settled into the corner of the bedroom by their dresser, where he saw something white huddled in the corner. Getting out of bed, he slowly walked over to the wall and knelt down next to Jill, who was huddled so tightly that she would've blended into the wall if she were able to. He reached out to touch her arm, only to have her flinch away from his touch. "Don't touch me!" She shrieked as she curled herself into an even tighter ball.

Mike knew that she'd been dreaming and was probably still dreaming as he pulled the quilt off of their bed and wrapped it around her freezing body. "Baby, it's me," he whispered as he sat beside her and tried to pull her into his arms. "Come on, you're just having a bad dream."

She resisted for a few more minutes before jolting awake as she stared into his eyes. "Mike?" She continued staring at him in confusion.

"Yeah," he smiled as he watched the confusion gradually fade from her eyes. "You were dreaming."

She didn't respond as thunder once again shook the apartment, causing her to jump and grab his pajama shirt. "I hate storms!" She cried as Mike pulled her into his arms and began to rock her, trying to get her body to stop shaking.

"I know," he whispered into her hair as he continued rocking her. "Do you want to tell me what you were dreaming about?" He looked at her as she suddenly burst into tears. "Baby, it's okay. You're safe now. Nothing's going to hurt you."

He continued holding her and soothing her as if she were a small child. He knew where a lot of these old fears were coming from. 'Cleve Andrews,' he thought with disgust. Jill's former 'boyfriend' had returned a couple of months ago while Mike had been out of town. He had somehow managed to draw Jill back into his web. Convincing her that he was dying, he'd gotten her to feel sorry for him. By the time she realized what his intentions really were, it had almost been too late. Mike and Lt. Ryker had arrived just in the nick of time to save her from getting a bullet in the back of her head. Terry and Willie were still angry about what had happened, feeling that Mike and Jill should've warned them about how dangerous Andrews had been.

Jill's nightmares had always been such a huge part of their relationship, like getting up in the morning or making love on a regular basis. But the nightmares that had started after the episode with Andrews had come to a violent conclusion had been the worst yet. When she had these nightmares, Mike would sometimes spend hours trying to calm her down so that they could go to sleep. She simply couldn't or wouldn't tell Mike what these nightmares were about. All he knew was that they had to be terrifying.

She continued to sob in Mike's arms as the thunderstorm continued to rage outside. The only safety that she'd ever felt in her life had been in his arms and she sometimes felt as if that safety net was going to slip out of her grasp. The nightmares of late had only proved that theory. She wouldn't be able to survive if she ever lost him. "Promise me that you're not going to go away," she looked up into his blue-green eyes.

"Baby, I'm not going anywhere," he promised as he tightened his arms around her. "Why do you think that I'm going somewhere? Please tell me what you were dreaming about."

"You went away," she began in a tear-choked voice as fresh tears streamed down her face. "You went back to Vietnam."

He sighed as he held her trembling body closer to him. She hadn't had dreams about Vietnam for a long time. He closed his eyes as he tried to think. "Baby, I'm not going back over there. You know that. The war's been over for me for a long time. I'm not going back."

"You'd left and your helicopter got shot down," she sniffled as she wiped her eyes. "The chaplain came to the door and told me that since you were dead that I was going to have to go back to live with my father. He said it was because I was a minor. I argued with him that I wasn't a minor!" She cried out as she began crying again.

"That's true, you're not," he agreed as he smiled down at her.

"Then my father came inside and told me, 'Jilly Kate, you come with me. I've got a surprise for you.' I started screaming at him to leave me alone! The chaplain took out a pair of handcuffs and handcuffed me to him and then he told Willie and Terry to take me to my father's house. He said that I was going to stay there from now on," she began to cry harder as he pulled her even closer to him.

"Baby, it was just a dream. I'm here and I'm very much alive. A chaplain wouldn't have handcuffs and he certainly wouldn't force you to go with your father. Can I ask a question? Why are you so afraid of storms?" She reacted with such blind terror that it made him feel guilty for asking.

"Please don't ask me that, Mike."

"I'm so sorry," he took her face in his hands and gently kissed her. He smiled as he felt her arms go around his neck as she pulled him closer to her. "Why don't I go into the other room and make us some tea?"

"Tea?" She asked, somewhat disappointed as she looked at him.

"Yeah, it'll help us relax and then we can go back to sleep. Come on," he held his hand out to her as she took it and let him pull her to her feet, as well.

"Mike, I'm sorry. I know that you have to get up early in the morning . . . "

"Stop," he put a finger on her lips. "I don't see anything wrong with holding the woman that I love in my arms, as I help her cope with nightmares and thunderstorms."

"Sometimes they're one and the same," she jumped into his arms as thunder boomed again.

He led her into the living room and settled her on the sofa as he went into the kitchen and put the tea kettle on to boil. She sat on the sofa, still wrapped in the quilt from their bed and watched as he took two mugs from the cabinet and placed tea bags in each one. She loved him so much that she felt sometimes as if her heart was going to burst. Until she'd met him, she'd never known that it was possible to love somebody that much and she knew that he was equally as in love with her. 'He'd have to be,' she thought, 'to put up with night after night of screaming in the night.' She couldn't even remember how she'd ended up in the corner of their bedroom. Every time before when she'd had a nightmare, she'd usually cried out or screamed from their bed. She hadn't walked in her sleep since she was a kid.

Mike walked over with two steaming mugs of tea and handed one of them to Jill. She pressed her hands around the mug, enjoying the warmth as he opened the quilt and pulled it around the two of them. "Better?" He asked as she smiled and cuddled closer to him.

"Much," she slowly sipped her tea, enjoying its warmth and the warmth of being close to Mike in the patterned quilt. It almost, but not quite, made her forget the terror of the storm and her earlier nightmare.

They'd almost finished their tea when a huge flash of lightning lit up the room, followed by a giant crash of thunder. Jill jumped as the lights flickered briefly and then went out, plunging them into total darkness. "Great," he mumbled as he untangled the quilt and got to his feet. "Stay here and I'll go find the flashlight."

"Mike?" She called out as he turned to look at her. "We don't need lights to just go back to bed."

"That's true, we don't. Are you sure?"

"I'm not going to be able to sleep as long as the storm's going on."

He smiled as he helped her to her feet and took her hand, leading her back to their bedroom. The only illumination in the room were the intermittent flashes of lightning that came through the bedroom window. She lay down on the bed and pulled him down next to her. They began kissing as he reached down and unbuttoned the buttons on her gown before reaching inside and caressing her bare skin. "You're so beautiful," he whispered as his lips traveled down her neck to her collar bone.

She writhed and moaned under his expert touch. She could feel his arousal against her leg as she reached down to touch him through his pajama bottoms. She smiled as she heard his moan of approval. She sat up as he raised her gown over her head and tossed it to the floor, before lying back down and pulling her close to him once again. He began traveling down her body, teasing her along the way. She gasped out loud as his fingers touched her intimately. She still found it hard to believe how he could make her body almost immediately respond to his touch.

She impatiently unbuttoned his pajama shirt with shaking fingers before yanking it off of his body as Mike smiled. "Why do you always do this?" She was breathless as she finally succeeded in removing the garment from his body.

"Do what?" He innocently asked her as he continued touching her.

"You know what I'm talking about," she writhed under him. "You make it so that I can't think."

"I thought that was the whole idea," he answered back as he kissed her hungrily. "Do you want me to take off the rest of my clothes?" He whispered in her ear.

"I think that would be a very good idea," she tried to catch her breath as he stood up and removed his pajama bottoms before rejoining her on the bed. She reached down and wrapped her hand around him as she lightly stroked him, smiling broadly at his sudden sharp intake of breath.

"You're enjoying this very much, aren't you?" He groaned in ecstasy as she brushed his tip with her thumb.

"Oh, I'm enjoying this very much, but I think that as much as I'm enjoying touching you, there's something that I want even more," she pulled him closer as she guided him into her.

The two of them moved together as the storm continued to rage outside. But at the moment, the storm was the furthest thing from Jill's mind. Right now the only thing on her mind was the peak that was beginning to build in the deep recesses of her body. At first, it had only been a spark, but that spark soon burst into full flame, as she held Mike tighter to her as she cried out his name over and over as she felt his release deep inside of her.

He'd just moved off of her onto his side of the bed when the lights came back on. "I think that I found a cure for thunderstorms," he smiled as he cuddled her closer to him.

"Nightmares, too," she yawned sleepily as she tightened her arms around him and drifted off to sleep.

***MJMJMJ***

The next morning Mike was already in Roll Call when Terry and Willie came slouching in. Mike looked at them in wonder as they their seats on either side of him. "Did you hear the storm last night?" Terry asked as he opened his notebook and prepared for the morning briefing.

"Yeah, it knocked the power out for a little while," Mike answered as Lt. Ryker walked into the room.

"I know. That's why we're late. Our alarm clocks didn't go off. Why didn't you call or at least bang on the door?" Willie accused as he looked at his two friends.

"I'm sorry," Mike apologized as Ryker stepped behind the lectern and began the morning briefing.

He knew that his two friends were still upset over the incident that had transpired with Cleve a couple of months earlier. They both felt that they'd been misled into believing that Cleve was something that he wasn't. Mike had simply not felt that Cleve presented that big of a threat, an almost fatal mistake on his part.

At the hospital, Jill was having lunch with one of her co-workers, Jackie Greenfield. "I saw Mike dropping you off this morning. Is he picking you up this afternoon?" Jacked asked as she opened her lunch bag and removed her lunch.

"No, I told him that I'd take the bus. That way, he doesn't have to rush to leave work. It'll still bring us home at around the same time," she said as she began eating her own lunch.

Several blocks away in a neighborhood tavern, Albert Cummings sat at the bar, nursing a beer. In a few hours, his path would tragically intersect with Jill's. But for now, he was enjoying his beer. His work truck was parked in the parking lot.

Albert Cummings was known as a legend on his job, but unfortunately, not in a good way. His job was currently on the line after several incidences of showing up on the job drunk. If he hadn't been friends with his current foreman, he probably would've been fired long ago.

It was just after four o'clock when Albert realized that he was late to make a delivery. He signaled the bartender and pulled out his wallet to pay his tab. "Let me call you a cab, Al," the bartender offered.

"I'm okay," he said as he laid his money on the bar. "I have to get going. I'll see you tomorrow."

***MJMJMJ***

Jill always carried a paperback tucked away in her purse during the bus rides to and from work. It saved her from having to have meaningless conversations with strangers. But today, her thoughts were focused on the night before. Mike had been so tender and loving. He was always able to erase those memories from her past that always tried to pull her back in. He could make those nightmares go away, at least for a little while. She was always grateful for that. She never in a million years thought that it'd be possible for her to love anybody as much as she loved him. As much as she was always teasing him about being a pest, she was glad that he'd been as persistent as he'd been in winning over her heart, which she'd always thought was a closed book.

The bus was stopped at a red light. When the light turned green, the bus began moving through the intersection. Jill heard someone gasp in horror. When she looked out of the opposite window, she saw a large truck running the light and barreling toward the bus at full speed. The bus driver laid down on the horn, but the truck just kept coming. It collided with the bus in a loud explosion of twisted metal and broken glass. The bus seats seemed to telescope from the front of the bus toward the back. Jill froze as the seats slammed into her. That was when her world faded to black.