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Thirty minutes later, Dr. Steele came out and said, "Derek can I talk to you in private."
"You can tell all of us—she is our family," Derek said.
"Your wife appears to have dissociative amnesia, when a person has this form of amnesia they block out certain information, usually associated with a stressful or traumatic event, leaving her unable to remember important personal information. With this disorder, the degree of memory loss goes beyond normal forgetfulness and includes gaps in memory for long periods of time or of memories involving the traumatic event. She has a mix of both. We still assumed she will have some degree of PTSD – depending on the level, she may require more hospitalization. Obviously, we can't assess the PTSD because she can't remember the incident."
"The drug cocktail they gave her, ecstasy, narcotics, and benzodiazepine drugs could produce a dream like state for her mentally making it hard to distinguish dreams from reality—this could be a problem with memory recovery." The doctor saw the perplexed look in their face and clarified some more. "This will only effect memory recovery not anything else. She may think the kidnapping was a dream – it's hard to say now. With psychotherapy she will regain her memory but we don't have a time line."
"The good news is she is physically fine, she has healed nicely and we are giving her pain medication for the aches. We were concerned about the Vagus nerve damage but all of her sensory receptors are functioning as expected and we will run a series of test tomorrow to confirm. We will also come up with a treatment plan."
"Her brain functions properly the only problem, I'm sorry I should've said this first when I was discussing the amnesia but I was just so excited that she woke up—Her actually memory is very blurred. It's like the dissociative amnesia shut down 10 city blocks in her brain. In addition, the ripple effect of those streets being closed is traffic – bumper-to-bumper traffic. Which shuts down neighboring streets. The ripple effects of the amnesia is that She thinks it's 2006 or 2007."
"What?" the group murmured.
"This is apart of the amnesia—but let me be clear, it will come back—only in 6% of the cases does it not. The parts that may be permanently lost are the ones induced by the drug cocktail because she may not be able to distinguish the illusion from reality. It could be very murky for her, but she does remember you all to some degree"
Derek rubbed his head "what does she remember," he asked.
"She remembers working the cases, teaching, California, being engaged, and bits and pieces peppered in. I'm not a psychiatrist but our on duty psychiatrist is talking to her now. She is up for seeing you all but don't overload her with stories of the past or the kidnapping. I think the psychiatrist should tell her what happened with you present, Derek, so we can use it as a part of our evaluation. They will probably want to do that tomorrow morning."
"I know it's a lot to take in—do you have any questions?"
"If she thinks it's 2007 do we have to act like it is?" Beth asked.
"No, she understands that she lost time because she sustained a head injury."
Dr. Steele looked at the faces before her and she knew they need time to process what she said. "I will go check on her and give you all time to discuss things." As she walks away, they start trying to piece together the information Dr. Steele has told them.
"Where were we in 2006?" Emily asked.
"She just got here, I think," Preston said
"We weren't engaged then" Derek said puzzled- wondering how that piece fit in.
"We were," Jackson said oddly, " kinda engaged that is."
"No, you guys were married" JJ said
"Actually, You were dating at the time," Reid said, "but secretly, I think and if it's to the date – I would say it was before you started dating Jordan. Dr. Steele said it was blurred so who knows what she will recall—I am sure she remembers you. She said she knew she loved you when she met you at Pete's."
Derek smiled as that memory played in his head, "she did say that, didn't she. I'm concerned about Chris and Izzy –they're going to want to see their mom and she won't know who they are."
"Derek, She ready for you."
Derek walks and they all hang back.
"Can you come with me—I "
More to come today! The chapter was sooo long I had to break it up :)
I'm so glad she's awake :)