Gilligan slept through dinner. And breakfast. And most of lunch, but he emerged from the hut before any of them had left the table. He had washed his face and hands, combed his hair, and put on his spare shirt, which, not-so-incidentally, also covered the graze on his left arm. He looked, more or less, like himself again, at least until one looked at his face. But he was trying.

"Um… hi, everyone," he said. "I… um… is there any food left?"

The words—the ones he was trying so hard to make sound normal—were barely out of his mouth before he found himself playing the filling in a girl sandwich. He didn't much like being kissed at the best of times, which these were most emphatically not, and being unexpectedly grabbed didn't improve the situation. He made a strangled, animal sound and, breaking free of their arms, started towards the edge of the jungle before seeming to realize where he was. Breathing hard, he came back, looking ashamed. "Sorry, girls. I didn't… I mean, I… um. Sorry."

"It's all right, Gilligan," Mary Ann said encouragingly. "We didn't mean to startle you. Come on; sit down. We saved you a plate—I'll go get it now." She retrieved it, and set it in front of him. "Here you are. Filet of snapper, and there's some mashed taro to go with it. Skipper caught the fish just this morning."

"Sure did," the Skipper said, a bit too heartily. "Those new fish traps we built worked like a charm."

"Yeah, we're pretty good at building traps," he mumbled, staring at the fish. He shoveled a bite of taro into his mouth, but his throat closed up as he tried to swallow, and he stood up from the table so quickly the chair went over backwards. "Sorry. Sorry; I gotta… um. Sorry." This time, as he ran for the jungle, he didn't stop, and he vanished into the underbrush before any of them could stop him.

OoOoOoO

"I was afraid of this," the Professor said.

"What is it, Professor?" Ginger asked. Someone had to. Mary Ann looked ready to cry at this second failure to comfort their stricken friend; the Howells' interlocked hands were so tightly clenched that their knuckles were white. And the Skipper… somehow, the gut-shot look on his face was making her feel almost sorrier for him than she was for Gilligan.

"Well, obviously, he's been through a terribly traumatic experience. I suspect he's suffering from some form of shellshock."

"What can we do?" she prodded, when he seemed to trail off.

He looked at her, and the unease she saw in his usually calm eyes was not comforting. "We wait," he said. "All we can do is be kind, be understanding… and be patient."

OoOoOoO

Gilligan came back a little before sundown, with a large load of firewood they hadn't particularly needed and nothing to say for himself. He knelt to stack it by the ovens.

"There you are!" The Skipper, who had spent most of the afternoon puttering around the camp, pretending to look for jobs to do while unsuccessfully scanning the jungle for a flash of red, was expansive in his relief. "Wow, that's some stack of firewood. We won't need to gather any more for a while, that's for sure! Good work, little buddy."

Gilligan glanced up at him, and he tried to smile. He really did try.

The Skipper made the swift decision to accept the effort for the deed. "Anyhow, you're just in time for dinner… and I happen to know that Mary Ann was baking pies all afternoon. I know once you get a couple of those down the hatch, you'll feel better."

"Aye aye, sir," Gilligan mumbled, and let himself be propelled to the table. Dinner, on the Professor's instructions, did not feature anything that had, at any point in its existence, had a face. Nothing had been caught or trapped; nothing had died to provide their meal, and Mary Ann had done her best to make the omnipresent coconuts fresh and exciting. For all the good it did, she might as well have not bothered.

"Mmm! My dear girl, this coconut soufflé is positively marvelous," Mrs. Howell gushed. "I declare, I simply don't know how you do it."

"Thanks, Mrs. Howell," Mary Ann said. "Did you try the breadfruit rolls? I tried something new with them. Tell me what you think!" She was, ostensibly, addressing Mrs. Howell. That was not who she was talking to, and everybody knew it. She passed the tray of rolls around the table, instead of across, which would have been far faster.

The Skipper plunked one onto Gilligan's mostly-untouched plate as they went by. "Here; get that onboard," he ordered.

Gilligan took an obedient bite, chewed and swallowed. "It's good, Mary Ann," he said softly, putting it back down on his plate.

The rest of the meal was more of the same; forced attempts at conversation, surreptitious glances at Gilligan, not-so-surreptitious glances at each other as he struggled with the food, keeping his head down and not saying another word. As the excruciating parody of a meal ground to a merciful close, Gilligan suddenly looked up, and bit his lip.

"I… er… I wanted to say thanks, is all. When I checked in at camp… you were all cheering me on. You wanted me to get away, even though Kinkaid said you'd be rescued if I didn't." He swallowed. "So, I… yeah. Thanks."

The Skipper choked, and clapped him on the shoulder. "Oh, little buddy—of course we wanted you to get away! No matter what! Did you doubt that for a second?"

He shook his head. "No, Skipper, never. I didn't doubt it… but it still makes you all the best friends a guy could ever have. A lot of people would've, you know, thought about what would help them, not what would help the other guy." His eyes glittered a bit in the light from the tiki torches. "Not you guys, though. I'm awful lucky."

Ginger smiled at him… a real smile, nothing of the vamp or Hollywood glamor about it. "We're the lucky ones, Gilligan. We got you back. That makes us the luckiest people ever."

He looked troubled. "And, Ginger, I'm sorry I called you a Beatrice Arnold. I didn't understand what you were trying to do. I… I wasn't thinking all that straight."

"Oh, don't be sorry! That's what you were supposed to think," she said, and struck a pose, trying to lighten the mood. "Mata Hari, at your service!"

He attempted another smile, then turned to Mr. Howell. "And thank you for trying to buy him off. That was really nice of you."

"Good heavens, my boy, don't mention it," he said, embarrassed.

He turned his gaze to the Professor, and hesitated, then pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. The Professor's heart sank as he recognized his ill-fated map. "You didn't label the quicksand," he said bluntly. "That was on purpose, right?" Lie to me, his eyes said. Whether or not it's true, I don't care, just say yes. Six outweighs one… but lie to me anyway, please!

The Professor cleared his throat. "Yes, that's right. I was hoping that I could convince him that you were likeliest to hide in that vicinity… and that he'd fall into one of the quicksand patches." He looked at the table. "It didn't work," he said unnecessarily.

"Still… that was smart. It was a good try. Thanks," Gilligan said, simply. His piece spoken, he was far away, and silent, for the rest of the evening, his eyes fixed on something none of the others could see. That night marked the beginning of the nightmares.

OoOoOoO

The next day, and the ones after that, were more of the same. He was somewhere else, even, or perhaps especially, when he was within arm's reach. Watching, always watching, waiting for something he couldn't name, seemingly more wary than frightened and more grief-stricken than either. Mary Ann found the shattered remnants of his net by the lagoon one morning; she understood that they would not be butterfly hunting anytime soon, if ever. And it broke her heart.

He was everywhere at once, or so it seemed. If he wasn't gathering firewood, he was carrying water, or tending the salt pans, or digging drainage ditches, or any of the thousand and one other tasks life on the island required. He even resumed fishing and tending the lobster traps; he didn't eat much of his catch, but then, he wasn't eating much of anything. His weight dropped precipitously, and it wasn't like he'd had a great deal to spare.

He answered when spoken to, usually, and he was obviously trying his level best to be as little of an inconvenience as possible. It was not his fault that his silence was louder than his voice had ever been.

"Little buddy, it's too hot to be doing that now. Come on," the Skipper tried, one day, as Gilligan staggered into camp with a bag full of coconuts bigger than he was. "We've got enough coconut to last a week. Let's head down to the lagoon and take a swim, okay?"

"No, thanks, Skipper," he said, not meeting his eyes. "I thought I'd go and dig out the heads; they're starting to get a little whiffy."

"Oh, Gilligan, forget about that for now! We can worry about that tomorrow," the Skipper said. "If you don't feel like swimming, we could go fishing, how about that?"

"No, if you want to go for a swim, you go on ahead. I'll just stay here and finish up the chores."

"Gilligan, you're working too hard," the Skipper said. Subtlety was not working. "You're going to make yourself sick if you're not careful. I order you to take a break, all right?"

"Skipper, I can't," he said. "I just can't. Please. I need to stay busy. If I'm working, I'm not thinking about… I just can't, see? If I really tire myself out, sometimes I can get at least a little bit of sleep at night. I'm sorry, Skipper. I really am. But I… I just can't."

The Skipper did not enjoy feeling helpless, and he was getting all too familiar with the feeling. As he stood there, watching the emaciated figure slip back into the jungle, his hands clenched into defiant fists, he cursed his own uselessness. Being patient and kind was getting him nowhere; his first mate was retreating ever faster into some inner darkness, where the Skipper could not reach him. He was more frightened for him now than he had been during the hunt; there were things worse than death. And if he was any judge, right now Gilligan was living through all of them. His little buddy was real Navy, and a whole lot tougher than he appeared at first glance, but how long could anyone stand up under the punishment he was taking? How long was it even fair to ask him to try?

They were listening to the Dodgers on the radio, some weeks later. No rescue had materialized, and it was tacitly understood that Ramoo had not held up his end of the bargain, but nobody wanted to be the one to say it. Gilligan was still mostly silent, working like a machine and eating like a bird, his sunken eyes increasingly haunted as the days crawled by, and if the cries that the handkerchief could not entirely stifle were any indication, the nightmares were not subsiding; were in fact, if anything, getting worse. Nobody wanted to be the one to mention that, either.

OoOoOoO

"The world of sports was saddened today," the radio announcer intoned. "The wreckage of a helicopter belonging to champion trap-shooter and noted big-game hunter Jonathan Kinkaid was discovered off the coast of Hawaii. While his body was not recovered, that of his assistant was found in the vehicle, and authorities believe that both he and Kinkaid were killed in an accidental crash. In other news—"

Mr. Howell reached for the radio, and turned it off. "Good," he said bluntly. "Couldn't have happened to a nicer person. And, to be perfectly honest, I'd have hated to be rescued by that revolting creature. A Howell, indebted to that barbarian? Pshaw! Not even Yale would have let him so much as cross their threshold!"

Gilligan looked as though he'd been slapped. "I should have tried flying that helicopter after all. I couldn't have done a worse job than he did."

"Don't be an idiot," the Skipper reproved. "You'd just have gotten yourself killed. He and Kinkaid can burn in hell together, and good riddance to them. Filthy murderers!"

"Maybe. I'm going to… uh… I'll be back," Gilligan said, from halfway out the door.

The men looked at each other. "He's not getting any better, Professor," the Skipper said. "He's not… he's not him anymore. And if this keeps up much longer… I've seen this happen before, Professor! Isn't there anything we can do?"

"Skipper, if there were, don't you think I'd already be doing it?" The Professor's voice was ragged with emotion. "I don't know what we can do. I don't know if there's anything that anyone could do. I've seen this before, too—and I've seen trained and qualified experts fail to accomplish a cure! Skipper, I'm not a psychiatrist! I don't know how to help him!"