Universe 2 (October 2009)
After Booth's visit to London, he returned home with a different mindset regarding his future. He decided that he just needed to relax, enjoy his bachelor lifestyle, and trust that fate would work in his best interests. He had always felt that he wanted marriage, house, children - and often when he went to mass he prayed about it. He finally felt like the answer came to him one Sunday morning when he stayed after mass and just sat in the empty church enjoying the solitude. Maybe it was best not to try so hard. Just relax, enjoy being able to do all of the things that bachelorhood offered, and if his soulmate was out there, he hoped to get the opportunity to meet her. He just had to keep an open mind and an open heart. And maybe it might not ever happen. But he had Parker. If the only child he ever had was Parker, he would have a full heart. But he longed to open that heart to additional children with just the right woman.
So, he stopped fretting about it and started living a more active life in his hours away from work. He dated off and on - either introduced to women by his friends, or occasional one night stands with women he met in his favorite bars. He continued to play on his hockey team during the winter and spring, and often would take the train to Philly on weekends to meet up with old friends and attend hockey or football games. He had planned to join a softball league for the summer - until he almost died.
During the spring, he kept having hallucinations. He didn't think anything of them because he had a couple of concussions playing hockey earlier in the year and figured they were just a side effect in the recovery. He was a little bit embarrassed about having cartoon characters and long deceased hockey legends talking to him, so he kept it to himself. If the FBI got wind of it, they might bench him and require him to see one of their staff psychiatrists. After several weeks of this, it got to the point where he couldn't go more than an hour without one of these visions and he finally called the only person he trusted with the information - his friend Cam, the coroner. He figured that she was a medical doctor so she could set his mind at ease.
He asked her to meet him for lunch in the diner. When he described what had been happening, she was alarmed. "Seeley, this sounds serious. You need to see a doctor immediately." He scoffed at her response, but she barked back at him. "Which of the two of us sitting at this table has a medical degree? Hmmm? Come on. I'm taking you to the emergency room." He was startled. "It's that serious? I was hoping you were going to tell me it was normal after a concussion." She slowly nodded her head. "Yes. It's potentially very serious. Let's just go right now and maybe they will say it's nothing. But we need to find out for sure."
So, she took him to the hospital, and after several hours of tests and scans, Cam was told that he was being rushed into surgery because they had detected a large brain tumor. It was most likely benign, but it had grown so large that the surgery was going to be difficult, and they hoped that it wouldn't compromise essential areas of his brain. It was a long and complicated surgery, but ultimately successful. The surgeon told Cam that they got to it just in time, and it might have killed him if he had waited a few more days. He was kept in a coma for four days, and his recovery was very slow. He spent time in a rehab facility before finally being allowed home and was out of work for three months.
During the time he was in the coma, he had a dream that felt very real to him after he regained consciousness. In the dream, he was married and the couple owned a nightclub. He thought about the dream often while he was rehabilitating from the surgery, and he had a strong feeling that the woman in the dream was the soulmate he had been hoping to meet. But, try as he might, he just couldn't see her face. Every time he thought about it, her face would be turned away or in darkness - he just couldn't seem to catch a glimpse.
When he returned to work, the first case he got was a doozy. A young blonde woman came to the FBI purporting to be a psychic. She said that her cards told her that there were bodies buried under the fountain in a local park. Booth didn't believe a word of it, but he sent out a tech team with a radar device to see if there was anything under the fountain. And, to his surprise, there were several sets of remains detected there. Once they were excavated, the FBI techs identified one of the bodies as a close relative of the "psychic" who brought them the case. Of course, she immediately became a suspect and Booth had several interrogations with her. Each time, she would pull out her Tarot cards and try to convince him to let her do a reading for him.
He finally relented, thinking that maybe her cards would give a clue into the fate that he was relying on. Or maybe help him with the mystery of his coma dream. She had him cut the cards, and the first card she turned over said "Temperance". He looked at it and laughed. "No, I'm not looking for a teetotaler for a soulmate." She shushed him. "No Agent Booth. That's not what this card means. It means you need balance and patience. It shows you have a clear long term vision for your life, but that you shouldn't be rushing things along. You need to take your time to achieve your goals." Booth was a little stunned, because that was exactly what he had been trying to do for the last year. Was she confirming that he was on the right path? She laid down a couple more cards and said that his patience would be rewarded. The cards said that what he had been searching for would be within his grasp in the next year. But he had to be ready and have the courage to act or he would miss the opportunity.
As he left the interrogation room, Booth felt a lightness of spirit that he hadn't felt in a long time. His mind went back and forth from telling himself that there is no such thing as a psychic, to maybe what those cards were telling her had something to do with fate, which he firmly believed in. Nevertheless, he was going to keep his radar up. If she did come across his path, he hoped that they wouldn't end up like ships passing in the night.
A few nights later, after a tough loss for his hockey team, he was in the locker room changing out of his gear. His best friend on the team, Wendell, was sitting beside him telling him about his new relationship with a beautiful woman from work. Wendell had obtained a highly coveted internship the previous year at the Jeffersonian Institute. Booth rolled his eyes. "Oh, go ahead, rub it in." Wendell laughed. "Sorry bud. Hey, maybe I could get Angela to fix you up with one of her friends from work and we could do a double date." Booth was intrigued. "You have someone in mind?" Wendell rolled a few names in his head. "Well, there's Naomi. Don't know her last name, but she's a doctor in paleontology. And Angela's best friend is Doctor Brennan, she's an anthropologist." Booth held up both hands waving them back and forth. "No, no, no, no, no. No scientists, no psychologists, no psychiatrists." Those kinds of people make my brain hurt. Plus, every one I've ever met has been way too literal to have a conversation with." Wendell shook his head. "Sorry bud, but then I don't think I can help you. All that leaves are interns, and the one female is already seeing someone." Booth slapped him on the back. "No problem pal. I'm happy for you though."
The following week, Booth was called to a crime scene where body parts were found scattered along a railroad line. The FBI techs combed the tracks a mile on either side of the area where the bones were found, but they were able to recover so little of the body that identification was impossible. They investigated people who had been reported missing from the area, but there were no promising leads. Eventually, the FBI techs put together everything they had and, as they did with every cold case, shipped the remains to the Jeffersonian Institute. The hope was always that at some point in the future, the scientists there might learn more. But there was always the realization that the Jeffersonian had such a backlog that it could take years before anyone would do the more detailed evaluation. And, of course, by then, the trail would have gone even colder.
What no one ever learned was that these remains belonged to a young Amish man. He had left his home to go on Rumspringa, a rite of passage where a young Amish person goes to live in a non-Amish community for a length of time to decide if he or she wishes to dedicate their life to the Amish way. If they don't return, the parents mourn them, but understand that they have chosen a different life. If they return, they are welcomed back with open arms. Levi's parents had filed a missing person report, but because the FBI techs didn't have access to the technology to determine the bone markers, they never connected him to the Amish community. And the friends that he made living in the city were not concerned that he was gone with no notice because they believed he had decided to return home. So, his loss was mourned by both groups of people. And his remains would lie in a plastic container in a massive room, possibly never to be identified.
Those were the cases that hurt the most - and stayed with Booth. He would often think about them and wonder how he would feel if someone he loved disappeared without a trace. He would never know if they had died or were still alive somewhere. If they had chosen to stay away with no contact. If they were being held against their will. If they had lost their memory and didn't know they had a family grieving for them. And if they had died, how did it happen? Who was responsible? So many unanswered questions, and Booth mourned the fact that he couldn't provide those unknown families and friends with some closure. He sometimes wondered about that anthropologist who Cam had occasionally recommended. Would she have helped to solve some of these cases? An anthropologist? Didn't they study ancient civilizations and such? He shook his head, wondering what Cam was thinking to make such a recommendation. An anthropologist? Sheesh.