Learning How To Live (18/22)
Title: Learning How To Live
Authors: jerseystrife , alixzin and I
Rating: mild M for some unpleasant adult themes
Summary: Something is terribly wrong with Barney Stinson and his friends have all started to notice him avoiding them. When questions arise, Barney fights to keep his secrets and to keep the life he's grown comfortable with living.
Disclaimer: Sadly, none of us own either of the shows.
Note: A million thanks to roland44 for the beta.
Previous Chapters: 1| 2| 3| 4| 5| 6| 7| 8| 9| 10| 11| 12| 13| 14| 15| 16| 17|This is 18
Just as he had been doing for the past few months Ted stopped by the hospital in the morning before heading off to work. But today was different, today Barney wasn’t in his room. In fact the room was completely empty and all of his stuff was gone.
It felt like the floor was taken out from under him. The only explanation he could think of was that Barney had died in the middle of the night and they hadn’t been called yet. Or maybe his phone had been turned off. As he pulled out his cell to check for messages he vaguely registered that he was shaking and sobbing uncontrollably. His brain had gone completely numb.
“Ted?” One of the ICU nurses that he knew he should recognize approached him. “Are you okay?”
“Where’s Barney?” he choked out. “Is he-”
“Whoa Ted, take deep breaths,” she led him to the empty bed and had him sit down. “It’s okay, Barney’s fine. He was just taken down to radiation therapy a half hour ago.”
“But,” he gasped, still in the midst of a freak-out. “All of his stuff is gone from the room. Why…?”
“He’s being moved to an isolated clean room.”
Ted took a deep calming breath and wiped away the tears that were dripping down his face. This made no sense; he had a million questions.
“I-I thought Barney had decided to stop all treatment?”
The nurse suddenly grinned. “Haven’t you heard?! We’ve found him a donor! He’s in radiation to completely destroy all of his own marrow. He’ll be getting a transplant late in the afternoon.”
Ted stared at her open mouthed, already his feelings of deep panic were getting replaced with warm fuzzies. “Did you find someone from the registry?”
“No," she leaned in and whispered in a low tone, as if telling a great secret. "All I know is that it’s some close relative that his brother managed to track down.”
“Where is he? I need to go hug him.”
“I’m afraid you can’t do that. Without his marrow he's not going to have a functioning immune system. So no visitors until after the transfusion.”
“I think I can live with that,” Ted grinned now that the news had finally sunk in. “Thanks for letting me know what was going on.”
The first thing Ted did was call Robin. It was still early in the morning so the call woke her up , but this did not prevent her from shrieking and crying with him.
He called Marshall and Lily next, but to his surprise rather than screaming like Robin did when she got the news, Marshall went dead silent.
“Dude, did you hear what I just said? Barney’s getting the transfusion! He’s not going to die! I’m pretty sure the donor is that women we saw James with the other day.”
“Yeah, I…. Ted, we need to talk. Could you and Robin come over? Like right now. I need to tell you guys something really important and… Please, would you just come?”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marshall sat on the sofa, holding on to Lily's hand as if she were a storm anchor, his entire body rigid. How could he explain any of this to Ted? To Robin? All this time they'd been looking after Barney - if someone was to tell him about Barney's secret, he'd think it was some sick joke.
"None of you are going to believe this…" he began.
"Just tell us, Marshall!" Robin said, angrily. Marshall could see that she was at her wits end. "What's going on?"
"James found Barney the bone marrow donor. You guys, this is going to be really hard to believe but she's his Mom." He paused, looking up with a sigh. "Barney isn't really James' brother. His name isn't even Barney. The whole thing has been a lie."
"WHAT?" They all exclaimed.
"Marshall, no…" Lily clutched his arm, her voice wobbling.
"Marshall, that doesn't make any sense. That's… horrible," Ted ran his hand through his hair, making it stick up at odd angles. "How could he…? How could they deceive us? It just doesn't make sense."
Marshall tried to put his thoughts into some sort of order. He pulled the photos out of the folder on his lap, handing them around. "It makes perfect sense, but you guys have to understand the whole story. The young man in these pictures is Barney Stinson, James' real brother. He died back in 1996. According to James, he killed himself."
Robin let out a "Wow!" while Ted and Lily looked at the photos in silence.
"Then who is Barney? Our Barney?"
Marshall slid a few more papers from the folder - these ones were print outs from the research he'd been doing over the last couple of days.
"His real name is Douglas Howser. He was a kind-of boy genius. As far as I can make out, he had a complete nervous breakdown and James took him in. Over the course of a few months, he totally took on the personality of James' dead brother and James just… let him. He encouraged it," Marshall was scowling.
"Douglas Howser…" Ted shook his head, staring at the photos. "I've seen this before. Oh… the Delpino film…" He looked up, glaring at Marshall. "Barney's been- Douglas has been hiding this from us, all this time? This other life?"
"Douglas," Robin whispered, as if trying out the word. She looked stunned.
"I'm so sorry," Marshall managed to say. "I wish there was something else I could say."
"Honey, this isn't your fault," Lily said, stroking his arm.
"Perhaps I shouldn't have dug into all this? Damn my curiosity!" He said, banging his hand on his knee and making Lily jump.
"Jesus, Marshall. It's not your fault. If you hadn't, we would have found this out eventually. We would have asked James who that woman was." Lily was staring at Ted and Robin as if daring them to contradict her.
"What did James have to say for himself?" Ted asked.
Marshall closed his eyes briefly. "Seriously, dude, I think the guy's a little unhinged. He kind-of believes that Barney really is his brother! Like he's reincarnated or something. He's feeding into Barney's delusion. Doogie's delusion?"
"DOOGIE?" Robin laughed.
Marshall shrugged. "That's what his family calls him."
Ted leaned back in the sofa. "I think I want to talk to his Mom. Ask her a few questions?"
Marshall nodded. He knew they'd all have to work through this in their own way. "I'm not sure that Barney even knows what the truth is any more. I think he's had some kind of mental schism. Like, he really thinks he is James' brother. I don't know if he remembers anything about his other life."
Robin shook her head and exhaled, a long, long breath. "This is all so crazy."
Lily nodded. "We need to talk to Barney, not his Mom."
Robin tilted her head. "If he makes it through the transplant."
They all sat in silence for a minute or two.
"I just can't believe this," Ted finally broke the silence. "For months all I've been doing is hurting and worrying and helping him. And all this time he's been lying to us. He could have gotten that transplant a long time ago, when it could have helped him. Jesus, he's been playing around with his own medication because he's so-" Ted stood up suddenly. "He doesn't deserve our sympathy, guys. He's brought all this on himself!"
"Ted, sit DOWN!" Robin shouted at him. Ted gulped and obeyed. "Ted, it's Barney! I don't care about all this stuff. I don't care about his past! Except that a lot of things about him suddenly make a hell of a lot more sense. He's still our friend. You can't take away everything he's done over the past four years and re-evaluate it because of all this. He's still the same person."
"No he isn't, Robin!" Ted argued.
"Yes. He IS!" Robin was nose-to-nose with Ted now, both their expressions locked in anger.
"Stop it!" Marshall was almost on the edge of tears. "Barney's going to live! Isn't that what we all wanted twenty-four hours ago? I mean, really? Is anything more important?"
Ted bowed his head, covering his face with his hands. "I don't know. I really don't know. I think I need to know a bit more about this. About who Barney really is."
Marshall nodded. "Yep, all the info that I have is in this folder. Read it? Take your time, buddy." He patted Ted on the shoulder.
Meanwhile, Lily and Robin were exchanging worried glances. Robin slowly shook her head. "This is just… this is the weirdest thing I can imagine. Barney's literally got a real secret identity. Who knew?" She laughed.
Lily smiled sadly. "Trust him to mess things up, just as everything was finally going well for him."
Marshall held her hand and nodded.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Everything had become so fuzzy. His mom was with him and the room was raining. He was in a giant tube and then floating down the hallway. His doctor was standing over him, smiling while a giant bag of red life dripped into his chest. He was whispered words of encouragement. So fuzzy, a fog filled dream.
“Barney? Do you think you could try waking up?” Ted’s voice.
“Hey,” he whispered, lifting his head and trying to pull himself into a sitting position
“Careful,” said Ted, worriedly placing a hand on his shoulder. He was looking so serious. This must be a deathbed visit. For the first time since this all began he found himself getting tearful.
“I had a dream that I’d gotten the transplant. Everything was going to be okay and go back to normal.”
Ted gripped his hand firmly “Barney, that wasn’t a dream. You did get the transplant. You are going to be okay.”
It took almost an entire minute for the realization to dawn on him. Then a grin slowly started to grow across his face and he forced himself to sit up all the way. Barney looked around; he was in a small air tight room with all the walls made out of glass. A clean room.
“High five!” Barney held up his hand for Ted to slap. It took much more effort than it should have. He was feeling exceedingly weak, but it was to be expected now that he was lacking all of his own marrow. “This is totally going in my blog!”
“You being alive?”
“No, this awesome glass room. It would make an amazing setting for a porn movie.”
Ted chuckled but the laugh didn’t reach his eyes, one of the few parts of his face that the mask, he should have noticed earlier, wasn’t covering up. There was a lot of sadness behind them.
“Barney, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Yeah?”
Ted sighed, picking at his fingernails. Whatever it was he was stalling. “I've been talking with your mom, she seems really nice….”
His mom? What was Ted talking-? Oh God. He had a dream that his mother was here. He also had a dream about getting a transplant and-... Oh shit! Where had his marrow donation come from?!
“You’ve been lying to us. All these years you’ve been lying to us about who you are. You’re not Barney Stinson; you’re Doogie Howser, a doctor.”
No! No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no , no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! This cannot be happening.
“I don’t understand Barney. I don’t understand why you’ve been doing this. I need an explanation.”
All he could hear was the sound of hummingbird wings furiously beating in his head.
“Barney, are you okay? Can you hear me?”
Everything was crashing down. His whole world came crashing down.
Special feature:
alixzin 's Everything Leukemia Factsheet.
.
Authors: jerseystrife , alixzin and I
Rating: mild M for some unpleasant adult themes
Summary: Something is terribly wrong with Barney Stinson and his friends have all started to notice him avoiding them. When questions arise, Barney fights to keep his secrets and to keep the life he's grown comfortable with living.
Disclaimer: Sadly, none of us own either of the shows.
Note: A million thanks to roland44 for the beta.
Previous Chapters: 1| 2| 3| 4| 5| 6| 7| 8| 9| 10| 11| 12| 13| 14| 15| 16| 17|This is 18
Just as he had been doing for the past few months Ted stopped by the hospital in the morning before heading off to work. But today was different, today Barney wasn’t in his room. In fact the room was completely empty and all of his stuff was gone.
It felt like the floor was taken out from under him. The only explanation he could think of was that Barney had died in the middle of the night and they hadn’t been called yet. Or maybe his phone had been turned off. As he pulled out his cell to check for messages he vaguely registered that he was shaking and sobbing uncontrollably. His brain had gone completely numb.
“Ted?” One of the ICU nurses that he knew he should recognize approached him. “Are you okay?”
“Where’s Barney?” he choked out. “Is he-”
“Whoa Ted, take deep breaths,” she led him to the empty bed and had him sit down. “It’s okay, Barney’s fine. He was just taken down to radiation therapy a half hour ago.”
“But,” he gasped, still in the midst of a freak-out. “All of his stuff is gone from the room. Why…?”
“He’s being moved to an isolated clean room.”
Ted took a deep calming breath and wiped away the tears that were dripping down his face. This made no sense; he had a million questions.
“I-I thought Barney had decided to stop all treatment?”
The nurse suddenly grinned. “Haven’t you heard?! We’ve found him a donor! He’s in radiation to completely destroy all of his own marrow. He’ll be getting a transplant late in the afternoon.”
Ted stared at her open mouthed, already his feelings of deep panic were getting replaced with warm fuzzies. “Did you find someone from the registry?”
“No," she leaned in and whispered in a low tone, as if telling a great secret. "All I know is that it’s some close relative that his brother managed to track down.”
“Where is he? I need to go hug him.”
“I’m afraid you can’t do that. Without his marrow he's not going to have a functioning immune system. So no visitors until after the transfusion.”
“I think I can live with that,” Ted grinned now that the news had finally sunk in. “Thanks for letting me know what was going on.”
The first thing Ted did was call Robin. It was still early in the morning so the call woke her up , but this did not prevent her from shrieking and crying with him.
He called Marshall and Lily next, but to his surprise rather than screaming like Robin did when she got the news, Marshall went dead silent.
“Dude, did you hear what I just said? Barney’s getting the transfusion! He’s not going to die! I’m pretty sure the donor is that women we saw James with the other day.”
“Yeah, I…. Ted, we need to talk. Could you and Robin come over? Like right now. I need to tell you guys something really important and… Please, would you just come?”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marshall sat on the sofa, holding on to Lily's hand as if she were a storm anchor, his entire body rigid. How could he explain any of this to Ted? To Robin? All this time they'd been looking after Barney - if someone was to tell him about Barney's secret, he'd think it was some sick joke.
"None of you are going to believe this…" he began.
"Just tell us, Marshall!" Robin said, angrily. Marshall could see that she was at her wits end. "What's going on?"
"James found Barney the bone marrow donor. You guys, this is going to be really hard to believe but she's his Mom." He paused, looking up with a sigh. "Barney isn't really James' brother. His name isn't even Barney. The whole thing has been a lie."
"WHAT?" They all exclaimed.
"Marshall, no…" Lily clutched his arm, her voice wobbling.
"Marshall, that doesn't make any sense. That's… horrible," Ted ran his hand through his hair, making it stick up at odd angles. "How could he…? How could they deceive us? It just doesn't make sense."
Marshall tried to put his thoughts into some sort of order. He pulled the photos out of the folder on his lap, handing them around. "It makes perfect sense, but you guys have to understand the whole story. The young man in these pictures is Barney Stinson, James' real brother. He died back in 1996. According to James, he killed himself."
Robin let out a "Wow!" while Ted and Lily looked at the photos in silence.
"Then who is Barney? Our Barney?"
Marshall slid a few more papers from the folder - these ones were print outs from the research he'd been doing over the last couple of days.
"His real name is Douglas Howser. He was a kind-of boy genius. As far as I can make out, he had a complete nervous breakdown and James took him in. Over the course of a few months, he totally took on the personality of James' dead brother and James just… let him. He encouraged it," Marshall was scowling.
"Douglas Howser…" Ted shook his head, staring at the photos. "I've seen this before. Oh… the Delpino film…" He looked up, glaring at Marshall. "Barney's been- Douglas has been hiding this from us, all this time? This other life?"
"Douglas," Robin whispered, as if trying out the word. She looked stunned.
"I'm so sorry," Marshall managed to say. "I wish there was something else I could say."
"Honey, this isn't your fault," Lily said, stroking his arm.
"Perhaps I shouldn't have dug into all this? Damn my curiosity!" He said, banging his hand on his knee and making Lily jump.
"Jesus, Marshall. It's not your fault. If you hadn't, we would have found this out eventually. We would have asked James who that woman was." Lily was staring at Ted and Robin as if daring them to contradict her.
"What did James have to say for himself?" Ted asked.
Marshall closed his eyes briefly. "Seriously, dude, I think the guy's a little unhinged. He kind-of believes that Barney really is his brother! Like he's reincarnated or something. He's feeding into Barney's delusion. Doogie's delusion?"
"DOOGIE?" Robin laughed.
Marshall shrugged. "That's what his family calls him."
Ted leaned back in the sofa. "I think I want to talk to his Mom. Ask her a few questions?"
Marshall nodded. He knew they'd all have to work through this in their own way. "I'm not sure that Barney even knows what the truth is any more. I think he's had some kind of mental schism. Like, he really thinks he is James' brother. I don't know if he remembers anything about his other life."
Robin shook her head and exhaled, a long, long breath. "This is all so crazy."
Lily nodded. "We need to talk to Barney, not his Mom."
Robin tilted her head. "If he makes it through the transplant."
They all sat in silence for a minute or two.
"I just can't believe this," Ted finally broke the silence. "For months all I've been doing is hurting and worrying and helping him. And all this time he's been lying to us. He could have gotten that transplant a long time ago, when it could have helped him. Jesus, he's been playing around with his own medication because he's so-" Ted stood up suddenly. "He doesn't deserve our sympathy, guys. He's brought all this on himself!"
"Ted, sit DOWN!" Robin shouted at him. Ted gulped and obeyed. "Ted, it's Barney! I don't care about all this stuff. I don't care about his past! Except that a lot of things about him suddenly make a hell of a lot more sense. He's still our friend. You can't take away everything he's done over the past four years and re-evaluate it because of all this. He's still the same person."
"No he isn't, Robin!" Ted argued.
"Yes. He IS!" Robin was nose-to-nose with Ted now, both their expressions locked in anger.
"Stop it!" Marshall was almost on the edge of tears. "Barney's going to live! Isn't that what we all wanted twenty-four hours ago? I mean, really? Is anything more important?"
Ted bowed his head, covering his face with his hands. "I don't know. I really don't know. I think I need to know a bit more about this. About who Barney really is."
Marshall nodded. "Yep, all the info that I have is in this folder. Read it? Take your time, buddy." He patted Ted on the shoulder.
Meanwhile, Lily and Robin were exchanging worried glances. Robin slowly shook her head. "This is just… this is the weirdest thing I can imagine. Barney's literally got a real secret identity. Who knew?" She laughed.
Lily smiled sadly. "Trust him to mess things up, just as everything was finally going well for him."
Marshall held her hand and nodded.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Everything had become so fuzzy. His mom was with him and the room was raining. He was in a giant tube and then floating down the hallway. His doctor was standing over him, smiling while a giant bag of red life dripped into his chest. He was whispered words of encouragement. So fuzzy, a fog filled dream.
“Barney? Do you think you could try waking up?” Ted’s voice.
“Hey,” he whispered, lifting his head and trying to pull himself into a sitting position
“Careful,” said Ted, worriedly placing a hand on his shoulder. He was looking so serious. This must be a deathbed visit. For the first time since this all began he found himself getting tearful.
“I had a dream that I’d gotten the transplant. Everything was going to be okay and go back to normal.”
Ted gripped his hand firmly “Barney, that wasn’t a dream. You did get the transplant. You are going to be okay.”
It took almost an entire minute for the realization to dawn on him. Then a grin slowly started to grow across his face and he forced himself to sit up all the way. Barney looked around; he was in a small air tight room with all the walls made out of glass. A clean room.
“High five!” Barney held up his hand for Ted to slap. It took much more effort than it should have. He was feeling exceedingly weak, but it was to be expected now that he was lacking all of his own marrow. “This is totally going in my blog!”
“You being alive?”
“No, this awesome glass room. It would make an amazing setting for a porn movie.”
Ted chuckled but the laugh didn’t reach his eyes, one of the few parts of his face that the mask, he should have noticed earlier, wasn’t covering up. There was a lot of sadness behind them.
“Barney, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Yeah?”
Ted sighed, picking at his fingernails. Whatever it was he was stalling. “I've been talking with your mom, she seems really nice….”
His mom? What was Ted talking-? Oh God. He had a dream that his mother was here. He also had a dream about getting a transplant and-... Oh shit! Where had his marrow donation come from?!
“You’ve been lying to us. All these years you’ve been lying to us about who you are. You’re not Barney Stinson; you’re Doogie Howser, a doctor.”
No! No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no , no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! This cannot be happening.
“I don’t understand Barney. I don’t understand why you’ve been doing this. I need an explanation.”
All he could hear was the sound of hummingbird wings furiously beating in his head.
“Barney, are you okay? Can you hear me?”
Everything was crashing down. His whole world came crashing down.
Special feature:
alixzin 's Everything Leukemia Factsheet.
.