Fic: Waking Up - [part five].
Title: Waking Up
Author: Lyrical12
Pairing: Luke and Reid
Rating: PG-13, may change
Disclaimer: Not Mine
Warnings: Angst, violence/injuries/medical descriptions
Summary: Canon complaint fix-it fic. A man wakes up in London with no memory. Who is he? How did he get there? He knows only one thing - He doesn't kill people. He saves them.
A/N: I'm back! After a lovely message from Marlies encouraging me to revisit this story, I've dived back in. I can't promise updates will be quick (I am also trying to rewatch to refresh my memory) but I intend to finish this story - even though it's been six years since I last posted, this story has always been in the back of my mind. I would really like to complete it and give Luke and Reid the closure and happy ending that they deserve. Please, please comment to let me know what you think! And if you notice any inconsistencies with the plot, please don't hesitate to point them out. My goal is to make this as logical and canon-complaint as possible (well, soap opera logic, at least!). Much love, and thank you for reading.
[You can find the previous parts by selecting my author tag!]
[five.]
Oakdale, early September.
Luke had spent the summer throwing himself into Foundation work so thoroughly that by early September, he'd almost managed to forget that the anniversary of Reid's death was coming up. Almost. The date was there in the back of his mind, an awful, ever-present reminder he tried not to give much attention to. There was too much to do - the neuro wing was nearing completion, and he was working to put together its opening ceremony.
There were two hurdles still remaining. The first, they should have anticipated. The Board of Oakdale Memorial had chosen to take a, “If we build it, they will come,” strategy towards securing the flagship neurosurgeon for their new state-of-the-art facility, but it hadn't proven to be as successful as they'd hoped.
Privately, Luke wondered if the specter of Reid was too strong. Reid Oliver, the world-famous neurosurgeon, who'd designed the wing to his precise specifications. Reid Oliver, who'd become nothing short of a legend after donating his heart to save a fellow doctor. Reid Oliver, for whom the chair the chief surgeon would hold was named, thanks to Lucinda Walsh. Reid Oliver, whose name the new neuro wing bore. Reid Oliver, whose ashes formed the cornerstone of the building itself.
Reid Oliver, who Luke missed so much he thought he'd crack open under the weight of it. It was a lot to expect anyone to live up to.
It had barely gotten easier, in the year that had gone by. Luke had thought he'd known grief, but this was so much worse; an ache that was always there if he poked at it, a gnawing loss that hurt too much to acknowledge. There were so many what-ifs, what-could-have-beens, and nothing could ease the sting of losing the life they might have had together. Luke was supposed to have spoken at the cornerstone laying ceremony for the new wing, which had doubled as a public memorial service for Reid. He'd started to speak, and promptly choked around the words, unable to get out the tribute Reid so dearly deserved. Katie had saved him, reading the speech he'd prepared, then her own. Luke had removed himself from the crowd and sobbed, wishing Reid was there to mock him for his excessive sentimentality.
Luke knew the official opening of the wing would be a similar scenario, full of tributes to Reid - Reid the surgeon, not Reid the person, but the two were of course entwined - and he wasn't ready to face the loss of Reid so publicly yet again.
As Luke was lost in these thoughts, the second hurdle to the opening of the new wing made itself known to him in the form of an email from a fellow board member: An exposé on Oakdale Memorial had been published, with publicity so negative that it could potentially derail the proceedings. A nasty reporter from Oakdale's most notorious gossip rag, who was always looking for the freshest scandal, had unearthed what she believed to be a cover-up involving a hospital employee, a hit and run, and a mysterious disappearance.
Despite the bad news, Luke was grateful for the distraction from his thoughts. Nothing helped shake him out of dwelling in sadness the way that taking action did. He made a quick phone call, then drove to the hospital.
*
Luke was already speaking as he strode into the Chief of Staff's office “John, what is this? Is there any truth to this?”
John Dixon sighed gravely. “Luke, the hospital did nothing wrong. We fully cooperated with the police. There's no scandal, just a lowlife desperate to make a story out of anything.”
“Cooperated with the police? There was an investigation? Why didn't I know about this? As a major donor and member of the board, I really should be kept informed of these things!”
“Luke,” John spoke, his voice gentler than usual, “this all happened around the time of the... accident.” There it was, that euphemism that could barely capture the toll the day had taken on Reid, on Oakdale, on Luke's life. “You were going through a terrible time. Bob was dealing with his son's transplant and his last month as Chief of Staff. We didn't want to bog you down with unnecessary stress.”
“Well, can you tell me about it now?”
John nodded. “On the day of the accident, when most of the hospital was preoccupied, a witness went to the police and claimed that she saw a woman in scrubs run over a man with her car - quite badly, according to her tale. By the time the police returned, there was no sign of the altercation, and no record of anyone with such injuries visiting the ER or any other medical establishment in the vicinity of Oakdale. We conducted an internal investigation, coupled with the police's own, and the only strange thing that turned up was that one of our employees - a young woman, who matched the witness' description - stopped showing up to work around the same time.”
Luke took this all in. John wasn't entirely wrong that he would have been far too preoccupied at the time to process any of this as it was happening. “The woman? Who was she?”
John shook his head. “That's the thing. When we looked into it, it was like she didn't exist. She went by the name Gretchen Taylor, but it wasn't her real name. The credentials that led to the hospital hiring her as a nurse were falsified. Her coworkers didn't know much about her personal life - the only thing she mentioned was a fiancé who had passed away, which she claimed was her reason for moving here. We couldn't turn up anything about her background or her family. It's all very odd.”
Gretchen? Wasn't that the timid nurse Reid had so terrorized? She'd been leading a secret life? This was all incredibly bizarre, and Luke suddenly was desperate to know more.
John, reading him all too well, laughed a little. “Luke, I can tell you're about to pounce on this the way you do all your projects. But I can assure you, the police did their due diligence. It's a dead end.”
“I'll try to take your word for it, John. Thanks for filling me in. What are we doing about this exposé?”
“We'll publish a statement, and leave it at that. Our lawyers looked into the matter thoroughly - her credentials were expertly forged; there's no reason we would have been able to tell they were fake. Her coworkers assured us that she was reasonably competent, and there's no record of any malpractice or a patient having a bad outcome due to her employment here. The hospital will be fine, Luke. The neuro wing will be fine.”
“Thanks, John, I appreciate it.” Luke shook his hand.
“Give your grandmother a call,” John said as he rose to leave. “She'd love to hear from you.”
Luke acknowledged this, but his mind was going a mile a minute. He had a different call to make.
*
Luke didn't enjoy taking advantage of the shadier channels his birth father's dealings had given him access to, but he was too curious to accept John's claim that the investigation had led to a dead end. Information was a valuable currency that Damian had known well how to trade in, and there were means of finding things out that the police couldn't pursue. There was a particular contact he knew he could trust, and so, after a stop at the police department to request the publicly available information on the investigation, he gave the contact a call.
Luke filled him in on the details, then faxed over the file. Satisfied that the contact would get back to him once he had any leads, Luke settled back down at his desk. His fingers played with the edge of a drawer he hadn't opened in months: all these mysteries had reminded him of another one - maybe it was time to examine that one too.
The black box was sitting in the drawer, exactly where it had been since the police had cleared it, with the keypad still blinking at him tantalizingly. The only thing he knew about it for certain was that it contained no explosive devices or traces of poison; otherwise, he had no clues as to its provenance or purpose. Luke ran his fingers over its edges, allowing himself to investigate it more thoroughly than he had in months. Unsurprisingly, his search didn't result in any additional insight. The object was as impenetrable as ever.
Frustrated, Luke punched at the keypad. L-U-K-E, he typed. Four more letters. R-E-I-D. He felt foolish as the box blinked red back at him. It was no use. The likelihood of guessing an eight-letter passcode was effectively zero. Whoever had sent this to him had clearly meant to torment him; what other explanation could there be?
Reid would probably be able to figure it out. He was too clever for his own good, most of the time, but Luke was certain he'd have been able to come up with some way to take a crack at this thing. He gazed at the chess piece that rested on his desk, watching over him calmly. The skill of a chess master, the hands of surgeon, the brains of a genius - what he wouldn't give to have those here with him, to help him with this impossible task, or to commiserate over its futility. Mostly, he just wanted the man, whole and present. He wanted Reid.