fic: waking up - [part seven].
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: Earlier chapters can be found via my author tag. Here we go! Reid begins his travels. More notes at the end!
[seven.]
Jason’s flight to Buffalo from London was thankfully uneventful, but that didn’t stop him from learning something new about himself: apparently, he was not a fan of enclosed spaces. The journey had been tolerable but unpleasant, and he was eager to exit the aircraft.
It was strange to be in a new country. Despite his accent, London was the only place he knew; the idea of America was discomfitingly foreign. He had made a concession to Stillman’s optimism, however: he would fly back to London via Boston, and had left his departure date open-ended, in case he found reason to stay.
Jason sent a text to Buffalo’s chief of trauma, letting her know he had landed, then went to join the taxi queue.
There was a tall woman pacing outside the hospital entrance as Jason’s cab pulled up. He exited the vehicle and asked, “Dr. Vasek?”
She spun around to face him. “Jason?” He nodded, detecting a certain sense of awe on her face as she took in his. They’d spoken over the phone to set up the meeting - Jason had even sent her an awkwardly-taken selfie of his face - and while she’d thought there was a possibility, she was pragmatic about the fact that she couldn’t be entirely confident that Jason was the same as their John Doe.
Now, as they stared at each other, her face broke into a smile. “It is you,” she said, holding out her hand. Jason shook it firmly.
She looked him up and down, still grinning. “It’s incredible to see you look so well. The therapists in London have done a fantastic job. How are you feeling after the flight? Can we head to my office? Our ICU chief is looking forward to meeting you as well.”
“Sure.” He scratched awkwardly at the back of his head. “Can we… make a pit stop for some food?”
Dr. Vasek laughed. “Of course! You must be starving. We’ll detour by the cafeteria.”
As they picked up food, Jason filled her in on the past - and effectively only - four months of his life. To his relief, the doctor was pleasant enough to talk to: she asked incisive questions and gave a general impression of competency - not that he was surprised; an imbecile could hardly have saved his life as this woman surely had. Still, he’d learned that he had a far easier time with social interaction when he could respect the person with whom he was interacting, and Dr. Vasek had earned his.
The ICU doc who met them at Dr. Vasek’s office was more of the same. An older man, he shook Jason’s hand firmly, and expressed his own delight at seeing Jason so well-recovered. Perhaps Jason’s initial disparagement of Buffalo had been uncalled for; these two medical professionals, at the very least, gave him a favorable impression.
As they seated themselves, Dr. Vasek removed a file from her drawer and placed it on the desk. “This is a full record of your time as a patient here, under the name John Doe. You were admitted to our emergency department on September 7, 2010 in serious condition. To be honest, your trauma was so severe we didn’t think there was much we could do. But the woman who brought you in was adamant that we try, and so we did.”
The woman who brought him in? She had to be the same woman from London, didn’t she? Jason wanted to ask for more information, but Vasek was still talking.
“Your injuries were extensive. Multi-system trauma. It took a team of our best to stabilize you and even then, we weren’t sure whether you would make it. It was touch-and-go for several days, but signs started to improve. We were able to keep you comfortable in a medically-induced coma in the ICU. Over the next few months, once your body was strong enough, you had additional surgeries to address the less immediately life-threatening injuries. It’s all detailed in the file, though I’m guessing the dry medical information isn’t entirely what you’re after.”
Jason nodded. “Can you describe to me the circumstances under which I arrived at the hospital?”
Vasek’s brow creased with concern. “This is just one of the many odd parts of the tale.” Jason nodded, expecting as much. Vasek went on. “Our local dispatch received a direct call from a woman insisting that we send one of our Life Flight helicopters to a site outside Indianapolis.”
Indiana? Another hellish place he didn’t think he would have been caught dead in - but then, what did he know.
“Highly unusual, as I’m sure you can understand. But the caller was adamant that you be brought to this hospital, and that she would pay in full for the flight cost and the extra distance. She flew here with you. When you arrived, ER staff tried to get information on your history from her, but she claimed she didn’t know you - that she’d witnessed a car run down a homeless man crossing the street and was so horrified she decided to do anything she could to help you.”
Vasek shook her head at the story she was telling. “She said Buffalo was the best trauma center she knew of, which was why she’d insisted on getting you here. But things got even more bizarre. She - or someone - had clearly performed some advanced care on you before Life Flight arrived. The emergency staff on the helicopter said it seemed like it had been hours since your accident, and that the only reason you were still alive was that your heart rate had been slowed to an almost imperceptible rate. They couldn’t get the ECG to pick up a rhythm at all, at first, but could detect a very slow pulse manually. By the time you arrived here, it was coming back up to normal - for a trauma patient, at least - but it was peculiar enough that the ER sent a blood sample off for labs. They found a highly illegal drug in your system - a toxin, effectively - that slowed your systems down enough to keep you alive.”
Jason’s short life had been punctuated with enough shocking news that he was hardly fazed. Vasek clearly expected more of a reaction, but while the news was bizarre, well, everything about his existence thus far was bizarre. This was just another piece in the patchwork puzzle of bizarre that he had to contend with. He merely nodded, and tried to figure out what to ask next.
“Was that suspicious enough to bring about a police investigation? Were any steps taken to determine my identity?”
The other doc, Dr. Hawkins, chimed in. “When we have unidentified patients in the ICU, the police run a fingerprint check, but yours didn’t turn up any matches. With no criminal record, they lose interest. Particularly since you didn’t match any active missing persons cases. We kept checking, over the months you were here, but there were no hits. Usually, patients that fit this profile are homeless and/or have mental health challenges.” He shook his head sadly. “As you can imagine, not the sorts the system is willing to devote many resources to. Since you were under sedation, we couldn’t assess your mental status, but it seemed reasonable to assume you fit in this category - particularly since the woman who brought you in claimed you were homeless.”
Jason nodded. Similar to the situation with the cops in London, so not unexpected. “And the woman? What do you know about her?”
Vasek and Hawkins shared a glance. “Not much,” Hawkins said, as Vasek nodded pensively. “She certainly had a vested interest in your survival, though she claimed no personal relationship. She set up a fund to pay for your medical bills, but never visited - I never met her, and I’m not even sure of her name.”
Jason filled them in on the woman from the fountain in London, from his own recollection and the little that he knew from surveillance and the cab driver. Neither doctor were sure what the woman looked like, but they agreed that it seemed likely that she was the same as the woman in London. His mysterious benefactor - her motives uncertain, their relationship unknown. Had she known Jason in his previous life, or had she truly just come across him in need of help? Why would she have gone to such lengths to help him?
“So, this begs the question,” Jason began, “how the hell did I end up in London?
Hawkins winced a little. “You were here, in a coma, for nearly seven months - far longer than we would normally keep a patient sedated, but the trauma to your body and brain necessitated it. By April, we were ready to consider bringing you off sedation - your body was quite weak, but was healing well. We didn’t share this information - patient confidentiality, of course - but perhaps your benefactor found out, because around the same time, she insisted that you be transferred to a facility in the UK, or she would stop paying for your care here.”
“And you just sent me off with an anonymous madwoman?” Jason heard the pitch of his voice rise with his incredulity.
Vasek looked apologetic. “Believe me, Jason, we would have preferred for you to stay here. There are a great deal of staff at this hospital deeply invested in your survival and recovery, and would have been there every step of the way. But a patient like you costs the hospital a lot of money, and without the state involved, the administrators weren’t eager to take you on as a charity case. They deemed that the woman could only have your best interests at heart, and authorized the transfer.”
Hawkins cut in. “There was another factor. One of the hospital’s leading research scientists, a biochemist, vouched for the woman personally. It eased any ethical qualms the admins had. The woman chartered a medical flight, and you were officially discharged - that was the last any of us heard of you.”
“Until your call last week,” Vasek added. “It is truly incredible to see you alive and healthy. I’m only sorry we couldn’t have done more for you. I’m sorry we can’t tell you who you are.”
Jason shook his head firmly. “Please, that’s ridiculous. I’m deeply in your debt, Doctors. Thank you for giving me this second chance at life.”
He shook their hands, and promised to be in touch. “One last question,” he asked before he left. “What was the name of that biochemist?”
A/N: I promised this would be plausible by *soap opera* logic, so please forgive the Hollywood medicine at play here. I know this chapter is a lot of talking/info-dump/exposition, but it had to happen at some point... and there's more of it to come. Thank you for reading; please let me know if you do!
