fic: waking up - [part eight].
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. In this chapter: In search of answers, Jason pays a visit to a certain biochemist. Will what he learns be enough?
[eight.]
Dr. Elena Garcia was in her lab when Jason showed up, entirely unannounced. He knocked and stood uncomfortably in the doorway as the scientist looked up from her work, frowning in confusion. Her brow uncreased as she took in his appearance, smoothing into something more like shock.
“Can it be?” she asked, hurrying over. “You are our John Doe?”
“I go by Jason, now,” he said, fiddling with the cuff of his sleeve. “Jason du Lac.”
“du Lac?” She raised an eyebrow. “How very Arthurian.”
“Yeah, it’s-”
“A long story?” She asked, and finally smiled. “I have time.”
*
Jason was very, very tired of talking by the time he finished recounting his history to Dr. Garcia. He hadn’t really had to explain his convoluted circumstances in full like this before, and now that he’d done it several times in a single day, he was exhausted.
For her part, Dr. Garcia was an excellent listener, though she too appeared exhausted - and deeply sad - by the time he finished.
“I am almost certain that your woman at the fountain was my former student,” she told him, wiping the sleeve of her lab coat across her glistening eyes. Uncomfortable, he shifted on his stool. He wasn’t used to people crying in front of him. “I am very sorry to hear of her passing.”
He nodded, then waited a beat, hoping it was an appropriate length of time to pause. “So, you know who she was?” he asked awkwardly.
Garcia laughed, somewhat bitterly. “I knew what she called herself. I think I know what kind of person she was. But who she truly was? I am not certain.”
Jason waited again, hoping she would go on. The woman appeared to gather herself, then finally continued. “I knew her as Amanda Jensen, but I don’t think that was the name she was given at birth. She was studying for her biochemistry PhD at my previous university, where she was the most promising doctoral student I had ever worked with. I was her advisor for four years before- well, before everything imploded.”
“Imploded?” Jason asked. The name Amanda Jensen hadn’t jogged any recognition, but neither had anything else in the past four months. He needed to learn more.
“Amanda was very secretive. I didn’t know where she grew up, or anything about her family. Only that she had cut ties with them when she started undergrad. But she did talk about her fiancé - he was a surgical resident at the same hospital, and she was head over heels for him. But in April - this was almost a year and half ago - tragedy struck. Her fiancé was killed. Officially, it was a home invasion turned deadly, but I think there was more to it than that. Amanda, understandably, disappeared. I tried to reach out, but I didn’t hear from her for weeks. Then, in May, I got a strange message from her. She told me my life and research were in danger and that I needed to leave Boston immediately. I was hesitant. But she begged me, and there was an opportunity and funding in Buffalo. So I came here.”
Jason nodded slowly. Choi thought the woman had been on the run - this all added up, so far. “Did she explain why?”
Garcia shook her head. “She told me it wasn’t safe to explain. She disappeared for months - I called her, urging her to continue her research, but heard nothing. Then she called me out of the blue, just before she turned up here with you, and said she needed access to my lab. She wouldn’t answer any questions, or tell me what she was working on. She only told me it wasn’t safe for me to know anything, and that she was sorry for putting me at risk by coming here.”
“So did you give her access?”
“I did. I think she was continuing our research, but- Jason, I am sorry to tell you this, but we were working on a drug that would induce selective amnesia by targeting memory retrieval in the brain.”
Involuntarily, Jason’s jaw dropped. Of all the things that he’d learned thus far today, this was the most startling. Neither he nor Dr. Stillman had given much consideration to the possibility that his amnesia could have been caused by anything other than physical or psychological trauma. A pharmacological origin could explain why thus far, nothing had triggered any personal recollection. And maybe, just maybe, there was a way to reverse it.
Dr. Garcia sighed gravely. “Our goal was to help patients with severe PTSD and other memory-related trauma. If we could target the specific memories and erase or mitigate them, we might be able to improve those patients’ quality of life.”
Jason ran through possibilities in his head. “Does the drug induce neuron death or signal disruption? Or does it target specific areas of the brain? The hippocampus, or the amygdala...” He trailed off as he pictured the brain, all its beautiful whorls and structures, that tangled mass of gray spaghetti that made human beings what they were. Or in his case, took that away.
Garcia smiled at him sadly. “You know the brain, then.”
He nodded. “The only thing I’m absolutely sure of is that I was- am a neurosurgeon. I just can’t prove it to anybody without an identity.”
“I’m sorry, Jason. If Amanda went rogue - we had not even started human trials; it would have been completely unethical - but if she did administer the drug to you, there is not much that I can do. She destroyed her work before she left, and your amnesia is far more thorough than what would be produced by the drug I’m working on. I am not sure how she could have done it - but I do not doubt that she was brilliant enough to have accomplished it.”
His hopes, teetering on the verge of the summit they had torturously climbed over the past few days, lurched precipitously close to the edge. He swallowed hard.
She must have seen the anguish he was doing such a poor job of hiding. “There’s some hope, though. Our drug was not meant to erase the memories entirely, only to block their retrieval. Our aim was to do so with a scalpel, so to speak, not a blunt instrument as she seems to have used, but it is likely that her work built on our research together. Your memories, your past - if your amnesia was caused by Amanda’s work, they are likely still there. You are only blocked from accessing them.”
His heart leapt, hope finding solid footing again. His fingers flexed and curled, his muscles, at least, remembering the feel of a scalpel in hand. “What’s the mechanism? Is there any way around the block?”
“Our research identified a specific neuron pathway involved in episodic memory retrieval. The goal of the drug was to disrupt transmission along the pathway by sending an enzyme to bind to the receptor site. To get around the block, we would need to administer a second enzyme that could bind to the first and catalyze its breakdown, thus freeing up the receptor again.”
It all sounded logical to Jason. “And there’s no chance that the enzyme could break down over time on its own?”
Garcia frowned. “It’s possible, though I cannot know for certain without knowing the exact structure of the enzyme she used, and that research is lost. I could spend my entire career trying to reproduce her drug and create an antidote, but I am not sure that you would want to be the guinea pig for that kind of testing. I am truly sorry, Jason. I would help you if I could.”
His hopes plummeted. It was tantalizing and torturous, to be so close to an explanation - to a solution that could give him his memory back - yet to fall short like this. He thought back, as he often did, to that last clue the dying Amanda had given him. “Does the term Lancelot mean anything to you?” he asked, recounting her final words.
“So that is why you are Jason du Lac?” Garcia asked, a faint smile appearing. Jason nodded his affirmation. “Amanda was fond of Arthurian legend; she liked to name her samples after its characters. I remember seeing vials in her cabinet labeled ‘Lancelot.’ Perhaps it is how she named the drug she gave you. But I do not think that will help us much.”
He groaned, frustrated. But she had said it was the key! There had to be a way he could use it to unlock his memories. She had helped him, but why? He’d found his way here, and yet the woman from the fountain still remained inscrutable to him.
“Dr. Garcia, do you know why she would have done this? All of this?”
The doctor’s expression grew sorrowful again. “I told you that I do not know who Amanda truly was, but I did know what kind of person she was. And I do believe that she was a good person, trying to escape from bad things in her past. She wanted you to live. She funded your care, and she fought for you to survive. She told me, when I asked why she was so invested in helping you, that you reminded her of her fiancé, and she wanted you to have a chance to live where he could not. I believe she would only have caused your amnesia if she truly believed it would help you to survive.”
She paused, drawing in a deep, shuddery breath. Jason had heard the shakiness in her voice, saw her eyes start to glisten with tears once again. He gritted his teeth and patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. She inclined her head gratefully, drew in another breath, then continued.
“Last April, she came here frantic. I tried to stop her, but she destroyed her notes and her samples. It’s possible she had copies or backups elsewhere, but those are gone with her. She told me her past had caught up to her, and that she needed to leave immediately. She promised I would be safe, and asked me to vouch for her to get you discharged into her care - she begged me to do this one last thing for her, to help you. I did. She was willing to risk her research, her credibility, possibly her life to help you - I am certain that she had your best interests at heart.”
Her voice had grown faster, her words coming quick and fierce. “I do not know where she went or what happened after that. I never saw her again. I am sorry I cannot tell you any more. I do not know where she was in the months before she reappeared here. She would not tell me anything about what happened to you, or where you came from, or who you were. But you were important to her, and I believe that she died to save you.”
The weight of it sunk into Jason more fully than it had yet. This woman, this Amanda Jensen, or whatever her real name had been - had given her life to give him a chance at survival. He owed it to her to make something of it, however he could.
“I’m very sorry for your loss, Dr. Garcia. Thank you for all of your help,” he offered, injecting the full heft of his gratitude into his words. He held out his hand.
She shook his firmly. “If you discover anything more, please keep in touch.”
“You have my word.”
He hesitated for a moment, remembering the end of his meeting with Drs. Vasek and Hawkins just an hour before. Both conversations had filled in tremendous gaps in his inexplicable history, but it wasn’t nearly enough, and there were still too many questions he had no answers for. As it stood, he was no closer to learning his identity - no closer to being able to practice medicine again - than he’d been before leaving London. He might as well keep following the meager trail of breadcrumbs to see where it led. “Amanda’s fiancé- what was his name?”
Garcia’s brow furrowed briefly, then smoothed. “It was Lance. Lance Taylor. Lancelot! I cannot believe I never made that connection.”
“I’m not… I’m not him, am I?” There were several reasons why Jason was confident he couldn’t have been Amanda Jensen’s fiancé - not the least of which was that the man was dead - but it didn’t hurt to check.
“I am afraid not,” Garcia told him, shaking her head. “I met him a few times; he looked nothing like you. But I am not surprised that you reminded Amanda of him. I can tell that you are very smart, and very determined. I can tell that you are a good man, Jason du Lac, and I think that you will find your way.”
A/N: Biochemists/neuroscientists/etc please don’t kill me! This science here is based on my simplistic knowledge and research; I'm aiming for it to be at least vaguely plausible - but like I said, by soap opera rules and thus soap opera medicine!
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. In this chapter: In search of answers, Jason pays a visit to a certain biochemist. Will what he learns be enough?
[eight.]
Dr. Elena Garcia was in her lab when Jason showed up, entirely unannounced. He knocked and stood uncomfortably in the doorway as the scientist looked up from her work, frowning in confusion. Her brow uncreased as she took in his appearance, smoothing into something more like shock.
“Can it be?” she asked, hurrying over. “You are our John Doe?”
“I go by Jason, now,” he said, fiddling with the cuff of his sleeve. “Jason du Lac.”
“du Lac?” She raised an eyebrow. “How very Arthurian.”
“Yeah, it’s-”
“A long story?” She asked, and finally smiled. “I have time.”
*
Jason was very, very tired of talking by the time he finished recounting his history to Dr. Garcia. He hadn’t really had to explain his convoluted circumstances in full like this before, and now that he’d done it several times in a single day, he was exhausted.
For her part, Dr. Garcia was an excellent listener, though she too appeared exhausted - and deeply sad - by the time he finished.
“I am almost certain that your woman at the fountain was my former student,” she told him, wiping the sleeve of her lab coat across her glistening eyes. Uncomfortable, he shifted on his stool. He wasn’t used to people crying in front of him. “I am very sorry to hear of her passing.”
He nodded, then waited a beat, hoping it was an appropriate length of time to pause. “So, you know who she was?” he asked awkwardly.
Garcia laughed, somewhat bitterly. “I knew what she called herself. I think I know what kind of person she was. But who she truly was? I am not certain.”
Jason waited again, hoping she would go on. The woman appeared to gather herself, then finally continued. “I knew her as Amanda Jensen, but I don’t think that was the name she was given at birth. She was studying for her biochemistry PhD at my previous university, where she was the most promising doctoral student I had ever worked with. I was her advisor for four years before- well, before everything imploded.”
“Imploded?” Jason asked. The name Amanda Jensen hadn’t jogged any recognition, but neither had anything else in the past four months. He needed to learn more.
“Amanda was very secretive. I didn’t know where she grew up, or anything about her family. Only that she had cut ties with them when she started undergrad. But she did talk about her fiancé - he was a surgical resident at the same hospital, and she was head over heels for him. But in April - this was almost a year and half ago - tragedy struck. Her fiancé was killed. Officially, it was a home invasion turned deadly, but I think there was more to it than that. Amanda, understandably, disappeared. I tried to reach out, but I didn’t hear from her for weeks. Then, in May, I got a strange message from her. She told me my life and research were in danger and that I needed to leave Boston immediately. I was hesitant. But she begged me, and there was an opportunity and funding in Buffalo. So I came here.”
Jason nodded slowly. Choi thought the woman had been on the run - this all added up, so far. “Did she explain why?”
Garcia shook her head. “She told me it wasn’t safe to explain. She disappeared for months - I called her, urging her to continue her research, but heard nothing. Then she called me out of the blue, just before she turned up here with you, and said she needed access to my lab. She wouldn’t answer any questions, or tell me what she was working on. She only told me it wasn’t safe for me to know anything, and that she was sorry for putting me at risk by coming here.”
“So did you give her access?”
“I did. I think she was continuing our research, but- Jason, I am sorry to tell you this, but we were working on a drug that would induce selective amnesia by targeting memory retrieval in the brain.”
Involuntarily, Jason’s jaw dropped. Of all the things that he’d learned thus far today, this was the most startling. Neither he nor Dr. Stillman had given much consideration to the possibility that his amnesia could have been caused by anything other than physical or psychological trauma. A pharmacological origin could explain why thus far, nothing had triggered any personal recollection. And maybe, just maybe, there was a way to reverse it.
Dr. Garcia sighed gravely. “Our goal was to help patients with severe PTSD and other memory-related trauma. If we could target the specific memories and erase or mitigate them, we might be able to improve those patients’ quality of life.”
Jason ran through possibilities in his head. “Does the drug induce neuron death or signal disruption? Or does it target specific areas of the brain? The hippocampus, or the amygdala...” He trailed off as he pictured the brain, all its beautiful whorls and structures, that tangled mass of gray spaghetti that made human beings what they were. Or in his case, took that away.
Garcia smiled at him sadly. “You know the brain, then.”
He nodded. “The only thing I’m absolutely sure of is that I was- am a neurosurgeon. I just can’t prove it to anybody without an identity.”
“I’m sorry, Jason. If Amanda went rogue - we had not even started human trials; it would have been completely unethical - but if she did administer the drug to you, there is not much that I can do. She destroyed her work before she left, and your amnesia is far more thorough than what would be produced by the drug I’m working on. I am not sure how she could have done it - but I do not doubt that she was brilliant enough to have accomplished it.”
His hopes, teetering on the verge of the summit they had torturously climbed over the past few days, lurched precipitously close to the edge. He swallowed hard.
She must have seen the anguish he was doing such a poor job of hiding. “There’s some hope, though. Our drug was not meant to erase the memories entirely, only to block their retrieval. Our aim was to do so with a scalpel, so to speak, not a blunt instrument as she seems to have used, but it is likely that her work built on our research together. Your memories, your past - if your amnesia was caused by Amanda’s work, they are likely still there. You are only blocked from accessing them.”
His heart leapt, hope finding solid footing again. His fingers flexed and curled, his muscles, at least, remembering the feel of a scalpel in hand. “What’s the mechanism? Is there any way around the block?”
“Our research identified a specific neuron pathway involved in episodic memory retrieval. The goal of the drug was to disrupt transmission along the pathway by sending an enzyme to bind to the receptor site. To get around the block, we would need to administer a second enzyme that could bind to the first and catalyze its breakdown, thus freeing up the receptor again.”
It all sounded logical to Jason. “And there’s no chance that the enzyme could break down over time on its own?”
Garcia frowned. “It’s possible, though I cannot know for certain without knowing the exact structure of the enzyme she used, and that research is lost. I could spend my entire career trying to reproduce her drug and create an antidote, but I am not sure that you would want to be the guinea pig for that kind of testing. I am truly sorry, Jason. I would help you if I could.”
His hopes plummeted. It was tantalizing and torturous, to be so close to an explanation - to a solution that could give him his memory back - yet to fall short like this. He thought back, as he often did, to that last clue the dying Amanda had given him. “Does the term Lancelot mean anything to you?” he asked, recounting her final words.
“So that is why you are Jason du Lac?” Garcia asked, a faint smile appearing. Jason nodded his affirmation. “Amanda was fond of Arthurian legend; she liked to name her samples after its characters. I remember seeing vials in her cabinet labeled ‘Lancelot.’ Perhaps it is how she named the drug she gave you. But I do not think that will help us much.”
He groaned, frustrated. But she had said it was the key! There had to be a way he could use it to unlock his memories. She had helped him, but why? He’d found his way here, and yet the woman from the fountain still remained inscrutable to him.
“Dr. Garcia, do you know why she would have done this? All of this?”
The doctor’s expression grew sorrowful again. “I told you that I do not know who Amanda truly was, but I did know what kind of person she was. And I do believe that she was a good person, trying to escape from bad things in her past. She wanted you to live. She funded your care, and she fought for you to survive. She told me, when I asked why she was so invested in helping you, that you reminded her of her fiancé, and she wanted you to have a chance to live where he could not. I believe she would only have caused your amnesia if she truly believed it would help you to survive.”
She paused, drawing in a deep, shuddery breath. Jason had heard the shakiness in her voice, saw her eyes start to glisten with tears once again. He gritted his teeth and patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. She inclined her head gratefully, drew in another breath, then continued.
“Last April, she came here frantic. I tried to stop her, but she destroyed her notes and her samples. It’s possible she had copies or backups elsewhere, but those are gone with her. She told me her past had caught up to her, and that she needed to leave immediately. She promised I would be safe, and asked me to vouch for her to get you discharged into her care - she begged me to do this one last thing for her, to help you. I did. She was willing to risk her research, her credibility, possibly her life to help you - I am certain that she had your best interests at heart.”
Her voice had grown faster, her words coming quick and fierce. “I do not know where she went or what happened after that. I never saw her again. I am sorry I cannot tell you any more. I do not know where she was in the months before she reappeared here. She would not tell me anything about what happened to you, or where you came from, or who you were. But you were important to her, and I believe that she died to save you.”
The weight of it sunk into Jason more fully than it had yet. This woman, this Amanda Jensen, or whatever her real name had been - had given her life to give him a chance at survival. He owed it to her to make something of it, however he could.
“I’m very sorry for your loss, Dr. Garcia. Thank you for all of your help,” he offered, injecting the full heft of his gratitude into his words. He held out his hand.
She shook his firmly. “If you discover anything more, please keep in touch.”
“You have my word.”
He hesitated for a moment, remembering the end of his meeting with Drs. Vasek and Hawkins just an hour before. Both conversations had filled in tremendous gaps in his inexplicable history, but it wasn’t nearly enough, and there were still too many questions he had no answers for. As it stood, he was no closer to learning his identity - no closer to being able to practice medicine again - than he’d been before leaving London. He might as well keep following the meager trail of breadcrumbs to see where it led. “Amanda’s fiancé- what was his name?”
Garcia’s brow furrowed briefly, then smoothed. “It was Lance. Lance Taylor. Lancelot! I cannot believe I never made that connection.”
“I’m not… I’m not him, am I?” There were several reasons why Jason was confident he couldn’t have been Amanda Jensen’s fiancé - not the least of which was that the man was dead - but it didn’t hurt to check.
“I am afraid not,” Garcia told him, shaking her head. “I met him a few times; he looked nothing like you. But I am not surprised that you reminded Amanda of him. I can tell that you are very smart, and very determined. I can tell that you are a good man, Jason du Lac, and I think that you will find your way.”
A/N: Biochemists/neuroscientists/etc please don’t kill me! This science here is based on my simplistic knowledge and research; I'm aiming for it to be at least vaguely plausible - but like I said, by soap opera rules and thus soap opera medicine!