Je me souviens

Title: Je me souviens

Summary: Faith wakes up from her coma, but revenge is the last thing on her mind.

Timeline: Who Are You? (Because, if season three would be better if I wrote it, just think how awesome season four would be!)

Disclaimer: Characters et al. belong to Joss Whedon and his army of flying monkeys. This is my way of making him money.

Author's Note: Everyone and their cousin has written this story. Dylan wrote this story, and it was awesome. I figured it was time to hop on the bandwagon, so this is my version.

Author'sond ond Note: But seriously. I am insane. Three stories. What the hell am I thinking?


Je me souviens

*

Pour un instant, j'ai oublié mon nom
Ça m'a permis enfin d'écrire cette chanson
Pour un instant, j'ai retourné mon miroir
Ça m'a permis enfin de mieux me voir
J'ai perdu mon temps à gagner du temps
J'ai besoin de me trouver une histoire à me conter.

*

She had been dreaming.

She was sure of that much. There were still images flashing through her mind. A rainstorm. A knife. Something about falling. She frowned and tried to hold on to the pieces. If she could catch them, then she could force them to make sense. But the dream faded too quickly, and she was blinking at a ceiling so white it hurt.

In fact, everything hurt. She ached. Her body felt like a lead weight. That was wrong. She heard machines beeping and hissing. The ceiling showed only blank tiles. She needed to move. There was somewhere she needed to be. She lifted her arm--God, it was heavy--and stared at it. Pale skin. An I.V. taped to her hand dripped clear fluid into a vein. She turned her head. An I.D. bracelet banded her other wrist. She squinted at it, tried to focus. Finally, the blurred letters cleared.

Faith Wilkins. No allergies. 5/20/99.

She tried to roll over onto sid side. All her muscles protested. The I.V. pinched her skin. She bit her lip and pushed herself up with one hand, until she was sitting in the bed. The room was small and bare. One bed, surrounded by machines counting out her pulse, blood pressure, and oxygen saturation. She watched the little spikes travel across the screen, blip blip blip. And thought, I'm supposed to be somewhere.

She turned her head when she heard a rattle outside the door. Her whole body tensed. She wanted to run away. She was trapped, and that was bad, because someone had been chasing her.

Hadn't they?

In her dream?

The door opened. She edged across the bed, as far as she could from the light in the hallway. A woman rolled a cart into the room. She was dressed in white, short and round, with brown hair cut in a bob. She was reading a chart, making notes with her pen, and then she looked up. She jumped nearly a foot in the air, her hand going to her chest, the chart clattering to the floor, the pen rolling under the bed.

"Oh, my dear," she said. "How you startled me!" She smoothed her uniform and picked up the chart. "You're awake," she said. "Well, of course, you already know that! Oh, I'm sorry. My name is Nurse Owens."

She nodded at Nurse Owens. She glanced at the door and wondered if she could reach it before the nurse. Escape. She swallowed.

"Well, well, this is certainly a surprise," Nurse Owens said, bustling to the bed with her cart. She bent down and retrieved her pen. "I'm afraid I was already writing down that there had been no change! Just goes to show, you can't let your assumptions lead the way, not in nursing, anyway. Poor child. Well. I guess you're hungry. I'll have to get the doctor, of course, no sense starting you on solid food and then getting my knuckles rapped for my presumption. But then, I'm not the only one, am I?" Nurse Owens smiled and reached for her wrist.

She yanked her hand away. Her eyes darted to the doorway again.

"There, be easy, I just want to take your pulse. Can't trust the machines forever, can we?" Nurse Owens touched her hand, then clasped her wrist. Her hold felt firm and gentle at the same time. "Hmm, strong, good. I told them so, of course, but doctors are too high and mighty to listen to me." She made a note in the chart. "They said that with a coma of this magnitude, we need never hope for a full recovery! But you were different. Lots of REM activity. I pointed it out on the EEG--most coma patients, you get very little in the delta region, of course. You were more asleep than unconscious. But listen to me go on. How are you feeling?"

She shrugged. "I--" The croak that emerged surprised her, and she cleared her throat. Nurse Owens shook her head and went to the sink, getting her a small paper cup of water. She drank slowly, feeling her fingers tremble around the fragile cone of the cup. Finally, she spoke again. "I'm supposed to be somewhere," she said. Her voice still sounded husky, but far more natural. She licked her lips.

Nurse Owen patted her hand. "No, dear, I'm afraid not. I'm sorry t the the one to tell you this, but you've been in Sunnydale General Hospital--the long term care ward--for eight months."

"What happened?" She looked around again. The room was incredibly clean, even for a hospital. Everything smelled like bleach on top of vomit, like there were some smells thouldouldn't be washed away. It was all too clean. No one ever visited here. There were no flowers, no get well cards. Shouldn't your friends send you flowers in the hospital? Wasn't that the right thing to do? Maybe not after eight months. Maybe not if they thought you wouldn't wake up.

"Well, dear, I'm not sure. I only transferred here five months ago. Let me see..." Nurse Owens flipped back through the pages of the chart. She looked over the nurse's shoulder aaw law line after line of the same quirky handwriting. Patient condition shows no change. No change. No change.

"It says here that you were in a motor vehicle accident. A pedestrian. Hit by a truck...Upper left quadrant wound, possibly impaled on debris...subdural haematoma. That's what's listed as the root cause of the coma." Nurse Owens peered at her. "What is the last thing that you remember?"

"I--" She hunched her shoulders. She twisted the bracelet on her wrist.

Faith Wilkins. No allergies. 5/20/99.

"I remember that--I have to be somewhere. I have to go." She turned her hips. Her legs were tangled in the covers. She pushed at them.

Nurse Owens caught her hands. "Here...Miss Wilkins...or may I call you Faith? Such a pretty name."

She tilted her head. Did she like one or the other? "Whatever."

"Faith," Nurse Owens decided. "There is no possible way I can allow you to leave the hospital." She shifted Faith's legs back onto the bed and freed the covers, then started tucking them in again, properly, with htal tal corners. "First, you are still far too ill. We would want to see a substantial recovery before you were released. Second, you appear to be suffering from amnesia. Where would you go? And, finally, you are still a minor. We can contact your next-of-kin for you, but you can't leave all by yourself."

Faith let Nurse Owens raise the bed until she was sitting more comfortably. The room was hazy in front of her eyes. She leaned back against the pillows. If she fell back asleep, would she ever wake up again? "Who are they?" she asked.

"Who are who, dear?"

Faith forced her eyes to stay open. She was much warmer with the sheets tucked around her. Everything was warmer. She didn't hurt as much, now. "My next-of-kin," she said. "Who are you going to call?"

Nurse Owens opened the chart again. "Your guardian is Richard Wilkins...oh..."

"What?" Faith wriggled upright again. "What's wrong? What's 'oh'?"

"Your guardian--he was the Mayor of Sunnydale. He, ah, he died...just shortly after you were hurt. Faith, I'm so sorry."

Faith tightened her lips. Dead. Her guardian. And there was someone chasing her, with a knife--no. That was only a dream. She shook her head. Richard Wilkins. What had she called him? Dad? Mr. Wilkins? She moved her tongue around the names. Nothing felt familiar. Was she supposed to be sad now? She wondered if she would cry if she remembered him. She reached out for memories. There was only a thick fog, and the sound of a thunderstorm. Rain, falling. Blackness. Nothing.

"Oh, but there is someone else," Nurse Owens said. "In case of emergencies...here we are. Rupert Giles. All his information appears to be current." She rested her hand on Faith's shoulder. "You must be exhausted. Don't worry. You're going to be fine. I'll make the calls, and I'll have the doctor come and check on you, just to be surell rll right?"

Faith nodded. She tried to relax. She laid back on the bed. Rupert Giles. There was still nothing, no associations. It was kind of a strange name. She pulled harder, trying to find some crack in her mind where all her memories had disappeared.

"Shh, there." Nurse Owens soothed the hair off her forehead. "Don't try too hard to remember. Amnesia is common in coma patients, and it's usually temporary. You'll be yourself in no time. Everything will be fine
Fa
Faith gave her a tentative smile. "Thank you," she said.

Nurse Owens smoothed the blankets one last time. "Sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite." She turned off the light and wheeled her cart back into the hall.

Faith closed her eyes and listened to the rattle of the wheels for what felt like a long time. Good hearing, or else she was imagining that she could still hear it...the murmur of other people's voices...the shuffle of footsteps... The weiof tof the hospital settled on her chest like chains holding her down.

She fell asleep and dreamed of escaping into the rain.

*

They let her eat soup the next morning. They'd taken the I.V. out of her arm, and all the other tubes as well. The oxygen machine was pushed into a corner. An orderly wheeled a cartful of trays into her room. He extended the table arm over her lap and placed the bowl in front of her. She held the spoon easily. The shakes in her fingers were gone. The broth was thick and warm and filling, but tasteless. When the orderly returned, she asked him if Nurse Owens was there, but he shook his head. "Late shift," he said, and offered her a bedpan.

She grimaced. "No."

"You'll be able to walk soon enough, once you've had some physio. Then we won't pamper you," he said, grinning. "Don't worry, I won't watch. I'm a professional."

She cautiously returned his grin. Was that the kind of person she was? A kidder? "Thanks. Not now."

"Okay." He pointed at the call button. "You can try the nurse's station later, but they might be busy. Don't get too impatient."

She waited until he'd left, the door clicking behind him, and then she shoved the blankets aside and swung her feet over the side of the bed. She didn't feel weak. The pain was mostly gone, except when she stretched too far. She put her weight on her feet. It was fine. She walked to her bathroom easily. She thought it made sense that a person who hadn't moved from their bed in eight months ought to need physiotherapy. Didn't muscles atrophy after that long--a use it or lose it kind of thing?

But she felt fine. Strong, even. She came back into the room and tried a few warm-ups. Hedy sdy seemed to know what to do. She went through an entire routine of stretches without thinking about it. When she finished, her body felt like it was hers again. Nothing stiff or unnatural about it, not like when she'd woken up yesterday. The quicker thump of her heart was gratifying. Her breath came evenly. She made a fist and smiled at it. She flexed a bicep and felt it with her opposite hand. Nice. Her whole body felt good, toned and hard. She was too pale, but once she got out of the hospital, the sun would take care of that.

She hopped back on the bed. How long until that guy, Rupert Giles, came to see her? She listened to the sound of people passing back and forth in front of her door. If she concentrated, she could hear the drone of a television down at one end of the hall, and call bells ringing at the nurse's station at the other end. Wicked. She hadn't been imagining it. Her hearing really was that good.

And, if she knew her hearing was good, it meant she knew that other people didn't hear as well as she did. Was that like a memory? She closed her eyes and thought about it. She knew stuff...she knew lots of stuff. How to stretch enough so that her muscles felt the pull, but not so much that she hurt herself. Shew thw the orderly had spoken with an accent--Texas. Screwing up her eyes, she imagined a map of the country. Geography. She knew that.

But when she thought about anything to do with herself, there was nothing. She knew her name and that she had no allergies. She knew she'd been in a car accident on May 20, 1999. She counted the months. That meant it was February 2000, or close enough. She'd seen her chart and knew she'd missed a birthday while she was unconscious. She was seventeen now. She knew that the guy whose name she had was dead.

Rupert Giles. She knew nothing about him at all. Would she recognise him when he walked into the room? Would she suddenly remember everything as soon as she saw him?

Waiting was boring. She knew that, certainly. She sighed and kicked her legs. The hospital gown was ugly and faded. Had they left her wearing the same one for eight months? Her head itched and her hair was greasy. She picked up a hank of it and studied the thick, black strands. Well, as long as she was meeting this guy, she might as well look good, and maybe find something to do while she waited.

She headed for the shower, stripping off the gown as she walked. She grinned as she dropped it behind her on the floor. Obviously she didn't care too much about showing off her body. She stared down at herself with a slight smile. She ran her hands down her sides and then up to cup her breasts. Everything was in the right place, that was sure. And in working order, she thought, when her nipples stiffened. But there was something--she moved her right hand over her stomach, just under her ribs. There was a ridge of scarring there, puckered pink against her pale skin. She moved closer to the mirror and watched her fingers move over the bumps and roughness, then back onto smooth skin. It didn't hurt, but it felt weird. As if it should hurt--it should hurt forever. She frowned at the girl in the mirror. She was a stranger. She didn't know anything.

In her dream about the knife, she'd been stabbed. Right there. Same place. Who had done it? The person chasing her...

Impaled on debris in the accident, Nurse Owens had said. The dreams were part of the coma. They didn't mean anything.

She ran the water as hot as she could stand it. The hospital had tiny bars of soap and a shampoo dispenser on the wall, no conditioner. Still, it felt amazing to be clean, even better than stretching. The towels were too small. She dried herself on the top sheet of her bed. She made a face at the hospital gown, but was all she had. She put it back on. Without a brush, she couldn't do anything with her hair. She finger-combed it a bit, then tucked it behind her ears.

And again, she was left with nothing to do. Would stupid Rupert Giles never get here? Long lost--what? She tried tcidecide on a relationship. Relative? Friend? She hesitated, then threw in lover? for good measure. Well, anyway, when a long lost whoever wakes up from a coma, then you went to them first thing. This was getting annoying. She paced around the room once and thought again about just leaving. Running. But that was stupid. Like Nurse Owens said, where would she run to? She didn't remember where she was or where she was supposed to go.

Staying in the room for another five minutes, on the other hand, would drive her stir-crazy.

The sound of the TV down the hall decided her. She left the sheets thrown back on the bed and went to see what was on.


*


To be continued. Hey, would I kid you about a thing like that?