Kintsugi

Chapter 16

"Mama! No! I don't want to stay here. The nuns are scary! Why don't you want me? I'm sorry! I'm sorry," the child screamed, his small voice echoing off of the brick walls and high ceiling.

"Forrest...I mean John. Honey, a bad man is after you. He wants to take you away from me," his mother cried. "If you don stay here-if I don't hide you...he's going to get you. I'll visit. I promise you, I'll visit you as often as I can."

"I'm scared, Mama. I'm scared..." he cried, clutching at her fur coat in desperation as one of the nuns began to pull him away from her. "Mama!"

"I'm sorry, baby. I love you so much, and I'm sorry..." she said, standing alone in the cavernous hallway watching her screaming child being taken away. "I'm so sorry," she whispered.

John awoke with a start, jerking from his sleep with a jolt, and staring at the ceiling while he tried to catch his breath. It took him several moments to process where he was, and who he was with.

Marlena's soft palm smoothed over John's chest, and she whispered in reassuring tones, "John? Hey, come on...John..."

"I hear you, Doc. Your voice is the most beautiful sound in the world to me," he said, rolling over to face her in the dark.

"Was it a nightmare?"

"Kind of...it was dream, but it was also a memory. A memory of when I was Forrest Alamian," John whispered. He took her hands in his, pulling them up to his mouth, and kissing her knuckles.

"The journal could likely trigger memories that weren't present before. Do you want to talk about it?" she asked him.

"It's not much. My mother, well the woman I thought was my mother, Philomena Alamain, she was leaving me at a Catholic boarding school. I begged her not to," he said. "I asked her why she didn't love me. I thought I had done something to make her leave me there."

"Oh, John," Marlena whispered, as her heart felt pain for the child he had been. He had lost the only family he had ever know at the age of six, and now he was having memories of that loss. "No child should ever have to feel that kind of loss," she told him. Her fingers made their way softly around his jaw, touching his ear, and trailing down his neck.

"She told me that a bad man wanted to take me away," John mumbled, deep in thought. He looked to Marlena suddenly, saying, "Sending me away, when she faked my death as a child...she was hiding me from Stefano, Doc. It all makes sense, even the name change. In my dream...she called me Forrest, but then she corrected herself, and called me John."

"Why would she go back to calling you your birth name?" Marlena wondered.

"Maybe she thought Stefano would assume she wouldn't use that name. It might make it harder to find me, using a name that would be so obvious, he would dismiss it out of hand. Or, maybe Stefano never told her, and she just used the name of John, because it's so common?" He said, thinking out loud.

"We can look at the journal again today, in more detail," she said, casually running her fingers through the hair on his chest.

"Doc, I swear to G-d, I don't know what I would do without you," John said, using his fingers to softly tuck a stray piece of hair behind her ear. "For the last ten years you have been my rock when it comes to learning about my past. I was so lost, and broken when I met you."

"Kintsugi..." she mumbled.

"What?" he asked her, since he had missed what she said.

"I know this really smart, sexy man, who told me about kintsugi pottery...when I was so low I thought I might never be whole again. It applies here I believe," she whispered, laying her face on his chest, and gently smoothing her palm over his skin. "John, we're all broken in some shape or form, and we all struggle to put ourselves back together after trauma. You helped me heal after the possession. You're still helping me heal. I'm going to help you now."