Yowzah Oneshot Collection (3)

132(G)

             Storm and Memory

                  hammernikita

There was a thunderstorm that night, with the roads as treacherous as she’d ever seen them. He had insisted upon driving himself home, even though he had a terrible time paying any sort of attention to traffic in the clearest of conditions. Or, with the clearest mind- which his day of losing such a patient certainly hadn’t given him.

The accident was simple and profound; a driver crossing an unseen line, and an impact that altered worlds.

They’d called it post-traumatic amnesia; pieces of his life were there, just as they’d always been. But even some things he’d remembered felt alien; his own given name sounded so foreign to him that he refused to use it. Through some dark twist of neurology he knew that he was a doctor, although of what he couldn’t recall- he’d insisted on being addressed as such because it felt most comfortable to him.

Post-traumatic amnesia- caused by a harsh impact to the head… but that’s not all it is, River thought, as she sat just outside his hospital room. She’d learned from his cohorts at the hospital that he’d left in a mood over the death of a patient that evening, although, of course, no one could tell her much about it. The death grieved him to distraction- that much she could guess… but even in the face of their own tragedy, she certainly couldn’t push for more.

He had finally awakened from hours of surgery, and two days of unconscious recovery. She’d let the nurses do their job, and hadn’t pounced as soon as she saw his eyes open… Post-traumatic, yes… but dissociative, as well…? But when his gaze finally fell upon her by his bedside, there was no light in his eyes upon meeting hers. A nurse was present to offer help, and began to speak to him of his wife who’d been there all along, waiting for him to come back to her. He’d listened for a moment, but then began to shake- almost a near-seizure panic overtaking him, just as the nurse had finished her words of encouragement.

His… wife? It was as though the memory of her, in the act of resurfacing, threatened to breech some protective wall thrown up by his damaged brain. River was stunned.

When it happened once more early the next morning, the medical staff noted that he hadn’t reacted to the sight of her, and only seemed to become somewhat distant at the mention of her name. But he did react, powerfully and violently, when anyone tried to speak of her. It made no sense, but there was no point in pushing him further.

He didn’t recognize her when she was there before him, and it was clear that his mind could not even cope with the attempt to do so. Her presence had been swiftly explained as just another doctor who’d been part of his recovery process- a clever idea, but one that had crushed her.

River witnessed this- the man she loved regaining consciousness from an act that nearly killed him, but with his mind inexplicably thrashing with the force and weight of the very idea of her. She found herself assaulted by different, but intertwined, knowledge… terror and agony and grief, all bound together into a single, chilling fact:

He does not know who I am.

……………………………………………….

Professor River Song was a psychotherapist, although it had been years since she’d worked directly with a patient. To others, she had drifted into teaching naturally, but she knew it had been time spent with Evangelista- a particularly difficult patient- that had pushed her to explore a different path. Her careful nurturing, along with a bold and irreverent sense of leadership, made her the professor she now was. And her students, no matter how challenged or challenging, never quite made the sort of impact to break her heart.