"Al?"
He cracked open his eyes, not wanting to wake up but knowing he needed to in order to reassure the people he loved that he was out of the well. He was always sleepy, though, and he hoped this wouldn't be his lot now that he was back. He had a wife and children depending on him, a job he needed to get back to.
He saw Rachel, Lauren and Emma looking down at him. "Hey," he croaked, his throat feeling like gravel.
"Need some ice chips?" Rachel asked, spooning some into his mouth.
He crunched on them and got some much needed hydration. "Thank you. I feel like I can talk now."
Emma crept forward and placed a gentle hand on his cheek. "Hi, Al," she said.
"Hey, kiddo," he said, tearing up. "It's nice to see you again."
"Your cheek is scratchy."
He chuckled. "I know. I need a shave."
She beamed, her eyes huge and shining behind her thick lenses, and said, "I'm glad you're awake, now."
"Me too. Where's Logan?"
"Watching Naomi and Tosh at home because Joe's seeing his brother."
Al knew what that meant, but wouldn't let on to his teenage daughter what Joe really got up to when he left to see his brother. "Ah, yes, he does that every Sunday."
"Logan hasn't come to see you much. I think he doesn't like hospitals."
"I don't blame him."
"We talked to the doctors," Rachel said. "They said your MRI went well."
"Yes. I didn't care much for the tight fit. I guess I'm a little claustrophobic." He looked at Lauren and said, "You took off your neck brace."
She smiled, those dimples of hers popping, and said, "Yeah, I thought I'd rip the band-aid off and see. It feels pretty good. Now I'm going to see if I can get a boot for this cast and use a walking stick to get around. I hate these crutches."
"Good for you. I still can't remember much about what happened."
Lauren looked at Rachel, and Rachel cleared her throat and said, "About that. Lauren needs to talk to you in private. Emma, can I take you out of the room for a minute?"
Emma nodded and said, "Okay, but I want to see him again before we go."
"Deal."
Al watched them leave and then stared up at Lauren. "What's going on?"
She hobbled up to his bed and sat gently on the edge, holding her crutches in one hand and placing her other on his chest. "Do you remember," she asked, "when we were at Centennial Lodge, at the art auction?"
"Yeah, actually. I can't remember if we won any of the pieces we bid on."
She blinked in surprise. "Oh! Yeah, actually, we all won one or two of them, so you have something to put up in your new place. Sunny got the one with the Queensborough Bridge, can you believe it?"
"That selfish bastard," he said, chuckling. "He sees that bridge from his window every day."
"I know!" she said with exaggerated irritation. Then she cleared her throat and said, "Do you remember when you told me you loved me?"
He smiled and placed a hand over hers. "I remember. I still do, no question."
Her chin quivered. "Oh," she breathed, then leaned in to kiss him gently on the lips, and now he was in the privileged position of tasting her tears for a change. "I love you too. You have no idea how much I had to hold myself back when I saw you awake for the first time yesterday; I thought my heart would burst out of my chest."
He chuckled. "I get it. Too many people around, including my mom. We couldn't even kiss at the art auction in case the others saw us. I'm glad you don't have to hold back now."
"Me too." She wiped her eyes and said, "Okay, so, you don't remember the accident?"
"Not really. I remember it was you, me and Tosh in the car." He gasped. "Oh, Jesus, I forgot to ask about Tosh! Is he okay?"
She put a hand on his face and said, "Don't worry, my love. He has a cast on his arm, but he made out the best of all of us."
"Thank goodness," he said, sighing in relief.
"Um, I do have some bad news, though," she said, and he was horrified to see her tearing up again.
"Did someone else get hurt?" he asked. "There was just the three of us in the car, right?"
"Well, technically, yes, but there was another passenger..." She placed a hand on her belly.
Al looked at the hand, then at her, and when it finally dawned on him what she was saying, he felt his heart break. "Oh. The baby."
She sniffed and wiped her eyes. "I'm sorry."
"It's gone?"
She nodded, her face crumpling. "I don't know if it was the accident, or if I was just unlucky, but it didn't make it."
He put his hand over her hand on her belly, both of them having a moment of silence for the poor clump of cells that didn't have the chance to gestate and come to term. When he felt like he could speak again without crying, he said, "I guess the only consolation is that it happened early; if I'd seen an ultrasound of it before it was lost, I don't think I'd be able to bear it."
"Oh, sweetie, I know. We'd only just decided we would keep it, didn't we."
"I guess there is one other consolation: we don't have to keep deceiving Joe anymore."
She grimaced. "Um, about that..."
He felt his stomach drop. "He knows?"
She nodded. "They had to scrape me out while I was sedated, and they told Joe about it because he's my husband. It wasn't the way I wanted him to know, believe me."
He sighed and said, "I guess I know why he hasn't come to visit me yet. I wonder if I can live at the hospital forever."
She chuckled and asked, "What are we going to do once you're able to leave the hospital?"
"I know. I take it Joe's back home now?"
"Yes. He's in the middle of renovating the basement so Logan can have his own room. He wants Rachel and the kids to stay until you're back on your feet."
He put a hand over his face and groaned. "He's a good man, and I'm a terrible friend for cuckolding him."
"Hey, it takes two to tango, buddy, but let's just say he doesn't have the moral high ground anymore."
"Right, I heard what Emma said. He's still seeing Joanie."
She blinked in surprise. "Yes! Exactly."
Al could tell, though, that there was something else she wasn't telling him, but he didn't have the energy to press her on it. "I take it that, once I'm back on my feet, I take them with me and we move into the new place."
"I think that is the implication."
"Did Rachel tell you she's offering Agnes our place until she sorts things out with her husband?"
"Yes, and that will make things complicated if she hasn't sorted them out by the time you're able to move in."
"Yeah."
"She hasn't accepted the offer yet."
Al blinked in surprise. "Oh! Why not?"
"She doesn't want to leave her parents behind to deal with her husband if he comes around, but she doesn't want to move them, either."
Before Al could chew on that, Rachel opened the door and stuck her head in. "Did you tell him what you needed to tell him, babe?" she asked Lauren.
"You know too?" he asked Rachel.
"Of course I do. I'm sorry, for what it's worth."
"Yes. I'm sad about it, but at the same time it's probably better for everyone this way."
Rachel looked at Lauren, who shrugged and nodded, in acknowledgement if not agreement. "Do you think I can talk to my husband in private for a minute, and you can sit with Emma in the waiting room?" Rachel asked.
Lauren looked chastened by Rachel's assertion of uxorial rights. "Sure," she said, using her crutches to help herself up. "Let me know when it's okay for us to come back in."
"Will do," Rachel said. She held the door for Lauren and, when she was gone, went to Al and said, "I want to ask you about something you said yesterday."
"What's that?"
"You mentioned seeing Sam?"
"Oh, yeah." Al sat up a little. It seemed to be all he had the strength for, but he noticed he was already able to do more today than he was yesterday. "It was weird. Maybe I just had him in my head because you once described him to me. He was in his Mister Rogers guise, well, except for one time when he looked like my imaginary friend George."
Rachel brightened. "Oh, right. An elephant, yeah?" He nodded, and she continued. "What did he say to you?"
"Sometimes he was a bit of an asshole, but ultimately I think he was my brain's version of a Virgil figure, leading me through the dark wood, so to speak. I think he helped me get out of my coma."
"Really?"
"Yeah, well, him and my dad, when he wasn't also being an asshole. You know, I think I'm fortunate he didn't pay much attention to me when I was young."
Rachel thought about it for a moment. "You know, when Sam finally went away, I was almost a hundred percent convinced he was an imaginary friend just as you said. When you told me you saw him, it fucked me up."
He took her hand and said, "Now I wish I hadn't said anything. Do not make anything more of this than it is, my head repeating things back to me that were already in there."
"Except for what you told your mom."
"About Uncle Richard?"
"Yeah. She looked spooked. Do you think what you said was actually true? And if it is, how would your brain have repeated that back to you?"
Al shook his head. "I don't know. I need to talk to my mom, in private this time. I think she was really mortified yesterday, probably because you were there. I really thought it was just nonsense, that was the only reason I mentioned it at all."
She nodded thoughtfully. "I've never met your uncle. What's he like?"
Al shrugged. "Honestly, I haven't seen him a lot. Maybe that was by design, if it's really true he's my dad and they were keeping it secret."
"So, he's still around?"
"As far as I know."
"Once you're up and about, do you think... you know... you might want to see him and talk to him, just in case?"
He thought about it for a moment. "Honestly? That would be a weird conversation. His kids wouldn't be my cousins, they'd be my half-siblings."
Rachel brightened. "Al, you might have half brothers and sisters out there! They can be uncles and aunts to Emma and Logan!"
Al grimaced. "One thing at a time. First, talk to mom. If she confesses, then talk to Uncle Richard."
"Okay." She took a deep breath and said, "Did Lauren tell you anything more about what happened after the accident?"
Al shook his head. "I think she was holding something back, but I don't know what it is. Something about Joe, I think."
She blinked in surprise. "Oh! Well, I wouldn't know about that. Anyway, what I mean is what happened to you in the medical sense."
Al stared at her for a moment. "I was in a coma."
"Yes. The thing is, you healed remarkably quickly for someone with an injury like yours. The Highlander flipped, and you hit the top of your head on the ceiling as it rolled, maybe more than once. They had to drill a hole into your skull to relieve the swelling in your brain, that was why they induced the coma in the first place, so they could shut down your body's functions enough to do the necessary work and save your life."
"Jesus," he breathed. "I really could have died."
Her face crumpled, and she quickly wiped her tears before she went on. "Yeah. If you weren't already so close to Burnaby Hospital--"
"Oh, is that where I am. I didn't even know that."
She nodded and sniffed. "Anyway, the doctors were astounded at how quickly you rallied. Can I ask... did the doctors detect anything when they did your MRI?"
Al shrugged. "They didn't tell me anything, just that my brain looked like a normal, healthy brain."
"Is that the only area they scanned?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Oh. Okay. Huh."
She looked preoccupied, so he asked, "What's going on?"
Rachel thought for a moment how to answer. "Do you remember Naira Sandhu?"
Suddenly it came back to him. "There were two of them."
"Yes! Except, we discovered one was her real name, but one had changed it legally from another name."
"Oh, shit," Al breathed. "The case. We were... doing something... wait, Lauren mentioned Centennial Lodge, the art auction... drones!"
"Yes! Good job remembering."
"Wait." Al shook his head furiously.
"Don't expend too much energy on this, honey. It's okay, you don't have to worry about it."
"But... damn it, I missed out!"
"Oh, baby, it's not your fault!"
"I know, but..." He sighed in frustration. "Did it get resolved?"
She nodded. "Yeah, and it kind of has to do with you."
"Huh? Why? I've been here, stuck in my own head, haven't I?" He gasped as something else occurred to him. "Wait! Sunny! He was running for Councillor! Did he win?"
Rachel smiled tenderly at him and leaned in to kiss him. "This is why I love you, you're always thinking of others. Yes, Al, Sunny won. He hasn't officially started yet, I think it's this coming week."
"But why didn't he tell me when he saw me yesterday?"
"Because he's not a self-centred jerk, that's why. He was there to see you and welcome you back. There would have been plenty of time for him to tell you that news when you were better able to digest it. Even today you're staying awake longer than yesterday. That has to be a good sign."
"Yeah, I guess you're right."
"And anyway, now he's helping your old flame, so maybe he was a little preoccupied."
"Will you thank him for me, and tell him that once I'm a hundred percent I'll owe him a favour?"
She waved this off. "You know him. It's his mission to help women escape bad marriages."
"Do you know anything more about this husband of hers?"
"No. It's now attorney-client privilege, or whatever. Don't go wasting energy wondering about it. Now stop distracting me, I was going to tell you something else!"
He smiled at her and touched her hand. "Is it weird that I get a little turned on when you get angry at me?"
"Oh, yeah?" She looked down at the relevant area that would indicate his arousal and frowned. "I don't see anything different."
"It's intellectual stimulation."
"Still, all of you better be working by the time you get out of here. We have a lot of time to make up for."
"I'm looking forward to it."
"Uh-huh. Now, where was I? Oh, right. The other Naira Sandhu, the one that was married to Birinder."
"What about her?"
"She visited you here."
Al started. "What the fuck? Why?"
"Here's where it gets a little hazy. Lauren caught her in here, and when Naira saw she was caught she quickly hid something behind her back. We don't know what it was."
Al felt the blood drain from his face. "Was she trying to kill me?"
"We don't think so. On the contrary, we think she was trying to help you."
"How?"
"Well, after you went into your coma, Sunny was visited by the real Naira Sandhu, the one we were looking for. Remember the device, the one that looked like a tampon applicator?"
"Oh, shit, yeah! It had GPS on it! That's what drew the drones!" He gasped. "The car, it was chasing us, that's why--"
She squeezed his hand. "Yes. The accident. You remember now."
"Fuck. Those fuckers. Weren't they dirty cops, or something?"
She chuckled and shook her head. "Oh, man, Al, you slept through a shitstorm of media exposure. Naira gave all the information to a contact at the Sun, and the story went viral. RCMP operatives were secretly developing nanotechnology that could alert electronic surveillance to the location of criminals. It was an embarrassment to the force and to the government, because it was such a tiny division that no one else knew about it, or claimed not to."
"Jesus," he breathed. "That's some Orwellian police state shit."
"The thing about it, though, is Naira and Jordan were working on this technology in conjunction with Chimeronics, where they both worked in IT, Naira undercover. They had intended for the technology to be smaller and able to help regulate body function while travelling through the bloodstream."
What she said brought back another memory. "Oh, shit, Jordan. He's dead, isn't he."
She nodded sadly.
"Wait! Sunny!" he exclaimed. "What happened to his arm? I didn't even think to ask him!"
"Sweetie, you've just woken up from a coma, you're not expected to get everyone's story all at once. Sunny was shot."
"What?!"
"Yeah. He and Naira, and Joe, they went to rescue Birinder, who was being held hostage by the other Naira, whose birth name is Jasminder Bains, and the same guys who probably killed Jordan. Oddly enough, Sunny was shot protecting this Jasminder from her own co-conspirators."
"Holy shit!" he breathed. "Sunny got to be the hero after all."
Rachel chuckled. "I don't think that was what he'd envisioned. The media exposure didn't hurt him, though; in the last week before the election, the story of his involvement made him a bit of a star in municipal politics, and maybe that was what he needed to get enough votes to get a seat on Council."
Al smiled. "Good for him. He deserves it."
"So, back to the nanotechnology. We think the other Naira was trying to help you because she felt bad about what happened to you. She admitted as much to Sunny the night they rescued Birinder. After Naira left your room, Lauren checked all around you and your bed to make sure she didn't tamper with anything, and everything looked all right. Your IV was still in, your catheter..."
He flushed and cleared his throat. "Yeah, apparently I've been peeing through a tube and shitting into a diaper like a baby."
"Don't be embarrassed, Al. They did what they had to do."
"I've graduated to a bedpan, now."
"Good! Are you eating, yet?"
"They're starting me on chocolate pudding, easy to digest."
"Hey, I like chocolate pudding, it's not a bad start. Anyway, Lauren didn't see anything amiss with your tubes, but it would have been hard for her to detect a needle hole at a cursory glance."
Now Al got it. "You think Naira was hiding a syringe behind her back. Maybe filled with something, this nanotechnology you mentioned, helping regulate body functions. You think it sped my healing."
She nodded. "No one's ever reported to me that they found anything wrong in your blood work, though, and they've taken a lot of blood over the course of your time here. So, if you say there was nothing wrong in your MRI, then maybe Naira never got the chance to do anything before Lauren went in, and we have nothing to worry about."
"Huh," Al said, but he was thinking about everything he hadn't been awake for. This Naira woman could have tampered with him and he wouldn't have been able to do anything about it. What if she'd injected him with something and they just weren't able to detect it?
A knock on the door, and Emma peeked her head in. "Are you done talking?" she asked. "I want to see Al again."
They both chuckled. "Yeah, come on in," Rachel said, and Emma opened the door, not without some effort because the door was heavy and on a door closer. Lauren helped her a little and followed in after her, the two of them looking like a comedy act as they both fumbled and stumbled together until Rachel held the door for them. To Rachel's credit, she didn't laugh at them. Maybe if it had been Lauren on her own, she might have.
Al thought he should talk to Emma now, since she wanted to see him again. "So, Emma," he said. "Thank you for coming to see me even when I wasn't aware you were there."
She smiled and put a hand to the gauze on his head. "What does it look like under there?"
He chuckled. "Honestly, I don't know, but I bet it's not pretty. I bet I'll have to grow my hair back where they drilled."
"Ew!" she exclaimed, but he could tell she was intrigued. "What's this for?" she asked, touching his nasal cannula.
"It just gives me some more oxygen in my nose so I can breathe better. I probably don't need it now."
"When can you come home, Al? I miss you."
Al teared up again, amazed at how children unknowingly devastated parents with their simple declarations of love. He touched her face and said, "As soon as I possibly can, kiddo. Count on it."
Thanks for reading this far! Al has a lot of catching up to do now that he's awake, with two big revelations in one night. If you liked what you read so far, hit "Vote" to send this title up the ranks. If anything doesn't ring true about the workings of hospitals, leave a comment and let me know; I strive for authenticity.
To see how Tej deals with an unexpected new client, click on "Continue reading."