The physician came back in with his bag , and took one look at Lorelai sitting upright against the headboard and stopped walking for just a fraction of a second the involuntary pause of a man whose medical expectations have just been revised without warning.
"Well," he said, recovering smoothly, setting his bag on the side table and reaching for his instruments. "Earlier than anticipated." He didn't say it like a complaint.
Val had moved to the window. He stood there with his arms crossed and his back partially to the room, which was not the same as not watching. He watched her reflection in the glass, She hadn't said anything since the physician had entered. She was clearly choosing not to,
Val looked out the window.
The physician drew a small light from his bag and leaned forward, tilting her chin gently upward. She allowed it with the stiff, barely-tolerant compliance of someone who had decided the physician was not the problem in the room. He checked her pupils, one then the other, the light moving in short precise arcs, and made a small sound that communicated nothing to anyone except himself.
"Can you tell me if you're in any pain?" he asked, settling back. "Anything that feels wrong, uncomfortable, anything at all."
She shook her head slowly. Then reconsidered. "My head," she said. Her voice was still rough from earlier, worn down at the edges. "It's very heavy. Like something," She paused, and her brow creased slightly with the effort of finding the word. "Like something struck it." She sounded clueless.
Val turned from the window. He walked towards her and stopped at the foot of the bed, close enough that she registered the movement immediately, and her shoulders pulled back, spine straightening against the headboard. "You don't remember who did it?" His voice was flat.
She stiffened. Her hands tightened around the quilt.
The physician looked up from his chart, and his eyes met Val's with a calm, direct steadiness that communicated, without any particular drama, that he would very much appreciate it if the man at the foot of the bed did not speak to his patient like that while she was still in a critical condition.
Val stopped. The physician returned to Lorelai. "Can you tell me what you last remember?" he asked, his voice returning to its careful, neutral register. "Anything at all. Take your time, Anything that you remember."
She looked at him. The crease between her brows deepened. The silence stretched long enough to become its own answer,
"Your name," the physician said gently, redirecting. "Can you tell me your name?" he leaned forward. Val's eyes narrowed. She looked at him.
The effort was visible. It crossed her face openly, she was trying, genuinely trying, turning toward the question with everything available to her.
"I don't know," she said, gasping for air as she said it. The words came out barely above a whisper.
Val's jaw locked, and he stepped forward, and the words were out before he had decided to speak them. "Stop performing. I know exactly what this is, drop the act!"
She flinched back hard against the headboard, and her voice came up immediately to meet his, high and frightened and completely unsteady. "Why are you talking to me like that!" she cried out, Tears finally fell from her eyes, Her breath was coming in ragged pulls now, her hands gripping the quilt so tightly the fabric bunched in her fists. "I don't remember anything, I don't remember anything, why don't I–"
The sentence didn't finish. Her hand flew to her head, and she made a sound that wasn't a word, Both her hands were driving into her hair and curling there, fingers twisting into the roots, her whole body folding forward over the pain radiating from the wound like something had split open behind her eyes. The scream didn't stop. Val stood absolutely still.
"Everyone out." The physician's voice cut through the room He was already moving to her side, hands reaching to steady her without touching the wound. "Out, now, please…all of you —"
The corridor received him with its usual quiet. He pulled the door behind him and stood with one hand still on the handle, listening to the screaming on the other side of it, and the screaming did not subside. It rose and broke and rose again, and the sound of it moved through the door and through the wall and sat in the corridor.
Jeremy was a few feet away, stationed where Val had left him, and he turned at the sound of the door with a question already arranged on his face.
Val looked at him.
Then he shook his head once, slowly, and looked back at the door.
After a few moments, the screaming subsided, tapering into something quieter and more exhausted, and then the door opened, and the physician stepped out into the corridor.
He saw Val first. He took in the expression on Val's face,
"It appears the lady is suffering from amnesia," he said. "The impact to her head was severe enough to have caused it. I have given her some medicine so she will be asleep for a while."
Val stared at him.
"The memories may return with time," the physician continued, with the careful, measured cadence of someone laying bricks one at a time and hoping the structure holds. "In some cases, patients recover fully. In others…" He paused, choosing the next words with visible precision. "In others, recovery is partial. And in some cases, the memories don't return at all. At this stage, it is genuinely too early to say which course this will take. But please make sure not to stress her out a lot, or it might lead to severe problems in the future."
---------
The door clicked shut behind them and the room settled back into its quiet, just the steady tick of the saline drip and the shallow, even breathing of the woman in the bed, who had exhausted herself thoroughly.
Val stood in the center of the room and said nothing for a long moment. Then he turned away from the bed and pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose.
"How does this happen," he said. It wasn't a question directed at Jeremy so much as at the general situation, which had been deteriorating with impressive consistency since the previous morning. "She was supposed to wake up. She was supposed to be manageable. How does a woman go from a straight up killing machine to being absolutely clueless about everything?" He asked but Jeremy gave. no answer for a while.
Val turned. "Well? Nothing to say?"
Jeremy considered this for a moment. "Actually," he said carefully, in the tone of a man testing the temperature of something before stepping into it, "I think this might not be the worst development."
Val looked at him with an expression that invited him to explain that immediately.
"If she doesn't remember anything," Jeremy said, keeping his voice low and even, "then she'll believe what she's told. I mean..." he gestured slightly, "— the situation."
"You think she'll simply believe whatever I tell her." Val's voice carried a flat skepticism that made Jeremy pause. "A woman like her? She drove her earring into my neck the last time I saw her." he said pointing to his neck that still has the mark of the earring, gladly she was pulled away at the right time or he would not be here at all.
"Maybe not right away," Jeremy conceded. "But consider the alternative, if she had her memory, she would fight everything. Worse she would have sided with Micheal for the impression you made on her was not the best." He paused. "She doesn't have any of that now. She's a blank page, Master. And a blank page can be written on."
Val said nothing. He turned back toward the bed and looked at her, and the image that surfaced without invitation was the look on her face the second she had woken that wide, cornered, immediately hostile look, directed at him before she had even finished registering where she was. Even stripped of every memory she'd ever had, her first instinct upon seeing his face had been to pull away from him.
He breathed out slowly through his nose.
"She already looks at me like she'd rather be anywhere else," he said. "And she doesn't even know why."
"Which is exactly the problem I'm getting to." Jeremy took a careful step forward, lowering his voice further. "If you want her convinced, genuinely convinced, you need to make up a lie convincing enough to make her believe you." He held Val's gaze steadily, which took effort. "You need to keep up the performance of a husband, for her to believe."
Val's eyes narrowed slightly. "Hah! You must think i have lost my mind to treat her nicely, her of all people who wanted me dead not a month ago? You want me to put up a show with her?"
"Think about it," Jeremy pressed on, while he still had the floor. "Your father will never formally acknowledge this marriage unless he wants to. We both know that. The documents buy us time, but they don't close the door. The only thing that closes the door is if the girl herself is willing. If she stands in front of William and the rest of this family and she is not reluctant in staying by you." He paused.
The room was quiet for a moment.
"I don't think i can do that Jeremy but what i can do is make her hate Micheal enough so that she would happily run into my arms when needed," Val said. The words came out like something faintly distasteful.
Jeremy bit down on his teeth and nodded their was a silence but hen Val spoke again.
"Fine," he said at last, quietly and without enthusiasm. "But if she tries to come after me again I make no promises."
Jeremy's shoulder's relaxed a bit and he breathed out in relief.