Reunion
Chapter 4
by
D'Jean
"Well really it's just routine. We like to give every mutant that comes here a thorough medical exam. Many of them don't get access to adequate care because they're afraid of exposure." Hank tried to explain it as non-threateningly as possible. "I know your experience has to have made you a bit skittish about doctors but I can assure you that no one will hurt you or do anything to you against your will."
"It's fine, Hank. You're right, it's probably a good idea for all of us actually. I just have one condition."
"What is it, Lena?"
"I want all copies of the records so that I can destroy them personally. I don't want you keeping any of it on file."
"Lena, it's all protected. Security's very tight here."
"The best security is not having anything to find. I'm sorry, Hank. It may be paranoid but I'm not budging on this point. You can examine Annie and Caleb and me but you can't keep any files on us, no hardcopy, no softcopy."
"All right then," he sighed, "no records of any kind. Can you meet me in the examining room in a half an hour?"
"No problem."
The examination went well. Lena didn't hold back and Hank hoped it meant that she was finally coming to trust him a bit more.
"Do you always get sick to your stomach when you use your power?"
"Pretty much so. I mean not when I'm in passive mode but yeah, anytime I consciously use it, I get sick."
"How much of your power manifests without conscious control?"
"The skin thing is always on."
"So you always can see into a person by touching them?"
"Yeah, I've gotten good at ignoring it for the most part. Oh, it's also always on in the other direction."
"You mean people being able to see into you?
"Yeah but I can usually control it unless I'm stressed."
"You know it's a bit strange that you have trouble eating after exercising your powers. Most mutants get hungrier."
"Hopefully when the test results come back, you'll have a better idea of what they did to me. It's hard for me to tell because one of the first things they did was to prevent me from going into myself."
"So you can't heal yourself?"
"Not without a lot of pain, there's a negative reinforcement chain set up inside me."
"Pardon?"
"If I try to heal myself or shift my consciousness into my body, it hurts and the harder I push, the worse it gets."
"My God, why did they do that?"
"For the same reason the doctor put mines in my head. They didn't want me to be able to undo what they did. Andumit also kept me from regressing." She bit her lip and looked down at her toes.
"Regressing? Regressing into what?"
"When you have the kind of powers I do and they manifest as early as mine did, you tend to have trouble interacting with the outside world. I...I was diagnosed autistic. That's how the doctor found me. He knew what to look for. The negative reinforcement was set up to keep me from regressing back into an autistic state, going into my own body and staying there."
"I see, Lena. Tell you what, I think this is enough for today. Let me take some time to reviewuate the test results and we'll get together again soon."
"Okay." She slid off of the examining table without looking up.
"And Lena."
"Yeah."
"Thanks for putting up with all of this." He squeezed her shoulder.
"It's okay, Henry." She paused a moment before going on. "This is the first time I've ever been able to talk about it. As much as it hurts now, I think it's going to be a good thing in the end." She smiled quickly at him and left the room before the tears started falling from her eyes.
Henry did his best to pretend not to see the tears. It made him sick inside to think about what had been done to her. To think that while all those horrors had been perpetrated upon Logan, there had been a 15-year-old girl trapped in the middle of it. Now that he had scans and x-rays he could begin to see the extent of the work. He started trying to puzzle out all of the modifications.
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"Hey Jean."
"Hi Lena. How are you doing?"
"Not bad, I just got done with Hank so I thought I'd grab something to eat. I guess I'm a bit late for breakfast."
"Don't worry, there's all sorts of stuff in the fridge. Don't let me hold you back, I was just about to leave anyway."
"Don't, Jean. . . I mean. . . don't leave on my account. We should probably talk anyway."
"What about?"
"Oh about the fact that you're as nervous as a long-tail cat in a roomful of rockers every time you have to be near me." Lena looked into Jean's eyes and smiled.
"Lena, that's not true I...just..."
Lena held up her hand. "It's okay, Jean. I'm not much better around you. But I want to be. It's just not easy for me to trust telepaths and I guess it must be hard for you to trust someone you can't scan at all."
"I guess there's some truth to that." Jean's curiosity got the better of her. "Do you...did you know this from scanning me? Can you use your telepathy through your shields?"
"Well no it's just kind of obvious...uh," she stopped for a moment and looked up from the oatmeal she was stirring to focus on Jean, "I'm not telepathic at all, Jean. I guess I thought you knew that but I can see how you would interpret it that way."
"You aren't a telepath? How does your power work then? You have to at least be an empath don't you?"
"It doesn't work that way. It's more like an extended sensory input. When you touch my skin, information immediately starts streaming in but it's all just body noise it's not psychic in nature."
"I don't follow."
"You get temperature, blood flow, various chemical tags, that sort of stuff. If you know how to analyze it you can interpret it correctly, otherwise, your body just interprets it the way it would if it were happening inside you."
"So when you fed me the images of those charts?"
"That's why I picked you. As a telepath, you're more flexible when it comes to that kind of information. When I gave you the inputs, it was easy for you to envision a chart. You do the same thing all the time with psychic data."
"And when people feel what you're feeling?"
"They're actually getting the chemical signatures of my emotions and interpreting them the way they would if their body put out those chemicals."
"So when Logan kissed you"
Lena's face brightened into a blush. "He was interpreting my emotions in his way, I tried to explain it to him but I'm not sure he understood. How did you know about it?"
"Kurt mentioned it."
"That's right he walked in on us. How embarrassing, It was my fault for not realizing how overwhelming Logan would be."
Jean grinned. "Yes, Logan certainly has an effect on most women."
"Well yeah, that too, I guess, but I just meant the way he feels."
Jean stared at her blankly.
"You know what I mean, touching him is such a rush. It's better than drugs, or roller coasters or just about anything I've ever experienced." Lena enthused. "I thought that's what we were talking about?"
Lena smiled as she realized why Jean missed the point. "You still think I'm talking about sexual attraction don't you? I guess telepaths don't experience what I'm talking about."
Somewhere between hearing his own name and the phrase better than roller coasters and the term sexual attraction, Logan decided he had to know more about what was going on in the kitchen.
"Mornin' ladies. Either o' you want enlighten me as to why my ears are burning so hot?"
Lena flashed a devilish grin at Jean. "Well actually Logan, I could use your help in a demonstration over here."
"What cha need, Darlin'?" He smiled at her wolfishly.
"Just your hand. Don't worry it won't hurt." She lightly grabbed Jean's exposed wrist. "Okay, Jean, that's me. Feel it? I'm a little bit tired, there's my pulse, and there's my brain activity. Pretty normal right?"
"Yes."
"Okay, this," Lena grabbed Logan's wrist with her free hand, "is Logan."
Immediately, Jean felt all of the input she had been receiving at least quadruple. Several strong rhythms thundered in her ears and through her chest. A sense of amusement, joy in contact, barely contained energy seemed to flow through her body and the room was suddenly alive. Jean heard, smelled, saw, felt and tasted as Logan did.
"Whoa, Mama!"
The contact broke as Lena started to laugh hysterically. Then Jean joined her in her laughter. They both tried to compose themselves to explain what was going on to Logan. But the statement on his face just set them to laughing again. Finally, Lena managed to squeak out. "Don't sweat it Loge, I was just showin' Jeannie what a stud ya are." At that point, Jean actually collapsed out of her chair with laughter and it was several minutes before the two of them could calm down.
"If you two are finished, I wouldn't mind knowing exactly what the hell you were up to."
"I'm sorry, Logan." Lena brushed the hair out of her eyes. "Apparently, Kurt mentioned our little tryst in the med lab to Jean. I just wanted her to know why it was so easy to get carried away." She looked back at Jean. "See I told ya, pretty overwhelming, huh?"
"Like Christmas morning for an eight-year-old! I've never felt anything like that before."
"Yeah but the scary thing is neither have I and I've been in a lot of people. He's the alive-est living thing I've ever experienced. I don't even think you need special powers. I mean, have you ever felt his pulse? It's like a goddamned bell."
"Well yeah, I guess I noticed that. Like, if you stand next to him when it's quiet, you can actually hear his heartbeat."
"Exactly!"
"Okay, Ladies that's enough. Stop talkin' about me like I'm not in the room. It's disconcerting."
Lena's cheeks colored and she looked down at the floor. "Sorry, you're just. . . so-"
"So what, Lena?"
She looked up at him shyly, "cool, Logan." Her smile widened into a guilty grin.
"Well I guess I'm glad o' that but I'm not sure if I should stay around here and feel flattered or high-tail it for the hills. Yer both lookin' at me like I'm what's for dinner."
That snapped Jean out of her reverie. "You're right, I'm sorry, Logan." She checked her watch. "I have to get to the Professor's study, anyway. Lena," She grabbed Lena's hand, "I'm glad we talked. You were right, but I think that now it's out in the open we can work on it together. I do want us to trust each other."
"Good, Jean. That's what I was hoping to hear."
As Jean left the room, Logan went down on his haunches in front of Lena's chair so that he could look in her eyes. "Hey there, don't ya ever do that to me again. Ya made me feel like a dog and pony show." He grinned at her.
"Cry me a river, Bub. Jeeze, I can make it so women get their jollies just by touching you and you consider that somethin' bad? I know a lot of guys who'd kill for that kind of trouble." She winked at him, her eyes dancing.
"Don't need any help givin' women their jollies, Lena." His face was only inches from hers but again the signals got fuzzy and he backed away. "So, uh, do ya always feel me when you touch me?"
"Yeah but I have better control than Jean does. So I can usually keep it from getting to be too intense."
He narrowed his eyes slightly. "So what can you tell from touching me?"
She glanced down as she thought and then lifted her eyes to his. With a sly smile, she reached underneath his collar to a spot between his shoulder blades and began scratching an itch that had been bothering him all morning. He reacted to her touch the way a dog would, yowling in his throat and pushing his head into her chest. She laughed and kissed the back of his head. He pulled back to look at her again. His smile was easy and his eyes twinkled with a light that Lena knew she would never tire of seeing.
"You don't know what you do to me, Darlin'."
"Oh that wasn't nothin'. Most men aren't too far from their own inner puppy." She winked again. Then a cloud passed over her face as she began to understand what he was trying to say. She noticed how close he was to her and how intense the look in his eyes had become. She slid her chair away from him and took her bowl up to the sink. "I should probably get a move on myself. The Professor said it would be okay for me to look in on Annie. So I want to do that and I don't have the slightest idea where Cay Cay has gotten to."
He straightened up but couldn't stop looking at her. "Ya sure ya got enough to eat, Lena? You didn't even finish your oatmeal."
She was bracing herself against the sink. Rising too quickly had left her lightheaded. Then a wave of nausea hit her and she turned, panicked, towards the kitchen door. Holding her mouth she ran for the bathroom.
He ran after her, getting to the bathroom in time to hold her hair as she threw up.
"You gonna be okay, Darlin'?" He held out a cup of water that she took gratefully and used to wash the taste of vomit from her mouth.
"I...I don't know, Logan. Hank told me that I should let him know if I had trouble keeping food down."
"I'm gonna take you down to the med lab then."
"No, I'd rather just go to my room and lay down."
"Lena, you haven't kept down any solid food in more'n twenty-four hours. It would be okay if ya hadn't been though the wringer several times over in the last couple o' days but you have and yer just a little bit of a thing to begin with. Hank'll probably want to put ya on a drip."
Her face broke and she looked like a forlorn child. "I hate drips. Hate it, it reminds me of....of"
"I know what it reminds you of." He sighed and brushed the hair from her face. "But what do you want me to do, Lane? Yer just gonna get sicker. I can't let that happen. I just found you after all this time an' I'm not gonna loose you again."
She hung her head in resignation and allowed him to lead her back to the lab.
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Henry wasn't at all surprised to see her return. It was more surprising to him that she had been able to make it out in the first place. He had only let her go because he knew how much she hated the lab. After he set up the IV drip, he headed off to a conference room to consult with Dr. MacTaggart about Lena's results.
"Let me see the full body scan again, Henry."
Hank tapped a button on the control panel to re-send the image to Dr. MacTaggart on Muir Island.
"Ooch, it looks like the whole endocrine system is wired-up. Now that's fiber optic cable, you said?
"Not standard issue, Moira, but yes."
She followed the paths again and reviewed some of Hank's notes. "If I had to guess, I'd say it's some sort of electro-chemical drain. But why would anaeone want to do tha'? Eventually, it'd have to kill her."
Hank ran a hand absentmindedly through his hair. "I think that's exactly what they wanted to do. If I try to reconstruct how the rig, as Lena calls it, worked, I think she was specifically rewired so that she could only work safely in that environment. I think they wanted to make her dependent on it. A sort of virtual leash."
"Good Lord! Yuir right. If she ran away, it'd only be a matter of time before before How could they do tha' to another living being?"
"I have no idea, good doctor." He sighed heavily. "But now, you and I must devise a way of undoing the damage. I fear it won't be an easy task."
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"Lena?" Hank called into her room. "Caleb and Annaleah are here to see you. Can I send them in?"
"Certainly, get in here guys." Lena sat up in the hospital bed doing her best to look cheerful and ignore the drip tube.
"Hey Lanie. When you gonna stop goldbricking and help us move in?" Caleb teased her.
She smiled at him. "At this rate, I figure I'll be getting out as soon as you're done with the heavy stuff."
"Lena," Annie piped up, "Dr. Hank said you had something to talk to us about."
"Yeah, I do. Come on up here and sit with me, you too Cay Cay."
"Lanie, I'm too old to be sittin' up there with you."
She sighed softly. "Indulge me, you big pain the ass."
Once Caleb finally crawled up beside her, Lena put her arms around both of them and gave them a big hug. For a moment, she held them, feeling them like she was trying to drink them in, wanting to remember just this moment.
Caleb couldn't stand it any longer. "What's going on M'ija? Why are you doing this?" His statement was strained. He was afraid to hear what she had to say.
"I'm sick, M'ijo. I'm not going to get any better unless Dr. McCoy goes in and tries to fix me. But, well it's surgery and there's always some risk involved. I could die. I could end up catatonic."
"What happens if you don't have the surgery?"
"Eventually, if I keep using my powers, one of these times, it will kill me."
"So jou could go without the surgery if you didn't use your powers?"
She looked him full in the eyes and shrugged significantly.
"Jeah what am I thinkin'. Jou wouldn't last two seconds. Somebody'd get a damn hangnail and you'd wanna help them."
"You should do it, Lena. You have to." Annie told her.
"I know, Annie. I'm going to. I just wanted to talk to you guys first. You're involved in this too. We're a family, right?"
"Jou bet. Don't worry Lena. Jou gonna be fine. I think the blue guys are good with this stuff."
"I think so too. Look, I'm probably gonna pull through this just fine but If I if something happens to me, I want you two to promise me that you'll take care of each other, that you'll stay brother and sister."
"Of course, Lena. We're family. We know that."
She pulled them close to her again. "You two know I don't go for the mushy stuff and so I'm gonna say this 'cause I know I don't say if often enough and not 'cause I'm worried. I love you both so much that sometimes I think I'm gonna bust. I've never been anything but proud to call myself your sister."
Caleb couldn't bear to hear anymore. So he stopped her with a joke. "Don't believe in the mushy stuff? M'ija, jou could write greeting cards for a living!"
"I thought it was nice!" Annie's lower lip jutted out. Leave it to Cay Cay to ruin a moment, she thought.
"'Course you do. Jou still think Pokemon is cool."
"Caleb! It's okay, sweetheart, Caleb just knows it's his job to keep my feet on the ground. I think we're about done here anyway. Hank and I need to go over the pre-op stuff."
"When is the surgery?"
"How long will it take?"
"I don't know yet. I'll make sure Hank fills you in, okay?"
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He watched them file out of the room as McCoy went back in. He hadn't intended to listen in on that conversation or any of the other conversations for that matter. But he was worried about her and nothing he had heard that morning made him worry any less. That damned machine had reached a lot deeper into her than anyone realized. Getting it out and making Lena well again was going to be a tall order.
Hank and Moira had given up on the idea of yanking the whole thing out in a surgical procedure. It was just too extensive and Lena was in no shape to undergo that kind of ordeal. They had decided to remove just the first link, the network that Lena referred to as the negative feedback chain. With that gone, Lena had a fighting chance to remove the rest of the links her way. The only problem was that the first link was also what kept her from catatonia. No one was sure that she would ever regain consciousness.
Logan thought about the creepy song Jubilee used to play all the time that had the line about God having a sick sense of humor. He'd always hated that song, probably because the words rang too true to his ears. He wasn't in love with Lena, hadn't known her long enough. Was he maybe falling in love with her, he wondered? How could he not? Even tired and pale she was a real head turner. But she was so much more than that, so much spirit and so much heart and even a little touch of the devil to boot. And tomorrow he might loose her before he had a chance to know her. Not funny, God, he thought grimly. He spent the rest of the night on his Harley trying to drive fast enough to outrun his thoughts.
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The surgery took all day. Lena didn't react well to the sedatives. Her heartbeat was erratic throughout the procedure. Hank handled most of the work. Kurt assisted and Moira was patched in over a video link. Caleb, Annie and Logan kept vigil in the waiting room from 6:00 in the morning when Lena went into pre-op to 5:00 that night when she went into recovery.
"She's doing as well as can be expected. The rest of the sedatives should work their way out of her system in the next few hours. I don't know if she'll wake up right away but her vitals are good. The heartbeat is finally steady. Pulse and pressure are good. It's up to Lena now." Hank wearily took off his scrubs and ran his fingers through his hair.
"When can we go in?" Caleb was the first to ask.
"Kurt's finishing up the dressing. So we need to keep it sterile in there. Give us about a half-an-hour to get her cleaned up and into a regular room and then you can sit with her."
Her vitals got stronger throughout the night but she didn't wake up. In the morning, Logan heard some sort of rustling underneath the bandages on her back. Kurt put on gloves and uncovered the stitches. Small threads of fiber optic cable were slowly forcing their way out of her back, or being forced. Ever since the morning, Lena had been draining IV's at a rate that Kurt could hardly keep up with. Hank theorized that Lena's body was doing what came naturally now that the negative feedback chain was removed. She was healing herself, cleaning herself out.
"I know we all hoped that she'd be awake by now but I think we're still on safe ground. We just want to make sure that she knows we're here. Go ahead and talk to her, encourage her. She doesn't seem to be reactive now so you can even hold her hand. In fact, that might really help since she'll be able to feel your presence." Hank tried to sound more reassuring than he felt. "So you saying she might have trouble findin' her way back?"
"Yes, Caleb. Hopefully, she'll come back to her conscious mind as soon as she's done with repairs but she may have trouble."
"I got an idea then. Annie, jou stay here with Mr. Logan and Dr. Hank, okay? I'll be right back."
Caleb returned in a few minutes with his boom box and a handful of CD's. It took him a second to catch his breath because he had run all the way back and forth.
"H'okay, Sis. I even brought the cowboy music and if I'm willin' to listen to that crap, jou better be willin' to wake up."
"Music," Hank remembered, "that's right. Lena told me music helped but she didn't really explain how."
"It's the rhythm. It's different from all of the rhythms inside a person and it's coming from the outside. So she can get her bearings with it. Anyway, she really like music, especially this cowboy crap." He popped in Fisherman's Blues by the Waterboys and set it to play.
"That's not cowboy music." Logan corrected him.
"It's white guys with fiddles okay, Logan? Jou probably like it but I like songs I can dance to."
"You can dance to this."
"If you can't dance salsa or mambo to it, I ain't interested."
"I don't think it matters whether we like it as long as she does. Hell, I'd listen to Celine Dion if I thought it would bring her out of this."
"Really? Wow. I think you like Lanie more than I do then." He looked down at Lena. "Hear that Lena? Now you gotta wake up. We're making jokes about Celine the Yawn and jer missing all the fun."
"Hey kid, you might just be on to something." Logan focused on Lena. "Yep, her breathing's changing. I think she'll be coming out of it soon."
She woke up in the middle of Sweet Thing. As the song went into the second verse, she added her voice to it,
And I will ride my chariot down your streets and cry,
Hey it's me. I'm dynamite and I don't know why,
And you will take me in your arms again
And I will not remember that I ever felt the pain.
Nothing would have sounded sweeter to the people gathered around her bed.
"Lena!"
"Darlin'!"
"Lanie!"
"Hey there guys. Don't cha have anything better to do than watch a person sleep?"
"How are you doing, Miss Jones?"
"The truth, Henry?"
"Certainly."
"I'm starving." She smiled up at him.
"Marvelous! What can I tempt your palate with?"
"What I'd really like is a cheeseburger, french fries and a chocolate malt. I'm willing to negotiate on everything but the malt. I been thinkin' about that since last night."
Logan spoke up. "Nope."
She gave him her best pout. "I can't have a malt?"
"No, you get everything you want, no negotiations, not today. Caleb, you wanna ride shotgun?"
"I'm wit' jou, Jefe. Everybody else hungry too? My treat." Caleb waved his wallet in the air.
As Caleb took food orders, Lena's eyes traveled around the room taking in all of the people. She tried to wrap her head around everything that had happened to her and she failed. All she knew was that some miraculous twist of fate had given her a second chance. She planned to use that second chance for all it was worth.
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