Okies! Part Two is now ready to post!
Thanks to LaraMoon and Saskia for their Betary Goodness, and to CapeFetish for kicking my heiny in gear on more than one occasion, and to Psychofurball who helped me deviously plot and plan a good part of this.
Some things are explained, but more questions are probably raised...
Hope you enjoy, and Part Three is currently being written up all nicey nice
**
Part Two
“Has anyone been able to get a hold of her husband?”
“No, and we haven’t been able to contact her parents, either.”
Lois could hear the voices through the slot in the door as she leaned against the wall. The room was padded, for her protection they had said. More like for their own protection. Since she had been admitted, she had done everything in her power to escape, including the incident with the plastic spork and a nurse’s hand.
They only gave her sandwiches and soup now, easily eaten with her hands or sipped from a bowl, or food precut into bite-sized pieces, or pre-mashed; anything that could be eaten with a less deadly spoon.
This was all a part of their plot, she knew. Try to trick her into believing she had been rescued at last, trick her into revealing whatever information it was that they were looking for. The only problem was that she
had no more information for them. Everything that they had wanted to know, pertaining to that ridiculous story that she had apparently started, she had already given them
“There are his parents we could contact. They’re listed as
his emergency contacts, but it’s the only thing left that I can think of.”
Lois rolled her eyes.
When she heard the slot open and the tray slid through, she eyed the tray for several moments before slowly getting up to retrieve it. She needed her strength if she was going to escape here.
The voices faded away, and she could make out the trailing sentence of plans to call her old work, to call her in-laws.
Which was ridiculous. The last time that she checked, she was still single. Happily so, too. No man to tie her down, to diminish her career in any way.
Lois hoped that her boss would be getting there soon. He would no doubt be able to straighten most of this mess out. For all of the people that she knew, her boss knew her best.
Also, if these supposed in-laws came, they would undoubtedly be able to assure the staff that no, Miss Lane was not their son’s wife.
-
Martha sighed softly as she paused outside her son’s room, leaving a plate from dinner on the floor. Before she left, she rapped her knuckles softly against the wooden door. The last thing that she wanted to do was allow him to continue in this depressed state, but nothing she or her husband said would bring their only child back from where ever it was that he hid himself in his tormented mind. The only one who might have any chance of bringing him back had been killed - and by his own hand, no less.
Reluctantly, she moved farther away from her son's room and down the creaking stairs of the old farmhouse. The phone rang twice before she heard her husband answer. She wasn’t too concerned, though, until she heard the slight rise in Jonathan’s tone.
“Martha?” he called for her. He tried to sound nonchalant, but she could hear the slight waver in his voice.
“Yes dear?” she answered with a sigh, trying not to sound weary, but knowing she failed.
“There’s someone on the phone for you.”
As she neared her husband, she tried to gauge his face, to read his expressions. He looked confused and almost afraid to hope. Reaching him, she took the phone from his hand and placed the receiver against her ear.
“This is Martha,” she answered reservedly.
The voice on the other end was unfamiliar, but the name that it had spoken was not. Her eyes widened and she reached out to grip her husband’s arm. “I’ll be there on the next flight,” she replied.
She hung up shortly after, stunned into silence.
“I don’t want to get his hopes up, Jonathan,” she said quietly after the pause. “Because if it’s not her…”
“I know, Martha,” he replied. “Go ahead; I’ll book you a flight.”
Nodding once, she leaned forward and pecked her husband on the cheek. He pulled her in for a brief bear hug before releasing her. “Bring our girl home.”
Martha nodded again before grabbing the keys to the truck.
-
Perry would later find it rather ironic that he had been thinking about finally clearing out her stuff when he got the call. The boxes, which held the belongings of one of the best reporters that he had ever had the pleasure of working with, were taking up space in the supply closet, and the supply manager had begun to complain, although quite discretely, that he was tired of tripping over the reporter’s things.
As luck would have it, he was just standing up to go take care of the issue, since he didn’t want anyone else to have to do it, when his phone rang.
That had been about a week ago, and finally today the hospital had consented to let him visit. It didn’t take long to convince the orderly to let Jimmy go as well. While he was sure that the young photographer would love nothing more than to see his friend alive again, Perry had a more selfish reason for taking the young man along. He knew that, four minutes in, if he did not have anyone with him when he went to see Lois, he would break down and cry like a little girl.
“Now Jimmy,” he started as the two headed for the elevator in the lobby. His voice was gruff. “You remember what the doctors said.”
“Right, Chief,” Jimmy replied, his own voice shaking. After a moment, he tried for a laugh, ending up with a sound that resembled a strangled chipmunk, as he attempted to make a small joke, which invariably fell flat. “As many times as that girl’s lost her memory, you would think she’d do regular backups.”
Perry rolled his eyes as he pressed the button that would lead to the eighth floor. The ride up was filled with an awkward silence from the both of them, neither man wanting to voice the fear that each had, that this person was not in fact Lois Lane. The sound of Jimmy clearing his throat seemed to reverberate through the small, enclosed space, and echoed harshly on the metal walls.
When the bell finally announced that they had reached their floor as the doors slid open, there was a collective sigh of relief from the both of them. Perry mentally noted that his ride in the hospital elevator was not nearly as pleasant and flowing as that of the Planet’s elevator, because he could not recall feeling the car stop all the way in his joints.
At the receptionist’s desk, Perry took a moment to lean against the counter, pretending that he was leafing through a pamphlet for ADD when the nurse on duty cleared her throat.
“May I help you?” she asked in a tone that implied she would much rather be at home, watching the latest episode of ‘The X-Files’, than stuck there at work.
“Yes, we’re here to see Lois Lane.”
The nurse snorted with a mixture of amusement and disdain. “Good luck. Have you had your tetanus shot?” she mumbled quietly as she sifted through a pile of folders.
“That’s our girl,” Perry grumbled to Jimmy with a hint of pride.
As the nurse came from around the counter, the chief couldn’t help but notice the gauzy bandage secured over her right hand. “Hazards of the job?”
The nurse chortled. “Sporking incident,” she replied, as though she was in on a private joke that no one else knew about.
She led them to a small room where a male nurse was standing guard He had an intimidating air about him and his shoulders reached at just under six feet. However, his credibility as an emotionless cyborg was diminished when another patient ambled past.
“Hi Billy,” the young woman said, her voice as soft as a small girl’s.
Billy grinned in a way that changed him from towering brute to oversized teddy bear in two seconds flat. “Hi, Francie.”
The diminutive woman was led away by a nurse, and Billy’s expression returned to its original scowl, but the damage had already been done.
“Wait in here,” the nurse informed them. “They’ll bring down Miss Lane momentarily.”
The tall male nurse’s eyes widened for a moment at the mention of the reporter’s name, and for a moment he shuffled in place.
“Don’t worry, son,” Perry said with a kindly slap on the man’s arm. “Her bark’s worse than her bite. Reminds me of the time that Elvis was in the hospital for a bad bout of food poisoning. You see, son, Elvis was in quite a state at the time, and everyone thought that maybe he was possessed. He would rant and rave at the staff, threaten the doctors, even considered suing the establishment for malpractice. What they found out later was that the fever he had, which was around one-oh-five, had sent him into a delusional state and he thought that they were all aliens trying to steal his vocal box. Of course, after the fever came down and he was feeling better, he put on a little show for the kids.”
Jimmy and the two nurses stared at White for a moment. “Chief, are all your Elvis anecdotes true, or do you sometimes make them up?”
The nurse snorted once more before heading down the hall.
Alone, Jimmy and Perry took their seats in the sterile room, the light bouncing off the white walls, creating a blinding din.
“I feel like I’m in an interrogation room,” Jimmy muttered as he sat down in a rather uncomfortable chair. He fidgeted for a few moments in a futile attempt to get comfortable.
Perry picked up a tattered magazine from the table between them, noted that it was two years out of date, and began to flip idly through the pages. “At least there it’s not quite as intimidating.”
Several moments passed by with only the sound of rustling pages and squeaking chair limbs before the door opened.
“Stop your fussing, child! We’re there already.” The now disgruntled nurse entered with a dark scowl on her face.
“If I were fussing, I’d have done the same thing to your other hand!” The achingly familiar voice, with the same temper that both men knew so well, floated through the doorway before being followed by the voice’s owner.
The magazine was flung back onto the table as Perry stood up at the sight of her. The scowl on her face as the nurse left, followed by the light in her eyes when she spotted her friends, removed any doubt from his mind that this was not a copy or a fake. This was the real Lois Lane.
She stood for a moment, her eyes large and unsure, as she took in both her coworkers.
“Oh, darlin’,” Perry murmured, and before he knew it, Lois had flung herself at him, hands clinging tightly to his coat.
He took a moment to just hug her, assure himself that she was really there. He came back to the present to hear that she had been speaking a mile a minute, and had apparently been doing so even before she flung herself at him. “-and they’re trying to tell me I’m married, and to that guy you just hired, no less, and everything is different, even Jimmy is different and I had to do a double take, and they say there’s something weird with my blood work and Perry what the hell is going on?”
“What’s the last thing you remember?” he asked, not wanting to pull away from her just yet.
She sniffled into his jacket, and he wondered if he would have to get the thing dry-cleaned. “I was just about to go on the space station. But they’re trying to tell me that was over five years ago!”
“That was five years ago, darlin’,” he said softly, trying to soften the blow.
She sniffled again and clung tightly to his coat. “I know. I mean,
logically I know, but it’s just so weird! I mean, five years ago is yesterday to me, but to everyone else, yesterday was five years ago! And that whole Clark thing? You just hired him, how can I be
married to him? I’m not even sure if I like him yet! No, I’m sure I don’t
really like him, he just seems too nice!
Nobody is that nice! At least not without being a serial killer or hiding a really big secret.”
Perry just let her ramble for a few more minutes until she ran out of steam. He could tell the moment she had, just after she exhaled loudly and fell silent. “Now, I know that you’re confused, honey, but I know for a fact that he isn’t a serial killer.”
She deflated a bit in his arms before stiffening in his arms. “Well then, where is he? If he’s really my husb-“ she stumbled over the word as though they were laced with arsenic. “If he really is who you say he is, then why isn’t he here? Wouldn’t he be the first person they called?”
The chief sighed. “No one hasn’t really heard from him since he quit, Lois. He took your ‘death’ harder than even I thought he would.”
Lois nodded absently, seeming unable to take in this information overload. She did what anyone else would do under the circumstances; she withdrew and changed the subject.
Pulling away from Perry, she turned to Jimmy and smiled, a little unsure. “Hey, did you change your hair or something? I hardly recognized you, you know.”
Jimmy laughed and pulled her in for a tight hug, surprising the reporter for a moment. “It’s really good to see you again, Lois.”
Lois laughed, somewhat nervously, as she awkwardly patted the young photographer on the back.
Sometime later, Jimmy sheepishly pulled away, stuffing his hands in his pockets.
“Okay, so do we have any leads on what happened to me?” Lois asked, getting down to business with a speed that would have given most people whiplash. “What was the last story I was working on? Do we know?”
“Well, I went through a few of your files,” Jimmy started as he pulled out a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. “Apparently, you were working on a story about Biomedic Industries. Does that name ring any bells?”
Lois thought about it for a second before shaking her head. “Not really. Was there anything else?”
Before either man could respond, there was a knock at the door before the nurse poked her head in. “Seems like you’re a popular woman today, Miss Lane.” Through the crack, Perry could see the nervous face of Martha Kent, wringing her hands as she tried to peek over the nurse’s shoulder.
-end Part Two
