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Best and the Brighest
by Karen
(Dead Zone) belongs to USA Network Television and all other producers and
distributors, and none of the characters belong to me, etc. Written for scifiroots' amnesia
challenge and kiene's darkside's request in Fic on Demand.
"The Best and Brightest" by Karen
Johnny woke up with one his usual headaches, refusing to take any kind of medication to
alleviate the dull buzzing sound and the dull ache behind his eyes. He's had enough head
aches to know the warning signs of a portending vision.
In the landscape of his mind's eye Johnny stand atop the summit of a steep hill. The sky
above his head is heavy with dark swathes of cloudbank. Almost directly below his lofty
perch dense green woodland is lined with evergreen trees.
The sky opens up, and the rain comes pouring down, and in a detached part of his mind
Johnny realizes that its one of those summer lightning storms, the kind that are fierce and
awesome to behold, but hardly ever last very long.
Pulled up alongside a deserted country road is a beat up pickup, stalled by the shoulder
while a disheveled and highly irate Sheriff Walt Bannerman curse fluidly. Applying the
kind of logic that usually accompanies such of his precognitive visions Johnny wants to
shout out to the other man to find shelter, because a big storm is heading his way.
However, his voice is eerily silent, as he watches a stroke of lightning lance down and hit
the pickup, ricochet off of the highly conductive metal, and hit Walt Bannerman squarely
in the chest, knocking him a good five feet or more backwards towards the tree line.
Walt's hair stands on end as he staggers to his feet, dazed but otherwise unharmed.
When he comes out of his trance vision, for lack of a better word, Johnny realizes that he
never left the room, never actually was in the vicinity of where he has witnessed his best
friend, Walt Bannerman, struck by lightning.
The sheets at the foot of his bed are bunched up, tangled, and half on and half off the bed
He bolts upright, rubbing his temples and wondering where he is and what has happened
to him.
In his peripheral vision Johhny realizes that nearby is a white-garbed figure holding a
clipboard and a thermometer in hand, waiting for him to wake up. He turns his head to
take in his immediate surroundings and realizes that he is not in his own room, the
windows to the east look out on a crisp, cold Maine winter, he remembers that much of
the past 48 hours. However, the walls are papered in alternating patterns of pastels, the
floor is tiled, and he realizes with some dismay that he is in a hospital room.
"Back with us so soon?" the male doctor asked; as he bent forward to rest a cold
stethoscope on Johnny's neck and then went on to check the rest of his patient's vital
signs. With that task complete the doctor sets it aside.
"Where am I?"
"In a hospital, son," the doctor replies, "I'm Doctor Ruben Lyndale, and you're in the
trauma ward of the Banglor, Maine hospital. You've suffered a nasty knock to the head,
but luckily nothing is damaged beyond repair. Do you remember anything?"
"The last thing I remember was the empty box of pizza I had for dinner the other night."
"Are you hungry, thirsty?"
"I guess so, but I'm not wild about hospital food. How did I get here?"
"There was an accident, one of your neighbors called 911 and you were brought in
shortly afterwards. You've been asleep for quite a while now, how are you feeling?'
"Lousy. Johnny blinks, shaking his head to clear it of the inevitable cobwebs, trying to
summon the required puppet strings in his mind to recall events of the past twelve hours.
All he can come up with is a big gray blur, and it is irritating the hell out of him. He tells
the stubborn part of his mind that he should be able to remember something like this,
'Damn it!' he thinks. "Why can't I remember?" he says aloud.
"Please try and relax, I'll need to run a few more tests in order to be certain, but my initial
diagnosis is that a part of your short term memory is gone."
"Gone?" Johnny clenches his fists around a handful of the sheets on his bed. "What do
you mean by gone?"
"As in not there, but there's no need to fret. It might just be caused by the trauma you
suffered to the head. It probably is only temporary." Lyndale said, bending down to
glance at Johnny's medical chart. "I see you've had a prior history of trauma to the head
Mr. Smith, I'll have to take that into consideration.
"Smith?
"Your name, Johnny Smith."
"Oh, I guess that's okay then, doc. But keep my informed huh, I wouldn't want to miss
out on anything."
"Now we're making progress." Lyndale smiled encouragingly and then left the room to
make his rounds and check up on a few things.
It took the better part of a week to locate any next of kin of Johnny Smith, and having to
be the one to inform her of Mr. Smith's amnesia.
Doctor Ruben Lyndale sits behind his desk with Vera Smith, a stack of official
documents in a manila folder, and removes the release form.
"Mrs. Smith, thank you for coming by on such short notice. I 'm sorry for the trouble
we've put you through."
"No need to apologize, I should have come visit my son on a regular basis, I just wish it
were under better circumstances."
"So do I, Mrs. Smith, so do I. With amnesia patients it's more anyone's guess than a
science so we can't say for sure how long it will last or how severe it is."
"Yes, you mentioned that over the phone."
"I know, but humor me, I have to go over this again. You know how it is, hospital policy,
especially if I am going forward with releasing a patient, your son." Lyndale said.
"I can take him home?" Vera Smith asks.
"It might be the best way to go, surround him with familiar sights, sounds, smells; help
jog his memory as it were."
Two Weeks Later
Vera Smith had tried and retried all of the various recommended therapies to bring back
her son's lost memories, to no avail. Even surrounded by the familiar surroundings of his
childhood home in Indiana did not do the trick. According to the big erasable marker
calendar, squarely mounted on the door of the quietly humming away fridge, told her it
had been two weeks.
Walt Bannerman had dropped by, on his day off from the sheriff's department, to pay a
visit and talk to Johnny. Figuring if anyone needed a friendly and familiar face, well,
then he would damn well be there for him.
The doctors had told him about Johnny's accident and resultant amnesia, and on the
phone, he had promised to do everything he could to make sure Johnny recovered as
quickly as humanly possible.
"Thanks for coming by, Walt," Sarah began, after offering him a cup of freshly brewed
coffee from the big machine percolating away on the kitchen counter. Vera Smith then
bustled over to a rack of chocolate chip cookies cooling on a baking rack, and mittens in
hand, removed a dozen on to a waiting plate, set then down on the kitchen table in front
of him, and took a seat. "I hate to see him like this. Some I feel responsible for his
condition."
Walt reaches across the expanse of the table and takes her hands in his: "Don't. There
was nothing you could have done. It's a damn difficult situation, by any consideration,
and you're doing exactly what you have to, taking care of him until he regains his
memory."
Vera nods and disentangles her hands long enough to remove her apron and the mittens.
"I know, I know, it's just hard to have to watch him stumble around the place like he's a
stranger. The doctors told me they had no way of estimating how long it would take, it
could be sudden it could be longer, but it still would be up to him."
"Well, then I wish he would get on with it."
"Walt! Vera exclaims in some indignation.
"I'm, kidding, Mrs. Smith, a little." Walt replied, then reached for one of the cookies on
the plate in front of him. "After all, look on the bright side, at least it's just his short term
memory, he could have been crippled or in a coma, so there are worse things."
"I suppose," Vera cautiously replies. "What that supposed to make me feel better?"
"Yeah, did it work?" Walt grinned.
It occurred to Walt even as he reassured Johnny's mother that perhaps the lengthy delay
in his best friend's recovery might have something to do with psychic visions dating back
to that long ago car accident. Walt cocks his head to one side, thinking the matter
through; all not all of those lost memories had been Johnny Smith's to begin with. Walt
thinks back to the incident that occurred many years ago, when they had both been
children.
Flashback
It's a cold, crisp winter day in Maine one that makes Johnny Smith, age six, eager and
somewhat anxious to get out to the ice of the local skating rink. It will be his first time
on the ice and the weight of his ice skates hang heavily over his shoulders. It's not that he
fears that the other kids will laugh at him or anything like that, after all, falling flat on his
face and making a fool of himself, it's a more unexplainable sensation. He hasn't found
the words to express what he's feeling to his parents or his best friend, Walt, so the
pressure has been building to the point where he feels he is fit to burst if something
doesn't happen and soon.
When he finally straps the final laces of the skates to his feet, and stands upright once
more, Johnny realizes that another of the boys on the rink is watching him:
It's' the boy he'd seen on a prior outing to the rink. It's the ring leader of a group of boys
Johnny had observed from a distance and admired not only for their skill in skating, and
playing ice hockey bust also for the ability to skate backwards.
Skating backwards had been part of his plan to try out on this outing.
At first the initial rush of exhilaration and adrenaline at having succeeded in his goal,
skating backward, picking up speed as he went, hearing the encouraging roar of the
onlookers, his parents among the faces in the crowd, clapping and beaming in shared
delight. It's a heady feeling, one that Johnny wishes he could somehow capture and hold
on to, its only when he detects an all but subtle undercurrent, a change in the charged
atmosphere of the crowd that he begins to doubt.
He can not stop. The roar of the crowd becomes a dull throb in the back of his skull and
the next thing he's coming up on the backboard of the skating rink's enclosure, and when
he and the obstacle make contact with an audible thud, and whoosh. The next thing
Johnny feels is a dull lump on his forehead. He reaches up to touch it and his mittened
hand come away streaked with his blood. It's only later that he realizes that the blood is
his own.
The last consciousness thought before blackness overtakes him, 'How come they never
teach you how to stop? It's a lot harder than it looks.'
Present Day
Conclusion
"Walt!" You can't go out tomorrow night!" Johnny exclaims, all but falling out of his
chair. "There's a big summer storm passing through this part of the country and you're
right in its path."
"Relax, sounds to me like some one is back in the fortune telling business, Walt
exchanged meaningful glances with Vera Smith, one that said, it appeared that Johnny
was going to be all right. "All kidding aside, do you remember anything that's happened
in the past week or so?"
"I remember a hospital and lots of kind doctors and nurses. And you making me listen to
the entire collected hits of Johnny Cash and something about you wanting to go
Graceland. Johnny slumped back into a loose-limbed relaxed posture in his chair, the
lines of his face relaxing as well as some of the tension drained out of his mind and body.
"Other than that, was anything in particular I was supposed to remember?"
"I guess we're back to normal, or as normal as things ever get for us?" Walt asks as he
rubs the grit of the road away from his eyes.
"I guess so," replies Johnny, shrugging his shoulders, "All things considered, I was more
concerned about you then I was about sudden lapse in memory."
"I hate to say this, but I sometimes wonder about the jacked up capers I get involved in
because of you," Walt grimaced and then grinned the familiar devil-may-care one that
Johnny recalled very well. "Wouldn't miss it for the world, you know?"
"Thanks, man." Johnny returned the grin, "I know that. I just need to be reminded every
once in a while."
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