AU: No One Is Lost (Sean)

[Dr. Sean Neville]

It was better, because the voices were slightly less loud when Josh touched his shoulder. “Yes,” he whispered to convey that, because nodding (and moving his head more generally) hurt given the already present and intense headache.

He trembled regardless of the other man’s touch, but it did help.

He had lost track of time since before leaving the tent initially, and so he had no idea how long had passed by the time one of the relief workers pulled up in his EMS van. He parked right near the alley, stepped out, and approached them.

“Mister Bernstein? I think you gave us a call?”

He then turned his attention to the older man, the one that Josh insisted was his missing roommate Sean Neville. The other man certainly looked unwell; in fact, he appeared to have a terrible case of the flu (if not being strung out on an illegal drug). He approached slowly, offering a friendly smile as he crouched down beside the two men. “We want to bring you back to the relief station. Are you okay with us moving you?”

“Yes.” The voice was barely audible, but he managed the single word in between tremors. He did want to go back to the relief station with them.

[Joshua Bernstein]

Josh's face melted into relief when the volunteer arrived. He had stayed by Sean's side the entire time, but this was beginning to be an uncomfortable position; his throat was parched, and he was hungry because he hadn't eaten before going to search for Sean. And, most pressing at the moment, he had to pee.

"I'm so glad you're here. I don't know how to get back on my own."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

“I’ll get you there,” the relief worker promised Josh, the gentle smile still on his lips. When they had been dispatched to Pilot Ridge to help in the aftermath of the mass amnesia event, they had been told to remain calm and welcoming no matter what. He stuck to that, because he could only imagine how scared the residents must feel to have lost their memories, their identities, and thus their very sense of self.

He then turned back to Sean and asked, “Do you think you can walk to my van? It’s only a few feet away.” He didn’t think that the older man could see it, but it was right behind him.

The older man eyed him warily but then said, “I...I think so.” Then, he added, “I need help getting up.”

The relief worker assisted him with that, and, while the older man was heavy, they were able to get him into the back. The relief worker then assisted Josh to climb up, before he shut the doors, went around to the front, slid in, and began to drive.

“We still have plenty of food and water there, and I’ll make sure that a doctor looks both of you over right away,” he promised. He could arrange that. Both men looked miserable, although the one identified as Sean looked in far worse shape.

[Joshua Bernstein]

"I don't need to see a doctor," Josh told the younger man, squeezing his legs together. "But I will need a bathroom if you have one."

He couldn't imagine a relief effort that didn't include bathrooms, but it wasn't as if he had prior experience with this. Or, if he did have prior experience with this he couldn't remember, so he may as well not have had prior experience.

"Just help Sean."

He didn't know what was wrong with his lover, but clearly something was.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

“We have plenty of those,” the relief worker promised. He kept his eyes on the road, although, every so often, he would glance into the rearview mirror so he could check on the patients.

His voice softened (which was an achievement given his gentle tone), as he assured Josh, “I will. We’ll do whatever we can.”

Fortunately, Pilot Ridge wasn’t particularly large in terms of population or land mass, and so, soon enough, they had reached the relief camp. The men had been in the front part previously, in the tents where the population had been sorted in an effort to identify as many people as possible. However, the relief worker parked near the rear, with the permanent buildings that had been converted, rather than the tents. The worked gestured with his elbow and said, “There are restrooms through there. I’m going to take your friend to the triage area, and you can meet us whenever you’re finished.”

With that, he walked around the vehicle and opened the back doors. He assisted the older man to leave, while the older man leaned heavily on him. “It’s right through here,” he promised Sean.

The older man acknowledged that with a whisper followed by a wince. Everything was so loud here, even louder than it had been downtown.

Not like he remembered from the tent at all.

[Joshua Bernstein]

Josh nodded and hobbled to the bathroom, trying not to pee on himself. Once he was relieved of his need for the bathroom he made his way to the area the volunteer had indicated he should meet him and Sean.

Worry gnawed at him; was his lover ill? Nothing in their home had indicated this was the case, but perhaps he just hadn't looked hard enough. Or maybe whatever had caused the amnesia had also made Sean sick.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

The relief worker flagged down one of the workers running the triage area, as he helped Sean onto a bed so he could lie down. He repeated the information to the other volunteer, explaining the situation and the associated name.

“We’ll see if we can pull his records,” the other volunteer promised. Maddock Hospital in the next town over had given them access to assorted medical records to help them with the relief effort. Technically, it violated HIPAA, but that paled in comparison with the potential disaster of a dialysis patient or someone with diabetes not getting the necessary treatment because they no longer remembered their health history.

As a result, the second aid worker disappeared for the computer to type in the name and try to match records.

Meanwhile, the first aid worker – the one who had driven them – disappeared into the snack area to grab two bottles of water and a few granola bars. He unwrapped one for Sean, and, upon coming back and finding Josh there as well, handed both the bars and the water bottle to him. “I’ll get your friend a blanket,” he said, before disappearing again.

Meanwhile, the older man shivered on the bed and looked up at Josh. “Nobody hears this,” he murmured.

[Joshua Bernstein]

"Hears what?" Josh asked, squinting at the other man in concern. He offered the unwrapped granola bar to his lover; despite being ravenous himself he thought the other man needed food more. He looked so miserable, and Josh didn't know whether or not he'd eaten anything all day.

At least he had the opportunity.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

“The noise,” he croaked out, before fighting back another wave of pain. The noise was so loud, but it was obvious that only he could hear it, because nobody else struggled against the suffering and the overwhelming loudness. He wanted Josh to understand what he meant when he said that he thought he was sick.

Particularly if they had lived together before the amnesia. Even if they hadn’t, at least because Josh had shown him so much kindness already. He hoped that they had been lovers before, and that Josh wasn’t mistaken. He liked the other man, and the thought of a job, a home, a lover...it was more than he had expected.

He stared at the proffered granola bar before reaching for it hesitantly. “Are you sure you don’t want it?” He asked around a soft groan of pain.

Truly, he was hungry, because he hadn’t eaten at all today, and he hadn’t eaten anything but a bar the day before. That was it, he had nothing in his stomach, certainly nothing substantial or something full of calories or carbohydrates.

He didn’t know that this was contributing to the pain and the noise; he had no reason to know or understand that.

[Joshua Bernstein]

Josh shook his head. "They gave us more than one, so I'll be fine."

Only after Sean had taken the granola bar did he pull a folding chair up next to the bed, sinking into the uncomfortable blue fabric with a grunt.

"They gave me two bottles of water, too," He added, placing one between his feet and twisting the cap off the other. "If you're thirsty."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

He took the granola bar and brought it to his mouth, taking a hesitant bite. It tasted good, entirely because he hadn’t eaten anything for so long. He perked up slightly at the mention of water and asked, “May I have one?”

May I rather than can I. Memory was such a peculiar entity, given that he had forgotten his name, his entire past, but he made peculiar linguistic choices that came from his upbringing.

He reached out again, waiting for Josh to give him one of the water bottles. Water would go a long way, he thought, because he felt almost as thirsty as he did hungry, even if his fatigue outweighed both of those.

He was on a cot now, and that was far more comfortable than the alley had been.

It took nearly ten minutes for the second volunteer returned after having looked through all of the medical files. Much like her male counterpart, she wore a gentle, patient, compassionate expression as she said, “I have some good news and bad news.”

She, too, pulled up a chair so that she sat between the two men. “The good news is that you don’t have any chronic illnesses like diabetes that might be causing this, and we also think we found out the cause: it isn’t viral and thus isn’t contagious.”

Which meant that neither of them required quarantine.

[Joshua Bernstein]

Josh offered Sean the bottle of water he had opened, and then turned his attention to his own granola bar and water. When the volunteer returned he had already offered Sean a second granola bar, and was unwrapping a second one for himself.

"That's great!" He exclaimed, and then, less certainly he asked, "And what's the bad news?"

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean took careful, measured bites despite how hungry he was, as though he was afraid of choking. He drank the water carefully as well. Between the two, he began to feel...not better, not really, but slightly less overwhelmed. Unfortunately, that still did nothing about the noise that he believed was mental illness. It didn’t help that the other man hadn’t replied to his admission about hearing noise.

In fact, this only underscored how out of touch he felt.

Rather than ask questions of the relief worker, he simply stared at her. He hadn’t thought this was physical, since he thought he was crazy; as such, the fact that he wasn’t sick with diabetes or the flu only confirmed his beliefs, as opposed to ruling out a cause for concern. Any moment now, they would admit that he had a history of mental illness; why else would she call it “bad news?”

The relief worker’s expression remained gentle and patient as he leaned forward, looking between the two men – taking into account how Josh did most of the speaking for Sean – before she admitted, “We found a note in Sean Neville’s medical file that indicates that he was meta-human. It’s possible that your side effects are causing this, and we don’t have a treatment for that.”

[Joshua Bernstein]

Josh stared at the relief worker. "Meta human? What does that mean?"

He was sure, since he and Sean lived together, that at one point he had known that term, but that didn't help him in the present. In the present he didn't know what the relief worker had just said, except that this was what was causing Sean's illness.

"Is it serious?"

[Dr. Sean Neville]

The phrase also had no meaning to him, but he assumed it was something important. It was important enough to have been mentioned in his medical records, and for the relief workers to be concerned enough about him that they would call it “bad news” and the obvious solution to the overwhelming noise that only he could hear. The lack of a cure concerned him. Did that mean that he was cursed to suffer this without any help?

All he could do was fight back another wave of nausea and pain.

The relief workers had hoped that the residents would recall information this important, such as what it was to be meta-human in the meta-human capital of the world. However, they had prepared for the worst, and so she would do what she could to explain it.

“Meta-humans are very special,” she started, because she didn’t want the two men to become frightened from what she was about to explain. “Every meta-human has what we’d think of as super powers, a special ability like super strength or being able to shapeshift.” She wanted to stay away from mentioning powers like pyrokinesis or mind control, as she didn’t want to start a panic.