Post by Hellokitty on Aug 19, 2006 9:03:47 GMT -5
Falling Book 2: Finding Marlena Chapter 12
“Marlena, did he rape you?” John asked as he rubbed her shoulders gently. Head dipping to her chest, John supported her. Unable to control the emotions that had been simmering below the surface for so long, Marlena silently cried.
“Oh honey,” John said as he held her, devastated by her answer. Nothing about life was fair. Why did it seem that Marlena of all people was victimized over and over?
“I didn’t want you to find out John…I never wanted you to know,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.” She’d held the secret for a while and had come to accept it as part of her past, a piece that she neatly tucked away in a corner and never brought it out. Although she knew that compartmentalizing her emotions wasn’t the healthiest thing to do, she seemed to be stuck in a behavior pattern she couldn’t and didn’t want to stop. That day on the beach months ago when she finally accepted her past and made the commitment to move forward with John seemed like such a long time ago. No matter how hard she tried to move forward it seemed like she was stuck in a circle, endlessly going around and around.
“I don’t know what to say,” John admitted, at a loss of how to help Marlena. Although his own past seemed so complicated, it was nothing compared to what Marlena went through. “I don’t know how to comfort you and help you, but I want to.”
Marlena sat in a tense but comfortable silence for a few minutes thinking of John’s words to her. He did want to help her and to comfort her but had no idea how. The sad thing was, neither did she. She honestly didn’t know what could be said and done by her or by him to make things better for her and for them, to stop this endless cycle drama, co-dependence and secrets that seemed to be tearing them apart at their most fragile seam. If she continued on this track there would be no her or them. She knew and understood that, although recognizing it was painful for her. “God, why do I do this? Why can’t I let you in?” Marlena laid back in Johns arms, tired of fighting. “Why?”
John just held her, resolved to let her lead the path this discussion took. “I need to tell you some things,” Marlena whispered trying to find the courage and the words, neither coming easy to her. “I need to explain some things, things I should have told you a long time ago.” He needed to know about Alex and Mason, but most of all she needed to accept responsibility for her own actions for the past forty years.
Finding it easier not to have to see his face and see the care, love and understanding that was omnipresent, Marlena closed her eyes. “My whole life I grew up wanting to be someone else,” she finally began. “Becoming Marlena allowed me to do that. Going away to college allowed me an escape of sorts. No one there knew me or of my past. But as much as I loved finding out who I was and what I wanted out of life it always seemed as if something was missing. My freshman year I was so terrified that people, especially my roommate, would find out I was a fraud. I took as many classes as possible and studied all the time. Every free minute was spent in class or in the library. It just became easier that way…. there was no expectation that I go out and socialize or party as you call it. The strange thing was, the more I became involved in my studies, the more fascinated and entrenched I became with finding out about the world around me, the world I’d been missing out on.” John gazed down at the top of her head and watched as the firelight danced and reflected on the blond strands with each crackle of the log. He imagined the bright eyed and scared girl thrust too early into the cruel world, much like the Marlena of his dreams.
“I graduated with my undergraduate degree in two years and entered medical school at twenty. I had no idea who I was or how to interact with my peers so once again I threw myself into my studies. Psychiatry seemed a natural choice to me, as I needed to understand my own past in order to move forward. I ran into Alex quite by accident in the library at school one day. He was one year behind me in school. I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to see someone familiar after so long. We fell back into our natural camaraderie and it was as if the seven years we’d been apart hadn’t occurred. Alex and I were friends before but that was it. I guess when I agreed to marry him it wasn’t because I loved him, but because I felt in order to overcome my past I needed to act like and do things that other people my age did, other undamaged people. I married him in a simple ceremony during the summer before I graduated and started my residency. I guess I knew going into the marriage that I didn’t love him, not passionately and deeply, not what I had with….” Marlena started and then stopped abruptly, lost in a memory of a long time ago, of a person her heart tried so hard to forget. Clenching her eyes shut she tried to get him out of her mind, wondering why after so many years he still held a piece of her heart, a piece that she’d never been able to let go of and give to someone else, even John. “John,” she thought to herself, feeling guilty for still having feelings for a ghost from her past. Although John was everything that she’d ever wanted and was the love of her life and soulmate, the first man she’d given her heart to would always hold a special place.
“Nevermind,” she began again. John wondered who and what she was remembering from her past. He always assumed that Don Craig was the first man to capture her heart, but now knew that wasn’t the case.
“Tell me about him,” John gently prodded her as he stroked her hair. He needed to know about this ghost that had resurfaced after so many years that his wife was remembering. He needed to feel secure with his place in her life, by most of all her needed to hear how in the horror of her upbringing that at least for one moment, however brief, she was loved.
“I don’t know where to begin John and I don’t remember his name…for the past couple of months I’ve been having dreams about him, dreams that are recurring and build upon each other. As a psychiatrist I know that they’re not fantasies and delusions,” Marlena said, the melancholy in her voice dripping like honey. Glimpses of the man were all that she had to go on and to hold on to. How could she still feel something for someone she didn’t know or remember? “Why can’t I remember this man? I wake up with an overwhelming sense of love and loss….”
“What kinds of things are you doing in your dreams?” John asked wanting to provoke her memory and help her, yet afraid that she’d reveal intimate details of her past with another man, a man that wasn’t him.
“Mainly walking on the beach, swimming in a lagoon, horseback riding…why?” Marlena said as she sat up and turned and looked at him, not quite understanding why he asked what he did.
“Just curious, that’s all,” John said, the love in his eyes evident as he cupped her chin gently with her hand and smiled at her.
“Tell me about your first love John,” Marlena suggested wanting to take the focus of the conversation off of her.
“You know that you’re my first love Doc,” John said with sadness in his voice. There were so many years of his past missing, gone, vanished. Although he loved and cherished the memories that he did have especially his memories of Marlena, he always had the feeling that something, someone, was missing.
“Yeah right sailor…I’m not buying that one…Try it on someone else,” Marlena laughed as she playfully swatted him on the arm, missing the serious look that briefly crossed his beautiful features.
“Really Marlena, for a long time you were my first love, the woman I remembered from when my past began….It’s always been you…my past,” John said as he kissed her forehead. “My present,” he said as he kissed the tip of her nose. “And my future,” he said as he gently kissed her on the lips. What started out as a gentle kiss soon became much more as both Marlena and John became lost in the magic of the moment, hands roaming, fingers gently touching and probing the sun-kissed exposed tender flesh of others torsos.
“Wow,” Marlena said in amazement as she pulled out of this kiss.
“Still got it baby,” John said seductively as he reached his hands around to her back side, placed his large hands on her buttocks and squeezed them gently.
“So as you were saying Sailor,” Marlena said as she reached behind her and grabbed his hands, pulling them off her butt. If they remained there, they’d never finish this conversation, not that she minded.
“Oh right,” John said as he tried to shake the image of Marlena lying underneath him, long tanned legs wrapped around him, out of his mind. “I had a dream this morning that was so clear, that I’m wondering if I am remembering my past,” John finally admitted.
“Oh John that’s wonderful,” Marlena said as she hugged him. “I know that you’ve always wanted to remember your past.”
“I have, Doc, I have….And I think I might be remembering something, but it was just one dream,” he said as he thought back to the memory of the woman with long blonde hair running in front of him on a beach. As hard as he tried to reach out and grab her and see her face to see if she was Marlena, he couldn’t. Who was the woman and why did he feel such a sense of loss surrounding her? “Let’s not get our hopes up,” John warned her as he thought back to his dreams about Marlena and his memory of the blonde girl on the beach. It was so clear and so real to him. Was it real? Did it happen?
“What was your dream about?” Marlena asked, unsure if she really wanted to know. Although she’d come to accept the mystery of her past and the loss of her memory, John’s memory loss still frightened her immensely. The fear of his unknown continued to haunt her at night. What if he had this wonderful life before he lost his memory? Would he give his life up in Salem, give his life with her up, to reclaim what he might have had with another woman?
“You,” John admitted, waiting for her reaction.
“What?” Marlena asked quizzically.
“You, you and Samantha…”
“Honey, you’re just transferring your memories of me onto someone else that you knew a long time ago.”
“I’m not Marlena…I’m not… I believe I met you long before I arrived in Salem.” The conviction in his voice frightened Marlena. Whatever the truth was, John really believed that he had met her in the past.
“That’s preposterous John, don’t you think we’d both remember it? Things like this can’t happen,” Marlena blurted out in frustration, her voice rising with each word she said.
“What if it did?” John replied calmly, knowing that he was right, that his dream was right.
“It didn’t…don’t you think that I would know that it was you?”
“I know…it doesn’t make any sense….”
“It’s because you want to believe it John….think about it…what would be more wonderful and romantic than for us to have known each other from a long time ago….it’s the destiny theory.”
“Destiny theory?”
“You know….we were always destined to be together…no matter what life has thrown at us we will always find out way back to each other…This is the stuff of novels and young girls dreams John…stuff like this doesn’t happen in real life.”
“Is it so crazy to believe and to hope that it does?”
“No,” Marlena said as she took him into her arms. “Not at all honey, its what makes us human. If we didn’t believe that dreams and fairy tales do come true what hope would be have?”
“You’re probably right Doc, but I have this profound sense deep in my soul that when I arrived in Salem in 1985 it wasn’t the first time I met you.” Marlena closed her eyes and willed herself the ability to stay calm and not raise her voice again. Arguing with John wasn’t going to get her anywhere. He was convinced that he was right and there was no changing his mind.
“It not possible for us to have known each other before you moved to Salem John…Honey, you just want to believe so much that it did happen,” Marlena said as she gently cupped his cheek with her hand and smiled at him. “But it didn’t happen….It was just a dream, albeit a wonderful one….It’s not physically or geographically possible for us to have known each other before…You were a wealthy young man traveling the world with the Alamain’s and I was a foster child of the Evans’…Where would we have met? I know you want it to be true and I would love it as much as you would if it was true, but its not.”
“You’re probably right,” John told her, not believing it for a minute but sensing that this line of discussion was going nowhere. He’d have to recover more of his memories before she’d be receptive to what he had to say. “So….Doc, about Alex….”
“What about him?” Marlena’s blood suddenly ran cold at the mention of Alex North.
“I’m trying to understand why he married you, disappeared and then came back and tried to lock you up.”
“I don’t know John,” Marlena said defensively as she sat back and crossed her arms over her chest.
“I think you do Doc,” John said as he reached over and pulled on her one arms until she let go of the other one. Taking her hand in his he told her, “The answer are inside you Marlena, we just need to know where to look….after you went to live with the Evans’ all contact with your past life ended, right?”
“Yes.”
“Including Alex and Mason?”
“Well yes, but they both disappeared right after….” Marlena paused not wanting to continue her sentence, even though they both knew the event that she was talking about. “After someone killed their families I lost contact with them.”
“How do you know that Doc?”
“I just do.”
“Someone had to have told you….” John stated matter of factly as Marlena went into a flashback of a man in a white room…. “You won’t remember anything about Alexander North and Mason Jones after you are finished with your treatment. They will be a long forgotten part of your past….” “I was supposed to forget them John.”
“But why? And how did Alex know where to find you? You think that it was random?”
“I don’t know…”
“Think Marlena…think.”
“I can’t John…you’re asking too many question…I can’t think fast enough.” Flashes of her past with Alex ran through her mind in random order. She saw him smiling handing her a bouquet of flowers.
“That’s the point…I need for you to remember and not analyze what you’re thinking before you say it…whatever pops into your mind say it, no matter if you think it doesn’t make sense or happened….okay?”
“Okay,” Marlena said relinquishing control to John. She needed to trust in him if she was going to recover or remember things that her mind seemed to want to repress.
“Back to Alex…when was the last time that you saw him?
“When I shot them,” she said softly with a far away look in her eyes. She remembered the look in her father’s eyes as he lay dead on the floor of their shack. The color of his eyes was the same as John’s. Why hadn’t she realized that before?
“What did he say to you?
“I don’t remember a lot of what happened John,” Marlena said defensively, still bothered by her realization that her father and John shared the same eye color. “It was so long ago…honestly what little of it I do remember I wish that I didn’t… I just want it to stay in the past where it belongs.”
“I know Doc…don’t give the misery and despair you felt back then power….Until we figure out what happened we’ll never know what happened to you we’ll never be safe….We can’t go home to Noah and Rachel or to Sami, Carrie, Eric and Belle until we find out why they want you….it’s a lot more than retribution and you know it.”
At the mention of her children’s name, her resolve dissipated. “…I’ll find you, no matter what happens…that’s the last thing that Alex said to me.”
Nothing out of the ordinary, not a particularly revealing statement. “When you met him at the library in medical school…what did he say to you?
“Chaucer is an interesting author, don’t you think?” she said as she thought back to that day in medical school when Alex North, handsome in corduroy jeans and matching jacket, suede patching on the elbows, boldly approached her.
“Chaucer?”
“Yes.”
“Were you reading a work of his?”
“No, he was,” Marlena said as she saw him in her minds eye approach the table where she was buried underneath a pile of medical journals and anatomy books. “He was reading The Canterbury Tales.”
“Seriously.” John thought to himself that Alex had to be the lamest man ever to try to pick up a woman. Chaucer?
“Yes.”
“Didn’t you find that odd?”
“Well yes.”
“Did you recognize him at first?”
“Not until he said that to me.”
“Really?…when he walked up to you…you had no idea who he was until he said “Chaucer is an interesting author don’t you think?”
“Yes.”
“Did he look different….Was it his voice you recognized.”
“No…I’m pretty sure it was what he said.”
“Did you read Chaucer or something when you were younger?”
“Not that I recall,” Marlena said. The distant look in her eyes validated to John the path that he’d chosen to help her recover her memory. So much of her past was right below the surface waiting to be recalled.
“Oh my God John,” Marlena said as she grabbed onto his hand and held it tightly. “It’s not what he said and has nothing to do with Chaucer…He was wearing a ring that he held up…that gleamed in the light.
“A ring?”
“Not just a ring, it was a ring with the Dimera family crest on it.”
“Marlena, did he rape you?” John asked as he rubbed her shoulders gently. Head dipping to her chest, John supported her. Unable to control the emotions that had been simmering below the surface for so long, Marlena silently cried.
“Oh honey,” John said as he held her, devastated by her answer. Nothing about life was fair. Why did it seem that Marlena of all people was victimized over and over?
“I didn’t want you to find out John…I never wanted you to know,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.” She’d held the secret for a while and had come to accept it as part of her past, a piece that she neatly tucked away in a corner and never brought it out. Although she knew that compartmentalizing her emotions wasn’t the healthiest thing to do, she seemed to be stuck in a behavior pattern she couldn’t and didn’t want to stop. That day on the beach months ago when she finally accepted her past and made the commitment to move forward with John seemed like such a long time ago. No matter how hard she tried to move forward it seemed like she was stuck in a circle, endlessly going around and around.
“I don’t know what to say,” John admitted, at a loss of how to help Marlena. Although his own past seemed so complicated, it was nothing compared to what Marlena went through. “I don’t know how to comfort you and help you, but I want to.”
Marlena sat in a tense but comfortable silence for a few minutes thinking of John’s words to her. He did want to help her and to comfort her but had no idea how. The sad thing was, neither did she. She honestly didn’t know what could be said and done by her or by him to make things better for her and for them, to stop this endless cycle drama, co-dependence and secrets that seemed to be tearing them apart at their most fragile seam. If she continued on this track there would be no her or them. She knew and understood that, although recognizing it was painful for her. “God, why do I do this? Why can’t I let you in?” Marlena laid back in Johns arms, tired of fighting. “Why?”
John just held her, resolved to let her lead the path this discussion took. “I need to tell you some things,” Marlena whispered trying to find the courage and the words, neither coming easy to her. “I need to explain some things, things I should have told you a long time ago.” He needed to know about Alex and Mason, but most of all she needed to accept responsibility for her own actions for the past forty years.
Finding it easier not to have to see his face and see the care, love and understanding that was omnipresent, Marlena closed her eyes. “My whole life I grew up wanting to be someone else,” she finally began. “Becoming Marlena allowed me to do that. Going away to college allowed me an escape of sorts. No one there knew me or of my past. But as much as I loved finding out who I was and what I wanted out of life it always seemed as if something was missing. My freshman year I was so terrified that people, especially my roommate, would find out I was a fraud. I took as many classes as possible and studied all the time. Every free minute was spent in class or in the library. It just became easier that way…. there was no expectation that I go out and socialize or party as you call it. The strange thing was, the more I became involved in my studies, the more fascinated and entrenched I became with finding out about the world around me, the world I’d been missing out on.” John gazed down at the top of her head and watched as the firelight danced and reflected on the blond strands with each crackle of the log. He imagined the bright eyed and scared girl thrust too early into the cruel world, much like the Marlena of his dreams.
“I graduated with my undergraduate degree in two years and entered medical school at twenty. I had no idea who I was or how to interact with my peers so once again I threw myself into my studies. Psychiatry seemed a natural choice to me, as I needed to understand my own past in order to move forward. I ran into Alex quite by accident in the library at school one day. He was one year behind me in school. I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to see someone familiar after so long. We fell back into our natural camaraderie and it was as if the seven years we’d been apart hadn’t occurred. Alex and I were friends before but that was it. I guess when I agreed to marry him it wasn’t because I loved him, but because I felt in order to overcome my past I needed to act like and do things that other people my age did, other undamaged people. I married him in a simple ceremony during the summer before I graduated and started my residency. I guess I knew going into the marriage that I didn’t love him, not passionately and deeply, not what I had with….” Marlena started and then stopped abruptly, lost in a memory of a long time ago, of a person her heart tried so hard to forget. Clenching her eyes shut she tried to get him out of her mind, wondering why after so many years he still held a piece of her heart, a piece that she’d never been able to let go of and give to someone else, even John. “John,” she thought to herself, feeling guilty for still having feelings for a ghost from her past. Although John was everything that she’d ever wanted and was the love of her life and soulmate, the first man she’d given her heart to would always hold a special place.
“Nevermind,” she began again. John wondered who and what she was remembering from her past. He always assumed that Don Craig was the first man to capture her heart, but now knew that wasn’t the case.
“Tell me about him,” John gently prodded her as he stroked her hair. He needed to know about this ghost that had resurfaced after so many years that his wife was remembering. He needed to feel secure with his place in her life, by most of all her needed to hear how in the horror of her upbringing that at least for one moment, however brief, she was loved.
“I don’t know where to begin John and I don’t remember his name…for the past couple of months I’ve been having dreams about him, dreams that are recurring and build upon each other. As a psychiatrist I know that they’re not fantasies and delusions,” Marlena said, the melancholy in her voice dripping like honey. Glimpses of the man were all that she had to go on and to hold on to. How could she still feel something for someone she didn’t know or remember? “Why can’t I remember this man? I wake up with an overwhelming sense of love and loss….”
“What kinds of things are you doing in your dreams?” John asked wanting to provoke her memory and help her, yet afraid that she’d reveal intimate details of her past with another man, a man that wasn’t him.
“Mainly walking on the beach, swimming in a lagoon, horseback riding…why?” Marlena said as she sat up and turned and looked at him, not quite understanding why he asked what he did.
“Just curious, that’s all,” John said, the love in his eyes evident as he cupped her chin gently with her hand and smiled at her.
“Tell me about your first love John,” Marlena suggested wanting to take the focus of the conversation off of her.
“You know that you’re my first love Doc,” John said with sadness in his voice. There were so many years of his past missing, gone, vanished. Although he loved and cherished the memories that he did have especially his memories of Marlena, he always had the feeling that something, someone, was missing.
“Yeah right sailor…I’m not buying that one…Try it on someone else,” Marlena laughed as she playfully swatted him on the arm, missing the serious look that briefly crossed his beautiful features.
“Really Marlena, for a long time you were my first love, the woman I remembered from when my past began….It’s always been you…my past,” John said as he kissed her forehead. “My present,” he said as he kissed the tip of her nose. “And my future,” he said as he gently kissed her on the lips. What started out as a gentle kiss soon became much more as both Marlena and John became lost in the magic of the moment, hands roaming, fingers gently touching and probing the sun-kissed exposed tender flesh of others torsos.
“Wow,” Marlena said in amazement as she pulled out of this kiss.
“Still got it baby,” John said seductively as he reached his hands around to her back side, placed his large hands on her buttocks and squeezed them gently.
“So as you were saying Sailor,” Marlena said as she reached behind her and grabbed his hands, pulling them off her butt. If they remained there, they’d never finish this conversation, not that she minded.
“Oh right,” John said as he tried to shake the image of Marlena lying underneath him, long tanned legs wrapped around him, out of his mind. “I had a dream this morning that was so clear, that I’m wondering if I am remembering my past,” John finally admitted.
“Oh John that’s wonderful,” Marlena said as she hugged him. “I know that you’ve always wanted to remember your past.”
“I have, Doc, I have….And I think I might be remembering something, but it was just one dream,” he said as he thought back to the memory of the woman with long blonde hair running in front of him on a beach. As hard as he tried to reach out and grab her and see her face to see if she was Marlena, he couldn’t. Who was the woman and why did he feel such a sense of loss surrounding her? “Let’s not get our hopes up,” John warned her as he thought back to his dreams about Marlena and his memory of the blonde girl on the beach. It was so clear and so real to him. Was it real? Did it happen?
“What was your dream about?” Marlena asked, unsure if she really wanted to know. Although she’d come to accept the mystery of her past and the loss of her memory, John’s memory loss still frightened her immensely. The fear of his unknown continued to haunt her at night. What if he had this wonderful life before he lost his memory? Would he give his life up in Salem, give his life with her up, to reclaim what he might have had with another woman?
“You,” John admitted, waiting for her reaction.
“What?” Marlena asked quizzically.
“You, you and Samantha…”
“Honey, you’re just transferring your memories of me onto someone else that you knew a long time ago.”
“I’m not Marlena…I’m not… I believe I met you long before I arrived in Salem.” The conviction in his voice frightened Marlena. Whatever the truth was, John really believed that he had met her in the past.
“That’s preposterous John, don’t you think we’d both remember it? Things like this can’t happen,” Marlena blurted out in frustration, her voice rising with each word she said.
“What if it did?” John replied calmly, knowing that he was right, that his dream was right.
“It didn’t…don’t you think that I would know that it was you?”
“I know…it doesn’t make any sense….”
“It’s because you want to believe it John….think about it…what would be more wonderful and romantic than for us to have known each other from a long time ago….it’s the destiny theory.”
“Destiny theory?”
“You know….we were always destined to be together…no matter what life has thrown at us we will always find out way back to each other…This is the stuff of novels and young girls dreams John…stuff like this doesn’t happen in real life.”
“Is it so crazy to believe and to hope that it does?”
“No,” Marlena said as she took him into her arms. “Not at all honey, its what makes us human. If we didn’t believe that dreams and fairy tales do come true what hope would be have?”
“You’re probably right Doc, but I have this profound sense deep in my soul that when I arrived in Salem in 1985 it wasn’t the first time I met you.” Marlena closed her eyes and willed herself the ability to stay calm and not raise her voice again. Arguing with John wasn’t going to get her anywhere. He was convinced that he was right and there was no changing his mind.
“It not possible for us to have known each other before you moved to Salem John…Honey, you just want to believe so much that it did happen,” Marlena said as she gently cupped his cheek with her hand and smiled at him. “But it didn’t happen….It was just a dream, albeit a wonderful one….It’s not physically or geographically possible for us to have known each other before…You were a wealthy young man traveling the world with the Alamain’s and I was a foster child of the Evans’…Where would we have met? I know you want it to be true and I would love it as much as you would if it was true, but its not.”
“You’re probably right,” John told her, not believing it for a minute but sensing that this line of discussion was going nowhere. He’d have to recover more of his memories before she’d be receptive to what he had to say. “So….Doc, about Alex….”
“What about him?” Marlena’s blood suddenly ran cold at the mention of Alex North.
“I’m trying to understand why he married you, disappeared and then came back and tried to lock you up.”
“I don’t know John,” Marlena said defensively as she sat back and crossed her arms over her chest.
“I think you do Doc,” John said as he reached over and pulled on her one arms until she let go of the other one. Taking her hand in his he told her, “The answer are inside you Marlena, we just need to know where to look….after you went to live with the Evans’ all contact with your past life ended, right?”
“Yes.”
“Including Alex and Mason?”
“Well yes, but they both disappeared right after….” Marlena paused not wanting to continue her sentence, even though they both knew the event that she was talking about. “After someone killed their families I lost contact with them.”
“How do you know that Doc?”
“I just do.”
“Someone had to have told you….” John stated matter of factly as Marlena went into a flashback of a man in a white room…. “You won’t remember anything about Alexander North and Mason Jones after you are finished with your treatment. They will be a long forgotten part of your past….” “I was supposed to forget them John.”
“But why? And how did Alex know where to find you? You think that it was random?”
“I don’t know…”
“Think Marlena…think.”
“I can’t John…you’re asking too many question…I can’t think fast enough.” Flashes of her past with Alex ran through her mind in random order. She saw him smiling handing her a bouquet of flowers.
“That’s the point…I need for you to remember and not analyze what you’re thinking before you say it…whatever pops into your mind say it, no matter if you think it doesn’t make sense or happened….okay?”
“Okay,” Marlena said relinquishing control to John. She needed to trust in him if she was going to recover or remember things that her mind seemed to want to repress.
“Back to Alex…when was the last time that you saw him?
“When I shot them,” she said softly with a far away look in her eyes. She remembered the look in her father’s eyes as he lay dead on the floor of their shack. The color of his eyes was the same as John’s. Why hadn’t she realized that before?
“What did he say to you?
“I don’t remember a lot of what happened John,” Marlena said defensively, still bothered by her realization that her father and John shared the same eye color. “It was so long ago…honestly what little of it I do remember I wish that I didn’t… I just want it to stay in the past where it belongs.”
“I know Doc…don’t give the misery and despair you felt back then power….Until we figure out what happened we’ll never know what happened to you we’ll never be safe….We can’t go home to Noah and Rachel or to Sami, Carrie, Eric and Belle until we find out why they want you….it’s a lot more than retribution and you know it.”
At the mention of her children’s name, her resolve dissipated. “…I’ll find you, no matter what happens…that’s the last thing that Alex said to me.”
Nothing out of the ordinary, not a particularly revealing statement. “When you met him at the library in medical school…what did he say to you?
“Chaucer is an interesting author, don’t you think?” she said as she thought back to that day in medical school when Alex North, handsome in corduroy jeans and matching jacket, suede patching on the elbows, boldly approached her.
“Chaucer?”
“Yes.”
“Were you reading a work of his?”
“No, he was,” Marlena said as she saw him in her minds eye approach the table where she was buried underneath a pile of medical journals and anatomy books. “He was reading The Canterbury Tales.”
“Seriously.” John thought to himself that Alex had to be the lamest man ever to try to pick up a woman. Chaucer?
“Yes.”
“Didn’t you find that odd?”
“Well yes.”
“Did you recognize him at first?”
“Not until he said that to me.”
“Really?…when he walked up to you…you had no idea who he was until he said “Chaucer is an interesting author don’t you think?”
“Yes.”
“Did he look different….Was it his voice you recognized.”
“No…I’m pretty sure it was what he said.”
“Did you read Chaucer or something when you were younger?”
“Not that I recall,” Marlena said. The distant look in her eyes validated to John the path that he’d chosen to help her recover her memory. So much of her past was right below the surface waiting to be recalled.
“Oh my God John,” Marlena said as she grabbed onto his hand and held it tightly. “It’s not what he said and has nothing to do with Chaucer…He was wearing a ring that he held up…that gleamed in the light.
“A ring?”
“Not just a ring, it was a ring with the Dimera family crest on it.”