Chapter 12

Qais' assessment of the line was pretty spot on, he had to admit. The emergency room was full of people, and the line never seemed to cease. For the first few hours, they all waited patiently, but as evening turned into night, Peter became restless, trying to convince the staff that their case was urgent, but with very little luck.

"I can't get through to them," Peter said as he took a pause in his nagging to rejoin them for a moment. "Is there anywhere else we could go?"

"Not at this hour," Qais said, interrupting his game of tic-tac-toe with Aisha. "Vårdcentralen will be closed."

"And it's not like they'd do anything," Aisha said. "Just give us a remiss to a specialist, and that could take months. If you really think it's serious, this is our best option."

"Maybe it would help if you seemed remotely eager to get this done."

She rolled her eyes and drew another circle.

"It's been five weeks," he pointed out. "I'm not gonna die waiting here." Of course, dying of boredom might be a factor. Since tic-tac-toe was a game for two, it seemed Peter was his best chance, and so he grabbed his brother's shoulders, pulling him to a seated position. "Sit down and tell me about my kids."

The request was actually enough to make Peter remain still for a while. He told anecdotes about the boys – sweet ones, funny ones, even a few tragic and painful ones. Most of them evoked no memories, but just hearing them were a comfort.

"...There were slices of cucumber and lemon on the salmon, and I guess they looked a bit like scales, because Simon asked, 'May I have some more dragon, please?'"

He laughed. "That's cute."

"He was so embarrassed when we told him it was fish. Red as a traffic light. Nobody blushes like Simon. He must have abnormal blood supply to his head or something."

"Well, you're the nurse, you should know. Maybe that's what he does. As his special thing." He put two fingers up to each temple to illustrate his point. "It runs in families, yeah?"

"Yeah."

He watched Aisha and Qais, chatting away in that bilingual mix he never quite got the hang of. As far as he knew, Qais was the only one with any form of paranormal ability. But then, lie detecting wasn't like flying. Maybe there was something else in the others, something so low-key he hadn't even noticed. Or maybe Qais had that first mutation that would start the chain in his family. "Does anyone else in our family have it?"

"Claire does."

"Tell me about Claire."

Peter smiled a little and looked off into the distance.

"Any time you're ready," he prodded after a while.

"I don't know much. I mean, I know that she's a sweet kid. Incredibly brave. Special. I hope you get to meet her some time."

"Why wouldn't I?"

Peter threw a quick, discreet glance around the room, saying as clearly as words that this was one of those things not discussed in public. "She kind of needs her privacy right now. A bit like you."

He stiffened. Was his daughter in hiding? Because of the Linderman thing? But no – Peter had said nothing about any danger to Heidi or the boys, and if the mob was the problem, their position had to be a lot more fragile than hers. What then? Did it have to do with what she could do? He could certainly see why careless use of special abilities might cause the wrong kind of people to ask the wrong kind of questions, until your only options were hiding or being caged up somewhere.

"She's okay, isn't she?" he asked in a low voice.

"She's fine," Peter replied with a reassuring smile. "She's with her family – her other family." His eyes widened. "Damn it, I need to call Noah."

"Her dad?"

"Yeah. He's... I gotta call him. Hang in there, okay?"

"I promise," he said dryly, watching his brother run off to a remote corner to use his cell phone in peace. Well. It didn't take him long to start running around again.

The period that followed was even more exceedingly dull than the one past. Peter kept pacing the floor, barely stopping for a word. Aisha fell asleep. Qais did his best to be entertaining, but his offered games were really a bit too juvenile.

"How about I Spy?"

"I Spy?"

"You say, I spy something that starts with an M, or something. And I guess."

He looked towards the door, where two paramedics were bringing in another kid who could barely stand. "I spy something that starts with a D."

"Doctor?"

"Drunken-ass teenager. Is that the third case since we got here?"

"Probably a lot more," Qais said with a shrug. "It's Lucia."

"I thought that was yesterday."

"The wake was yesterday. Now they're just finishing the leftover alcohol."

"Charming." He watched the entrance, and saw a man walk through the door with purposeful strides. There was something about that man – the suit, the hair, the glasses... He sat up straight, pulse racing. "We have to leave."

"Now!? Are you kidding me? We've been here for hours!"

"Shh!" he warned, shaking Aisha awake.

"Hmm?" she asked, pushing the hair out of her face, where red marks spoke of its former presence. "Is it our turn?"

"No." He sat down on his heels, speaking in a low voice. "I need you to be very quiet. There's a man in here who's very dangerous – "

"What man?" Qais asked, looking around the room.

"Qais!" he hissed.

Qais sat down and whispered, "What man?"

"By the door. Now, it's me he wants, so if you leave first, I doubt he'll pay much attention to you. Oh, for crying out loud, will you stop doing that!" Because Qais had just craned his neck to get a better look.

"No, he's not," Qais said with absolute certainty.

The memory was more vivid than any so far – a wire fence on one side, and on the other that man, stone-faced, holding him at gunpoint. He shuddered involuntarily. If only the kids would stop arguing and get the hell out of there, he'd have a better chance of going unnoticed. "Trust me, he is."

"No, he's really not." Qais repeated. A smile teased at the corners of his mouth.

"You can determine that from the other side of the room?" he snapped.

"Yes. And look!"

Against his will, he looked, seeing Peter with evident relief rush up to the man. His first instinct was to rush after, pull his brother away, but he held himself back. "What the hell's going on?"

"Peter's like me now, right?" Qais asked. "You can definitely trust this guy."

"That's not what I remember."

"Maybe your memory's playing tricks on you."

"Is it, now?" He held his gaze steadily at the man next to his brother, as the two of them came closer to him.

"Hello, Nathan," the man said, holding out his hand. "I'm Noah."

That admission threw him off his track for a moment, and he shook the offered hand. "Noah? Claire's father?"

"That's right."

"I seem to recall... us being on rather poor terms. Perhaps I'm mistaken."

Noah's face was dispassionate, but he seemed to search for words for a moment before replying, "No, I wouldn't say that you are."

Qais gasped, barely audible, and Peter – Peter cringed.

His eyes narrowed. Whatever was going on here, Peter clearly wasn't surprised.

"Things change, though," Noah added.

"Qais?" he asked, his eyes still firmly fixed on Noah's face.

"What?"

"Do things change?"

After a pause, Qais replied cautiously, "Yes. They do."

"Peter?"

"Yeah?" Peter said, sounding a bit guilty.

"Do you vouch for this guy?"

Peter glanced over at Noah, and eventually smiled a little. "I do, yes."

"All right, then. Sorry," he told Noah. "I had to make sure."

"No problem, I understand. Though I must say I'm surprised you remember me at all."

"I didn't lose all of my memories. They sort of show up in flashes."

"Really?" Noah sounded surprisingly thoughtful. "That's interesting."

"How so?" he asked, catching on to the quality in the other man's voice.

"When Peter told me of your condition, I assumed... well, I formed a theory. I think I may have been wrong." Looking over towards the reception desk, he asked, "I take it you haven't seen a doctor yet. Let me see if I can do something about that."

He watched Noah go to talk to the receptionist, and raised an eyebrow. "What are the odds of him managing to talk her into letting us skip the line, when none of us could?"

"Knowing him," Peter replied, "probably really good."

Whatever Noah had said, it clearly worked. They were shunted through to an examination room, where he had to tell a careful mix of truth and lies to a doctor who hummed a lot before giving him the same answers Dr. Kaya had done a month ago. Since this was supposed to be his first visit, he pretended to be surprised and alarmed.

What followed was a circus of tests, scans, further talks with the sympathetic doctor, who spoke in a much-too-kind voice filled with reassurance and a tinge of pity. Finally, in the early morning, he was given a number of drug prescriptions, a hospital bed, and some peace and quiet.

Peter sat by his bedside, watching him with a mournful expression that became very tiresome very soon.

"I'm not dead or dying, Pete, so cut out the puppy dog eyes, okay?"

"Strokes, Nathan," Peter said quietly.

"Mini strokes. Tiny strokes. Listen, I'm not wild about the thought of someone sticking a probe in my head via my crotch – or inguen or whatever the word is – but they clearly know what they're doing. They tell me I have a normal life expectancy, I believe them. I might even get most of my memories back. I call it a good deal."

Peter bit his lip.

He sighed and took his brother's hand, squeezing it in what he hoped was a comforting manner. "It could have been so much worse."

"You think I don't know that?" Peter asked vehemently. "I thought you were dead."

True enough – oh God, what a mess. He asked, "That story about the staph infection..."

"We had to say something. I couldn't very well tell people that I'd exploded in the sky with you, and when I woke up you were gone."

He had to laugh at that. "Yeah, I can imagine. Does... Does Heidi know I'm alive?"

Peter looked away. "No."

"You have to tell her."

"I know. I just have to figure out what to say."

"You tell the truth. All of it."

That clearly startled Peter. "Are you sure?"

"I'm positive. I may not remember much about my wife, but I remember loving her. I do love her, don't I?"

"You do," Peter said with a very soft smile.

"Then you tell her the truth, and you tell the boys as much of the truth as you think they can handle. If I'm to have any chance of being their father again, and her husband, I can't start off with lies."

"It's gonna be hard. Getting your life back."

That gave him pause. Was that what he was after, getting his life back? A month ago he would have said "yes" without a second thought, but now he wasn't so sure. His life was incredibly alien to him; it felt entirely theoretical compared to the real relationships surrrounding him. The fact that he was supposed to be dead only made things even more complicated. On the other hand, he wasn't ready to throw out the past for a room in someone else's apartment and a shitty low-wage job either.

"Where are the others?" he asked.

"Outside. Mr. and Mrs. Mansour just arrived."

"That's good." He felt pathetically safe just knowing that Adil and Zaynab were around.

"Do you want to see them?"

"No, it's all right." Still holding Peter's hand, he indulged in the scraps of memory he had of the two of them, trying to will his mind to cooperate with him to reveal more. It was hard to say which option was less appealing – leaving with Peter to a world he knew next to nothing about, or Peter leaving without him. He hardened his grip.

"The kid – Rim – she came in a while ago with some woman."

"Rawan," he assumed.

"Yeah." Peter paused. "Do you want to see her?"

Peter's tone was so meaningful that he winced. Just a bit too perceptive there. Rawan made things even more complicated – yes, it had been a one night stand, they both knew it, but beyond that she was a friend, and that made things all kinds of awkward concerning Heidi.

"Not right now, okay?"

"Okay."

They were both silent for a while, and then he asked, "Peter? Could you call my family, please? Ask them to come over here."

"Now?" Peter asked, starting to slip his hand away, but he grabbed it, hard.

"Soon. Very soon."

"Yeah. I will."

He nodded slowly, relaxing his grip a little.

"Nathan," Peter said quietly. "Whatever happens, whatever you do, you're still my brother. Still their friend. None of that changes."

He looked towards the window to the corridor. The glass was covered by a white film, but he could see shadows move behind it, even guess the names of those shadows, the difference in bulk and height between parent and child, friend and stranger.

"Everything changes," Nathan whispered.

But Peter's hand remained in his.