Pandora's Hart--Part Two

-Loreena McKennitt, "Dante’s Prayer"

Jennifer sat in the low light of the living room staring absently out the window. The sun was sinking beneath the trees, giving the impression of a wildly raging fire on the horizon. But Jennifer did not see the splendor of the sunset, or the majesty of the view before her. She clutched in her hand the piece of paper she had been writing on.

Her experiment in ‘free association’ had led her to this moment in time, to a list of words that meant the world, meant her very life, but could only conjure up half-images and broken recollections.

Suddenly cold, Jennifer drew the couch blanket up over her legs and once again spread the piece of paper across her thigh. The words were blurred together and faint, but she could make them out. They were the keys to Before. To him. To life.

Jennifer jumped at a light tapping from across the room. A woodpecker? Her eyes lit up when she saw Pandora trotting towards her. Pandora’s nails clicked against the hard wood floor, beating a steady rhythm, until she came to rest beside Jennifer. Chocolate colored almond-shaped eyes pled with Jennifer and a soggy tennis ball was dropped in her lap.

With a chuckle, Jennifer half-heartedly lobbed the ball across the room and Pandora scampered after it. Jennifer cringed when Pandora’s massive tail swept a stack of magazines off an end table, but quickly forgave her when she saw Pandora’s utter contentment at trapping the errant ball.

Scott had presented Pandora to Jennifer not long after they had arrived at the cabin. He claimed she would need a companion, a friend, to keep her company. After all, he spent many hours, even days, away from the cabin. He had duties at the hospital in Vancouver and he wanted to know she was occupied. At the time, Pandora was merely a sprout who wanted desperately to be a German Shepherd. Over time she had grown beautiful and regal, and became Jennifer’s constant companion.

"I loved animals Before," she said to no one in particular. Pandora looked up from her sopping tennis ball and cocked her head quizzically. Jennifer smiled at the dog and motioned for her to continue her chewing.

<What a strange name, Pandora. > Scott had said. <Why Pandora? >

Jennifer had said only that it sounded exotic, and she loved the exotic. But it was more. Pandora, the real Pandora, held within her box all the mysteries of the world. And when curiosity got the better of her, she opened the box and released many horrors: hatred, anger, fears, loathing. Frightened, Pandora slammed the lid back on her box, but not before she caught sight of one last element sitting quietly within the box. Fearfully inching back the lid, Pandora was astonished to find the strongest of all that had been within the box. Not evil like its companions, it was graceful and wonderful.

It was hope.

And Pandora, the gentle fuzzy soul sitting before Jennifer, was hope. Hope that Jennifer would reclaim a life, old or new, and that she would begin to live again. Quasi-existences lived outside the world high atop a hill in a glass house, were no existences at all.

Jennifer moved her gaze from the dog back out the window. Her memories of before were her own box. She knew they would release all manner of horrible truths. Pain, devastation, a family who had lived a year without her. But hiding in the corner of Jennifer’s version of the box was hope. Hope that the people from Before loved her and that she loved them. And that they needed her just as much as she needed them.

"Mr. H," Max tapped Jonathan lightly on the shoulder.

"Not now, Max." Max peered over Jonathan’s shoulder, trying to see what held Jonathan’s interest so fully. Black and white 8x10 photos littered his desk. The filtered light from the single lamp cast haunting shadows across the garish photographs. The topmost picture showed their yellow Mercedes crunched and crumpled as if it were merely a piece of paper. The windshield was scattered around the car in small, shimmering chunks. Another image, partly hidden beneath the corner of another, depicted the path torn through the turf on the side of the road. In the distance, the car sat upended. Max accompanied Jonathan’s shiver; the pictures showed such devastation…

"Mrs. Blaurosen is on the phone, Mr. H. She says she’s willing to grant the interviews you requested." Mrs. Blaurosen, as far as Max knew, was one of the directors at Huntington Memorial Hospital, where the Harts had been sent after their accident. Jonathan had pled with her every day following the accident to tell him what had happened to his wife, where they had taken her. The doctor refused interviews, stating only that there was no record of a Jennifer Hart ever having been admitting. "I really think you should take this."

Max had to jump back to keep the wheels on the chair from running over his toes and Jonathan shot backwards and headed towards the phone. <A year late is better than never>, Max shook his head sadly and set about his job of tidying up the office. He gathered half-empty coffee cups, glasses, discarded napkins and remnants of meals long forgotten. Mr. H’s office had become his primary living space.

"Why couldn’t you grant me these interviews a year ago? I merely wanted, want, to talk to the staff!" There was no mistaking the steel in Jonathan’s voice; it was so like the one he used during stressful and important business dealings. The only thing different about his voice on this afternoon was the unequivocal undercurrent of desperation and sorrow. Jonathan felt the absence of his wife like a physical pain, and it was almost too much for Max to watch him struggle through each day with only a modicum of hope.

"Fine. I’ll be there this afternoon." The phone slammed into its receiver as Max busied himself by folding the blanket Jonathan had been using to sleep on the couch. He laid it on top of the pillow and turned towards his employer. His friend.

"So, they gonna let you talk to ‘em, finally?" Max lumbered the tray of dirty dishes up into his arms.

"We have to leave at 2pm," was all Jonathan said before he slipped out the door of the office. Max shook his head and followed him. Most people would have found Jonathan’s behavior rude, but as Max listened to the pounding steps up the stairs and the commotion in the master bedroom, he couldn’t smile. Those were the sounds of the hunt, the sounds of Mr. H preparing himself to do battle.

And there was no doubt in Max’s mind that soon, the knight would rescue the lady fair.

"Apparently, the good doctor has forgotten our agreement. It’s time we showed her just how serious we are." The distinguished older gentlemen looked at the two lackeys standing before him. "Fix it, or I will fix you."

"Yes, sir." The taller man said, stumbling towards the door. The smaller man stared at his older boss and sneered contemptuously before also backing out of the room.

The older gentleman steepled his fingers and rested his chin on them. He stared absently around the dimly lit library. Jonathan Hart had managed to take away the most important thing in his life, and Angelo DeBartelli spent years arranging his revenge.

"You will never find that with which you cannot live without, Mr. Hart. I assure you that."

Jonathan shifted from foot to fit in the elevator, keeping his eyes trained on the illuminated number above his head. 3, 4, 5. The car stopped and Jonathan let out a sigh of frustration. The doors opened and there was an exchange of bodies. Before the last person had even cleared the doors, Jonathan reached out and roughly thumbed the "shut door" button, followed by the already-lit number 6.

"Hey, man, where’s the fire?" A young intern mumbled behind him. Jonathan turned and pinned the offender with his eyes. The intern managed to look sheepish for a second before he motioned his chin towards the numbers. "This is your stop, isn’t it?"

The bell clanged and Jonathan was off and running. He maneuvered the yellowed hallways expertly and found himself standing in front of Dr. Blaurosen’s doorway in no time. The wood was rough and unforgiving beneath his rapping knuckles.

"Yeah, come on in." Jonathan blew through the door, a torrent of energy and anger. He stopped short at the sight of the petite woman sitting behind the desk, a phone balanced between her shoulder and her ear. She was not at all the Wicked Witch of the West Wing Jonathan had thought her to be, selfishly hoarding all the secrets of the ward under her pointy hat. She, instead, looked more like the harried executive as she motioned him to sit with her pen.

"Uh huh. Yeah," she jotted down a few notes on a yellow legal pad. "I’ll have to call you back, Frank. My appointment is here."

After replacing the phone, Dr. Blaurosen took a few more seconds to write then turned her full attention back to Jonathan. Blue eyes captured Jonathan’s brown ones and they stared each other down for a few seconds. Dr. Blaurosen broke the silence first.

"I assume you want to know why I agreed to talk with you now?" Jonathan had to hand it to her; she knew how to cut right to the chase.

"Let’s start with you explaining to me the code of silence that you have kept for the past 11 months."

"Mr. Hart, no woman by the name of Jennifer Hart was admitted—" Dr. Blaurosen stopped dead at the narrowing of Jonathan’s eyes. "Not the story you wanted to hear?"

"Try again."

"There are rules, Mr. Hart," she began, "As an executive in high power, I’m sure you know all about the bureaucratic red tape the surrounds any kind of governmentally funded organization. There are forms to fill out, OK’s to get, signatures to find…and you and your wife were in an accident, Mr. Hart. Not only did I have my hands tied by this organization itself, but I was told specifically not to give out any details--"

Jonathan cut her off. "I wasn’t asking you for secrets of the state. I was asking you where my wife was!"

Dr. Blaurosen’s shoulders slumped in defeat. "I know, Mr. Hart."

Silence descended in the room and Jonathan watched the older woman compose herself. She was pretty, in a harried and unkempt way. Her would-be strikingly blonde hair hung dull and lifeless around her face. Dark circles rode beneath her eyes and her movements spoke volumes of her fatigue and stress. Jonathan could almost feel pity for the creature across from him, save for the fact that he nearly hated her and her "rules" for playing with him for the past year.

She finally looked up into Jonathan’s eyes. Her words were strong and concise, but there was a bitter sadness to her tone. " The truth is, my staff and I don’t know what happened. One minute she was being wheeled into the ER, the next minute my attending physician was raising hell because he thought some joke was being played on him. A bloody stretcher was all he found in the exam room, and nobody could tell us where she had gone. Honestly, Mr. Hart, this hospital doesn’t need any bad publicity. And losing the wife of a multi-millionaire after a life-threatening car accident just oozes bad publicity."

"I can’t believe I’m hearing this…" Jonathan’s voice dropped from its strangled incredulity to a softer, more lethal tone. It amazed him how willingly people gambled with the lives of others. "You have jeopardized my wife’s life for a year to escape bad publicity?! Dr. Blaurosen, I know every single reporter in this town. They would gladly crucify your institution on my command. They’re waiting to smell blood in the water on this story, Doctor, and you are dangerously close to becoming bait."

"Mr. Hart if it makes you feel any better, these decisions were not mine to make, but those on the board of directors of this hospital." Her voiced fell to just above a whisper and her eyes clouded with the pain that comes from keeping a yearlong secret. "They don’t know I am having this conversation with you, even. I am risking my job to tell you these things, and I hope you understand how difficult it is for me to admit. I’m fully aware of my culpability if your wife is found injured or worse, Mr. Hart. And I live with that every day of my life."

Jonathan sat stunned for a few moments. "Why did you ask me here? To absolve yourself of your sins?"

Dr. Blaurosen pushed a file across the desk at him. "For a year I’ve silently investigated your case. A young intern by the name of Michael Hadley claims to have some information about an airlift that occurred from this hospital to another about twenty minutes after your wife was checked in. I searched hospital records and found the paperwork, but it was missing large gaps of information. The only information I could get was that they were airlifting a patient with spinal cord damage to the trauma unit at Cedars-Sinai hospital. Apparently, time was of the essence and they didn’t manage to write down the patient’s name.

"Mr. Hart, there’s a definite chance your wife is lost in this city and she doesn’t know who or where she is. Memory loss, especially long-term memory loss, is quite common in victims with injuries similar to your wife’s. She may be waiting at Cedars, waiting to be found."

"If my wife was here in LA for me to find, Dr. Blaurosen, I would have found her." Jonathan replied. He regarded his enemy for a second before holding out his hand to her. There was honor in her, somewhere, even if it was buried under years of living the rules of the game.

"I believe you. You’ll find Hadley on the 3^rd floor, pediatric unit. He’s probably cleaning bedpans and making beds. He can help you, Mr. Hart. Good luck." With that she stood and looked pointedly to the door. "You know the way out."

Jennifer took the stairs two at a time to the loft of the cabin. She stopped short at the foot of the bed and shuddered. She loved Scott, she was sure, but she wasn’t sure it wasn’t a love borne of a need to connect with another human life. The first few months of her new life were so bleak and lonely and she needed companionship so desperately. Scott was the first person who had made her laugh. The first person who had made her cry. He was the first person who made her feel anything beyond the numbness of living without an identity.

Jennifer moved to the head of the bed and fidgeted with the edge of a pillow. Scott hadn’t made it, so she set about folding the comforter into place and fluffing the pillows. When she finished, she sad amidst the clouds of white down. The mattress creaked softly beneath her weight and Jennifer flopped backwards and burrowed into the comforter. Her eyes tracked the high four posters of the bed, up to the gossamer mosquito net draped daintily from the ceiling. Her vision began to melt as she felt the strangely familiar bubbly and lightheaded sensation of slight inebriation. Her own laughter skittered through her head and the white of the room dissolved into a barely lit, dark room. Her large bed was replaced with a smaller, canopied version dressed with rich red, embroidered duvet. It was a present, she could remember. A gift for…something.

The gorgeous visage filled her vision and recognition flickered again. Jonathan. A voice, smoother than warm chocolate, slid past her ears, filled with teasing.

<Darling, I think you’ve had a little too much to drink. > Even stranger than the drunken elation, was the overwhelming feeling of supreme happiness. Something she hadn’t felt since she woke up in the hospital. Jennifer reached her hands out to his face, to bring it to her own and ask it all the questions burning in her heart. But the face shimmered and shook and disappeared into a glare of light from the large windows in the cabin.

"Jo—" Jennifer’s anguished cry caught in her throat, as she realized that even though she knew his name, he didn’t know who he was. A lover? A friend? Jennifer pulled a crumpled up piece of paper from her pocket and stared again at the drawing of two hearts entwined. The tears that welled in her eyes distorted the shape of the drawing, nearly erasing it from her vision.

"Who are you?" Her voice broke forlornly. There she laid, laying on the bed, for what seemed like hours. She stretched and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. Makeup streaked across her skin, but she really didn’t care. She’d clean up before Scott got home; they were supposed to go to dinner.

Lifting the sleeve of her blouse, Jennifer checked the time. 3:14 – She stared at the watch for a second, realization dawning. Before she realized where she was going, Jennifer was moving across the bedroom towards the closet. Near the top, balanced precariously on a series of medical texts, was a lock box Jennifer had kept since she was released from the hospital. Inside were the few and cherished effects she had when she was sent home. They were precious few clues to who she was Before. Jennifer reached a hand up, but her hands barely brushed the bottom of the box. Bouncing a little on the balls of her feet, she jogged the box off its balance and in crashed towards the floor. She jumped out of the way and the box slammed into the hard wood and the lid flipped open.

"Good solid construction…" she muttered as she bent over to retrieve the box and the contents that had managed to spill out. She automatically sought out the gold watch she remembered seeing in there. Though the jewelry was her only tentative connection to her past, Jennifer rarely got it out. She was never prepared for the empty feeling it produced. Yet this time she gloried in the clues she received. The watch was a Rolex, petite just for her wrist. The small diamond chips glinted in the late afternoon light and Jennifer instinctively flipped the watch over.

There. On the back, engraved in the soft gold was the two hearts along with the words. "I love you, - J".

The edges of Jennifer’s vision darkened and tunneled until all she could see was the back of the watch. J. Jonathan. She searched through the box with her fingers until she felt the ring. A rather large, intricately cut diamond in an exquisite gold setting, it fit perfectly on her ring finger. Jennifer ran a perfectly manicured nail across the etching in the back of the watch. The weight of the ring on her finger was more than familiar and Jennifer knew she was married. To him.

She envisioned the handsome face, the beatific white smile, and the hot cocoa voice. She knew his touch, his kiss, his heart. But she didn’t know his last name.

Jennifer clutched the watch to her chest and formulated a plan. She was so deep in contemplation that she never heard the door open. She never heard the footsteps behind her. And before she could even turn around her world darkened in a blast of light and pain. And then it was over.

"She’s closer than ever! I only managed to knock her out, but what do I do?" The panicked voice was high-pitched and jagged in the old man’s ear. This is what happens when you send amateurs to do a job.

"You take care of her. Did you get the jewelry." His voice was calm and low.

"Yes. I knew it was a mistake to let her keep them in the firs--."

"Don’t presume to tell me my job, Sir. Just see that she never finds those jewels again. Especially the watch."