Lois and Martha paced the waiting room at Metropolis General, waiting for word of Clark’s condition. He’d already been in surgery for eight – no, nine hours, Lois corrected herself as she pulled out her phone and checked the time for the millionth time that day. Nine hours and still no word had filtered down to them. She had to assume that was a good thing. Surely, if something had gone amiss, Dr. Klein would have told them. Still, nine hours of being knocked out, his bones broken and realigned, his tendons and ligaments repaired, and, scariest of all, Kryptonite exposure had Lois’ nerves teetering on the edge. She could only imagine what kinds of thoughts were running through Clark’s mother’s head. The poor woman looked absolutely distraught, and Lois couldn’t blame her one bit.
She turned to Martha and touched her shoulder. Martha jumped slightly at the sudden contact, but then she gave Lois the barest ghost of a smile. Lois nodded her head in the direction of the door.
“Our pacing isn’t helping anything,” Lois acknowledged. “In fact, I think we may be freaking out the family over there, waiting to hear about their son’s transplant. Let’s get out of here for a little while…get some coffee and something to eat.”
“But what if…” Martha began.
“Dr. Klein has my cell number,” Lois reminded her. “If he needs us, he’ll call.”
Reluctantly, Martha surrendered with a sigh as she let her head hang down so that her chin rested against her chest. “Okay,” she agreed.
Lois linked her arm with Martha’s, offering her support as they left the waiting area. Together, they made their way back down to the cafeteria. They’d been there seven hours ago to grab a quick brunch and some coffee, as Clark’s surgery had only just barely gotten underway. Lois yawned as they stepped into the noisy cafeteria. It hadn’t been that way earlier. Then, they had avoided the breakfast and lunch crowds, and only a few people had sat alone or in small groups, silently eating or talking in hushed voices. Now, with dinner time approaching, the room was nearly full and the noise level was at a dull roar as people competed with their neighbors in order to be heard.
They wasted no time in debating their meal choices, choosing a couple of tasteless burgers, bland and somewhat mushy fries, hard-as-rocks chocolate chip cookies, and soft drinks that, surprisingly, weren’t flat. The two ate mostly in silence, venturing to speak only when it was absolutely necessary. Lois tried to get Martha to talk a little, but even her gift of gab couldn’t shake Martha’s worry and inner reflection as she waited for news of her son. Eventually, Lois gave up trying and slipped into her own internal monologue of doubts and fears.
After they swallowed down as much food as they could stomach, they mutely cleaned their table, disposed of their trash, and refilled their drinks to take with them to the waiting room. Lois pointed out the restroom on the way back, and both women stopped to use the facilities and wash up. All in all, they were gone for less than forty-five minutes. And still, when they checked with the nurse in the waiting room – who was giving the family of the transplant recipient good news when they walked in – there was still no word on Clark’s surgery being over. Lois sat in the chair she’d been sitting in all day while Martha rifled through the stash of magazines on the table in the corner of the room. She yawned again as her eyelids grew heavy. She’d barely slept the night before – and suspected that Martha hadn’t gotten so much as a single wink. The lack of sleep, followed by a four AM trek to Met Gen for a five-thirty check-in time on Clark’s surgery had left Lois feeling like every last nerve had been rubbed raw, as well as utterly exhausted. Her eyes fluttered shut of their own accord and she dozed for a while.
She awoke to Dr. Klein gently shaking her shoulder. Martha appeared to be just rousing from a cat nap as well. Lois blinked rapidly to dispel the lingering sleepiness in her eyes and stifled a yawn. For a split second, she was disoriented, but then it all came crashing back to her. Clark’s surgery.
“He’s fine,” Dr. Klein said, answering their unvoiced question. “He tolerated the surgery better than I’d anticipated. He’s heading to recovery now.”
“Can we see him?” Martha immediately asked.
“Soon. Give us a little more time to get him all set. He still hasn’t woken up from his sedation, but it shouldn’t be too much longer now. We’ll keep him as comfortable as we can with painkillers, but,” Dr. Klein shrugged, “it’s only a matter of time before his natural metabolic rate starts burning it off faster than we can give it to him.”
Lois glanced around as Dr. Klein said the words, but they were alone in the waiting area now. The world beyond the windows in the room was dark and overcast. Lois had a hunch that it would snow again before the night was through.
“How bad was the damage?” Lois ventured, emboldened by the fact that no one else was there to eavesdrop.
Dr. Klein sighed and shook his head as an apologetic look wrinkled his features. “Bad. The muscles and tendons were…well…they weren’t the worst I’ve seen but…close enough. His bones though.” Once again, he shook his head sadly. “I don’t know how many times his bones were broken, but I do know this: it was done a lot. I’m not talking five or six times. I’m talking about probably dozens of times. Whatever happened to him, this isn’t a case of someone being clumsy and falling and hurting himself. This…this had to have been deliberate.” He pulled the surgical cap off his head, mopped his brow with a handkerchief, and fiddled with the cap in his hands. “I know we talked a little bit about how bad things looked from the x-rays we took, but…I wasn’t prepared for the amount of damage I saw.”
Lois bit back a cry of horror, but Martha allowed hers to escape. A wail of sorrow and pain ripped from Clark’s mother’s throat and Lois instinctively wrapped the older woman in a hug.
“It’s okay,” Lois whispered to her. “Clark’s okay. He was hurt, yes, but he’s going to get better now.”
But in her heart, Lois was ready to go to war with whoever had done this to Clark.
***
Two and a half days passed before Dr. Klein informed Lois and Martha that it was time to “check Clark out of the hospital against medical advice.” His newly reclaimed aura had returned in full and it was growing next to impossible to keep that information under wraps. He could no longer keep an IV line in, nor could Dr. Klein continue to hide how much healing had been taking place. After all, he’d deliberately chosen a corner room for Clark, with two whole walls of windows to let in as much of the still-weak winter sunlight in as possible.
Lois was only too happy to oblige Dr. Klein, though she could tell Martha was torn between wanting Clark and his secret safe at home and wanting him under the watchful eyes of medical professionals. For his part, Clark appeared to have no opinion on the matter. He was distant and mute, as always, though from time to time he would moan in discomfort as his body burned off the painkillers and his natural healing process knit his bones, muscles, and tendons back together. That broke Lois’ heart as she sat vigil by his bedside each day. Clark had already endured so much, and now they were asking him – no, requiring him – to undergo more pain, even as necessary as it was. But as it grew closer to the time to check him out of the hospital, his moaning grew more infrequent. Dr. Klein did one final, “unofficial” x-ray before they left, and to no one’s surprise, the breaks and fractures Dr. Klein had been forced to make before realigning Clark’s bones in the correct manner had all but fully mended themselves. He gave Martha the x-rays to take with her and deleted all evidence of the scans just to be safe.
“Come see me in another six weeks,” he told them before they left. “I’ll do an ‘official’ check then and we’ll get a fresh set of x-rays to prove that he’s healed. It’ll give us a paper trail, just in case of anything. We can discuss his feet and ankles then too, and repeat the process we just went through.” He slipped a business card out of his lab coat pocket. “In the meantime, here’s the number for a physical therapist I know. She’ll work with Clark to make sure he relearns how to properly use his hands again.” He looked over to Clark, who was staring blankly out the window, perhaps at the blimp that was flying over the harbor. “Call her tonight and she’ll set everything up. She can probably do at-home visits if you explain how difficult it is for Clark to get out and about.”
Martha took the card and then hugged Dr. Klein. “Thank you for all you’ve done for him so far,” she said, and Lois heard the hitch in her voice as she struggled to keep her tears at bay.
Dr. Klein smiled. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to help your son. I just wish I could do more.”
***
The weeks passed quickly and life moved on. A string of high-profile investigations kept Lois busy and Martha spent her days tending to Clark. But Clark grew stronger every day. With the help of Rashida, the physical therapist Dr. Klein had recommended, Clark was soon able to use his hands, wrists, and fingers in the way they’d been designed to work. Lois noted with satisfaction that he no longer needed quite as much help as he’d once relied on to do simple tasks like brushing his hair in the mornings, brushing his teeth, and manipulating utensils to eat with. In fact, being able to feed himself with far less effort than he’d needed to exert before only served to boost his appetite again, and for a few weeks, it was all Lois could do to keep the house stocked with enough snacks to sate Clark’s voracious Kryptonian metabolism.
Still, Lois and Martha had to be careful during Clark’s “recovery” period. If there was a chance of Clark being seen by anyone, they had to carefully wrap his hands the way Dr. Klein had taught them. And Clark did, indeed, need to have his hands bandaged on a few occasions – all of which he slightly protested with squirms of discomfort and the odd sound of displeasure. But it couldn’t be helped. Lois had run out of excuses to keep Perry and Jimmy away. Three weeks after Clark’s surgery, Perry happened to be in town and Lois couldn’t refuse his request to come visit Clark.
Their former editor was overjoyed to see Clark at first, but as the day wore on, it became more and more obvious that their sometimes gruff, but ever loving, old boss was at a loss as to what to say and how to act around Clark. Still, Lois had to commend Perry for the effort he put in to trying to talk to Clark, reminiscing about the approximate year that Clark had been a part of the Daily Planet’s staff. He told Clark stories about things that had happened in the intervening years too – how Mr. Stern had stepped in to buy the paper after the bombing, how much effort had been put into trying to find Clark, how Lois had been responsible – along with no small amount of help from Jimmy – in crumbling the empire that the Church family had built through the use of Intergang, even if Intergang still popped up once in a while to cause headaches for Metropolis. Through it all, Clark was silent and unmoving, and it was impossible to tell whether or not he’d actually heard and processed any of what was said.
After a while, Lois found that Perry was speaking more and more to both Martha and herself, and it hurt to think of Clark as being excluded from the conversation, even though she knew Perry didn’t mean for it to look like that. Still, in the end, she felt like Perry cut his trip short, citing a need to bring Alice to the opera. Lois glanced at her watch discreetly as the Chief said it – most operas in the city didn’t start for another two to three hours. Still, before he left, Lois noticed that Perry pulled Martha aside to speak briefly in whispered tones that Lois couldn’t hear. She did, however, notice the knowing way he nodded his head and the tender smile that crossed Martha’s lips.
He knows, her gut instinct told her.
After she’d first discovered Clark’s secret, she’d tried to remember everything Clark had said and done, and that often included the conversations he’d had with herself, Jimmy, and Perry. Clark might have been oblivious – deliberately or feigned – but Perry had seemed to drop the occasional hint that he’d known about Clark’s dual life. A part of her was tempted to ask Martha what Perry had said, but she bit back her curiosity. Clearly, he hadn’t wanted her to know, and besides, did it really even matter?
Jimmy visited the day after Perry, and that went, thankfully, a little smoother, though Lois could see how deeply Clark’s condition hurt their friend’s gentle heart. She could see the way the younger man kept swallowing around the lump in his throat and the way his eyes glistened with tears that he refused to shed. Still, for all of that, Jimmy retained the façade of a jovial attitude. Perhaps some of it was even real – no one could joke around the way Jimmy did and feign all of his positive tone of voice. Lois found that she was glad of Jimmy’s company and wished she’d allowed him to see Clark sooner than she had. Sure, she’d wanted to protect Clark and Jimmy both from being hurt, but maybe it was good for Clark to be around the people who’d once been closest to him, even if he couldn’t remember it.
She found herself laughing along with Jimmy that day; real, deep, hearty laughs like she hadn’t enjoyed in a while. Not even her sister, brother-in-law, and nieces had brought tears of laughter to her eyes and she found herself repeatedly thanking Jimmy for lightening her world within the confines of her heart all day long. She only wished Clark could partake in the joyful atmosphere, but, as usual, whatever might or might not have been going on in his mind stayed looked away behind his vacant gaze.
***
By the time summer broke, Clark’s hands and feet were completely back to normal. He no longer needed Rashida to guide him in relearning how to walk properly or how to hold a spoon. He could deftly handle even the most complicated tasks; things that had been almost impossible for him before, like tying his shoes and buttoning his shirts. Life became a little more relaxed, in subtle ways. Martha stopped following up on Rashida’s instructions, forcing Clark to work for hours a day at strengthening his muscles and retraining his brain to do things the correct way. Lois worried less when she was away from Clark. Instead, she could focus easier on her investigations at work and Clark’s imprisonment at the asylum.
So far, she didn’t have much to go on. It became clear that Dr. Fulton had been receiving somewhat regular cash bribes – but who was paying him was impossible to uncover. Nor could she prove that he was being paid off to keep or harm Clark, rather than one of the other patients. And nothing could be found about who’d ordered the Reaver to try and assassinate them. Anyone even remotely connected to the Reaver began to pop up dead – most from “suicide.”
Things were almost back to normal.
They would have been, if not for the continued absence of Clark’s memory and inability to speak or show that he could comprehend the world around him. And, of course, the occasional visit from Bruce or Diana – Lois’ main contacts in the superhero world – letting her know if they’d deflected another attack or if all had been quiet. It was mostly quiet, but two other attempts had been diverted – one man had been certifiably insane and claimed that the devil was in Clark and that’s why he needed to kill him, and the other had chosen suicide before Bruce had been able to catch him.
Yes, things were almost normal.
“Lois,” Martha said one evening as they sat out in Lois’ diminutive back yard, sipping the freshly squeezed lemonade she’d made that afternoon.
“Hmm?” Lois responded, watching Clark, his neck craned upwards to catch the last few rays of the setting sun on his face.
“I think it’s time I went home to Kansas.”
“What?” Lois asked, taken off guard. She’d become too used to having Martha around.
“At least for a little while,” Martha amended. “The planting season has already come and gone. Pretty soon the crops will begin to grow. I trust my hired hands to run the farm for me, but…” Her voice trailed off as she sighed. “Even if I’m only there long enough to put the farm on the market, I need to go back,” she said, her voice gone soft and sad.
“Sell?” Lois gasped. She could no more picture Martha selling the farm than she could picture herself leaving Metropolis for good.
“I’m getting too old to run the place on my own,” Martha said, shrugging. “And…I need to be with Clark. Until he…finds his way back to us, if that ever happens…I should be around. And I can’t….as much as I might want to bring him home to Kansas…I can’t do that to him. Kansas hasn’t been his home since he first set his sights on Metropolis and the Daily Planet.” She turned her head slightly to better see Lois. “And, truth be told, once he met you, I knew nowhere else would ever be his home. As much as I want to believe that, since I’m his mother, I’m Clark’s best chance at recovering fully…I’m not. You are. You’re the key, Lois.”
Lois blushed in embarrassment. “I’m not sure that’s true,” she admitted sheepishly. “I haven’t done a very good job so far. He’s still…locked away from us.” She gestured feebly toward Clark. She fell silent for half a minute, then sighed deeply. “Six months. He came home almost six months ago. And we’re still no closer to getting him back.”
“At least he’s more comfortable now,” Martha commented quietly. “His feet…his hands…you were right to trust Dr. Klein.” She paused for a moment as her cheeks colored slightly in a blush. “I’ll admit, it scared me at first, knowing that some stranger…to me at least…was going to be let in on Clark’s…uniqueness,” she said, lowering her voice out of mindfulness that they were outside and that there was the potential to be overheard.
“I don’t blame you,” Lois replied, reaching over and taking Martha’s hand. “I was a little scared too. But I knew Clark trusted Dr. Klein.” She looked to Clark, but his eyes were closed and his breathing was deep and even, his whole body relaxed as he slept. She thought for a minute as she watched the peaceful way his chest rose and fell with each breath.
“I think we should come with you,” she said at last, earning a surprised look from Martha. “I can talk to Jimmy about taking some time off. I know I’ve taken a lot since Clark was found, especially in the very beginning. But he’s been understanding of our situation and wants to see Clark get as well as possible. I think Clark needs to go home for a visit. Maybe being back on the farm will…I don’t know. Jog his memory a little? Bring back that spark into his eyes? Maybe…maybe it’s a long shot,” she admitted after a moment’s hesitation. “But now that he’s strong and healthy and won’t attract as much attention with the way he was walking and everything…I think he needs some time in his childhood home.”
Martha looked only too eager to have her boy back home again and she covered Lois’ hand with her free one, trapping Lois’ hand gently between hers. She nodded as a grin began to creep across her face. “I’d like that.”
Lois returned the smile and she nodded in Clark’s direction. “I think he will too. I’ll go call Jimmy now, then we can check out flights.”
***
“Clark?” Lois asked, peering cautiously into his face as she guided him into the weather-beaten old farmhouse where he’d spent the whole of his childhood. She bit her tongue against asking if the place was familiar to him. After all, he’d only just stepped foot inside the living room. “I know it’s been a long time,” she offered instead, “but this is the house you grew up in.”
Clark didn’t so much as flinch or flick his eyes around the room.
“This is your parents’ house. You lived your whole life here, from the time you entered their lives as a foundling infant, until the time you left to go to college, then to travel the world before settling down in Metropolis,” she explained, gesturing at the pictures on the walls as she spoke, which featured Clark at various ages.
The first one showed Jonathan and Martha, beaming with pride, on the day Clark had officially become their son. Another showed him as a giggling five or six-month-old. Another showed him as an eighteen-month-old, mid-shriek of laughter as he ran through the living room with his pants on his head. Another showed him at age five, posing proudly with the first fish he’d ever caught. In yet another, he was practically glowing as he held a third-place ribbon from the science fair. Then there was his eighth-grade graduation, his high school prom photo, his high school, and college graduations, and the headshot the Daily Planet had used for his byline.
A lump caught in Lois’ throat seeing that last one as it hit her, once again, how much she missed working alongside him at the paper. She wished she could hear him editing her copy just once more, or be subjected to some of his gentle, good-natured teasing, or be treated to his hearty laughter, or even just be on the receiving end of one of those devastating smiles she’d once tried so hard not to be affected by. She swallowed hard, trying to remove the lump before she spoke again.
“You used to talk about this place all the time,” she told Clark, taking both of his hands in hers as she led him deeper into the house. “You made it sound like it was Heaven itself. I used to think you were absolutely crazy. I mean, it was so…country.” She chuckled. “But then we came out here to investigate Bureau 39 and I got to see, first-hand, how amazing it really is here. Oh, that’s not to say I was ready to pack up and leave Metropolis for good, but…I could see why it appealed to you so much. The slower pace. The friendly, small-town feel. The freedom of the wide-open farmlands. It just…matched your nature so well,” she continued as she guided him to the stairs.
One by one, they ascended each step to the second floor, where Lois took Clark to his old bedroom. She took him to the window and let him look out, though she doubted how much he was really seeing.
“See that?” she asked, standing pressed against his side. She pointed down to a lone tree in the yard. “Your old tree house is right there. It had been your father’s when he was a boy and then it became yours when you were old enough. Your mother said that you used to spend a lot of time in it.”
She failed to mention how it had been his “Fortress of Solitude” – a refuge from the world when his abilities had begun to manifest and continuously terrify him with all the new and progressively more powerful things he could do. Clark didn’t need that reminder right now, not had his powers shown up again, outside of his invulnerability and accelerated healing. She often wondered why that was, but neither she, nor Martha, nor Dr. Klein could explain it, other than that he might be so far gone with the trauma he’d sustained to his brain that he was incapable of touching his abilities. For now, Lois was thankful. There was no telling what kind of damage Clark might cause if he could suddenly shoot fire from his eyes and ice from his breath without understanding what he was going or how to shut the ability off. And she shuddered to think of what state her house would be in if Clark was able to grasp things tightly enough to crush them with his immense strength. For the time being, perhaps because of his injuries and altered state of mind, his touch was as delicate as a butterfly’s, which continuously surprised Lois. She’d expected him to be a lot clumsier and more prone to accidental destruction.
“This was your bed,” she said, turning his body enough so that he could see it.
She gave him a gentle touch of encouragement and he shuffled across the room to sit down. Lois sat next to him and a flood of memories washed over her. She’d slept in his bed during that first investigation in Smallville, when they’d uncovered Trask’s real reason for digging around in Wayne Irig’s fields. She’d slept there when she’d flown, terrified and heartsick, to visit Martha and Jonathan when Clark had gone missing and she’d discovered his Superman suits in his old apartment. She’d slept there on other, even more somber visits, as she tried to give his parents comfort as the years slipped by with no further sign of where Clark was.
Her chest heaved with a concealed, but heavy, sigh as she remembered those trips. She’d been so happy on that first visit to Smallville. Hungry for the story and annoyed with Clark for dismissing what Bureau 39 was up to at first, but happy. She’d lost herself and her heart to the small town, the charmingly country CornFest, and the irresistible good nature of her coworker. For the first time, Lois had really seen Clark while they were there. She’d admired how relaxed and easy-going he was. She’d seen how friendly and open he was. In short, she’d been forced to see him as a person, rather than just competition at work. They’d started that trip as partners mandated to work together – happily on Clark’s part and grudgingly on hers – and ended it friends. She still could scarcely believe how much had changed between them over the span of just a few days during that investigation, and she was still silently thankful for the way Kansas had made her see Clark in a new light.
“It’s too late to go into town today,” she commented, more to herself than to Clark at first. “Maybe in a day or two we can go into Smallville. Maybe seeing your old neighborhood will shake something up there loose,” she said, tenderly brushing a lock of his striking black hair away from his forehead.
Clark closed his eyes against the now familiar feel of her hands on his body. It almost felt natural, the way he responded to her touch now. Lois remembered well how Clark had always seemed to crave her touch – the way he’d always been quick to offer his hand or his arm, the way he’d always appeared to melt a little when she initiated contact with him. She let her hand linger longer than she otherwise would have, enjoying the contact with him as much as he was enjoying it. She truly wished she had the power to heal him through her touch alone. Feeling brazen, she leaned over and gave him a chaste kiss on his forehead, before pulling away and smiling at him.
“I wish I knew what to do for you,” she quietly told him for what felt like the billionth time since he’d been found. “I’d give up my own memories if it meant I could restore yours. I’ve even talked to my father to see if he has any crackpot theories about how to help you, or even one of his insane gizmos that never seem to work the way he intends. But…” She shrugged helplessly, then put her arm around Clark’s shoulders. “I’m sorry, Clark. But, I promise, no matter what happens, I’ll be here for you.”
They sat in silence for a short while, then Lois took him out into the fields until the sun had set and the sky above began to turn the purple-black of twilight. Martha stayed with them for a time, pointing out to the still-oblivious Clark the different crops that were growing and letting him taste some of the strawberries and blackberries that had already ripened in the heat, before returning to the house to prepare a meal of pork chops, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, and buttermilk biscuits. After dinner, Lois took Clark back outside. So far away from the city lights she was used to, the sky above seemed profoundly dark and full of more stars than were imaginable. She’d found an old astronomy book in his bedroom, so she quickly downloaded an application on her phone that would allow her to pinpoint which star was which. Armed with her phone and a thick picnic blanket Martha had found in the barn, she brought Clark out to the front yard where she laid out the blanket and stretched out on it alongside Clark. With the help of phone app, she did her best to point out the various celestial objects – constellations and planets, the band of the Milky Way, even the space station as it orbited by.
Martha had once told Lois how Clark had often sought solace in that space between the Earth and the rest of the universe when he wanted to be alone and think, and Lois wondered if some part of him would remember that and feel connected to the stars. She wondered if any part of him recognized that he’d been born out there, somewhere out beyond the reaches of their own solar system, on a distant, doomed world. She wondered if he would remember how lonely that refuge beyond the Earth’s nourishing atmosphere was and how it had made him search for answers about his origins and his place in the world.
You never belonged out there amongst the stars, she thought to herself as she gazed at Clark. You were always meant for this world. You were always meant to find your way into my life. I just wish I’d realized it sooner. I could have cured your loneliness. I could have protected you from whatever tragedy brought you to your imprisonment in Arkham Asylum. But I’m here now. And I’ll never make the mistake of dismissing you again.
To Be Continued…
