Author's Introduction: This is a brief introduction for now, there is more below the line. Briefly, this is a first person point of view that will begin with Brennan at the start of the Shot in the Dark and will take her through it in five parts. (Thus, huge spoilers for Shot in the Dark are ahead if you haven't watched this episode yet.) I will try to update once a week, on Sundays. (However, I may take a Sunday off on the 17th because of finals.) At the moment I anticipate five relatively (for me) short chapters.

Those who don't want to be spoiled have clicked away, right...?

Last chance...

Okay. Spoilers from here on out.

If you found yourself wondering what Brennan might have thought regarding her argument with Booth, then being shot and briefly dying, this is one possibility. If you found yourself wondering what 'really happened' to her, this gives a scientifically sound explanation. If you wondered how 'real' her interactions with her mother were, I can't tell you because I'm not that writer. However, I can tell you what a rational empiricist would most likely think and the conclusions she would draw.

This piece will take into consideration all of Brennan's history, and that includes her stated perspectives on religion and what happens after death. Brennan is an empiricist, which means she looks for concrete evidence and rational explanations for things before she accepts them as plausible or 'true.' I will be using my education to show you what a scientist knows about the brain during moments of stress (and dying is the ultimate stressful event!). What I know is surely the same as what Brennan knows, and in my opinion she does know it. (You'll see why she does in chapter three.) There be science here, and plenty of it.

Finally, what is driving this story is my need to master six chapters (over 300 pages) in my anatomy text before March 15th. I've synthesized about half of my winter quarter A&P into this story, believe it or not. Because I need to know which parts of the brain are responsible for consciousness, dreaming, vital functions, hearing, etc, I had to master whole chapters just to put in a single line about, for example, why she thinks she's hallucinating. What evidence would she draw upon to form that conclusion? You'll get a line but I plowed through 100 pages of text to give you that one line. ;) This is serious studying, people. This is not a rationalization. :P

If you're interested, read on. :D

~Q~

This is Not a Rationalization

~Q~

We go through our lives on the assumption that another moment is going to follow this one, the one we're in. We have a long line-up of moments just waiting to be experienced and an equally extensive list of assumptions to go with those anticipated moments we plan for.

We enter an airplane certain that we'll reach our destination and once there, we will carry on with whatever we were going to do at the end of that journey. We leave our home for the day, confident that we'll be coming back that night. We send our loved ones off in a car without any doubt that it's perfectly safe, little realizing that statistically, we're more likely to die in an automobile collision than almost any other catastrophe that we can imagine. Yet we assume the risk is minimal every time we need to go somewhere, because we've always gotten there safely in the past.

The problem with these assumptions we all make, of course, is that they are assumptions. They are built on a faulty premise: that what has gone on before can predict what will happen next.

Even when we have arguments and fights, when we part with loved ones on acrimonious terms, we still assume that we'll get a second chance to set things straight. Because, we've always gotten one before.

It becomes a problem when the assumptions fail to materialize as we expected. That one time we shout at a parent or a child, that one time we didn't kiss our mate goodbye and we left in anger with the assumption that it'll all work out later … that could be the time our premise reveals its faulty foundation.

Something unexpected might take those future moments away.

~Q~

In hindsight, it was a foolish argument (as most arguments are).

Sometimes I am stubborn. I have always known that I was, from my earliest memory of my exasperated mother asking me why we had to have the same fight again and again. (I don't remember what the conflict was about, only that as usual I had set myself against my mother's will and we were 'knocking our heads together' as my father called it.)

The only other person who has ever had to contend with the full brunt of my stubborn nature is my partner. We almost never came to be what we are because I was too stubborn to give him a second chance. Fortunately for both of us, he can occasionally be more stubborn than I am. I can laugh about it now, that I refused to speak to him for over a year and yet he persisted in calling me over and over again, and finally resorted to trickery to reach his objective (a minute with me so his charm could finally have a chance to defeat my resistance).

Given that inauspicious beginning, you would think he'd have guessed what he was getting into. We worked together as partners for years, fell in love but both of us were too stubborn to admit it until finally one of us caved (him, actually) but the other (me) refused. Then after a great deal of misunderstanding and waiting far too long, I finally gave in (and thankfully he was back to being ready). All of which goes to show that I am more stubborn than he is most of the time.

One of the things I'm most stubborn about is ensuring I always have a rational basis for everything I say and every decision I make. It's not a rationalization: that is to cover irrational behavior with a veneer of acceptable or logical reasoning while simultaneously failing to understand one's own internal and actual motivation. If I refuse to take an elevator on the basis of a fear of enclosed spaces but tell everyone (including myself) that I simply prefer the exercise of stairs … that is a rationalization. If I know that I fear enclosed spaces, and explain that I would prefer not to place myself in such an uncomfortable situation and thus I take the stairs … that is not a rationalization. It is merely rational.

I've always known the reason why I do anything that I do. I do not rationalize. If I don't have a logical justification, then I don't act.

That confuses people, even the people who know me best.

It was an irrational argument that saw me being stubborn, and refusing to make a decision without my crutch of logical reasoning. (Yes, I know it's a crutch. You see? I do not rationalize.)

Here is another thing I've always known about myself: I am not a rational person. If not strictly controlled, I am given to extreme emotional reactions when I feel anger, fear, and love. In the past, I have been prone to outbursts that have included harsh words or impulsive actions I've later come to regret. (Want an example? I once leaned over to an attractive man who had just fired me and suggested we could have sex since we weren't working together any longer. That impulsive act on my part is why we argued the next day and why I refused to speak to him for a year.) I called him a bully and hit him; clearly I was not behaving rationally at the time.

One of my greatest regrets was saying something cruel to someone I loved, all on the basis of me acting emotionally, lashing out, and the hurt I caused could not be healed. Henceforth, I vowed to only speak to reason, to only act with logic, and in so doing to avoid ever causing that kind of pain again. Logic became my crutch: I cannot take a step without it because every time I do, some disaster befalls me and those I care about.

Booth wanted to take our fourteen month old daughter to a cabin in the woods for a family fishing trip. I've known he's harbored this fantasy for years (he first spoke of it the first time we cared for an infant together, a baby named Andy), but it always struck me as being an illogical way to spend time with an infant.

Christine can't fish, ergo, I can't fish either. She and I will be staying on the shore, while Booth fishes alone. Does that not negate the entire purpose of a supposed family vacation? Logically, it does. He wants me to do something that has no logical justification, for the purpose of building memories for our daughter (and that defies logic as well since a fourteen month old is incapable of forming long-term memories). When I attempted to explain that his stated reasons were irrational (rationalizations?) he became angry.

He accused me of not being spontaneous, of requiring scientific permission for everything I do. He didn't understand (and in a calmer moment I might have worked harder at explaining myself). The issue is not that I need permission from science, it's that I wanted to understand his actual motivation. Christine can't go fishing. Who is this memory actually for...? He felt attacked, so he attacked me.

I've known for years (from the beginning) that Booth is a man who operates on the basis of emotion and what he feels. Reason is not his yardstick, it is mine. I am brain, he is heart; and we are metaphorically separated by the blood-brain barrier. That which passes through the heart is not permitted to enter the brain, and that which is generated in the brain does not cross the boundary to reach the heart. This is not the first time we've been unable to cross the divide that separates us. It probably won't be the last.

What sets this argument apart from all the others that have gone before is not that we argued, nor what we argued about. No, what sets this one apart is that it happened when the premises failed.

During a brief lapse, I kicked away my own crutch in a fit of passion and left him with a scathing remark. "Here's something spontaneous. Bye!" A slammed door, me driving off and leaving him angry and unsatisfied … this is not the first time this has happened. We've done this many times over the years, a little more often now that we're living together and raising our daughter, but we have always found a way to reconcile. Always, given enough time, we return to each other and seal the breach. Heart and brain do exist within the same body, working together. The boundary remains but we take our sides and touch each other through the filmy veil that separates us.

There is one truth I've lived with for over twenty years, the one that first drove me to the crutch of reason, and yet I've failed to live by it with Booth. You see, I've always known that second chances aren't guaranteed.

I learned that the hard way, when I was fifteen.

~Q~

When I am upset and need time to think, I prefer to work. It gives me a physical distraction that keeps my hands busy, my mind centered, and the chaotic emotions at bay long enough for my limbic system to stand down. Speaking in anger is detrimental to relationships; acting on anger is far worse. The temptation to speak, to spew something scathing and injurious, is far stronger in me than anyone ever realizes. I am Iceland, ice on the surface and fiery hot destruction underneath.

Rather than risk saying something even more damaging than 'good bye' (for now), I went to work at the lab. As I spent my time with the bones of our latest victim, my thoughts raced in agitation. Booth wanted me to throw away the crutch of reason that I've leaned upon for over twenty years. Even after all these years together he doesn't understand why I need it.

The time in the Bone Room was supposed to help me sort out my emotions, classify them so that I could specify which were reasonable and which were not. The unreasonable emotions—for example, my initial feeling that Booth had suggested I am an unfit parent—must be discarded. The reasonable ones, such as my realization that I am clearly feeling insecure regarding my ability to correctly parent my daughter, must be examined more closely. This is the crutch. How can I navigate the confusing swirl of emotions without some sort of aid, without a way to organize that which is inherently disorderly?

I confess, I spent a great deal of time muttering to myself the long history of reason, rhetoric, and logical discourse that science is heir to. Our civilization is founded on the premise that observation and reason provide the evidence that explains the workings of the natural world. "Civilization is based on rational thought. There is no certainty without evidence. To dismiss the empirical for foolish emotions..."

So caught up in my litany was I that I scarcely paused when the nightshift security officer, Hal, stopped in to inquire my intentions. He quizzed me on the body I was examining, and then quickly retreated when it became clear he could not tell a suture from a sulcus. Most people can't.

My internal monologue against Booth's irrational behavior and expectations was next interrupted by Booth himself, calling me. Ironically, in taking another step without my crutch, I lost my last chance right then with a petty little revenge. I hit 'ignore' and sent his call to voice mail. Had I accepted his call, I would not have had the magnifying headlamp on my head a few moments later. Things may have ended differently because I might have seen it coming.

Dwelling in what-might-have-been is not my modus operandi, however. That has never been the way I operate because we can't go back and change the past. I slipped the magnifying headgear on and trained it over the victim's cleanly transected right distal radius. A few moments later, I heard the shuffling sound and looked up through the distorted lens to see a vague white shape.

"I can't talk right now, Hall. I'm working."

The form moved, seemed to raise its hand. As I began to reach for the magnifying headgear so I could remove it, I heard a soft hiss and swish. An instant later, the most peculiar sensation of freezing cold accompanied by ripping pierced my middle left abdominal quadrant. Instinctively, I gasped and brought my hand to the wound.

It was a wound. It penetrated deeply, and even within that fraction of a second, I knew it had entered at one of the worst possible locations. The inferior mesenteric artery passes in that general vicinity. Within another second, I could feel the hot, wet flow of arterial blood pouring through the strangely cold hole in my body. Stunned by the unexpected violation, I tried to take a step. I would need medical attention immediately, and my only hope lay in reaching my cell phone for a fast 911 call.

But, shockingly, already the blood loss was accumulating. My knees buckled and I felt myself falling. A crashing sound indicated I'd knocked over a tool tray and the metal instruments rained down beside me. As my body hit the floor in a graceless heap, the realization that I'd reached the end of everything was immediately eclipsed by a far greater sorrow. Christine would grow up without a mother, just as I did.

My final coherent thought was hollow disappointment in myself. I'd taken a step without my crutch. I'd acted impulsively, ignored Booth's call, and now I was going to die and leave behind a legacy of harsh words. All because I'd forgotten that any given moment might be our last.