One Past Midnight

by Jessica Shirvington

  Luckily, she started from the opposite side of the room, and I knew it was unlikely we would get through everyone before it was my turn. Just in case, I jotted down a few points. As I did, I flashed back to the night before—to Ethan, smiling, joking about my coming back and speaking in German. Suddenly, instead of summarizing a future I wasn’t even sure I would have, I was scribbling something else entirely.

  My name is Sabine. I live in two worlds. I want Ethan to believe me.

  I hoped I’d remembered it right. I was sure it was the general gist of what he’d said. When the bell rang and everyone filed out singing, “Au revoir, Mademoiselle Moreau!” I approached the front desk.

  “Excuse me, mademoiselle, I was wondering if you might be able to point me in the right direction to get a German translation?”

  Mademoiselle Moreau glanced up from her papers. “Parler en français, Sabine.”

  “Je suis désolée,” I apologized, then repeated my request, this time in French.

  She shook her head. “Je ne sais comment me présenter en allemand,” she said, explaining that she only knew how to introduce herself in German.

  I took out my pen and wrote down her translation for “My name is Sabine.” Mein Name ist Sabine.

  “Merci beaucoup, mademoiselle,” I said, and headed for the door.

  “Sabine!” she called out.

  I turned to face her.

  “There are lots of translation sites online, but they are not so reliable. The library will have a good German translation dictionary.”

  “Oui, merci,” I said, not daring to reply in English.

  I rushed through the halls, keen to collect my bag and get straight to the library. Miriam and Brett were waiting by the lockers.

  “Hey, we’re going to the mall. Want to come?” Miriam asked, while Brett snuggled her from behind. For some reason, their easy togetherness grated on me today.

  “Ah, no,” I said, feigning disappointment. “I have to go meet Mom for a coffee.” And then, in case they decided to hound me, I smiled and added, “But maybe after.”

  “And let me guess, you’d like to be chauffeured to your coffee date?” she offered.

  I did a quick calculation. I was sure I could have coffee with Mom and still make it to the library in town before it closed.

  I threw Miriam a sheepish look and she rolled her eyes. “Come on.”

  Sala’s Patisserie was the best coffee shop in Wellesley—famous for their afternoon teas. By the time I walked in, Mom was already seated, a tiered cake stand of finger sandwiches and delicate pastries in front of her. My stomach rumbled, still hungry despite my pasta-salad lunch.

  I sat down, ordered a mocha, and let Mom do all the talking—which was exactly the way she wanted it, pausing just long enough to enjoy dainty mouthfuls of the miniature éclairs and tarts, which she dissected and critiqued from every angle. For my part, I devoured the too-small sandwiches and what was left of the pastries and tried to marshal my scrambled thoughts.

  For the first time in forever, I was going to try to actually prove it—that I lived in two worlds. There had always been reasons, good ones, to keep it a secret, but those didn’t apply anymore. Not in the same way.

  As each minute passed, I grew more determined. Ethan didn’t believe me. He didn’t want to believe me. But what would he do if I managed to deliver what he’d so easily joked about? For the first time in my life, I wanted someone to believe me. And not just anyone . . .

  Ethan.

  The thought of seeing his face when I spoke those lines in German ignited a hope in me I’d never dared entertain.

  Of course, when I remembered the way I’d left things in Roxbury, my confidence faltered. All of this would rely on me being . . . Well, I’d need to be . . . alive.

  When I shifted tonight, knowing how much digoxin had been in my system, I couldn’t be sure what would be waiting for me. Had I played it too close to the line? Taken too high a dose? Would I even get my chance to show Ethan the truth and make him believe me?

  “Sabine? What’s wrong with you? You look like you’re about to explode out of your seat,” Mom said, her eyes going to my bouncing legs.

  “I . . . er . . . I just need to get to the library before it closes!” I blurted. “There’s a book I need before graduation.” I shrugged and pushed back my chair, knowing I couldn’t wait any longer. “You don’t mind if I catch up with you at home, do you?”

  I had to try. I had to find a way to make him believe me. At least one person in my worlds was going to damn well know me, know the truth. Someone had to.

  Mom’s shoulders dropped. Clearly she’d been hoping for more than just coffee. She’d probably had visions of a shopping trip afterward. I felt a pang of guilt, but there was no way I was going to give up this opportunity. When Mom gave a sigh and nodded, I leaned down and gave her a tight hug. I’d make it up to her later.

  “Thanks, Mom,” I said, and then I was out of there, headed straight for the library in the center of town—straight toward proof of my crazy existence.

  It wasn’t a perfect translation, but the words were there and in order and that night I sat in bed, a piece of paper resting on my lap. A small, crumpled square of paper that suddenly meant so much.

  I was glad I’d set my alarm. I’d never imagined I’d be able to fall asleep, but after enduring a gossip-filled dinner, where Mom and Lyndal ran through the checklist of every scandal in Wellesley, I’d slipped away to my room, and shortly thereafter, exhaustion had struck. Thanks to my alarm, I woke up fifteen minutes before the Shift. Just enough time to do a final run-through of my lines.

  My pronunciation wasn’t brilliant, but it would have to do.

  My eyes flickered open. I was shaking uncontrollably, the tension and confusion from the Shift only adding to my body’s free fall.

  I was back in Roxbury.

  The room looked yellow; the halo around the ceiling light pulsed above my head.

  Oh God. I couldn’t breathe. My chest was pumping so hard, but slow. It hurt. There was yelling, someone called out for a crash cart. Not encouraging.

  I squeezed my hand. Someone was still holding it, thankfully, acting as my anchor. Ethan?

  I had mere seconds before my mind would slip away.

  “Ethan,” I croaked.

  People all over me.

  Messing with tubes.

  Sticking in needles.

  “E-than!” I choked out.

  Suddenly he was there, close beside my face.

  “I’m here.” His voice was breathy. Scared.

  It was now or never. “Mein Name . . . ist Sabine.” I had to pause, each breath shorter than the last. “Ich habe zwei Lebensunterhalt . . . und ich mochte . . . Ethan mussen mir glauben. Bitte, bitte glauben . . . Sie mir.”

  Someone called out, “She’s talking. Is she coming around?”

  But I wasn’t. I was going under.

  Someone else: “Why is she speaking German?”

  More urgently, another voice: “Where’s the Digibind?”

  Footsteps came running into the room. “We’ve got it. Here, we have it!”

  Something cold pressed down on my chest. A needle in my arm.

  “Jesus, her bradycardia is at twenty-six. I don’t know how she’s still conscious, but she won’t be for long. Someone get that IV in.”

  More jabbing. I was fading. Could feel my body taking over, pulling at my mind. It felt like I was drowning.

  Then . . . “What did she say? In German, what did she say?”

  Someone cleared his throat. “She said her name, that she has two livelihoods and that Ethan must believe. Then she pleaded for him to believe. Or something like that; it was broken German.”

  “What time is it?” Ethan’s voice. It sounded near and distant all at once.

  “Just past midnight. Why?”

  Disorientation and pain reached their peak as the last of me started experiencing the full extent of the damage I’d done to myself. Even so
, I heard him. His voice close to my ear, his hand squeezing mine tighter than ever before.

  “Stay with me, Sabine. I heard you. Stay with me!”

  But I couldn’t.

  Everything went black.

  What happens when we die? Do we go somewhere?

  I can’t say I believe in pearly gates. Coming from the world, worlds, that I do, I’m more inclined to believe in some form of reincarnation—a sick flick of a switch and we start over. That’s much more believable. Much less appealing as well—to be stuck on a constant setting of repeat.

  I was pretty sure of one thing, though. Death didn’t come with the monotonous sound of beeping machines. Or a raw, scorched throat. Or, for that matter, a body that felt as though someone had taken a meat-tenderizing mallet to every inch.

  My hand fumbled with the oxygen mask. I hated the feeling of something being over my face, even if it was there to help. As my eyes started to blink open, my struggling became more urgent.

  A set of warm hands settled over mine. I relaxed instantly.

  It took a moment for my eyes to adjust and recognize the owner of those soothing hands.

  I think I expected Mom. Even Dad.

  As if he knew, he spoke. “Your dad was here. Your mom couldn’t leave your sister alone and they didn’t want to bring her in. He stayed until you stabilized, but he . . . he had to go.”

  Ethan gently removed the oxygen mask.

  I was so groggy I could barely keep my eyes open and I missed some of what he said, his voice dropping in and out of my consciousness. But just hearing it helped.

  “. . . should sleep . . . body’s been through a lot . . . if we hadn’t known what you’d taken . . . was so scared . . .”

  I opened my eyes again. One of his hands covered his face and his shoulders were slumped.

  I swallowed a few times before I could speak.

  “Do you . . .” I rasped, “believe?”

  He sighed. “I . . . I asked your father if you could speak French. He said you’d never spoken a word of French in your life.”

  I felt a wave of fury toward my father. “Mon père peut être un idiot,” I whispered.

  Ethan smiled grimly. “I’m gathering those aren’t words of love.”

  “Non.”

  Without thinking, I lifted my arm toward him, my hand cupping his face. His eyes widened, but he didn’t move away.

  “Need someone to know me,” I murmured. Begged. Because we both knew he still hadn’t answered my question.

  “Why?” he asked, his voice breaking.

  “‘Cause no one ever has.” My hand dropped.

  Ethan looked down, cleared his throat, and looked back at me. “They’re moving you back down to your room after your labs come through. Was it only the digoxin you took?”

  He watched me carefully as I nodded.

  “And you just figured it might be handy to write the name of the antidote on your cast?” His eyebrows lifted gently.

  “Don’t want to die,” I said, and tried to shrug.

  He half-laughed, but then sadness clouded over his expression. “Could’ve fooled me—and everyone else.”

  My eyelids were too heavy. I was sliding back under. “Want a chance . . . to really live,” I murmured.

  Ethan said something but I’d lost focus. I missed it.

  The next time I opened my eyes I was back in my room. The first thing I noticed was that my closet had been mostly cleared out. Just a few articles of clothing remained, folded on one shelf.

  I felt under the sheets. I was back in a hospital gown. I knew without looking that my butterfly necklace was long gone. At least I wasn’t restrained.

  I turned my head toward the other side of the room. Macie was sitting in the armchair, watching me, an open magazine in her lap.

  I swallowed painfully a few times, and she waited for me to settle.

  “You were vomiting a lot and they had to intubate you at one point. Did you really write the name of the antidote on your hand?” she asked, her tone incredulous.

  I didn’t answer and instead asked, “What time is it?”

  She rolled her eyes. “That’s all you ever want to know.”

  “Yeah, well, if you were me, it’d be on the top of your need-to-know list too.”

  She stared at me like I was a puzzle she didn’t want to have to solve. Eventually she looked at her watch.

  “Congratulations,” she said mockingly. “You’ve been out of it all day. It’s five p.m.” She stood up. “I’ll let Dr. Levi know you’re awake.”

  Oh yeah, she had the hates, bad. I had a feeling it was more to do with me kicking Mitch in the face than anything else. If I had to guess from the looks they gave each other, Mitch and Macie were sneaking visits to the supply room on a regular basis.

  I must’ve drifted off again because when I opened my eyes Dr. Levi was standing over me, writing something on his clipboard.

  “Hello, Sabine. An eventful evening, I hear.”

  He started to take my vitals.

  “You seem to be mending well. How do you feel about that?” he asked, his tone no different than if we were talking about the weather.

  I couldn’t think of an appropriate answer, so I turned my attention to the open door. A nurse I hadn’t seen before was standing in the hallway, observing.

  Dr. Levi put down his clipboard. “Sabine, the attending physician mentioned you spoke some German while you were semiconscious last night, and your father said that you told Ethan you can speak French. Is it true you can speak other languages?”

  It was no major surprise. I knew I would have to deal with the fallout from my experiments.

  I sighed. “Je ne parle pas allemand, mais je peux dire ce que vous voulez en français. Je le parle couramment depuis que j’ai cinq ans. Et vous avez quelque chose de vert entre les dents,” I said, explaining that I couldn’t really speak German, but that I’d been speaking French fluently since I was five years old and . . . that he had something green stuck between his front teeth. I couldn’t resist the add-on.

  Dr. Levi watched me carefully and when I finished he turned to the nurse in the hallway.

  She was smiling and seemed on the verge of laughter. But when she looked at Dr. Levi, she sobered and nodded.

  I suddenly realized why.

  She was there to confirm what I’d said. She spoke French—or at least enough to know if it was genuine and not gibberish.

  Dr. Levi took a moment, dismissing the nurse and then turning back to me. “That’s very impressive, Sabine. How did you teach yourself to speak French?”

  “I learned at school.” I shrugged. “Had a tutor at home.”

  “She did not!” came a holler from the hall. A moment later my father appeared in the doorway. I flinched. I should’ve guessed he’d been hiding out there, waiting to pounce.

  “Where did you learn French, Sabine? What game is this to you?” He was livid. Clearly the time for concern and compassion had passed—assuming he’d had such feelings in the first place.

  “Dad.” I said the word sarcastically, since it was a name I no longer felt he was entitled to. “Nice of you to visit.” Before he could answer I rolled away from them onto my side, wishing the locked window looked out to something more pleasant than a concrete parking lot.

  “Dr. Levi,” my father ordered, and I could hear him stomp back out to the hallway.

  After a considerable sigh, Dr. Levi followed, but he paused at the door. “I’ll be back shortly, Sabine. Perhaps we could chat further.”

  “Not likely,” I replied, not bothering to turn and look at him.

  My father’s words could be heard easily.

  “Her mother has been put on Valium for Christ’s sake! She can’t have this . . . unrest. What’s wrong with Sabine? How can she suddenly speak French?”

  Good question, Dad.

  Dr. Levi’s tone was several decibels lower than my father’s, but his voice still carried in the otherwise quiet hospital.

/>   “She appears to have created an alternate world where she, in her mind at least, exists for part of the time. It also seems that this has been going on for many years. From what Ethan has written in his reports, she’s extremely convincing. There’s no doubt she has carefully constructed every element of this new life so that, despite any evidence we provide to the contrary, she has a way of explaining away our logic. It is . . . Well, it’s obsessive but also quite brilliant. To have created such a complex world as she has, her mind would have to be borderline genius, as well as—”

  “Insane!” my father snapped. “But that still doesn’t explain the other languages.”

  “Actually, it does. If she’s submerged herself so com-pletely in this fantasy existence, it would also be believable that she could’ve given herself the tools to justify it. It’s possible Sabine has been teaching herself French in private for many years—and with her level of intelligence, it’s doable.”

  Shit.

  I tuned out from the conversation and wiped away a few tears. No matter what I did, I was going to be pegged as crazy. I’d been wrong to think I could make someone believe me. Ethan had written his reports, said I was convincing, but that was it. The worst thing was, there’d been a moment, I was sure, when I’d seen a small glimmer of curiosity—a suggestion that he was willing to know more. Had I just been seeing things because I wanted to? Things that hadn’t been there at all?

  When Dr. Levi returned, I kept my attention on the window. He asked question after question. Stupid, pointless stuff mostly. Every now and then I would answer in the hope that it would make him go away, but I offered no new information. It would only be manipulated to incriminate me further.

  “Sabine, I need to know if you have any further intentions of harming yourself. Can you tell me that?” he asked, starting to sound fed up.

  I didn’t answer. He wouldn’t believe me if I said no, and I’d be back in restraints if I told him the truth.

  He sighed. “Then I’m going to have to keep a day nurse with you.”