Parallel

by O'Roark, Elizabeth

  NICK

  I live nowhere near the Metro, but I assure myself there’s nothing inappropriate in what I’m doing. She did a nice thing for my patient. Seeing her safely to her destination is just common courtesy.

  But there’s been nothing appropriate about my reaction to her tonight. Not from the first moment she appeared at the door, all flushed cheeks and bright eyes and uncertainty.

  We walk quietly, in step, down Reservoir to 34th Street. Even though school is out, the sidewalks are clogged. My hand reaches out to the small of her back to keep us side by side.

  “I had another dream last night,” she says.

  “More torrid memories from our honeymoon?”

  Her laugh is throaty. God, I’d give anything to know what she remembers of this supposed trip to Paris. “The opposite of torrid,” she replies, her smile fading. “I dreamed we were in the hospital.”

  “I apparently really knew how to show you a good time in my past life.”

  Her mouth twitches into a grin. “Yes. I’m sure it was a high point in our relationship.”

  It’s so damn comfortable with her. It’s comfortable with Meg too, but this is easier somehow, which is a really unfair comparison. Of course it’s going to be easier with Quinn—she has no expectations of me. I might not even see her again after tonight. “So, what happened in this dream of yours?”

  She swallows. Whatever she saw, it bothers her even now. “We were in the hospital and it seemed like I was dying or really sick, I’m not sure. And then this woman came into the room, and I knew she was going to take me away from you. It’s the same dream I had as a kid.”

  We reach a crowd of people waiting to cross M Street and stop. “But I wasn’t in that dream when you were a kid.”

  “Yeah,” she says slowly. “You were.”

  I blink, wondering if this is a joke. The crowd moves forward and I remain standing here, stupefied. “That is completely impossible.”

  “Even when I was small, I told my parents about you. That your name was Nick and you were my husband. I’m sure it must have freaked them out.”

  “That—”

  She laughs, the sound weary. “Is completely impossible? Yes, I know. But my parents sent me to therapy because of those nightmares. It’s all documented. You could argue it wasn’t the same you, but I swear to God it was.”

  I rub my temples. I believe her. And yet, it is wholly unbelievable. “I don’t even know what to say.”

  She sighs. “Yeah. Me neither. It seemed so real too. My blood pressure started dropping and you shouted at the doctor to give me something. Levo…Levophed? Is that a thing?”

  I can only stare at her. It’s the exact medicine I’d have used to treat her blood pressure in an emergency, something she’s highly unlikely to know. “This just gets weirder and weirder,” I reply, starting to move across the street just before we miss the light. “I know you don’t want to have these dreams, but don’t you think maybe there’s a reason you’re having them? The next dream you have might be the one that helps you make sense of all this.”

  Her mouth purses. I wonder, fleetingly, what that mouth of hers would taste like—the cake she couldn’t bring herself to eat? Something better?—and it grates inside my chest, the fact that I’m never going to know. “Maybe, but I doubt it.”

  I agree with her, but I’m still disappointed in her answer.

  We reach the Metro far too soon. It had to be the fastest one-mile walk of my life.

  “What line are you on?” she asks.

  “I’m not,” I tell her. “I live back near the hospital. I just didn’t want you walking here alone since it’s getting dark.”

  Something pained and wistful passes over her face. “Thank you,” she says quietly, going up on her toes to press her lips to my cheek. She smells like oranges and sunshine.

  I watch her step onto the escalator and remain there until she is out of sight, wondering if this is what it’s like for my brother. If he’s somewhere in the world cataloging all the experiences he’ll never have too.

  * * *

  Meg is waiting in my apartment when I get back, which leaves me feeling guilty and irritated simultaneously. I hope some time away from Quinn will make my feelings for Meg return to what they were, but right now they are nowhere in sight. “Hey there. I didn’t think you were coming over.”

  She shrugs. “I figured once I move in, we’ll have to get used to working around each other’s schedules, so I might as well stay here anyway. Have you eaten?”

  I set my keys on the counter. “No, but I’m pretty beat,” I tell her. “You want to rent a movie and order in?”

  “We could,” she says, crossing the room toward me. “Or we could do something else.” She goes on her toes to kiss me, her fingers pulling at my tie. “We haven’t been alone in forever.”

  I know what she wants and for literally the first time in my adult life, I can’t. I know I’ll be picturing Quinn, and that when it’s done, I’ll feel like I’ve cheated on Quinn and Meg, as insane as that is. My hand gently circles her wrist, staving her off. “I did something to my back swimming this morning,” I lie.

  “I could do all the work,” she offers.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I really don’t feel great.”

  I watch Meg walk away, the rigidity of her spine the only sign of her displeasure. I need to get my head straightened out fast, or I’m going to lose the good thing I have—Meg—for something that isn’t even an option.

  * * *

  I spend the entire weekend trying not to think about Quinn. I spend Monday thinking of reasons I could call her, when I should never have called her last Thursday in the first place. My role as her doctor had basically ended at that point.

  But there are no words for how pleased I am when she calls me instead.

  “How’s Darcy today?” she asks.

  “I just saw her wandering around the hospital in her cape. It really cheered her up to have you there last week. Thanks for coming by. You’re at work?”

  “Yeah. My boss is out,” she says, “probably buying Dalmatians for her next fur coat, so I’m able to actually place a personal call.”

  I like the idea of this being a personal call more than I should. “Dalmatian fur is way too hot for D.C. in the summer.”

  “You can never plan your fur coat purchases too far in advance.” We both laugh and there it is again—this sense of ease in our conversation I don’t have with other people, not even friends I’ve known all my life.

  “So, I was thinking,” she continues. “Both of my seizures, or whatever they were, seemed like they were triggered by that house at the lake, the one that might be your parents’. I was wondering if I could see a picture of it?”

  “Sure, but why?”

  She sighs. “I don’t know. I’m just wondering if it’ll help me remember something. Obviously, I can’t stop the dreams, but maybe if I can figure out the significance of the house, or at least get used to seeing it, I can stop passing out every time I’m there.”

  Because of her wedding. It’s funny how I keep forgetting it’s happening, and how I flinch each time she reminds me. “Sure. Hang on.” I quickly swipe through my pictures, send one and then wait while she pulls it up.

  “Oh,” she whispers.

  “Is it the same house?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “That’s it. But I’m fine.”

  I give a small laugh. “I’ve never heard someone so disappointed to not have a seizure.”

  “No,” she muses, her voice distant and distracted. “It’s good, obviously. At least I’ll be able to make it upright through the wedding. I just thought…do you think I could see other pictures?”

  “Of the house?”

  “No,” she says, hesitating. “Of you guys. You and Ryan, your parents. The treehouse, maybe. Do you have pictures of that?”

  People always seem worried when they mention Ryan to me, as if I might have just forgotten that my twin is dead unt
il their reminder. I hear the apology in her voice but it’s unnecessary. A piece of me wants to share my past with her, wants to throw open the doors and let her be the one person I let inside. “Sure,” I reply. “Give me a sec.”

  I go into a favorites file on my phone and hit several in a row. A picture of me and my parents when I graduated. My dad in front of our house, captured wearing a hat of my mom’s to mow the lawn. Then me and Ryan—as teenagers out on the dock, both of us sun-burnished and way too full of ourselves. As kids, leaning out of the treehouse with big semi-toothless grins.

  She laughs. “What is your dad wearing?”

  “My mom’s hat,” I reply. “He has very little shame, obviously.”

  There’s a moment of silence, and when she speaks again her voice is full of dread. “Oh.”

  I shoot forward in my seat. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nick?” she whispers, the sound distant and barely audible.

  I hear a crash, and then nothing. I shout her name but hear only background noise. “Someone pick up the fucking phone!”

  There is only silence in response.

  16

  QUINN

  How was the first day of school?” asks Nick, leaning against the locker beside mine, lanky and relaxed in the way only someone older and cooler than you can be. Despite that easy stance, concern darkens his blue eyes, furrows his brow. He’s always been protective of me, although we’re only a year apart, and he’s even more so now that I’m in public school for the first time. But his protectiveness is big-brother-like, which I find highly annoying. I’ve seen the way he looks at me when he thinks I’m not paying attention, so who does he think he’s fooling?

  “Perfect,” I reply.

  “You found your classes okay?”

  I feel a trickle of evil joy in my chest as I look up at him. “I did. And you’ll never guess who just asked me out during Spanish.”

  Anything pleasant in his face bleeds away. “Who?”

  “Colin Campbell.” Nick and his twin brother are already stars at our school—both gorgeous, both straight-A students and star athletes—but they are juniors and Colin is a senior. A popular, hot senior. This is apparently a coup of some kind, but mostly I’m just relieved there’s a male somewhere in this high school who doesn’t want to pretend I’m his sister. Who won’t watch me like something he wants to devour and then rub my head like a favorite pet.

  Nick’s eyes narrow. “He’s a senior. You cannot date a senior.”

  “I’m fairly certain I can, since I said yes,” I reply, slamming my locker shut and heading for the front doors. It’s still summer-hot outside, and I have to pick my way through lounging students to get to the path I take home. Nick is on my heels, his eyes the color of a summer storm.

  “Where’s he taking you?” he barks.

  His distress is a balm to my soul. I’ve spent a solid two years trying to make him admit he likes me. I shrug, the very picture of ambivalence. “Some party.”

  “He’s going to try something. He’s at least going to try to kiss you.”

  He sounds pissed and it serves him right. We’ve just reached our cut-through in the woods, but I stop and turn toward him, shifting my backpack to my other shoulder. “Remember the time Ryan dared you to kiss me, and you did it, but acted like you were vomiting afterward? That is the grand sum of my experience. So, I hope Colin tries something, because that’s a shitty memory to have as my only kiss.”

  He slaps a palm to his forehead. “For fuck’s sake, Quinn. I was nine.”

  “Yeah,” I reply. “And I’m 15. So I’m ready for something better.” I turn to walk away and find myself spun back toward him before I’ve even had time to process it. His mouth lands on mine without hesitation or uncertainty, as if I’m a meal he’s been waiting for years to consume.

  And he consumes. With his lips, his tongue, his hands. He burns me alive, taking my oxygen and my common sense and leaving nothing but desire in its wake. Kissing is so much more than I realized. Not just mouths and fumbling, but something that turns my core into a pillar of fire and finds me arching against him, desperate for more.

  When he finally breaks away, my back is against a tree, his hands are on my ass, and there’s a bulge pressing into my abdomen—I suspect I know what it is, but this is all new to me, so I wouldn’t swear to it. “Are you going to pretend to vomit now?” I ask.

  “No, I’m not going to pretend to vomit.” He sounds winded and gravelly. His hands move up, cradling my face the way they once did a robin’s egg we found. I remember the awe in his eyes as he carried it. It’s how he looks at me now too. “God, Quinn. You have no idea how badly I’ve wanted to do that.”

  He’s older, and knows more, but this raw, wanting thing inside me surges and takes charge. I pull him down to me by the collar of his T-shirt. “Do it again,” I command.

  “Fuck,” he hisses. “Yes.” And then he’s pushing me against the tree again and his mouth is right there, about to land on mine…except my name is being called. Somewhere far away, but it’s coming from inside my head, and the voice is…Nick’s. Older, different, yet still him. Another version of Nick, calling me home.

  I want to ignore him. I want to stay right here against this tree and see what happens next. But that voice I hear has grown desperate and I can’t stand it. I have to go.

  I tumble through the darkness, but I am not actually falling, like I thought. I’m moving sideways, slipping through walls that press against me like the narrowest hallway, yet are made of absolutely nothing. And as I’m flying by, in the darkness across from me, I see a face. A girl—with long brown hair and gray eyes like nothing I’ve ever witnessed before—who looks as astonished to see me as I am to see her.

  “Quinn,” says Nick, stern in his panic. “Can you hear me?”

  I’m on a stretcher, in an ambulance bouncing so hard over D.C.’s potholes that it feels like an amusement-park ride.

  “Hi,” I murmur. The pain is setting in, shearing my brain into pieces, jagged like glass. I want to raise my hands but I can’t. “Head,” I whisper.

  “I have you,” he says, pushing my hair back from my face. “It’s going to be okay.”

  He looks at me the way I remember, from some other life: as if I mean absolutely everything to him and nothing else matters. On the other side of me, the paramedic is doing something. Wrong, apparently.

  “Give me that,” Nick demands, and seconds later, I feel the pain being pushed away, cleared, like he’s taken a large broom to the whole area. As everything goes black, I wonder if I’m dying, and my biggest regret is that I won’t have gotten to spend more time with Nick before it happens.

  * * *

  When I wake, it’s dusk, and Nick is sitting in the chair beside me. My hand is clasped in his, and that’s as it should be. It belongs there.

  “Hi,” I whisper.

  His hand slides away. “Hey there. How do you feel?”

  “Okay. A little achy, but that’s it. What happened?”

  “You passed out in your office while we were on the phone.”

  The entire morning is vague to me. I don’t remember waking or getting dressed. But I do remember the dream, and the sound of him begging me to come back. “You came for me,” I say quietly. “Thank you.”

  His mouth opens and closes, his hand reaches for mine and falls away. “The hospital called your fiancé,” he says after a moment, his lip curling into a sneer at that last word. “He couldn’t get a flight out until morning. Is there someone else you’d want me to call?”

  I shake my head. “My mother, but she’s two hours away and she’d just worry.”

  He stares at the blankets for a moment before raising bleak eyes to mine. “We got another MRI while you were knocked out.”

  My hands clench reflexively, nails biting into the soft skin of my palms. His expression is so grim I barely have to ask if it was bad news. “Oh?”

  “The tumor is growing,” he says, his jaw shifting as
he utters the words. “Quickly.”

  Everything inside me grows still and quiet. I take one deep breath. Another. “But you said it wasn’t metabolically active,” I whisper. “That it wouldn’t grow.”

  “It shouldn’t have. I have no explanation for this. None. I’ve never even heard of a tumor that could grow like yours without additional blood flow.”

  I bite my lip, willing myself not to cry. “And it’s inoperable,” I add.

  He is silent for a moment. “Yes,” he finally says. He squeezes my hand and I squeeze his back, not letting go as I turn my head away from him. A tear trickles over the bridge of my nose and onto the pillow. I was ready for this last week. Maybe not ready, but braced for it at least. Now I can only lie here feeling like I’ve been hit by a truck. “So how long do I have?”

  He reaches out to touch my chin, forcing me to meet his eye. “It’s not a death sentence, Quinn. Surgery isn’t the only option. There’s chemo and radiation. I need to refer you out to an oncologist.”

  I think of Darcy, tiny Darcy who is not going to be around for long. None of that worked for her, obviously. I think of my father. They told us he probably had five years. He was dead in six months. “And if those things aren’t possible, or just don’t work for me?”

  He exhales. “If it were to stop growing…there are people who are okay. They just sit with it, and we monitor and hope for the best.”

  He’s doing what all doctors do, pretending my one wispy tendril of hope is something far more solid and stable than it is. Except I don’t want the best-case scenario. I want the likely one. “But mine is growing. So how long if it continues at the current rate?”

  He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Let’s hold off on making predictions just yet. I’ve got a call in to the best oncologist in the city. He’s on vacation but I should hear back by Monday.” I just look at him, waiting, and he relents. “If it keeps growing at the current rate, you might have a few years.”

  A few years, and he’s probably still giving me a best-case scenario. It’s just as likely to mean one year.