by Nick Jones
The doctor draws in a long, dramatic breath and then exhales, slowly. When he speaks he sounds almost embarrassed. ‘If this was some kind an accident,’ he tuts, ‘why are there no puncture wounds?’ He doesn’t wait for an answer, he continues questioning himself. ‘There are no signs of entry, no ripping or dragging, no torn flesh. The barbed wire is perfectly inserted, as if the stuff has somehow grown in him and then been cut neatly at the edges. It’s more like some kind of sick torture.’
Another voice, this one a little further away, ‘Or, the world’s weirdest acupuncture.’
I feel my mouth twitch, my body’s feeble attempt at a smile. ‘Mark,’ I hiss, my voice a pathetic croak happening at the very back of my throat.
I feel a hand on my wrist for a short time and then on my side, lifting bandages I presume and checking my wounds. I finally manage to open my eyes and a brilliant golden world floods into view. I squint and groan, shifting my weight slightly. I cough and something sticky rattles in the back of my throat.
‘He’s awake,’ the nurse says.
I blink some more and see Alexia. She smiles but it can’t hide her concern. At times like this, when your world is filled with darkness and pain, beauty seems clearer somehow, and Alexia’s face is like the sun. She shudders, the back of her hand covering her mouth.
‘It’s okay,’ I manage.
The doctor, a short, pale man with a thick beard, leans close to me. ‘You are in Cheltenham General Hospital Mr Bridgeman, we’re prepping you for surgery, how are you feeling?’ He asks, eyes narrowing. ‘Are you in pain?’
Nah, I’m fine, it tickles really.
‘Yes,’ I murmur, ‘but I’ll live.’
A shadow approaches, initially blurred but unmistakably Mark. ‘Hello mate,’ he says, with his own version of a painful smile. ‘You had us worried for a bit there.’
‘You’ve been in an accident,’ the doctor says. ‘Do you remember what happened?’
I blink, staring up at the ceiling, my time-travelling adventure flooding back into my mind. The second jump, the fairground and then the landing. Smack bang in the middle of a very spiky fence. I tense my abdomen and feel a flash of brilliant pain, strong and white. I pant and wince. I can feel the metal in me, hot like a grill.
‘Yes,’ I finally reply, ‘I remember.’
Alexia leans in. ‘Joe,’ she says firmly, ‘you don’t need to say anything.’ Her eyes widen and she shakes her head. ‘Why don’t you rest? We can talk to the doctor later.’
I nod, as best I can, letting her know that her warning has been received. She’s right. I need to keep my mouth shut. Explaining this one isn’t going to be easy. The nurse to my right checks my wounds again.
Prepping me for surgery? Oh, shit.
I turn my head and look down as she lifts the bandages that cover the right side of my abdomen. I see my skin, angry and raised, and three dots of shining metal, like polished rivets flush with skin. Barbed wire, right though the fleshy bit of my side but it’s been cut by time itself, the metal within me travelling through time as I did, the rest left in that field.
I close my eyes, wondering when I last had a tetanus injection, but my thoughts are interrupted by the nurse who suddenly cries out. I see her stumble back, sending a tray of instruments crashing to the floor. ‘What on Earth!’ She exclaims, pointing at me, ‘Doctor, look.’
The pain, glowing hot inside me eases, instantly, as if a magic balm has just kicked in. I let out a long, deep sigh and begin breathing normally, only then realising how tense I must have been. The doctor steps forward. ‘That’s impossible,’ he gasps, pressing gently around the edges of my wound, leaning in for a closer look. ‘It’s steel, it can’t just…’
‘Can’t just what?’ Mark asks.
The doctor turns to him and then points at the light-box, the one showing a skeleton X-ray version of me with comedy barbed wire all over the place. ‘It makes no sense, we have the X-rays, they show it, they prove it.’ He speaks quietly as if to himself, lost and confused, ‘There was barbed wire, embedded deep into the muscle.’
Mark curls his lip, ‘What do you mean, was barbed wire?’
‘Well, that’s the thing,’ the doctor replies, ‘it’s gone, it, just,’ he swallows, staring at me, ‘it just vanished.’
10.
The next hour consists of prodding, two more X-rays and a parade of hospital types who either frown, fake-smile or ignore me completely as they discuss the bizarre case of me. Alexia and Mark wait patiently in the corner of the room as I repeat my excuses. I’m too tired to talk. I need rest. Etcetera. Finally, the room empties, the throng of doctors, nurses and consultants no doubt decamping for a more private discussion, loosely entitled, What the fuck just happened? And, What the hell are we going to do about it?
Mark folds his arms, leaning back against one of the walls in my small, but at least private, hospital room, ‘Well, that was intense.’ He sighs.
‘Yeah,’ I nod.
I press my elbows into the bed and manage to pull myself up to a forty-five degree angle, which makes all the difference when you’re trying to talk. A new version of pain has arrived but it’s a dull, gnawing ache, like after you’ve had a tooth removed and the anesthetic has worn off. I know how bad toothache can be, but trust me on this; barbed wire wins and the relief that it has vacated my body is huge.
‘What happened?’ Mark asks.
I shrug, ‘I had a bad landing and bought some of the fence back with me, but it didn’t belong here, not in this time.’
Mark nods, exploring his bottom lip. ‘So it came back, same rules as your watch and your clothes.’
‘Yep,’ I reply, ‘I guess so, it’s a bloody relief, I can tell you.’
Alexia sits next to my bed. I turn to her and smile and as I do her eyes fill and swim with water. ‘God Joe, I’m so sorry,’ she sniffs, ‘I didn’t think for a minute that we would…’ She sniffs again and exhales quickly, forcing back tears, ‘Didn’t think this would happen.’
I reach for her hand. ‘Alexia, listen to me,’ I say, my voice scratchy. ‘What happened isn’t your fault – ’
‘But if I hadn’t insisted you try and jump again, well you wouldn’t be in this…’ She winces, shaking, looking me up and down, ‘In this mess. I was so worried about you.’
‘I’m okay,’ I assure her and also myself. ‘Unbelievably, it just feels sore now.’
Mark sighs loudly, pushes off against the wall and walks around to the other side of the bed, studies me and then sits on the edge. He frowns, looks at Alexia and then back at me. ‘Ever since you left my house I’ve been going crazy,’ he says, more serious than I’ve seen him lately. ‘You need to be more careful Joe, I almost called you to tell you that, I mean you need to be super super-careful with this.’
‘Yeah,’ I sigh, nodding at Alexia, ‘she keeps telling me the same.’
‘Well, maybe you should listen,’ Alexia replies, giving my hand a gentle squeeze. ‘There’s two people here who care about you.’
I frown and realise that moments like these define our place in the world. If we are found – like I was, I presume – and admitted to hospital, the people who come to our bedside tell our story. Go back two months and mine would have been a very sad one.
‘I have been careful,’ I say, defensively.
Mark hikes an eyebrow, spreading his palms over and above my battered body, ‘Yeah, sure, you’ve been really careful.’
‘Up until now I’ve been fine,’ I protest further, deciding not to mention the moments before landing in 1992, hanging thirty feet above a building, the sudden rush of on-coming traffic. ‘This was just a slip-up, I can –’
‘Joe,’ Mark interrupts, forcefully, ‘we don’t have long, those doctors are going to be back in a minute with more clucking consultants, keen to see the barbed wire man. How far back did you go?’ Mark’s eyes narrow. ‘All the way?’
‘Yes.’ I sigh, the memory of the fairground still fresh in my mind. I
stare at him, my lips pulling back against my teeth in frustrated determination. ‘I was so close but I couldn’t stay, I couldn’t stay focussed.’
Mark shakes his head, ‘But your limit was 2001, we talked about this, how did you –’
‘It’s my fault.’ Alexia shrugs, her voice thready, ‘I thought I could help. I programmed him to time-travel again after he landed in 2005.’
‘A double jump,’ Mark whispers.
I’m tense again and have to force my body to relax. ‘It’s not your fault,’ I tell Alexia again, ‘or yours,’ I assure Mark, ‘but you said I needed to find my Eureka moment, something that would change things, up the game, let me go back further.’
‘Yeah, but not like this.’ Mark sighs, looking around the room and then back at me, ‘I mean look at you, you’re going to end up killing yourself if you carry on like this.’
We sit in silence for a while, listening to the beeping of machines and distant voices in the corridors. I shift occasionally, testing my movement and the pain associated with it. It’s amazing really, but now the wire has gone, I’m feeling pretty good. I stare at the X-ray and can see how the barbed metal was inside the muscle and fatty tissue, how it missed the important bits of me like the arteries and bone. Lucky, I tell myself, you are bloody lucky Joe.
‘Listen,’ Alexia says eventually, ‘it’s taken me years to learn to meditate, to be able to hypnotise myself, we shouldn’t have…’ She corrects herself, ‘I shouldn’t have expected it to work on the first attempt.’
‘Right,’ Mark agrees, fixing me with his gaze. ‘No more jumps until she’s happy you’re ready.’
I shake my head. ‘You don’t understand,’ I say, solemnly, ‘I don’t think it works like that.’
‘What do you mean?’ Mark asks.
‘I managed to jump again,’ I say, eyes working between them, ‘all the way back but it was only just within my reach.’
‘Maybe you can learn to get better,’ Alexia assures me.
‘It’s not like that,’ I almost snap back at her. ‘I managed a second jump and okay, I messed up, but it was such a stretch to reach ’92.’
‘You can try again,’ Mark suggests, ‘when you’ve recovered.’
‘Maybe,’ I murmur, ‘but time doesn’t wait Mark, not for anyone, and every day I spend here is a day further away from that night.’ I swallow, deep in thought as the realisation lands, an idea that’s been brewing away in my subconscious for a while now. ‘Don’t ask me how I know but I can feel it. Time is like an ocean. We travel through it, rising up as the past fades into darkness below us, and every day here just moves me further away, making it harder and harder to get far enough back.’ I stare at Mark, ‘Don’t you see?’
‘Joe,’ Alexia interjects politely, ‘I know it might feel like that, but it’s –’
‘No,’ I snap, surprised by my own venom, ‘I’m not imagining this, I know. Time is against us, against me.’ My voice cracks. ‘We need to try again, sooner rather than later, before it’s too late.’
‘Joe, come on mate, stop now.’ Mark flashes Alexia a weak smile, a concerned gesture that makes me glow with happiness and frustration in equal measure. ‘Alexia is right mate,’ he continues, ‘you’re going to have to do it her way. You need to heal, then spend time learning and practicing, getting better at this, but doing it as safely as possible.’ He shrugs, and raises both eyebrows. ‘That is, unless you’ve got some magic way to take her with you that you haven’t told me about.’
There is a long silence, the air heavy with his words.
Some magic way to take Alexia with me.
Alexia and I stare at each other, deep understanding rushing silently between us. I turn back to Mark, mouth agape, eyes big and round. He looks back at me in utter confusion. ‘What?’ He asks with genuine innocence, ‘What did I say?’
‘I can take her with me,’ I murmur, excitement coursing through me. ‘If someone is touching me as I travel, they travel too.’
Alexia pulls her hand from mine as if I’m planning to do it right there and then. ‘There’s no way Joe,’ she scoffs, loudly. ‘Absolutely no way I’m doing that again.’
Mark raises his hands and snorts, ‘And I have absolutely no idea what the hell you two are talking about.’
11.
I’m a fast learner when it comes to avoiding things; Mark, on the other hand, is just a fast learner. As I explain the fundamentals of dual time-travelling he listens intently, a deep frown carved into his brow. ‘So, hang on,’ he interjects, glancing over at Alexia who is staring out of my hospital window, ‘you travelled with him?’
‘Yes,’ Alexia replies without turning, her arms folded defensively. ‘Joe seemed in pain and I reached down to grab him,’ she pauses, ‘and then we –’
‘Time-travelled,’ Mark finishes for her, piecing things together quickly. He turns back to me, ‘How far did you go, what were the dates?’
‘We left on the 19th, got pulled forward to Christmas Day.’
‘Fascinating,’ his voice becomes a monotone stream of consciousness. ‘It’s chaos trying to find order, pulling you around until the balance is restored, things appear to be random but they aren’t, almost like entropy.’
I move my legs carefully as he talks and am surprised by how little pain I feel. It could be the huge contrast of course, but as I shift my weight and lift myself higher in the bed I actually feel okay. Bruised and aching, but okay. ‘I hope my tetanus is up to date.’ I smile, rolling my shoulders.
Mark grins, ‘Exactly what I was thinking.’
‘This is just some kind of joke to you is it?’ Alexia snaps, turning her gaze onto us, eyes blazing, ‘I’ve been worried sick.’
Mark and I know enough to stop talking. Alexia shakes her head, cheeks flushed. Her anger was sudden and I suspect the majority of it is born from guilt. I can see it in her eyes. She blames herself for the state I’m in.
Hey, get me; an expert on women all of a sudden.
‘Alexia,’ I say, lifting myself upright, ‘for the last time, this isn’t your fault. I’m a grown-up, I can make my own decisions and I take full responsibility for what just happened and whatever happens next.’
‘Next?’ She snorts.
‘Yes. I made it all the way back to 1992,’ I shrug as if that’s the easy bit. ‘Okay, so I made a bad landing but I can get better at that, and if you came with me we could…’ I pause, taking a breath, ‘We could actually save her.’
‘Joe,’ she says, voice quiet and controlled, ‘there is absolutely no way I am travelling through time again.’ Her voice wavers a little but she lifts her head, jutting her chin forward, ‘For one, it hurts; and two, we don’t know the long term damage we could be doing to ourselves.’ She moves her gaze to Mark, ‘And we don’t know the damage all this meddling could be having on the world either. Your ideas and theories are just that, unproven, not validated, they’re conjecture.’
Mark nods. ‘You’re right,’ he admits simply. ‘It’s the butterfly effect and completely unknown.’
Alexia eyes him and his apparent agreement with suspicion, but doesn’t speak and for the next few minutes the three of us stare at anything but each other.
I eventually catch Alexia’s eye again. ‘Will you just think about it?’ I ask. ‘Please.’
Alexia studies me, frowning, but then slowly her earlier determination shifts into something else, something cooler and altogether more disconcerting. ‘I’m sorry Joe,’ she says, her voice clipped and flat, almost robotic, ‘but I can’t be part of this.’ She inhales, offers me a painful smile and then walks away without looking back.
Shit.
I sigh heavily, glancing over at Mark, who somehow managed to blend into the wall the whole time. He walks over to the bed and perches next to me, ‘She’ll come round.’
‘You told her she was right,’ I snap. ‘You agreed that we shouldn’t be messing with this.’
He leans in, ‘Sometimes it’s worth a fight, other tim
es it’s better to let them win the first round, wait for the sting to come out of their tail.’ His brow narrows, ‘Trust me, I’ve learnt the hard way.’
I hope he’s right this time.
‘How long have you known her?’ Mark asks.
‘Not that long,’ I reply. ‘Why?’
Mark shrugs, ‘Just wondered.’ He looks me up and down again and then locks eyes with me. ‘She called me, asked me to come here, seems to genuinely care about you.’ He leans in, ‘But I’m not sure she’s going to time-travel with you again.’
‘You might be right,’ I admit with a frown.
‘But I will. If you need someone to come back with you, I’ll do it.’
I feel a swell of pride and love for Mark, my old friend, back when it matters the most. I place my hand on his shoulder and nod. ‘Thanks,’ I reply, voice wavering, ‘I appreciate it.’
‘But it needs to be her doesn’t it?’ He offers, voice flat and without inflection.
I nod with a sigh, ‘She started all this and if she came with me I’m convinced she would help me jump again.’
‘But why does it have to be her?’ Mark asks, ‘Can’t we just find another hypnotherapist?’
I smile back at him. ‘I trust her,’ I say simply. ‘And that matters.’
Mark draws in a long breath. ‘Okay,’ he nods and then repeats it again, almost defeated by the simplicity of my reasoning. A short silence follows and Mark seems distracted, wrestling with something else.
‘Are you okay?’ I ask, carefully.
‘You saw something didn’t you?’ He asks, staring down at his hands, ‘You viewed something you shouldn’t have.’
‘Sorry,’ I say, genuinely confused, ‘I’m not with you.’
Mark still doesn’t look up. He swallows, ‘With Sian I mean, you saw something, it’s why you talked to her on your own, why you met her all those years ago.’
‘Mark,’ I say, voice breathy, nervous. ‘Listen –’
‘You didn’t come on to her at all,’ he almost laughs, shaking his head. ‘You were warning her. She was seeing someone else, wasn’t she?’ He finally looks at me but I don’t see anger in his eyes, I see something else. He doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘It’s okay Joe,’ he says, gently, ‘I mean it.’ He looks around the room, his shoulders hunched low. ‘I’m just sorry I didn’t believe you.’