Once Again

by Catherine Wallace Hope

  The dispatcher coached Zac to let Erin continue giving rescue breaths and to take over if she got tired. “But paramedics should be on scene in a minute or so,” he said. He told Zac how to check for a pulse at Korrie’s neck, but Zac’s body thumped with its own thrashing hysteria, and he couldn’t tell if there was a beat. “I can’t find it,” he said.

  “That’s all right,” the dispatcher said. “Don’t do chest compressions then. Tell your wife to keep giving rescue breaths.”

  “Keep going,” Zac told Erin, and she nodded.

  The dispatcher asked Zac how long it had been since Korrie had stopped breathing, and all the crossings in his mind collided. Five hundred days? What kind of time was he in? What was real now? This? The official questions reared one at a time: What was her full name? What had occurred? Were there injuries? All Zac could say was that he didn’t know.

  When the sound of sirens whined in the distance, Zac said to the dispatcher, “We’re on the grounds of the cemetery. We have to get her out toward the road.”

  “No, no, don’t do that,” he answered. “Don’t move her. Let the paramedics come to you.”

  Zac found himself beginning to cry. Tears stung at the edges of his dry eyes. His throat seized shut. Relief softened inside his chest and he surrendered. Help was coming. Somehow, help was coming for Korrie.

  He sprang to his feet as Erin bent over to give another breath. Down the back of her T-shirt, he saw blood in a huge red splotch. “Your back,” he said. “My god, there’s blood.”

  She shook her head. “I’m fine.”

  He turned toward the rising whine of the siren. “We’re not supposed to move her. I’m going to show them where we are.”

  She leaned over Korrie again, and he took off running toward Compton, his thoughts like rocks in a tumbler. He reached the middle of the road, stopped, and looked toward the intersection. A red and white ambulance appeared from Rayleigh and raced toward him. He waved his arms until the woman and man inside signaled him to get out of the way. He jumped back onto the grass as they braked to a halt. The techs leaped from doors on each side of the ambulance. They swung open the back doors of the vehicle and yanked out a folded gurney.

  “She’s over here,” Zac said, and he turned, sprinted, and led the paramedics to the spot where Erin still knelt over Korrie.

  Before they even reached her, Erin started explaining, “I’ve been trying, but she’s not breathing. It’s been a long time.”

  She stood aside as the paramedics gloved up and leaned over Korrie. The one nearest her said, “Do we need a brace? For her neck, her back?”

  “No,” Erin said. “It’s oxycodone. It’s an overdose.”

  As the paramedics knelt beside Korrie, one of them tried to pull her arms out from under her. He rolled her on her side and saw the plastic cuffs and said, “Holy Jesus Christ.” He looked up at Erin.

  “She was abducted.” She shivered and visibly cringed. “I couldn’t get those off.”

  Zac’s chest flooded with a father’s instincts, and he wanted to let the violence inside him burst out.

  The paramedics lifted Korrie’s limp body onto the gurney and rushed off with her, speaking to each other in one-word sentences, letting Erin and Zac run behind.

  Zac flushed as if a roller of pins and needles were running over him, shaking as if he would rip at the seams, his nerves blasting, the impact of an idea: the ascension of a wave—then crashing into the surface of time.

  When they reached the ambulance, the paramedics loaded Korrie. The man leaped in back with her. Erin and Zac climbed into the tight confines around the gurney and squeezed themselves onto the tiny bench seat along the side. The other tech closed them inside and then appeared a second later in front of them, in the driver’s seat.

  As the ambulance lurched forward, the tech pulled a mask over Korrie’s nose and mouth. He compressed the bag attached to it and then pressed two fingertips to her carotid.

  “Is there a heartbeat?” Erin asked. She touched Zac’s hand as the vehicle tipped around the corner and jostled them together on the seat.

  The man looked at his watch. “There …” He paused. “There it is. Weak and thready. But yes, ma’am.”

  Erin’s head fell forward and rested in her hands.

  “You know for sure it’s oxycodone?” he said.

  She pulled herself up straight and wiped that ugly hand across her wet cheek. “Yes.”

  From a drawer above her, he pulled a small square device with a short nozzle. He pulled back the mask and pushed the tip of the device into Korrie’s nostril.

  “What’s that?” Zac asked.

  “Naloxone.” The tech pressed the plunger. He repositioned the mask and compressed the bag. “To counteract the oxy.” He unzipped the hoodie and rubbed Korrie’s chest vigorously and called her name. “Wake up now,” he yelled against the backdrop of the siren. One hand still over her heart, he reached with the other into a compartment under the seat and pulled out a large pair of shears. He rolled Korrie’s shoulders enough that he could snip the heavy black plastic and free Korrie’s wrists. He pulled the bands away, fetched a paper bag from one of the drawers, and dropped them in it, folding the top over. He tenderly straightened Korrie’s arms at her sides before he pushed up her sleeve and inserted an IV line inside the bend of her elbow. He went back to rubbing her chest and saying her name. He sandwiched her hand between his and rubbed hard.

  “Tell her to wake up,” he instructed Erin, and he squeezed the bag on the mask again.

  “Korrie,” Erin said, “open your eyes.” There was no response. She took Korrie’s hand in hers. “Wake up, baby.”

  Zac noticed the tech’s instant assessment of that bedraggled ruin of a hand, blood dried, shiny with swelling, bruised dark, fingers splaying at odd angles. Zac needed to unravel where she’d been and what the hell had happened.

  The tech tipped his chin toward her hand and said to Erin, “We’ll get to that.”

  She showed the tech a hint of a smile. Zac wanted to tell him about the wound on her back, but before he could gather the words, the tech moved aside Korrie’s mask and gave her another plunger of the antidote. He pressed the chest piece of his stethoscope to her skin. “Better,” he said.

  Senseless with bewilderment and gratitude, Zac leaned forward and let the surf roll as he cupped his hands around those of his wife and his child.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  8:25 PM

  June 20, 2021 | Foothills Hospital Emergency Room

  An orderly had wheeled Erin away to Radiology, and so Zac stayed with Korrie as she lay unconscious in the ER cubicle. After a few minutes, a woman in regular street clothes invaded the cubicle and introduced herself, though Zac couldn’t have repeated what she said, intoxicated as he was with the return of his child back into his life. He was thinking about how long it would be before they brought Erin back to him so he could find out how she’d done it. The woman asked him for Korrie’s information so she could fill in the form on her tablet. Date of birth, health history, immunizations, insurance. Korrie hadn’t been on his insurance for sixteen months. He told the woman he couldn’t answer her questions now and promised he would deal with it later, after they brought his wife back.

  Alone again in their cubicle, he kissed Korrie’s forehead and whispered her name. He sat beside her and looked at her face. Perfectly alive. Unconscious but breathing on her own. She’d had another dose of naloxone and would need another because the oxycodone was still circulating in her bloodstream. But her heart was beating, strong chirps sounding from the machine beside her. The monitor’s green tracings leaped up into a neat row of peaks, steady and even. Zac took her hand in his. He pressed her pink fingers, like petals, against his lips. Remnants of glitter nail polish rimmed her cuticles, and he remembered thinking Erin could teach her how to take that off with a Q-tip—a thought retrieved from the night before he left for Hingoli, meaning that somehow Korrie had skipped all the months between then and
now.

  How could it be possible that any living person could break through a closed timelike curve, if that’s what it was?

  And where was Erin? It was past 8:30, and it seemed like they’d had her for X-rays for ages. How could he wait any longer to find out what had happened?

  Just then, as if in answer to the wish, the orderly wheeled her into the cubicle, a hospital gown over her sweatpants and her hand bandaged into a round, white mitten. The orderly helped her stand and then took the wheelchair and left.

  Zac stood, and his chest filled with lightness at the sight of her.

  She held up her bandaged hand. “Three broken digits.” She smiled.

  His old Erin. He laid Korrie’s hand on the sheet. With a step, he carefully gathered Erin into his arms.

  “Ow,” she laughed.

  He stepped back. “What?”

  She pulled the neckline of her hospital gown down between her breasts to reveal a deep purple bruise.

  “What is that?” Zac said. “What happened to you?”

  “It’s a boot mark.” She took his hand with her unbandaged one, and with a glimpse, he noted that oddly enough, her engagement ring was now on her swollen little finger. She turned toward Korrie. “She’s doing okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Good.” In the back opening of the hospital gown, he could see layers of white bandaging. “What happened?” He returned to his question. “A boot mark?”

  Everything blacked out. It was as if they’d stepped into a blast freezer. Bitter cold and absolute dark.

  “Erin?” Zac said, and he felt her hand clench tight in his.

  “No!” Erin cried.

  Zac’s eyes adjusted, and flat blankness came into focus. Korrie was gone. The room was gone. The entire hospital was gone. Night stretched out around them. He pulled Erin close to him. He could barely make out that they stood in an open field of cleared earth. The wind was so cold it stung his cheeks. A distant crane reached skyward in the moonlight, a red flasher blinking far above. An enormous earthmover sat parked in the dark where a mountain of soil rose in the stark night. “What the hell?” he said.

  “It’s happening again,” Erin cried, “the interval.”

  “What?”

  “This is what’s been happening. It shifts.”

  “The light shifts?”

  “Time!” Erin said. “This is 2022. Look at your phone.”

  Zac plucked his phone from his pocket and shook his head. “Can’t be.” He focused sharply: November 1, 2022. “This can’t be!”

  “We’re in 2022,” Erin said. “And Korrie is in 2021.”

  The sim bloomed in Zac’s mind, the black gap opening in the aftermath of a wave.

  “We have to get out of here.” He took her arm. “How did you get out?”

  “I didn’t,” she said. “It just changes.”

  “How did you get back to Korrie?” He couldn’t think fast enough.

  “I don’t know how. Time kept shifting. I was in the past sometimes.” She looked away toward the Flatirons, and his eyes followed her direction toward the desolate moon-whitened stretch of earth. “I found Aidon Clype. I set a fire,” she said. “I got her back.”

  He tried to make his brain analyze the dimensions of spacetime and what would happen if they were caught in a strand of time that was severed. Not the same strand as Korrie’s.

  Reason eluded him. “How has it been happening? Describe it.”

  “It flips, and it’s a different time. It’s been happening since around 9:30 this morning. It shifted to when Korrie was taken, and it went back and forth all day. Maybe once an hour or so. But not like this, not into the future.”

  “Oh no,” Zac said.

  “What?” Erin said.

  “The waves.” He shook his head. “How could you possibly be affected by the waves?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Zac thought for a moment. “My God,” he said.

  “What?” Erin looked into his eyes.

  “In the sim, the waves end in destruction.” He explained as fast as he could. “Things that have occurred are destroyed, and time splices shut.” He took hold of her arm. “Did you lose any time?”

  “Yes.” Erin’s eyes narrowed with concentration. “There was something missing. A piece I couldn’t remember.”

  So it was happening. Mark’s words returned to him. The contents of the gap do not survive.

  “When was the last one?” He tried to steady her with his hand beneath her elbow. “How long did it last?” He had to know how close they were to the crowns of the two blast fronts.

  “I’m not sure. They—”

  Fluorescent light glowed oystery bright around them. Zac stood in the warmth, clutching Erin’s elbow there in the confines of Korrie’s hospital cubicle. They were back. Both of them rushed to Korrie’s bedside. In perfect rest beneath the white sheet, in deep slumber, her chest rose and fell. Relief beyond understanding.

  “Thank God,” Erin said.

  Zac checked the monitor, the green peaks pulsing in their neat, even row. Beeps soft and constant.

  Erin took Zac’s hand again and said, “Is it okay now?” She looked up at him. “Is it over?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe not.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  9:29 PM

  June 20, 2021 | Foothills Hospital Emergency Room

  Erin sat on the edge of a sagging hospital chair at Korrie’s bedside, exhausted and stunned into some sort of dazed tranquility. It was as if the events of the day had happened ages ago, and her memory of them seemed aqueous and impressionistic.

  The pink had returned to Korrie’s cheeks and lips, her chest rose and fell, and every so often her eyelids fluttered as if she were going to wake. The monitors on the other side of the gurney showed the steady measurements of her blood oxygen, her heartbeat, her respiration. All in perfect rhythm. The ER nurse had checked her reflexes, which were normal—a good sign.

  Erin’s injuries throbbed with thickening trumpets of pain as her initial dose of medication faded. And soon she would have to stand and head to the restroom, but for this moment, all she wanted was to stay like a sentry and watch Korrie sleep. Her hand, her small hand, was warm, there, wrapped in Erin’s. It didn’t matter that what they’d been through was irreconcilable.

  Sirens whined outside, and Erin heard the whooping of helicopters in the distance. She wondered if the accelerated tempo of the hospital staff outside their cubicle was because of the fire. How could she ever explain herself? She’d set that blaze in summer to carry into a past winter so she could bring back her child, dead and buried, from the hands of her killer, back to the world of the living.

  Erin could see only Zac’s shoes as he walked back and forth beyond the hem of the curtain. He repeatedly treaded the linoleum, talking on his phone in the hallway outside the cubicle. She’d explained as much as she could about what had happened, and it had thrown him into a state of turmoil. His whispers carried farther as his tone became more urgent. When he came around the curtain, he looked terrible, his face marked with worry, his eyes intense and anxious. “I don’t know what to do,” he said.

  “About what?” Erin reached out her good hand to him.

  “When you lost time, do you have any idea how long it was? The time you couldn’t remember?”

  Erin shook her head. “I’m not sure.” She thought back. “It would have to have been longer than it would take to start the fire. For me, the order of things was reversed, so I knew I’d started the fire, but I couldn’t remember when.”

  Zac looked perplexed. “That’s so much more than we thought.”

  “More what?” Erin said.

  “We were thinking it was small moments, déjà vu–length moments.”

  “No,” Erin said, “it was definitely much longer than that.”

  “I have to get back to the lab.” He took her bandaged hand and held it, gently but without thought. “But I can’t leave you two
here.”

  “We have to stay here, Zac.” She said it softly, seeing how upset he was. “Stay with us.”

  He nodded. His eyes moved with the labors of his thoughts. “But I have to let them know.” He raked his hand back over his hair. “But I can’t leave you.”

  “Just stay,” Erin said, trying to calm him.

  “I can’t.” He shook his head. “I have to find some way to leave a record in case the worst happens. But whatever I leave would also be lost.”

  “The worst?” she said, her anxiety returning.

  “What we learned today. The sim. It could happen any moment.”

  “I don’t understand, Zac,” Erin said. “What do you mean by ‘the worst’?”

  “The waves,” he said. “We had no idea what we were looking at.”

  Erin felt the sharp resurgence of all her fears. “Meaning what?”

  “I still have no idea why you were singled out—why you crossed that border. It’s not even possible.” He let go of her hand. “But what we did discover is that gravitational waves obliterate pieces of time when they sweep past. The thing that I know now that no one else knows is that it’s more than mere seconds that we lose. It might be a minute or an hour. You lost serious time.”

  “What are you saying? Be clear, Zac.”

  His eyes grew red. “The last wave is … The last wave will come at 9:32. It will be when two massive gravitational blast fronts break over the quantum collapse of a white hole. It’s the thing that might never happen again. I don’t know how much time an explosion like that will steal. If it was fifteen minutes, I wouldn’t care. Even if it was an hour, I wouldn’t mind. But what if it’s more? What if it’s days or months? We could lose this time and end up before now. Before you got her back.”