“You told me.”
“I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did. You said you had a horrible high-school existence and became a teacher to make sure no other kid ever had to go through that alone, but you have to stay in the closet to do it.”
She opened and closed her mouth as if silently gasping for air. “I’ve never told anyone that.”
“Well then, how do I know, Jody? How do I know you’re gay?”
She glanced frantically over her shoulder. “Please stop saying that, and stop calling me Jody.”
I began to hyperventilate again as my eyes moved from her panic-stricken face to her long hair, to my clothes. What was happening?
“Stevie, I got ahold of your mom. She’s working tonight, but she’s going to send your dad over to drive you to the hospital.”
“My mom? Working? My dad?” My voice trembled even as it rose until a horrible question pushed past the fear. “What year is it?”
Mrs. Snow turned from my terror to Jody’s expression of disbelief before finally saying, “It’s 2002.”
The number ricocheted through my screaming brain even as the darkness consumed me again.
*
I recognized the sounds of the night nursing shift and the smell of antiseptic, along with the IV running down my arm before I even opened my eyes. Those factors alone might have unsettled most people, but I’d grown up in this place. Hospitals meant safety to me. I remembered lying on the floor behind the nurses’ station with my coloring books, or hiding from my older brother under the chairs in the waiting room. Mostly, though, the hospital reminded me of my parents.
I lay on the gurney, breathing deeply until I gathered enough strength to open my eyes. A monitor beeped beside me, and I turned my head to see the screen. With little more than a glance, I registered my steady pulse, my sufficient oxygen levels, and my slightly elevated blood pressure. The pain in my head had also subsided significantly, likely due to the IV, which as best I could tell was currently only delivering some hydrating fluids but had likely started off with a strong dose of acetaminophen.
I closed my eyes again, resting my head on one of the slightly elevated beds I’d often napped on as a child. Everything would be okay now. The doctors would get to the bottom of whatever occurred and have me on a plane to New York soon. In the meantime, I could finally get some much-needed sleep. I relaxed into the paper-covered pillow and dozed off again, until somewhere in the lovely space between sleep and awareness I heard my parents talking.
The sound of my mother’s voice both soothed and afflicted me. Like most people, I associated my mother with comfort and safety. Even as an adult who’d lived alone for years, I still wished to have her closer every time I got sick. However, having her close now meant she wasn’t in Florida, but in fact still worked in Darlington.
The next logical leap came unwanted and unbidden to my mind.
I could no longer ignore the possibility. I was a senior in high school.
“We’ve run a series of tests, but aside from a nasty contusion at the back of her head,” my mother said from the other side of a partition dividing the hospital room, “she doesn’t seem to have anything medically wrong with her.”
“So she has amnesia?” my father asked.
“It’s not like the movies. Amnesia doesn’t generally manifest after such commonplace events like falling over. Short-term memory loss can be associated with a severe concussion, but as far as we can tell there’s no substantial swelling of her brain.”
“Is she really displaying memory loss?” Mrs. Snow asked. Her presence in the room and in the conversation surprised me. Who else was here? Jody? Somehow I doubted that. She probably hated me now. At the very least she had to think me a loose cannon with the power to end her career before it even began. I had to make her understand I’d never do anything to hurt her.
No, damn it. I couldn’t be worried about scoring points with a beautiful woman. I had much bigger problems, like how I’d lost eleven years of my life.
“Yeah,” my dad added. “She didn’t forget anything. She’s added a decade to her life, right down to the details about her career as an award-winning author.”
“It doesn’t make sense. Not from a traditionally medical standpoint.”
“What do you mean traditionally?” My dad always managed to keep up with medical conversations at the outset since he spent so much time around doctors and nurses, but eventually he always asked the question that made it clear he worked in the administrative side of the hospital.
“I mean the brain is a funny organ, one we may never fully understand. And Stevie’s always had a vivid imagination.”
“She’s never fabricated anything like this before. She’s never lied or even yelled at anyone.” I could sense the undercurrent of fear in his voice.
“No, she’s not acting out. Her terror when she got here was very real. Even if I wasn’t her mother, I could’ve clearly seen how genuinely confused she was. But as a doctor, I suspected the disorientation stemmed from intracranial pressure, and I’ve seen no evidence of that, not even on a minor scale.”
“I don’t want to overstep my bounds here,” Mrs. Snow said tentatively. “I’m just a school nurse, but could the blunt trauma have triggered some sort of mental break?”
I fisted my hands into the sheets of my bed and bit my lip to keep from screaming out in my own defense. I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t making anything up, and Jody’s reaction proved the events of the last decade weren’t the product of my overactive imagination. She said herself she’d never told anyone the things I repeated to her in the locker room.
“We have to consider a mental disorder as valid a possibility as anything,” my mother said, sounding resigned and sad.
“Mallory,” my father said, “my daughter is not a nut job.”
“She’s my daughter too,” she snapped, before taking a deep breath. “And I hope very much this condition is temporary, but in the meantime, I won’t let the stigma of mental illness stand in the way of seeking adequate medical treatment.”
Adequate medical treatment? What did that mean? A mental institution? Surely they wouldn’t do that.
My father sighed. “Do you want me to call for a transport to St. Louis?
“Let’s wait until she wakes up again and see if there’s any improvement.”
No, no, no! This couldn’t be happening. I hadn’t had a mental break. Had I? Even if I had, sending me to a mental ward where I’d be poked and prodded and scrutinized every second of every day would not make me better. Extra scrutiny had gotten me into this mess in the first place. I’d snapped and passed out because of all the attention. And even if I went to a psych hospital, what could I tell them? The truth? Was there any possible way to convince someone I’d come from the future? No. The more I talked, the deeper they’d pull me into the system, and who could blame them? Time travel didn’t exist.
God, maybe I should be locked up.
There had to be some other explanation, and I had to find it fast. Once I got placed under the care of a psychiatrist, I’d never get away. This was my last chance to try to work things out on my own. Yet…how could I convince them I wasn’t crazy when I wasn’t entirely sure of my sanity? I’d faked and fumbled my way through a lot of situations in my life, but never anything of this magnitude. Then again, I’d never had so much at stake. Could I really play along with a do-over of my senior year in high school? A multitude of fears flooded my senses, the bitter taste stinging my mouth and clogging my throat. But before I had a chance to pick them apart, one of the monitors beside my bed began to beep loudly.
The curtain dividing the room was pulled back swiftly, revealing the concerned faces of my parents.
“Stevie,” my mom said with forced calmness, “it’s okay. I’m right here.”
“Mom.” The word left my lips as I reached for her instinctively.
She pulled me into a hug, and I rested my head on her shoulder, soaking up the feel of her
starched white lab coat against my cheek. I inhaled her scent. The subtle jasmine of her perfume undercut heavier doses of latex and Dial soap, a byproduct of obsessively fighting the spread of germs. “It’s okay, honey. I’ve got you.”
Her presence, her words soothed me, but they also reminded me why I needed to stay with her. If I had to be transported into the past, at least it should be to a place I knew, a place I could feel safe. Familiarity was the only remaining strand between complete darkness and me. I intended to cling to it with every ounce of strength I had left.
My mom pulled away slowly and studied my eyes, either judging the size of my pupils or searching for something only a mother could see. “You look a lot better. How do you feel?”
“Okay, I think.” I answered tentatively, fearing the questions I knew would come next. Looking past her, I added, “I’m sorry for making trouble, Mrs. Snow.”
“It’s all right.” She smiled over-politely. “Do you remember what happened?”
Here’s where I had to begin spinning my web. I thought of everything I’d ever read about storytelling, especially how to build credibility as a narrator. “I was at a basketball game. I think something hit me. I don’t know. I woke up on the floor. You were there, along with Jo—um, Miss Hadland.”
My father smiled brightly, but my mother eyes narrowed skeptically. “Do you know what the date is?”
“February.” I then paused long enough to see the corners of my dad’s mouth quirk upward. “February 28th.”
“And do you remember the day of the week?”
“Friday,” I answered, then grimaced at their frowns. “Or is that just wishful thinking?”
My dad gave a strangled chuckle. “Can’t blame her trying to move a day closer to the weekend.”
“What year is it?” my mother, never one to pull punches, asked.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, summoning all my remaining fortitude. “It’s my senior year of high school, 2002.”
“There you go. Improvement,” my dad said triumphantly. “That’s what we needed to see, right? He turned to Mrs. Snow, who nodded, relief evident in her features.
Only Mom remained doubtful. She stared at me, hard. No matter what else might’ve changed over time, she was still a human lie detector. I’d never been able to get anything by her as a child, and I rarely even tried. I fought the urge to squirm under her scrutiny. The only thing that kept me from faltering was the deep-seated knowledge that I wasn’t a child anymore, despite what the calendar said. I’d finely honed my skills as an award-winning fiction writer and a budding playwright, and this was the most important role I’d ever craft.
“Fine.” She sat back. “I don’t see any harm in keeping her overnight.”
Everyone in the room visibly relaxed. Her proclamation fell short of the “all clear” I’d hoped for, but I’d received a reprieve and some much-needed time to refine my plan.
My mom stood up and squeezed my hand. “Why don’t you try to sleep? We’ll run more tests tomorrow.”
I nodded.
“I’ll be in my office if you need anything, okay?” Dad said, seeming like he didn’t want to leave but knew he should.
“Thanks,” I said, then added, “I’m glad you’re here.”
He kissed the top of my head. “I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”
He followed my mom out of the room, and I lay back thinking about all the other places he could be. I thought of where we all should be right now and how that contrasted with where we were. Tomorrow I’d concern myself with ways to deal with the disparity between those realities, but if I had any hope of facing the challenges ahead, tonight I needed to sleep.
*
With the exception of shift change, it’s always hard to tell the time of day in a hospital. In a room without windows, noon often feels similar to midnight, and given my current dilemma, I was particularly sensitive to time deprivation. Each time I woke up throughout the night, I immediately reached for my iPhone, only to be hit with a wave of disorienting sadness that it hadn’t been invented yet. I stared at the stark-white ceiling. What other resources did I have at my disposal? I had to find a way back to the future—or what should be present day. But since I’d yet to decide what’d actually happened, the dilemma overwhelmed me so fully I feared another relapse into panic.
I had to focus on staying out of the mental ward. As soon as my mother believed I’d had enough time to rest, her questions would get tougher and more detailed. While some amount of memory loss seemed acceptable after a concussion, I needed to remember the big-picture items from my senior year. I wished again for a wireless connection to Google this day in history. I had to find another way to orient myself to the current time.
A nurse peeked around the curtain quietly. “You’re awake.”
“Yeah, kind of. I’ve been dozing.”
“Do you want me to get your mom? She’s in her on-call room.”
“No, don’t bother her. She probably needs some rest too.”
The nurse patted my hand, no doubt thinking me a very caring daughter. “How’s your pain?”
“Manageable. My headache’s almost gone.”
She checked the contents of my IV bag and referenced a chart near my monitor. “You’re still on the pain meds.”
“Oh, well, my vision is better too.”
“That’s encouraging,” she said. “But don’t overdo it. You don’t need to be reading or watching TV yet.”
Reading and TV. What great ideas, if not for the part where she said I shouldn’t use them. “Okay, I guess I should probably get some more rest then.”
She patted my arm. “I’ll check back in an hour with your next dose of meds. I’m sure your mom will be in then too.”
An hour. I had one hour to get my act together. I considered turning on the TV but worried the noise would attract too much attention. Prohibitions on reading be damned. I needed to find a newspaper.
I slid off the gurney and tested my balance. Aside from being brutally cold on my bare feet, the floor remained solid, and I slowly came to trust it wouldn’t roll or pitch beneath me like it had at the assembly. Actually, I felt steadier than I expected overall. Even my head didn’t hurt much. Honestly, most mornings felt at least this rough before I had my coffee. They must have given me the good meds.
Moving a few steps in either direction as far as my IV would allow me to go without drawing attention to myself, I searched for a magazine. I spotted an old Highlights on the chair next to the bed, but that wouldn’t help much. I checked behind the curtain and found a small trashcan. Praying the janitor hadn’t been overzealous last night, I tiptoed over and rifled through the top layer looking for anything with a date on it. Just under some sterile gauze packaging I found a Darlington newspaper. They came out only once a week, which meant this one was probably a few days old, but it would have to do.
I scooted back over to the bed and climbed in as quietly as I could. The front-page story was about a local nursing home’s big fund-raiser, a spaghetti dinner. The event had been Olympics themed. The Olympics. They apparently had just ended in Salt Lake City. Good to know. I searched my memory for more detail. I could only think of funding scandals and Mitt Romney, but were these things I knew from high school or from his yet-to-happen presidential run? I had no memory of watching the games.
I kept flipping and found a piece about a recent anthrax scare in St. Louis that turned out to be nothing. Anthrax. Should I be scared of chemical weapons? Did I hate the Dixie Chicks? September eleventh would still be fresh in everyone’s mind. Should I be worried? Yeah, try me. I’m a New Yorker. Except I wasn’t yet. I’d only been there once, just a few months ago when we’d visited NYU and Columbia. I remembered the visit vividly and added it to my mental list of conversation topics.
Another story was about someone from Darlington serving in Afghanistan. He said he could be there for up to a year but doubted the war would last that long. I said a silent prayer for him and for the man
y more to come who couldn’t begin to imagine what they were in for.
I flipped one more page to the obituaries and probably would’ve skimmed past them if not for last name DEVEROUX in bold letters over the picture of a middle-aged couple. I didn’t need to read the story for my eyes to fill with tears.
Beth’s parents had died instantly when a drunk driver crossed the centerline and hit them head-on. I had attended the visitation with my parents, apparently just last weekend, and waited in line over an hour to pay our respects. Poor Beth. She’d just lost her parents. She must be devastated.
She couldn’t imagine the woman she’d become. She didn’t have Rory by her side. Did she have anyone? Could I help in some way? I might be able to give her a hug. She seemed to like those. But what would I say? The things I knew about her would only throw her into more chaos, and my sudden interest in her life after years of casual interactions would likely only draw attention to both of us. Besides, I hoped I wasn’t stuck in the past, or this nightmare, or whatever I was experiencing for much longer.
“She was awake earlier but resting calmly,” the nurse said from just outside the door.
“Any change in her vitals?” my mother asked.
I quickly stuffed the newspaper under the children’s magazine, lay back, and closed my eyes.
“Everything’s normal. Nothing to suggest she’s not completely healthy.”
“No,” my mother said, “nothing outwardly anyway.”
“Mallory,” my father warned her, “don’t assume the worst.”
“I’m a doctor and a mother. That’s never a good combination in a hospital.”
“Admitting it is the first step to recovery.”
I heard the curtain slide back and hoped my theater class with Jody had given me enough to do an adequate job of acting the part of someone just roused from sleep. “Hi, Mom and Dad.”
“Good morning. How you feeling?” my mom asked, her hand going immediately to my forehead.
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