Come Down In Time (A Time Travel Romance)

by Jennifer Ransom

  Jamie laughed too. “Do you want me to make you a database?” she asked her. They both laughed then.

  “That might not be a bad idea,” Linda said.

  It was a long time before Jamie told Linda about Tommy. She never wanted to talk about that. But one night, when Linda had come in early from a date—“he was boring so I said I had a headache,” she said—they started talking. Linda started asking her questions, mainly about why Jamie didn’t date. “You’re gorgeous,” she said. “I know the guys have got to be all over you.”

  Jamie had been asked out several times, but she always refused. She couldn’t see herself being with anyone but Tommy. Not even on a date with small talk and a movie or something. So, one night, Jamie told Linda about Tommy and what had happened.

  “That’s the saddest story I ever heard,” Linda said. “I’m crying, it’s so sad. I’m so sorry.”

  “Thanks,” Jamie said.

  They had both fallen asleep then. But a few nights later, Linda asked Jamie if she would go to a festival.

  “This guy I’ve seen a couple of times has a friend who’s going with us to a bluegrass festival out in the sticks. Do you think you would want to go with us? It’s going to be fun. You don’t really have to be his date or anything.”

  It was late in the spring semester by that point, and Jamie hadn’t been on a single date. Maybe she needed to get out more, she thought.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Really?” Linda said. She got off her bed and came over to Jamie and put her hands on her arms and looked directly in her eyes. “Really?” she repeated.

  “Really,” Jamie said.

  “I told Josh I’d bring the food,” Linda said, “but I have no idea what I can possibly make in this dorm room.”

  “We’ll make sandwiches,” Jamie said. “And get chips and stuff. If we didn’t live in this dorm room, I could make fried chicken and potato salad, but we can’t do that.”

  Jamie and Linda went to the grocery store near campus on Friday and bought smoked turkey and ham and everything else they would need to make sandwiches. Jamie got fresh tomatoes, which she would slice and put in a plastic bag to add to the sandwiches later. They bought Doritos and potato chips. As an afterthought, Jamie grabbed a bag of chocolate chip cookies.

  “Josh is bringing a cooler of beer,” Linda said. “So we don’t have to worry about that.”

  The next morning, Josh called Linda and said he and Matthew were waiting downstairs in the lobby of the dorm. Jamie and Linda transferred the sandwiches from the mini fridge to a cooler, grabbed the grocery bag of chips and cookies, and went downstairs.

  Josh and Matthew were both wearing jeans and t-shirts, and both had their hair pulled back in ponytails. Josh blonde, Matthew brown. Both good looking.

  Jamie sat in the backseat with Matthew. She felt shy and awkward. She had never been on a date with anyone but Tommy. She didn’t know what to do with herself. She didn’t know what to say. All she could think about was Tommy.

  Jamie and Tommy had grown up next to each other, if you could call houses separated by acres and acres next to each other. Jamie lived on land that her father had grown up on and his father and grandfather before him. By the time her father inherited the land and house, it was no longer a working farm. Her father had gone to college and had no interest in maintaining a full farm. The acres of fields became pastureland, but her mother insisted on keeping one acre free to grow vegetables for the family. The apple and peach orchards still stood, still providing sweet fruit for another generation of Walters.

  Tommy’s parents lived on land owned by his grandparents on his mother’s side. His father was an accountant at the same junior college where Jamie’s father worked, and his mother stayed home raising the children. As soon as Tommy was old enough, he started helping his grandparents on the farm, which grew mostly corn and soybeans. But Tommy wasn’t just working in the fields. When he got older, he started doing Internet research on organic farming. By the time he was fourteen, he had started his own acre, his “experiment,” he called it.

  Jamie remembered what she guessed must have been their first date. She was sitting with Tommy on the school bus, as she often did, but that day when they got close to Tommy’s house, he asked her if she wanted to see his garden. He talked about it all the time, and Jamie was curious. What was so great about a garden? she wondered. They had walked up the dirt driveway to Tommy’s house. They waved at his mother, who was looking out the kitchen window, and walked toward the back. She could see fields and fields of corn beyond the house, but in front of that, a lush green area. Tommy’s experiment.

  As she and Tommy walked down straw-covered rows, he pointed out each vegetable to her—eggplant, squash, onions, garlic, tomatoes, potatoes, purple hull peas, black eyed peas, green beans, cucumbers. Tommy was trying several types of heirloom tomatoes and squash. “When I get my license next month, I’m going to sell these vegetables at the farmer’s market,” Tommy said. “People are starting to want organic.”

  After the tour, Tommy offered to walk her home. “Let’s go through the woods,” he suggested. “See what’s going on in there.” Jamie grabbed her backpack, which she had left in front of the garden, and followed Tommy along the edge of the corn field, around the corner, and to the woods. She knew where they were going. The long pathway through the forest started at Tommy’s land and ended at hers.

  As she walked behind Tommy—there wasn’t room on the path to walk side by side—Jamie felt a new appreciation for him. She was attracted to the passion he felt about his organic gardening. He seemed like he knew what he wanted to do and he was going to get there. Jamie really had no idea what she wanted to do. She was only fifteen—almost sixteen—but nothing had really grabbed her yet to be passionate about. Tommy’s brown hair hung over his collar, and Jamie noticed how shiny it was. When Tommy stopped to show her a tree, he reached out to touch a branch and she noticed how muscular his arm was. When her long dark hair got caught in an overhanging bush, Tommy untangled her hair, and she noticed how gentle he was.

  They reached the lake and kept walking along side it. When they were at the midpoint of the lake, Tommy stopped. “This is the property line,” he said. “We share a lake.” Of course, Jamie already knew that, but she loved it when Tommy talked about it.

  “See that willow tree?” he asked, pointing at the tree. The tree was leaning, its branches trailing the water. “There’s an overhang underneath it,” Tommy continued. “You can’t really see it because of the branches, but it’s there.”

  He walked down the embankment, closer to the lake, then turned toward the leafy tree branches. He grabbed them and held them aside. “Let’s sit in there,” he said.

  Jamie ducked under the tree branches and crawled into a little cave. Tommy crawled in and sat beside her. Through the leaves, they could see the lake water shimmering in the afternoon light. A wild duck and her ducklings floated by and Jamie grabbed Tommy’s arm in excitement. That’s when Tommy kissed her for the first time. It wasn’t her first kiss from a boy or his with a girl, but it was the best kiss. If she thought really hard, she could still feel his lips brushing against hers.

  Linda looked back at Jamie from the front seat. “Could you stop at the next gas station?” she asked Josh. “I need to go.” A few minutes later Josh pulled over to a country diner with a gas station and Jamie and Linda got out of the car. Inside the bathroom, Linda said, “Girl, you don’t look like you’re gonna make it today.”

  “I’m sorry, Linda,” Jamie said. “I started thinking about Tommy. I don’t want to spoil everything.”

  “I’m not worried about me, I’m worried about you,” Linda said. “I’m going to ask Josh to take you back to the dorm.”

  “No!” Jamie said. She had to get a grip. This was embarrassing. “No, I don’t want you to do that. I’m going to be all right. I promise.”

  “Are you sure, Jamie?” Linda said. “You really don’t look all right.”
/>   “Just give me a few minutes,” Jamie said. “Tell them I’ll be out in a few minutes, okay?”

  Linda left the restroom. Jamie splashed cold water on her face and looked in the mirror. Her brown eyes looked back at her. “Get control of yourself,” she told her mirror image. “You can do this.”

  When she went back out to the car, Jamie had done a complete about face. She talked to Matthew and he talked to her. Everyone talked to each other and it wasn’t long before they were all singing to Third Eye Blind on the radio. “I wish you would step back from that ledge, my friend,” they sang. Jamie had stepped away from the ledge. She put the memory of Tommy in a deep place in her mind, a secret box, a Pandora’s box. Her mind might look at that box, consider opening it, over the years, but she would not open it again.

  Chapter Two

  As she drove through the hilly landscape, Jamie was looking at that box again. She was on the edge of opening it, but she didn’t know what would happen if she did. She forced herself to avert her mind by looking at the thick treescape that lined both sides of the highway. It was fall, and the hardwoods were at their most glorious moment that day, a collage of brilliant and muted reds, yellows, oranges, and browns blending into each other. Jamie concentrated on that while she drove.

  Eventually, Jamie began to climb a road that went higher and higher, steeper and steeper. If she went much further, she would be in the misty mountaintops, but her journey ended before she went that far. The landscape flattened and she drove into Grahamville. Cottage-like houses and Victorians lined the street, with trees blazing with color in the front yards. She could see the mountains in the distance. This doesn’t seem so bad, she thought. This looks nice.

  She kept driving where her GPS took her. After a few blocks of pretty houses, the landscape changed into a series of businesses—restaurants, antique stores, and one strip mall. At the end of that, stood the clinic. Jamie parked her car and went inside.

  As soon as she walked in the door, she sensed an urgency. She walked over to the receptionist. “I’m Dr. Walters,” she said.

  “Oh, Dr. Walters,” the receptionist said. She was a middle-aged woman with graying short brown hair. “We’ve got an emergency right now. I’ll let Dr. Abbott know you’re here.” She got up and walked to the back of the clinic.

  Not a minute later, a nurse came out wearing the typical scrubs nurses wore. “Dr. Walters,” she said. “I’m Stacie McCorkendale. We’ve got an emergency here right now. Follow me.”

  Jamie followed the nurse into the back and into a patient room. A child lay on the bed and Jamie couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl. “He was bitten by a rattlesnake,” the nurse said. A clean-shaven man with dark hair was suctioning an area on the boy’s leg.

  “The ambulance is on the way,” he said.

  “How long ago did it happen?” Jamie asked. She put her purse down against the wall and walked over to the child. A boy, she could see now.

  “Too long ago,” the man said. “It was up in the hills and they got him here as soon as possible, but it’s been more than a few minutes. The crucial time. It takes a while for the ambulance to get here.”

  Jamie walked over to the boy. His mother was holding his hand. She looked up at Jamie with frantic eyes. “Is my boy going to be all right?” she asked her.

  What could Jamie say to that? She had only just arrived and didn’t know how to answer her. She placed her hand on the mother’s shoulder. She looked down at the little boy in the bed. He looked back and she saw something in his eyes. Strength.

  “Yes,” she told the mother. “He’s going to be all right.”

  The mother looked at her gratefully. “Thank you,” she said. A few seconds later the emergency responders arrived and put the boy on a stretcher and carried him out of the room, down the back hall, and out the door to the waiting ambulance. The mother looked back at Jamie as she got in the ambulance. “It’s okay,” Jamie said to her, giving a little wave.

  “Well,” the man said behind her. “I guess you got a baptism by fire today.”

  Jamie turned. The man held out his hand. “Dr. Abbott,” he said. “You must be Dr. Walters.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting all of this. I just drove into town.”

  “I heard you tell the boy’s mother that he’s going to be okay,” he said. “But we don’t really know that.”

  “I know it,” she said. “I could see it in his eyes.”

  Dr. Abbott gave her a long look. “Are you ready to start working?” he said.

  “I’m ready,” she said, though her official first day wasn’t until the next day.

  Jamie retrieved her stethoscope from her car. She was exhausted from driving several hours, but she got a second wind as she finished out the afternoon in the clinic. Nothing so dramatic as a life-threatening snake bite for the rest of the day. Mothers brought in babies with respiratory problems and there was one broken foot. Mr. Almers had stepped into a hole in his yard and flipped over, breaking his foot in two places. They were able to treat him, give him a removable cast, and provide crutches. As Mr. Almers and his wife walked slowly and painfully out of the clinic, the day ended.

  “I guess I need to show you where you’ll be living,” Dr. Abbott said. “You must be pretty tired by now.”

  “I’m okay,” Jamie said. But she was tired. She just wanted to get where she was supposed to go and collapse. “Thank you, Dr. Abbott.”

  “Call me Nate,” he said. Jamie followed him out the clinic door. “Follow me,” he said getting into a Jeep. He backed up and Jamie got behind him. He took a left, back toward the little town. A minute later, he turned into a driveway in front of a white cottage. A Japanese maple in the front yard was at its peak with deep purple leaves. A pot of yellow chrysanthemums greeted them at the front door.

  “I see Stacie has been here,” Nate said. “Here’s your key,” he said, handing the key to her. Jamie unlocked the door and Nate followed her inside.

  The floors throughout the house were wide-plank hardwood and looked to be in pretty good shape. The walls were all painted an off-white color that wasn’t unpleasant. The kitchen was bigger than Jamie was expecting since it was a small house. Butcher block countertops lined three of the walls. The cabinets were old, but seemed to be freshly painted. The floor was checkered in black and white squares of vinyl tile.

  “We painted the whole house before you got here,” Nate said.

  Jamie took her gaze from the kitchen cabinets and turned to him. “This is nice,” she said. “I like it.” It was the first house Jamie had lived in since she left her childhood home. She had been living in apartments and duplexes and townhouses for years. She opened the back door in the kitchen and walked onto a porch. It was getting dark, but she could see a garage and a yard.

  “Are you Native American?” Nate asked abruptly.

  “I’m one quarter Cherokee, on my mother’s side,” she said.

  “That’s going to be an asset to us,” he said. “We’ve got a Native population around here and they are distrustful of the clinic. They use it when they have to. Well, it’s not just the Natives who are distrustful. If you aren’t from around here, most people are wary at first.”

  “Do they trust you?” Jamie asked.

  “Just barely,” Nate said with a laugh. “Just barely.”

  Nate helped Jamie move her suitcases and her few boxes into the house.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said as he closed the door.

  There were two bedrooms in the house, and Jamie chose the one with a bathroom to be her bedroom. It wasn’t large, but it was big enough. She unpacked her suitcases, hanging her clothes in the small closet. She put her jeans and t-shirts and underwear in an antique dresser. She unpacked her items for the tiny bathroom and placed them in the shower and on the vanity.

  And then she was starving. She drove down the tree-lined street to one of the restaurants she had seen on her way into the town. A sign on the diner’s door s
aid it was open from eleven to eight, and she walked in at ten minutes till eight. The place was packed. Jamie felt the other customers’ eyes following her as the waitress led her to a booth. She opened the menu and studied it. She could get meat and three vegetables for seven dollars and fifty cents. There was so much to choose from, but Jamie finally decided on chicken fried steak, turnip greens, black-eyed peas, and macaroni and cheese. Not the healthiest of meals, but one that Jamie was looking forward to anyway. The waitress brought her a basket of biscuits and cornbread squares while she waited on the main meal.

  She felt heavy as she left the diner and drove back to her new house, but she felt full and satisfied. How long had it been since she’d had a real meal? Jamie couldn’t remember, but it had been a long while.

  When she got back to the house, she found her sheets in a box and started to make up the bed. The sheets were queen-sized and the bed was a double, so they were too big. But they worked. After a shower in the small green-tiled bathroom, Jamie got into bed and fell asleep.

  She wasn’t sure what to wear to the clinic, but she took Nate’s attire as her cue. She put on jeans and a t-shirt, then put on her white doctor’s coat and white sneakers. She walked into the clinic at eight with her stethoscope around her neck. She saw mothers with children waiting outside the door. She didn’t have a key herself yet, so she waited with them until Stacie opened the door. She talked to the mothers about their sick children while they waited. She looked the children over and even used her stethoscope to check them out.

  “I’m sorry,” Stacie said when she unlocked the door. “I should have given you a key yesterday.”

  “It’s okay,” Jamie said. “I’ve been getting to know our patients.”

  The day was full with patients, from a severe case of poison ivy to a pregnant woman with abnormal bleeding. She and Nate and the nurse practitioner, Stacie, took care of everyone. At five, the clinic doors were locked. It was the first time in years that Jamie had worked in the daylight hours.

  As she was getting ready to leave for the day, Nate walked into the back room where she kept her purse. “I realize that I should have taken you somewhere to eat yesterday,” he said. “I just wasn’t thinking. But can I take you somewhere now?”