The doctor spoke. “What I’m suggesting is you go to see Jim Priestley yourself Damien and hear what he has to say. And I think we should also run some other tests. As well as the usual scans.”
“What sort of tests?” asked Christine.
“I think we need to monitor your body and brain activity in your day-to-day life and see if we can detect any signs of change when…if…you next shift.”
“Have you heard yourself doctor, you sound insane,” exclaimed Damien.
“Wait,” said Christine, “Why is that such a bad idea Damien? We could learn something from that. I know things are happening differently in each world. When I jump back things have moved on here but I have no recollection of them. When I jump there things have changed too. But …but… the memories do come back there and are getting stronger. What if something in me is physically changing when I’m there in a way that could be measured?” She was excited at the idea of these tests - at last there was something practical she could be doing to try to understand this better.
“Are you listening to yourself?” Damien shouted. “You’re talking about jumping, shifting, other worlds, memories of things that haven’t happened.”
“Damien,” interrupted the doctor, “Can’t you approach this with an open mind?”
“I came here looking for medical help and support,” said Damien angrily, “But instead you’re just as much a crank as that Dr Priestley. Are they giving away science degrees these days?”
“Damien!” said Christine, “Don’t speak to Dr Collins like that.”
“It’s okay Christine, I can understand how frustrating this is for Damien.” The doctor stood up, walked to the window and looked outside for a moment. Then turning back he said to Damien, “You have a choice to make. You can either give your wife the benefit of the doubt and work with her, Jim and myself to get to the bottom of this. Or you can close your mind off to all of this and deny your wife the support she needs and for you the chance to find out that this world might be different, very different, from what you think of it. Now what is it to be?”
Damien was silent for a moment. Then he stood up and walked over to Christine. He knelt down before her. He put his arms around her and drew her close. They stayed like that for several seconds. Then he pulled away, stood up and said to the doctor, “I will always support my wife. I love her and I believe in her. If I need to have an open mind to prove that then I will. I will do everything I can. But if you hurt her, if you cause her to come to any harm whatsoever, then you will have me to deal with, I promise you that.”
The doctor nodded. Christine stood up, held Damien’s hand and then turned to the doctor. “So how do I get wired up for these tests?”
“That’s the easy bit,” he said. He walked over to the phone and dialled a number. He spoke to someone for a few minutes, giving instructions, then hung up the phone. “You need to go from here to the hospital, the neurology department. They’ll be expecting you. They will give you two devices. One of them looks like a hearing aid but it’s far more powerful than that. It’s a very small device that sits in your ear and monitors your brain activity. The other fits to your chest. It can monitor your heart rate, blood pressure and other physical changes. You’ll need to wear both devices until it next happens and then we’ll analyse them, see if they tell us anything.”
“Okay,” said Christine getting up to leave, anxious to get to the neurology department to pick up the equipment.
“Before you both leave there’s one more thing,” said Dr Collins. “I want your permission to speak to Jim Priestley about what’s happening. I need to understand more about his theories about this in terms of quantum physics.”
“That’s fine,” said Christine, “I’m happy for you to discuss it with him.”
“And I want to discuss with him the possibility of one more thing…just an idea but something that might help.”
“What is it?” Christine asked.
“I want to find out if it would be possible to induce a shift,” he said.
“Induce a shift?” said Damien.
“Yes. From everything Christine has said these seem to happen randomly and it’s going to be difficult for us to study anything random. But if we can control when and how this happens that could be a different story.”
Christine suddenly felt like a laboratory rat. Did he just want to poke and prod her, to treat her as an exciting new experiment. She felt Damien reach for her hand and knew that he was thinking the same thing. Dr Collins must have read both their minds. He came up to them. “I’m sorry. I’m getting carried away. It’s so strange it was me you got to see today. I really am an admirer of Jim Priestley’s work. I do want to know more about what’s happening to you. I didn’t expect anything like this today when I came into work and yes, the idea of being involved in this excites me. But I am first and foremost a doctor and my ultimate concern is to protect and care for my patients – that’s you Christine. I won’t do anything to jeopardise your well being. I want to help you.”
He spoke sincerely and part of Christine felt reassured. But another nagging voice still had doubts. How could he possibly know what would jeopardise her when they were talking about things that questioned the very fabric of reality? Could a consciousness continue to move from universe to universe without at some point breaking down or collapsing in on itself? How could he possibly know the answer to that?
But she knew he spoke from the heart and right now he was someone who wanted to help. Together the four of them – she, Damien, Dr Priestley and Dr Collins (and Matt of course, whispered the same inner voice, don’t forget Matt) could work on this together, try to understand it and then …and then what she again asked herself? Where was all this heading? And that was the question she could not answer. She did not know where things were heading, and worst of all, even as she took Damien’s hand, she realised she did not know where she wanted them to head.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It was snowing when they drove back from the hospital. Already every car they passed was covered with a thick powdery layer. Despite the heating in the car Christine could not warm up.
They had not been long in the hospital. A junior doctor had seen to them quickly. He hadn’t asked why Christine needed the two attachments fitted so urgently. The one in the ear felt odd and conspicuous, but when she looked in the mirror she saw it wasn’t visible to a casual glance, someone would only see it if they looked very carefully.
The house was also cold. Christine put on the fire and huddled before it. Damien went straight into the kitchen and she heard him rummaging around, moving cups, clanking plates. She knew she should go out and see what he was doing but she was too cold and tired to move away from the fire. Five minutes later he came in carrying a tray on which stood two steaming mugs of hot chocolate and two plates of hot buttered toast. She suddenly realised she was starving. She smiled at him gratefully. He sat down beside her in front of the fire and silently they ate the toast and drank the hot chocolate. When they had finished he put the cups and plates back on the tray, put the tray to one side and put his arms around Christine, hugging her close. Then he looked at her. “Better?” he said, “You were looking so pale.”
“I’m just so tired.”
“I know, we have to look after you, you need to start eating more and getting some rest.”
“Thanks Damien,” she said, “Not just for the food but for everything. I couldn’t do this without you.”
He held her tight again. “I love you Christine and I’m here for you. We’ll get through this.”
They stayed before the crackling fire for awhile. Christine could feel her bones starting to warm and the tension begin to leave her body. Damien could always do this to her. Say the right words and calm her down, or just hold her tight and help the stress pass. He had always been her rock and even here, at this time when what was happening was beyond all comprehension he was here for her unconditionally. She loved him and was grateful to him.
>
Suddenly she knew she had to talk to him about something. She pulled back.
“Damien, you said on Saturday that this could all be happening because we haven’t had a child together yet. Do you really think that?”
He looked away for a moment then back at her.
“I think there might be some connection yes. I know how much you want a child Christine and I know how much it kills you that it hasn’t happened.”
“Yet,” she added, she was always careful to add the word yet; she did not want either of them to admit out loud that both had now given up.
They had been trying to get pregnant for years, after trying to prevent getting pregnant for even more years. When they first started having sex they had been terrified of pregnancy. It had seemed to be the very worst thing that could happen to them. Christine was studying, Damien was not earning much money. When they bought their house it was hard enough making enough money to cover the mortgage, the bills, the groceries - they knew they could never provide for a child as well. And that was how it was for several years. Their family would sometimes ask if they intended having children and both of them would shrug their shoulders and say they weren’t ready yet and did not know if they ever would be. And they meant it.
But ten or so years into the marriage Christine’s feelings started to change. She felt strange one day when a colleague came into work and announced she was pregnant. It took Christine awhile to realise that she felt jealous.
She spoke to Damien about it. Initially he was reluctant. It could ruin things between the two of them he said. He didn’t want to share her with anyone. He didn’t know if he would make a good father. So they left it again and Christine continued taking the pill. And for awhile the ache passed.
And then another colleague got pregnant and the pain was back. And this time it did not go away.
So there was another conversation. And tears. And eventually Damien agreed they would stop using protection and see what happened. But she wasn’t to get obsessed. There was to be no temperature checking, no charting ovulation, no pre-planned sex on her most fertile days. They would just see what happened. And that’s what they did for the first few months. But each month Christine’s period still arrived and their disappointment grew. By now Damien was becoming as keen as she was to have a child. The fact it was not happening as easily as they thought it would was a shock to them both.
So Christine started to do some research. She found out their ages were against them, as were parts of their lifestyle. So they made some changes - lost weight, cut out the caffeine (although she never cut out the wine - a fact that still shamed her). Still it did not happen. After months of this they agreed to take a break from it all. Stress didn’t help, they both knew this, and Damien couldn’t stand to see Christine so depressed and unhappy each month. They discussed going to the doctor for tests but neither of them wanted to do this. It would have been an admission that there could be something wrong with one them and neither of them were ready for that. She began to wonder whether she would ever see a positive pregnancy symbol on a pregnancy testing kit. Gradually she began to realise she wouldn’t.
And this was where they were now. Still not fully giving up hope but no longer trying with the same focus - back to letting things flow naturally and seeing if it would happen. But it hadn’t. And time was now running out. Christine was forty.
So maybe he was right. Because now she had a whole new set of memories of trying for a child with a very different outcome. Alongside the memories of all the failed conception attempts with Damien was of course the story of Teresa and how she and Matt had come to conceive her.
And as she sat by the fire in Damien's arms she remembered the conversation with Matt the night they had agreed to try for a child. They had been much younger than when she and Damien had first started trying. She had just left university but was waiting to hear whether her application for a grant to do a doctorate was successful. It was completely the wrong time to start trying, they both agreed that. They were too young. They did not have enough money. How could they manage with a baby if she was researching full time? But after listing all the reasons why they shouldn’t do it they had looked at each other and laughed. When did they ever do the most logical thing? They had both wanted a child and they had both wanted to start trying there and then. Which they had.
Christine smiled at the memory but then hugged Damien tighter, feeling guilty at where her thoughts were taking her. Any thoughts of Matt were a betrayal of Damien she knew that, and thoughts of she and Matt conceiving a child together were the ultimate betrayal.
But what was she to do then? She had those memories now. She could not escape them. And she didn’t want to. Because in that life she was a mother. And she loved Teresa. She had from the moment she first held her in her arms.
“She’s a lovely girl Damien,” she said to him suddenly. He visibly flinched and pulled back.
“I’m here for you Christine but I can’t talk about that.”
“We have to talk about it Damien, we can’t ignore it.”
“I don’t even know what it is Chris,” he said. “You tell me you are living another life in another world and I’m trying to get my head around this, trying to be here for you and support you. But in that life you have a child, with another man.”
She looked away. She had been crazy to think she could talk to him about this, absolutely crazy. Why was she so selfish? Why was she hurting him like this?
She looked back at him. “I’m sorry Damien, I shouldn’t have said anything.”
He was silent for a moment, then he said, “It hurts that he has given you what I can’t. You must prefer that life to this one. You must. Because a child is what you’ve wanted for so long now and he has given you that.”
His eyes started to fill. She reached over to him and drew him close to her. “I love you Damien, you are what I’ve wanted the most in life, and even if we never have a child together I will always be grateful and thankful that you are in my life. You are enough for me.”
He kissed her and held her for a moment but then pulled back and when she looked at him she saw doubt and fear in his eyes. He didn’t fully believe her. And why should he? There was now another life where things were very different and where she was happy – with another man, with a child, and where Damien did not feature at all. What did that really mean about him and the role he played in her life? If he was everything to her in this world how could there be another world in which he meant nothing to her at all?
But before she could even begin to think about that or even try to reassure Damien she felt the now familiar pain start up again.
“Damien, it’s happening …,” she began, but before she could finish the white light came, then the colours, then the darkness and when she opened her eyes Damien had gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY
She was sitting on the floor in front of a fire. For a second she felt disoriented, there was something unfamiliar about the fire. She looked around her. No everything was the same. It was her home. Why was she having these moments where she felt odd and unsettled. Matt had said something similar the other day hadn’t he. She remembered again her mother’s changing face at the doorway a few days ago and she shivered.
“Are you okay?” said a voice. It was Matt, entering the living room carrying a tray bearing two glasses of egg nog. Their usual Christmas Eve treat.
“I’m fine,” she said smiling. She did not want to tell him about her moment of disorientation. He would only worry. And part of her was scared that he would tell her he was having more of those moments too and she didn’t want to think about what that could mean.
He passed her a glass of egg nog and she took a sip. It was delicious. She looked over at the sparkling Christmas tree and felt a warm glow inside. She loved Christmas. She always had. She remembered Christmases at home – first with her mother and father and then in later years with her mother and stepfather. All of them had been magical. Even wit
h the money troubles that her parents used to have Christmas still managed to cast a spell of joy over them all. Her father seemed to relax more at Christmas, his bristling anger subsiding for a few days at least. For that short period of time each year they seemed a normal family. Then later when her stepfather was in their lives there was even more warmth, even more normality.
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