“Evasion systems,” she said, pulling a beat-up book from the top of the stack. I chuckled.
“What is it?” she asked, suspicious.
“Nothing, just that I have my very own Q, it seems.”
“Q?”
“From James Bond. The spy movies? Q makes all of the gadgets.”
She nodded, not as gleeful as me about it.
“Well, I’m counting on you to learn how to make them. I just do the research.” She thought for a second. “Does James Bond have a librarian?”
“Probably,” I said.
We read through the mechanics presented in the book, taking notes. Jeannine looked at the calendar on the kitchen wall.
“Nine more days?” she asked.
I nodded, still reading. Her fingers were sitting on the center where the pages came together in the book, holding it open for us to read. They were slender and tapered, and I glanced at my own hands, almost against my will. My knuckles were becoming more like my father’s—big knobby hinges joining thickening fingers together as my hands spread out wider. I was supposed to get used to having no control over the changes in my body, but so far, it still pissed me off. I slid my hands under the textbook to hide them.
“Are you going to celebrate?” she asked.
“Oh, probably not. I think it would be too depressing.”
“Turning eighteen is never depressing, silly,” said Jeannine, and she sat back, taking stock of me.
“Well, I’m excited I can go to the hospital.” Adult visitors were allowed to see some patients on the mental ward, and I planned to talk to Dr. Dorfman as soon as I could.
I found a way to change the subject and we went back to reading. Jeannine opened up another book and I sensed I’d read this book before. But where? I closed the cover enough to read it: A History of Law Enforcement, 1880-1939. It was familiar somehow, but maybe I’d just poured through too many navy blue hardbound books in the last month.
After an hour, it was time to get on with our actual homework. I stood up from the table and stretched, and my shirt came untucked.
“You’re sure getting furry,” Jeannine said. She grinned on one side of her face, and with quick movements pet my stomach. I pulled back, sucking in air and pulling down my shirt. A warm feeling spread out from the bottom of my torso and I blushed.
“Geez, Jack, try not to act like I’m repulsive. I’m just teasing you.”
“No, it’s okay,” I said.
“It clearly isn’t okay,” she said. “I’m sorry. I have no right and I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.” She had pulled back her affection since realizing I had missed the whole hooking up thing last year. I felt bad for disappointing her. So we hadn’t really broken up, but we weren’t the item we had been, either.
“Don’t worry about it, I’m fine,” I said, standing behind a kitchen chair. Even if my heart wasn’t in it, my body had a way of reacting all on its own.
She was kind enough not to insist on a hug before leaving, and I was relieved to gather up the library books from the table that I’d been assigned to read for our next meeting. Maybe none of this made any sense, but I was out of ideas for what else to do until I could talk to Dr. Dorfman. I worried he wouldn’t make any sense.
When I finally got to see him during visiting hours, we had a much different conversation than I’d anticipated.
***
The morning was chilly enough that I had to spend ten minutes scraping frost off the windows of my car. The freaking scraper sucked, peeling back a quarter inch of frost even though the blade was like five inches wide. Down the street, I saw Jay trying and failing to get his engine to turn over. I hopped in and drove up beside him, my heater blowing near-freezing air at the glass. Leaning over to the passenger side, I rolled down my window.
“Do you need a jump?” I asked. He considered ignoring me but then sighed.
“My father says it’s the alternator, not the battery.” He looked defeated.
“So get in, I’ll drive you to school.”
“I don’t think so.” He held the steering wheel hard.
“Jay, the bus left already, and Jeannine’s gone. Just get in so you can get to class.”
“Fine.” He grabbed his backpack and clambered in, the window vibrating after he shut the door. I headed off.
“So look,” I said, but he cut me off.
“How about you don’t talk while I’m here?”
“Jay, come on, we used to be friends. Good friends.”
Sanjay gritted his teeth and talked through them. I could see his chest puffing quickly in and out as he tried to control his breathing.
“You made it clear you don’t want to be friends anymore.”
At a stop sign, I hesitated. “I can only say I’m sorry and try to make amends, man. I was an ass.”
“Boy, were you ever,” said Jay. I hoped he would smile.
“I miss you.”
“I miss you too, but in a different way, Jack. And you’re not ever going to feel the same way.”
My first thought was Oh my God I blew him off after a flirt or something. That was bad enough. My second thought was a thousand times more depressing.
If only you knew, buddy.
“Can we just see if we can take it a day at a time? I think we can both use a friend to help us deal with our families, at least.”
“Well, that’s the truth,” he said, sounding like he was trying to keep from choking. “If my family found out, they would disown me. Literally.”
“If you ever want to talk, I’ll listen.”
“You’ve sure worked on getting in touch with your feminine side,” he said as we pulled away. He rubbed his eyes.
“It’s something I picked up at the gym,” I said. That brought a laugh out of him, and we drove the last few blocks to school. Puffs of frost appeared before our faces as we crossed the parking lot. Dang this heater took a long time to get going.
Jay headed off to his locker with only a small wave.
I hadn’t seen any need to stay in school except that the truancy officer had finally called my father after a month of skipping class. I didn’t need to worry my parents, and I acknowledged that it helped me feel rooted in this time, which was my time, after all. But my grades were ass.
***
This part of the hospital had a long window that ran along a colorful garden and patio so that from anywhere in the communal room, people could gaze at the outdoors. A little dustiness on the glass reminded everyone that really, they were locked in, at the end of a building that could be entered only through a series of double doors and a guard who buzzed in visitors in thirty-minute increments.
I left my license with the guard and got a colored visitor’s badge that I wore clipped to my shirt. Wednesday was yellow, apparently. Past the guard’s desk an orderly pointed out Dr. Dorfman, who was sitting listless in front of a television mounted high on the wall. He was watching The Price Is Right. As I got closer, he noticed me, squinting as if he couldn’t see me clearly. He looked disheveled, a little dirty, his teeth yellow in a way I hadn’t noticed during the study. His perm days were over, and now his hair was a little too long, a little matted, the fluffy sideburns shaved off. I noticed a crumpled pack of Winston cigarettes on the end table and figured out why his teeth were so ugly. The ashtray overflowed with crushed butts.
“You.” His eyes were unfocused, glassy.
“Do you remember me, doctor?” It was only then that I clued in to the fact that I didn’t really have a plan for talking with him. Sure, I’d played the conversation I wanted to have with him over and over in my own head, but that wasn’t an actual conversation.
I grabbed an orange plastic scoop chair and pulled it over to face him.
“Showcase Showdown. They always try to get a dollar and lose. No, no, no, don’t spin again,” he said to the television.
An orderly noticed how animated Dr. Dorfman had become.
“He loves that show,” she said, a
nd then she walked away, over to a patient who was refusing to take some pills. I saw her and another orderly, who was trying not to argue over an older man’s medication. She coaxed him into submission. The patient swallowed the pills and then on command showed them the space under his tongue.
“Do you remember the epilepsy study, doctor?” I asked him.
He just stared at the TV.
“Now she, this woman here, needs to spin the wheel twice. You can’t stop at forty cents. Don’t stop at forty cents!”
Cindy had warned me about this. This was a mistake, coming here.
Another orderly came over, a squat woman with silver hair. “Son, I think you’ll have to leave. You’re getting him too riled up. It’s not good for him.”
“Wait, we can talk about something else,” I said. No, don’t make me leave now. I need him, he knows how to help me jump back. After all this time waiting and preparing, filled with memories of people in pain and dying, I couldn’t just leave.
“Maybe we could turn off the show,” I suggested.
“No, I don’t think so. Come on, don’t give me trouble now.” She got up close to me, like I was one of her patients. She wrapped a hand around my wrist, pulling me away from him.
“You’ll win the showcase,” said Dr. Dorfman, who kept his eyes to the television.
I was figuring out how to get back to see him. I couldn’t wait any longer. I mean, I could come back later, maybe, but I needed to know who else was traveling through time, and where they went, and if I could get back there. So many questions.
“I forgot something,” I said, squirming out of her grip. I ran over to Dorfman.
“Please, just help me get back. Tell me how to get back.”
Our eyes connected. He looked at me, really looked, finally uninterested in the game show.
“It’s inside you,” he said. “You just need the notebook, is all. I wrote it all down. About all of you.” He strained for words, and I was pulled back to the door by the tall orderly who knew how to get pills into people. He gave me one last look.
“Bye-bye, my time traveler.” He waved at me like a toddler.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
JEANNINE SAID OUTRIGHT that she was frustrated, at least as much as I was over my non-conversation with Dr. Dorfman. She held my hand, a spot of warmth on my skin against the chill outside. I felt bad about taking her affection, and I found myself wishing she was Lucas, which of course made me feel even worse. I was in a cycle of lonely assholeness.
“Sounds like they’re all so spaced out on drugs that none of them know if they’re coming or going,” she said. We were back in the woods, off the edge of our neighborhood, but it was too cold to stay long. A branch snapped not far in the distance. Before I knew it, I was standing and ready for an attack.
“Settle down. Unless you didn’t mean it about being friends again,” said Sanjay, toeing carefully through the trees. He sat down on an old metal chair.
“Sorry, guess I’m on edge,” I said. “What are you doing out here?”
“Not what you think,” he said, giggling a little.
“I’m glad to see you two are talking again,” she said. “It’s been a long time since we all hung out back here together.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” said Jay. He brushed a brittle dusting of snow off a fallen tree and sat down. “So why don’t you tell me what you two lovebirds have been up to?”
Jeannine and I looked at each other, neither of us ready for his question.
“I don’t think you’d understand,” I said. That was weak.
Sanjay bristled and crossed his arms over his chest. “Oh, here we go, I see.”
“It’s not like that,” Jeannine said. She dropped my hand and sat down on a log next to Jay.
Dr. Dorfman had told me the answers were in “the notebook.” Where would I find it? Did it still exist? I had no idea where he lived, or how I’d get inside or what it looked like, or anything. Then a light bulb went off over my head. I jumped up.
“Where the hell are you going?” called Sanjay after me. I stopped, twenty yards away from them.
“I have to go talk to someone,” I said, checking my watch. “Jeannine, fill him in.”
“Really?”
“I have a better GPA than both of you clowns,” said Sanjay, as if we were questioning his abilities. I burst out of the woods and ran down the sidewalk to my car, then jumped in and sped to the hospital. If I hit all the traffic lights just right, I could get there before Cindy left at the end of her shift.
Maybe Dr. Dorfman’s notebook was at the hospital in the clinical study office.
***
This time, I knew better than to try to get past Mrs. Finney, so I stayed in the parking lot, crossing my fingers that I’d picked the right outer doors to catch Cindy. I leaned on my car even though it was warmer in the vehicle, but I wanted to make sure I could talk to her before she drove away. Please let her get out here before the frostbite sinks in, I thought.
A cluster of nurses, some still wearing their uniforms, came out together as the evening shift began. I saw Cindy walking with two other women. Thank god Nurse Ratchet—I mean, Mrs. Finney—wasn’t with her. I trotted over, waving when she noticed me.
“Jack, you sure hang around the hospital a lot for a boy who’s well now.” She looked at me sideways, like I was suspicious.
“I went to see Dr. Dorfman.”
She stopped groping for her car keys in her purse and looked at me. She drove a run-down Ford Escort that had a lot of rust along the left rear fender where it had been struck at some point. Maybe nurses didn’t make as much as I thought they did.
“Oh, honey, he’s not fit to talk to anyone. Did he say anything?”
I thought about the once-famous neurologist, now close to drooling on himself and obsessed with a game show.
“Not much, I’m afraid.”
“You shouldn’t go over there again,” she said. “Those people are working on getting better, and they don’t respond well to changes in their routine.”
“Are mental patients always on that much medication? Is that how it is?”
“We don’t call them ‘mental patients,’ Jack. But unfortunately, often it is. It can take a while to find a balance of medicine that helps people.”
I thought of my mother. She was a lot like Dr. Dorfman.
“I don’t remember a lot from the end of the study,” I said, changing gears. “Is there a record of my lab sessions? I’m eighteen now.” Hopefully that was helpful to add, since being a legal adult and all was a big deal.
“Well, as a clinical study those sessions are put into a blind panel,” she said.
“Um, I don’t know what that means.” So much for instant adulthood. Just add water!
“Who receives the treatment is kept confidential, even from the doctors. And I don’t really remember their names anymore.” She shrugged. “I’m sorry to give you bad news, hon, but I couldn’t go back and even tell which sessions were yours. And you’re better now, so why do you want to know?”
I didn’t know what to tell her. If Dr. Dorfman was locked up and drugged because he insisted I and possibly others had traveled through time, what would happen to me if I told the same story? I was just a nobody kid from the suburbs, and he was a prestigious doctor, and still nobody bought his story.
“I’m having some memory problems from that time. Some false memories. I wanted to see if there was anything in there that would help explain it to me.”
She looked really upset for a moment, then nodded. Maybe she was trying to think of a way to help me fix my problem. Because time travel and loves from another time, totally easy to fix!
“There are other doctors on the ward, I suppose, who you could see to get some understanding. What kind of memories do you have that you know aren’t real?”
“I keep seeing a burning house,” I said, going for something that was true but not crazy-sounding. “A white farm house at the top of a hill.”
She frowned. “I see. That does seem pretty specific, but I’ve heard of those things happening before. The human brain, it’s so complicated.” Wow. Cindy was blowing me away with her scientific knowledge of brains.
“Wasn’t there a time when Dr. Dorfman reversed the EEG machine and sent electricity to my brain?”
“Well, it was a different machine, since EEG machines can only read brain waves, not produce current. But yes. Do you have a specific memory from that?”
Lucas, smashing through the branches and crying out in pain. Meeting Dr. Traver as a full-fledged drunk, scouring the back office for coffee to sober him up. Kissing Lucas, tasting him, feeling my heart pound, running through the tunnels of the Underground Railroad. I’d say it was a specific memory in the extreme.
“Yes.”
“I can try and find another doctor to talk to you, Jack, if you really need to explore this.”
“That’s okay,” I said. I had hit yet another dead end. “I just wanted to look at my records if I can’t talk to Dr. Dorfman. And I’m glad the study cured me, I guess.” Did I mean that? Even if I couldn’t go back and save everyone? Or see Lucas again?
“The study didn’t cure you, Jack. You just grew out of it. Many people, when they hit puberty, their brain waves just correct all on their own.” Fucking hormones. It’s nuts that some stupid chemical from south of my junk can totally change the electricity of my brain. But there you have it. Enjoy testosterone!
I walked back to my car after thanking Cindy. She wasn’t the Cheshire Cat she used to be. Which made me trust her more than when I’d been in the study. But now she only gave me bad news.
***
I turned into the driveway after dark, battling the winter fog with my headlights. If only Dr. Dorfman or Cindy could explain the study, or what they thought had happened to me. Instead I had to settle for knowing a bunch of people were going to die horrible, fiery deaths. It was too much.
The engine cut out in a gruff as the key slid out from the steering column. The key’s millings were so worn sometimes it fell right out of the car. My chest felt tight and the cold air bit me through my light jacket. I wondered idly why the foyer lamp wasn’t on, because my parents usually let it burn through the night like a tiny lighthouse. Maybe the bulb had died.
The Unintentional Time Traveler (Time Guardians Book 1) Page 14