“Not so fast,” Celeste said. “You don’t want to be sick.”
I drank more. I couldn’t help it, the thirst was so great.
“My God,” Celeste said, shaking her head. “You haven’t aged a day. And I’m mystified.” She leaned toward me. Took the emesis basin from my lap and set it on her desk. “Whatever happened to you, Caroline?” she asked gently. “I remember you very well now. You were so devoted to your little girl. You were in the nursery nearly every hour of every day, weren’t you? Then suddenly, you stopped coming. I remember it was right before 9/11, and we all figured you must have been one of the victims. We’d given you a gift certificate for the city tour and we worried you’d picked that day to take the tour and something happened to you. That was the only possible reason we could think of for you to disappear like that. What actually happened?”
That “9/11” again. A victim? I stared at her blankly, unsure how to respond. Clearly, this “9/11” was something I should know about. Maybe, though, she was giving me my story. The reason I disappeared.
I nodded. The water sloshed around in my stomach. “Yes,” I said. “I was … a victim.”
“Oh, no, how terrible.” She shook her head, an expression of great sympathy on her face. “Thank God you survived, though.”
“Where is Joanna?” I asked. That was all I really cared about.
Celeste hesitated a moment as though she wasn’t certain she wanted to answer me. “When she was well enough to be discharged,” she said slowly, “the hospital social worker contacted Child Protective Services and they took her.”
I pictured the scene. My baby, waiting for me to come cuddle her and sing to her, instead being trundled off into the arms of a tired, overworked, indifferent social worker and taken … where? A whimper escaped my throat. My eyes burned.
“And then what?” The words came out in a small voice I barely recognized as my own. “What did they do with her?”
“Once a baby leaves us, we have no way of knowing,” Celeste said. “I think what you need to do is imagine that Joanna landed with a loving family. She’d be what? Twelve now? I bet she’s having a wonderful life with parents who are thrilled to have her.”
Joanna was twelve? With a loving family? No, no, no.
“She already had a loving family,” I said, my voice breaking. I needed my baby back! The sense of loss I felt was unbearable. I had to get back to 2001 and my little girl! I thought of the list of portals in my backpack and with sudden horror, I realized all those dates were to return me to 1970 from 2001. Not from 2013. I was stuck here.
The nausea came back with a vengeance. Celeste seemed to sense it and handed me the basin. I clutched it, shutting my eyes, my breathing so rapid I was nearly choking on it.
“Deep breaths,” Celeste said calmly. “Fill your lungs nice and slowly.”
I barely heard her, my mind racing with the horror of my predicament.
“Where were you when the planes hit?” Celeste asked gently. “Did you sustain a head injury?”
What planes? What the hell was she talking about? I shook my head slowly, staring down at my lap, thinking, Twelve years. I was twelve years too late for my baby. Another small, agonized sound escaped my lips.
“Thank God you weren’t killed,” Celeste continued. “I wanted to go to the remembrance service this morning so much, but I can’t leave here. I was able to go last year, though.” She paused. “I lost five friends when the towers came down,” she said.
I felt the blood rush from my head. The towers? The only towers I could think of were at the World Trade Center. They came down? Planes hit them? How? Why?
“We don’t need to talk about it,” Celeste said kindly. “It must be very hard to think about. It was just so shocking to us when you didn’t come back. But then, everything was shocking during that time, wasn’t it?” She leaned forward to touch the back of my hand. “Where did you go?” she asked. “Were you hospitalized? As I recall, you were from out of the area. North Carolina, right? Is that where you’re living now?”
She’d asked too many questions at one time for my frightened brain to process. I needed to get out of here. Needed to figure out how to get back to my baby. I started to get out of the wheelchair but she stood up quickly, holding me down by the shoulders.
“No, no,” she said. “I can’t let you go like this. Obviously you had some sort of traumatic brain injury, since you didn’t realize the date,” Celeste said. “Do you remember what happened?”
I was going to have to make something up. Something to explain my behavior. “I don’t really remember,” I said, settling into the chair again. “But when I … I came to, they told me I’d been hit in the head by … I don’t know what. They took me to my sister’s house in North Carolina.” The fake story spilled from me. “I’ve been there all these years. I guess I had … amnesia. I forgot I had a baby.” I could never, ever, in a million years forget I had a baby.
“Didn’t your sister tell you?” Celeste asked.
I looked away from her. Licked my lips, scrambling for an answer to her question. “She didn’t know,” I said. “We’d been estranged for years. Though now we’re close, and I began to remember Joanna and felt confused about what year it was. What year it is, I mean.” I felt a sob rising in my chest and fought to keep it down.
“Have you been treated for PTSD?” Celeste asked.
I remembered reading about PTSD in an article written by a Vietnam veteran. Could you have it if you hadn’t gone through a war?
I nodded. It was easiest to go along with her.
“I imagine today’s date brought it all back for you, huh?” she asked. “Left you pretty confused?”
I nodded again. Let me out of here, I thought.
“Here’s what we should do,” Celeste said, shifting both her position in her chair and her tone. “I’ll take you down to the ER. I’ll ask them to have a psychologist stop in to talk to you, and—”
“No,” I said quickly. I had no time for this. I had to get out of here. I had to figure out what to do. “I’m not crazy, Celeste,” I said, hoping I sounded saner than I had a few minutes earlier. I remembered when I was a physical therapy student and we learned about working with the elderly or people who seemed confused. We’d have to give them a mental status exam. What month is it? Who is the president? I had no idea who the president was. They’d drag me off to some psychiatric hospital.
“I’m not saying you’re crazy,” Celeste assured me. “PTSD has nothing to do with—”
“I’m all right. Really.” I set the basin on the edge of her desk again, preparing to stand, but she rested a hand on my knee.
“It’s 2013 and you thought it was still 2001, Caroline,” she said gently. “You thought your—”
“It was being back here,” I said. “Just for a moment, I remembered coming to the hospital every day. Being with Joanna.” Joanna. I could see her so clearly. Feel the weight of her in my arms. Kangaroo care. Her soft skin against mine. Her gummy little smile. “I know it’s 2013,” I said, my voice husky. “I know where I am. Who I am. I’m fine.”
“I’m worried about just letting you walk out of here.” Celeste frowned. “Where will you go? Where are you staying? How about I get the social worker up here and she can call your sister for you?”
“I’m fine,” I said again.
“You need to think about Joanna in a positive light,” she said. “Imagine she has a good life.”
“What if she doesn’t?” I asked. “What if she didn’t get adopted by some wonderful family? What if they didn’t take good care of her? Didn’t get her medical care? Made sure her heart was okay?” I choked up with panic. “I didn’t abandon her! I would never abandon her.”
“Oh, Caroline.” Celeste folded her hands awkwardly on her lap. “You do need some help to work all this through,” she said. “Have you seen a therapist at all?”
“Yes, I’ve seen one.” I’d go along with her. It seemed the best course of
action right then. I flipped up the footrests on the wheelchair with my feet and shifted forward, hoping I could stand without getting too dizzy. “And you’re right. That’s a good idea. I’ll call my therapist and tell her what happened here today.” I spoke quickly as I stood up and Celeste looked at me uncertainly, unsure how to respond to the fact that I was getting ready to leave. “She’s a wonderful therapist and it’ll be good to talk to her.” I smiled, trying to look perfectly sane. It was killing me. I wished I did have someone I could tell everything to.
“You’re sure you’re okay to leave?” Celeste asked, standing up herself.
“Yes, and I’m sorry I was so messed up when I got here,” I said, heading for the door. I had to get out of here. I had to think. “I feel like a fool now.”
“No, no. No worries,” Celeste said. “That day messed all of us up.” She lifted the phone on her desk. “Let me ask someone from security to make sure you get downstairs and outside all right.”
“No,” I said quickly. “Really, Celeste. I’m fine. Thank you.”
I turned and walked out of her office. In the hallway, I heard the cries of babies. My breasts ached. My belly contracted. Only two months ago, I gave birth to my baby girl. I needed her back in my arms. Eyes burning, I turned in the direction of the elevators. I felt stiff and scared as I rode down to the lobby. If anyone was playing the piano, I didn’t hear it. I walked through the front door, then leaned against the cool outside wall of the hospital and shut my eyes.
Joanna.
I started to cry. I covered my face with my hands and sobbed my grief into them, not caring who saw me. I must have stood there for five miserable minutes. Slowly, my weeping stopped. I wiped my cheeks with my fingertips. People glanced at me as they passed me by. I looked straight through them, my mind not here on this street. Instead, I was thinking of the one person with the power to get me back to my baby: Myra.
I needed to clear my head. Think things through. I needed a plan. The bank where I had my account was only a couple of blocks away. First, I would go there and withdraw the money I’d left in the account. Then I’d go to the condo and get my iBook and phone.
I pressed my hand to my mouth. What was I thinking? Twelve years had passed. My iBook and phone were long gone. I doubted the key I had would even let me into the condo and surely by now it was no longer vacant. Oh my God, what a horrible mess I was in!
I slipped off my backpack and pulled the list of dates Hunter had given me from the outside pocket. Turning the paper over, I saw his mother’s address. Alexandria, Virginia. Was she still there? I’d get my money from the bank. Then I’d catch the next train to Alexandria, and—as long as Myra was still living at this address—I would beg for her help to somehow, some way, get my baby girl back again.
37
“When an account is abandoned for three years, we close it and turn the money over to the state,” the bank manager explained. He’d been called over by the teller when I began to cry with frustration over not being able to get my money.
There was that word again. Abandoned. “I didn’t abandon it,” I argued. “I was injured in the … in the 9/11 thing, and I had to go away to get better. And I need that money.”
The manager frowned at me. “I can give you a form you can use to contact the state,” he said, “but I’m afraid they’ll say it’s far too late. I’m sorry.”
I left the bank without taking the form. So I was five hundred dollars poorer. What did it matter right now? What the hell did anything matter?
I took a cab to Penn Station and was relieved to see that at least the train station looked familiar. I needed something to look as I remembered it. I studied the timetables. One hundred and fifty-six dollars to get to Alexandria. I shut my eyes, upset all over again at my lost five hundred dollars. The train would leave in twenty-five minutes and arrive in Alexandria a little after five. The credit card Myra had given me such a short time ago had long since expired, so I paid for the ticket with some of the precious bills Hunter had given me, grateful now that he’d forced that money on me.
I reached the correct platform and joined the line of people as they boarded the train. I found a window seat and was glad when no one sat next to me. It would be a four-and-a-half-hour trip. I had nothing to read. Nothing to distract me from thoughts of my baby. My missing daughter. My chest tightened in agony every time I pictured her in her isolette, waiting for her mama. Waiting and waiting. I turned my face to the window and let the tears stream down my cheeks.
The train began chugging its way out of the station through a dark tunnel, and I squeezed my eyes shut. Hunter. I didn’t want to be angry with him, but he’d screwed this up. I’d pressed him to work fast, though. Pressed him too hard. I should have been more patient. Given him more time. I’d trusted him to do it right. He always did everything right. He was the smartest person I’d ever known. How could he have gotten this so very wrong?
The train stopped at every town we passed through, or so it seemed. People got on and people got off, but the seat next to me remained free and I could only guess that, with one look at me, passengers decided it was best to give me a wide berth. I didn’t look like a good traveling companion.
As we neared Virginia, I had a sudden thought. It was 2013. Twelve years since I’d last seen Myra. Maybe by now she’d figured out a way for a traveler to take a fifth trip. Maybe she could get me back to 2001 to find my baby and then home safely to 1970. I filled with hope then, until I remembered that Hunter had arrived from 2018 and not only had the fifth-trip rule still been in place then, but Myra had somehow gotten herself trapped by it that year and disappeared.
“Shit!” I said, out loud. And the woman in the seat across the aisle turned to glare at me. What did she see? A disheveled twenty-seven-year-old woman with tear-streaked cheeks, well-worn blue jeans, and a grass-stained backpack who now cussed out loud to the air. I turned my face back to the smeared window.
* * *
I found a cab at the Alexandria station and gave the woman driver Myra’s address. She glanced at me in the rearview mirror.
“Long trip?” she asked pleasantly. I knew then that I looked even worse than I thought.
“You could say that,” I said.
“Going home or visiting?”
I didn’t understand the question at first. My brain was not in this cab at all. “Visiting,” I said. I hoped this wouldn’t be a long trip and a long conversation. She seemed to pick up on my mood and fell quiet. We were driving on a busy street, hitting every red light. Rush hour. After ten very slow minutes, I had to know how close we were.
“How much farther is it?” I asked.
“We’re almost there,” she said. “This is Old Town Alexandria and the address is just a few blocks away.”
Thank God. She turned onto a cobblestone street, driving downhill, and we bounced with such force my teeth knocked together. I could see the glint of water—a river?—ahead of us. Then she turned onto a paved street and stopped in front of a row of narrow, ancient-looking town houses.
“This is it,” she said, pointing to a beige brick town home squished between two others.
“Thanks,” I said. I handed her more of my precious cash, then climbed out of the cab lugging my backpack over my shoulder as I walked to the red door. I pressed the doorbell as the cab drove away. No answer. I pressed it again. Held it down. I could hear it buzzing inside the house.
A man in a suit eyed me as he walked up to the sidewalk to the town house next door.
“Excuse me!” I called to him. “Can you tell me if Myra Poole lives here?”
He nodded as he reached into the mailbox next to his door. “When she’s in town, yes,” he said.
Oh, no.
“Is she … do you know if she’s in town?”
“No idea.” He pulled a few pieces of mail from the box. Glanced at them, then back at me. “She keeps to herself.” He frowned. “You all right?”
“It’s just been a long day
and I need to see her.” I forced myself to smile to fend off more questions.
“Well, maybe she’ll be home soon.” He slipped a key into his lock and gave me a quick wave as he opened the door. I nearly asked him for some water, but thought better of it. I was afraid of too many questions. Afraid of seeming out of it.
I looked down the street once he’d closed the door to his house. I could see some shops in the distance. I walked in that direction and found a bakery, where I bought a bottle of water and a slightly stale blueberry muffin. I devoured the muffin and gulped down the water as I walked back to Myra’s. As I neared the house, I saw a woman approaching the front door. Her hair was white but she was unmistakably Myra. I began to run.
“Myra!” I called.
She’d opened her door but turned to look at me. Daylight was beginning to fade and she squinted. Cocked her head. “I remember you,” she said, and I could tell she was hunting for my name.
“Caroline Sears,” I said. “Carly. Hunter’s my brother-in-law.”
“Shh!” She glanced behind her as though someone might have heard me. “Come inside,” she said, then whispered, “Don’t say things like that outside the house.”
“Sorry,” I said, walking past her into a long, skinny living room. The sides of the room were windowless, as they would have to be, since the house was tucked between two others. But the far wall was nearly all glass and looked out over the darkening river. “I need your help.” I was suddenly filled with hope at seeing her. “Desperately!” I said. “I was supposed to—”
“Slow down.” She set her briefcase on a table inside the door, then motioned toward the living room. “Have a seat and I’ll be right in. Do you want something to drink?”
“Just water.”
I sat impatiently on the edge of the long off-white sofa, my hands knotted together in my lap. She finally came into the room and handed me a glass of water before sitting down in a chair by the window. “The year 2001, wasn’t it?” she asked. “You had fetal surgery, followed by a healthy baby, and you returned with the baby to 1970, correct?”
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