She tossed the card back into the bin and started in on the mess around her on the floor, throwing in albums and loose pictures and letters in haphazard fashion. She’d almost filled the bin by the time she saw it, an old envelope that must have been tucked between the pages of a photo album.
It was an envelope she was certain she’d never seen before. There were others beside it, cards and letters that had been torn open with haste and excitement, but this one was different. This one wasn’t addressed to the Jenny from New Orleans, the one with the black eyeliner and scarlet lipstick, but to the Jenny who was living in Calebasse, Louisiana, with her soon-to-be husband and son. It was postmarked just two weeks after Dean’s birth and had been sliced open with a whetted letter opener, just like the one Hank used.
The paper was soft between her fingers, and when she pulled it from the envelope, she instantly recognized the beautiful penmanship as David’s. Her eyes pored over the pages, devouring word after word, until there were none left to read, and then she started over. Words flooded her mind and consumed her as she read the letter again and again, each time slower than the previous, until she could take it no more. The paper slipped from her fingers and drifted to the floor at her feet, her tears dripping down beside it.
The wine ambushed her when she pulled herself from the bed, and when she fell into the nightstand, the empty wineglass fell to the floor beside her, dripping wine onto the carpet and bleeding into the words of David’s letter, blotting them out forever.
What would Hank’s excuse be?
She stumbled through the hallway to her bedroom, feeling her way along the wall with clumsy hands as the floor spun beneath her feet. Her head was swimming with merlot and her tongue was too thick for the slurred words she spat out at her absent husband.
“Whyjoo do that to me, Hank? How couldjoo?”
The room continued to spin, even when she fell onto the bed and covered her head with the pillow, as if she were floating above herself, waiting for it to end, waiting for the moment when it would all come crashing down.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
maria
FIBERS OF DUST FLOATED THROUGH THE meek rays of sunshine that trickled past the prison-barred window of Maria’s room. They danced around her like they were drifting down from heaven but had lost their way. The Alabama spring sky was an impossible shade of blue, mocking her from the side of freedom, where people worked and lived and loved with no regard for the torrent of grief that washed through her. Was her agony any worse than theirs?
Henry was on another day pass and the hours were terminally long. He’d returned to the unit just moments before bed the previous day, and she had yet to ask him about his purpose or his plans. The five minutes they found for each other were spent exchanging phone numbers and addresses in case they didn’t get another chance to talk before he was discharged.
Maria could feel someone watching her as she stared out the window and counted the minutes ticking away on the clock. She could feel his eyes boring into the back of her head before she heard his raspy, nasal breath, and though she had no interest in company, she felt compelled to face him. No words were exchanged as they took in the sight of each other, his eyes lingering on her splinted arm as hers tried to reconcile the mismatched pieces of him. A mop of gray hair, well overdue for a trim, clung to the top of his head while a wiry pair of spectacles played an endless game of slip-and-slide off the bridge of his nose. His pants were cinched too high, his loafers were scuffed, and his shirt had most certainly never felt the heat of an iron. He looked like he could be one of her patients.
“Can I help you?” Maria said.
He smiled at her as cautious steps carried him into the room, and only when they stood eye to eye, just inches apart, did he speak.
“Maria.” He breathed out her name as if she’d been lost to him for ages and finally returned. “I can’t believe you’re here.”
“Were you expecting me?”
“I was, in fact. But still, what a nice surprise.” His hand jutted out between them, but only with hesitation did Maria accept it. “I’m Eric,” he said. “Eric Johnstone.”
“Doctor Johnstone?” Maria replied. “From Iowa?”
“The one and only.” With his hands held wide, he stepped toward the window, the sunlight casting the shadowed bars across his face. “You might find this hard to believe,” he said, “but this is my first trip to Alabama. I was in Louisiana once, New Orleans, right during the heat of summer. I don’t know how anybody survived down there before air-conditioning was invented.” He turned back to her and shook his head. “Hotter than Hades.”
Maria stood in awed silence as this man who’d stumbled into her life carried on about bayous and gators and the overabundance of seafood that was pulled from the Mississippi Sound, like he was an airboat tour guide.
“But why am I telling you all this?” he continued. “You’re from the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, right?”
“I’m from Alabama,” Maria muttered. “From right here.”
“That’s right.” With a wink, he turned and stepped closer to the barred windows, his eyes peering down at the courtyard below. “Did you ever wonder what it would be like to be locked up on a psych unit before now?” He spun around to face her before he continued. “I mean, as a psychiatrist, did you ever think about stuff like that?”
It was the one secret she’d managed to withhold, the one piece of information she hadn’t shared with anyone since returning. Her doctors knew all about the other delusions—her family, her unborn son, her home along the coast of Mississippi—but the fact that she had become what she spent her life trying to cure was the one secret she had guarded.
Dr. Johnstone was not who she expected him to be. She’d been prepared for a university professor with a clipboard and a checklist of symptoms, and maybe even an assistant. She’d planned on being a quick disappointment, a failed case study that would land him back in Iowa by nightfall, but this doctor was challenging her, casting out just enough bait to make her bite. When their eyes met, though, it was clear that he wasn’t expecting a response.
“Why don’t we head outside,” he said. “A beautiful spring day like this shouldn’t go to waste.”
The courtyard was teeming with patients and visitors as she and Dr. Johnstone settled onto a concrete bench in a far corner, under the shade of a magnolia tree. Maria could see it a thousand times, the majestic bloom of the southern magnolia, and it would never grow old. There had been one in her yard when she was a child. It was probably still there.
A lone velvet petal drifted to the ground at her feet before her eyes searched the perimeter of the courtyard. It was an unconscious response, learned from just days of confinement. Where was the exit? The courtyard was full of them, gravel-lined paths and gates that hung open like gawking mouths, inviting her to amble through them to her freedom.
“Where will you go?” Dr. Johnstone’s voice, along with his laughter, pulled her back to him as he watched her plan her escape. “When you break yourself out of here, what direction will you run? You already know your family’s not out there, so where to next?”
“I don’t know,” Maria said, wondering how the man beside her seemed to stay one step ahead of her and follow her thoughts as if she was speaking them out loud. Did he already know her next move? Did he know that she was awaiting Henry’s return to the psych unit so she could formulate a plan with him to get home? Did he know what “home” meant?
“I’m going to get myself a cup of coffee,” he said, slapping his hands on the tops of his legs and startling Maria from her thoughts. “I’d be happy to bring one back for you, if you’d like.”
Maria simply nodded and watched in silence as he rose from the bench and traipsed down the gravel path that led to the hospital, confident in the knowledge that his new patient would be waiting for him on the bench beneath the magnolia tree when he returned.
He was right. Thoughts of escape had faded from her mind, and as she aw
aited Dr. Johnstone’s return, spring bombarded her from every corner of the courtyard: sunshine, blooms, and babies. People all around her laughed and lived as if cruelty wasn’t lurking around the corner; they were oblivious to what could happen and what they might awaken to in the morning. A young couple ogled their toddling baby on their makeshift picnic blanket, a tray full of cafeteria food between them. Maybe it was better not knowing. Maybe the inevitable was easier to face without a countdown clock ticking away in the background.
Maria lifted her face toward the sky and closed her eyes as a gust of wind spiraled through the tree above her head, sending a shower of petals over her body. When they settled at her feet, Dr. Johnstone was standing before her with a paper cup in each hand.
“‘Listen to the wind, it talks. Listen to the silence, it speaks. Listen to your heart, it knows.’” He handed her one of the cups and eased onto the bench beside her. “That’s an old Native American proverb that always pops into my head when I feel a big gust of wind. Do you know that some cultures believe the wind carries our spirits back from death to be reborn again?” He sipped his coffee and tilted his head back, sunlight sprinkling through the branches of the trees and trickling over his face. “Do you listen to the wind, Maria?”
His words forced her back to a place that was now so far out of reach, and a scene that wouldn’t leave her mind: Will and her daughters laughing at the beach, in a dream that was worlds away. When had she ever just listened to the wind? And what wouldn’t she give to go back and do it all over? Take her family from that dream and make it a reality?
“I’m sure we could all take more time to listen to the wind,” she said, forcing a sip of the lukewarm coffee, which must have been sitting on the burner for hours. It seemed such a distant memory now, when her days were filled with worries about work schedules and day care drop-offs and her son being born before her fortieth birthday. She swallowed another gulp of the bitter coffee, unable to still the nausea in her gut. “You knew I was here before you sent that fax to my doctor, didn’t you?”
“I did,” he replied. “You’re very perceptive. I was wondering if you were going to ask about that. How would a research scientist from Iowa know about a seventeen-year-old girl in Alabama? And why would he travel all the way down here just to see her?”
“Why, indeed?”
“Because you’re not just any patient,” he said with a wink. “And George is the one who told me you were here.”
Maria’s mind spun through the names and faces of every man she could remember named George, faster than a Rolodex. None of them made an impression. Was he a patient? A coworker? A friend?
The last drops of cold coffee left a bitter aftertaste in her mouth, but she gulped them down, stalling for time and trying to force the pieces of their conversation together.
“Who’s George?” she finally asked.
Dr. Johnstone scooted to the edge of the bench, his excitement a palpable discomfort between them. “You don’t remember George?”
“Should I?”
“He’s been with you your whole life. In a way. He’s been sick lately, otherwise he’d be here to visit.” He shrugged away the thought before he continued. “Anyway, he’s the one who knew you’d come back.”
Come back.
Maria wanted to trust him. It would have been easier to throw caution to the wind and trust that the man beside her was on her side and not trying to trap her into a diagnosis. But she’d already fallen into a trap that wasn’t even deliberately set by her first doctor, unable to name the current president, and she couldn’t afford to drop her guard.
“From the future,” he continued, winking at her again before scooting back on the bench and struggling to contain his restless energy. “But I was the one who figured out you were a psychiatrist. How else could a seventeen-year-old girl know what the DSM is? Or that schizophrenia can’t be diagnosed with an MRI?” Maria picked at the edge of the paper cup as his words danced around her. “Okay, let me rephrase this and put your mind at ease. How does a seventeen-year-old girl without the internet know all those things?”
It wasn’t a word she should have been hearing. It was a word that didn’t belong to this time or place, and as her thoughts raced ahead of her, she couldn’t remember if there was such a thing as the internet in 1988.
“You’re trying to remember when the internet was invented, aren’t you?” Dr. Johnstone laughed. “Technically, it’s already been invented, but the term isn’t in popular use yet. How about cell phones and text messaging?” The courtyard spun as the doctor’s words swirled through the air, rustling the leaves of the magnolia tree above their heads. “And September 11, 2001? No American can forget that date. Does it ring a bell?”
Maria wanted to cry. The relief was sudden and overwhelming, like a dam breaking and spilling out all of the fear and anxiety that had been pent up inside of her. Finding Henry had been a blessing, but finding Dr. Johnstone could mean salvation.
“Were you there?” she asked. “Were you alive in the future, too?”
“I was.”
“What happened to us? Why are we here?”
“The short answer is, I don’t know.” He leaned back and laughed, downing the rest of his coffee before crushing the cup in his hand and glancing at his watch. “And the long answer is too long for me to go through right now. But we’ll get there.”
“I thought this was some kind of test to see if I have those…” Her mind was still racing, and she couldn’t remember what they were called. “Those hallucinations of the future.”
“It’s not a test, Maria. You’re not hallucinating.” His voice dropped to a whisper as he leaned toward her almost conspiratorially. “There’s no such thing as prospective hallucinations. I made it up to find people like you.”
“Then you’ll help me?”
“I’ll help you with anything I can,” he replied. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions, and I’ve been around for a while, so hopefully I can answer them for you.”
Henry was the first person who popped into her mind. Not her husband or children or her home in Mississippi. It surprised her, and saddened her in a way, but she was eager to share the excitement with him and to tell him all about the doctor who might be able to get them both home. Sylvia wasn’t far from her thoughts, either, with her premonitions and warnings and purposes.
“Why are we here?” Maria asked. “Were we sent back for specific purposes?”
“Some people think that.” Dr. Johnstone shifted on the bench, as if he could physically dodge the question, and if Maria hadn’t been paying attention, she would have missed the subtle change in his restlessness.
“Do you?” she asked.
“I think you can find a purpose to anything if you look hard enough.” He rose from the bench and tossed his crumpled-up coffee cup into the garbage, before he glanced at his watch again. “There’s a lot we have to talk about, Maria. But I told Dr. Anderson I wouldn’t disrupt your routine too much, so I have to get you back up to the unit before group therapy.”
“Wait.” Maria pulled herself from the bench, unable to settle her nerves or her racing pulse and not yet willing to abandon their conversation. “What about getting me home? Can you do that?”
Dr. Johnstone hesitated briefly as he studied Maria’s face, as if her question had surprised him, as if she’d asked for something unexpected. It reminded her of Henry’s response during their first meeting on the couch in the dayroom.
You can’t go home, Maria.
“I’ll be back first thing tomorrow morning,” Dr. Johnstone continued, “and I’ll explain everything to you.”
Maria reached out and laid her hand over his arm, forcing his eyes to meet hers. “Please tell me you can send me home.”
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow, Maria.” He placed his hands on her shoulders and held her gaze at arm’s length, making her feel suddenly small again, like a child being comforted by her father. “I know how hard it is,” he said.
“Believe me, I do. But you’re just going to have to trust me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
TRUST.
People were popping in and out of her life and her dreams with such disturbing regularity that Maria couldn’t keep track of them. How could she possibly trust Dr. Johnstone to return to her? There was nothing she could do about it, though. Whether she trusted him or not, she was at his mercy. He was the doctor and she was the patient.
Henry had been at group therapy when Maria was escorted in a few minutes late by her new doctor. He was excited to report that his visits with family had gone well and he would be getting discharged from the hospital the next day. Maria was waiting for him on their couch like he’d asked.
Meet me on our couch after group.
Our couch.
She wasn’t sure why that made her smile, and she could feel her face flush when she noticed him watching her from the other side of the room. It was a habit that had haunted her in her youth, and one she had forgotten about until she felt the warmth climbing into her cheeks. There was something so intimate in the way his eyes landed upon her skin, as if he could see into her, leaving her feeling exposed and vulnerable.
“I have something really exciting to tell you,” Maria said, as Henry took his place beside her on the couch. “There’s a doctor here who’s come back from the future, just like us.”
Henry surveyed the room around them before he responded, making a mental note of where the nurses were stationed, like he always did, and then he leaned back into the couch and sighed.
“Please tell me you didn’t talk about this with one of the doctors,” he said, rubbing at his temples with the tips of his fingers. “And please tell me that, if you did, you didn’t include me in this conversation.”
“Of course I didn’t mention you,” Maria replied. “And he’s not one of the doctors from here. He’s from Iowa, and he came all the way down here just to see me. He does this kind of work so he can find people like us.”
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