“Apparently, you got worked up last night about something,” Dr. Johnstone said. “They said they had to sedate you.”
Henry was gone. She could feel it. The sun was up, a new day had begun, and he would have been discharged by now. It had taken him to put the pieces together for her, but Maria finally understood what it meant to have a purpose.
“Do you know what the date is today?” she said, almost too afraid to hear the answer, certain she had already failed the little girl who was waiting to be saved.
“May fourth,” he replied, and when Maria breathed a noticeable sigh of relief, he leaned his body against the desk and eyed her over the rim of his glasses which had slipped halfway down his nose. “Why? Is there somewhere you need to be?”
“Yes.” She squinted up at him, the morning light from the window behind him unforgiving in the potency of its glare. “And very soon.”
With his body propped against the desk, Dr. Johnstone watched her in quiet contemplation. There was something so visceral about him in that moment and in the way he seemed to be piecing together her history. It was the longest he’d kept his mouth shut since their introduction, and the air between them grew thick with anticipation before he broke the silence.
“I’m starving,” he said. “Why don’t we head down to the cafeteria for some breakfast and finish our conversation there?”
The cafeteria was nearly vacant when they arrived, just a scattering of patients and visitors mulling over half-eaten breakfasts. They paid Maria no mind as she settled into a far corner booth with her plain bagel and cup of coffee, or when Dr. Johnstone slid onto the chair beside her, his plate overflowing with bacon and eggs.
“Is that all you’re eating?” He eyed her meager portions and dusted his eggs with salt and pepper. “The food here is really pretty good.”
Maria tore off a piece of bagel and forced it into her mouth. “I’m not really a breakfast person.”
He shrugged before diving into his pile of eggs, his appetite as voracious as his personality. As he wolfed down his breakfast, she tried to ignore the discomfiting gaze he set upon her.
“So, you think you figured out why you’re here?” he said. “Your purpose?”
She nodded as he lifted his glass of orange juice to his mouth, which was still stuffed with eggs.
“Can I ask you how you figured it out?”
She hadn’t thought to prepare an answer for a question like that, and as she considered all the lies she’d woven through her story over the past couple of weeks, she couldn’t understand why this one felt so difficult. It seemed like something she should have been able to figure out on her own, even if she didn’t. “I had some dreams before I came back,” she said, biting into her bagel and shrugging off the question.
“Has anyone come to visit you since you’ve been in the hospital?”
He swallowed down half his juice with an audible gulp and set the glass on the table. Maria dropped her eyes to it, unable to disguise her surprise. Did he know about Henry? She wondered whether she’d ever see the boy from the psych unit again, and why she felt compelled to safeguard his privacy.
“Like who?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” He shrugged before he continued. “Anyone besides family?”
Maria shook her head.
“What about when you came back,” he continued. “Do you remember anything about that?”
“Not really. I just woke up in the middle of the night one night and thought I was dreaming, and then when I realized it wasn’t a dream, I thought I was supposed to kill myself to get back home.”
“You don’t remember any kind of transition? Like being in a hospital or seeing your family or anything like that?”
“Not when I first came back,” she said, shaken by the memory of her husband’s face hovering above her as she begged for her son’s life to be spared. “But after my suicide attempt, I saw my husband covered in blood and pleading with me to hang on. I thought I had made it back home, but when I woke up in the ICU, I was still here.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Most of us have some difficult memories to deal with when we come back.”
“What happened to us?”
“We’re repeaters,” he said. “Kind of like glitches in the system.”
He shoved a bite of toast into his mouth and wiped his hands on his pants as he gathered the salt and pepper shakers from the surrounding tables and positioned them along the perimeter of his plate at varying distances.
“Let me explain. Let’s say this plate is the sun, and the salt and pepper shakers are all planets. Now, each of these planets is spinning around its own axis to make days, right?” He spun the salt shaker closest to him in a clockwise circle as he watched Maria to make sure she was following along. “One rotation around a planet’s axis is one day. But these planets aren’t just spinning around their own axes; they’re also circling the sun.”
The salt shaker he dragged around the plate left a trail of salt in its wake, and when he released his grip on it, greasy fingerprints were stamped onto its sides.
“Our whole lives are measured in cycles: days and months and years. So all these planets are spinning and circling at different speeds and crossing paths with each other at different places throughout time and space.”
The salt and pepper shakers circled the plate in a chaotic dance through Dr. Johnstone’s solar system as Maria looked on.
“Well, it’s the same thing with our lives. Imagine each person being a planet. One cycle is one lifetime, and we’re spinning through these lives, interacting with people at various times and places throughout space. Does that make sense so far?”
“I guess,” Maria replied.
“Good. Now this,” he said, pointing at the scene before them, “is how things go when there are no glitches in the system. You complete a life cycle and then you’re born into a new one, with no memories of the previous one. But every once in a while, an asteroid or comet or some other space debris comes along and crashes into a planet, knocking it off its axis and back in time.”
He flipped the spoon in his hand end over end before crashing it into an unsuspecting pepper shaker and sending it tumbling off its trajectory into the plate of eggs. “That’s what happened to us. We’ve been hit by something that’s knocked us off track.”
He’d worked himself into a frenzy by the time he was through, though that didn’t seem a difficult task, and as Maria took in the mess on the table between them, her hope faltered. Her doctor seemed to be balancing precariously close to the edge of his own psychosis.
“You think we’re planets?”
“Not the actual planets,” he said. “I just think we’re like the planets in the way we rotate through time. You know, like a metaphor. Using one thing to describe another?”
He sighed as he pushed the plate of eggs away and leaned back in his chair, his fingers fumbling with one of the salt shakers from the table. “I don’t understand why no one ever gets my planet metaphor.”
Salt spilled onto his pants as he flipped the shaker in his hands, oblivious to the mess he was making. “All right, then, try to think about it like reincarnation. We’re born, we live, we die, and then our memories are wiped clean and we’re reborn again. Now, where and when we’re reborn isn’t constant, so the people and places we encounter are always changing, but sometimes we catch glimpses into our past lives, when we meet someone we swear we know or find ourselves standing in a place we’re sure we’ve been. It’s so common there’s even a name for it: déjà vu, which literally means ‘already seen.’ And then there’s us.” Dr. Johnstone spread his arms out wide. “The repeaters. For some reason, sometimes there’s that glitch in the system, and instead of restarting at the beginning of a cycle when we die, with our memories wiped clean, we’re thrown back into a time and place in the life we’re already living.”
When we die.
His words were jumbled and cluttered in her mind, their meaning ambiguous, as she
tried to comprehend the only three she could remember: when we die. The storage unit flashed through her memory like a grainy slide show projected on the wall. The metal door with the painted numbers, the faint light of the hallway, the slick surface of the concrete floor. With a shake of her head, they scattered out of view.
“But I didn’t die,” she whispered, listening to the legs of the doctor’s chair scrape across the tiled floor as he closed the gap between them.
“What do you mean?”
Will’s blood-smeared face stared back at her with the same pleading eyes Beth had worn in a nightmare that was worlds away, forcing her into a place she refused to go. “I mean I didn’t die,” she said, and while she knew something terrible lay just beyond her memory’s reach, she also knew that, somewhere in time, she was still with her family. She could feel it.
“I knew it.” Dr. Johnstone slammed his hand on the tabletop with such force that it drew the attention of the few scattered diners throughout the cafeteria. “I knew it when I met you, Maria. This is so exciting.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means you’re still alive out there somewhere,” he said. “It means we can get you back home.”
It was a tempered excitement that coursed through her body, a yearning so deep she refused to acknowledge it for fear it would evaporate before her like a mirage. “You can really get me home?”
“I’ve done it before,” he said. “I’ve only met one other repeater who didn’t die before coming back, and, as far as I know, we got him home.”
“How did you do it?”
“Hypnosis,” he said. “The idea is that, if we can get you to a state where you’re present in both realms, you can somehow choose which one to enter. The research I’ve done on this is quite fascinating. I think pretty soon I’ll be able to prove that hypnosis is the key to unlocking areas of the brain and memories that are trapped in there. And I don’t just mean from this life cycle. I think we might be able to unlock memories from past cycles, too. I can show you the MRIs I did after each hypnosis treatment with the last patient, and you’ll see the transformation in the brain as we got him closer to his family.”
“But how can I be alive in two different worlds?”
“Time isn’t linear, Maria.” He gathered the salt and pepper shakers, righting the ones that had been flipped and setting them up around the plate again. “And our life cycles aren’t, either. They’re constantly overlapping each other and crossing at various points. And there’s no way for me to know for sure, but I imagine the way time moves is different in each cycle as well. For example, you’ve been here for a couple of weeks now.” He started to spin one of the salt shakers in a slow circle around its own axis. “But who knows how long it’s been since you left your last life? It could be hours or days or even years.” The pepper shaker next to it was spinning at twice the speed before he finally let it fall to the table and come to rest. “Time is elusive.”
She didn’t need any more explanations, and she had no intention of trying to interpret the meaning of his words, for fear her family would move on without her. Would they do that? If months turned into years, would they eventually give up on her? She had to get home. She had a singular focus to get back to her family, a road to take her there, and nothing was going to stand in her way.
“I’ll do it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
HER SHOULDERS BURNED AS SHE HELD her arms straight out before her and trained her eyes on Dr. Johnstone’s finger floating between them. Her parents had given their consent, just like Maria knew they would, and she had pleaded with Dr. Johnstone to get started immediately. He tried to warn her that their first session wouldn’t be their last, that he first needed to determine if she was even hypnotizable, but she couldn’t hear reason. She was convinced she would be home by nightfall, even though she couldn’t provide him with the kind of memory he needed to take her there.
Give me a day you would love to repeat with your family, he’d said, and Maria had nothing but the dream on the beach to offer him. It was a regrettable admission, an eye-opening moment when she thought of all the missed opportunities to make memories with her family. She wouldn’t let it happen again. If he could send her home, she would be a better wife and a better mother. A better person.
“Block out everything but the sound of my voice,” he said, as they began the session. “And keep your eyes on my finger.”
Despite forbidding her mind to overthink it, Maria was convinced she would be unhypnotizable. She wanted so desperately for it to work that she was certain it wouldn’t, that she would somehow sabotage it.
“Your arms are light and airy, like feathers on a breeze, drifting into the sky.” As his voice reached her, the tension in her shoulders dissolved and her hands drifted above her head. “When I move my finger away, you will continue to stare at the same spot between your hands. Focus only on that spot.”
Her eyes didn’t falter, they didn’t blink or twitch or waver, but the air could not hold her attention. She couldn’t help but see the window on the far wall in front of her, which led to a world she was desperate to leave. She forced her posture straight and pressed her back into the stiff cushion of her hospital room chair, fighting to see the air bouncing between her two outstretched arms. A searing pain bit through her wrist as he turned her hands so her palms were facing each other. She tried to force it away, but the ache was deep and tangible, and the more she fought to feel nothing but the air between her arms, the more intense the pain grew.
“Shut your eyes, Maria, and allow the pull between your hands to take over. Your arms are being forced together by your palms, as if each is a magnet. Soon they will come together and meet in the middle.”
The heaviness set in again, her arms weighted down with fatigue, but it wasn’t the pain that pulled at them now; it was a steady, ensnaring tug that forced them together, like a rubber band constricting around her wrists.
“The closer together they get, the stronger the pull. They’re very close now, Maria. In fact, even if you tried to separate them, it would be impossible, because the attraction is too strong.” The force was overwhelming, and the instinctive tug she gave against it did nothing but enforce the pull.
“They’re getting closer now, Maria. And soon, when they touch, your whole body will go limp and you will hear only the sound of my voice. You will experience nothing—no sounds, no sights, no smells—unless my voice gives you permission. Your hands are even closer now … and now … they touch.”
She could no longer feel her back against the chair, she couldn’t hear the birds singing outside the window, and she couldn’t smell the scent of Dr. Johnstone’s aftershave. All the senses she didn’t even know were a part of her were gone, and the world in her head was vast and barren.
“I want you to meet your family at the beach. That beautiful dream you told me about with your husband and your daughters. The sun is shining, you can smell the salt in the air, and the wind is caressing your skin. I give you permission to experience all of that. Watch your children as long as you’d like. Feel the waves between your toes.”
The sun beat down on her face as the waves lapped over her feet, forcing her toes to curl under the icy water. She didn’t remember it being so cold in her dream. Was this how it happened?
“Enjoy your family, Maria. Build sand castles with your daughters, throw a Frisbee with your husband, just soak it all up and experience them.”
She kneeled beside her daughters, absorbed in their giggles, while she tried to burn every image into her memory. Her hands ran over her swollen belly and her mind fought to suppress logic, but her movements were too effortless, and she was certain this wasn’t how it would happen.
“Good, Maria. I can see you’re having a wonderful time with your family, but the sun is setting now, and soon it will be time to go.”
The wind forced its way through her, and as the clouds rolled in around her, the sky darkened. She searched the beach for her
daughters and her husband, but they were gone. The waves, the surf, the sun, they were all gone. And when the darkness closed in on her, nearly suffocating her, she stood frozen with terror.
There was something in her hand, something she hadn’t realized was there. It was cold and hard, and as her fingers ran over its jagged edges, its identity was unmistakable. 307. The white block numbers painted on the metal door in front of her jumped out from the darkness, and the lock that sealed it in place was waiting to be paired with the key in her hand. It was the key that Detective Andrews had wanted. Had he already been here?
Maria fumbled with the lock. She would just take a quick peek—
Whack!
A thunderous clap split through her ears, sending a vibration through her jaw.
Whack!
A blinding flash of light threw her off balance.
Whack!
A distant voice was calling for her. “… Maria.”
Whack!
“When I clap my hands, you will awaken.”
Whack!
Dr. Johnstone hovered above her, his face tense with worry as he clapped like a madman.
Whack!
“Maria, wake up!”
Sweat dripped from her forehead as she leaped from the chair, her heart pounding against her chest. “Stop!” she yelled, her head ringing from the echoes of his deafening claps. “Stop clapping.”
“I couldn’t get you out,” he said, his eyes darting back and forth from Maria to the door. “You weren’t listening to my voice anymore, and I didn’t know where you were.”
“It was the storage unit,” she said, her pulse normalizing as the moisture from her shirt chilled the skin beneath. “I was there. I must have gone there before I came back.”
“What storage unit?” A hush settled over them, each watching the other, neither sure how to proceed.
“I have to go back,” she said, easing herself onto the chair, the familiar ache in her head throbbing to the same beat as the pain in her arm. “You have to take me back there, so I can see what’s in that unit.”
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