12. Some Truths
CHAPTER 12
Some Truths
F our hours of research had led me down increasingly unorthodox paths. My browser tabs now included University of Virginia studies on children with unusual memories, consciousness research from reputable institutions, and – though it pained my academic sensibilities – several papers on unexplained phenomena in medical literature.
“This is ridiculous,” I muttered, rubbing my eyes.
The rational part of my brain, the part that had gotten me through medical school and surgical residency, wanted to dismiss it all as pseudoscience. But my hands... my hands remembered things they shouldn't.
“You're here late.”
Sofia's voice made me jump. I quickly minimized my browser, but not before catching her concerned frown.
“Just catching up on some reading,” I said, gesturing vaguely at the neglected patient files.
She moved further into my office, closing the door behind her. “The board meeting's not until Thursday. Those reviews can wait.”
I started organizing papers randomly, needing something to do with my hands. “I know, I just wanted to... ”
“When's the last time you slept?” She settled into my visitor's chair with familiar grace. “Actually slept, not just dozed between surgeries?”
“I'm fine.”
“Mm-hmm.” Her tone carried twenty years of friendship and skepticism. “That's why you're hiding in your office at 9 PM, looking like you've seen a ghost.”
If only she knew how accurate that description felt. “Just... processing some things.”
Sofia studied me with the same careful attention she gave difficult cases. “This is about Rothschild's project, isn't it? The way Vale's been pushing back?”
“No,” I said too quickly. “Maybe. I don't know.” I turned back to my laptop, pulling up a safe article about hospital protocols. “It's complicated.”
“Isn't it always?” She stood, squeezing my shoulder gently. “Just... don't stay too late. Whatever you're researching can wait until you've had some real rest.”
After she left, I stared at my computer screen without really seeing it. My scientific mind rebelled against the possibilities I was considering, wanting hard data and repeatable results. But these memories, these inexplicable knowings, defied conventional research methods.
My fingers moved across the keyboard again, typing out new searches: “cellular memory in organ transplant recipients,” “genetic transfer of learned behaviors,” “consciousness studies in near-death experiences.” Each query led down new rabbit holes, each paper suggesting possibilities just beyond current scientific understanding.
A knock interrupted my research spiral. Through my office window, I could see the last of the day shift heading home, realized I'd lost hours to this search for rational answers. When I looked toward my door, my heart recognized the visitor before my mind could process it.
Alex stood in my doorway, not with the promised evidence from our earlier conversation, but with something else – an old leather journal, its pages worn with time. The sight of it sent recognition through my entire being, though I knew I'd never seen it before.
“Sometimes,” he said softly, “the answers we need aren't in medical journals.”
I looked from my laptop screen full of scientific studies to the journal in his hands, then down at my own fingers still poised over the keyboard. These hands that remembered ancient medicines, that knew treatments lost to time, that recognized truths my rational mind couldn't accept.
With a decisive click, I closed the laptop. “Show me,” I said, and Alex's smile held recognition of how much those two words cost a man of science.
He moved into my office with that fluid grace I remembered from other lifetimes, settling into the chair Sofia had vacated. The journal he placed on my desk seemed to hum with potential, with answers I both craved and feared.
“Your handwriting hasn't changed much,” he said, his voice gentle with memory. “Even after all this time.”
I started to protest that he couldn't possibly know my handwriting from centuries ago, but the words died as he opened the journal. The script that flowed across those aged pages matched the notes I'd been making all evening – the same precise slant, the same tendency to cross t's with slightly too much force.
“This is impossible,” I whispered, but my fingers reached for the journal without conscious thought.
“No more impossible than remembering ancient Greek medicine,” Alex replied.
Outside my office, the hospital settled into its quieter night rhythm. Monitors beeped and the nurses who made their rounds by the hour.
“Do you trust me?” he asked suddenly, his voice soft but intent.
The question should have been absurd. He was practically a stranger;. Every logical part of my mind screamed that I shouldn't trust him, that this whole situation was insane.
But my soul...
“Yes,” I heard myself say. “God help me, but I do.”
Alex stood, holding out his hand. “Then come with me. There's something you need to see.”
I stared at his offered hand, feeling the moment balance on a knife's edge. Behind me, my laptop screen still displayed medical studies and scientific papers. Before me, Alex waited with patience learned across centuries.
The choice felt bigger than just whether to leave my office – it was about which truth I was ready to accept.
“My car's downstairs,” he said quietly. “And I promise, this will make more sense than anything you'll find in those research papers.”
My hand lifted of its own accord, fitting into his like it had done a thousand times before. The contact sent recognition sparking through my entire being.
As we walked through the hospital corridors, Alex's hand warm and steady in mine, I realized I'd just crossed a threshold. Whatever came next would change everything.
And somehow, that didn't feel as frightening as it should.
Alex's car glided through empty streets, Manhattan sleeping around us. The leather seats probably cost more than my first car, but nothing about the luxury felt ostentatious. Like everything else about Alex, it simply was – comfortable, precise, chosen with care rather than flash.
I should feel uncomfortable, I realized distantly. Should question the madness of leaving my office in the middle of the night with a man who claimed to know me across centuries. Instead, I found myself studying his profile against passing streetlights, noting how the changing shadows caught the distinguished grey at his temples.
“In Florence,” I said suddenly, the words rising unbidden, “you used to watch me paint like this. From the shadows.” The memory surfaced like a bubble breaking, clear and perfect and impossible.
Alex's hands tightened slightly on the steering wheel, but his voice stayed gentle. “What else do you remember about Florence?”
I closed my eyes, letting the motion of the car rock me back through time. “Light through studio windows. The smell of oils and pigments. Your voice speaking Italian – not textbook Italian, but something older. Tuscan dialect, maybe.”
When I opened my eyes, I found Alex watching me in brief glances between traffic signals. The intensity in his gaze should have been unsettling. Instead, it felt familiar. Safe.
Michael had loved Florence too. We'd planned to visit for our tenth anniversary, had looked at villas and art tours and...
“It's okay,” Alex said softly, reading my tension. “All of it – the memories, the grief, the confusion. It's okay to feel everything at once.”
The car turned into the West Village, where historic architecture stood proud against modern development.
“Here,” Alex said, pulling into a private parking spot beneath an old converted warehouse.
He led me through a discrete entrance, up stairs that creaked with age.
“I've kept things,” Alex explained, his voice soft in the midnight quiet. He paused before a heavy wooden door, key sliding home with well-oiled precision. “Pieces of our lives. Proof, if you need it.”
The space beyond caught my breath in my throat. Part gallery, part archive, it held the kind of careful curation Michael had always admired in small museums. Paintings lined the walls – some ancient, some newer, all carrying an energy I recognized in my bones. Track lighting illuminated each piece precisely, creating pools of warmth in the midnight shadows.
My hands reached out without conscious thought, fingers hovering over a signature on the nearest canvas. My own name, written in Renaissance script I shouldn't know how to read.
“These are all...?” I couldn't finish the question, but Alex understood.
“Yours,” he confirmed gently. “From different times, different lives.” He moved through the space with familiar grace, illuminating pieces one by one. “Florence, 1487. Paris, 1924. Each time you're drawn to art, to healing, to creation.”
I drifted between paintings like a man in a dream. Here, a Greek temple against a sunset sky, oils still carrying the scent of memory. There, a jazz club in smoky colors, music almost audible in the brushstrokes. Every canvas felt like a window into another life – lives I shouldn't remember but somehow did.
“And you?” I asked, turning to find Alex watching me with that ancient tenderness. “What are you drawn to?”
“Finding you. Always finding you.”
The words should have felt overwhelming, dramatic, too much. Instead, they settled into my soul like puzzle pieces clicking home. But...
“Michael,” I whispered, my hand going to my ring. “I loved him. Love him still.”
“Of course you do.” Alex's voice held no jealousy, only understanding. “Love doesn't divide, Eli. It multiplies. What you had with Michael was real and true and precious. Nothing about these memories changes that.”
I stopped before a particular painting – a sunlit studio in Florence, afternoon light falling through tall windows. In the foreground, an easel held a half-finished canvas. But in the background, partially hidden in shadow, a figure watched the artist work with undisguised devotion.
“You never said anything,” I murmured, the memory surfacing like a photograph developing. “You'd just... be there. Watching.”
“You were so focused when you painted,” Alex said softly, coming to stand beside me. “So completely in your element. I didn't want to interrupt.”
The tenderness in his voice made my heart ache – not just with remembering, but with the realization that he looked at me the same way now. Had watched me work in the ER with that same quiet devotion.
“I don't know how to do this,” I admitted, gesturing at the gallery of impossible memories around us. “How to reconcile what I'm remembering with what I know. With who I am now.”
“You don't have to figure it all out tonight.” His smile held centuries of patience. “The memories will come as they're meant to. The understanding too.”
“How can this be real?” I whispered, but the question held less skepticism than before. “How can all of this be real?”
“Some things are beyond scientific explanation,” Alex replied, moving to stand beside me again. Not touching, but close enough that I could feel his warmth. “Some truths have to be felt rather than proven.”
My wedding ring caught the gallery lights, and I twisted it absently. “Michael and I were happy,” I said softly. “Really, truly happy.”
“Yes,” Alex agreed simply. “You were. Are. That happiness is part of who you are, part of what made you ready to remember everything else.”
My logical mind still rebelled against what my soul had already accepted – the paintings that carried my signature through different eras, the journals filled with my handwriting in languages I shouldn't know, photographs that captured impossible moments across time.
“Why do you remember and I don't?” I asked finally, voicing the question that had been building all night. “Why are your memories clear when mine come in fragments? ”
Alex's expression shifted to something careful, almost guarded. The change was subtle, but after hours of studying his face by gallery lights, I caught it instantly.
“That's part of what happened,” he said softly. “Part of the pattern we need to break.”
His hand hovered near mine on the edge of a display case, not quite touching but close enough that I could feel the warmth of him. The space between our fingers felt charged with possibility and hesitation, like the moment before lightning strikes.
Outside, Manhattan was waking up. Traffic sounds drifted up from the streets below, delivery trucks making their morning rounds, the city returning to its normal rhythms. Reality pressing in around our bubble of midnight revelations.
Alex stepped back smoothly, understanding in his eyes.
“You have questions,” he said, his voice gentle. “Many more than we can answer now. But the memories will come. They always do.”
I looked down at my hands, noting with distant surprise that they were steady despite everything we'd discovered tonight. These surgeon's hands that remembered ancient medicines, artist's hands that had created beauty across lifetimes.
“The battle,” I started again, needing to understand that one crucial memory that had started all this.
But Alex was already shaking his head. “Not yet. Some truths need time.”
Morning light strengthened, breaking the spell of our night among memories. I needed to get home, shower, become Dr. Monroe again before my morning rounds. But as I turned to leave, Alex caught my wrist.
The touch sent recognition sparking through my entire being – not just physical attraction, but soul-deep knowing. His fingers were warm against my pulse point, the contact both foreign and achingly familiar.
“Take care of yourself,” he said softly, urgency threading through his voice .
I nodded, but hesitated at the door. “Will you tell me the rest? Eventually?”
His smile held both promise and warning. “When you're ready. When remembering won't break you.”
The city embraced me as I stepped out into early morning light – car horns and coffee carts, delivery trucks and early commuters, all the familiar rhythms of my current life.
The sun caught my wedding ring, and for once the sight didn't bring only pain. Michael's love was still there, still real and precious. But now it felt like part of a larger pattern, a thread in a tapestry I was only beginning to understand.
At the corner, I paused to look back at the old warehouse. Alex still stood at the window, his figure barely visible in the strengthening dawn.
This time would be different. I didn't know how I knew that, but the certainty settled in my bones like truth.
For now, I had patients to heal, a department to run, a life to live in this particular present. But as I turned toward the hospital, my hands remembered everything they'd ever been – surgeon, artist, healer, lover – and for the first time since Michael's death, the future felt full of possibility rather than just survival.
Even if that possibility came wrapped in impossible memories and ancient warnings.
Even if understanding might break me before it healed me.