Chapter 6 #2
I listened as Severine told me about her two girls, about her husband, about her job and her house.
She filled me in on her life, and I let myself fall into her voice and her story.
When she was done, I didn’t tell her what was happening.
It didn’t feel right. And when she asked if I would call her again, text sometimes, I only promised to try.
“Take care, Scotty.”
“Bye, Sev. And thank you. Thank you for being you.”
She gave a throaty, bemused laugh. “Well, you’re welcome. My pleasure, you know. Being me.”
We hung up, and I stood there a little while longer, listening to the sounds of Madison around me. Then, tucking my head down against the wind, I headed back toward the parking garage.
I was waiting in the living room when Lyle got home.
I watched out the picture window as he clambered off the bus, his legs small enough that he took each step carefully, placing both feet down before tackling the next one.
He straightened his glasses as the bus rolled away and looked up.
I knew he probably couldn’t see inside, not past the reflections on the big window, but I thought I saw him smile.
I met him at the door.
“Dad,” he said, now grinning.
“Ah, bud.” I huffed as I picked him up, backpack and all. “How are you?”
“I knew you’d be back today.”
I kicked the door shut behind me. “I promised I’d come back, didn’t I?”
He gave his solemn nod, his eyes large and searching. “Does it hurt?”
“Does what hurt?”
“Time travel.”
“No, it doesn’t hurt, bud. Not a bit. I barely feel anything at all.”
He straightened his glasses. I’d knocked them askew when I’d picked him up. “Wikipedia said it could hurt. At least in stories. Some of the stories say it does. Like The Terminator.”
“Well, it doesn’t hurt. Don’t trust everything you read on the Internet. And you’re too young to watch The Terminator.”
I carried him toward the kitchen. Amy had arrived earlier and was chopping vegetables.
She waved the knife at me in an I-told-you-so sort of way, though the edges of her eyes still had the puffiness from earlier, and her smile wasn’t as bright as it might have been.
Lyle kept talking, his mouth near my ear, unusually excited.
“There are a lot of different ideas about time travel, did you know that, Dad?”
“Like what, bud?”
“Wormholes, for one. And time di—dila—dilation. I thought that one was especially…”
“Interesting? Relevant?”
“Yeah, because that one only travels forward in time. Like you.” He pushed back enough so I could see his face. “Unless you’re traveling backwards, too?”
I laughed and shook my head. “No, just forward, as far as I know.”
I set Lyle on one of the kitchen stools. He shrugged out of his backpack. “Dad? Did you know that if it keeps doubling, the fifteenth time it happens you’ll go almost forty-five years into the future?”
I stopped. Across the kitchen I felt, rather than saw, Amy freeze. A silence fell, heavy and tense, and my throat seized as if I was being choked. I breathed out, hard. “No, bud, I didn’t know that.”
Lyle looked toward his mom, then back to me, and his lips pressed together. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, kiddo.” I ruffled his hair. “No harm in doing the math. I’m proud of you for figuring it out.”
He straightened his glasses again and gazed up at me. “Dad?”
“Yeah, bud?”
“What’s for dinner?”
I glanced over at Amy, and we both started laughing. Lyle joined in after a moment, and I bathed in the sound, ignoring the desperation I heard in Amy’s laugh, and in my own.
Maggie had two doctors with her in the lab the next morning. Dr. Michael Brantford and Dr. Elaine Nguyen from the UW Hospital, both specialists in neurology.
“We need more expertise,” Maggie said.
The chair was set up near the far wall of the lab again. The building was quiet. Adam and Juliette, the two grad students, stood behind Maggie. The two doctors, both wearing khakis and white, neatly pressed shirts, regarded me skeptically.
“Have you told them what happens?” I asked.
“I told them enough.”
Brantford’s head snapped around. He was in his late middle age, with graying hair around his temples, but he had the paper-thin skin and build of a marathon runner. “‘Enough,’ Maggie?”
“Enough to get you here.”
“When does this whatever-it-is happen?” Nguyen asked. She looked closer to me in age than Brantford did.
“Seven fifty-two,” Maggie said. Her eyes went to one of the old analog clocks on the wall nearby. “So, we don’t have a lot of time. Scott, if you would?”
I followed her to the chair. I sat as five pairs of eyes watched my every movement. “Are we trying the pads again?”
“Yes,” Juliette said. “I’ll get started.”
Nguyen sighed and stepped forward. “How about I handle hooking him up? We might as well do things right if we’re going to do them at all.”
Maggie nodded, and Juliette backed away, managing to not look affronted.
Nguyen applied the patches with clinical precision as the others clustered around the computers and started the recorders. During the entire process, the doctor never once looked me in the eye, nor did she say a single word. I wanted her to be done.
The headache started up again, pulsing behind my eyes. It was accompanying every one of my transits, I realized. Like a warning beacon. My own little canary in the coal mine. It would have been nice if it could’ve been something less painful. Like a leg twitch.
Of course, it would have been nice not to be skipping forward through time against my will.
Nguyen stepped back. “Sensors are in place.”
“Great,” Maggie said. She looked up at the clock, then back at me. “Elaine, um … you should probably stand back.”
Nguyen made an exasperated sound but backed up a pace.
I looked over at Maggie.
“I hope you get…”
The world slipped, then righted itself.
“… something.” I finished the sentence before I took in the changes in the lab. I blinked and sat up as I tried to get my bearings. The lab was empty and quiet, the doors shut. There was only one other person in the room. Maggie.
“Scott,” she said, her voice stricken, her face pale and drawn. “Scott, I’m so sorry.”
Panic shot through me, a hard electrical jolt, and I pivoted my legs around on the chair and stood, stumbling in my haste. “What is it? Did something happen to Lyle? To Amy?”
“I—they’re okay, Scott. Your family’s okay.
” She held her hands up, placating. It reminded me of the time Lyle’s school had called me during work.
The first thing the assistant principal had said was that Lyle was okay.
Only then did she go on to tell me another kid had knocked Lyle down on the playground and stepped on his glasses.
But something had happened. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have called.
“Maggie.” I tried to tamp down on my heart as it pounded in my chest. “What’s going on?”
Maggie took a breath, gathering herself. She gestured. “Come on. I’ll explain. But we have to go.”
“Go?”
“Please, Scott. Trust me. I’ll explain as we go.”
I searched her face. She looked haggard.
Drawn. The crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes stood out.
Lyle and I had once watched a man sculpt a face out of clay at the Saturday farmer’s market at the capitol.
The craftsman had dug deep furrows into the clay around the face’s eyes, etching with a tool like a scalpel.
That’s how Maggie’s lines looked now. Etched. “Okay.”
Maggie led me to the door. She opened it and then hesitated, sticking her head out to look up and down the hallways.
When she glanced back, she saw my look and grimaced.
“Come on.” She hurried into the narrow corridor, toward a side door.
We weren’t heading for the stairs. It was a different route than the one I had grown accustomed to taking.
“Maggie—”
She looked back but pushed onward, toward the door, not slowing. “The news found out. There’re reporters outside the main entrance to Chamberlin. I called campus security and they’re holding them off, but you can’t go that way.”
“What? Reporters? How—”
“Michael.”
We reached the door. Maggie took out a key and unlocked it.
She opened it a crack, peered through, and then pulled it fully open.
She ushered me into what turned out to be another even narrower and more poorly lit corridor and closed the door behind me.
Old tumblers rattled as she put her key into the lock and twisted.
She checked that the knob wouldn’t move and then, pocketing the key, turned.
“Michael?” I asked.
“Michael Brantford, my physician friend.” She coughed and shook her head. “Physician acquaintance. Physician asshole. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t use strong language or resort to name-calling, but … my goodness gracious, he is such an asshole.”
“Maggie, you’re freaking me out.”
“I know. I know. I’m sorry. Please, just—come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
She sighed and rubbed at her temples. “A side exit. Tucked away. This building, Chamberlin, it was constructed in the early 1900s. They renovated in the early 2000s, but it’s still basically an old building. There are rooms and exits here and there that almost nobody uses or even remembers.”
“All right.” I was swirling. Trying to grab on to something solid. I followed her as she hurried down the hall, moving fast for a woman of her age. “What happened, Maggie?”
She spoke over her shoulder. “When you disappeared, just like I said you would, Michael didn’t even believe his own eyes.
He thought we were all pulling some kind of stunt.
So, Adam and Juliette and I showed him the high-speed camera footage.
And he and Elaine looked at the readings from all the sensors we put on you and saw how they just ended, or flatlined, with no prior indication. ”
“And?”