The
gap between the crowd’s sadness and anger and my own feelings of confusion and endless possibility makes me edgy. Because I have three hours between the end of my Expo shift and the seven o’clock start at Greasy Ryan’s, I head back to the apartment, hoping to catch up with Freya, who has the night off.
Despite the weird atmosphere at Expo
, I’ve gotten through half the day on a single cigarette and I’m fighting the idea of smoking a second when the phone rings.
“Hello,” the female voice says. “Is this Robert Clark?” No one calls me Robert. To everyone
aside from Freya I’m always ‘Rob’ or ‘Robbie,’ but I tell the voice yes. “Holly Allen’s suffered a concussion and we’re currently examining her at Vancouver General Hospital,” the voice explains in a perfunctory tone.
My brain stutters over the information. At first hearing some stranger say
‘Holly’ tricks me into thinking she must have called the wrong phone number and be talking about someone else.
But I’m Robert Clark
, just like she said, and Freya’s Holly Allen.
The
Holly Allen who is lying injured in a hospital bed.
“A concussion?”
I repeat breathlessly. “What happened? Is she okay?”
“She took a fall and lost consciousness
briefly,” the woman explains. “But she’s awake now. I’m not yet sure whether they plan to release her tonight or keep her overnight for observation.”
“I’ll be right there,” I tell
her.
Head pounding, I tear into the elevator with my bike, fly up Main Street
, and shoot along West Twelfth Avenue. This is one of the times I wish we still had the money-pit car old Freya bought us
—a
thought that flings my mind back to the moment old Freya was murdered. It was both a miracle and a nightmare, and almost as incredible to me now as the day it happened. That older version of Freya coming to help us because I’d
died
. I would’ve done the same thing if I’d lost Freya that day, thrown myself back into the chute another seventy-eight years so I could try to rescue a newer Freya and Garren. But I didn’t have to. Freya was the one left to face another journey through time, and then decades of waiting for the right moment to save me, giving us both another chance.
The memory
deepens my anxiety. Timelines tangle in my brain, fraying, unknotting, and snapping before slithering back together.
Freya
has to be okay.
It’s a primal, paranoid fear
. Losing her. There’s every reason to think this Freya
—my Freya—
will be fine. Otherwise the woman at the hospital wouldn’t have said they’d release her tonight or tomorrow.
W
ithin fifteen minutes I’m tearing into the E.R. and giving them Holly’s name. It’s another thirty-five minutes of staring anxiously at my hands and feeling sweat gather around my hairline until they call for me. A male nurse takes me in to see her, and Freya smiles tiredly up at me. “I’m okay,” she says. “Just stuck with a headache.”
I rub her arm,
so relieved to see her in one piece that I exhale like someone blowing out a match. “What happened? My mind was running wild.”
“Didn’t they tell you I was all right?”
Freya’s forehead crinkles in sympathy.
“They did.” I shrug,
suddenly feeling ridiculous.
The nurse hands me an information packet. “Sorry to interrupt. She can explain when you get home, but there are some things I need you to look out for. We can’t release her unless there’s someone to watch over her for the next twenty-four hours.”
“I’ll do that,” I say quickly.
“
Good,” he says. “You need to keep an eye on her. If her speech becomes slurred or if she gets confused or the headache worsens, or there are any other strange symptoms, bring her back right away. She should be woken up every two hours during the night so that you can check that her condition hasn’t changed. And her family doctor should check her out again in a day or two.”
“When can I go back to work?” Freya asks
, her fingers bunching up in her lap.
“Not until you see your regular doctor and he tells you
it’s okay. For the next few days we don’t want you doing anything except taking it easy, all right, honey?” Freya nods obediently and we both listen to the nurse explain that it could be a week or two before she’s back to her old self.
But at least s
he can come home with me now, and Freya and I slowly make our way out of the hospital together. I hail a passing cab, thinking that I’ll have to come back for my bike tomorrow night when it’s safe to let Freya out of my sight again. In the backseat of the taxi, she begins to tell me about the accident. “I was almost home when I saw an old man running after his dog on the sidewalk, shouting after it. I was closer than he was and I thought I could catch up with the dog. But the thing was so strong—it looked like some kind of Rottweiler mix, all muscle—that even when I’d hooked my fingers around its collar, I couldn’t make it stop. It kept yanking me along. We were coming up to the corner and I slammed right into a person who’d just rounded it from the opposite direction. I fell over and conked my head on the sidewalk.”
I wince.
“That must’ve hurt like hell.”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember my head hitting.
Just the stuff that happened before. And when I woke up there were a bunch of people leaning over me and I heard the ambulance siren. One of the women told me I’d been knocked unconscious and said not to get up. It was weird; it felt more like a dream than real life. The doctor says I could be foggy for a little bit. Light-headed and dizzy, that kind of thing.” Freya squints like the sun glinting through the car window is burning her retinas. “Mostly it’s the headache that’s bugging me, though.”
I remember the nurse saying
Freya could have a pain killer, and when we get back to the apartment and she’s settled herself on the couch, I bring her two aspirin. Then I call Greasy Ryan’s and talk to my boss about needing tonight and tomorrow off. He’s not happy about it but grudgingly says he’ll call around to find someone to pick up my shifts. Luckily Freya’s bosses at the restaurant are more understanding and tell her not to even think about coming back until Friday.
Freya and I spend the next twenty-four hours living in slow
motion, me bringing her fluids and food and periodically quizzing her about how she feels. A couple of times, while she’s sleeping, I sneak out to the balcony for a smoke. The rest of the time we’re camped out in front of the TV watching a weird combination of music videos, American political news coverage, and soap operas. Freya isn’t used to being under the weather—in the future no one really gets sick anymore and injuries heal fast—and after the first night she starts pushing herself harder than she should, listening to the Spanish tapes and rearranging stuff in the hall closet.
When I lecture her about needing to rest, she says we’ve both been so busy for so long that she doesn’t know how to take it easy anymore. “I get that,” I tell her. “But your brain needs a break.”
“Like your lungs,” she counters. “So how about this? If you stop trying to ration that last pack to make it last forever and quit right now, I’ll go sit down again.”
I root my hands to my hips and resist the urge to roll my eyes. “What’s the point of that? I told you I was quitting anyway. Just this final pack and that’s it.”
“I know.” Freya’s gaze is so level you could stack a set of encyclopaedias
on it. “I just want to make sure.”
Sometimes a person wanting the best for you doesn’t feel the way it should. If I want to taper off cigarettes rather than quit cold turkey, I shouldn’t need anyone else’
s approval to do it, even hers.
“I’m nineteen, you know. It’s not like I’m going to
get hit with lung cancer next year, Freya.” So maybe the package on the coffee table won’t be my final one, so what? The thought feels like a stupid little rebellion even as it’s sprinting through my head.
“I don’t want to be having this conversation with you for the next twenty years,” she says. “You were supposed to quit months ago.”
It’s true. I started talking about quitting in February. But I’m not going to let Freya pressure me into doing it today just because I wish she’d go lie down. “And you’ve left this place a mess a thousand times,” I tell her. “So I don’t see you changing in a hurry either. On any other day your dirty dishes would probably be clogging up the sink right now, but as soon as you’re supposed to rest, you can’t leave the closet alone. You’re just using me as an excuse.”
It’s not the worst fight we’ve ever had, not even technically a fight, but not a conversation I want to continue either. “I have to go get my bike at the hospital,” I grumble. It’s been exactly twenty-five hours and five minutes since I met Freya there. She doesn’t need watching anymore and anyway, she won’t listen to me about taking it easy.
Freya’s nostrils flare as she looks away. I lurch towards the coffee table to scoop up my cigarettes and say, “Just try not to hit your head again, all right?”
She smiles like I’m being an idiot. “Don’t get lung cancer on the way to the hospital,” she
quips, her eyes flashing with mischief.
I can’t help it; a tight grin cascades across my face and next thing you know we’re both chuckling at ourselves. Give us another couple of years and maybe we’ll be smart enough to skip the majority of our arguments and zip straight to seeing the funny side of things.
I bend down by Freya’s spot in front of the hall closet and kiss the crown of her head. “Back soon,” I tell her.
Outside the air feels cool but dry. Here and now there’s no such thing as an all-clear day and, with a few exceptions, no reason to fear what the weather will bring.
I walk idly in the direction of the hospital, not in any hurry to arrive, my right hand digging into my pocket for a cigarette that I don’t
want
to want. I have it lit for roughly six seconds before I toss it to the ground and crush the ember under my shoe, fighting myself now. Impulsively, I yank the entire package free, scrunch it in my hand, and toss it into the nearest garbage where it falls on top of an oily napkin and a can of Tab.
I want to pick the cigarettes up and shove them back into my pocket so badly I can taste it.
Ash and desperation. I fight that too. If I can survive the trip seventy-eight years back in time, recover my memory despite the scientists’ wipe, and successfully evade the director and his men, breaking a ten-month-old habit should be no sweat.
Once I reach my bike and climb on, the ride distracts me from the craving a little
, but I resolve not to tell Freya that I tossed the cigarettes yet. I need to quit for myself first. If I make it through the next couple of days without a smoke, I can share the news with her.
Inside our building I squish into the elevator with my bike. The enclosed space smells like meaty pizza and my stomach begins to rumble. Thirty seconds later I’m sliding my key into our door. I was sure I locked it when I left
, but it’s open. I turn the knob and wheel my bike into the hallway.
The apartment entranceway reeks of pizza too
, so maybe Freya ordered from Domino’s. I hope so. We ate a couple of hours ago but I’m already hungry again.
I lean my bike against the wall and venture into the living room, expecting to find Freya on the couch with a fat slice of pepperoni and sausage pizza in her hands. Instead
, I almost trip over the overturned chair that’s been pulled away from our dining table. Did she fall again? I shouldn’t have left her. I should’ve waited until she’d gone to the doctor and been given a thumbs-up.
No. It’s not that. It’s worse
.
My gaze leaps around the living room, landing first on the coffee table. The magazines, cactus, and other plants it was littered with when I left are scattered across the floor as though someone swept the table clean with a stroke of their arm. The lamp shade’s crooked too. The record player hangs open and the handful of vinyl albums I own have been emptied onto the ground, their hollowed-out sleeves lying haphazardly among them.
I run into the kitchen and step into the middle of an identical scene, all the cupboards ajar, the handful of towels we normally keep in the bottom drawer lying scattered along the counter with the stove manual and record player warranty. We
bought the record player second-hand, but the old hippie who sold it to us still had the warranty. I don’t know why we kept the paperwork. Nothing we have is worth much.
Now I’m running.
Into the bathroom and then the bedroom. Searching for Freya and making a silent wish that this is only a robbery.
The pair of ten-dollar bills that was on top of our bedroom dresser earlier today is gone. Someone has rifled through everything we own, torn our clothes off the closet hangers, and tossed our underwear, socks, and shirts onto the floor so I have to wade through them to reach the other side of the bed and peer into the nightstand. We never had anything important in it—just a stack of bills and receipts. On top of the nightstand there’s a photo of a blond boy in a small oval frame, a model from a department store ad who Freya thought looked like her brother when he was younger. Of everyone from home, he’s the one she misses most.