Come Down In Time (A Time Travel Romance) (12 page)

“
What’s his oxygen level?”
Jamie asked the nurse.

“
It’s 98 percent,” she
said.

“
What about his vitals?”
Jamie asked.

“
His temp is 98.9, his blood
pressure is 140 over 90. We’ll be doing some ABG work soon.” The
nurse had responded to Jamie without question.

“
Please let me know what the
ABGs are,” she said to the nurse. The nurse nodded and walked out
of the room.

Tommy was staring at her. But
Grandpa spoke up then.

“
Jamie, words really aren’t
enough, but thank you for saving my life,” he said.

She walked to Grandpa’s bed and
leaned down to kiss him on his cheek. “I’m just glad you’re
still with us,” she said, sniffing a little as tears threatened to
fall. “I’m so grateful for that.”

Grandpa held onto Jamie’s hand.
She looked at Granny, who was sitting in the vinyl-covered chair that
she was going to sleep in that night, if she had her way. “Granny,
I know you’re going to stay with Grandpa all night. I’ll stay
here with you.”

She looked at Tommy and he gave
her a grateful smile. “Tommy, you should probably go home to take
care of things there.”

“
Oh, I think I may’ve left
the stove on,” Granny said frantically. “I’ve probably burned
the house down.”

“
I got it before we left,
Granny,” Tommy said. He hugged his grandfather as best he could
with all the tubes around him, then hugged his grandmother. “I’ll
see y’all first thing in the morning,” he said. Jamie followed
him out the door.

“
I don’t really understand
how you know all this medical stuff,” Tommy said. “But I’m glad
you do.” He hugged her and kissed her.

“
Call me if anything at all
happens,” he said. “I’ll miss you tonight, sugar.”

She watched Tommy walk down the
long corridor, then went back in the room.

“
I’m glad you’re staying,”
Granny said. “I feel so much better with you here.”

Grandpa had fallen asleep, which
was the best thing for him right then.

“
I’m going to get us some
food, Granny. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Jamie walked down the long,
well-lit corridor to the elevators. She went down to the ground floor
and followed the signs to an all-night eatery. They mostly had
hamburgers and French fries and ham and cheese sandwiches. She got a
cheeseburger with fries, a ham sandwich, and two cups of sweetened
iced tea. She carried it all back to the room.

“
I wasn’t sure what you
wanted, so I got a cheeseburger and a ham sandwich. You pick,” she
said to Granny as she pulled the food out of the bag. She handed a
plastic cup of tea to Granny, who accepted it and picked up the ham
and cheese.

“
I sure wish we were all at
home eating that roast I was making,” she said.

“
Me too, Granny,” Jamie said.

They talked quietly as they ate
and afterwards. Jamie could tell Granny was exhausted so she helped
her push the chair back into the bed it was supposed to make. She got
a blanket out of the closet and covered Granny.

“
Honey, how are you going to
sleep?”

“
I’m going to ask the nurse
if they can bring a cot in here,” she said. When she worked in
hospitals, they had often been able to provide a cot. When the nurse
came in a little later to check on Grandpa, she asked her about it.

“
I’ll see what I can find,”
she said.

“
Could I look at his chart?”
she asked the nurse as she was walking out. The nurse handed it to
her and Jamie studied the numbers. Everything was looking pretty good
for a man who had suffered cardiac arrest a few hours before.

An attendant brought a small cot
and another blanket in a few minutes later and Jamie set it up as
close to Grandpa’s bed as she could. She lay down wearily. She was
too tired to talk, but she wanted to text Tommy. Then she remembered
that people weren’t really texting yet, weren’t even using the
word. She closed her eyes and didn’t wake up until the next morning
when the sun shone through the blinds.

She used the restroom and
splashed water on her face. When she emerged from the bathroom,
Granny was sitting up. She went straight to the restroom after Jamie
walked out. Grandpa was starting to stir.

“
Hey, Grandpa,” she said.
“How are you feeling today?”

“
Hey, Jamie girl,” he said
smiling. “It’s good to be alive.”

Tommy walked in carrying a bag of
sausage biscuits and three Styrofoam cups of coffee. Luckily, an
attendant followed him in the door with Grandpa’s breakfast tray.
He took the top off the plate and stared at it. He sighed.

“
Guess I’ll have to get used
to eating oatmeal,” he said. “But y’all enjoy your biscuits.
They sure do smell good.”

As she had with her father when
he had his heart attack, Jamie reassured Grandpa that he would get to
eat good food again, with some minor changes.

“
I’m not complaining,” he
said. “Because I’m alive and looking at your pretty face.”

As they were finishing their
biscuits, a middle-aged man strode through the door. He had an air of
authority, so Jamie knew he was the doctor.

“
I’m Dr. Stallings,” he
said shaking Grandpa’s hand, then Granny’s, Tommy’s, and
Jamie’s. He looked over Grandpa’s chart, looked at the cardiac
monitor, and checked his heart with his stethoscope. With a pang,
Jamie remembered her own stethoscope that was so much a part of her
everyday life—every doctor’s everyday life. Her stethoscope was
somewhere in the year 2013. She missed it.

“
Mr. Lewis, you’re in
remarkable shape for someone who suffered a heart attack,” Dr.
Stallings said.

“
That’s the girl who saved my
life,” he said, pointing at Jamie. Dr. Stallings looked at Jamie.

“
I heard about that,” he
said. “You’re to be commended, Mrs. Grisham.” It felt weird for
someone to call her that, even if it was her name. “I heard you
pumped his heart like a pro.”

Jamie blushed. She had only done
what came naturally to her as a doctor, but everyone else thought she
was a saint, because to them, she wasn’t a doctor. “I saw it on
TV,” she said.

When Dr. Stallings left, Jamie
followed him out the door. “Dr. Stallings,” she called to his
retreating figure. He turned and she walked up to him. “Can you
tell me what the percentage of damage is to his heart, if any?” she
asked.

“
I think you’re too young to
be a nurse or a doctor, but you seem to know things anyway,” he
said.

“
I want to be a doctor,” she
said. “I’ve done a lot of reading.”

“
Mr. Lewis suffered very little
damage to his heart, even though he had an arrest. That’s due to
you, Mrs. Grisham. Few victims have someone knowledgeable who can
step in as soon as the arrest happens.”

“
I’m glad he was in the
kitchen instead of out in the fields,” she said. “Are you
recommending the usual protocol with meds and diet?” she asked.

Dr. Stallings looked at her hard
then. “Are you sure you’re not a doctor?” he said. Then he
laughed.

“
Yes, Dr. Grisham,” he joked.
“The usual protocol. I’m guessing I don’t need to explain to
you what the usual protocol is because I’ve got a feeling you
already know.”

She smiled at the doctor. “Yes,”
she said. “I do.”

“
I hope we see you working at
our hospital one day,” he said. “Have a nice day, Dr. Grisham.”

Chapter
Nine

Grandpa returned home after three
days in the hospital with a new lease on life. He turned over the
major running of the farm to Tommy. “Make it organic, son,” he
said. “It’s all but yours now.” But Grandpa didn’t give up
working completely. He still rode the tractor occasionally, he
checked the fields every single morning, and Tommy was sure to
consult his grandfather about things he needed to and things he
didn’t need to.

“
I want Grandpa to know it’s
still his farm and that I still need him for what he knows,” Tommy
told her one night while they were lying in bed.

“
You’re doing the right
thing,” Jamie said. “A large percentage of men die within a
couple of years after they retire.”

“
How do you know so much about
it?” Tommy asked. “You’re like a walking medical encyclopedia
these days.”

Jamie laughed. “Granny and I
watch TV in the mornings,” she said. “Morning talk shows and
stuff like that. They cover everything.”

Tommy started to drift off. “I
love you, sugar,” he said drowsily.

“
I love you too, Tommy. Forever
and ever and beyond time and space.” He was already asleep by the
time Jamie said that. As she began to drop into sleep, Jamie wondered
if she would ever tell Tommy about her time travel. Because by then
she knew that she wasn’t in a dream. She had traveled through time
and was changing the lives of people she loved.

She dreamed about Nate. He was
putting a sapphire ring on her finger, smiling at her. “I can’t
accept this,” she said. “I’m already married to Tommy.”
Nate’s face fell. “Who’s Tommy?” he asked her. She woke up in
a cold sweat and reached over for Tommy. He wasn’t there. She
looked around the dark room. It was hard to see, but she saw enough
to tell her she was in her childhood bedroom.

Jamie jumped out of bed and ran
to the bathroom. The face in the mirror was no longer her
eighteen-year-old baby face. It was the gaunter face of her
thirty-year-old self. Her hair was shoulder length. “No!” she
wailed. She fell onto the bathroom floor whimpering. “No,” she
whispered.

“
Jamie, are you all right?”
Her mother was standing in the door of the bathroom. “I heard you
scream.”

“
I’m sorry, Mom. I had a
nightmare and came in here to splash water on my face.”

Her mother held out her hand and
Jamie took it and stood up from the floor. “I’m just going to get
back in bed,” Jamie said. “I’m okay.”

“
Okay, honey. I’ll see you in
the morning.”

Jamie lay back but she couldn’t
go back to sleep. She felt her hand, but there was no sapphire ring
there. Had she lost it somehow? How much time had passed since she
had been living back in time with Tommy? She didn’t know anything.

She got up when the sun rose
thirty minutes later. Her mother was already in the kitchen making
her father’s oatmeal and drinking a cup of coffee. Jamie poured
herself a cup and sat down at the kitchen table.

“
How’s Dad?” she asked.

“
He seems to be doing fine,”
her mother said. “I think he’s starting to take his cardiac event
seriously and wants to do everything he can to prevent another one.”

“
That’s good,” Jamie said.

“
I ran into Mrs. Grisham the
other day,” her mother said as she stirred the oatmeal. “She said
to tell you hi.”

“
I ran into her, too. At the
grocery store. Things have been really rough on her.”

“
What do you mean?” her
mother asked.

“
Well, with Tommy and her
father and then her husband.”

“
What about them?”

“
You know. How they all died,”
Jamie said. Why didn’t her mother know what she was talking about?

Her mother looked at her. “Do
you have a fever, Jamie?”

“
What do you mean, Mom?”

“
Honey, you know Tommy got
remarried. Mrs. Grisham told me they’re expecting their third baby
any day now.”

Jamie looked desperately around
the room, trying to find something that would ground her in this new
reality. She noticed that the kitchen cabinets had been updated to a
light maple. The floors were ceramic tile. The appliances were
stainless steel. This was not the same worn-out kitchen she had come
to on her first visit home. The same kitchen she had grown up with
that her parents never changed. It looked fresh and contemporary. And
Tommy was alive and married to someone else.

“
I didn’t know he had gotten
remarried,” Jamie said shakily.

“
Of course you did,” her
mother said. “What’s wrong with you? You divorced him after you
went to college.”

“
What about his grandfather?”
Jamie asked.

“
He’s still getting around.
He and Granny moved into the house with Tommy’s parents and gave
the farmhouse to Tommy.”

“
And Tommy’s father?”

“
Well, now, he did die last
year. Had a massive stroke. But I told you all of this, honey. We
emailed. Remember?”

She had been emailing her mother?
That was different. It finally began to dawn on Jamie that she had
returned to 2013, but it wasn’t the same as the 2013 she had come
from. It was vastly different.

Jamie looked down at her hand. “I
can’t find my ring,” she said.

“
What ring?” her mother
asked.

“
The sapphire ring I had on
when I got here. You said it was beautiful.”