Time After Time (21 page)

Mrs. Greene spots us the second we round the corner and step into the ICU waiting room, and all three of us freeze in place as she bolts from her chair and speeds across the room toward us. She’s still wearing her uniform.

She hugs Anna hard and then leads her away from us, returning to the chairs in the corner, where she fires questions at her. Anna sounds calm as she fills her mom in on everything that happened, from the moment she and her dad left the house the night before to the series of events that led to her finding him on the bookstore floor.

Justin gives me a look and I give him one back, silently confirming that neither one of us knows what to do with ourselves. He glances awkwardly around the room and I point at a couple of chairs a polite distance away. We spend the next twenty minutes in silence.

Then Justin’s parents burst through the door, and that sends the energy level soaring again. “Where is she?” Mrs. Reilly asks as she heads straight for us. Justin hugs her and then points over toward the corner. I wish I didn’t have to overhear Anna’s mom repeat the same horrible details, but I’m close enough to pick up every word she says and every gasp that leaves Mrs. Reilly’s mouth.

I lean over, resting my elbows on my knees so I can cover my ears and at least muffle the sound. I’m just about to go outside and get some fresh air when I hear Anna’s voice.

“Do you have a quarter?” she asks as she collapses into the chair next to me. She kicks her legs out straight and lets her head fall back against the wall while Justin and I dig around in our pockets.

“Here,” Justin says.

Anna reaches across me to take it and stands up. “I’m going to find a pay phone and call Emma. I’ll be right back.”

Anna’s gone for a full ten minutes, and Justin and I return to our silent state. But then the doctor enters the waiting room and calls out, looking for Mrs. Greene. She stands up and crosses the room. The two of them speak in hushed tones for a moment.

Her mom’s head spins in my direction. “Bennett, would you go find Anna?”

I move quickly, out of the waiting room and into the sterile halls, but I don’t have the slightest idea where she is. I turn down corridors and double back when they look like dead ends, and I finally spot her at the far end of a hallway, leaning against the wall and playing with the steel phone cord as she fills her best friend in on what happened.

She sees me coming.

Doctor,
I mouth, and Anna says something I can’t hear before she slams the phone down hard. The two of us speed back to the waiting room.

As soon as she’s within arm’s reach, Anna’s mom takes her by the shoulders and pulls her closer, then waves the rest of us over to her. “Go ahead.”

The six of us stand in a semicircle while the doctor explains far too matter-of-factly that Mr. Greene has had a stroke. She goes into detail about the battery of tests they’re running to determine exactly what time it occurred and the extent of the damage.

She looks right at Anna’s mom, addressing her more like a peer than the wife of a patient. “Strokes are tricky at first, as you probably know. Everything hinges on how long he was out before your daughter found him. When the medical team arrived on the scene, they administered medication that dissolved the clot, but…” The doctor trails off and Anna starts twirling her hair around her finger. “Until we can pinpoint exactly
where
in the brain the stroke occurred and how long ago it happened, we won’t know about his chances for recovery.”

Anna takes a few steps back, as if that’s too much for her to take, and I ask her mom if I can take her outside to get some air.

We take the elevator down to the first floor and I steer her toward the entrance. The wind outside blows our hair back, but we huddle close to each other on a cement bench next to a tall ashtray. It smells like fresh rain and stale cigarettes.

“I want to go back.” I don’t wait for her to answer; I just start running her through the plan I’ve been concocting since we left the bookstore. “I’ll go back to this morning. I’ll get Brooke and bring her to your meet, and then I’ll tell you what’s going to happen with your dad, okay? It’ll be fine.”

Anna shakes her head. “What about the side effects? Last time you ended up with twenty-two hours you could never account for. What if you try, and instead, we all get knocked back somewhere? Or what if we lose those hours and I don’t find my dad when I did? You can’t mess with this one, Bennett.”

I hear her, but that doesn’t stop me from running through the easier scenarios again. If we went back to the bookstore, I don’t know what would happen to Anna. If we went back to this morning at the race, I don’t know what would happen to Brooke.

“Stop,” she says, as if she can tell that I’m still trying to figure out a way to make it work. “Listen. You promised me you’d tell me if you ever lost control. But apparently I need to be the one to tell you.” Anna locks her eyes on mine. “You’re not in control. You cannot fix this.”

My stomach sinks. God, if she only knew how much I want to. That I’d do anything to fix it. But she’s right. I can’t. There’s too much at stake this time. I’m not in control anymore. Not unless I stick to the rules.

Anna presses her lips tightly together and runs her thumb along my cheek. “You aren’t supposed to change things, remember?” Then she rests her head on my shoulder. The two of us sit like that for a long time, listening to the sound of the automatic doors sliding open and snapping shut as people pass us on their way in and out of the building.

I tell her I’m sorry a few more times, and she tells me not to be. But I don’t tell her what I’m really thinking: If I hadn’t come here today, she would have driven home with her dad instead of Brooke and me. She would have had three hours in the car with him. Three hours to notice that something was wrong.

Those three hours should have been his, and I took them away.

Today, after we found her dad in the bookstore, we both went straight to one question:
What if we could do it over?
We never once thought:
What if we hadn’t changed anything in the
first place
?

As Justin and I leave the hospital, the wind slaps us hard in the face. We pull our coats tighter around us as we march, heads down, plowing toward the car. He climbs in first and unlocks my door for me.

“You okay to drive in this?”

His shoots me a look and turns the key in the ignition. “Yeah.”

And that’s the last thing he says for the next twenty miles. Every time I look over at him, he has this strange look on his face and his fingers are white-knuckled from gripping the steering wheel so hard. We’re traveling down Lake Shore Drive, at or just under the speed limit, but the wind packs a wallop. Each time it slams into the side of the car it feels like it’s about to wrap its fingers around this lightweight Honda Civic and hurl it straight into Lake Michigan.

I try to make small talk. “I didn’t know you had a car.”

“I got it over the summer.” He turns onto a side street. “It’s nice, but it’s light. When it starts snowing, I’m going to have to load the trunk with sandbags so I don’t skid.”

Now that we’re off Lake Shore and heading into the wind, the car feels a little less squirrelly. I see Justin’s shoulders relax slightly and his fingers uncurl. He takes one hand off the wheel and squeezes the back of his neck.

“I’ve known him since I was a little kid,” Justin says, his voice deeper than usual. “Our parents have played bridge together every other Saturday night for as long as I can remember.” He takes a deep breath. “He’s so
healthy
, you know? Healthier than my parents. God, he’s been trying to get my dad to go running with him for years.”

“I know,” I say. Of course, I don’t know. I’ve never heard any of this. But I have no idea what to tell him right now.

“This whole thing is just so weird…” Justin trails off as he takes another turn, and I resist the urge to say that I’m sure Mr. Greene will be okay, because I have no way of knowing this, and he may not be. The air in the car is thick with tension, and Justin keeps looking at me like it’s my turn to talk.

I haven’t known Mr. Greene very long. I don’t have years of collected stories that substantiate his impact on my life or anything. I just know that I like him, that he’s a nice person and a good dad, and that he doesn’t deserve to be hooked up to machines right now.

Justin blows a mouthful of air at the windshield. “They say he could be totally fine, and make a full recovery, but I can’t help but wonder.” When he pulls up to the stoplight, he turns to me. “I mean, I don’t know anything about strokes, but it seems pretty far-fetched that there wouldn’t be any damage to his brain. He had to have been out for at least…what did the doctor think? Twenty…twenty-five minutes?”

This is the part I can’t think about, let alone talk about. Anna and I were just down the street during those twenty minutes. What if there had been a parking space in front of the bookstore? What if we hadn’t stopped for coffee? What if I hadn’t come here today?

“I guess we’ll know more tomorrow when the test results are back.”

“I guess. But man, doesn’t it make you wish you had future sight or something? I mean, if we could just
know
, right?”

As the light turns green, he looks away from me, shaking his head as if it’s a ridiculous thought.

The deadbolt clicks open with a loud
thunk
. I tiptoe inside and shut the door behind me, grateful to find the house is silent and dark, save for the glow of the light that Maggie always keeps on over the desk.

My feet drag across the hardwood floor and it takes far too much effort to lug myself up the stairs. My brain is working overtime, but my body can’t wait to fall into bed.

I head straight for the bathroom, where I splash cold water on my face and check out my reflection. My skin is pale and my eyes are bloodshot, lids half closed despite the cold jolt I just gave them. I flick off the light and head back to my room.

I should have insisted on staying with Anna at the hospital, even though the look on her mom’s face made it pretty clear that she didn’t want me there. For the hundredth time tonight, I picture Anna’s expression when she told me I couldn’t go back, and I wonder if I’m doing the right thing by not even trying. Especially when I remember how Mr. Greene blinked at me.

But of all the things that happened tonight—of all the things that were said—Justin’s words are the ones haunting me and keeping me awake.

He said he wished he could see into the future, with absolutely no idea that
I
can.

I can’t fight it anymore, so against my better judgment, I dig my heavy boots out from the back of the closet and step into them, and then I zip myself into my black parka and pull my wool cap low to my brow. I fill my backpack with bottled water and a wad of cash.

I’m not changing anything. I’m not manipulating the clock, and I’m not doing anything over. I’m observing, just like I’ve always done. This time, I’m not breaking the rules, and when it’s over, no one ever has to know what I did.

The doctor said it would take time and patience; that even if he made a full recovery, it would probably take a year or two. With her words in mind, I stand in the center of my room and close my eyes.