by Wendy Devore
“You know, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I’m suddenly having the strongest sense of déjà vu.”
Andrew barely stifled a laugh. “Seriously?” he replied, his tone mocking.
Normally I’m perturbed when I’m not in on the joke, but I found myself uncharacteristically giddy. Apparently laughter is contagious when wine is involved, even if it’s at my expense.
“What’s so funny?” I giggled in a largely unsuccessful effort to contain myself.
He drained his glass and appraised me with those disconcerting eyes. “The universe is funny. And the reason that this feels so familiar is that this is not the first drink we’ve shared together. It’s not even the first time we’ve shared this wine.”
After all the alcohol, it took a second, but then my eyes widened with comprehension. “No. Freakin’. Way.” I narrowed my eyes. “That’s why you keep calling me Kathryn.” My mind conjured the thrill of his kiss, and I suffered a surge of irrational jealousy toward the other version of myself—which I knew was ridiculous. My dream wasn’t this reality. And neither was that other Kate. I frowned. “So Janine and Amir must be yukking it up right now.”
For a fleeting moment, Andrew actually looked hurt. Then before I could be sure, the expression had vanished. “No,” he said quietly. “That detail I kept to myself. But you need to know that the reason I recruited you—the reason I knew we needed you—was because of your extraordinary work in the other slice.”
I immediately felt like the biggest jerk in the entire world, a sentiment no doubt magnified by the ridiculous amount of champagne I’d consumed. My boozy state made my emotions swing wildly in a way that was extremely unfamiliar and altogether unwelcome.
I clenched my hands in my lap. “Sorry, I was out of line. I apologize. It’s just—” I paused, trying to collect my swirling thoughts. “It’s been a weird couple of days. I can barely tell what’s real and what’s not. Or at least, what’s real here. My world is a little upside down.”
“I know,” he replied, rubbing his chin. “I’m asking a lot of you.”
The silence between us intensified. But the bubbles were messing with my head; and it suddenly struck me as hilarious that I was having this deep heart-to-heart conversation with a man my brain patently disliked but that the rest of me viewed with lustful intrigue.
I narrowed my eyes and poked him in the arm. “Dude, you totally harshed my buzz.”
The solemn expression disappeared, and his lips twitched as he tried not to smile. He raised the bottle. “Finally, something that’s easy to fix.”
I held out my glass, and when he poured, I noticed that his hand was the slightest bit unsteady. At least I wasn’t getting sloshed alone.
“I’ve been dying to ask—how did you find yourself working as a mad scientist?”
“Personally, I prefer the term Crackpot Visionary.”
I almost snorted up my wine. Did he actually have a sense of humor? “That doesn’t answer the question.”
“I guess you could say,” he said with a thoughtful pause, “that it’s my father’s influence that brought me into the business of bucking reality.”
“Well, there’s an original answer,” I groaned, rolling my eyes. “Whose parents don’t mess with their heads? How about the answer to the question I actually asked? So tell me, what is your role here at Albaion, Doctor Crackpot Visionary?”
“Well, you might say I discovered a new species of insect,” he replied evasively.
Despite my foggy mental state, I took note. The Bug was Andrew’s baby—interesting.
Andrew rested both elbows on the table and leaned in. “There’s something I’ve been dying to ask you. About your dreams…”
“Ah, yes, the nightmares,” I said with an involuntary shudder, which Andrew promptly noticed.
“It’s almost as if you’re drawn to disaster. Or it’s drawn to you.”
I winced. “They’re almost always something awful; and night after night I’m stuck in another scene from a postapocalyptic horror film.”
“What’s the worst?” he asked quietly.
“That would be the time when I watched my mother get raped by militant religious zealots,” I confessed. “I was only four years old when that gem was visited upon me.”
If this revelation made Andrew uncomfortable, he didn’t show it. Nor did his enigmatic gaze stray.
“I honestly don’t know how I’ll bear it,” I said, clenching my hands in my lap. “Now that I know it’s not just my sorry excuse for a subconscious. Now that I know that somewhere, in someone’s reality, these horrible things are actually happening. Thankfully, I wake up. The killer migraine that follows is a special parting gift.”
“They’re always nightmares?”
“Once in a blue moon, they’re different.” The sudden heat in my cheeks made me certain I was blushing again. If he noticed, he gave no indication. “Sometimes, they are actually quite nice. Once I dreamed about this couple,” I sighed. “I think maybe they were in love.” An echo of his touch fluttered over my belly and I inhaled sharply.
His eyes locked on mine; the intensity of his gaze made me catch my breath. It wasn’t possible, but for a moment I was convinced he could read my mind.
“In that case, it is my wish that your travels tonight are auspicious.” He raised his glass and tapped it gently against mine, his blue eyes luminous. “I’m reminded of something Yoko Ono once said: ‘A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.’”
Chapter 13
Kate
September 25
The room is spacious, bright, and airy. A comfortable brown sofa faces a cozy flagstone fireplace. The soaring cathedral ceiling is knotty cedar and a large, vividly colored giclée print of Yosemite’s iconic Half Dome in all its autumn splendor graces the wall. Beyond the picture windows stands a verdant forest of towering spruce trees that sway in the light mountain breeze. Somewhere nearby, a woodpecker’s staccato stutter adds counterpoint to the wind song. It is early morning, but the sun has begun its ascent, and through the open French doors in the adjacent kitchen, I can smell the sweet, crisp scent of pines. I have never been to this place, yet in some inexplicable way, it smells like home.
A toddler girl, head bursting with strawberry-blonde curls, waddles into the room, giggling deliriously. She totters around in an unsteady twirl, the pink and purple tulle layers of her dress floating around her huggable, plump little body. I instinctively bend down as she darts toward me, ready to catch her in my arms, but she careens right past me. With an excited squeal, she pulls a throw pillow from the sofa to the floor and dives beneath it. From down the hall, I can hear a man’s voice.
“I’m—gonna—get you!” he calls, causing the child to squeal again in delight.
From the darkened hall, the child’s father begins to crawl toward her, making exaggerated thumping noises.
“Where is she? Where is my little doodle bug hiding?”
The child wiggles with uncontained delight and tries unsuccessfully to remain quiet. I am nearly overcome by a visceral urge to pick her up and snuggle her to my chest; to bury my nose in her curls; to feel the weight of her body in my arms.
When her father finally thumps around the corner, a powerful shock of recognition jolts my body. The man who is playing with this child is Andrew. My breath comes in shallow gasps, but he also brushes right past me, unaware of my existence.
When he finally lumbers to the toddler’s hiding place, he reaches out a finger and gently tickles her tiny bare foot. She erupts into a cascade of giggles, throws aside the pillow, and launches herself into his arms. Warmth floods me like a gut punch to my soul, and for reasons I can’t explain, bittersweet tears collect in the corners of my eyes.
“Dada!” she shouts, patting her chubby starfish hands against his face. I realize she shares his deep cobalt eyes. “Dada!”
He blows raspberries on her smooth, rosy cheek. The child breaks away and totters to a low shelf on the
nearby bookcase. She clasps a small picture frame and races back to Andrew’s arms.
She offers up the frame. It’s covered in tiny fingerprint smudges. “Mama?”
A shadow darkens Andrew’s face, and his sorrowful sigh makes his deep grief and loss plainly evident.
“No, sweetie. No Mama,” he whispers quietly. “Mama can’t be with us anymore. Mama’s our special angel.”
He gently removes the frame from her chubby little fingers. She furrows her little brow and stares hard at Andrew.
“Dada. Why twy?”
The little girl reaches a tiny, perfect finger to his face to catch the tear at the corner of his eye. He kisses her cheek, stands up, and replaces the photo. He sweeps the child up, and she wraps her small arms around his neck. She gently strokes his hair. It is obvious from his sad, sweet smile that he adores this child and longs for her mother. My chest constricts with the weight of his heartbreak, and also with some other sentiment. Some small part of me is deeply envious of this child’s dead mother.
I move tentatively toward the bookshelf, intensely curious yet dreading the identity of this woman, my paradoxical rival. At first I’m not sure what I’m seeing. It’s a woman, pale and drawn, in a hospital gown, holding a red, wrinkly newborn infant. The woman is me. Without warning, the floor lurches off kilter and a peculiar spinning sensation distorts my vision. My knees go weak, and I grasp the edge of the bookshelf for support. A sob catches in my throat, and the hot tears that I’d just barely contained pour down my cheeks.
The tsunami of sorrow threatens to overwhelm me, and I drop to the floor, close my eyes, and fight to calm my ragged breath. “This is not mine,” I chant hoarsely. “This is not my reality.” Time becomes unbounded, and I allow the swells of sadness to break over me until my concentration grows so great I can no longer hear the child, no longer hear her father, no longer smell the pines. At last, I allow my conscious mind to assert itself. I am not really here, I think to myself. I will not be here. I WILL NOT BE HERE.
When I awoke, I was half reclined in a leather office chair in the lab. Uneven gasps punctuated my breath, and my arms ached for the solid weight of my child. No, not my child, I reminded myself. I reached a hand to my face to wipe the tears from my swollen eyes and realized the EEG electrode cap was attached to my skull, but I had no clear memory of how it had gotten there. Taking deliberate, deep breaths, I struggled to sit up, but the familiar, forceful pounding on the right side my head was compounded by a sickening lurch in my stomach. I was expecting the migraine, but the nausea was new—thanks to all that stupid wine. I quickly sank lower and lay as still as I could. With a groan borne of churning stomach, headache, and aching heart, I laid my arm over my weary eyes. How much more of this can I endure? I desperately wished that I could rewind the clock, back to when my biggest worry was whether I’d finished grading student exams.
Moments later I heard a gentle knock on the door, then the click of the lock as someone badged in. I snuck an eye open and detected a shape through a glowing aquamarine aura.
“Who is it?” I mumbled.
“It’s Janine,” she whispered. “How are you feeling?”
“Not great. I can’t really see—I have a hideous migraine right now.”
“It might help if I lower the light and the temperature.”
I could hear Janine tap her phone and the lights dimmed. I heard the soft hiss as cool air began flowing through the ceiling ducts.
I raised an eyelid halfway, then another. The cool darkness was soothing.
“Can you help me get this EEG cap off?” I asked. The web of sensors extended over my nose, past my cheeks, and fastened below my chin like a crazy sci-fi bonnet from hell. My voice was raspy, and it felt as if my teeth were covered in fur.
“Sure.” She unsnapped the chin strap and gently extracted the sensors from my tangled hair. “Can you lean forward?”
“I think so…” I said, but as I raised my head, a monumental wave of nausea formed in the pit of my stomach and then surged quickly upward. Janine was more than prepared—she immediately produced a large plastic bag and positioned it deftly. It caught every bit of expensive pink champagne that erupted from my body.
“I can’t believe he got you drunk,” she muttered, rubbing my back as I coughed and sputtered.
When I had finally purged every last ounce of liquid from my gut, she whisked away the bag and returned with a cool washcloth, which she used to gently wipe my face.
“I’m so sorry,” I coughed, closing my eyes and wincing through the rhythmic pounding in my head. “I almost puked all over you…”
“It’s okay,” she assured me. I could hear the kind smile even though I couldn’t see it. “But I’m going to have words with Andrew…”
Despite the throbbing in my skull, I managed a weak smile. I wrapped my arms around my body and shivered. The temperature in the room had already dropped, and I was covered in goose bumps.
“Let me try to make you a bit more comfortable.” She gently enfolded me in a thick microfleece blanket.
“You rest for a while. Sleep if you can. It says in your medical records that you have had some success treating migraines with eletriptan?”
“Mmmmm-hmmmm…” I agreed, trying to nod. Bad idea. The pain was nearly unbearable.
“I’ll get you a dose. And you’re probably dehydrated as well; we’ll get you some fluids. I’ll be back soon, Kate.”
The distant click of the door latch indicated Janine was gone.
I shifted slightly, adjusting my arms so that my palms faced upward. I certainly couldn’t get into a full lotus position, so I would do the best I could, given the raging hangover. I took a deep breath and tried to relax my body.
I exhaled and thought, “Peace.” I inhaled again and added, “Light.” Finally, I added, “Love.”
“Mommy is our special angel,” I heard him say as clearly as if he was actually standing beside me. And then I felt the phantom brush of his breath against my neck; his mouth against my lips.
“Oh, no…” I whimpered, willfully compelling the hallucination to end. I took another deep breath, refocused, and tried again, abandoning my mantra and instead deliberately and vehemently pushing every conscious thought from my troubled mind.
Relief washed over me when Janine returned with a single orange pill and a cup of lukewarm peppermint tea.
Within an hour, the aura had abated, and my eyesight had been restored. The pounding in my head had subsided, and instead I was left with a consistent, but manageable dull ache. Despite the tea, I still felt queasy. After this experience, I promised myself that I was off alcohol—for good. I managed to stumble to the bathroom and splashed some water on my face, but the effort made me feel like walking death, so I shuffled to my dorm room, collapsed on the bed, and resumed meditation.
The incessant pressure in my head blended with the very real pounding on the outside of my door. I pulled my pillow over my head and rolled over. After what seemed like hours, the pounding stopped but was replaced by the familiar click of an access card releasing the lock.
“Kathryn?” Andrew called, poking his head into the room.
“Leave me alone!” I groaned, waving my arm clumsily to ward him off. “Haven’t you ever heard of privacy? What did you do to me? “
“Did the meds work on the migraine?”
“Yes,” I grumbled through the pillow. “But I still feel like shit.”
“You’re just hungover. Let’s go.” He grasped the pillow and yanked. I tried to swat his hand away but missed by a mile.
“You need some coffee, some vitamin B, and hydration. And then we need to get to work. We’ll need to get started right away on the data analysis on your dream state.”
Right—my dream state. I had to remind myself that while he knew about my nightmare, there was no way he could know its content. I shook off the thought with a shudder, sat up, pulled back my tousled hair, and smoothed my rumpled shirt.
The bed bounced sli
ghtly as he sat beside me. I warily eyed the small medical kit as he snapped it open and extracted a vial and a syringe.
“Time for the vitamin B.”
I got the distinct impression that he was getting some perverse enjoyment out of this.
“Wait, what? I’m not letting you inject me! Where is Janine?”
“Don’t be such a baby. Janine isn’t the only one with an MD in this place. And unlike Janine, I actually completed my residency. Besides, it’ll help with the headache—and the nausea.”
I snatched the vial and examined the label; it looked like a legitimate B-complex dose. I closed my eyes against the dull ache in my head and handed it back, resigned to do whatever it took to ward off the aftereffects of my night of alcoholic indiscretion.
He inserted the needle into the vial and drew back a dose. “Let’s take a look at that ass of yours.”
I was in no condition to participate in witty repartee. I pushed up my left shirtsleeve. “Haha. Very funny.”
A swipe with the alcohol swab and a quick stab and it was done. Andrew handed me a sizeable bottle of water.
“No time to hook you up to an IV like the professional drinkers. There’s work to be done. Go eat something with protein in it, drink all this water, and have some strong coffee. I’ll see you in the lab in twenty minutes.”
I was thankful to discover that the prepackaged frozen chicken soup was excellent. The B-vitamins and a dose of industrial-strength espresso returned me to a nearly human state. I plodded down the hall to the lab and badged myself in to find Amir working alone at his workstation. He swung around in his office chair as I trudged through the door.
“Well, did it work?”
“Oh, yeah,” I confirmed, “and I have the mother of all headaches to prove it!”
“You dreamed? And you were able to exit?”
I nodded.
“Great! That means we have a baseline reading of your dream state with a self-determined exit,” he said triumphantly. “I’m texting the A-man.”
Amir whirled back toward the keyboard and typed furiously.
