Time-Travel Duo

by James Paddock

  When the chief was finished, James tore a page from the back of his notebook and wrote his name and phone number on it. “Here, if anything comes up or you remember anything else, please call me.”

  As he took the phone number the Chief said, “There’s one other thing that may or may not be important.”

  James sat back down. “Go ahead.”

  “Sometime early this morning, roughly 0330 I would say, several of my men discovered a bag, almost in the same spot she was discovered.”

  “Bag? The one you were carrying when I saw you get off the elevator?” James opened his notebook again and began writing.

  “Right.” The chief began making motions with his hands to indicate a general shape and size, “It’s about this big and made of a material I’ve never seen before.”

  “Did you search it?”

  “I waited until I had an officer present, in this case Lt. Martin, the base Doctor.” The Chief pulled another cigarette and lit up. “You sure you don’t want one?” he said as he pointed the crumpled pack toward James.

  “No, thank you. What did you find in the bag?”

  “The usual woman’s stuff, private stuff you know. And pants.”

  “Pants?”

  “Yeah. Red and blue. Has to be hers. You wouldn’t catch any guy wearing such things. And there was a bible and some jewelry, and something else that was really strange.”

  “What was that?”

  “A thing that blows hot air. It had a cord so we plugged it in. It was shaped like a gun but shoots hot air.”

  “Hot air?”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it. And money. Nearly forgot that. Almost a thousand dollars.”

  “Hmm!” James tapped on his notebook. “Okay, Mr. Savage. Anything else?”

  “No. Nothing other than clothes and such. But nothing was normal, or what I would consider normal. But then I don’t know anything about these rich big-city women. I’d be curious to know where she’s from and how she got into my barracks.”

  “If I find out anything, I’ll let you know. And, please, if you think of anything else, give me a call.”

  “Sure Mr. Lamric,” Chief Savage said and stood.

  “If you like, I’ll take the rabbit off your hands. I’ll make sure she gets it.”

  “A pleasure,” the chief said. They walked to the Navy truck.

  While James and Chief Savage were talking, Nurse Stevens picked up the bag and proceeded down the hall to room 328. As she entered Anne’s room, she noted that Gertie, as usual, wasn’t in her bed. It was useless trying to hold that lady down, the nurse realized. It was easier to just let her wander around the hospital or visit the nursery.

  Anne, on the other hand, appeared to be asleep. The nurse quietly set the bag next to the bed and returned to the nurses’ station.

  Anne heard the nurse come in and was relieved when she quickly left. She was getting tired of resting, of the inactivity. The effort to turn her mind blank wasn’t working, and she knew it would do neither her nor Elizabeth any good for her to become a vegetable. She rolled over onto her back and stared at the ceiling for a time; then, thinking she might try finding the nursery, as she had a sudden urge to hold Elizabeth, she sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Her foot struck something and she looked down. She recognized the bag immediately. She had seen it in the closet at least a dozen times and had fussed at Steven about not putting it away properly. She picked it up and put it on her bed, then simply stared at it. After a time she ran her hands over it and then slowly undid the handles. Grabbing both zippers at one time, she began pulling them away from each other, then stopped. She pulled her hands away, and then rushed to the door. In the hallway she briskly walked to the nurses’ station.

  “Nurse, where did that come from?” Her hand was pointing in the general direction of her room, “My husband’s athletic bag, how did it get here?”

  “You mean the bag I placed next to your bed?”

  “Yes, yes, my husband’s athletic bag.”

  “A Navy chief brought it in about fifteen minutes ago. Chief Savage I believe.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? I need to talk to him.”

  “You said you didn’t want any visitors.”

  “But this is different. I need to know how he got it; where my husband is.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Waring. I’ll let you know if anyone else inquires about you. Officer Lamric said he would stop by again tomorrow. Maybe he’ll know something.”

  “Thank you,” Anne said quietly as she started walking away, and then turned around. “I’m sorry I’m being so difficult. All of you have been so nice to me, except for that old nurse last night. I’ll get my head on straight soon and try to become normal.” She continued walking toward her room. “Whatever that is,” she said under her breath to herself as she stepped back into her room. She looked again at the bag, and the short note that was with it.

  With the rabbit tucked under one arm, James again shook hands with Chief Savage. “Thanks for your time.”

  “Not a problem, officer. If you come up with any answers, I’d sure like to hear how she came about showing up in my barracks.”

  “I’ll keep you informed.”

  The chief pulled out of the parking lot and James placed the rabbit in the back seat of his car. Knowing the sun-baked car would be too much for him, he moved the car to a shady area and rolled the windows halfway down. Satisfied that the rabbit would be fine, he returned to the hospital. Maggie was busy with a patient so he waved to her and proceeded on up to the third floor. Nurse Stevens didn’t look up but said, “Be with you in just a moment.” James waited patiently until she finished.

  “Oh! Officer Lamric! How nice to see you again.”

  “It seems, Nurse, a couple of things have developed and I’m going to need to speak to Mrs. Waring in a more official capacity. Is there a chance you could speak with her again and see if I could get in to see her?”

  “You’re in luck. She has had a change of mind and is ready to see visitors. Follow me.”

  At room 328, Nurse Stevens said, “Please wait here a moment,” and went in, closing the door behind her. Most of two minutes later the nurse propped the door open and returned to her station.

  Inside, James found Anne sitting on the edge of her bed, the contents of the bag, as described by Chief Savage, spread about her. He observed that she had been crying but had made a valiant effort at drying her eyes and fixing her face.

  “Mrs. Waring, I’m Officer Lamric, James Lamric of the Charleston Police Department.” Her eyes were on his, beautiful eyes he noticed, but confused eyes with a speck of fire and strength, intelligence and independence of spirit. “I came to your assistance last night and got you back into the hospital.”

  “I remember,” she said softly as she stared into deep brown eyes, eyes that spoke of strength and understanding. “I guess I should thank you.” She added. “I was apparently, a bit out of my mind.”

  “Not a problem, Ma’am. I was just doing my job.” James felt very nervous suddenly, unable to relax. He couldn’t break the eye contact.

  “What’s that? Guarding hospitals so that women in labor don’t escape?” She continued to look straight at him as if waiting for a response. He just stood with his hat in his hands, not sure how to respond, a bit shocked by her comment. Then she smiled and he smiled and she laughed. “Thank you for helping me. I’m glad I didn’t get any further than the front steps.”

  “Me, too.” With her laugh he watched her eyes light up briefly, allowing him to see the potential brightness within her. She dropped her eyes to her lap.

  “You might not have found me.”

  “No.” James felt extremely awkward. His words were coming to him very slowly, hesitantly. He felt he was about to begin stuttering. The only other time he remembered feeling this way was at a high school dance when he tried to ask Marion Samuels to dance. He had thoroughly rehearsed the words but they came out broken and backw
ards. They weren’t backwards this time, but he was afraid they would become so, so he chose and thought through his words carefully. “I might not have.”

  “Did you carry me all the way back in, up the stairs and all?”

  “Of course.” He took a deep breath and tried to pull himself together. Granted, she’s beautiful, James, but for crying out loud, she’s a married woman. You’ve met plenty of beautiful women before and you have never let any of them get to you like this. He felt a trickle of sweat roll down his back. He remembered carrying her into the hospital. She was so light and fragile and very pregnant. Something about her intrigued him even then, but he had managed to initially brush it aside. But now, here she was calmly sitting in front of him in her nightgown with a beautiful smile and captivating eyes. “You weren’t up to walking.”

  “Amazing!”

  “Why?”

  “Men like to bill themselves as being virile and all muscle, but then don’t stand up to the test.”

  They both remained silent for some time; she, fiddling with what appeared to James to be a string of pearls in a see-through bag; he, standing, watching her. She wore a white cotton nightgown with a pink, lace bodice, partially covered by her long golden brown hair, badly in need of a brush. A pair of pink slippers sat at her bare feet. Gradually her eyes left the pearls and traveled down to the slippers, across the distance to his feet then up to the hat in his hands. “You wear a hat even when not in uniform?”

  “Of course.” Don’t all men? he thought to say but didn’t.

  Her eyes met his again and she smiled. “So, what is the purpose of your visit, Officer Lamric?”

  “May I sit down?”

  “Of course, it’s not my hospital.” James pulled up a chair and sat facing her.

  As he leaned forward, elbows on knees, he said, “I haven’t been able to find your husband. The numbers you gave me,” he opened his notebook and read the numbers back to her, “do not work.”

  Her eyes had dropped back to her hands and her expression became neutral.

  “I checked the directory for his name and found nothing, but then, of course, you said you weren’t from Charleston. I wasn’t able to locate a Goose Creek, but I did check directories for all the outlying communities including Summerville and Monks Corner and found no listing under Steven Waring. There are other Warings, but no Steven. I took the liberty of calling them and asked them if they knew of a Steven or Anne Waring. No one has heard of you.” He stopped and waited for her to respond, studying her thoughtfully.

  Anne sat in silence for some time, and then said, “I’m not surprised.”

  “Why is that, Mrs. Waring?”

  She looked up at the ceiling, waved her hand in the air and said, “Don’t worry, Mr. Lamric, I’ve already figured it all out. I’m either crazy or I’m insane.” She dropped her hands to the bed and then pointed at the things scattered about her. “The one thing I don’t understand is, where did all this stuff come from?”

  “This isn’t yours?”

  “Oh, this is all mine all right, my clothes, my bible, my pearl necklace,” she held the bag of pearls up in the air, “broken, my husband’s athletic bag. Gold pieces! I think that’s part of my husband’s coin collection. But how did it get here? If I’m making things up and my husband doesn’t exist, where does this come from?” She held up her wedding photo while displaying her wedding ring and the note. She was sounding exasperated. “To be truthful, I thought I was dreaming all this. I thought I was dreaming my husband. I thought I was just making him up in my head. I pretty much figured that all out. I didn’t know who I was. I was resigned to being checked into a mental hospital, then this bag shows up.” She shook her head. “Where the hell did it come from?”

  James winced at her use of profanity. “Mrs. Waring, I spoke with Chief Savage right after he dropped this off. It appears that it showed up the same way you did, out of thin air, and in the same place you did, in the middle of his barracks. Do you have any idea how you got in his barracks?”

  “What I remember obviously couldn’t have happened so there’s no point in my even going over it again.”

  “Well, lets try it anyway. I haven’t heard the story. Why don’t you start from the beginning? Maybe something will pop out that didn’t come to you before.”

  “Okay.”

  “First, what is your age?”

  “I’m twenty-four.” Anne leaned forward, supporting herself with her hands on the bed, then straightened up and pulled her hands through her hair, not seeming to notice the mess it was in. “I was supposed to pick up my husband at work at seven o’clock. I was running late. My car was broken and in the shop, and it has air conditioning, and it was really hot.”

  “Air conditioning, Mrs. Waring?”

  “Yes, air conditioning. You turn it on when it’s hot to make it cooler in the car.”

  “A-ha.”

  “Apparently something else I’m making up. It’s 1943. There’s no such thing as air conditioning, is there?”

  “I can’t say I’ve heard of it,” James said. “Please continue.”

  “Steven caught a ride to work yesterday morning so I could have his truck for my doctor’s appointment, but I would have to pick him up. His truck is hard to drive anyway with a stiff clutch and no power steering, but here I am, or was, eight months pregnant and it’s at least a hundred degrees and his truck has no air.”

  “No air!” James exclaimed.

  “Yeah! A hundred degrees and there’s no damn air conditioning. And I was running late picking him up. I remember dressing up because I wanted Steven to take me out to dinner. I wanted to give him the news from the doctor that we were going to have a girl.”

  “Girl? The doctor knew the sex of your baby?”

  “Well, he wasn’t 100 percent certain. The ultrasounds don’t always give a clear picture, especially at eight months.”

  “Explain an ultra sound,” James said.

  “You know, an x-ray like machine that scans my insides. The doctor took a picture of that. As a matter of fact, it’s in my pocket.” She looked around the room until she spotted her clothes, retrieved the photo and presented it to James. “See, Mr. Lamric, that’s a picture of my baby just twenty-four hours ago... I think.”

  “But your baby was born this morning.” James said as he tried to make sense of the strange lines in the photo she gave him.

  “No, no!” she exclaimed. “This was taken before she was born, yesterday, from the ultrasound. Another thing I would think I’m making up in my mind except, you’re holding it in your hand. How can I create that?”

  James looked at Anne and then back at the photo.

  “Steven wanted a boy very badly – a man thing, I guess – so I thought I would break it to him over a romantic dinner. That’s why I was all dressed up.” She stopped for a moment to think. “I rushed to the Navy base, arriving at Steven’s work nearly fifteen minutes late. I thought he was going to be really mad, but he wasn’t even waiting on me.”

  “You drove onto the Navy Base?”

  “Well, not really the Navy Base I guess, the shipyard. I went in the gate down by the Navy Hospital, McMillian Avenue.” Anne stopped while James wrote in his notebook.

  “Okay, go on.”

  “Well, like I said, when I got to the lab, he wasn’t waiting outside, and I remember everyone’s cars were there which told me they were working late.”

  “Who are they?” James asked.

  “The other men Steven works with. By the vehicles parked in front, I could tell that everyone was still working. But Steven never called me and he always calls if he’s going to be late. Anyway, it’s hotter than blazes and I’m starting to feel a bit ill, so I decide to go on in where it’s air-conditioned. I remember being glad I didn’t wear heels as the parking lot, believe it or not, isn’t paved.”

  “The parking lot isn’t paved?” James commented.

  “No, it’s not,” she said forcefully, “and the ruts and stuff ar
e horrible.” She looked at him for some time, until he broke the silence.

  “So, what happened next?”

  “That’s it.”

  “That’s it? The parking lot wasn’t paved and that’s the end?”

  “Well, I went inside. It was cool. The next thing I know I’m waking up on the floor and a bunch of sailors are standing around me. I figured I had walked into the wrong building, delirious from the heat and all. They wouldn’t let me leave, then my water broke and an old ambulance showed up and zip, here I am.”

  “Zip?” James looked at her.

  “Yeah, Zip!”

  James sat back and considered her story. He reached out and touched the bag. “You say this is your husband’s. It’s a very interesting material. What is it made from?”

  Anne looked at the bag, considered the fact that in 1943 there’s probably no such thing as plastic or fake leather. “I don’t know. I thought I did but obviously I don’t. Do you know what plastic is?”

  “Can’t say I do.”

  “Well, there you go. Another of my made-up words.”

  “Could you have lived or traveled in a foreign country? Do you speak another language?”

  Anne pondered on that. “I don’t think so. I was born in Bismarck, North Dakota in...” she started to say 1963 then stopped herself. “I was raised primarily in Boston, however. My father received his doctorate and became a professor at MIT.”

  “MIT?”

  “Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It’s in Boston. I met Steven there, at MIT. I was working on my master’s and he on his doctorate. We finished about the same time and got married, and that summer, four years ago, moved here to the Charleston area.”

  “You have a Master’s degree from MIT?”

  “In nuclear physics. I also have my bachelor of science in history. I was 18 when I got that. Steven’s doctorate is in nuclear engineering.”

  Nurse Stevens walked in with Elizabeth Anne. “Feeding time. You’ll have to excuse us now, Officer Lamric.”

  “Certainly. Thank you for your time, Mrs. Waring. I would like to stop in and talk more with you tomorrow afternoon, if I may.”