Chapter 7

Chapter

Seven

Dr. Lucas Hamilton

Dr. Delano spends some time trying to get me to eat watery tomato soup and toast. I can't smell it. I can't taste it. Whether that's due to the dust storm or the curious static or my crying jag, the soup soon congeals into an unappetizing ink blot test in the bowl.

We haven't talked since we got back to the clinic. Delano knows something is wrong, but he's waiting for me to broach the subject. What must he think of me, when "safe word" was practically the first thing out of my mouth? I mean, that was a joke because I'm not that guy. But in my defense, I thought I'd gotten caught up in some weird medical cosplay kink scenario. Now I wonder if Delano even knows what a safe word is.

April 5, 1935.

That means today is the sixth but it can't be.

The newspaper I saw could still be bogus. I'd like to believe that. I really would. But the evidence seems overwhelmingly in favor of… I don't want to even think the words.

Time travel.

Nope. This is a bad dream. I'll wake up soon.

"You know what?" Delano finally puts the soup to the side before retrieving another blanket and spreading it over me. "I think you're in shock."

God, his eyes are blue. No one should have eyes that color. Mother Nature must have been on molly and meth to mix that shade. Blue eyes. Silver hair. A full beard. He's slipped off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves to serve me soup. There are scars on his forearm—not a neat surgical cut, but a tangle of skin pulled together. Shrapnel?

How old is he? When was World War I? Am I even considering the possibility that I went to a carnival in 2023 and woke up in 1935?

No, it's too fantastic. It's a dream. A nightmare.

"I know what shock looks like," Delano says wryly. I return my gaze to his. "When I finished medical school, I left right away for France. I'd read every news article about the war. I saw it as my duty."

I want to speak, but it's as if I've lost the right. Nothing I know makes sense anymore. Not science, not spirituality, and sure the fuck not karma. I find out I have a daughter only to disappear from her life. How is that fair? I love her. I already miss her so much.

"A family friend pulled strings, so I went straight from a privileged life here to the Order of St. John field hospital at étaples during the Battle of the Somme. That was.…" he calculated, "July to November 1916. The Western Front."

God, how did he live through The Great War? How did he stay kind, and humble, and caring? I know a little something about being a doctor in a conflict zone. He must be hiding so much—what he feels, what he went through, how the war affected him. In his time, that's what they were taught.

"Sometimes," Delano continued. "Something happens that is so outside our preconceived ideas that it changes everything. The civilized world you thought you knew is only an illusion. The way you see your fellow man is fundamentally flawed. Is that how you feel?"

"I don't know how I feel."

"Forgive me for asking, but…did the men who beat you…." He wipes a nervous hand over his lips. "Did they violate you as well?"

"Oh, God, no. And nobody beat me." I can see why he'd wonder. I acknowledge I'm in shock, but not for that reason. "I fell down a steep hill, I think. Hit every tree with my face and torso on the way down."

He seems terribly relieved to hear this. He brings his chair closer, and his face hovers over my hand. It would be nothing to touch his cheek. To see if its cool perfection is fact or fiction.

"Doctor Hamilton," he says. "I've seen things you couldn't imagine. Did you serve?"

"Not—no." Not in the Great War. I've been in sketchy situations with Médecins Sans Frontières, but I don't tell him that.

"That's right. Too young. You missed out on a lifetime of nightmares."

I see his pain, so I cover his hand with mine. I don't even think about what it might mean here, in this time. He doesn't take his hand away. In my world, where there are no wooden floors or army cots or dust storms, it would be unexceptional. Though I'm rarely the one offering comfort, people do it all the time.

But it's 1935, and while he held me earlier it's because I was losing my shit. I'm sure it's not acceptable for two men to hold hands in the normal way of things, but I don't want to stop. I've known this man for less than a day, yet I feel like I've known him forever. There is a connection growing between us, and I want to feel it physically, like static between our fingers.

Delano sees how lost I am because he knows what it feels like to be lost.

How did he put it? Something so outside our preconceived notions the fact of it changes everything? That certainly that applies to war, but it also applies to waking up in the wrong century. Would he believe me? I reach for the table, where I left the newspaper folded up. I smooth it with the palm of my hand. Fold it so the date shows prominently.

"Doct—" I cough. It's so dry here; that's probably why my throat feels like I swallowed cleanser. "Dr. Delano."

His dove's wings eyebrows take flight toward his hairline. I can't help smiling.

"Is this today's date?"

He shakes his head. "Yesterday."

I don't know what to say next, only that I have to say something. There will never be a better time. It's only the two of us, and Delano seems to be in a nostalgic, confessional mood.

"When I went to the carnival, it was Friday, April seventh, 2023."

His earnest expression fades. His lips tighten. His blue eyes louver closed.

Nothing gives away what he's thinking.

"Say again?" he demands.

"When I went?—"

His fists clench, "Yes, I heard that. Tell me that date again?"

"The seventh of April in the year 2023."

"I used to play a game with my brother where we tried to guess which day of the week Christmas would fall on in any specific year." He sits very still. "The seventh of April, 2023 is a Friday."

"Yes. I had just completed an emergency surgery. Teen with severe chest trauma. The procedure was complex. I don't know if the boy will make a full recovery. I phoned my daughter to ask what she wanted me to bring for dinner. She's a vegetarian, and sometimes it's hard to know what she'll eat. She informed me she was going to a carnival. She said Don't wait up. That's teen speak for fuck off, you know. I controlled my temper and told her to wait until we could discuss it in person."

A small smile played over Delano's mouth. "She went anyway?"

"How did you know?"

"I've met a teenage girl or two. I don't suppose they've changed very much."

"I went out to look for her, but the carnival was…strange. I found her, but she ran away." I open my mouth, then shut it again. I sound crazy to my ears. How can I not sound crazy to him? "I know I'm dreaming. This isn't real. None of this is real, except there's you and the newspaper, and the army cot, and…" I have to look away or I'll start crying again.

"What else do you remember?" He's sitting so still. Is he afraid of me now?.

"I followed Sophie into the Fun House. That was Friday, April seventh, 2023. I couldn't stand it, so I left through the emergency exit, and I woke up in your infirmary this morning April seventh, 1935."

For the first time since I've met him, Delano has nothing to say. From his facial expression, he's practicing to become a goldfish. The silence is unbearable. I'm already trying to tease out the worst-case scenario from all the horrible outcomes I can dream up. Incarceration. Institutionalization. Exorcism.

"Say something. Don't you have some lovely aphorism about time travel? Say it in that cream-at-the-top of American society accent of yours?"

He startles. "I have an accent?"

"We call it transatlantic, dahling, as if you didn't know. Very Nick and Nora Charles in the Thin Man series."

"Series? There's only the one film."

"That you know of." Because they're guilty pleasures of mine, I've watched them all more than once. " The Thin Man , After the Thin Man , Another Thin Man , Shadow of the Thin Man ."

Delano's eyes widen. "Dear God. Are there really so many more?"

For a moment, I think he's going to cheer. "That's what convinces you?"

"I like that movie. That what you say is?—"

"True? Yes." The color leaves his face for all the places blood goes when a man is orienting or freezing after a mental shock. Typically, one's heart rate lowers and one's blood pressure increases. The main physiological objective is to interrupt the ongoing action and give space to form a new response. Fight or flight. It's the biology of humans to freeze for a split second when they're surprised.

I feel a little bad for administering the stimulus, so I take a leaf from Nora's playbook. That's Nora, without the H.

"Nicky, this calls for a drink."