“I CAN TEACH YOU HOW TO crochet.”
Maria pulled her eyes from the window and followed the voice to the little girl sitting in the corner of the dayroom with her. Dr. Johnstone had promised to return before noon so they could discuss the hypnosis treatments with her parents, but so far there were no signs of him. Her outburst during the last session, and her stint in the quiet room, had put everyone on high alert, and there was talk about putting the treatments on hold. Dr. Johnstone said he would take care of it, get everyone back on board, and Maria was ashamed to admit, even to herself, that she hoped he’d be successful. She wanted to go home. She didn’t want to grapple with right versus wrong, and she was thankful that Henry was no longer beside her in the hospital to judge her for it.
“I can teach you how to crochet,” the little girl repeated, an unidentifiable mess of knotted yarn resting in her lap. “It’s really not hard, and my doctor says it’s therapeutic.”
She couldn’t have been more than ten, with tufts of orange frizz sprouting from her head like weeds and skin so pale it defied nature. The silver braces on her teeth gleamed in the sunlight when she smiled. One day she would be beautiful, but adolescence would undoubtedly be cruel.
“That’s wonderful.” Maria nodded to the project in her lap. “Is it a scarf?”
“You can tell?” She held up the misshapen rows of uneven stitches, her eyes unable to hide her delight. “You’re the first person to figure out what it is.”
Maria winked at her. “Of course it’s a scarf,” she said. “Anyone can see that.”
The little girl went back to work with a newfound determination, her hands delicate and deft, as Maria looked on, her heart breaking for all the things she had yet to teach her children: to crochet, and to read, and to ride bikes, and to do all the things she was always too busy to do. If it was a lesson someone was trying to teach her, she had learned it. She was ready to go home. She would be better. She would promise, swear on her life, to do whatever she was commanded to do, just to get home. She was so lost in her thoughts that she didn’t notice the nurse standing above her until she spoke.
“Maria?” she said. “You have a visitor in your room. Your grandfather.”
While the complexity of the news begged an explanation, Maria somehow had the prudence to bite her tongue. Even as she rose from her chair and followed the nurse down the corridor and back to her room, she knew better than to open her mouth. There was no way this woman could have known that Maria had no living grandfathers.
The old man who was propped on the edge of her bed and staring out the window sat unmoving. The thin strands of white, downy hair that fashioned a halo around the crown of his head created a stark contrast to the mottled skin on his scalp, and the gathers of wrinkled skin that sagged off his bones looked like they had been folded and stitched into place. The bones themselves were so brittle, Maria wondered if they might break under the weight of a heavy gaze. When his eyes landed on her, though, she had no doubt that his mind was sharp.
“Grandpa.” Maria draped an arm over his shoulder as she eased onto the bed beside him, her fingers running over the jutting edges of his scapula. The old man pulled her into an embrace with the strength of a man half his age.
“Maria, my dear.” He breathed in her image as he held her at arm’s length. “Look at you.”
In silence, they measured each other, the old man with the deceptively frail body and the middle-aged woman with the deceptively young one. The nurse paused at the door before she glanced back at the pair and smiled. “I’ll be just down the hall if you need me,” she said, pulling the door shut behind her and leaving the room to silence.
Maria shifted her weight away from the man, rising from the bed and slipping onto the wooden chair across from him, neither whispering a word until they heard the click of the shutting door.
“So,” she said, when she finally heard it. “Who are you?”
His dentures glistened between them as his smile spread to his eyes, which were trained on Maria as if they were etching the details of her onto a canvas in his mind.
“I’m George.”
The chair creaked in the silence that followed, as Maria scooted herself forward on it. The man she’d written off as a mistake or a misunderstanding on the part of Dr. Johnstone was pretending to be her grandfather and was wearing an expression that could almost convince her they’d known each other forever.
“How did you know I was here?” she asked.
“You don’t remember me?”
Her mind reeled with the explanation Dr. Johnstone had given her of the man named George who’d known where to find her. A man who was too sick to visit. A man he’d brushed aside as an afterthought. “Have we met?” she asked.
“Once upon a time,” George replied.
“Then why don’t I remember you?”
“Give yourself time,” he said. “You will.”
His eyes were the same deep brown as her daughter Emily’s, but rimmed with the blue halos of age, and as she sank into the depths of them, she could almost see her daughter sitting before her. Did this man know her daughter? Did he know the family she left behind? Had he come from the same world she’d been stolen from?
“But why are you pretending to be my grandfather?”
“No visitors allowed, per Dr. Johnstone’s orders. Except family. He told me when he came to visit me the other day.”
The deceptions were stacking up in a precarious heap, threatening to topple like a house of cards built on sand, and warning Maria to back off. This was the man Dr. Johnstone was asking about when he wanted to know if she’d had any visitors. It wasn’t Henry, after all.
“He doesn’t want me talking to you, does he?” Maria asked.
“No,” George replied. “He doesn’t. He’s afraid I’ll convince you to do the right thing.”
The right thing.
There was a certain amount of shame to those words, and the guilt was suffocating. Did this man already know she was going to let a little girl die? She didn’t need to ask him what he meant by “the right thing.” She already knew. If Dr. Johnstone was trying to convince her to go home, then George was there to save a little girl’s life. She could feel the tug between the two men, the yin and the yang, each certain that his path was the one she should follow.
“Dr. Johnstone said you were the one to tell him I was here,” Maria said. “Why would you do that if you didn’t want me to listen to him?”
“Would you have believed an old man wandering in off the street if he hadn’t been here first?”
Maria shrugged. She couldn’t imagine what she would have believed or not believed had George shown up in her hospital room instead of Dr. Johnstone, if he’d tried to convince her to save Beth. After everything she’d been through in the past couple of weeks, hypotheticals were impossible.
“How do you know each other?” she asked. “Is he a friend of yours?”
“Dr. Johnstone was a lost soul when I found him almost thirty years ago, drifting in and out of homeless shelters, hooked on drugs, rambling on to anyone who’d listen about coming back from the future. About how he failed to do what he’d been sent back here to do. He’s come a long way, and he’s not a bad man. In fact, he’s helped many people over the years. But he’s so blinded by his research and the guilt he feels over his own choices that he sometimes forgets why we’re all here.”
“You mean our purpose?”
“No one comes back without a purpose,” George said. “He told me you didn’t die, which is one of the reasons he’s so interested in you. He wants to send you back. He thinks if he can figure out how to manipulate this loophole, he’ll somehow be able to manage voluntary time travel in the future.”
“Maybe he’s right. Maybe there’s a reason I didn’t die, and I’m supposed to go back.”
“You were supposed to die, Maria. But sometimes…” He paused and glanced out the window, almost regretful to continue. “Some people just don’t know how to let go.”
With shaking hands, George pulled a necklace from beneath the collar of his shirt and slid it over his head, running his fingers over the engraving. The silver disk was tarnished with age and wear, and before he placed it in the palm of Maria’s hand, he wound the chain around it and kissed it gently.
“I’ve carried this with me for over six decades now.”
Maria read and reread the engraving.
FOSTER, PHILIP V.
PVT.
38 REG. 3 INF.
U.S.A.
It was an old military dog tag, the likes of which she was sure she’d never seen, but the memory of it pulsed through her synapses and fired into her brain, the image flashing over and over in her mind. “How do I know this?”
“You were just a child at the fair, with your mom,” he said. “My wife and I were sitting on the bench across from you, watching you lick the last of the cotton candy off your fingers. I’ll never forget how you cried when your mom dumped that mess in the garbage.” The creases running through his face deepened with his smile as his thoughts took him back to a well-loved and often-played memory. “You stopped crying the second you saw me, and then you marched right up to me and my wife like you’d known us forever.”
“Are you sure it was me?”
“I’m sure,” he said, and as she held the dog tag in the palm of her hand, the heat from George’s skin still radiating from it, Maria could hear the words she’d said all those years ago.
“‘Can I see your brother’s necklace?’” As the memory materialized before her, she closed her fingers around the metal disk. “That’s what I said to you.”
“My brother.” George smiled. “You were right. He was more of a brother to me than my own flesh and blood, but our brotherhood was formed by the blood we spilled, not the blood we shared.”
The distant gaze of his eyes had taken him far away from the prison-barred window of Maria’s hospital room, and though he appeared to be taking in the Alabama spring sky just outside that window, she knew he was seeing people and places and choices that must have lingered in his memory for far too long.
“I want you to keep that,” he said, pointing to the chain in her hand.
“I can’t take this. This should go to your family.”
“That dog tag is the reason I knew you would come back, Maria. The reason I kept an eye on you all these years, waiting for something to happen to let me know that you’d returned.”
“But kids say crazy things all the time,” Maria replied. “How could you be so sure?”
“When you’ve seen the things I’ve seen, you listen to what the universe is telling you. There are no coincidences.” The nature of his smile changed before her eyes, and even though she’d never had one in life, Maria felt certain she understood the love of a grandfather.
“How did you figure out that I’d made it back?”
“I knew when you didn’t show up to school that morning something was wrong. You were never one to miss school, and when you didn’t pass me on the bench where I’d sit and feed the birds every morning, I started calling the hospitals. And then I called Dr. Johnstone.”
He nodded to the dog tag, and their eyes met on Maria’s clenched fingers. “Philip was my best friend, but I didn’t wear that necklace all this time just for him. I wore it for you, too. Knowing you’d need a friend when you came back.”
“What happened to him?” Maria asked, nosing her way into a past that the man beside her had likely spent years trying to forget.
“He died,” George said. “The second time we fought through World War One, he died.” His eyes darkened and the tremor in his hands worsened as his memories dragged him back to a place that should have been reserved for nightmares. “You’d be surprised how different the map of Europe looked back then, and how difficult life was. It’s amazing what people can endure. But at least I had the woman I loved and my best friend by my side every day of my life.”
He paused, and with a heavy sigh, his body seemed to deflate into the bed.
“But then I came back,” he said, “and it was all gone. Philip died on July 15, 1918, along the Marne River in France. It was the second time we fought through World War One, although he never remembered the first. I could have saved him, like I did the first time, but his death was the reason I’d been sent back. My purpose.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Second Battle of the Marne. The fight that led to the end of the war. His death was all that was needed to change the course of that battle and ultimately the course of the war. He saved hundreds of thousands of lives. And since I was the one who’d saved him the first time, I was the one who had to let him go.”
Maria sat speechless, a thousand questions running through her mind, but deference forced her to keep her mouth shut. Hadn’t he suffered enough?
“You’re the only person besides my wife who’s heard that story. And that’s yours to keep.” He pointed a crooked finger toward the dog tag still resting in Maria’s clenched fist. “I always knew we’d meet again. I knew we were brought together for a reason that day at the fair, so I’ve been holding on to it to remind you that there’s a greater purpose to all of this and that you’re not alone in your suffering. This is all connected, Maria. The reason you found me at the fair. The reason you were sent back. It’s your purpose.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She could only see the little girl with the marble-like eyes staring back at her and the dirt falling over her face. Beth was waiting to be saved, and George was here to convince her to do it. She picked at the frayed edges of her bandage as she tried to stop the images from spinning through her mind, but her head pounded with the effort.
“My purpose seems so much less significant than yours,” she finally said.
“No purpose is insignificant. The choices we make every day are not just about us. They impact everyone around us in ways that you can’t even imagine.”
Maria had been so focused on her own circumstances and misfortunes, she hadn’t stopped to consider the incredible gifts she might offer the world. Diverting catastrophes like 9/11 and the floods from Hurricane Katrina. She’d already decided to leave a note for her mother, to warn her about the cancer that was lurking around the corner, but could she make an even greater impact on society? Would someone listen to her and change the outcomes of those tragedies that were lying in wait down the road?
“Is that what you’ve been doing since coming back?” she asked. “Saving people from disasters that you knew were going to happen?”
“Unfortunately, there’s no changing someone’s destiny when it’s their turn to die. Unless you were sent back to change their fate, there’s nothing you can do. Wars, floods, fires, assassinations. As much as I’ve tried, I’ve never once been able to save a life when fate was coming for it.”
Maria had already composed the letter to her mother in her mind, the words that would save her from cancer, and while she knew George was right, she also knew she wouldn’t be leaving her mother without penning that letter. The life that fate had sent her back to save, the life of the little girl in Ohio, was the one she wasn’t ready to spare.
“I was sent back to save a life,” she said. “But Dr. Johnstone says he can’t send me home if I do it. That I can’t have both. But I’m not so sure.”
“Once you’ve changed your destiny here, you’ll let go of the life you left behind. I’ve seen repeaters like you. People who couldn’t let go of that other world. But it will slip away when you fulfill your purpose. You’ll go through the in-between, and then there won’t be any going back.”
“The in-between,” Maria whispered, remembering the words Henry had used and wishing he was there with her, so they could travel this road together. “What is that?”
“The most beautiful gift you’ll ever receive, Maria.” The furrows of regret that lined George’s face softened before her eyes, years melting away as the story of his life was momentarily forgotten. “The in-between world is where you learn for sure what your purpose is, and it’s where you get to see everyone from every life you’ve ever lived.”
“How is that possible?”
“We don’t have the words in our human vocabulary to describe it. You see everyone you’ve ever known, but not with your eyes. And you speak and hear, but not with words or voices or ears. You don’t even really feel with your body, but you understand so completely who every single soul is, and you love them, and they love you, and no one needs to be told. And you finally understand what eternity is.”
Maria could almost feel herself slipping into this in-between world, seeing the four people she had been longing for since her return—her husband and her three children, one of whom she hadn’t even met. But she didn’t have to go through that to see them. She didn’t have to limit herself to an in-between world, even if it would feel like an eternity, because she had the option of returning to them in real life. They were just waiting for her to wake up.
“Only in death can you go through that in-between world and be reborn,” George continued. “You have to let go of that other world.”
“But if I don’t do what I was sent here to do, will I stay alive in that other world?”
“I suppose you would. But most likely you’re in a coma back there and you won’t wake up until you leave this world.”
Maria could hear her children’s laughter from the recent hypnosis with Dr. Johnstone, as they held the picture Will had sketched of her. The vibrant colors from the thick and clumsy crayons that had shown so clearly a woman lying seemingly lifeless in a hospital bed, with no baby in her belly.
“This life cycle you’re living right now is an extension of the one you left behind,” George continued. “And you were chosen to come back and change it. It makes you different. The rules have changed for you, and you can no longer have a conscious existence in both worlds simultaneously.”
“But it’s possible that I could linger on in a coma back there and continue to relive my life here? As long as I don’t do what I was sent back here to do?”
The implications of that were astounding, and as Maria thought of the many comatose patients she’d seen during her medical school training and residency, she couldn’t help but wonder if those people had been trapped in another world, if they had also just been too stubborn to let go. When they woke up, did they know where they’d been? Did they remember the purposes they’d chosen to ignore?
“You’re a scientist, like Dr. Johnstone,” he said, interrupting her thoughts as if she’d spoken them aloud. “That’s another reason he likes you so much. He thinks you’ll be easier to convince. But I hope he’s wrong. It’s time to let your past go, let your family have new lives.”
“New lives?”
“Your children will be born, with or without you, Maria. Whether they enter this world through your body or someone else’s, they will always be a part of it. Their energy can never be destroyed. Our spirits are constantly being recycled and evolving, and you were sent here to help with that evolution. Your children have been a part of every world that has come and gone, and they will be a part of every world that has yet to come, just like you and me and everyone else. But they won’t always be a part of your life. And sometimes, when they do cross your path, they’ll do so in different roles.”
The jealousy that hit her as she considered the significance of his words was so unsettling that she was embarrassed to even acknowledge it. Thinking of another woman cradling her children and wiping away their tears and hearing their first words was almost too devastating to imagine.
“Please don’t say that. I could never let someone else raise my children.”
“There’s no ownership in this universe, Maria. We all belong to each other. We all take care of each other. You’ll see that, when you let go of that other world. Only the strongest from among us are sent back and asked to make the changes that need to be made.”
“I don’t want to be chosen,” Maria said. “I don’t want to be strong. I just want my family back.”
“I know you do, and I don’t envy the decision you have before you.” He pulled himself from the bed with surprising ease and fetched a folded piece of yellow paper from his pocket. “You’ve been entrusted with something that feels too overwhelming to even consider right now. A task that would break most people. But you were chosen for a reason.” He placed the yellow paper into her hand and folded his fingers around hers. “Keep this somewhere safe, and get yourself out of this hospital. I’ll do whatever I can to walk you through this nightmare, Maria. But you must be the one to fulfill your purpose.”
George was gone by the time Maria found her voice. The gifts he’d left for her were heavy in her hands, their weight a burden she didn’t think she’d ever have the strength to shoulder, and as she thought about her husband’s little sister in Ohio, the image of her family began to fade from her mind.