Reaching Through Time (19 page)

“If you like.”

He might be taking her to a cemetery. “I would like to go with you.”

He slung the stone, watched it skip five times over the water’s surface. “I’ll pick you up at two.”

Someone was watching her house. Maura felt traces of a presence the second she went in the door. The cats, which always mewed and greeted her when she arrived, had hidden under the bed. She discovered them quickly with her mind probe. Her senses tingled and she tasted real fear. The time police were the only entities who could have come. They hadn’t yet breeched the security system or the mental safety block she’d set up around the house’s perimeter. But eventually they would.

The next day, she went to Jerry. “May I take one of the abandoned dogs home with me?”

Jerry kept a few animals, fed and cared for them, worked to find them good homes. “What’s up?” Dylan’s father asked.

She put on a worried-scared expression that wasn’t entirely fake. “I thought I heard prowlers around my house last night.”

“Where are your grandparents?”

She remembered she was supposed to be staying with them. “They’re sort of deaf.”

Jerry nodded. “Sure. Take Chowder.”

The big German shepherd could be difficult, but Maura was one of a few who could handle him. “Thanks. I’ll bring him back once I feel safe.”

“Maybe your grandparents will want to keep him,” Jerry said hopefully.

“Maybe,” she said, hating to lie again but knowing it was necessary. Chowder was accustomed to cats, and Maura personally found that cats were good company, requiring little care. But the dog would bark if he sensed anything unusual near the house. He would warn her if she was in danger from the searching probes of the time cops, and she would have time to run.

On Sunday Maura dressed in clothes she’d bought with her paychecks, adding big sunglasses to hide her eyes and avoid broadcasting any telltale messages about her feelings
for Dylan and the possibility of seeing Catherine’s grave. Now knowing he was suffering from survivor’s guilt—the guilt people felt because they lived though another had died—she would be able to treat him more easily. Yet whatever was lurking behind his memory’s walls remained a mystery.

He picked her up promptly at two o’clock. They talked little, or rather, Dylan talked little. Maura told stories about Chowder, how he had jumped up on the kitchen counter and gobbled down the frozen bagel Maura was getting ready to toast for her breakfast. “The bread was frozen solid, but he got it down in about three chews and a swallow.”

Her story drew a half smile from Dylan, yet the farther he drove into the country, the less she was able to engage him. His aura was charcoal rimmed in black, the color speaking of death and unforgivingness. At one point she braced for him to turn the car into a cemetery they were approaching, but he didn’t turn. He kept driving down the long straight back road to his destination. Maura waited, repressing her ability to read his thoughts. She vowed to be patient, to let him take her to whatever it was he so dreaded. When he did turn, it was to enter a long driveway with a low brick building at its end. A sign read
GOOD SAMARITAN REHABILITATION CENTER
.

Puzzled, Maura followed him through sliding glass doors to a lobby, where a woman was sitting behind a
reception desk. She looked up, smiled. “Hello, Dylan. Good to see you.”

“Here to visit,” he said. “A friend,” he added, motioning to Maura.

The woman eyed Maura. “Both of you need to sign in.”

They complied; then the woman buzzed them through another set of glass doors. Dylan walked down a hall with sure steps, obviously knowing his way well. Maura kept pace. He stopped in front of a closed door and rapped softly. “I come on Sunday afternoons because no one else is usually here,” he explained. “I don’t like other people around when I visit.”

Maura’s heart was pounding; she was positive that what lay beyond the door was at the root of Dylan’s unstoppable pain.

Though she heard no summons to enter, Dylan eased open the door and she followed. There was a single bed in the room, plus a dresser and a bedside table. In the bed lay the frail, thin body of a girl with a ventilator hose snaking out of her throat.

“This is Catherine,” Dylan said, a catch in his voice. “She’s in a persistent vegetative state. So tell me, Maura … is she dead or alive?”

M
aura slowly raised her sunglasses to see Catherine more clearly. The girl’s body was a husk, yet her nails were groomed, lovingly manicured and painted, her dark hair brushed and held away from her face by a sparkly barrette. Her eyes were open but expressionless.

Catherine’s life force was missing. Her mind, her essence, no longer remained. The hallways of her thoughts and experiences were empty, the landscape gray and dead, like earth scorched by a nuclear blast. Maura saw nothing but a wasteland of tangled nerves and blood vessels and vacated memory cells. All that was functioning were the girl’s automatic reflexes. Her heart beat; her lungs filled only with an assist from the ventilator. Her eyes did not see; her ears could not hear.

Dylan walked to the bed, bent and kissed Catherine’s forehead. “Hi, baby,” he said.

His words stabbed Maura’s heart.

“She blinks,” Dylan said. “She wakes and sleeps. She can move her arms and legs. She even smiles. But it doesn’t count. It’s reflexive. That’s what her doctor tells us—me and her parents, her sister. She’s here but gone. Crazy, huh?”

Maura had read about PVS in textbooks, but she’d never seen such a patient. It was so sad she wanted to cry. “I—I’m sorry.…”

“Everyone’s sorry. Except Catherine. She doesn’t know a thing.” Dylan stuck his hands in his pockets. “So now you see why I’m no hero? Why did I save her? For what? For this? The accident happened two years ago, July fifth. We were at a party at Brad’s folks’ house on Mirror Lake.”

Maura had familiarized herself with the Clarksville area in the library and brought up a map inside her head. The lake was a smudge of blue on the north end of the city. And she remembered Brad from the ice cream store. Maura saw the image of the house and lake that Dylan projected.

Dylan rocked on his heels. “She was in a coma at first. That’s when we all had hope that she’d wake up. But she didn’t wake up.”

“If they pulled the vent—”

“They did. She kept breathing without it. So they put it back to make it easier for her.”

Maura examined the shunt inserted directly into Catherine’s abdomen to supply water and liquid food.
She stood transfixed, overcome with pity. “Without the feeding tube—”

“She’ll starve to death.” Dylan’s words conveyed sheer hopelessness. “Her parents won’t allow it.”

Maura knew Dylan couldn’t face that consequence either. Dylan, Catherine’s family, her doctors and caretakers, couldn’t “see” inside the girl’s brain as Maura could. They used tests and machines to confirm what Maura’s Sensitive abilities viewed plainly: no amount of care was ever going to bring Catherine back. She was a living corpse.

“So you come every week to visit her,” she said.

“Of course. It’s because of me that she’s here.”

“How do you figure that?”

He rubbed his forehead. “I was driving. I braked to keep from hitting a deer that jumped out into the road. The car skidded. I woke up on the ground. That’s all I remember.”

Most of his story was true, but Maura realized parts were conjecture manufactured by logic, reconstructions of the few memories he did have. But the glass wall in his mind was still intact. She ached to know what lay behind it, and fought the temptation to find out. “I should wait outside,” she said, stepping back toward the door. “You came all this way to visit her. Take your time.”

He turned to the bed, picked up Catherine’s limp hand and kissed it. Maura couldn’t bear to watch. She left
the room, steeling herself, wondering how she was going to help him when, despite all her intellectual abilities and willpower, she was falling in love with him.

In her dream, Maura’s two worlds were colliding. Her future time stream kept blending with the time stream she lived in now. She saw her parents in Dylan’s house; her mother, Diane, working over Sandra’s old-fashioned cooktop. Her mother’s image brought pangs of loss. She missed her, and wondered how her family felt about their daughter’s being a time fugitive. Picking up the time-travel device and recklessly pushing the button had changed everything about her old life—not only for her, but for the people she’d left behind.

Still, if she hadn’t pushed the button, she’d never have met Dylan or tested her clinical skills. Be truthful, she told herself in the dream. Her interest in Dylan far exceeded her medical interest in him.

She saw her best friend, Shalea, sitting on the sofa in the house where Maura now lived. Maura ran to her. “I’ve missed you so much!”

“We’ve missed you too,” Shalea said, her manner offhand, as if Maura had been gone fifteen minutes instead of almost three months. Shalea was reading, studying the piece of glowing electronic paper in her hands. “You’ve missed so many classes. How will you catch up?”

Maura waved away her friend’s concerns. “Let me
show you whom I’ve met.” As a Sensitive, she could place pictures into others’ minds, and she did so, focusing her efforts on the moonlit night by the river. She sent every sensation she’d felt too: the shivers, the pounding heart, the feel of Dylan’s skin, the scent of him and the night air.

“Wow,” Shalea said. Her dreamscape eyes grew wide enough for Maura to see her own reflection in the pupils. “What do you think you’re feeling?”

“Love.”

Shalea burst out laughing. “That’s silly. He’s an antique. He’s no better than a caveman. You can’t love him. Aren’t you curious about whom the elders have paired you with? A modern man, for sure.”

Maura began to cry because Shalea’s words hurt her. “Not true. It’s wonderful to discover someone you love by chance. Much better than some guy assigned by committee. Besides, Dylan needs me.”

“The committee is protecting your DNA, making sure it goes to offspring who will shape society.”

“You sound like a professor. Think with your heart, Shalea.”

The scene shifted and Maura was in a dark wood. She heard wolves growling, saw their red eyes glowing in the night. Her heart seized, but when she turned to run, her feet were rooted to the ground. The growling intensified. She panicked, felt a scream rise in her throat.

She woke with a start, heard real growls next to her
ear. Chowder. Maura bolted upright in bed, listened carefully. “What’s wrong, boy? What do you hear?”

The dog’s simple brain was easy to navigate. She heard what Chowder was hearing, twigs snapping in the yard, caught the scent of “stranger.” Maura’s heart hammered. Whatever was outside hadn’t penetrated her mind shield yet. If it was the authorities though, it was only a matter of time before they did.

Days later, Jerry had an emergency case come into the clinic. Sandra came to pick up Maura and run her home since Jerry couldn’t and Dylan had a job that was running late. As Maura got into the car, she said, “Thanks a bunch. I didn’t want to wait around. No telling how long the emergency will last.”

In truth, Maura wanted to be home at night. She felt certain that when the cops came for her, they’d come at night because it would be easier to take her under cover of darkness. She wanted a chance to escape when they came, and she wanted to feel herself close to Dylan and the area they’d met for as long as possible.

“No problem,” Sandra said. “I had to take the girls to dance recital practice. The big event is Friday night, with a nice reception afterward. I hope you’ll come.”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

“Hey, why don’t you come by the house and have dinner with me? I fed the girls earlier, but I haven’t eaten. Nothing fancy, just a burger.”

“I should get home.”

“Dylan can run you home. He shouldn’t be too much longer.”

The thought of seeing Dylan broke Maura’s resolve. Eating something she didn’t have to cook was appealing too. Unfortunately she’d developed a taste for meat, especially hamburgers with melted cheese.

“I’ve been hoping to get to know you better,” Sandra said.

Maura sensed a hidden agenda but wasn’t offended. She had many questions for Sandra as well. “Can’t pass up a good meal,” Maura said brightly.

In Sandra’s kitchen Maura watched the woman slap raw meat into flat patties. Maura hated the look of the meat, but once it began to cook outside on the grill, the aroma made her mouth water. While Sandra tended the burgers, Maura sat at the patio table and poured herself a glass of iced tea from a frosty glass pitcher.

“Have you had a good summer? Anxious to go home?”

Maura realized Sandra was softening her up for the real questions she wanted to ask. Maura saved her the trouble by saying, “I went to the rehab center last Sunday with Dylan, and I saw Catherine.”

Sandra’s expression went from cheerful to haggard.

Maura said, “Dylan told me about the accident. He told me everything.” She wanted to build Sandra’s confidence, wanted Sandra to know it was safe to talk about the tragedy with her.