Parallel Page 6

  Jeff looks up from his tray. “You okay?” he asks. “You’re all red.”

  Jesus. My fiancé is sitting five feet from me in the freaking hospital and I’m fantasizing about someone else. “It’s hot in here,” I say, waving a hand in front of my face.

  My God. What if it’s really Nick, my Nick, who walks in here tomorrow? What if he’s twice my age now? What if it isn’t him at all?

  I find each of those possibilities equally terrifying.

  * * *

  Jeff has already left for work by the time I wake the next day, and that’s probably for the best, given that I’ve spent another night dreaming about Nick, and London.

  Today I wake knowing it costs six pounds to take the Underground to Kensington. I know how to convert currency. I know that Covent Garden isn’t a garden at all but an outdoor mall, and that pants over there actually means underwear. And it’s different than things you’d learn from a book, or a show. I know these things, not as if I saw them, but as if I lived them.

  I climb from the bed and grab the wedding binder out of my bag. I draw the shops at Covent Garden. I draw a rough map tracing the streets I would take to get to the Underground. The walk to University College. Then, grabbing my phone and ignoring the wealth of angry texts from Dee—who was expecting me back at work yesterday—I go online and type in Harley Street, Marylebone.

  Before me a map appears, precisely matching my own.

  I hit the button to see a photo of the street view and there, on the phone screen, is the exterior I drew a few days ago—Nick’s flat, white stucco and brown brick. An arched portico, double doors. I even got the bushes in front right.

  I slam the sketchbook shut, feeling like I’m going to be sick. This isn’t possible, this isn’t possible. I’m seeing things, or this is some kind of extended dream. I open my eyes and the photo is still there on my phone, assuring me it happened.

  There’s a light tap on the door, and Caroline walks in carrying a big bag in her left hand. “Hey, sicko,” she says, oblivious to my freak-out. “You scared the piss out of everyone yesterday.”

  I force a smile. “Sorry. I hear I wasn’t such a fun travel companion on the way home.”

  “No worries. The stories I’ll have after your bachelorette will make up for everything, especially since I told Trevor to move ahead with hiring the prostitutes.”

  I laugh weakly and she swings the bag she’s carrying onto the bed. “I knew you’d be too freaked out about Dee’s wrath to go home to change, so I brought you toiletries and clothes.” She reaches inside it and hands me a smaller bag from Blue Mercury. “Plus a few other necessities.”

  I peek inside: Bobbi Brown eyeliner, mascara, and gloss. “I love you so much.”

  “More than Jeff?”

  “Obviously. All he’s ever given me was this dumb ring.” I smile as I say it, but Caroline’s known me way too long not to pick up when something’s amiss.

  “What’s up?” she asks. “I mean, aside from the fact that there’s obviously something wrong with your brain, that is.”

  I bite my lip. I’ve had a long history of hiding my strangeness from people, even her. I know all too well it’s something even those who love me most are unable to accept. But I can’t keep dealing with this on my own. Sighing, I hand her the sketchpad.

  “Look,” I whisper.

  Her brow furrows. “Uh…it’s a nice drawing? But you’ve always been amazing at drawing buildings.”

  “It’s London. Harley Street, in Marylebone. I keep dreaming about it, but I’ve never even been there. And you know what? Covent Garden. I thought it was an actual garden, but it’s not. It’s, like, an outdoor mall.”

  “Everyone knows it’s a mall.”

  “I didn’t. But now I know every store…” I trail off, frustrated by the impossibility of all this. Tears fill my eyes. “I know how to convert the currency. I know how to take their subway from Marylebone to Kensington. I’m seeing my life as if my father never died and it went on as I’d planned it. I’m in London, getting my master’s in architecture. I don’t remember my classes but I even wake remembering things I learned in them.”

  She sets the drawings aside and leans back in her chair. “You probably saw this stuff on the Travel Channel. God only knows how much knowledge we’ve all got stored in our brains.”

  “That’s not all, though.” My throat tightens. What remains is, by far, the worst part. The part I’m not sure I should say aloud, even to my best friend. “There’s a guy.”

  Her eyes light up. “Now it’s getting interesting. What guy?”

  “Nick. He’s a resident there, going into cardiology. We’re married. And insanely in love. I can’t even describe it. I had dreams about him when I was little, and they started up again after I passed out last week. But they’re not like dreams. It’s more like I’m living it all for the first time. I wake up and my brain is full of what I didn’t know the day before.” I don’t tell her my doctor here may be the same guy. I think I’m scared to say it aloud, worried I’ll jinx it.

  She frowns. “Look, I don’t want you to accuse me of being down on Jeff, because that’s really not what this is, but… it kind of sounds like you invented the guy who represents how you want to feel. He’s not real but maybe it’s your subconscious’ way of suggesting you think twice.”

  I shake my head vehemently. “But it’s not how I want to feel. At all. I just need it to stop.”

  Her eyes go wide. “Why the hell wouldn’t you want to feel like that? Everyone wants to feel what you’re describing.”

  I don’t, but I can’t entirely say why that’s the case. I just sense trouble. There’s something dark inside me, something I buried so deep I can mostly forget it’s there. But it’s been whispering to me again of late, ever since I started remembering Nick. And the terror of hearing it far exceeds the pull of wanting something more.

  Not that I can say any of this to her. There’s a limit to the amount of crazy you can share in one day, even with your best friend.

  “Because I already have exactly what I want. If this is my subconscious, I need a doctor who can make her shut up.”

  Caroline glances at me. “Or maybe one who can tell you why you’d choose to be less happy than you could be.”

  “You’re saying I need a shrink?”

  She comes to my end of the bed and wraps an arm around me. “Maybe. Or we just wait and see if Trevor has a better plan,” she says with a grin. “Warning: it may involve prostitutes.”

  There are still tears in my eyes, but I manage to laugh. “In that case, let’s keep this between ourselves.”

  * * *

  Caroline heads out to work, actually looking forward to her day. There are many times I envy her, and this is one of them. She’s at a point in her career where she is mostly calling the shots. If she wants to leave in the middle of the day, she leaves. If she wants to jet off on a safari with an Australian rugby player she met at a bar, she just takes off. It makes me think, once again, of returning to school. But as Jeff always reminds me, the money would be astronomical. It would take me five years, if not longer, before I had the education I need to start making money again, and all the while we’d be relying on Jeff’s income, which can’t exactly be relied upon. He argues that it’s impractical, and what can I really say in my defense? He’s absolutely right.

  A nurse walks in moments after Caroline has left. “How are you feeling today?” she asks. “I have the breakfast menu if you’d like to order.”

  “No thanks,” I reply. I still can’t eat. Until I see who Nick is, I won’t be able to hold down a single bite. “Will I…be talking to the doctor today?”

  She nods. “Yes, the attendings are meeting with the residents right now, but one of them will be in later.”

  One of them. So even if Nick is here, it might not be him I see.

  She mistakes my expression for impatience. “It looks like your friend brought you some stuff if you want to clean up. That way you�
��ll be ready to leave as soon as possible today.”

  I grab the bag Caroline brought and hop into the shower. When I emerge, I’m clean and dressed in far nicer clothes than any I actually own—designer jeans, a James Perse T-shirt that hugs my curves like it was made for me. Yes, it would be nice to live like Caroline once in a while.

  I shove yesterday’s dirty clothes into the bag and have just finished tidying up when there’s a knock on the door.

  Then Nick, my Nick, walks into the room.

  8

  NICK

  I’ve thought about nothing but Quinn all morning. I guess I just forgot she might not be quite as ready for our meeting as I am. She sees me and those stormy green-gray eyes open wide, her whole body swaying toward the wall like a tree in high winds. I lunge forward to catch her, and find I am standing far too close, my hands on her arms. But there’s a part of me right now that doesn’t care. It’s not about her looks, though God knows her looks alone would be enough. This is so much more than that. Something about her just compels me to move closer. She smells exactly like I remember, I think, before I correct myself. You can’t possibly remember what she smells like. You just met her yesterday for Christ’s sake.

  “I’m okay,” she says weakly, eyes focused on my chest.

  She lets me lead her to the bed, but perches on its edge, a captive preparing for escape. “This cannot be happening,” she whispers. She sounds near tears. “You’re real. I just…I don’t know how this is possible.”

  There isn’t a hint of guile on her face, so I dismiss Jace’s theory that she’s fucking with me somehow. But I don’t really have a theory to take its place. “I’m trying to make sense of this too,” I explain. “We must have met before.”

  She stares at me. Her mouth is like a peony just before it bursts open, full and round. I want to press my thumb to its center. “I really don’t think that’s possible.”

  “You’ve somehow managed to learn a lot about me,” I say quietly. “There has to be an explanation for it. When I checked in on you last night, you knew that I swim. You knew where I did my residency.”

  Her hand shakes as she pushes the hair back from her face. “That barely scratches the surface of what I know.” There’s something grave in her voice. An unnerving certainty.

  “What do you mean?”

  She looks at me for a long moment, searching for something she doesn’t seem to find. “You like bananas but won’t eat anything banana-flavored,” she finally says when I remain silent. “You gave up your shot at the Olympics to go to med school, but every morning you still swim because it clears your head. You had a flat in Marylebone during your residency. On Harley Street.”

  I blink. “How—”

  “Your favorite bar in London was the Golden Eagle. We were broke, but on special occasions you’d order a single malt scotch. You wanted to be a cardiologist because your dad has this heart problem, and it always bothered you that no one could fix it completely. But now you’re a neurologist, which makes no sense. I was the only person you ever knew who even needed a neurologist.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut. It is impossible that she knows these things. If she were to interview every person I’d ever known, she might be able to gather most of this, but not all of it. Meg knows maybe half, at best. I open my eyes to find her watching me again. She glances away, and then reaches for a binder beside her.

  “Since I’ve already completely creeped you out, look at this.” She opens the binder and pushes it into my hands. A drawing. Goose bumps crawl across my neck when I realize what it is. She’s drawn my flat in London. The interior of my flat. I push against my temples, trying to make sense of this. Nothing feels real, almost as if I’m asleep and will wake up at any moment pondering the bizarre dream I just had about a patient. Because it would be easy enough for her to find my old address with a little sleuth work, but how the fuck does she know what it looked like inside, down to the cow-shaped kettle my mother sent me as a joke? “How the hell do you know what the inside of my flat looked like?”

  “I have no idea,” she says. She is frowning, lips pressed tight. She seems as troubled by this as I am, so I’m inclined to believe her. At the very least I think she believes she’s telling the truth. But there has got to be an explanation. I believe in science. I do not believe in reincarnation, ghosts, fairies, vampires, or psychics. I don’t even believe in God, for that matter, and I think miracles are just another name for things we don’t yet understand. With enough investigation, I can make this make sense.

  “Okay, I’ll play along. How did we meet?” I ask.

  She winces. “Don’t say you’ll play along, like this is something I want to be part of,” she says. Her tone pleads with me more than it demands. “I’m engaged. Do you really think I want to fall asleep every night and dream about another man?”

  “I’m sorry. I phrased that poorly. In your dream that told you all this,” I say, lifting the sketch, “how did we meet?”

  She toys with the hem of her shirt. “I went to the hospital, right after I arrived in London. I had a migraine because I’d left my meds at home. And you came to discharge me.”

  “And when would this have been?”

  Her teeth sink into her lower lip. My gaze flickers to that peony mouth again. “Late August, probably four years ago. You wanted to watch the World Rowing Championship because you had a friend in it. Matt, I think?”

  I gawk at her, frozen aside from my heart, which is thumping so hard it would be impossible to miss. How? How could she possibly know this? Matt Langois was a friend from undergrad. He rowed for the US, and I watched it whenever I had time. “This can’t be happening,” I murmur. “This has got to be…I’m not accusing you of anything, but someone is fucking with us.”

  She sighs heavily. “How? It’s not like someone could climb into my head and make me dream all this up.”

  I have no answer to that, but it reminds me of the real reason I’m here. I glance at my watch. “Let’s table all this for now. I’ve got you scheduled for an MRI in five minutes.”

  She stiffens. “Is it necessary?”

  “There’s nothing to be scared of—you’re not claustrophobic, right?”

  She inhales and sets her shoulders. “No. I just don’t…never mind. It’s fine. What are you looking for?”

  “There are a couple of things that could be going on, but this is just a precaution. In all likelihood, everything will come back completely fine.”

  I rise but she does not. “What kind of things?”

  “A bleed, a cyst, a tumor. Really, it’s probably nothing.”

  She looks worried. I reach out to grab her hand, and I’m an inch from hers when I realize what I’m doing and jerk it back. What the hell is going on here? I’ve never tried to hold a patient’s hand in my life. It’s as if it was a reflex.

  I’m beginning to wonder if I need an MRI too.

  9

  QUINN

  Nick Reilly exists.

  I sit here on the edge of the bed, my mind trying to grasp it all, but the reality of him is too large to be held in one place and made logical.

  Nick, in my dreams, was beautiful. In real life, however, he’s so much more. He’s vital and male in a way I didn’t entirely grasp until now. The bump where his nose was broken, the tiny hint of a scar just to its left from a fist fight with his brother—they don’t mar the perfection of his face, they emphasize it. They roughen him up just the right amount, make him hot rather than lovely. Nick without that scar, without the small asymmetry, would be a face for photographers, for ad campaigns. Nick with those things becomes someone you want to have pin you to the nearest available surface.

  Which I remember him doing so, so many times. But to him, I’m simply a new patient. Potentially one who’s been stalking him.

  It’s me, some voice inside my head whispers to him. Remember? Remember our flat? Remember the way I’d wait for you to slide into bed and wrap yourself around me? Do you remember the fi
rst time you told me you loved me? The night you proposed?

  That same part of me cries out for him, wants to hold him tighter than I’ve ever held anyone, wants to breathe in his smell of soap and chlorine and skin and just remain there.

  Thank God the rational piece prevails. The part that knows this is not real life and remembers I’m in love with someone else. Just because you dreamed about him doesn’t mean it ever happened, the rational piece warns. It doesn’t make him yours.

  He asks how I know the things I do, and I proceed to recite more of them, my stomach sinking at the wary look on his face. Perhaps he’d appear relaxed to a casual onlooker, but I know better somehow. He’s restraining himself. Beneath that oxford his arms are taut, braced…against me? I’m not sure. God, I want so badly to press my mouth to that line between his brows, let it fall to the curve of his upper lip. As if I really need to do one more thing to ensure he sends me for a psych consult.

  Our bizarre conversation comes to an abrupt end when he suddenly remembers the MRI, the haze in his eyes clearing. We walk down a long hall, and then he uses his badge to open the doors to another area. I’m 5’7”, but next to him, I feel diminutive. His head bows just to speak to me. “So, you dreamed we met and what else?”

  I realize he’s humoring me. Of course he is—it’s not as if he thinks any of it is true. Even I don’t think it’s true, so why would he? “It’s a lot of just…normal stuff. Hanging out…dating stuff.”

  “That’s it?” he teases. “I must have been pretty boring, if that’s all you’ve got.” It’s a playful side of him, one I’ve seen in dreams but not in real life until now. He’s trying to take my mind off the MRI.