Eighty-Sixed: Chapter 48 - ER

The bustling emergency room was filled with far more patients than medical staff.  Frankie was crammed into the corner of an overcrowded examination room and hastily stitched up by an angry nurse who persistently mumbled a litany of grievances as she jittered around. 

“Just wanted to help,” the nurse muttered as she patched Frankie’s wounds.  There was a hole on each side of his left bicep — one where a bullet hit and the other where it exited without hitting a bone or significant artery.  The nurse tightly — and uncomfortably — wrapped gauze around completed stitches.  “But no one else shows up, and everyone gets angry.”

“Well, thank you,” Frankie said.

“You being smart?” she asked.

“Not at all, miss,” he said, flashing her a toothy grin. “And if I was in any way rude, I apologize profusely.”

She shot him a gaze, eyes squinted.

“No matter,” she said.  “Probably the drugs talking. You’re good to go.”

“Got me drugged up, do you?”

“Just that one Percocet for pain,” she said.  “You should be good with ibuprofen going forward if you can find any.” 

“Lickety-split, just like that?”

The nurse looked over at Olivia standing off to the side.  She sized her up and down, giving this teenage-looking girl next to the nearly thirty-year-old Frankie a disapproving scowl.

“Your girlfriend over there can take you home if the roads let you.”

“Oh, she’s no girlfriend,” Frankie said.  “Just a Good Samaritan who helped a reckless old fool.”

The nurse managed a forced, sad smile and left.

Olivia turned her back then as Frankie struggled to change from the flimsy blue hospital gown and back into his jeans and t-shirt.  He groaned in pain as he stretched his arm through his shirt sleeve.

“Do you need help?” Olivia asked.

“Perhaps with my shoes here, if you don’t mind,” Frankie said as he returned to the hospital bed again. “You can turn around now, love.”

“So, do you make it a habit to jump into the middle of highway gunfights?” Olivia asked.  She unexpectedly shivered.  

The hospital was cold now, too much so, compared to the increasing July swelter on the other side of the window.  Olivia rubbed her hands fervently across her bare gooseflesh-covered arms and forced a smile, just as the nurse had.

“Well, that was a bit much, eh?” Frankie said.  He groggily fought to open his eyes.  The Percocet was kicking in.  “So it didn’t kill me, eh?”

“Bullet went right through.”

“Ah! What did I tell you?”

He smiled broadly despite his eyes involuntarily squeezing shut as if leaden weights held down the lids. 

Olivia looked at her watch and then up at the muted television screwed into the top corner of the small examination room.  

“You got somewhere to go,” Frankie said, more as a statement than a question.

“I need to find my husband,” she said.  “I haven’t heard from him since all this started.”

“Nor I, my wife.”

“Becca, you said. Right?  The astrophysicist?”

Frankie raised a tired eyebrow in surprise. 

“Did I tell you that?”

“You said she caused all this time travel stuff.”

“I think that nurse must have given me more than just that one pill,” Frankie said.  “I’ll be honest, I don’t remember much of anything I may have said.  And I’m embarrassed to say I can’t quite remember your name, yet here you are, sitting in this dank place with me.”

“Olivia.”

“Olivia, yes, that’s right,” Frankie said.  He allowed his eyes to shut again.  “And I’m Frankie.”

“Yes.”

“So, where do you think your husband might be?”

“My best guess is North Carolina,” Olivia answered.  “Where he grew up, and we used to live before I was suddenly back here.”

“Well, that’s a heck of a drive.”

“We’ve tried the phones for days now and can’t get through.”

“The same for me.”

“And there’s more to it than that, too.  I just need to see him.”

“More to it, how?” 

Olivia glanced at the television again, seeing the scene unfolding over a body of water, the throng of onlookers, and the black spots radiating and pulsing over Lake Michigan like something out of a science fiction movie. Olivia fiddled with her fingers.

“Well,” she said slowly, her words suddenly choked in her throat.  

For days, she’d barely spoken to anyone but her parents.  She’d had no one else to retell the tale of his tragic drowning, of his being pulled away from her and away from life, down into a current of water that squeezed the breath out of his lungs and took him far, far away from her and from their children.  

Mark and Rosie.  

The sound of their beautiful voices was now faint and flittering, fading from her memory with each passing day, no matter how hard she held on.  Her eyes filled with tears before she could say another word.   

“Don’t worry about it,” Frankie said into the silence.  His eyes opened again, and he was suddenly focused and alert, peering directly at her.  “It’s none of my business.”

“No, it’s not that,” Olivia said.  “It’s just that I buried my husband two weeks ago.  Right before all this started, he died.”

“I’m so sorry,” Frankie said.  “Before all this, then?”

“Yes.  Just days before.”

Frankie nodded.

“Kids?” he asked.

“Two,” she said, allowing her tears to well up and pour down her cheeks without bothering to wipe them away.  “And I don’t know where they are now, either.  And I feel like every moment, I’m about one second away from just losing my mind.  On TV, they keep showing all these famous people who were dead, and now they’re back. They even had Johnny Carson hosting The Tonight Show last night as if this whole freakish time travel thing is some wonderful kind of gift.  And now we’ve got Ronald Reagan back in the White House, and Michael Jackson is not only alive, but he looks like Michael Jackson again and not some plastic surgeon’s experiment.  And this is what is important to everyone.  This.”

“But you just want to see your husband again.”

Olivia lifted her hands to her face and wept.  Her entire body shook as she cried.  Finally, she took a deep breath, looked up at Frankie, and nodded, her face tight, red, and wet.

“If they’re those people alive, shouldn’t David be, too?” Olivia asked.

“I would think so.”  

“Even if I just buried him, that shouldn’t matter, should it?” she said.  She waved her hands around herself like an amateur magician, as if she’d just pulled off the ridiculous trick of transforming herself into a sixteen-year-old.  “I’m in a body that never gave birth, that in this world is still a virgin for that matter.  That was never married.  But I have a mind that knows that’s not true.”

Frankie stayed silent, nodding.

“And why can’t I get through to him on the phone? Why are the lines constantly busy?  They’ve grounded all flights, so I can’t fly to him.  And when I try to drive to see him, I get stuck on the highway.”

“And then you end up having to take this idiot to the hospital.”

“Well, at least you were trying to help me,” Olivia said.  “If you hadn’t been there, for all I know, that man would have shot me dead over a couple of peanut butter sandwiches.  Which maybe wouldn’t have been such a bad thing.”

“Listen,” Frankie said.  “I imagine once some of these drugs wear off of me, I’ll be a bit more coherent.  Let me help you find your husband.”

“What about your wife?” Olivia asked.  

Frankie pointed up at the television.

“See that?” he asked.

Olivia followed Frankie’s gaze to the television in the corner, which projected a crowd of people scrambling in multiple directions, panicked and exhausted.

“I don’t recognize that movie,” Olivia said.

Frankie laughed.  “That’s no movie. That’s the news.”

“What do you mean?”

“What we’re seeing right there looks exactly like what started all of this,” Frankie said.  “I was there at her lab — well outside the lab, at least — the night all this happened.”

“Are you serious?”

“I was going after Becca. Thought I could fix things, but right when I got there, one of those things — massive, mind you, much bigger than those right there — swallowed up everything and everyone in one huge gulp.  And then — pop — we’re listening to Frankie Goes to Hollywood all over again.”

“This is what caused it?” Olivia asked.  “And your wife did this?”

“It was her life’s work,” Frankie said.  “And she always talked about how close she was.”

“Why would she want this to happen?”

“Well, my suspicion is that she was trying to do something else but screwed up, and here we are.  Blipped back to 1986 or thereabouts.  But all this came from Becca’s research into wormhole travel or something like that.  But this is what we got instead.”

“This is still so hard to take in.”

“Your husband coming back…” Frankie said and then closed his eyes again.  For a moment, Olivia thought he had fallen asleep.  “Your husband — and you need to hold onto the belief he did come back — all of that. Listen, what I’m saying is that what you thought was a movie of the week on the TV there is what my wife bloody very well made happen at her laboratory.  I’m saying that for all I know, she’s out there somewhere and if she knew how to make this happen in the first place, maybe she’s figured out a way to do all this again.”

“They look like black holes,” Olivia said.  “The news only talked about some sort of time disruption that caused all this but didn’t say anything about black holes.”

“That’s right up the road from here,” Frankie said.  “Look.  Right there.  That’s Navy Pier.”

“Right up the road?” Olivia asked.  Her face felt sunken and hollow.  “How close?”

“Two miles, perhaps? Straight shot with no traffic.”

“How do they have video of it?” Olivia asked.  Her head was suddenly spinning, twirling, and disoriented with confusion. 

“That’s not video,” Frankie said as he struggled to slip on his shoes.  “That’s live right now.”

Olivia moved to his side, took the shoes out of Frankie’s hands, and wedged first one, then the other onto his feet.

“Thank you,” Frankie said, humbled as the girl tied his shoes.  “So what say we find your husband?”

Olivia thought of Mark and Rosie. 

“What say we find your wife?”

“I was married to that woman for decades,” Frankie said.  “And sometimes think I know her less now than I did way back then.”

“But you think she can reverse all this?”

“I honestly have no idea what she may be up to.  But I can tell you that unlike your situation with your husband on the other side of the country, she and I were living in the same place at the same time right around now, but she’s apparently skedaddled and hidden herself away.”

“But if that’s the news on TV, don’t you think they may be interested in helping to find your wife?”

“Son of a gun,” Frankie said suddenly as he bolted upright in the bed. 

“What is it?” Olivia asked.

On the television, the camera zoomed in the terrifying frenzy of the stampeding crowds as onlookers scrambled and trampled over each other, making every strained effort to escape.  

“I know her!” Frankie said.  

“Who?”

“Wait a minute,” Frankie said.  “She’s off-screen now.  Hold on. Can you turn it up? Maybe they’ll show her again.”

Olivia reached up to the television and manually turned the volume knob.

“There!” Frankie said excitedly.  “In the dress there!”

Amid the crowd running on the pier was a petite little girl in a pretty sundress, no more than ten years old.

“Who is she?”

“One of the most brilliant people you’ll ever meet,” Frankie said.  “An expert in electromagnetism.  And she pretty much hates my wife.”

“That girl?”

“That’s no girl,” Frankie said.  A smile crawled across his face.  “I’d recognize that gorgeous red hair anywhere.”