Page 27 of Parallel

“Something’s wrong,” Nick barks at the staff, his eyes focused on a monitor overhead.

The doctor glances at us. She is setting things on a tray, slow and methodical, without a clue how bad this is about to turn. “She’s fine. Everything’s fine.”

“It’s not,” he insists, and his voice sharpens. “Check everything. Check every goddamned thing you think you don’t need to check because something is wrong.”

“Dr. Reilly, you need to calm down,” she says sternly, “or we’re going to have to ask you to leave.”

He leans over me. His concern has turned to panic. “Honey, you’re okay,” he says, but I feel it already, the dimming inside me. I want to cry out and beg the universe for one more minute, a chance to explain, but I know it’s useless.

My lids start to flutter. The world grows thick and slow, too liquid for me to grasp. I start to sink beneath it.

An alarm triggers. “Goddammit!” Nick shouts, rising. “Look at her blood pressure. I need Levophed, stat!”

The door opens, and that’s when I see her—the woman who enters silently, her pale blond hair shimmering beneath the hospital lights. The room is in chaos and no one but me even notices her. She is capable of terrible things, just like me, and her presence here means the end of everything. Of this life I wanted so badly. “No,” I whisper. “Don’t. Please.”

“There’s no other choice at this point,” she says.

I turn to my husband, taking in the face I love so much. “Wait for me,” I plead. “I’ll find you, but you have to wait.”

Nick’s panicked, desperate face is the last thing I see.

My eyes fly open. For a moment my limbs are unresponsive, weighted, and I can’t even cry out. It feels as if I’ve been held underwater for too long. A part of me wants to fight and another part is lethargic, ready to sink low.

It only takes a few seconds before it subsides and I pitch forward, gasping for air, limbs flailing. What the hell just happened? It’s the same dream I had as a child, but it’s the first time I’ve ever woken feeling as if I was dying.

I climb from the bed with my pulse racing, too scared to fall back asleep, and go to the living room. I turn on the TV and all the lights, wishing Jeff was awake too. What would have happened if I hadn’t woken when I did? It terrifies me, the power these dreams seem to hold.

I spend hours pacing or curled in fetal position on the couch. Eventually I’m able to convince myself I only thought I couldn’t move, but what I cannot shake, even hours later, is the horror I felt—not just of the woman who entered the room, but of myself. I truly believed there was something terrible inside me—something I had to hide from Nick.

I sense it inside me still. And I cannot shake the sense that Nick is the one person capable of setting that terrible thing free.

By the time Jeff rises, I have a plan. A plan born of desperation, but surely even that is better than no plan at all. Jeff is the right choice, the good choice, and he deserves far better than what he’s been getting from me of late. I need to do whatever I can to stick to the path I’ve been on for our six years together.

“You were up again?” he asks. “Stress?”

It’s easy enough to nod in the affirmative. I’ve never been more stressed in my life. “Yeah,” I say. “And I was thinking…maybe we should just go to Vegas. It seems like the wedding is triggering my seizures, and we don’t even know if I’ll be able to make it through the ceremony without having one. So maybe the solution is just to get it over with.”

He laughs. “I’m marrying the most beautiful, brilliant woman I’ve ever known. I want everyone we love to see it happen. And people already have plane tickets. Think about the money your mom has spent.”

“We can still do the big wedding,” I say eagerly. “We’ll just do Vegas first. It all feels so monumental. It’s like we’re wrapping the biggest moment of our lives up with the biggest performance of our lives, and it’s too much.”

“Honey—” he pleads. I hear apology, and thus refusal, in his tone. “I’m killing myself trying to get stuff squared away so we can go on our honeymoon.”

Despair makes my voice hitch. “I know. But it could be a quick trip—”

“Hon, when would we even go? I’ve got the trip today and three more over the next month. Between that and my bachelor party and your bachelorette, we just don’t have the time.”

My shoulders drop. He’s right. I’m not sure why I even suggested it. Jeff doesn’t have a spontaneous bone in his body. “Ignore me. I’ll be fine.”

He kisses my forehead and moves away. He’s relieved, but I am not. It feels like we’re racing against time. I don’t know the consequences of losing this race, exactly, but if these dreams continue until the wedding, I’m pretty sure I’ll find out.

Nick calls again that afternoon. I sit rigidly, swearing to myself that he’ll be nothing more than my doctor from now on, yet from the moment he says hi, I’m rolling the sound of his voice over and over again in my mouth, like it’s my last piece of chocolate. “I’m actually calling for a favor,” he says.

Excitement and dread both seep into my blood until I can’t tell them apart. “What kind of favor?” I ask.

“Darcy—you met her the other day—is having a birthday party tonight at six. It’s actually her half-birthday, but…you know. And she’s completely smitten with you. She told her mom you look like Starfire.”

“Starfire?”