Page 12 of Parallel

I cannot lookaway.

My mom and Caroline politely disagree about table placement and if we need one bar or two, and my eyes are locked, unmoving, on that house, seeing it in my head, though it’s at least a quarter mile away—a wide deck, a dock with a tiny boat bobbing alongside it. I see Nick there too, younger than he was in London. That dream I had last night…it took place there. I’m certain of it. Images sharpen in my mind, and I begin to shiver, hugging myself forwarmth.

“Goodness, Quinn, what’s wrong with you? It’s almost ninety degrees,” my mother says, but her voice is distant, tinny, and then there are no sounds atall.

* * *

I land on the floor,hard, my legs tangled in sheets and butt naked aside fromthem.

I have a single moment in which I am utterly blank. Unsure of the month or the year, or why I’m in this room with high, arched windows, winter sunlight illuminating dust motes in the air. And then a face appears over the side of the bed. Blue eyes flecked with gold, broad shoulders, the flash of asmile.

“I’m trying not to laugh,” Nicksays.

I grin. “This is very sexy, isn’t it, the way I’m all splayed out on thefloor?”

There’s a gleam in his eye that wasn’t there moments before. “Honestly? Yeah. Alittle.”

He reaches one long, perfectly formed arm out to hoist me into bed. I land on top of him, smiling as I take in his face. God, I love him so much ithurts.

“Good morning, Mrs. Reilly,” he says, nuzzling myneck.

I breathe him in. “Good morning, Dr.Reilly.”

Outside, Paris waits, but neither of us care. We are drunk on the novelty of this, waking up married. I’ve been a bit drunk, truthfully, on the novelty of having found him at all. Two Americans who chose London at the same time. If I hadn’t gone to the hospital for a migraine days after arriving, if Nick’s rotation hadn’t gotten messed up, so that he was in neurology rather than peds that week—I can’t even imagine. There is obviously something greater at play with us, something more than mere fate. But whatever it is, even if we can never explain it, it’s somethinggood.

“We’ll need to call home and tell our parents today,” he says. We’ve avoided this, knowing it would meet with nothing but objections on both sides. I’d like to keep avoiding it,personally.

“They’re going to think we’recrazy.”

He pushes my hair behind my ear. “It is a little crazy. But they’ll get it once they see us together. We’ll go back to the States over break, charm everyone, and they’ll befine.”

I sigh. “I’m not sure my mother will be as easily won over as you think. But then, I wasn’t easily won over either, and look at menow.”

“I am looking at you now,” he says. He flips me so I’m flat on my back and then looms over me, his gaze on my mouth. “And it looks like you need to be won over a littlemore.”

I pull him down, waiting for the delicious weight of him settling against me, but before it happens, there is this din in my head, sudden andloud.

The dull throb of a migraine, and a voice—shrill, unrelenting as an alarm. I’d give anything to silenceit.

“Quinn!” a woman’s voice cries, the pitch rising. My head feels as if it’s splitting open from the inside, as if it will cleave into two perfect halves like a watermelon. I groan and push at my temples as I force my eyes open. I’m standing in the grass, beside a lake, being shaken by this panicked woman and Nick…isgone.

The memories flood my brain: the quick wedding in London, Nick and I unable to stop smiling through the whole thing, fully aware it was insane to marry someone you’d known so briefly. The honeymoon itself, spent mostly naked in our hotel room. The dread I felt at the thought of calling mymother.

My mother. It comes to me with a startled gasp—she’s the woman standing here, shaking me. My eyes open and fill with tears. Nick is not my husband. He’s notanything. How can he possibly not exist when I remember him in such detail? When I feel so much forhim?

“You just completely went blank there, like you were asleep standing up!” my mother cries. “You looked like a corpse! We’re going to thehospital.”

The pain is unbearable, a pendulum of it swinging through my brain, bruising me a little more with each rotation. Before I can argue that a trip to the hospital is unnecessary, I drop to my knees and throw up in thegrass.

* * *

I knowit’s different this time, that it’s serious. After the longest, most arduous car ride of my life, Caroline and I arrive back in the same emergency room I sat in last week. This time I’m taken straight to neurology, where a nurse says she’s going to give me something for the pain that will put me to sleep for a while.Will I even wake up from this? I wonder, as the needle goes into my arm.Do I really care if Idon’t?

“What’s going to happen?” I ask. My words are slurred, my brain sinking somewhere dark andhazy.

“You’ll be just fine,” she says with a pat on the shoulder. “I’ll make sure Dr. Reilly is there to see you as soon as you wakeup.”

My eyes flutter closed before I can ask if I’ve heard hercorrectly.

---