Page 38 of Never Quite Gone

“These are all...?” I couldn't finish the question, but Alex understood.

“Yours,” he confirmed gently. “From different times, different lives.” He moved through the space with familiar grace, illuminating pieces one by one. “Florence, 1487. Paris, 1924. Each time you're drawn to art, to healing, to creation.”

I drifted between paintings like a man in a dream. Here, a Greek temple against a sunset sky, oils still carrying the scent of memory. There, a jazz club in smoky colors, music almost audible in the brushstrokes. Every canvas felt like a window into another life – lives I shouldn't remember but somehow did.

“And you?” I asked, turning to find Alex watching me with that ancient tenderness. “What are you drawn to?”

“Finding you. Always finding you.”

The words should have felt overwhelming, dramatic, too much. Instead, they settled into my soul like puzzle pieces clicking home. But...

“Michael,” I whispered, my hand going to my ring. “I loved him. Love him still.”

“Of course you do.” Alex's voice held no jealousy, only understanding. “Love doesn't divide, Eli. It multiplies. What you had with Michael was real and true and precious. Nothing about these memories changes that.”

I stopped before a particular painting – a sunlit studio in Florence, afternoon light falling through tall windows. In the foreground, an easel held a half-finished canvas. But in the background, partially hidden in shadow, a figure watched the artist work with undisguised devotion.

“You never said anything,” I murmured, the memorysurfacing like a photograph developing. “You'd just... be there. Watching.”

“You were so focused when you painted,” Alex said softly, coming to stand beside me. “So completely in your element. I didn't want to interrupt.”

The tenderness in his voice made my heart ache – not just with remembering, but with the realization that he looked at me the same way now. Had watched me work in the ER with that same quiet devotion.

“I don't know how to do this,” I admitted, gesturing at the gallery of impossible memories around us. “How to reconcile what I'm remembering with what I know. With who I am now.”

“You don't have to figure it all out tonight.” His smile held centuries of patience. “The memories will come as they're meant to. The understanding too.”

“How can this be real?” I whispered, but the question held less skepticism than before. “How can all of this be real?”

“Some things are beyond scientific explanation,” Alex replied, moving to stand beside me again. Not touching, but close enough that I could feel his warmth. “Some truths have to be felt rather than proven.”

My wedding ring caught the gallery lights, and I twisted it absently. “Michael and I were happy,” I said softly. “Really, truly happy.”

“Yes,” Alex agreed simply. “You were. Are. That happiness is part of who you are, part of what made you ready to remember everything else.”

My logical mind still rebelled against what my soul had already accepted – the paintings that carried my signature through different eras, the journals filled with my handwriting in languages I shouldn't know, photographs that captured impossible moments across time.

“Why do you remember and I don't?” I asked finally, voicing the question that had been building all night. “Why are your memories clear when mine come in fragments?”

Alex's expression shifted to something careful, almost guarded. The change was subtle, but after hours of studying his face by gallery lights, I caught it instantly.

“That's part of what happened,” he said softly. “Part of the pattern we need to break.”

His hand hovered near mine on the edge of a display case, not quite touching but close enough that I could feel the warmth of him. The space between our fingers felt charged with possibility and hesitation, like the moment before lightning strikes.

Outside, Manhattan was waking up. Traffic sounds drifted up from the streets below, delivery trucks making their morning rounds, the city returning to its normal rhythms. Reality pressing in around our bubble of midnight revelations.

Alex stepped back smoothly, understanding in his eyes.

“You have questions,” he said, his voice gentle. “Many more than we can answer now. But the memories will come. They always do.”

I looked down at my hands, noting with distant surprise that they were steady despite everything we'd discovered tonight. These surgeon's hands that remembered ancient medicines, artist's hands that had created beauty across lifetimes.

“The battle,” I started again, needing to understand that one crucial memory that had started all this.

But Alex was already shaking his head. “Not yet. Some truths need time.”

Morning light strengthened, breaking the spell of our night among memories. I needed to get home, shower, become Dr. Monroe again before my morning rounds. But as I turned to leave, Alex caught my wrist.

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