Discovery of the Moment Ch. 02

I looked my daughter dead in the eyes as I sat down on the cold convenience store tiles. "Honey, I'm going to need your help, okay? We have to get your mother to a hospital immediately. Baptist is only about four blocks away, but we can't do it in a car. Cars don't work here. I need someone to help me carry her and you're the only person on Earth than I can trust right now."

Kelly glanced at her mother's prone, lifeless body, taking in every detail and noting that Sarah was no longer bleeding. She looked around the store again, saw the clerk frozen in time, and then back at me. "What's happening? Did you do this?"

"Yes, Kelly, I did. Well... kind of. I don't know exactly how I'm able to do it, but I have the ability to step outside of time." Before she could stop me, I continued with my story, beginning as a child and finishing to the point we were at then, stuck in a nightmare of a crime scene. It took me several minutes and I was careful to leave out the part about taking advantage of her some weeks earlier in the bathroom, but by the time I was done, I could tell that she accepted my story as truth. Her first question was to ask me where I left the bodies of the robbers. "I left them in the past," I told her flatly. "From your subjective point of view, they are about five seconds in the past. For me it's been more like just under an hour since the first one, about fifteen minutes for the third. Every trace of them is gone, though. I simply left them where they were and came back to Normal Time, only to find that they had disappeared. I guess that's what happens to things I leave behind when I go Between. Their bodies won't be found by anyone and the whole event will just be chalked up to a weird thing that no one can explain. No money was taken and, if we're very careful about this, no one will ever know we were here at all."

"But what about Mom?" she asked, pointing at Susan. "And all the blood? Won't somebody notice that? Won't the clerk tell the police that a woman was shot and then suddenly disappeared, right along with her husband and daughter?"

I nodded. "Yes, of course he will. And, at the end of it all, he'll probably be taken to a shrink to hopefully just let go and forget about everything. Or maybe he'll think he was having a nightmare or hallucination or something. As for the blood, we can clean it up here, while we're Between. We didn't buy anything and haven't paid for the gas yet, so there will be no financial record of us ever being here. We can just wipe down everything we touched and push the Jeep somewhere down the road- no physical evidence of us being here, either."

"But what about the video cameras? They always show those video tapes in the news, Dad. There's got to be-"

I cut her off with a shake of my head and stood up. "Come with me," I told her. I've worked in places like this when I was younger. We both went to the door marked "Employees Only." Of course, it was left unlocked. Some managers require that the door to the office always stays locked, but I knew that most night clerks tended to ignore that rule due mostly to laziness- people hate having to fiddle with the keys twelve times in a single night. So I just pulled the door to the office open, walked inside and we quickly found the security VCR. I grabbed Kelly by the hand and flipped us back to Normal Time for just a few seconds so that I could hit the eject button. Outside, in the store's lobby, we heard the clerk start to freak out as the tape was spit out by the VCR. As soon as I had the tape in my hand, I took Kelly back to the Between state with me. I held up the tape, set it down on the floor and walked away from it. "Next time we go back to Normal Time, that tape will be gone, totally erased from history. No tape, no evidence. With the exception of that poor kid behind that counter," I pointed to the poor sap as he was frozen in the act of calling 911, "there is now no way to tell that we were ever here. Now... let's go clean this place up. It'll be a lot simpler than it would be in Normal Time."

Kelly, totally shell-shocked by what she'd been through so far that night, just followed me back out into the store and helped me to delicately move Sarah's body onto a broken-down cardboard box. After that, true to my word, it was child's play to clean up the small pool of blood. Remember, when I'm Between, all fluids are extremely thick and don't really behave like they do in Normal Time. With five minutes of decent effort there wasn't even a stain on the cool, white tile. Sarah's body, however, was a bloody mess. We delicately cleaned up as much blood from her skin as we could, but we were careful not to disrupt the gunshot wound in any way- the doctors at the hospital, I'm sure, would find that both curious and helpful once they began to work on her. After that we checked the area meticulously for any drops of blood that might have been transferred elsewhere. When we were satisfied that the store was completely clean, and neither of us were covered with blood, we both regarded my wife's severely damaged body. Kelly, to her credit, had been quiet through all of this, ready to do whatever was necessary without coming unglued. I'd like to think that the discipline of being an athlete helped her stay focused the entire time, but I'm pretty sure that she was just too mentally numb to do much analytical thinking and was simply content to follow my directions. Once we had cleaned up all the blood, we found ourselves standing over my wife's body. I glanced up at Kelly and saw her shaking like a leaf.

I put a gentle and loving hand on my daughter's shoulder and pulled her into a hug. "You're doing great, honey," I said with encouragement. "I know this isn't easy for you, but if you can stick with me for just a little while longer, we'll be through with all of this and we can get your mother to safety. Right now she's okay and not losing any more blood- and she won't if we're very careful. But until we're sure that she's in the hands of good doctors," I said as I broke the embrace and looked her straight in the eye, "I'm going to ask that you hold it together for as long as possible, okay?"

Kelly looked up at me with a sort of distant, unfocused gaze for several long seconds. Suddenly, much to my surprise, a smile formed on her lips and she actually let out a small laugh. "It figures," she said, peering at me with a strange look in her eyes.

I thought, for just a fraction of a second, that she'd put together what happened in the bathroom. "What does, honey?"

"You," she said, her smile slightly fading, "and this ability you have, Dad. I mean, think about it. All your life, you've been surrounded by it."

"By what?"

She waved her hands around wildly, indicating the very air around us, the crazy look back in her eyes. "Time, Dad. Time! What did Grandpa do when you were a kid? He owned a shop that sold nothing but grandfather clocks and did watch repairs. That's what he did to put you through college. And what did you do in college? You majored in History and had a minor in fucking Quantum Mechanics!" She crowed with laughter. "Your entire life, Dad, has had EVERYTHING to do with Time. Ha! Look at what you do for a living now, Dad. Working for SETI? Nope. You- you're selling- heheh- TIME on the fucking RADIO! And NOW look at you, Dad. You've turned into that Hiro guy on Heroes! I mean, what the hell? How could you NOT see this coming?"

My daughter was coming unhinged, I could see it clear as day. The only thing I could think to do was to slap her once across the cheek, hard. And I did it without a second thought. The loud crack of my palm streaking across her face sounded like a thunderclap in that silent world and her voice fell deathly quiet. She put a hand to her stinging cheek and just looked at me with shock and surprise. It had been many, many years since I'd ever caused my daughter pain- and even in those rare times, I had done so only as a disciplinary measure. "I'm sorry, honey," I started plaintively.

But she cut me off. "It was you," she said in a near-whisper as her mind found some clarity. "Holy fuck, that explains a LOT!"

I bowed my head guiltily, knowing that she'd finally figured it out. God, how I hated myself right then. But I still had my wife to think about and, even though her condition couldn't get worse while she was frozen in Time, I didn't want to take any more chances. We needed to get her to a hospital quickly. "Kelly," I started, "I- I'm sorry, honey. I'm so terribly sorry. I won't deny it. But now isn't the time to-"

"To what?" my daughter fired back angrily at me. "Talk about it? Why not, Dad? From where I'm standing, I'd say that we've got all the TIME in the fucking world!" She balled up her fists as her face contorted into fury. "How COULD you? You son of a bitch!"

I looked at my daughter with the eyes of a shamed and beaten man. "I don't have any excuse, Kelly. What I did was... it was terrible and wrong. I wish I hadn't done it, but I did."

"What were you thinking, you sick fuck! I'm your daughter!"

"I know!" I shouted back at her, feeling myself break inside. Having been caught in my indiscretion was bad enough, but to have my lovely daughter so angry at me, so ready to hate me, was heartbreaking. "I know. I don't know WHAT I was thinking. I was just... it was stupid and wrong and I'm sorry. I'd take it back if I could, honey, but I can't. Please, please, PLEASE forgive me. It won't happen again, I swear."

Kelly closed her eyes and tilted her head upwards to breathe and collect her thoughts for a moment. "I can't fucking believe we're having this conversation over my mother's body. This is... this is just SO fucked up!" she growled at the ceiling, her eyes still tightly shut. I said nothing as I stared at her, unsure of what she was going to say or do next. After a few seconds she opened her eyes and set them upon me with a steady, rock-solid gaze. "Okay," she said. "All right. We've got to focus on Mom and get her taken care of. But so help me God, Dad, we're not through with this. Not by a long shot. We ARE going to talk about this later. Understood?"

Like a little kid who'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, I nodded my head sheepishly, chastised by my own daughter. I didn't think that she'd turn me in to the police, but I didn't doubt that she'd tell me off something fierce before the night was over. And, to be perfectly honest, she had every right to. "Understood," I said.

My daughter took one more deep, cleansing breath and exhaled. "All right. So. What do we do about Mom? How do we get her to the hospital if we can't drive?"

I looked around us, hoping to find something that we could use as a sort of gurney for my wife. Nothing jumped out at me until I glanced at the parking lot outside. I remember seeing a Home Depot across the street. I'd spent many long hours in the Home Depot near our house, as most men undoubtedly have, and immediately knew they'd have just the thing: a flat cart. "Stay here," I told Kelly. "I'll be back in a few minutes." Without another word, I walked out of the convenience store, leaving my daughter to watch over my inanimate wife, and headed across the street. I found a flat cart in the Home Depot parking lot and came back to the convenience store just a few minutes later.

As I rolled the cart through the doors Kelly expressed surprise that its wheels worked even though it had been frozen in time. As we gently and very gingerly got my wife onto the cart (her body hardly moved at all from its originally prone position) I explained how simple machines tended to work just fine, regardless of whether I took them with me or not. "So why not get a bike or something?" Kelly asked reasonably.

I shrugged. "Logistics. Too complicated, really. First we gotta find a bike, then we've got to construct a make-shift gurney that won't break and attach it to the bike. I wouldn't have the foggiest idea where to find a bike at this time of night and the time it'd take to make a gurney could be better spent doing what we're doing now- getting your mother just four blocks down the street to the closest hospital. Once we do that we can push the Jeep out of here and leave it somewhere safe."

Kelly shook her head in disbelief. "I've got to hand it to you, Dad. It seems like you've really thought this out."

I shrugged, forgetful that she was going to probably burn my ears off with some hearty shouting later, and said, "Well, it's not like this is my first trip into frozen Time, y'know? I've been Between lots and have learned, the hard way, how to make do with what's readily available."

A sour look crossed Kelly's features as she said, "I see. So does that mean I'll have to get a chastity belt and hide the key?"

The sting of that statement actually made me flinch. She didn't follow it up with anything more, but I had a feeling that there was lots more to be said when this was all over. "No," I said. "I promised you, Kelly: that'll never happen again."

My daughter gripped the handle bar of the flat cart, chewed her upper lip for a second and said, "Like I said, Dad. We'll talk about that later." With a push, she got the cart rolling. "I don't know about you, but I'd like to get as far away from here as possible." I stood aside as she pushed past me. Once she navigated the cart outside the store's doors, she pulled it to a slow stop. "Tell you what, Dad. You push and I'll make sure Mom doesn't fall off." I heartily agreed to that arrangement and pushed the cart into the parking lot and down the street.

About thirty minutes later, and luckily without any mishaps, we had pushed the flat cart into the hospital's ER lobby. It looked like it was a quiet night, which was a mercy to us and my wife, but we found ourselves in a stalemate about how to proceed next. The problem was that we couldn't just appear in the hospital lobby with a woman on a cart who had a gunshot wound in her chest. And we couldn't really think of a decent story to explain how she'd been shot in the first place without making ourselves sound like idiots. The only solution I could think of was to get an actual hospital gurney, place my wife on it and then leave her there right in front of the reception area while we returned back to Normal Time. The receptionist would see my wife's unconscious body and call for help. Explanations could be dealt with later.

But Kelly had a better idea, one that I'm ashamed I didn't think of myself. The simplest and easiest solution to ensure my wife's safety and recovery was to bring a doctor into the world of Between with us. He could then work on my wife's wound without fuss or worry about time. Yes, it was a gigantic risk to let a total stranger learn about my ability, but my wife's life was at stake and the more time we could give to the doctor to save it, the better off Sarah would be. And, at the end of the day, my wife's survival was what mattered most. "Besides," Kelly reasoned, "it's not like anyone would believe him, is it? I mean, who's going to believe a story like that? Some guy comes into the ER, grabs a doctor and stops time so that the doctor can save his wife? They'd call him nuts." The smile on her face, one showing supreme confidence in Humanity's tendency towards incredulity, is ultimately what sold me on the idea.

So it went like this: we left my wife, as originally planned, right in front of the receptionist's desk. The two of us walked back to the Home Depot, returned the flat cart and then went to the convenience store to push my Jeep (which was easily put into Neutral) about a block away, all of which took about half an hour. When we were satisfied that the vehicle was safe, we walked back to the hospital in silence and returned to Normal Time just outside of the ER's entrance. A few seconds later, we walked into the ER to see what would happen next. As expected, the receptionist had immediately called some doctors to help my wife, who was still as unconscious as she had been when she first got shot (which, for her, had only been less than thirty seconds ago). A moment later a doctor took charge of Sarah's treatment while Kelly and I watched on quietly and pretty much unnoticed. As soon as my wife was in an ER operating room, a few minutes later, I flipped Time with Kelly at my side. The doctor who'd decided to treat my wife was a man who looked to be in his early thirties, fresh-faced and with a confident bearing about him- his name tag read "DR. ROBERT WASHBURN." We walked into the operating room as he was bent over my wife, checking her pupil dilation. They had already drained fluid out of my wife's lungs and were ready to stabilize and prep her for surgery. Kelly and I then took to the task of removing everyone from the room except the doctor and placed them back in the ER's lobby. That done, we joined Doctor Washburn back in the O.R. I held Kelly and the doctor's shoulders and flip-flopped between the seconds, dragging Doctor Washburn with us back Between.

His reaction, naturally, was one of surprise and disbelief. It took my daughter and I a good bit of time to convince him that he really was trapped with us between the seconds and that he could save my wife's life with infinite ease. After nearly a half-hour of explanations and me giving him a crash-course in the physics of the Between World, Doctor Washburn finally started to accept the reality of his situation. He kept saying, "I just can't believe all of this. I'm seeing it, but I just can't believe it!"

Finally I grabbed the doctor by the shoulders and gave him a single throttle. "Doc! I appreciate how mind-blown you are right now, but I need for you to get your shit together and fucking fix my wife! Now. Is there anything you need from Normal Time? Any devices or monitors? Any tools or supplies?"

Washburn blinked at me a few times and, miraculously, he came into clear focus. Once I'd mentioned the immediacy of my wife's need, his own shock and awe completely disappeared and he was suddenly all business. "Oh. Uh, no, I don't think so. I mean, I'm not a surgeon, but in your wife's current state I can do everything necessary on my own. You say that complex chemical reactions don't work very well here, and she's frozen in time and unconscious anyway, so there's no real need for drugs. And with the way her blood works in this state it'll be a piece of cake to see what I'm working on. No, sir, all I need is a scalpel, some forceps, suture thread and a needle. And it's all in that cart," he indicated an upright crash cart behind me. "Now if you'll excuse me, sir, I've got work to do. It'll probably take about an hour, give or take. If you would, please wait in the lobby with your daughter until I come and get you."

I let go of his shoulders with a curt nod. About fucking time, right? Kelly and I left the doctor to do his work in peace. In the meantime, we had some matters to discuss. We went to the lobby, as instructed, and sat down across from each other to rest for a minute after everything we'd gone through.

But Kelly didn't waste any time, once she knew that her mother was in good hands. "Okay, Dad," she said seriously. "NOW we can talk."

I slumped down in my chair, totally resigned to my fate, whatever it might be. "Go ahead, honey," I said. "Let me have it."

Kelly was silent as she thought about what she had to say. I waited patiently for what seemed like forever and when she finally started speaking, what she said was not at all what I'd expected. "I guess I should thank you," she said. I looked up at her sharply in disbelief. "That... event was, easily, the most incredible thing I'd ever experienced. Yes, what you did, Dad, was fucking wrong in every way imaginable, but in the last couple of hours I've had some time to think about it and come to terms with it. You promised me that you'd never do it again, but Dad, I've got to get something off my chest." She took a deep, steady breath as I sat there in stunned silence. "As wrong as it was... it felt REALLY fucking good." My mouth dropped open at that admission, but she apparently wasn't done just yet. "Next time, Dad, I would really appreciate it if you'd just ask me. I'll probably say yes anyway."