Borrowed time

CHAPTER THREE

Grief doesn’t come all at once.

It seeps in. Quietly. Patiently. Like water in the cracks of stone.

When I finally figured out there was something wrapped around my lungs, it had been a long time since I could remember what it felt like to breathe without having to struggle for air.

I hung around the hospital floor long after the tears subsided. Long after my body went numb. I sat, my back touching the hard wall, my knees pulled against my stomach, staring at the spot on which I had seen that man.

Where he had existed.

Where he had disappeared.

Nothing was any different in the corridor. The lights still hummed. A truck clattered by, off somewhere down the hall.

A distant phone rang.

Life went on in a manner that was almost insulting.

But I couldn’t move.

Because if I moved, that was giving up on the fact that what I’d just had wasn’t real — and even worse, it might be.

You’re in shock, I whispered to myself.

That’s all this is.

People hallucinate after trauma. I knew that. I’d read about it. The mind reaching for sense when the world becomes so harsh it can see no more. Creating stories. Creating faces.

Creating men who promise time.

I find the idea repugnant.

I buried my palms in my eyes until white sparks erupted on the insides of my lids. The hallway was still as empty when I dropped my hands.

Good.

That was good.

Eventually, someone touched my shoulder.

I winced so hard, my heart throbbed painfully against my ribs.

“Aurelia?” a nurse said gently.

Somehow her voice was too low, and also far away. As though it had come to me through water.

“Your mother’s asking for you.”

I nodded, even though my body hadn’t quite got there yet. Let her help me stand. Have her walk me back through hallways I didn’t know anymore, my feet following auto-pilot while the rest of me lagged behind.

My mother sat just where I’d left her.

Only… smaller.

That’s the word that got stuck in my chest.

She appeared somehow folded in upon herself. Her shoulders hunched protectively; she twisted her hands in her lap. When she saw me, something loosed in her face and she reached for me like reflex.

I caught her unthinking in my arms.

Her tears soaked the fabric of my shirt. Hushed, shattered noises that cut through me worse than the sound of a scream ever could.

I’m here,” I whispered, though I wasn’t exactly sure where here was anymore.

That way, we held each other for a very long time.

No one rushed us. There was no attempt to fill the silence. The hospital appeared to have grasped that there were moments too fragile to disrupt.

Paperwork followed.

Signatures I can barely believe are mine. Questions that I just let all pass me by. Dates, names, confirmations.

“Yes.”

“No.”

“I don’t know.”

At a certain point, a doctor asked if we would like a minute.

I didn’t answer fast enough.

They covered my father’s body anyway.

The sheet slid over his face and the finality of that gesture snatched my chest.

I hadn’t said goodbye.

It was a belated, bracing, unforgiving epiphany.

That morning, I had not said that I loved him. Hadn’t realized it would be the last opportunity. The weight of that unfinished instant rested in me, heavy and immobile.

The sky was cruelly bright outside.

Too blue. Too alive.

The world seemed to have made some terrible mistake by continuing.

I drove us home.

I do not recall even turning the key. Or stopping at lights. Or how my hands didn’t shake on the wheel while everything inside me unraveled.

I remember thinking he’ll never sit here again.

The thought appeared out of nowhere and rooted itself next to my ribs.

When we got home my mother went straight to her bedroom and closed the door.

I didn’t follow.

I wandered instead.

The house felt wrong. Like the set of a stage after everyone had gone. His shoes by the door. His mug still in the sink. The jacket he always neglected to hang up properly tossed over the chair.

Every item I’d been charged by something I couldn’t put a name to.

Eventually I flopped down onto the couch, staring at the ceiling as day grew tired around me. It was silent everywhere, dense with suffocating stillness.

That’s when the memory resurfaced.

You want time.

My jaw tightened.

“No,” I said into the empty room. “I don’t want madness.”

The more I tried to push it away, though, the clearer it got. His voice. Calm. Certain. The way he said my name like it was very old to him.

Like he’d been waiting.

I did not sleep well that night.

I had dreamed of clocks with no hands. Of hallways that circled back into themselves. My brother’s voice calling my name from somewhere out of reach.

I woke up with my heart pounding, sheets bunched around my legs, mouth dry.

Something felt wrong.

Not loudly wrong. Not enough to scream.

Just… misaligned.

The light from the window looked too sharp, as if the world had been turned up a notch too bright. My first reaction was to reach for my phone on the table next to me, but I hesitated as I pulled my hand back.

I didn’t know why.

The date blazed on the screen.

I frowned.

Checked it again.

Same date.

A creeping sensation of something very wrong knifed through me.

You’re exhausted, I told myself. Your brain is fried.

I rose to my feet and went to the window.

A neighbor’s car was in the driveway of the house across the street. One which I was absolutely sure hadn’t been here yesterday.

I dismissed it.

Until I saw the tree next to it.

One of its branches—whole again.

My stomach tightened.

The limb had broken in a storm. I remembered sweeping leaves off the driveway afterward.

Remembering how my father grumbled about the mess.

I picked up my phone again, scrolling more quickly now.

Old messages surfaced. And exchanges I had not witnessed for years. Names that should have been further away suddenly seemed too close.

Then I saw it.

My brother’s name.

My breath caught painfully.

The time stamp next to the message was not recent.

It was five years old.

“No,” I whispered. “No, no, no.”

This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be real.

My phone buzzed.

A new message.

Unknown:

You asked for time.

My blood went cold.

Another message followed immediately.

Unknown:

Now you stand inside it.

I shook as I looked at the screen with my hands.

Slowly, my gaze lifted to the dark reflection staring back at me.

For just a second—

I felt that there was someone standing behind me.