Carine’s necklace glinted from her distorted reflection in the nighttime window. The medallion felt heavy on her chest, hidden beneath her bleach-scented medical scrubs.
I can’t believe it’s been a whole year.
The coffee she clutched in both hands was too old and scorched to drink, but it thawed the October chill. She tapped a foot absently in the dim light of the breakroom while a lively pop tune blasted through her headphones.
The deejay cut in over the fading notes of the song. “That was ‘Take On Me,’ by the Norwegian sensation A-ha, rising to number one this week on the Billboard Hot 100. Stay tuned for—”
Carine clicked off the portable radio and stowed it in her locker. She dabbed her eyes with a tissue before heading down the hall to the nurse’s station.
Margot would love that song.
It was a quiet night in the step-down unit at St. Catherine’s. A couple of influenza patients had graduated from their respirators in the ICU. On the far end, a gunshot victim groaned softly as the surgical opiates tapered off. And across the aisle, as the charge nurse had explained, Carine would find their latest Jane Doe.
A couple of hikers had come across the elderly woman’s unconscious body in the forest outside of Three Rivers Park earlier that evening, carrying her the two miles back to their truck. After being treated for exposure and dehydration, she’d ended up on Carine’s ward to convalesce. In the morning, an oncologist would review the hospital’s initial diagnosis of late-stage lymphoma.
Carine was fussing with the blankets on Jane Doe’s bed around midnight when the old woman awoke, shuddering, taking in her unfamiliar surroundings. Her slotted eyes widened as Carine moved in close with a warm smile.
“You’re awake.” Carine took hold of a frail hand. “How are you feeling?”
Jane Doe blinked. Her voice was a raspy whisper. “Carine?”
“Y-yes,” Carine said, perplexed, then glanced at her nametag. “Yes, that’s my name. I’m the CNA on this floor tonight.”
The woman’s mouth quivered. “You’re a certified nursing assistant?”
Carine had grown accustomed to odd comments from patients waking from unconsciousness. Those unlucky enough to meet her professionally were far from their best selves. Jane’s confusion was unsurprising for how long she’d been under.
Keep her talking. Help her reconnect.
“Tell me about yourself,” Carine said, raising the head of the bed slightly. “Do you have a name?”
“I … uh …”
“Don’t worry. It’ll come to you. Why don’t you tell me what you do remember?”
“Traveling,” said Jane, as if the word were a prayer.
“You used to travel? Did you go anywhere interesting?”
Jane smiled. “Oh, Carine, I’ve been everywhere. Far, far away. Bright, magical lands. Dark, terrible ones. Places you couldn’t imagine.”
Margot would have loved this woman, thought Carine. She pushed aside the thoughts of her sister, but then something about Jane’s eyes reminded Carine of her mother. She turned away, willing her tears into submission.
“Are you okay, Carine?”
“Sorry.” Carine turned to blot her eyes on her shoulders. “I’m kind of emotional right now. I lost my sister a year ago today.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Jane. “What happened?”
“I don’t want to burden you.” She swallowed hard. “Let’s talk more about—”
“Please,” said Jane. “Tell me about your sister.” She extended her hand.
“Margot.” Carine took Jane’s cool, dry hand in hers. “That’s her name. And she isn’t just my sister, she’s my best friend.”
“So, when you say you lost her …”
“I mean literally lost, not dead. Well, I don’t know if she’s dead. I keep hoping one day she’ll come home.”
Carine pulled the necklace from underneath her scrubs. Affixed to the end of the silver chain was her half of the breakaway heart-shaped medallion she shared with Margot, her sister’s name engraved on its face.
“We saved up our babysitting money all summer one year to buy these.” She held the medallion close for Jane to examine, the shiny gold reflecting in the old woman’s wide eyes. Snippets of times past carried away her thoughts.
They’d hiked to the top of Ivy Hill to exchange their treasures in the late summer sunset. “We’re a perfect fit,” Margot had said, holding the two halves of the medallion together. “Promise me we’ll never leave each other.” They’d embraced as they made their vows.
“It’s lovely,” said Jane, shaking Carine from the memory. “So, your name is on her half? What a beautiful sentiment.”
“It would be,” said Carine with a frown, “except she left me. Now it’s just a broken heart.”
“Left you?”
“Well, I … I may have pushed her away.”
Jane’s brow drew together. “You would have to push pretty hard, I think, to lose a sister.”
Carine leaned against the edge of Jane’s bed. “Our parents died two years ago—in a shipwreck, of all things. They’d saved up for years for that cruise. I was eighteen, and Margot was sixteen, so I became her legal guardian. That was no walk in the park, let me tell you. I was always a bit of a homebody, but Margot … she could be downright feral sometimes. But despite our differences, we always found a way to work things out. Our folks had left us the house, which was paid for, so the only money we needed was for upkeep, food, clothes. I got a job working days at the Gap, while Margot worked part time at a movie theater. Together, we built a contented little home. At least until …”
Carine rubbed her temples. Why am I spilling my guts to this woman? she thought. I’m supposed to be getting her talking about herself.
Jane leaned up on her elbows. “Until?”
“It seems so silly now,” said Carine, shaking her head. “Margot had always been fascinated with UFOs and the universe and spacey stuff. She used to bore me to tears talking about galaxies and stars and black holes and the spacetime continuum. I can’t tell you how many nights I waited up for her when she snuck out to roam the countryside alone, following some rumor of a UFO sighting. When the story broke last year about a series of sightings in Nevada, she begged me to take her.”
“Did you?”
“No. I flat out refused. I told her we couldn’t just pack up and leave town for weeks on end. On top of the expense, we’d lose our jobs, and we had the house and yard to look after. Plus, she was just starting her senior year in high school. God, she was so pissed at me.”
Carine grimaced as Margot’s scowling face flashed behind her eyes. She’d hated being the responsible parental figure. Even worse, she’d hated herself for how disingenuous it had made her feel.
“Actually, I would have loved to have taken the trip, but I felt like I owed it to my parents to ‘do the right thing.’ By the time I’d come around to changing my decision, Margot was gone. I … I never saw her again. That was a year ago today. That’s why I got into this job, actually. My wages at the Gap weren’t quite cutting it.”
The gunshot victim across the room moaned, reminding Carine of the responsibilities of her new career. Flustered with having rambled on about her life to a stranger, she made her apologies to Jane and rushed off to tend to her other patients.
She never allowed herself to suggest that Margot had died, always careful to insist, “Margot is my sister,” and “Margot is my best friend.” The past tense was for the deceased. But if Margot had lived, she hadn’t tried to make contact, and Carine couldn’t tell which was more painful.
Satisfied that everyone was clean, dry, and comfortable, Carine again gravitated toward Jane, but found her sound asleep. A frisson rolled up her spine at how closely the woman resembled an older version of her mother. Figures the universe would choose today to confront me with such a vivid reminder of all that I’ve lost.
When her heart again swelled into her throat, she made no attempt to rebuff it. Tears blurred her surroundings.
“Come here, Carine,” whispered Jane, reaching for her. “There, there. It’ll be okay.” Jane pulled Carine close to the bed, running her thumb along the back of Carine’s hand.
“I-I’m sorry I woke you,” mumbled Carine.
“I’m glad you did. It seems like you need someone to talk to.”
Carine sniffled. “I just … I wish I could go back in time, back to before Margot left, back to before Mom and Dad …”
Sitting up, more lucid than before, Jane explained: “Traveling through time isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s important for our linear minds to stay in that forward groove. Strange things happen when we lose the concept of ‘now.’ Past and future are crucial to our identities. They’re how we define ourselves. No matter how painful the past may be at times, the future is always open to reinvention.”
Carine chucked through her sobs. “Sounds like something Margot would say.”
“She sounds like a smart girl.”
“If only I knew she was okay. That’s the hardest part of this. The not knowing.”
“What does your heart tell you?”
“It tells me I was too hard on her. This is all my fault. She left because of me. If she is alive, she probably hates me.”
“What if Margot’s travels have taken her somewhere that she can’t reach you? She may be desperate to make contact, but unable to, for whatever reason. In all my travels over the years, there were many times I wished I could reach out to my loved ones. It took learning I had cancer to remember what’s most important and come home. For a while, I was afraid I might not get back before …”
A tear fell from the corner of Jane’s eye and rolled down her ruddy cheek. Carine dabbed it away with a tissue.
“Carine, be a dear and grab my things from the shelf there, would you?”
Jane leaned over to rummage through the bin in which her faded and tattered clothes had been neatly folded. “It must be in here somewhere … ah!”
Carine blinked, disbelieving her eyes. In Jane’s hand was half of a heart-shaped medallion on a silver chain. Though it was tarnished and scraped, the engraving on its face was clearly visible.
“Wh-where did you get that?”
“I’ve had it for the last sixty years.”
“Margot?” Carine shook her head as she touched the rough engraving of her own name. “Is it really you? How …?”
“Remember how you always thought I looked like mom in her old pictures?”
“But … but you’re …”
“Old as the hills?” Margot smiled. “Yes, I know. Now we know what Mom would have looked like.”
“I-I’m so confused.”
“The night I left, I hadn’t even gotten to the county line before I turned around to come home to you. But they took me before I had a chance.”
“Wait. You were kidnapped?”
“Well, abducted. They don’t speak—not in the conventional sense—so I decided to call them the Voyageurs.” Margot patted the mattress beside her, just like she used to do when they were kids, staying up late into the night past their bedtime.
Carine pulled herself onto the bed, staring into Margot’s unmistakable face, hidden inside the creases of age.
“You were abducted by aliens?”
Margot nodded. “Their species evolved on a planet close to the supermassive black hole in the galactic center. Living next to such a powerful gravitational source had given them an innate understanding of spacetime. They learned how to manipulate it, to create shortcuts between points in space, between moments in time.”
Listening to Margot ramble, astrophysics was suddenly the most fascinating topic she could imagine. Then again, hearing Margot’s voice at all was the sweetest sound she’d ever heard.
“I’ve spent my whole life criss-crossing the entire galaxy with them,” Margot continued, “first as their specimen, and then eventually as their friend. Oh, Carine, it’s incredible, the life that’s out there. So many worlds. The Milky Way is absolutely teeming with life!”
“This is incredible!” Carine winced as the charge nurse glared at her outburst. She hopped down from the bed, blushing. “So, the Voyageurs … they decided to bring you back?”
“When they detected my cancer, I realized there was only one life that mattered to me—back here on Earth.” She held Carine’s hand between her own, gazing up at her with wet eyes. “I finally convinced them to bring me home, even though they weren’t planning to return to this arm of the galaxy for a hundred of our years. I’d asked them to put me back to the place and time they took me, but I guess they overshot it by one year.”
“And in that year, you’ve become my … my older sister. But Margot, your cancer. You’ve only just returned, and we have so little time.”
“At least I made it home in time to give you this.”
Margot held the two halves of their breakaway medallion together.
“There,” she said. “Still a perfect fit.”