Page 7 of Time for You
“Aye. And I’d like to get home. I assume there’s a machine for that, too?”
“You mean a time machine? I already told you, those don’t exist.”
“I thought that was a ruse to make sure I completed my treatment here.”
“Well, it wasn’t.”
His brow furrowed. “Then how did I get here?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Daphne shrugged.
Henry opened his mouth again, but before he could ask anything else, Ellie breezed in.
Her hair was tied back in a messy bun, and she had a white stain on the side of her scrubs.
“I hear you hit someone with your bike?” she said without preamble.
She looked at Henry and wrinkled her nose. “Must have been you, huh?”
“Henry, this is Dr. Ellie Levine. Ellie, this is Henry MacDonald.”
Henry had jumped to his feet when Ellie came in, and he did a little half bow, half nod thing that made Ellie shoot Daphne a puzzled look. “You must be another lady doctor. Pleased to meet you,” he said, absurdly formal.
“I’m Emergency Medicine, not OB-GYN,” Ellie replied, confused.
“He means like, your gender. Not your specialty,” Daphne clarified.
Ellie cocked her head to the side. “Oh. Uh, yeah, I’m a lady, so ... yeah?”
Daphne peeked out the door to make sure no one else was on their way in. “El, I’ve got to tell you something. There’s literally no other way to put this, but—god, this is so weird. Okay, here goes. He’s a time traveler—”
“From 1885,” Henry interjected.
“Yeah, then.”
“Daph, James said you were fine, and the patient had, some, uh, possible issues, but—girl, do you need a CT?”
“I didn’t hit my head. And I was wearing my helmet.
I don’t know how to explain it, but this is the truth.
He showed up out of nowhere right before I hit him, and he’s from the past. I have no idea how to prove that to anyone, except with this.
” She pulled up the test results and let Ellie sink onto the stool.
Ellie skimmed through the lab report the same way Daphne had, frowning at various points and nodding at others.
And then— “Holy shit, he has smallpox,” she hissed, shoving as far away from Henry as she could.
She jumped up and started pacing. “We need to call—I don’t know, the CDC?
But we have to lock this room down right away. How the fuck did he get smallpox ?”
Ellie’s panic mirrored her own just a few moments earlier, but it helped ground Daphne. “He doesn’t have it. He’s been vaccinated against it.”
Ellie stopped in her tracks. “What? They stopped that decades ago.”
“They did. But if Henry’s from 1885, smallpox vaccination was mandatory then.”
“Daph—”
“Ellie, listen to me. I know this sounds absolutely bananapants, but—”
“Bananapants?” Henry interrupted. “What are banana—”
“It’s a saying. Means weird ,” Daphne said, and turned back to Ellie.
“Look, I know how it sounds, but if you’ve ever loved me, you have to trust me on this.
I was riding my bike, and he just appeared .
No cars nearby, no doorways he could have stepped out of, nothing.
He wasn’t there, and then he was, and he’s been very consistent on his story—he’s from Scotland in 1885, and given the evidence, I don’t know what other conclusion we can reach. ”
“He could have grown up in a cult,” Ellie argued.
“I didn’t,” Henry replied.
“Besides, how would he have been exposed to smallpox?” Daphne pointed out.
“I don’t know, cults are fucking weird. There could be a smallpox cult out there.”
“El, I get it. It’s—not believable. But it’s what happened, I swear.”
Ellie sat back down on the stool. “He’s a time traveler. Okay, sure, why the fuck not?” she muttered. “Now what? Where do we go from here?”
“You handled that remarkably well, Miss Levine,” Henry said. “A little profanely, but well.”
“Uh, thanks?”
“You’re quite welcome.”
“What do we do with him?” Ellie asked, turning to Daphne.
Daphne shrugged. “I had just finished processing the time travel thing myself when you came in. Psych said they don’t have room for him, and anyway, he’s perfectly sane, just—”
“From the past,” Henry supplied.
“Exactly. So that leaves ... the social worker?”
“So Kiana can send him to a shelter? Those are already overflowing, and if he’s from, um, the past, then how is he going to manage literally anything?”
“Maybe an inpatient program of some kind?”
“You yourself just said he’s not mentally ill,” Ellie countered.
“Well, do you have any bright ideas? Or are you just going to shoot down mine?” Daphne grumbled.
Henry cleared his throat. “Would either of you two ladies consider asking me where I’d like to go?”
Daphne stifled an eye roll. “And where would you propose going? Time machine is still out, as we don’t have that technology.”
“And I still find that hard to believe.”
“Believe it or don’t—either way, you’re stuck in the twenty-first century for now,” Daphne said.
“Then I guess no, I don’t have any ideas,” Henry admitted, and sat back down.
Ellie rotated slowly back and forth on the stool. “I have an idea, but you’re not going to like it.”
“She won’t, or I won’t?” Henry asked.
“Daphne won’t. She hates breaking rules of any kind.”
“What are you thinking, El?”
“Helen’s.”
“No.”
“Hear me out—”
“Who, or what, is Helen’s?” Henry interrupted.
“Our neighbor. She’s in Florida for the winter—wait, did you have Florida yet back then?”
“You mean the peninsula in the southern United States? Yes, that particular land formation existed.”
“She meant if you knew of the state,” Daphne said, not liking his condescending tone, seeing as Ellie was currently the closest thing he had to someone on his side.
“Again, I have some concerns about the state of education in this century.”
“Blame Reagan,” Ellie said with a hand wave.
“Almost everything is his fault nowadays. Anyway, Helen’s,” she said firmly, and fixed Daphne with a look.
“It’s empty, and we know it will be empty for a while.
It’s just across the hall, so we could keep an eye on him, and we have the key.
And there would be a locked door between him and us when we’re sleeping. ”
“I object to the insinuation that you need protection from me. I am a gentleman, after all.”
Daphne ignored him. “We promised Helen we would water her plants. This is not plant watering.”
“She did say if we needed anything, we could help ourselves.”
“I’m pretty sure she meant like, we could borrow a broom. Not store a whole-ass man from the nineteenth century in her apartment for god knows how long.”
“Do you have a better idea?” Ellie asked.
Daphne sighed. “No. But what do we do in a month?”
“We hope we’ve sent him back home by then? Somehow?”
“I thought you said time machines don’t exist,” Henry said.
“They don’t, but whatever brought you here has to go both ways, right? We just find whatever wormhole you slipped through and shove you right back where you came from. You know I’m right, Daph.”
Daphne fixed Henry with a stern look. “If you steal anything from Helen, I don’t care when you’re from, I’ll hunt you down.”
Henry nodded seriously. “I wouldn’t dream of it. You have my word, as a gentleman.”
“Oh, well, if it’s your word as a gentleman ,” Daphne snarked.
Now it was Ellie’s turn to be defensive of Henry. “Jesus, Daph, don’t be such a dick. He’s really far from home, and it’s gotta be scary as hell.”
“Are all women in this century this prone to vulgarities?”
“Yes,” Daphne and Ellie said together, and Daphne sighed. “Okay, so we discharge him, and we take him to Helen’s. And then?”
“I dunno. We figure it out.”
“How?”
“We’re smart, and so are our friends.” Ellie shrugged. “If we can all get into med school, we can probably fix this.”
Henry nodded as if this were an acceptable plan. “If you’ll kindly return my clothing, I can join you shortly at this Helen’s.”
“How are we getting home?” Ellie asked.
Daphne shrugged. “I was going to RideShare, but—light-rail? Wait, Henry, you know what a train is, right?”
He sighed. “Yes, I know what a train is.”
“Okay, then we take that. Less freaky for you. We’ll work your way up to being in a car.”
“And what, pray tell, is a ‘car’?”
“That thing that freaked you out and made you trip over the newspaper stand,” Daphne explained.
“We’ll explain later. Just get dressed, and we’ll get going,” Ellie said, and Daphne was relieved that—for the moment, at least—Ellie was in charge.
Because this was officially the weirdest day of her life.