Come Down In Time (A Time Travel Romance) (16 page)

Jamie sat up on the bed and
looked at Tommy.

“
No,” she said. “There is
nothing to feel guilty about. I’m doing what I want to do.”

“
Really, sugar?” Tommy said.
“Because I know that you’re smarter than everyone else. You have
all of that medical knowledge. I just keep wondering if you shouldn’t
go to college. We can handle it.”

“
No,” Jamie said. “We can’t
handle it. You’re wrong about that.”

“
I guess I worry that you feel
stuck out here on the farm when you could be going to college,”
Tommy said. He closed his eyes.

“
No, Tommy,” she whispered.
“I want to be on the farm.” Tommy was already asleep and didn’t
respond to her. She put her head on her pillow and gradually fell
into sleep herself. She dreamed about Stacie and the clinic. She
dreamed about Nate and how she had been engaged to him, but now he
was with Stacie.

Chapter
Eleven

She woke up in her childhood
bedroom. Her hair was short and her bedspread was paisley. Jamie
cried when she realized that she had returned to 2013, or so she
thought. She cried into her 600-thread count pillowcases that her
mother had redecorated with. She didn’t really know what world
awaited her when she walked out of her bedroom.

When she went downstairs, the
décor of the house seemed the same as the last 2013 she had been in.
Her parents had updated over the years with new furniture and granite
countertops in the kitchen. Jamie had no idea where to go or what to
do at that point.

She sat at the kitchen table and
her mother brought her a cup of coffee. Jamie needed to find out what
kind of world she was in.

“
Mom, do you know where I
work?” she asked.

Her mother turned away from the
skillet. “Jamie,” she said in an exasperated tone.

“
I know you work at the
Grahamville Medical Center,” she said. “I’ve been there.”

“
I’m sorry, Mom. I just
wanted to make sure in case. . . .” Jamie trailed off.

“
In case what?” her mother
said sharply.

“
Just in case you ever need to
know, that’s all,” Jamie said.

So, she was still a doctor. But
was she engaged to Nate or was Nate engaged to Stacie or was Nate
even a part of her life at all?

“
Did I tell you that Nate and
Stacie got engaged?” she asked. Her mother’s answer to that would
tell a lot.

“
No!” she said. “You did
not tell me that.” She stirred the scrambled eggs. “I think
they’ll make a nice couple,” she said. “Stacie is so bubbly and
Nate is so serious. That could be a good combination.”

Jamie felt positive then that she
had returned to the previous 2013, where Tommy was alive and Nate and
Stacie were engaged.

“
Have you seen Tommy’s mother
lately?” she asked.

“
Not since that last time when
I saw her,” her mother said.

“
Were you and Dad disappointed
when I left Tommy?” Jamie asked.

“
Yes,” her mother said
slowly. “Yes, we were. But what you do with your life is not our
business.”

“
It is your business,” Jamie
said.

“
Jamie, why are you asking all
these questions?” her mother said. Jamie could tell her mother was
getting agitated and decided to shut up.

“
I don’t know. I guess when I
come home, it all comes back to me. I start wondering why I did some
of the things I did. Things seem so much clearer when I’m back
here.”

“
I’ve got to get to work,”
her mother said.

After her mother left, Jamie got
a sleeping pill from her father’s bottle—it looked like he wasn’t
taking them anymore so she didn’t feel bad about it. She got her
water and walked to the overhang. She fell asleep and woke up with
short hair. She repeated the ritual every day for the next five days
with the same results. Finally, Jamie decided to go back to
Grahamville. She didn’t know what else to do.

Her key still worked in her door,
so she supposed she still worked at the clinic. After putting her
clothes up, she called Stacie.

“
How’re things going?” she
asked her. “How are the wedding plans coming along.”

Stacie was effusive, as always.
“Dustin doesn’t understand why we have to make such a fuss,”
she said.

Dustin? Not Nate? Somehow, Jamie
had fallen into a timeline where Stacie wasn’t engaged to Nate, but
was engaged to Dustin. Did that mean she was engaged to Nate? Where
was she?

Jamie forced a laugh. “He’ll
be happy on your wedding day,” she said.

“
How’s Nate?” she asked.
She hadn’t thought to check her hand for an engagement ring, but
when she looked down, her hand was naked.

“
His dad died,” Stacie said.
“He’s gone for a few days.”

“
I’m sorry to hear that,”
Jamie said. If she were with Nate, then Stacie would be surprised
that she didn’t know about Nate’s father dying. Jamie didn’t
know what past event had caused this 2013 series of events, but it
was not the same as either 2013 she had lived so far.

“
I’ll be in tomorrow,”
Jamie said. “See you bright and early.”

Jamie inspected her house. All of
the walls were painted different colors from her first and second
2013. The kitchen was painted sky blue, the bedroom sage green, and
the living room camel. It was really amazing how a different timeline
produced different choices. But she was still a doctor. She still
worked at the clinic. And Stacie and Nate still worked there, too.
Jamie didn’t know how the shifting sands of time worked, but she
was learning that a choice in the past affected choices in the
future. It might be a small choice, but it could have an affect
nevertheless.

Jamie went to the clinic the next
day and started being a doctor again. Nate came back a couple of days
later.

“
Nate, I’m so sorry about
your father,” Jamie told him.

“
Thanks, Jamie. He had a stroke
a few years ago, so he hadn’t been having the best quality of life.
Then he had another stroke and it was too big to survive.”

“
Could I take you out for a
drink tonight?” Jamie asked him.

“
That actually sounds good.
Where are you thinking?”

“
You tell me. I’m still not
familiar with everything.”

“
There’s a place about thirty
miles down the road,” he said. “It’s kind of a juke joint.”

“
What’s that?”

“
It’s a place that has a band
every night that plays the blues. If they don’t have that, they’ve
got a jukebox. It’s totally casual.”

“
Okay,” she said, though she
had no idea what he was talking about.

“
I’ll come by and get you
around seven-thirty,” Nate said. “That all right?”

“
That’s fine,” she said.
She had thought she would take him somewhere right after work, but
apparently that wasn’t working with the juke joint scenario.

Nate knocked on her door a few
minutes before seven-thirty. “Let’s go in my car since I know
where we’re going,” he said. Jamie got in the passenger seat and
Nate drove down the road. They talked about his father and his family
for most of the ride, then talk turned to the clinic for the rest of
the way. Nate took several turns and finally pulled into a parking
lot in front of a building with a neon sign. Buddy’s Blues the blue
neon flashed.

Inside, it was crowded with
tables set close together. A bar was in the back with bright lights
shining down on it. She and Nate sat down at a little table for two
and Jamie noticed a band on the opposite wall setting up. A black man
plucked his guitar, then spoke to another black man behind him.

Nate ordered draft beer for both
of them. “It’s all they’ve got here,” he said. “I hope
that’s okay.”

“
It’s fine,” Jamie said.
“It’s so hot out now, I like to drink beer to cool down.”

“
They’ve got food here, too,”
he said. “Mostly hamburgers and chili.”

By the time the sun went down,
all of the tables were filled with a mixture of white and black
people. Nate ordered hamburgers and French fries.

By the time the waitress brought
their food, the band had started to play. Jangly songs, songs with a
heavy bass beat, sad songs, blues songs.

“
This is my favorite kind of
music,” Nate said. He looked over at Jamie. “How are you liking
it?”

“
I like it,” she said. They
ate their hamburgers and the band seemed to get more and more active
with the drums and guitar. When they had finished eating, Nate stood
up and asked Jamie if she’d like to dance.
She was completely
shocked. She hadn’t danced with anyone since the last time she
danced with Tommy, which in this timeline was a long time ago. She
took Nate’s hand and he led her to the dance floor where several
couples were dancing, wildly. As the beat of the music drummed into
her brain, and the singer sang a lively song, Nate twirled Jamie and
pushed her away and toward him. Over and over. They were both
laughing by the time the song was over. They sat down and Nate
ordered more beer.

And so the night went on. Jamie
was in tune with the beat and she and Nate danced and drank beer for
hours. Shortly after midnight, they decided to call it a night.

“
We’ve got to be at the
clinic in the morning,” Nate said. He took her arm and led her out
to his car. Jamie fell asleep on the drive back. Nate jostled her
shoulder to wake her up when they got to Jamie’s driveway. He
walked her up to her door and kissed her on the cheek.

“
Thanks, Jamie,” he said as
he walked down her steps. “I think that’s just what I needed
tonight.”

She watched him get in his car
and back out of her driveway. Then she went to her bedroom and got
under her covers and passed out.

Jamie worked at the clinic every
day for two weeks. She was thinking the whole time, trying to decide
what the secret was to getting back to Tommy. She didn’t know. She
had gone back in time twice and she had come back twice to a
different world each time. What else could she do, under the
circumstances, but work at the clinic? Her mother was getting
concerned about her, she could tell that. If she went back to her
parents and went to the overhang every day, her mother would start
questioning Jamie in a way that Jamie did not want. She had to hang
in the 2013 she currently found herself in, at least for a while.
Until she came up with a plan.

On her fifteenth day back at the
clinic, Jamie went to work as usual. The waiting room was full by ten
minutes after eight and she was going from one exam room to the next
without stopping.

She walked into exam room three
at two that afternoon. Lela sat by the exam table holding Darma’s
hand. The little girl looked up at Jamie, but her eyes were calm.
Stacie had already started the oxygen and treatment.

Jamie walked over to the table
and looked into Darma’s eyes.

“
I know you saw Tommy,” Darma
said, never leaving Jamie’s eyes. “I know you lost him.”

“
She says stuff all the time,”
Lela said. “We don’t know what she’s talking about.”

“
It’s okay,” Jamie said to
Lela. She turned back to Darma. “Yes, I lost him,” she said. “Do
you know how I can get him back?”

“
The dream weaver,” Darma
said. She sat up and grabbed Jamie’s arm. “He can get you back.”

“
Who’s the dream weaver?”
Jamie asked her.

“
Blackbird. He lives in the
clouds,” Darma said. She fell back on the pillow and closed her
eyes. “Blackbird,” she said.

Jamie was going to get nothing
more out of Darma. She leaned close to the little girl’s ear.
“Thank you,” she whispered.

“
She’s going to be fine,”
Jamie said to Lela. “I know these asthma episodes are traumatic for
Darma and for you. But she’d going to be all right.”

Lela looked at Jamie. “Thank
you,” she said.

“
I’d like to come to your
house later to check on Darma and talk to you, if that’s all
right,” Jamie said.

Lela nodded. “Do you know where
we live?”

“
Not really. Can you give me
directions?”

Lela told Jamie the way down the
main road, and then a complicated series of roads and turns up into
the hills. Jamie wrote it all down on her pad.

“
I’ll see you later,” she
told Lela. “Try not to worry too much.”

Jamie couldn’t wait for the day
to end so she could go see Darma again. She didn’t think the little
girl could tell her anything else, but Lela might be able to. Jamie
was counting on that.

At six, Jamie took off her white
coat and hung it in the closet in the supply room. She ran out the
door and started down the road to Darma’s house. She turned off the
main road and stopped in the road. No one was behind her. She looked
at the directions she had written down. Go about a mile, then take
the road to the right. Jamie drove and about a mile later, saw a dirt
road on the right. She turned. She stopped frequently on her journey
to check her directions. She took a wrong turn at one point, but
found her way back and took the right road. At least, she hoped it
was the right road.