Whole, p.10
Whole, page 10
“Stay close!” Jake yells back to me as he starts running inland, away from the water. I scramble to my feet and chase after him, looking frantically from side to side as I run. I’ve nearly caught up when suddenly a second portal opens directly above Jake’s head and a fourth lightbringer falls out of it, landing on top of him. They fall to the ground with a thump and roll around in the sand, fighting each other off while I stand by helplessly, not knowing what to do. I watch as they inch closer and closer back toward the water until they’re both standing in it, Jake fighting to keep the man from holding him under. He manages to free himself, and he gives the man a hard shove, knocking him back into a wave. The man disappears under the water, and Jake starts to make his way back to shore when suddenly he throws his hands up in the air, and the last thing I see is him taking a deep breath before his head is completely submerged.
“Jake!” I yell again, running as fast as I can toward the ocean. I’m steps away when I see a flash of bright light under the water, and the lightbringer pops his head up, gasping for air. He starts swimming in my direction, and I stop in my tracks, panicked, feet frozen in the sand. I remember the trola Jake gave me, and I clamber to get my backpack off, my hands shaking. Just as the man reaches for my shoulder and clenches my shirt in his large hand, I pull the weapon from my bag, point it straight at his chest, and pull the trigger.
His hand loosens as he falls to the ground, freeing my shirt from his grasp. Still shaking, I drop the trola at my feet and run over to the water looking for Jake.
“Jake!” I yell, over and over, water up to my waist now. I splash around helplessly as the seconds tick by, tears streaming down my face. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice something washed up down the shore, something large. I run toward it, and as I get closer, I can see clearly that it’s Jake, lying unconscious on the sand, his face covered in blood. I drop to my knees and put my head on his chest, listening for his heartbeat. It’s very faint, but it’s there. I can feel shallow breaths coming in and out of his nose. Relief pours over me as I push Jake onto his side and pound him hard on the back with the heel of my hand. He coughs and spits out water and it mixes with his blood in the sand. Then he rolls back over, and I search his face, desperately trying to find where the blood is coming from, when all of a sudden, his eyes widen in shock. I look back just long enough to see a lightbringer running toward us, trola pointed in our direction, before a portal opens in the sand beneath us and we fall into the black hole.
Chapter 13
We land with a small thud, and I open my eyes and see the familiar tall bookcase, stuffed with books. We’re back at Jake’s house—our house, I mean—in Chicago on Pearth, where the sun is just starting to set. Jake groans faintly beneath me from the impact. I sprint to the kitchen and grab two dish towels, running one under water in the sink before hurrying back out to the living room. Crouched down next to Jake on the floor, I gently wipe the blood from his face with the wet towel so I can get a better look. Then I see it—a deep gash across his left eyebrow dripping blood down onto his cheeks. I take the dry towel and press it firmly atop Jake’s eye, stanching the flow.
“Hold this here,” I tell him as I go back in the kitchen and emerge seconds later, holding the keys to his van. They were sitting on a shelf next to the back door, just like they always are at my house. “I’m taking you to the hospital,” I say.
Jake makes no objection and pushes himself up into a seated position, the dish towel still pressed firmly to his head. I hook him under the arm and help pull him up to standing, then I swing his arm around my shoulders to support his weight as I lead him out the front door and into the van, parked in the garage. My Jake keeps his drum kit in our garage, so the van is always in the driveway, but from the looks of it, this Jake is not a drummer. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t much of a music fan at all, actually, given his straight-laced demeanor.
When we get to the hospital, I follow the signs for the emergency room and pull up to the front door, jumping out of the van and running around to the passenger side to help Jake down, but he brushes me off like I’m making a fuss over nothing. We walk into the building, and I tell the woman at the front desk that he’s going to need stitches and he very nearly drowned. She raises one eyebrow as she looks him up and down, but I don’t give up any more details than that.
“Stitches?” she says, eyeing his face. “You mean laser cauterizing? We haven’t used stitches in thirty years.”
“Oh, uh, yes,” I say, backtracking. “That’s what I meant, of course.”
She hands me some forms to fill out and tells us to sit in the waiting area until a doctor calls Jake’s name. I start to fill in the forms as best I can so that Jake can continue to hold the towel to his head, but I quickly realize I don’t know anything about this Jake’s medical history. Surely it wouldn’t be the same as my Jake’s, right?
“Have you had any surgeries?” I ask him, reading off the paper. “I know Jake had shoulder surgery from a snowboarding accident when he was sixteen. My Jake, that is,” I say, quickly clarifying.
“No,” he says blankly, staring straight ahead.
“Ok...any allergies?” I ask, moving down the page. “My Jake is allergic to—”
He grabs the clipboard from my hand, cutting me off. “I can do this myself,” he says. We sit in silence and I tap my shoes on the ground anxiously while he fills in the rest of the sheet. Luckily, I only have to endure a few minutes of this awkwardness before a nurse throws open the double doors that lead back to the hospital and calls out, “Salvador! Jake Salvador!”
I jump up out of my seat and hold out my hands to help him up.
“I’m fine,” he snaps, pushing himself up with no help from me. “You don’t need to come with me.”
“Oh, alright,” I say, a little hurt. Then I feel embarrassed for being hurt, and I sit back down. “I’ll just wait here then.”
I watch him limp slowly over to the nurse and hand her the completed clipboard. She looks it over then motions for him to follow her, and they vanish behind the doors.
Hours go by with no word on Jake’s status. I’ve already moved the van to the parking lot, gone to the bathroom, took a walk around the hospital grounds, and got coffee from the free carafe near the nurses’ station three times. I’m running out of things to do to keep my mind occupied, and I’m getting a little worried that by staying in one place I could be exposing us to another lightbringer attack. I doubt if they’d risk attacking us in such a public setting, but I don’t want to take any chances either, so I resort to pacing around the waiting room, staring at the double doors. Finally, I can take it no longer, and I go up to the front desk to ask what’s taking so long.
“I’m sorry,” says the woman at the desk. “We can only give medical information to the patient’s immediate family.”
“I’m...his wife,” I lie, trying to sound indignant.
“Oh, okay, why didn’t you say so?” she says, pulling something up on her computer. “Looks like he’s waiting for test results. Would you like to go back and see him?”
“Yes,” I say, ignoring what Jake had said before. I can’t just leave him back there alone after he saved my life.
She pushes a button on the desk and the double doors swing open. “Room 24A,” she tells me as I walk through. I pass room after room, reading the numbers on the wall until I get to 24A. I pull back the curtain, and there’s Jake laying in the hospital bed, hooked up to an I.V., a large bandage over his left eye and another poking out of the top of his hospital gown along his back. Machines beep and whir around him, keeping track of his vitals. I stand in the doorway, unsure if I should go in, if he even wants me there.
“Are you going to come in?” he asks as if reading my mind, his voice a bit kinder than it was before. I enter the room and sit down on the chair that’s next to the bed, inspecting my fingernails, unsure what to say. After a few minutes, I must break the silence.
“How are you feeling?” I ask.
“I’m fine,” he says. “They fixed my eye. Had a gash on my back too, and that’s been sealed up. They did a full body scan to be safe, just waiting for the results before I get cleared to leave.”
“What did you tell them?” I say. Even though portaling isn’t a secret here, I’m sure ‘I was shot in the face while being held under water against my will...in France’ would raise some suspicions with the doctors.
“I told them I tripped and hit my head on the dock then fell into Lake Michigan,” he replies, shrugging. “They didn’t question it.”
The thought of Jake falling into Lake Michigan coupled with the stress of the entire day is enough to make me break. I burst out laughing, uncontrollably, and I can’t stop. I laugh until tears come streaming down my face and I’m unable to catch my breath. Jake is smiling now too at the scene I’m causing.
“Mara?” he starts, “I wanted to tell you—”
Just then the curtain is thrown back and a doctor strides into the room. “Mr. and Mrs. Salvador?”
I jump up from my seat, startled, and Jake glances briefly in my direction before answering. “Yes,” he says. “I’m Jake Salvador.”
“Well, your scans came back normal,” the doctor continues. “No concussion or broken bones, you’re very lucky. I’ll send a nurse in to remove that I.V., and you can be on your way.”
“Thank you, doctor,” says Jake, nodding.
He exits the room, leaving us there in awkward silence. I start to sit back down, then decide it might be better if I left the room.
“Well, everything seems in order here,” I say, knocking over my chair as I change direction too quickly. I pick it back up, my cheeks getting redder by the second. “I’ll just be out in the waiting room.”
“Sure,” says Jake, clearly trying not to smile. “I’ll be out in a second.”
I practically run out of the room and back out through the double doors, then I resume my pacing and wait. A few minutes later the doors open again, and Jake walks through, still moving slowly but already looking much better than he did back on the beach. I hurry over to help him, but he waves me off, so we walk together to the front door which I hold open for him.
“Thanks for the assistance, Mrs. Salvador,” he says, and my cheeks go red again.
“They wouldn’t let me back unless I was family!” I respond, wildly, trying to save myself from any more embarrassment. “What else was I supposed to do?”
“You didn’t need to come back at all,” he says, and then, seeing my face drop, he quickly follows up with “but I appreciate the company.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say, trying to play it cool, but I have a feeling it’s a little too late for that. We get into the van and drive the whole way home in silence.
Back at the house, Jake insists on sleeping on the couch and letting me have the bed, despite my arguing against it due to his recent near-death experience. “I’ll take the guest room, it’s fine,” I say, thinking of the second bedroom at our house on Earth that we use for guests.
“No, there’s no bed in there,” he responds, quickly shutting me down. “It’s just full of junk.” I look around the sparse living room, and I can’t imagine this Jake owning any amount of junk. We go back and forth, but I can tell he’s not giving in, so finally I agree, too exhausted for a long battle. I realize that I left my backpack back on the beach in Nice, so not only do I have no clothes, but my books are gone as well. Reading helps me sleep, and after the events of the night, I’m going to need something to take my mind off everything.
“Take something from the bookshelf,” Jake says when I tell him. “They’re yours anyway.”
“What do you mean, they’re mine?” I say. I don’t have another self on Pearth, so there’s no way I could own those books.
“Patrick said you liked to read, so I went to every thrift store in town and collected these. No one buys the physical copies anymore, it’s all digital, so they weren’t easy to find.” He looks down at his feet, suddenly self-conscious. “I just wanted you to feel comfortable,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “This is your house too, technically.”
I smile and step over to the bookcase to run my fingers over the worn-out bindings, each one a true treasure in a place where books are an endangered species. His sweet gesture reminds me of something my Jake would do, and I can’t imagine why he would be so nice to me, before we even met. My eyes flit around, reading the titles off the spines. I’ve never heard of any of them...or have I? I recognize the authors, but the titles are different, a little off. Gemma’s Adventures in Fantasyland by Lewis Carroll, and 2024 by George Orwell. I linger on a tattered copy of Along the Trail by Jack Kerouac then pull it from the shelf.
“This is good,” I say. “Thank you.”
Jake follows me upstairs to help me find something to wear to bed. He rummages around in the closet for a minute then comes out holding an oversized plaid flannel shirt and hands it to me. “Sorry I don’t have something smaller,” he says as he turns to leave.
“Hey,” I say just before he walks out the door. “What were you going to tell me? In the hospital, before the doctor came in?”
“Thanks,” he says, stopping to stand in the doorway. “I was going to tell you thanks, for saving my life. I’m supposed to be the one protecting you, not the other way around.”
“How about we protect each other?” I reply, thinking it over.
“Deal,” he says, turning to leave before stopping and looking back at me, the expression on his face torn, like he can’t decide if he should say what comes next. “Is that what you want?” he asks, finally. “To be Mrs. Salvador? With...the other Jake, I mean.”
I’m silent for a moment, a bit taken aback. I don’t know why, but the question makes me suddenly uncomfortable when it should be an easy answer for me. “Yes,” I respond, earnestly. “He’s my best friend.”
Jake nods and disappears down the stairs without another word, leaving me to change into his flannel shirt.
Chapter 14
In the morning when I wake up, I roll over and blink my eyes open expecting to see Jake smiling back at me or still snoring gently, but instead I’m met with an empty bed and untouched pillow. The early morning fog clouds my brain for just a second before I remember this isn’t my house, I’m no longer on Earth, and Jake isn’t here. Well, my Jake, anyway. The other Jake is downstairs in the living room, sleeping on the couch. Yesterday’s events feel like a dream, and I’d prefer it if they were.
I sit up in the bed and rub the sleep from my eyes, looking around the room for something that might give me an indication of the time. Light is just starting to peek through the window curtains, so I know it must still be morning. I spy a small, digital alarm clock on the bedside table and pick it up to get a better view. 8:27 a.m. I didn’t sleep through the whole day, at least. I kick off the covers and pad to the bathroom to brush my teeth before I remember that I don’t have a toothbrush, so I use my finger instead, like I did when I was a kid. I go back into the bedroom and look around for my pants, but they’re nowhere to be found. That can’t be right. I search the whole room a second time, but it’s no use. I’m going to have to go downstairs wearing nothing but a flannel button down.
I creep quietly down the stairs, hoping Jake is still sleeping, tugging on the shirt to try to make it a little longer. When I get to the living room he’s not there, but his sheet and blanket are sitting neatly folded on the couch. I go into the kitchen and find him standing over the stove, cooking eggs. He’s dressed in his military attire again, freshly laundered, and he doesn’t even look up when I enter the room.
“Hey,” I say to the side of his face. “Have you seen my clothes?”
“I washed them,” he replies matter-of-factly, eyes still fixed on the stove. “They’re on the dryer.”
Alright. I guess serious Jake is back, I think as I step past him and into the small laundry room off the side of the kitchen. There’s no door, so I turn my back to him and dress as quickly as possible, though there’s no need to be discrete. I could have been standing naked in front of him, and I don’t think his eyes would have left those eggs. I fold his flannel shirt carefully and set it on top of the dryer, then I go back through the kitchen and take a seat at the table. He walks over and sets a plate of eggs and toast in front of me without a word, then joins me at the table and starts eating. The food is perfectly plated, with a single sliced strawberry fanned out like a garnish next to the eggs. It feels like I’m eating breakfast at an up-scale restaurant, the presentation in stark contrast to the centuries-old plate the meal sits on. I wonder if it will taste as good as it looks, and I’m pleased to discover that it does.
“Thanks for breakfast,” I say, trying to break the silence, “and for the shirt.”
He doesn’t respond but finishes eating then gets up and puts his plate in the sink.
“We leave in a half hour,” he says, turning and looking at me for the first time all morning. “I’m going to get you a new trola.” Then he walks past me and out the front door, slinging his pack onto his back as he goes.
I finish eating my eggs then wash both of our plates and set them on the countertop to dry. I have some time before he gets back, so I decide to check out the rest of the house, curious to see just how different this Jake is from my own. He’s way cleaner, for starters, and not only with how he plates a meal. Everything in the house is a bit older, worn, but you can tell he puts in the effort to keep it looking pristine. The floors are swept, the counters are wiped, and nothing is out of place. There’s not a knick-knack to be found, save for the re-framed photo of my family, which sits atop the mantel. There are so few personal items you might think no one lives here at all.
I continue up the stairs and find more of the same in the bedroom. Button-down shirts and black t-shirts are hung neatly in the closet, jeans folded in the drawer. I’m not stepping over piles of dirty clothes like I would be at home. The walls are bare, with plain white paint that looks like it could use a touch-up. I make the bed, being sure to tuck the sheets back in how they were before I slept there, then I sit down on the edge and open the drawer of the small nightstand that sits beside it. Inside I find an old photo, ripped around the edges and faded from the sun. It’s Jake’s parents, much younger than I’ve ever seen them and holding what must be baby Jake in their arms. He looks no more than a year old, but he already has a full head of dark brown hair and is chewing on his fingers. I put the photo back carefully and shut the drawer, then I continue down the hall to the second bedroom.
