Time (Laws of Physics #3)(29)
I loved it. I needed hours with this photo.
You’ll have hours with her, and the bikini, in less than two days.
Two days.
Just two days.
Two days that stretched in front of me like an eternity.
8
The Magnitude Scale
Mona
Usually, if I’m booked on a flight and the airline offers a voucher to take a later flight, I am the first person to give up my seat. Discounts on air travel excites me more than well-timed puns and cookies combined.
Vouchers. Vouchers. Even the word sounds seductive.
But not this time. Nothing would induce me to give up my seat on the overbooked flight from Frankfurt to New York for a later flight, not even $800 in travel vouchers. Such was my commitment to arriving in New York as soon as the laws of thermodynamics would allow.
My plane was set to arrive around 9 PM. The plan was for me to check into our hotel, reserved under the names Abram and Mona Harris, and wait for his flight to land at approximately 6:00AM the following morning. Using the aliases had been his idea and made sense given how nuts the paparazzi had been over him in the last several months. Our hotel, called Inn New York City, wasn’t one with which I was familiar, but he’d insisted on the location. I honestly didn’t care, just as long as we were together.
The flight itself was uneventful, albeit slow, further buoying my theory that feelings influence perception of motion and the space-time continuum. Perhaps feelings were the key to unraveling the mystery of quantum gravity. Hmm.
Eventually, we landed at JFK safe and sound, and I immediately switched off the airplane mode of my phone, wanting to text Abram as soon as possible. I’d just opened my messaging app when a series of texts came through, the first one sent just after my flight had taken off, but the second one was from less than a half hour ago.
Abram: Can’t wait to see you.
* * *
Abram: Call Marie at this number when you land.
Marie?
Frowning at the last text, my heart fluttering anxiously, I called Abram’s number as instructed and turned toward the window at my right in order to achieve maximum privacy despite being packed into the very back of coach like osmium.
Three rings later, a female voice answered, “Mona?”
“Uh, yes?”
“Hi. It’s Marie Harris, Abram’s sister.”
MARIE! How could I have forgotten awesome Marie?
Oh jeez. I quickly tested my breath, and then abruptly stopped myself when—obviously—I realized it didn’t matter if my breath smelled bad. Unless they’d invested in olfaction-phonics and updated my phone without telling me, the status of my breath didn’t matter.
“Hi, hi! Hi, Marie. It’s nice to, uh—” SCHR?DINGER! And all his cats, dead or alive. I couldn’t say, It’s nice to talk to you again, because when we’d first met, I’d been Lisa. Damn lies. Clearing my throat, I said the first thing that popped in my mind, “How may I be of service?”
“Uh, yes. Well, Abram asked that I call. He’s here.”
“In Michigan?” my mouth asked, just as my brain thought it.
“No. In LA. We’re at the hospital—”
Hospital. Hospital. Hospital. Why did that word feel like being hit on the back of the head with a large, heavy, blunt object? All concerns about my previous lies vanished.
“—found him this morning. His fever was quite high, and an ambulance was called. Leo called me as soon as he found out and I arrived just an hour ago. They’ve been able to bring down his fever, and he’s tested positive for the flu. The doctors were worried about a secondary infection, but the CT scan and blood work came back okay. The doctors say he looks good to be discharged tomorrow, but they want to keep him overnight for observation.”
Hospital. Oh God.
My throat was choking me. “Is he okay? I mean, I know he has the flu, but is he—I mean—will he—is he—”
“They think he’s going to be fine.” Marie’s voice was infinitely patient and reassuring and was exactly what I needed to hear. “Just to be safe, they’re keeping him overnight and plan to get another blood draw in the morning. But, yes, he seems to be okay. Cranky, obstinate, and giving me dirty looks from across the room, but okay.”
“He’s there? Can I—is it okay for him to talk?”
“Yes. Absolutely. I just wanted to explain the situation first, answer any questions, to save him from having to speak unnecessarily, since he is very sick.”
I swallowed around a lump of guilt. I wanted to talk to him—desperately—but not if it would endanger his recovery. “If he’s too sick to talk, I completely understand. It’s obviously more important that he recover than—”
“No, no. It should be fine if you two talk. I just wanted to remind my brother that he is very sick and—under no circumstances—will he be performing tonight or flying to New York this evening. Here, let me put him on.”
I heard a grumbly, angry voice in the background, and it mollified the sharpest edges of my anxiety. Being well enough to feel and express anger was far better than the worst-case scenarios I hadn’t even realized I’d been imagining.