The Christmas Eve Letter: A Time Travel Novel (37 page)

Returning early.  Will arrive tonight, Monday December 14
^th
. 

Will pick you up for dinner at 7pm.

A. Harringshaw

Eve angrily crushed the telegram and stuffed it into her pocket, her mind racing with ideas.  Carrying the swinging lantern at her side, she marched down the corridor to Patrick’s room, anxious to start the process of departure.  It was time to escape from this time and place, and especially from Albert Harringshaw’s grasp. 

Eve was met by Dr. Long, whose face showed pinched urgency.

“Thank heaven you’re back, Eve.  There’s been a carriage accident.  Some children have been injured.  Can you help us?  Please come quickly.”

Eve hesitated, looking first at the lantern and then toward Patrick’s room.

“There is no change in Detective Gantly’s condition, Miss Kennedy.  Please hurry.  Time is of the essence.”

“Yes, of course.  I’ll be right there.  I’ll just change,” Eve said, feeling the telegram like a fire, burning in her pocket.

Eve slipped into Patrick’s room.  His face was flush with fever and he was delirious.  Conflicted and agitated, she slipped the lantern under his bed and reached for a cold cloth that lay in a pan of water.  She wiped his wet brow and face and spoke comforting and encouraging words.  How much more of the fever and infection could he take?  She couldn’t wait another day to get him on antibiotics or it would be too late.

For the next six hours, until 5pm, Eve, Dr. Long and three other nurses helped to clean, dress and bandage various wounds, from head cuts and sprained ankles, to broken bones and lacerated tendons.  They worked tirelessly, without a break, and when Eve finally glanced at the clock, her blood pressure shot up.

Albert Harringshaw would be waiting for her in two hours.  Eve had to get Patrick prepared to leave the hospital.  She’d been planning their escape and it was now time to put those plans into action. 

She figured she couldn’t just light the lantern in his hospital room.  If the lantern’s light was effective, and if it did indeed return them to the 21st century, Eve had no way of knowing where they might land.  Based on her first experience, they would be deposited in the same spot where they currently stood.

So where would that be?  In someone’s apartment?  In a gift shop in the South Street Seaport Mall or on some street in the lower East Side?  In a sewer, a subway track or an office building?  She couldn’t take that chance. 

Her plan was to return to the same Central Park bench she’d been sitting on when she had first arrived.  Eve knew for certain that the park bench existed in both times.  If she and Patrick suddenly appeared on that bench, it would be dark, which would minimize the effect of their sudden appearance.  So she had made the decision to bundle Patrick up, put him in an ambulance and travel to that same bench in Central Park. 

Could she confide in Dr. Long?  Eve came to the conclusion that she could not.  Eve knew two beefy ambulance drivers and she had solicited their help the night before.   She’d told them she would have to move a patient and that it was an emergency.  Fortunately, they liked her and, because she paid them well, they didn’t ask any questions.

Eve quickly changed into her street clothes, found a pencil and some paper, and scribbled down a note. 

Dear Millie:

I’m going away and I’ll never see you again.  Enclosed is some money.  Please spend it on something fun for yourself this Christmas.  Thank you for all your help and for your warm friendship.  I’ll never forget you.

Affectionately, Eve Kennedy

Eve left the nurses’ room and walked briskly down the hallway and up the stairs to Evelyn Sharland’s room.  Inside, she was surprised to find John Allister sitting by Evelyn’s bed.

“Oh, excuse me,” Eve said, peering into the room.  “I didn’t know you were here, Mr. Harringshaw.”

He arose, smiling warmly.  “Come in, Miss Kennedy.  Please come in.  Miss Sharland and I were just discussing you.”

Reluctantly, feeling the weight of passing time, Eve stepped into the room and closed the door behind her.  She leaned back against it.

“Discussing me?  Oh, please, you must have more interesting subjects to talk about.”

Evelyn smiled.  “I was telling Allister, I mean Mr. Harringshaw, about your grand story—the one you told me about the magic lantern and the future.”

Eve shifted her weight from one foot to the other.  “Oh, that.  Well, it was just a little something to entertain you, Miss Sharland.”

“It was quite a fantastic story, Miss Kennedy.  Evelyn told me some very specific things about your story that have intrigued me, one being that you said you lived in the year 2016 in an apartment uptown on West 107
^th
Street.  Of course that’s all rural countryside up there, is it not?”

Eve smiled, faintly.  “Yes, I suppose it is.”

“Why did you specifically choose that year and use that address, Miss Kennedy?” John Allister asked, his expression deeply curious.

Eve shrugged.  “Oh, who knows?  I’ve always had too much of an imagination.  It gets me into trouble sometimes.”

“Did you know, Miss Kennedy, that Evelyn has a capital memory.  She remembers the smallest thing, the minutest detail.  That’s one reason she was hired by Western Union, for her high and keen intelligence.”

Eve smiled.  “Yes, I can see that.”

Evelyn looked at Eve carefully, with her crystal mint eyes.  “Mr. Harringshaw told me, Eve, that he’d had several dreams about the night of the accident and they all included the lantern.  By any chance, did you find it?”

Eve shrank a little in height, avoiding her eyes.  She didn’t want to lie, but she didn’t have the time nor the inclination to explain any further.  “No… No, I didn’t, unfortunately.” 

And then she was grateful to change the subject.  “By the way, your mother is moving to Hoboken to live with Clayton.”

Evelyn brightened.  “Is she?  Oh, how wonderful.  Then you saw her and spoke to her?”

“Yes.  Yes, she is much better.  She’ll be dropping by to see you.  And I was just with Dr. Long.  She said you’ll be out of the hospital this week.”

Evelyn sat up higher in the bed.  “Yes, she stopped by earlier.  I will be so happy to leave, even though you have all been so kind.”  She reached out her hand to Eve.  “And what would have happened to me if you had not come along, Eve?”

Eve stepped over to the bed and took her hand.  Evelyn squeezed Eve’s hand and then peered deeply into her eyes.

“Wherever you came from, Eve, thank you for saving my life.”

John Allister moved closer to Eve.  “We are eternally grateful for what you have done for both of us.”

Eve’s voice was hesitant and low.  “I will never forget you both.”

“You will visit us at Christmas,” Evelyn said.  “You must.  We will all be at Clayton’s.  Say you will come, Eve.”

Eve looked at them both.  “Of course I’ll come.  Thank you.”

Eve left Evelyn’s room, and hurried down the stairs to the side entrance.  Outside, she found Daniel Fallow and Jacob Jackson, the ambulance drivers, smoking cigars and leaning back against the box-like horse-drawn ambulance.  Darkness had already dimmed the world and the side lanterns on the ambulance glowed.

“Good evening, gentlemen.”

They touched their bowler hats.  “Miss Kennedy.”

“Is it time?” Mr. Fallow, a broad stocky man, asked.

“Yes.  Are you ready, gentlemen?”

Jacob Jackson had the face of a prize fighter, broad, blunt and serious.  “We are, Miss Kennedy.  Shall we follow you?”

As they strolled down the corridor toward Patrick’s room, Eve prayed she didn’t run into Dr. Long.  Eve had already written a long letter to her, explaining that she had to return home.  Eve thanked her for her many kindnesses, and told her how much she had learned and how rewarding the experience had been.  She closed with the sentence “I shall always remember you fondly and with great affection.”

Inside Patrick’s room, the men worked slowly and carefully, wrapping him in woolen blankets and lifting him from his bed onto the wheeled stretcher.  The corridor lights were low as they traveled quietly toward the side entrance, the men on either side of the stretcher, both looking grim, but determined.  Eve gripped the lantern tightly in her right hand, surprised again by the weight of it, and by the potential power of it to change the course of history.  She was a mass of nerves and, despite the cold, she felt perspiration pop out on her forehead and run down her back.

They were almost at the side entrance, almost there when Eve heard a door creak open.  She heard footsteps in the hall behind her.  Eve did not stop or turn around.  She kept walking, her head inclined forward, eyes fixed on the looming door, her stride lengthening, as if her very life depended on it, which, in many ways, it did. 

Outside, the air was crisp and cold.  Feathery snowflakes fell across the glow of gas lights.  A lamplighter had just finished lighting a lamp off to their right, his long wooden pole extended over the gaslight.  Daniel and Jacob tugged the two rear ambulance doors open, lifted Patrick from the stretcher onto a waiting gurney, and slid him gently inside the enclosed space.

Eve’s impatient gaze surveyed the area, as she wondered if Albert Harringshaw was still having her watched.  She didn’t see anyone.  The night was eerily quiet and, as she turned back to the hospital for a last look, the building was dark and heavy with shadows.  Just a few lights flickered in the windows.

Jacob turned to her.  “We’re ready, Miss Kennedy.  Will you be riding in the back?”

“Yes, Jacob.”

He held the doors open for her and Daniel took her hand and lifted her up into the cab where she sat on a wooden bench, looking down at Patrick.  He shivered and mumbled in misery, but Eve didn’t understand a word.

Eve shuddered when Jacob slammed the two doors shut.  It was cold.  Her teeth began to chatter, and her breath puffed white clouds of vapor.

Both men sat up front, two hunched figures with cigars clenched in their teeth, Jacob shaking the reins.  As the ambulance trotted off into the night across the damp and shimmering cobblestones, Eve felt the old loneliness return, as if she were one of the last people on Earth, again wandering off toward an unknown fate.  What in the world would she do if the lantern’s light failed to return her and Patrick home to safety?  Patrick would die, and she would have to flee somewhere, away from Albert Harringshaw’s and Inspector Byrnes’ trap.  San Francisco?  Ohio?

She sat heavily on the bench, staring blindly in the dim light, praying for Patrick, praying for help, praying for release and praying for a new life with Patrick in the 21st century.  That was the thought that quickened her heart and gave her hope.  A new life in her own time.  How delightful and fun it would be to show Patrick all the wonders of the 21st century.  She was sure he’d be excited by the technology, the many freedoms, the cars, the airplanes and the food. 

When he was fully recovered, their relationship could pick up where they’d left off and they would fall in love again and, this time, they’d be free to play, explore and express all the emotions and desires denied them in 1885.  They could get to know each other, like true lovers, and they would fall in love again, just as they had fallen in love before. 

Eve’s concerned eyes lowered on him.  “Hang on, Patrick.  Just hang on a little while longer, my love.  We’re almost there.”

CHAPTER 33

In Central Park, the ambulance angled left, progressing at a slow, steady pace through circles of lamplight and falling snow, looking like a dark apparition.  It approached The Poet’s Walk at the southern end of The Mall, and Eve felt an eager restlessness.  They were almost there.  She touched the lantern and checked her coat pocket to make sure she had matches.

When the ambulance carriage stopped, Eve took a quick breath to fortify her beating nerves.  The double doors swung open and Jacob and Daniel stood at the ready, cigars sticking from the sides of their mouths.

“Ready, Miss Kennedy?”

“Yes.”

Daniel helped her down and she stood aside, holding the lantern, with a woolen blanket over her arm.  They stood on either side and reached for the gurney.  Before hefting it, they turned to Eve for further instructions. 

Eve glanced about.  Fortunately, it was relatively quiet, with just a few strollers out enjoying the magic of the snowfall.  A carriage passed and faded.

Eve pointed left.  “Take him to that park bench over there.”

Jacob and Daniel exchanged uncertain glances.

“To the bench, Miss Kennedy?” Daniel clarified.

“Yes.  Please hurry.”

Jacob shrugged and the two men retrieved the stretcher and followed Eve across the broad dirt and snow-covered path toward the empty park bench that was situated about 10 feet from the nearest park lamp.  The bench was silhouetted and covered by a thin layer of new snow. 

Eve stopped by the bench, brushed away the snow and spread out the blanket.

“Sit Detective Gantly here, please.”

Again the men exchanged glances.

“Please, gentlemen.”

They first lowered the gurney onto the ground.  The men stood on either side of Patrick’s shoulders and then gingerly lifted him, while Eve reached and secured the woolen blanket he was wrapped in.  Patrick was lowered down onto the blanket in a sitting position.  Already his lips were turning blue.  Both men stared at him with some compassion and, inevitably, both their gazes turned to Eve.  Their expressions were bleak and confused.

“I know how this looks, gentlemen, but it isn’t what you think.  Could you please drive the ambulance a short distance away and wait for me?  If I don’t come for you within 15 minutes, please return to the hospital.”