The Navigators (32 page)

Barry glanced up from his magazine, then broke into a big smile. “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself. How are you doing?”

He set the magazine on the side table and pointed to the sling holding his broken leg. “They think I’ll survive. All that running around made my leg swell up so bad, they had to cut the old cast off and make me another one. I’m supposed to keep it elevated now.”

Melissa sauntered to the foot of his bed. “Does it hurt much?” She laid her hand on the cast, noticing the bruised knee, the firm muscles of his tan thigh, the hem of the hospital gown... “Oh!” She whipped around to face the wall. “I – I didn’t know you were naked under your gown.”

“Sorry about that.” Barry quickly placed one hand on the bed rail and stuffed the bottom of the gown between his legs with the other.

Melissa waved her hand, talking to the wall. “Oh, it's okay. I mean, it's not okay—it's
more
than okay. It's nice. I mean-”

Barry pushed himself up in the bed. “Missy, what are you doing here? I thought your dad locked you away like Rapunzel in her tower.”

She walked to the side of the bed. “Actually, Dad told me what you did. Lying to protect me.”

“He did, huh?”

Melissa put her hand on his. “Nobody’s ever done anything like that for me before.” She looked down, stroking his hand. “I mean, my family, maybe, but nobody else. It meant a lot.” She raised her eyes to meet his. “I wanted to say thanks. You know, none of this would have happened if it weren’t for you.”

“Yeah. Don’t remind me.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Are you laying out your case for my defense here, counselor?”

“No. You don’t need anybody to do that for you. Not now. But there is one more thing I wanted to say.”

“What’s that?”

Melissa leaned over and kissed him, locking her mouth on his, letting the warmth of his lips electrify her. She wasn’t sure her heart had ever pounded so fast in her life. She found herself pulling him closer, straining forward to him, aching for him. Her hands glided along the sides of his neck and into his hair, winding her fingers up in his brown locks.

Their eyes met as she pulled away. He gave her a crooked smile. “You’re a good talker.”

“I was raised by a lawyer.” She lingered there, her face inches from his, gazing into his eyes.

Not at all like a brother.

His face was more mature to her, more familiar, more handsome. Even the stubble on his chin looked delicious. More than anything, she wanted to feel his lips on hers again. “Any rebuttal?”

“Oh, yeah.” He pulled her close and kissed her deeply, lifting her onto the bed with him. She reached inside the neck of his gown, feeling his muscular shoulders and warm, smooth skin. His heart beat against her hand. Time slowed for her—in that moment it was like the Earth paused to simply allow her to fully find him.

He rested his forehead on hers. “I have wanted to do that for a long time.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “Whatever my reason was, it sure seems stupid now.”

* * * * *

Dr. Harper walked out of his office and over to the desk where his training intern was waiting. “Time to make the rounds, Gina. Who’s on the roster today?”

She handed him the clipboard. “You have a recovering appendectomy in 2201, a broken arm in 2203, and a broken ankle in 2207.”

“This won’t take long then. Is pharmacy preparing their meds?”

“Yes, doctor.”

“Then let’s have another look at this appendectomy’s post-op report. Always double check, Gina – that way there are no surprises.”

* * * * *

Melissa kissed Barry on his neck, tugging at the hospital gown. “Hey, what day is it?”

He stroked her cheek. “Um, Friday.”

She glanced up. “Aren’t you supposed to have your big date tonight?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess so…”

Melissa sat up and moved to straddle him as he lay on the bed. She pulled her shirt off and let it drop to the floor. “Cancel it.”

Keeping his eyes on Melissa, Barry grabbed at the phone on the side table.

* * * * *

“Okay, Gina. Pharmacy’s getting ready to do their job. Let’s do ours. Room 2201. Appendectomy. What are we looking to see with this young man?”

Gina eyed the sheet the nurse had prepared. “We are checking the stitches and making sure there is no sign of infection. Then he can be readied for release.”

“Good. Good. This will only take a minute, and then we’ll go see about the broken arm. Let’s have a look.” He knocked on the open door. “How are you, young man?”

* * * * *

“Sophia, I’m sorry to call on such short notice, but I can’t make it tonight. I kinda broke my leg.”

“Oh no, you poor dear. Are you okay?”

Melissa sat astride Barry, tugging at his hospital gown. “Hey this comes right off, doesn’t it?”

“Um, I’ll be okay. But I’ll be getting laid – I mean, I’ll
be
laid up for a while.”

“Can I get you anything?” Sophia asked.

Melissa reached back and unhooked her bra, letting it drop down over her arms.

“No thanks, Sophia. I have everything I need.” He aimlessly dropped the phone onto the side table and reached for Melissa.

* * * * *

Dr. Harper walked out of room 2203 where the broken arm resided, sliding the x-rays back into the folder. “Who’s next, Gina?”

“Broken ankle, room 2207.”

“Oh, yes.” Harper took the clipboard from her, scanning the notes. “Barry Helm, broken ankle, cast removal, new cast applied.” He turned to Gina. “You remember Barry—he broke the ankle and then did all this crazy running around, to the point where his whole leg was swollen and painful.”

Gina smiled. “Yes, I remember.”

Harper shook his head. “Quite a character, that one.” He gave the clipboard back. “I wonder what kind of story Barry will have for us today.”

* * * * *

Melissa wiggled out of her jeans, her eyes never leaving his.

“Missy, should we slow down a little?”

She gazed up at him. “I’m done with going slow, just floating along like a leaf in a river.” She tossed her jeans onto the floor and dropped his gown on top of them. She leaned down and kissed him again. “It’s time to plot a new course.”

He slid his hands down her back. She leaned over him, letting her hair brush his face as her hips slowly moved against his.

The door to Barry’s room flew open. Dr. Harper cleared his throat loudly. “Am I interrupting something?”

Melissa shrieked, grabbing the sheet and diving for the floor. Barry’s hands flew to cover his naked crotch.

Harper smiled. “Barry, how are you?”

Barry swallowed. “Good, sir.”

Harper motioned to the intern. “You remember Gina?”

Barry lifted one finger off his crotch and nodded.

Harper addressed the pile of sheets and clothing on the floor. “Miss Mills? Everything okay down there?”

“Just peachy,” the sheets replied.

Harper scanned his notes. “Well, it’s time for your pain meds.” He peered over the clipboard at Barry. “Or is this a bad time?”

“Could you maybe come back in a few min-”

“-in an hour?” the pile on the floor asked.

Barry smiled. “In an hour?”

Harper glanced at his clipboard. “Not a problem. Gina, make a note please. And watch that ankle, son. If I have to put a third cast on it, I’m breaking the other ankle, too. Understand?”

Barry nodded again.

Gina peered around Dr. Harper. “Should I still give him something for the swelling?”

“It seems like Miss Mills has that under control.” Harper chuckled.

Gina blinked. “I meant for his ankle, doctor.”

“Oh, of course. Barry? Something for the leg?”

“In an hour?”

Harper winked and shut the door.

As they made their way down the corridor, Harper folded his arms over his clipboard. “Better get used to that, Gina. It’s fairly common.” He frowned. “There’s just something about the white hallways or smell of a hospital. Maybe it’s the way the gowns don’t close, I don’t know. But those college kids get admitted and suddenly it’s a frat party orgy in here.”

He sighed. “Gina, do you get migraines?”

“No, doctor.”

He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his brow. “You will.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

“
W
ill he still be there?”

Melissa sat on the edge of the hospital bed, pulling one of her shoes on. “Probably. Where else is he going to go?”

“I don't know.” Barry took a sip of water from the bedside table. “He doesn't have much stuff to pack.”

“Packing is not what keeps someone in their room all day.” She stood up. “I’ll be fine.

“Oh, I’m not worried about you.” Barry smiled. “I’m worried about Peeky.”

“Just worry about resting that leg and getting out of here.”

“Yes, doctor.”

She nodded. “We’ll play doctor again when I get back. I have to go trade dad’s BMW for Mandy’s truck.”

“And she’s going to let you?”

She leaned over and kissed him deeply, letting her lips linger on his. “I can be very persuasive.”

“Don’t I know it.”

* * * * *

My small, unfashionable suitcase stood in the center of the tiny dorm room. It had been humbling to stand in line at the airport to receive a piece of luggage so old and out of style. Other travelers grabbed sleek, expensive bags. Mine looked fifty years old, maybe older; a faded tan color with brown trim. It might have been more than fifty years old. I had not asked Ankit how old it was when he offered to lend it to me.

“You will go to America, Peeky, and you will return rich and famous. And I will be able to say I helped you.”

Ankit was a good friend. I wondered if he still would be when I returned disgraced and without the riches I’d promised everyone. And with no way to pay them all back.

It was all I could think about, just a taste of what my great-grandfather had gone through, to be sure. At least there was the mercy of not going through a humiliating trial like he did. Just a quick deportation hearing.

Then this country would be rid of me the same way it had ridden itself of my great-grandfather.

I sat on the bed, staring out the tiny window. The dormitory linen service would come by in a few minutes to pick up sheets and towels, with their exit forms for me to sign. I knew I wouldn’t sleep; there was no sense in pretending I needed sheets.

There were so many things I was going to miss. The university had been so different from what I expected. So much newer, and modern, and so much more open and accepting. And beautiful. The grounds were lush with landscape. So many places to eat, or shop, or just hang out.

But try as I might, I couldn’t distract myself enough times to erase the memories of the people who had become my friends. The ones who trusted me, who had taken me into their hearts.

I would miss them all. My heart hurt as I bathed in my loneliness, my self-inflicted exile. No amount of deep breaths and busying myself with linen receipts or repacking my suitcase could stop the sadness.

There was a knock. I picked up the forms from the small desk and walked over to open the door.

Of all the people in the world, she was the one I expected least.

I almost couldn’t speak.

“Melissa.”

It came out as a whisper.

She stood in the hallway staring at me, neither smiling nor looking angry. She seemed to be sizing me up in the dim light, debating about how she wanted to act towards me.

I stepped back, opening the door further. “I’m surprised to see you.” I swallowed. “And happy, I think.”

She took a few paces into my tiny room, stopping with her back to me.

I couldn’t hold back. “Melissa, I’m so sorry.” I searched the ceiling for words. “I’m sorry about everything.” I tried to get past the lump in my throat and hold my emotions in. “You were all my friends, and I-”

“Stop.” She put a hand out, lowering her head. “You sound like you’re going to cry.” She turned to face me, her eyes full of tears. “And if you start crying, then I’ll start crying.” A tear rolled down her face, followed by another. “And I don’t want to cry for you, Peeky. I hate you right now. So don’t you say anything else to me.” She folded her arms, sniffling a few times. “I had a friend I could talk to when I felt this way, and that friend is gone now.” She turned away, placing her hands on the desk.

I cleared my throat. “Okay.”

She wiped her eyes. “I didn’t come here to make a scene.” When she turned around, her eyes were puffy and red. “I had it all planned out and it didn’t include any crying.”

I stood silent, ready for whatever admonishments she wanted to throw at me.

She wiped her eyes again, taking a slow, deep breath. “I thought a lot about not coming, but Dad always says people deserve a second chance. I’m not so sure.” She sighed, glancing around the room, looking at anything but me. Her eyes brimmed again with tears. “You… you were my friend for a long time, before you weren't. You helped me through some tough times. So even though you lied to me like a piece of shit snake, I’d like to believe that some of that good guy still exists. I’d like to believe I wasn’t a complete fool.”

“Melissa, I didn’t know what to do. I had an ugly, deceptive plan that was born a long time ago for a lot of reasons that seemed good at the time. After I met you guys, you were all so nice to me—I wanted to come clean, but…” I stared down. “I just couldn't think of a way to do it without turning you all against me.”

“And yet you managed to do that anyway.” The tears rolled down her face again.

I nodded. “That's right. So here I am. I’d do anything to regain your friendship.”

She stared at me, seeming to size me up, to see which person was the real one. After a long while, she came to her conclusion.

“If you’re really still my friend, prove it.”

“Tell me what to do.”

“Everyone else from our original group is either in the hospital or in jail. Things have gotten pretty damned far out of control.” She looked me in the eye. “But I picked up the machine from the hotel. It’s in Mandy’s truck outside. She and I were able to get it out of the room and loaded into the truck bed. I’m supposed to turn it in to the University tomorrow morning.

“Instead, I want to ditch it.” She glanced over her shoulder at me, her eyes full of pain. “Tonight. Let's drop the fucking thing in a swamp or back into the mine where we found it. I want to get rid of it.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Why?”

She shook her head. “That thing is evil. Not devil-evil, but evil in its own way, like bad luck. It’s bad news. Nothing good happens to anyone who comes near it.” She walked back to me. “Think about it. Riff nearly got killed just unburying it. Roger almost died testing it. Barry was almost killed on his trip.”

“To throw away such a valuable-”

“Valuable? What value?” She threw her hands in the air. “It’s a tool of destruction. Its mere presence has caused every rational person who gets a whiff if it to drop any moral framework they ever had. The Dean, the police…” She glanced back out the window. “
Us
. Maybe its creators had noble intentions but that isn’t how it worked out. For God’s sake, look at what happened to your own family.”

Melissa turned to me, drying her eyes. “I’ve studied enough broken pottery to see that a lot of ancient people thought they had things figured out, and suddenly their whole civilizations vanished. We are not meant to travel through time. We can’t handle it.” She folded her arms, walking across the little room. “It’s like the kid who took the family station wagon for a drive when she was ten years old. It’s a disaster waiting to happen, and just . . . a matter of how bad it will be.”

She moved back to the desk, arms folded, and sat on the edge. “The original creators probably figured that out and threw the thing in an old well or a deep freshwater spring hoping nobody’d ever find it again. And then by pure accident, the machine was rediscovered—and disaster followed. We’re no different.” She looked up at me. “We need to get rid of that thing, but I can’t do it by myself. Can you help me? Can you be a friend and do that?”

I sighed, nodding. “I can do that.”

* * * * *

The drive to Florida Mining and Minerals site number 32 was a long one. And of course it had to rain.

Melissa drove while I sat there watching the borrowed truck’s GPS tell me how many minutes remained until I threw my dream into a hole. I was only a few feet from the machine I’d sacrificed so much for, over so many years, separated only by the truck’s small rear window.

Now I was helping take it to be dumped into a pond, in the middle of a mine, in the middle of nowhere. The workers of the next shift would unknowingly bury it, and it would be lost forever.

I didn’t speak much on the ride. Melissa had been emotional in the dorm room, but a two hour drive will cool most heads.

I kept thinking there might be a chance to persuade her to do something else with the machine.

It was already dark when we arrived, and the incessant downpour caused the watchman to barely stick his head out of the guard shack to check Melissa’s credentials. He didn’t seem to care that we weren’t in a university truck. He just waved us on through and went back to his newspaper.

We bounced along the dirt road for a few minutes, making our way to the center of the massive, muddy work site.

She stopped the truck and leaned forward over the steering wheel. “This looks like it.”

I peered out my window. There were no street lights, no work lights, just the high beams of the truck shining up onto a small hill through the rain.

Beyond it was the pond. The pretty blue waters that she and Roger had gone swimming in a few days ago. It had appeared so inviting then. It seemed so foreboding in the dark.

Melissa turned off the engine and pointed at the hill. “We’re going to pull the time machine off the truck bed, drag it up that hill to the far edge, and drop it off the cliff. It’s straight down into the deep water from there.” She looked over at me. “When the miners start working this area again, they’ll backfill this whole thing with a few million cubic yards of dirt. The machine will be buried for good.”

My heart sank. Her words echoed in my brain but I couldn’t let myself believe them. Surely she’d listen to reason. But time was running out.

She opened her door. “Come on.”

The rain finally stopped, allowing the constant humidity to create little clouds of mist around the pond’s cooler surface. Between the two of us, we were able to get the time machine off the truck and up the muddy hill.

From there, even in the darkness, we could see the water below. The dump mounds were notoriously unstable, especially in the rain, but this one seemed sturdy enough for our work. Grass had started to grow on it, so it had been around a while. At the top of the peak, the time machine rested, visible from the lights of the truck. I walked around behind it, taking it all in one last time and waiting for an opportunity to talk Melissa out of this madness.

She stood on the edge, hand on her hips, staring into the dark water below. Behind me, the noise of the truck’s intermittent windshield wipers was the only sound.

I knew there was no talking her out of it. No way to get her to see things my way. I could imagine the determination on her face.

There were only a few moments before that machine disappeared forever. Only she stood between me and my dreams.

She, who stood on the edge of a cliff right now, in the middle of nowhere.

“Peeky?” She turned to look at me. “You have a strange expression on your face.” She smiled. “Having second thoughts?”

I went over to her, my heart pounding. “How far down do you think it is?”

She peered over the edge. “I don’t know. Forty feet. Maybe more.”

“Four stories of a building.” I nodded. “That’s pretty high.” I could feel my heart thumping in my chest.

“It doesn’t really matter how high we are, it matters how deep the water is.”

I swallowed. “There’s stuff in that water sometimes. Old equipment. Big rocks. Something could land on it and get all smashed up. Maybe not sink at all.”

She looked at me. A concerned expression came over her face. “What’s with you?”

“I worked too hard, Melissa. I sacrificed too much.”

“To what? To give up the machine? Haven’t you been paying attention? It has ruined the lives of everyone who’s come in contact with it. You, of all people, should know that. It ruined your whole family.”

“I have a chance to change that.”

“It doesn’t work that way. I know that now.”

I shook my head. “You don’t know that. We hardly know anything about the machine.”

“I know enough. What are you thinking? You still want to chase after your fortune? Is that it? And I’m standing in your way?” She glanced around, holding her hands out. “Well, here’s your chance. Nobody else is here. We’re all alone, Peeky!”

I swallowed hard, staring at her.

It would be easy. A quick push… The machine would be mine. I could remove the shame of my family…

By doing the unthinkable?

The reality of it hit me like a blow to the gut. I felt my knees weaken.

What am I becoming?

I looked over at Melissa, suddenly sick to my stomach at the things I’d allowed myself to think.