Page 33 of Meet Me in Another Life

“Yes. Every day.” She can tell he’s not lying. Another reason she likes him: Mr. López, unlike so many of her patients, is not resigned. He isn’t angry, either, not like she would be in his situation. He simply does what he can, and lets the rest go. It’s an attitude she respects more than she can say.

He smiles at her as she watches his face for pain. “And what about you? How are you feeling today?”

She chuckles. “You’re my only patient who asks me that.”

“Ah, I see. Avoiding the question.”

She gives him a look. “All right. I’m feeling—odd, if you must know.”

“Odd?” He frowns. “You should take a break. My hands can wait.”

“No, it’s nothing physical. Just—” She sits up, looking into his eyes. “Do you ever have a moment when you look at the world, and don’t recognize it whatsoever?”

“Yes,” he says. “But I am eighty years old. You’re a little young to be talking that way.”

“Maybe I’m an old soul.”

He smiles. “Better than being an old body.”

“You’re doing very well for an old body,” she remonstrates. “I’m going to prescribe you something for the pain, but otherwise,you just need to cut down on the drawing and keep up with the exercises. I know they hurt like hell, but your range of motion is great, much better than it was.”

She goes back to her computer to fill out his prescription. As she types, she sees him reflected in the screen, looking around at her walls: the star chart behind his chair; the copy of the Hippocratic Oath in the original ancient Greek (her father’s passive-aggressive way of saying that if she was going into medicine, she should have become a doctor); the picture of her and Jules kissing at the Christopher Street Day parade. Mr. López is from a different generation, a different culture, and she’s worried he’ll make a comment. But when he speaks, the question isn’t what she expected. “What are you singing?”

Thora didn’t realize she was humming again. “Just—a tune that’s been in my head. I don’t know where it’s from. Why, do you know it?”

Mr. López doesn’t answer. When she turns to give him his prescription, he has a strange look on his face, as if there’s something he wants to say to her. Instead, his head turns back to the star chart: her public secret, daring the curious to ask. Thora follows his gaze, wondering how to explain to him that she keeps it as an anchor, to manage the vertigo she feels when she looks up at the night sky and imagines a dozen other ways it could have been.These are the stars. This is your life. These were your choices.

“I used to think I would go there someday,” he says, tapping the chart somewhere light-years away.

Thora sees the pain in his eyes and greets it like a friend. In a few decades, she will be the age he is now: an old woman, Earthbound her whole life. “Me too,” she says.

He takes the prescription from her. “It may be selfish, but I’mglad you didn’t,” he says. “Or you wouldn’t have been here to be my doctor.”

“I’m not—” she begins.

“I know.” He gets to his feet, wincing. His hand goes to the back of his neck.

“Something new?” she asks.

He shakes his head. “I’ve had this pain all my life. This is beyond even your power to fix.”

She smiles ruefully as he goes to the door. On the point of leaving, he pauses.

“Was there something else?” Thora asks.

Mr. López frowns, as if he’s not sure what he’s going to say until he says it. “When you said you don’t recognize the world. What do you mean?”

“I mean...” She pauses. The appointment is over: she has a cancellation straight after, but Mr. López doesn’t know that. She should really stop talking, send him home. But his eyes are fixed on her, and she doesn’t know why, but she wants to share this with him. “I remember it being better.”

He lets go of the door handle. “Better how?”

Thora swallows down the old hurt. “My mother—she died after a stroke when I was sixteen years old. And I feel—I can’t help feeling like that wasn’t supposed to happen. That there’s a world where it didn’t happen, and in that world, other good things came after.”Like maybe I made it to the stars.She has to stop herself from saying it. She doesn’t know why she’s talking this way to a patient. But it’s important to her that he understand what she means. “I used to think if I tried hard enough, if I really concentrated, I could travel there. To another world. A better one.”

Mr. López is looking at her with tears in his eyes. Thora panics. “Oh. I’m sorry. Did I say something wrong?”

He rubs the wedding ring on his veined right hand. “My wife. Thirty years ago, she resisted being robbed at knifepoint, and—they killed her. I tried to stop them, but...” He trails off.

Héloïse.The name jumps into Thora’s head. She frowns, and focuses: her patient just disclosed a personal tragedy, and she’s staring into space. “Jesus,” she says, forgetting that Mr. López probably believes in Jesus and doesn’t appreciate her blasphemy. “I’m sorry. I guess you have your own reasons for wanting to be in another universe.”

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