Page 14 of Time for You
Daphne stared at Henry. “You’re—you’re really from 1885, aren’t you?”
“Aye. And I’d like to get home. I assume there’s a machine for that, too?”
“You mean a time machine? I already told you, those don’t exist.”
“I thought that was a ruse to make sure I completed my treatment here.”
“Well, it wasn’t.”
His brow furrowed. “Then how did I get here?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Daphne shrugged.
Henry opened his mouth again, but before he could ask anything else, Ellie breezed in. Her hair was tied back in a messy bun, and she had a white stain on the side of her scrubs. “I hear you hit someone with your bike?” she said without preamble. She looked at Henry and wrinkled her nose. “Must have been you, huh?”
“Henry, this is Dr. Ellie Levine. Ellie, this is Henry MacDonald.”
Henry had jumped to his feet when Ellie came in, and he did a little half bow, half nod thing that made Ellie shoot Daphne a puzzled look. “You must be another lady doctor. Pleased to meet you,” he said, absurdly formal.
“I’m Emergency Medicine, not OB-GYN,” Ellie replied, confused.
“He means like, your gender. Not your specialty,” Daphne clarified.
Ellie cocked her head to the side. “Oh. Uh, yeah, I’m a lady, so ... yeah?”
Daphne peeked out the door to make sure no one else was on their way in. “El, I’ve got to tell you something. There’s literally no otherway to put this, but—god, this is so weird. Okay, here goes. He’s a time traveler—”
“From 1885,” Henry interjected.
“Yeah, then.”
“Daph, James said you were fine, and the patient had, some, uh, possible issues, but—girl, doyouneed a CT?”
“I didn’t hit my head. And I was wearing my helmet. I don’t know how to explain it, but this is the truth. He showed up out of nowhere right before I hit him, and he’s from the past. I have no idea how to prove that to anyone, except with this.” She pulled up the test results and let Ellie sink onto the stool.
Ellie skimmed through the lab report the same way Daphne had, frowning at various points and nodding at others. And then— “Holy shit, he has smallpox,” she hissed, shoving as far away from Henry as she could. She jumped up and started pacing. “We need to call—I don’t know, the CDC? But we have to lock this room down right away. How thefuckdid he getsmallpox?”
Ellie’s panic mirrored her own just a few moments earlier, but it helped ground Daphne. “He doesn’t have it. He’s been vaccinated against it.”
Ellie stopped in her tracks. “What? They stopped that decades ago.”
“They did. But if Henry’s from 1885, smallpox vaccination was mandatory then.”
“Daph—”
“Ellie, listen to me. I know this sounds absolutely bananapants, but—”
“Bananapants?” Henry interrupted. “What are banana—”
“It’s a saying. Meansweird,” Daphne said, and turned back to Ellie. “Look, I know how it sounds, but if you’ve ever loved me, you have to trust me on this. I was riding my bike, and he justappeared. No cars nearby, no doorways he could have stepped out of, nothing. He wasn’t there, and then he was, and he’s been very consistent on his story—he’sfrom Scotland in 1885, and given the evidence, I don’t know what other conclusion we can reach.”
“He could have grown up in a cult,” Ellie argued.
“I didn’t,” Henry replied.
“Besides, how would he have been exposed to smallpox?” Daphne pointed out.
“I don’t know, cults are fucking weird. There could be a smallpox cult out there.”
