She kissed him goodbye, knowing he wouldn’t remember her tomorrow. His brown eyes closed, and his cheek turned into the pillow, revealing a faded scar above his jawline. Ariana released his hand and feathered wisps of dark hair from his forehead. From her chair, she could see outside the window if she turned just a little to the left. Just far enough to look away from Michael.


The sun was dipping low and it was time to leave. Without glancing back, the young woman pulled the cord to raise the blinds and then the window. Noise flooded her ears from eleven stories below. Cars honked, dogs barked, people shouted. Somewhere, there was a scream.


A wail, really. A long, loud, piercing cry of agony. Ariana knew what it meant. Behind her, she sensed Michael stir. But he wouldn’t wake. Not yet.


She climbed onto the small windowsill and jumped.


She didn’t brace; she never needed to. This was her favorite part.


The freefall only lasted seconds, but it stretched into years for her. Each time it happened, her heartbeat suspended her breath as the world bent around her like the slow rise of a crescendo in a ballet. She landed on the fermata with the soft thump of a dancer’s foot and surveyed her surroundings. It always amazed her that no one ever bumped into her, which is why the small warm hand inside hers was confusing, like a memory trying to return.


Casting her eyes down, they fell upon the brown eyes of a young child staring back at her, a recent cut still in the healing stages prominent below his cheekbone. Her brows furrowed as a flicker of recognition brushed against her consciousness. They blinked at each other in silence.


Ariana cleared her throat and she scanned the pedestrians. “Are you lost?” She tried to ignore the rapid banging against her chest. There was no time for this. “Hey, do you know where your mom is? Your dad?”


Without letting go, he started to walk, pulling her along.


She licked her lips, eyes darting, as her feet carried her forward. Great. Kidnapping. “Hey, little boy, we need to go get some help. Okay? The police can help you find your paren-“


The alley was gray and brown with green dumpsters lined along one side. She wondered if this was his home. Rotting chicken and stale beer competed with fresh urine, and Ariana raised her free hand to shield her nose. Someone coughed from between the dumpsters. Further down, a pair of legs was sticking out. She swallowed hard as the boy led her to that dumpster. The one with the loafers.


The soles were worn thin, and the toes were scuffed. Water stains had discolored the suede. But she knew they had been expensive once. How had they ended up here?


Inhaling slowly and deeply, she was afraid to close her eyes, and instead kept them focused on the brown shoes, the tan pants. A bottle clinked to the ground and the cougher laughed. She pretended not to notice him. Eyes on your own paper.


The boy’s fingers opened against her palm, and she released his hand. Was this his father?


“Is that your daddy?” Ariana figured the boy had to be around four or five years old. He should be able to talk already. Unless he couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. Maybe he was too scared. Maybe he went in search of someone because his dad wasn’t waking up. What if he was dead?

She rolled her shoulders forward, then back, as she muttered, “Suck it up, girl. This isn’t your first body.” She placed one hand on the boy’s shoulder in a silent command to stay put and simultaneously launched herself forward.


A sharp inhale blocked her airway and her heart stuttered, the beat freezing in her chest. She gasped with a shouted whisper, “Michael!” She took one step forward, then halted. The air turned thin. Too thin. He was sitting up against the weathered bricks, his head tilted, eyes closed, grayish hair matted against his forehead. But, how? Taking two steps back, she turned to stare at the boy. The passageway was deserted. Except for the man with the cough.


“Wha-?” A twitch flitted in her right eye and she raised a finger to quiet it. Her left eye remained fixed on the man lying in front of her. She concentrated on his chest, hers tightening as she strained to detect movement. She was confident his rose. Was he alive? Everything was muted. Traffic. The other guy. Her ears had become vacuum-sealed. A bubble surrounded her, Michael, and the dumpster. Thick this time. Nothing else existed.


Ariana squatted slowly and placed her hand on his breastbone. She nodded when she felt the movement, subtle as it was. “Okay.” Hearing her own voice helped her become grounded. But now what? Should she wake him? And if he woke, what then? How could this be Michael? This version, with wrinkles around his mouth. A sorrowful smile tugged at her lips and she resisted running her finger along the nearly invisible scar. He was-


The wail pierced the bubble she was in, and she sprang into the air. “No!” She turned away from Michael, ran past the cougher who was leaning against the brick wall near the exit, and headed back into the hospital. She pushed against the glass door, walking with it until it allowed her to step into the large white foyer.


The security desk was vacant. She didn’t care that she was running. The elevator took forever before finally dinging and slowly opening its door to allow her entrance. Pushing the “11” button repeatedly did not help the doors close any faster and she scowled.

While the box slowly crawled up its enclosure, she tried to grasp what was happening. The child. The man. The second alarm. It was too soon. Something wasn’t right.


Her hands were pressed together, allowing her fingers to clap incessantly. “Come on. Come on!” The doors opened on the eighth floor and a woman pushed a man in a wheelchair into the box with her. A doctor followed and pressed “9.” Ariana gently bit her tongue. Couldn’t he take the stairs for one flight?


“Can you press the lobby for me?” The lady smiled at the man in the lab coat.


Ariana stared over her shoulder. “We’re going up.”


“Oh.”


Ariana tried to force a smile, but she was uncertain if she had succeeded. She just needed to get to Michael’s room.


When the eleventh floor finally revealed itself to her, she sprinted out into the hallway and ran down the floor until she got to Room 1109. The door was closed, and she tried to open it in a hurry, but it was heavy and slow. Finally, she was able to dash to his bed, but he wasn’t there. No one was. The bed was made as if no one had ever been in it.


“Michael!” She didn’t care if he saw her. It didn’t matter anymore. She checked the bathroom. “Michael?” It was empty. No clothes in the small closet. Not even his good loafers.


Not a single trace of him existed in the room. No indentation on the pillow from where his head had been. The only reminder that she had been there herself was the open window. As she walked to it, she heard a frantic shout from below. “Michael!”


Ariana’s wrist pulsated wildly and she examined the scene beneath her. A woman, turning around, frantic, calling out, “Michael!” She spoke to a passerby, placing her arm on the head of an invisible child as if to indicate height. The man shrugged, and she stopped someone else before calling out the name one more time and continuing down the street.


The boy! Was it possible he- but no. That- Ariana was afraid she would hear the wail again, and everything would change. She was running out of time. It would be tomorrow soon.


She jogged back to the elevator, sidestepping a nurse and her patient walking tediously down the corridor. She was about to give up and take the stairs when her ride arrived. They stopped at the fourth floor and the third before finishing their journey to the ground floor. Staring straight ahead, Ariana charged through a door that had not yet closed from an automated opening and ran down the sidewalk searching for the woman. She was already gone. But the backstreet remained.


Mustering courage she couldn’t comprehend, she stepped back into the cesspool. Everything was the same, except his feet were no longer sticking out. This time, as she passed the cougher who was digging through one of the bins, she fixed her gaze on him, but he didn’t even flinch.


She stepped quickly as she got closer to the dumpster where she had left Michael. Expecting him to be sitting cross-legged and awake, she flung her hair over her shoulder and opened her mouth to ask him what the hell was going on.


Her stomach dropped as if she were falling. The bubble, broken. Tomorrow was bleeding into a different day. He wasn’t there. No one was.

The alley was empty except for her and the cougher, whose laughter now ricocheted as another wail broke through the sky.