Quantum Night

24

Everything changed for Kayla after that. Travis was suddenly her number-one priority; whatever plans we’d had for my current visit were instantly forgotten. Of course, it wasn’t as if he could just waltz out of the place. His limbs had atrophied, and even his jaw muscles were so weak it wasn’t clear whether he’d be able to chew food. At a minimum, he was facing many months of physiotherapy, and even after that, he might well need a motorized wheelchair for the rest of his life.

We didn’t know whether Travis’s microtubular electrons were going to stay in superposition for good—yes, I had come up to speed on all this; there was no way I was going to be Penny to Kayla’s Leonard—and so Kayla’s mother Rebekkah was summoned at once so she also could spend time with Travis before, perhaps, he slipped away again.

Kayla had never brought Ryan to see her uncle, and given all the things that Kayla and Rebekkah suddenly had to do on Travis’s behalf, it fell to me to look after her. I spent the next three days doing just that—and I have to say I loved every minute. I took her to the Fun Factory, where we played laser tag, and to the Western Development Museum, which had a re-creation of the Saskatoon boomtown of 1910; the blacksmith let Ryan try out his hammer. We also went to the Children’s Discovery Museum, and to Wendy’s and Dairy Queen. I was curious about how Travis was managing but nonetheless was having the time of my life.

And, as Ryan and I walked along, her little hand in mine, I thought about my son Virgil, and about my life that could have been and wasn’t.

Propped up in his bed, Travis looked out the window. The blinds were raised—Kayla had done that for him before she’d stepped out—and, if he needed any further proof that significant time had passed, the summery landscape of green grass and leaf-covered trees provided it; for him, it had been a snowy winter just a few hours ago.

Of course, that January and this June were separated not by just five months but by nineteen years. His sister and mother were elated: his return was a miracle they’d stopped hoping for. But Travis was furious at the loss of all the intervening time, and he was devastated by how his body had wasted away. For Christ’s sake, he was suddenly in his forties! By this point, he’d planned on being a corporate vice president with a half-million-dollar home—or whatever amount a fancy place went for these days. He should’ve had the trophy wife, the 2.1 kids, the red Jaguar. Instead, he had just $347 in his Scotiabank account, plus, he supposed, whatever interest had accrued on it, if monthly service fees hadn’t whittled the damn thing down to nothing.

He’d heard Kayla and his mom talking—funny how candid they were, as if a part of them still felt he couldn’t possibly hear what they were saying. It had been decided that, when the doctors discharged him, he’d move in with his mom—yup, that was his life now, the quintessential loser, in his forties, living in his parent’s basement. But how the fuck had he ended up like this? What the hell had happened?

He clearly remembered everything from the last few days—the last few days nineteen years ago: going to see Dude, Where’s My Car? at the Polo Park Cineplex on New Year’s Eve; picking up a girl at the bar afterward; watching a new show called CSI and thinking that its gimmick would wear thin quickly, only to have Kayla tell him today that the damn thing had stayed in production until 2017. But what had caused him to become Rip Van Winkle? Oh, right! He had been—

“Great news!” His sister came back into the room; he was still startled by how she looked now. “I spoke to the dietitian. He’s going to work out a plan to get you back onto solid food. We’ll have you eating cheeseburgers and nachos before you know it.”

“Thanks,” he replied, but he didn’t feel much enthusiasm. He didn’t want to eat; he wanted to walk—he wanted to run!

Perhaps she’d read something in his face because she added at once, “And the physiotherapist will be here tomorrow to do an assessment.”

Just then, a nurse came in, pretty, Asian, maybe twenty-five. Travis turned to look at her as she checked his IV drip, and—

And it should have been obvious. It should have been clear at a glance. He should have been able to see it.

But he couldn’t.

This nurse might be vulnerable, she might be afraid, she might be the perfect means to an end—any end—for him.

But he couldn’t tell. The sense he used to have, the ability that had been there his whole life, the perception that had guided his interactions with others for so long, was gone.

The nurse, noting his gaze, smiled at him, but it wasn’t the interested smile he was used to getting from women; it was a comforting “there, there” smile, sympathy for the old man.

The nurse left, and Travis turned back to face Kayla. He used to be able to read her easily, too, but not anymore. And yet he did sense… something. As he looked at her, he… he felt… “pain,” he supposed was the right word for seeing her this way, although that didn’t… it… he couldn’t, but…

He narrowed his eyes, detecting the skin on his forehead, which had clearly loosened over the years, wrinkling as he did so. That was a strange sensation, but not as strange, not as unprecedented, not as fucking weird as…

…as this… this sadness—that was it!—this ineffable sorrow not for himself, not for the two decades he’d lost, but for his sister, for the toll the passage of time had taken on her, the decay she’d undergone.

Still, unlike him, she hadn’t missed out on the last nineteen years. She’d lived them, every moment, doubtless dozens of triumphs and dozens of tragedies. So why did he feel so melancholy when he looked at her? Why did he feel…

Why did he feel anything for her?

What the fuck was going on?

“You okay, Trav?” Kayla said, sitting down on a chair near his bed.

“I guess.” He paused for a beat. “So, Mom said you’re a big-time rocket scientist now, huh?”

“Quantum physicist,” Kayla replied.

“A professor?”

She shook her head. “I don’t teach. I’m a researcher.”

A question popped into his head, one that it had never occurred to him to ask before. “You happy?”

“With my work? Sure. The synchrotron is an amazing place, and it pays well enough.”

“And other than work?”

“Honestly? My ex is a pain in the ass.”

“Your ex? You’re married?”

“And divorced.”

A huge chapter of her life he’d completely missed. And—my God—he wasn’t even sure he knew his own sister’s name now. “Did you take his name?”

“Nope. Still a Huron. As we say in the physics world: inertia.”

“And this guy was an a-hole?”

“So it turned out. Only good thing that came out of that relationship was Ryan.”

“Who?”

“My daughter.” A pause. “Your niece.”

Incredible.

“Six, going on thirty,” Kayla said. “I’ll bring her by to meet you soon.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure. And yeah, to answer your question, basically, overall, life is good. I’m making amazing breakthroughs at work, and you’ve met my boyfriend Jim; he’s really good to me and Ryan.”

He thought about this—and, oddly, about how he felt about it all. It was very, very strange, but he replied, saying words that he’d said countless times before but meant—really meant—for the first time: “I’m happy for you.”