Second Chances

“Dr. Townsend?”

Jennifer looked up warily as the police detective came into the small cinder-block room.

She’d been questioned for hours, first at the hospital, and then here, in this interrogation room at the police station. She’d told her story over and over again to all shapes and sizes of detectives. To the precinct captain. To a psychiatrist who was clearly trying to evaluate her sanity.

She knew it sounded crazy. Time travel. Who would possibly believe it?

The worst of it was, they seemed to think she was the one who had shot Brian.

Brian’s surgery had taken a long time. He’d come through it alive, but when she’d been taken from the hospital he still wasn’t out of danger. He was placed under guard in the intensive-care unit.

Jennifer wanted to be there, sitting next to him, holding his hand, telling him to hang on, to fight to stay alive. Telling him that she loved him.

Instead, she’d been taken here. And while she hadn’t quite been put in a jail cell, the door to this little room had been securely locked each time she’d been left alone.

She’d tried to focus her thoughts on Brian, tried to reach out to him across all the city blocks that separated them. His love for her had defied the boundaries of time. Surely hers could touch him across such a short physical distance….

“How is he?” she asked the detective, praying that the news was good.

“He’s corroborated your story,” the man told her.

Jennifer’s heart leapt and she stood up. “He’s conscious?”

“Yeah. Not that we believe him any more than we believe you, but at least we seem to have removed you from out list of suspects. Mr. Littrell insists you didn’t shoot him. Although I think it’s the fact that the ballistics lab verified that the bullet the doctors took out of him didn’t come from your gun that’s working the most in your favor.”

“I want to see him.”

“Well, he’s asking for you, too,” the detective told her. “So let’s go.”

The drive to the hospital took forever, as did the elevator up to the intensive-care unit, but finally Jennifer was there.

Brian was asleep. He looked so small in that bed, hooked up to every monitor imaginable. An IV tube was attached to a bag that sent a slow but steady drip of a powerful painkiller into him arm. Jennifer took his chart from the foot of his bed.

“You can’t read that,” the nurse admonished her.

She gave her a long, level look. “Yes,” she said. “I can.”

She was silent as she opened Brian’s chart and quickly read the doctor’s notes, saw from where the bullet had been removed, saw that it hadn’t come near his spine, saw that none of the damage it had done would be permanent. His injuries were serious, but he would live. If he wanted to.

The nurse watched her warily as she replaced the chart.

“I’m going to sit with him,” she told the woman.

“Visitors aren’t supposed to stay long,” she told her. “There’s no chair.”

“Then I’ll stand.” Jennifer reached out gently and touched Brian’s hair, touched his hand. “Hey, Brian,” she said quietly, unable to keep her eyes from filling with tears. “I’m here.” Her voice broke and she couldn’t go on. All she could do was hold his hand, hope that he felt the pressure of her fingers against his. She didn’t care what anyone said, she wasn’t leaving his side again. She needed him to come back to her. She wanted him to open his eyes and look at her while she told him that she loved him.

The nurse stood and watched her for several long minutes before she silently left the room. She came back with a chair.

******************

Jennifer couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept. But every time she felt herself start to drift off, she forced herself to sit up straighter and have another cup of coffee. She was determined to keep talking to Brian. She was sure that somewhere, even if only in the back of his subconscious mind, he could hear her. And she wanted to make sure she was there and awake when he opened his eyes again.

At first everyone tried to talk her into taking a nap. The nurses, doctors------even Brian’s group mates. But after a while they gave up and brought her a fresh cup of coffee every time they came in to check on Brian.

Brian’s buddies were the best. They made sure she ate. And one of them could usually be found sitting in Brian’s room with her, listening as she talked. They could easily see how much she loved him. They had become really good friends of hers in a very short time. She didn’t know if she would have been able to keep it together if it hadn’t been for them.

After her third cup of coffee in an hour, she was forced to leave Brian’s side for a minute or two. She was in the bathroom when he woke up.

“He’s asking for you,” Nick told her as she walked out of the ladies’ room.

Jennifer ran down the hall, praying that she’d get to him before he slipped back into a painkiller- induced sleep.

She burst through the door. “Brian!”

His eyes were closed, but he spoke. “Jenn.”

Jenn. He wanted Jenn.

Jennifer felt sick. She felt her heart drop down into her stomach. He wanted Jenn, but Jenn was gone. Forever. She felt a surge of emotions. Grief for his loss. The pain and despair of her own dashed hopes and expectations. Fear that if he knew the truth, if he knew that Jenn was gone, he’s give up his fight to stay alive.

Jennifer reached for his hand, uncertain how to tell him. As her fingers touched his, his eyes opened.

She could see both his pain and the medication he was being given to numb it in his eyes. He was barely able to focus, and he blinked up at her, trying to clear his foggy vision.

“Jenn,” he said again.

She started to shake her head, to tell him no, but he reached for her, pulling her closer, clearly wanting to tell her something of great importance.

“Jenn, it’s ……ok,” he breathed. “You can go now. I’m going to be all right.”

He tried to squeeze her hand, but his grip was impossibly weak. Jennifer couldn’t speak. She didn’t know what to say.

“I love you,” he whispered. “I’ll always love you, and remember you. But I have to…..be honest.”

He fell into a silence that lasted so long, Jennifer pulled back slightly, thinking he was asleep again. But his eyes were still open. They were filled with tears.

“I know why you wanted me and Jenny…..to be together. You were right…..”

“I don’t understand…..” Jennifer started.

“You knew if I could love you, if I could love the woman you’ve become, despite all you’ve done and all you wouldn’t tell me…..then I would love Jenny even more.” His eyes closed and the last of his words were spoken on a sigh. “And I do.”

Jennifer sent a silent prayer of thanks to Jenn, wherever she was. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t going to take Jenn’s dark path. It didn’t matter that she was never going to become Jenn.

She was already something better than Jenn.

She was Jenny.

And Brian loved her, just the way she was.

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