Who Wakes First From the Long Dream I Alone Know My Life

When I woke after my LASIK surgery, my eyes still wrapped in gauze, my boyfriend Denys Sanchez's voice had aged a great deal.

He was gripping my hand tightly, telling me he had come back on purpose from forty years in the future, just to see me.

I used six questions to confirm he really was Denys, because those six secrets were things only he could know.

I was overjoyed. He really was Denys, the old-man version of him!

Then I asked six more questions, shaking his arm to make him answer each one.

"First one. Forty years from now, is there really the technology to travel through time?"

"There is. I'm the best proof of it. But it costs a fortune."

"Second. Did you marry me properly, the whole big affair?"

"I did. The year you turned twenty-three, we threw a huge reception, forty-eight tables."

"Third. Were you good to me after we married?"

"I was. One night you said you wanted the wonton soup from that diner on South Street, and I ran across half the city for it."

"Fourth. Did we have children?"

"The year you turned twenty-five, our daughter was born."

I laughed until the tears came, feeling this whole life had been worth it.

"Fifth. In your whole life, have you loved only me?"

He went quiet.

The hand shaking his arm stopped. "Is that a hard question? Yes or no?"

"Yes." His voice shook a little.

Satisfied, I asked the last one. "Then did we grow old together, side by side?"

His tight grip on my hand loosened.

It was a long time before he spoke.

"We grew old."

"But not side by side. Because we divorced."

1.

I grabbed at Denys's sleeve.

"Why did we divorce? When did it happen?"

He didn't answer right away.

I couldn't see. All I could hear was his breathing, a little quick now.

"You just came out of surgery. You can't get worked up."

Denys laid his hand gently over the gauze, his fingertips trembling.

"When they take the bandages off, I'll tell you."

"What does the divorce have to do with the bandages?" I wouldn't let go. "Did you do something to me? Something you couldn't take back?"

His cuff slipped out of my fingers, bit by bit.

"Be good, listen to me. Rest first."

His footsteps faded away.

I braced against the edge of the bed, trying to sit up, when a gentle voice reached me.

"You just had eye surgery. You mustn't get too upset, okay?"

The nurse steadied my IV line for me and propped the pillow higher.

Her movements were practiced, and when her palm cupped the back of my neck, something about it felt strangely familiar.

I caught hold of her wrist.

"Nurse, that man who just left. How old did he look to you?"

Her arm stiffened faintly.

"Sixties, maybe."

Something kept nagging at me. Time travel was too absurd to believe.

"Does he have a very faint mole at the corner of his left eye?"

"I think so, yes." Her voice came out a little off.

I slowly let go of her.

That mole was from a bicycle fall Denys took at seventeen.

Could he really be Denys, come back from forty years in the future? But how could my Denny ever divorce me?

At midday, I slept deeply.

In the dream, I was standing in the chapel in a white wedding gown.

The crystal chandelier overhead was dazzling, and applause filled the air all around me.

Denys stood in a black suit at the far end of a long red carpet, holding out his hand to me.

I had just taken one step when the chapel doors were suddenly pushed open.

A woman in a red gown stood there, backlit.

She took off her sunglasses and smiled at me.

I tried to make out her face, but everything went black before my eyes.

When I woke, my hand groped through the air a few times and touched a warm one.

"Denny?"

"It's me."

I gripped him tightly and told him everything that had happened in the dream.

"Did our wedding day go smoothly? Did anyone come bursting in?"

His body stiffened, plainly.

Then, quickly, he tucked the blanket corner in for me, keeping his tone light on purpose.

"The anesthesia hasn't fully worn off. That's why your dreams are all so strange."

"I asked whether anyone came bursting in."

Denys said nothing.

I loosened my fingers, one at a time.

It was a long while before he forced out a line. "That day we had forty-eight tables. There were a lot of people. It was lively."

He answered whether it was lively, not whether anything had happened.

I leaned back against the headboard and tried to find him an excuse.

Maybe something really had gone wrong at the wedding, and it was only that so much time had passed, and he didn't want me to worry.

"With that many people coming, I must have been very happy."

He didn't respond.

"What about you? Were you happy that day?"

Denys stood at the window with his back to me.

"Getting to marry you was the happiest thing in my life."

His voice was rough, as if he were speaking of something lost a very long time ago.

Before I fell asleep, drowsy, I asked him, "That woman in the red gown. Do you know her?"

Still he didn't respond.

He must have thought I was asleep. I heard him get up and walk out of the room.

Through the closed door, the voices in the corridor were pitched very low.

"Joyce Henson, she's not stable right now. Don't you"

The rest was drowned out by the sound of a cart rolling across the floor.

I clutched the blanket corner tight.

When the door opened again, the nurse came in to take my blood pressure. She felt how cold my hand was and said quietly, "Don't let your mind run off like that. Rest properly."

I turned my face aside.

"Did we know each other before?"

Her hands paused.

"I feel like your voice is so familiar. And just now, when you propped up my pillow, it didn't seem like the first time you'd taken care of me."

She gently freed her hand from mine. "I'm only your on-duty nurse."

The moment I fell asleep, the dream came again.

This time, the woman in the red gown walked into the light. Pinned to her chest was a white corsage, and on it two words were written, clear as anything.

The bride.

The guests rose one after another, calling her Miss Henson.

I looked down at myself.

The wedding gown was gone. I was standing outside the chapel doors, barefoot, and around my feet lay white roses trampled to ruin.

Denys was still standing before the priest, looking at me with something complicated in his face, and he did not come toward me.

I jolted awake, my clothes soaked through with cold sweat.

Denys reached out to take my hand, and almost on instinct I pulled it back.

The movement came so fast it startled even me.

At nineteen, I couldn't get close enough to Denys. I held his hand crossing the street, leaned into his shoulder at the movies, tugged at the hem of his shirt even in the middle of a fight, refusing to let him walk away.

But just now, the moment he touched me, my body drew back on its own.

The conversation between the old woman in the next bed and her daughter broke the awkwardness between us.

"You come every single day. It's too much for you."

The daughter laughed. "When I was little, you wore yourself out looking after me. Now you've had your cataract surgery, and it's my turn to look after you."

Listening to them, I felt a blank space open up in my head.

Where our home was when I was small, what my mother and father looked like, I couldn't remember any of it.

"Denys."

"Where are my parents?"

He got up to pour water. "I don't know much about your father. All I know is that your mother raised you."

"And my mom, in the future, is she doing all right?"

The glass in his hand knocked against the mouth of the pitcher, a small clink.

"When you were twenty-two, she got leukemia. But you did everything you could, and you saved her."

My heart clenched. "Was it you who helped me?"

"Mm. Yes."

I let out a breath.

The year I was seventeen, I ran a high fever, and Denys climbed over the locked dorm wall and carried me two miles to the hospital on his back.

Back then he barely had enough to cover the emergency fee, but he told me that no matter what happened after that, he'd always find a way.

Even now, knowing we'd once divorced, I still wavered because he'd said he saved my mother.

That was when his phone rang.

Denys glanced at it, and instead of stepping out like the last few times, he answered right there.

The other side talked for a long while. "I said it's not a good time. I'll call you back later."

After he hung up, I asked, "Was that Joyce?"

"Once your bandages come off, I'll tell you everything."

"Waiting for the bandages again." I touched the gauze over my eyes. "I can't see, so it's easier to lie to me?"

His breath caught.

"Some things are better if you see them with your own eyes than if I tell you."

"See what?"

He didn't explain.

The next morning, the nurse came to bring my medicine.

She placed the pills in my palm. I didn't take them. I asked her quietly, "Can eye surgery affect your memory?"

A few drops of water spilled from the cup in her hand.

"I've forgotten a lot of things, and I keep having these very real dreams." I gripped her sleeve. "We knew each other before, didn't we?"

She was quiet for a moment, then patted my back. "Take your medicine first."

At noon, the moment I closed my eyes, the images came.

I was standing alone in the living room, my belly heavy and full. Then a sudden warmth ran down below, amniotic fluid mixed with blood streaming down my calves.

Holding on to the table, shaking, I dialed Denys's number.

But it was a woman who answered. "He's celebrating my birthday with me."

I could barely stay on my feet from the pain. "Put him on. I think I'm going into labor."

The woman gave a little laugh.

"If you want the child in your belly to live, don't call again."

"The day I agreed to save your mother, we settled it. You're Denys's mistress, and I'm his lawful wife."

I gripped the phone.

"I never agreed to that."

"But Denys did. He signed the contract."

"If you dare come and ruin my birthday today, I'll stop your mother's medication right now."

The line went dead.

I dropped to the floor and called for an ambulance myself.

Ten hours later, the baby survived, and so did I.

But my womb couldn't be saved.

There was no family waiting outside the operating room. Denys's assistant stood at the far end of the hallway, beside a postpartum nurse hired at the last minute.

I woke from the dream crying out loud.

The Denys who'd traveled back came to wipe my tears. I didn't turn away, but I didn't lean into him the way I once would have either.

"Just now, I dreamed someone was trying to take you from me, and you chose to be with her."

His hand stopped at the corner of my eye.

In the voice of my nineteen-year-old self, I told him, plain and earnest, "Denys, listen to me. If a day ever comes when you need me to step aside for another woman, you won't have to send me away. I'll leave on my own."

He said nothing.

On the third morning, I heard the nurse and the attending doctor talking outside my door.

"Does she still need to stay on the medication today?"

The doctor turned a page in the chart.

"Hold the oral doses for now. And the hydrochloride... we'll adjust the dosage too. Once her vision comes back, we'll see how the cognition looks."

I didn't catch the name of the drug that came after.

I searched my mind for a long time, but I could never remember what kind of medication would affect cognition.

That afternoon, the medication pulled me under again.

In the dream, someone had thrown red paint all over our front door.

The word "mistress" ran from the top of the door all the way down to the floor, and through the crack in their doorway the neighbors were talking.

"Her man's got a wife over in Northgate. She's just the other woman."

I crouched on the floor scrubbing with a rag, but the more I scrubbed, the more the paint smeared, staining my fingers red, staining my daughter's little shoes by the door too.

The scene shifted, and the infant swaddled in the blanket was already three years old.

She stood at the preschool gate with her yellow backpack, watching the other children run into their fathers' arms.

She was the only one no one came for.

The teacher crouched down and asked her, "Isn't Mommy here yet?"

She shook her head and explained in a small voice, "Daddy's at Aunt Joyce's kid's parent-child sports day today. Mommy's at work, she'll be a little late."

That day was her birthday too.

I rushed home after my shift, made a whole table of food, bought a cake, and waited for her father to come home.

My daughter lay curled on the couch, holding out until eleven-thirty, until she finally couldn't stay awake and fell asleep.

That was when the lock turned. Denys came in carrying wonton soup from South Street, sequins still clinging to his suit jacket.

I looked at him, and somehow I still felt relieved. At least he'd come home.

I woke our daughter and got her to blow out her candles before midnight.

Denys carried her back to her room, then pushed the wonton soup, already gone cold, in front of me.

"Today, I kept my promise. I spent your daughter's birthday with her."

"Tomorrow, you have to keep yours. We go and file for the divorce."

The dream broke apart right then, and I woke with the ache still sitting in my chest.

The door to the room hadn't been shut all the way, and the voices drifted in in pieces.

"So there was a point to you coming after all." The nurse's voice was thick with tears. "She's remembered a lot these past few days. Once she remembers everything, you leave."

"I owe her." Denys said. "I want to spend the rest of my life making it up to her."

I pressed a hand to my chest. Denys said he owed me. Did that mean everything in those dreams was real?

That evening, while Denys was wiping my face, I finally asked it out loud.

"These past couple of days, I've had so many dreams. Tell me, are they real?"

"The first one. Joyce burst into our wedding in a red gown, with the bride's flower pinned to her chest."

Denys's hand went still.

"The second one. My water broke. She used my mother's medicine to threaten me, so I wasn't allowed to call you."

"Stop." Denys's voice cracked.

"The third one. Someone threw paint on our door, and our daughter waited at preschool and her father never came."

I kept going, one word at a time.

"And just now, I dreamed that you traded our daughter's third birthday for the divorce papers."

He reached out and pressed a hand to my shoulder, the pressure held back, but he wouldn't let me say any more.

"That's all in the past." Denys took my hand.

"In the past. So then it all really happened. It wasn't a dream."

His hand loosened from mine, little by little.

"Back then, some things... I had my reasons."

I felt for his wrist and held on, so he couldn't get away.

"Do reasons let another woman wear my wedding dress? Do they let my child be born with no father there?"

"I never thought it would turn out that way..."

His breathing turned suddenly heavy, and he seized my wrist, gripping until the bones ached.

The nurse pushed the door open.

"Denys! You're hurting her."

Denys let go like he'd been burned.

A ring of red rose fast around my wrist, and the nurse held an ice pack against it for me.

Today was the fourth day after surgery.

The attending doctor finished checking the wound and confirmed the bandages could come off.

The nurse stood behind me.

"This is the last dressing change today."

"Once the bandages are off, you should be able to see normally."

I heard her draw in a deep breath.

The bandages came away, layer by layer.

At first the light coming in was blindingly white, and the nurse shielded my eyes with her hand, only easing it away once I'd adjusted.

The first thing I saw was her face.

Her eyes were rimmed red, and she was thinner than I'd imagined, with faint fine lines already at the corners of her eyes, her hair tied neatly back, the bandages she'd unwound still bunched in her hand.

I let my eyes travel down her white uniform.

The badge read three words: Susan Harding.

Harding. My surname.

Before I could get a word out, a mirror caught the corner of my eye.

In the mirror sat an old woman.

White hair, loose eyelids, age spots scattered across her throat.

I blinked, and the woman in the mirror blinked too. I raised my right hand, and she raised hers.

I stared at the glass, something lodged in my throat.

"Who are you?"

The moment the words left me, the memories came back.

Forty-some years of forgotten memory came flooding back into my mind all at once.

I remembered the first day in the hospital, Susan holding me through an episode, crying, "Mom, it's just cataract surgery, don't be scared."

I remembered the pills I took every day, donepezil hydrochloride, medication for dementia.

And I remembered what my life had truly been, from the age of nineteen on.

The year I turned twenty-two, my mother was diagnosed with leukemia.

No suitable donor ever turned up in the registry, until the Henson family came to us on their own, and only then did I learn that my mother had given birth to a pair of twins when she was young.

When she fled the Hensons, she took two-year-old me with her, and left the other daughter behind.

That daughter was Joyce Henson. Joyce was a match for my mother, but she named a condition.

"You want the Henson heir to donate for your mother? Fine. Then hand Denys Sanchez over to me, and marry me off with him."

I refused. My mother refused too.

But Denys signed that loyal-dog contract behind my back.

He told me it was only a stopgap, that once my mother's condition stabilized, he would set everything right.

The year I turned twenty-three, we held our wedding without telling Joyce.

She stormed into the hall in a red gown and snapped my bridal bouquet in two.

Joyce slapped that contract down on the table.

"Have you forgotten what you signed? You actually dared to marry her in secret?"

The Hensons tore off my veil, stripped away my wedding dress, and put the bridal flowers from my chest into Joyce's hands.

When Denys helped me up, he murmured, "Bear it a little longer. Save your mother first."

And in that moment, I actually believed him.

Later, I accepted Joyce's marrow.

And I accepted her definition of what we were: she was Denys's rightful wife, and I was the lover who could never see the light.

At twenty-five, I got pregnant and gave birth. The day my water broke, Denys was throwing Joyce a birthday party.

He didn't come. He only sent his assistant with a signed surgical consent form.

Save the baby. Remove the uterus if necessary.

My body was never whole again after that.

When my daughter was a year and a half, my mother didn't make it after all.

After the funeral, Denys and Joyce ended their brief marriage. He came to my mother's grave with a plain band, knelt on one knee, and proposed to me, saying this was the standing he owed me.

I thought that after all those years of waiting, he had finally come back.

But the day we went to register, the moment we walked out of the office, one call from Joyce and he left me and our daughter standing at the roadside.

When our daughter was two and a half and hospitalized with pneumonia, he promised to stay the night, then left in the middle of it because Joyce's child couldn't sleep.

I went to a parent-child event at her school, and the teacher asked why the child's father never showed up.

On the phone, Denys said, "The Henson occasions matter more. Grow up a little. Don't use the kid to fight for attention."

On our wedding anniversary, he ordered me wonton soup from the little diner on South Street, and went out of town with Joyce himself.

When the delivery arrived, the note read: Don't wait for me.

Every time, he left something behind.

A meal, a card, one more bear it a little longer.

As if those things were enough to fill the space he left when he walked out.

When our daughter was almost three, he finally told me that he and Joyce had grown close over time.

"Let's divorce for now. Once I have control of the Hensons, once it's all over, I'll come back for you."

The divorce papers he wanted, I traded to him on one condition: that he spend our daughter's third birthday with her.

After that, he pulled himself out of our lives bit by bit.

First fewer visits, then he stopped the money, and in the end he took back the house he had once given us.

I delivered food, worked temp jobs, raised my daughter alone, and changed her surname from Sanchez back to Harding.

Every year after that, on Susan's birthday, I would send him one line:

Can you come back and have a meal with her?

His answer was always the same:

Bear it a little longer.

That bearing lasted more than thirty years.

He finally finished settling the Henson shares and took the chairman's seat at the Hensons.

And I had long since finished settling every expectation I ever had of him.

In the mirror, my face was wet with tears.

Susan crouched down and buried her face against my knees. She no longer called me her patient, no longer called me ma'am.

"Mom."

Just that one word, and her shoulders shook with sobbing.

I felt for the little fleshy mole behind her ear, the one she'd had since birth.

Afraid the nurse might mix her up with another baby, I used to check for it every single day.

"Susie."

Her crying stopped short for an instant, then she held me tighter.

Denys stood a few steps away.

He had grown old, the mole at the corner of his left eye faded paler now, his back no longer straight.

That dark gray coat was the color I'd loved most on him at nineteen.

But when I looked at him now, there was nothing left inside me.

"That story about traveling back from forty years in the future was a lie."

His lips moved.

"I was afraid you wouldn't see me."

"You guessed right."

Denys took a step forward. I raised my hand to stop him.

"I used to always wait. Wait for you to finish with Joyce, wait for you to get what you wanted, wait for you to come back when it was convenient."

I braced myself against the mirror and stood.

My legs were shaking, but my voice was steady.

"There's no need to wait anymore."

"Denys, go."

"From now on, in life or in death, we don't meet again."