Chapter 2
***********
An hour later, Christine was asleep and Sam was rummaging through
the amount of paperwork that Scott had to complete. It was only
9:30 p.m., but Sam found himself yawning while he was reading. Al
had left to check on Scott again, bringing no new information,
due to the fact that Scott was still out cold.
"Nooooooo!!!!!!"
Sam shot up as soon as he heard the cry coming from upstairs.
"Daddy?" she whispered first, then saw Sam.
"Sam?" Her brown curls fell into her little face making
her look a lot smaller than she was. Sam immediately flipped on
the light and walked to the bed, sitting down on it, and realized
the girl was shaking. He reached out for her, not sure what else
to do. He didn’t have kids, at least he didn’t remember
having kids (he could for all he knew), and had no idea how to
handle the nightmares of a four-year-old. He just picked her up
and held her in his lap until her shaking began to cease. He
didn’t want to ask her what the dream, or perhaps nightmare
was a better word, was about, for fear of stirring up another
scream from the girl.
Finally she seemed to settle in his lap, falling asleep. He laid
her carefully back down in the bed, staring at her sleeping form
for a second, a lump rising in his throat. Sighing, he shut the
light and exited the room, still wondering what kind of nightmare
could plague a girl so small.
It happened three more times that night, and each time it took
longer for Christine to settle down. Sam didn’t finish his
paperwork and didn’t get any sleep either. He suddenly
understood why Scott had collapsed. The poor guy worked twelve
hour shifts, then came home to a sleepless night spent comforting
his daughter. To make matters even worse, Scott’s beeper
went off at about 4 a.m., and Sam had to get one of the neighbors
(Scott was lucky he had an insomniac neighbor) to watch Christine
as he ran back to the hospital. Returning to the house at 6:30
only to have to get Christine dressed, dropped off at preschool
and back to work at 8, he was completely drained as he dragged
his tired feet in the ER doors.
To make matters more worse, a tracker-trailer had caused a major
accident on the near-by highway. Traumas came in and took up most
of the day. Things quieted for a while after that and Sam did
manage an hour of sleep somewhere, but when he looked at his
watch and found it only three o’clock he was ready to throw
something at a wall – hard. He was staring at the clock in
the lounge, almost daring it to move, when Al showed up.
Sam’s glance didn’t turn from the wall.
"I never underestimated sleep so much," Sam said in a
monotone, as he heard the chamber door.
"You should talk, Sam. For close to three years you lived on
less than an hour of sleep a night. I practically had to drag you
out of your office."
Sam ignored his comment. "Did Scott wake up yet?"
Al nodded, though Sam wasn’t turned around to see it.
"Yeah, about an hour ago." He walked into Sam’s
view, blocking the clock Sam had been staring at. "Up and
complaining. Doctors make the worst patients," he said with
a smile.
Sam’s glance broke from the wall up to Al, smiling a bit.
"Patient? What happened?"
"Well, Ziggy finally dug up part of the reason that
you’re here. Believe it or not, it _is_ actually to give the
guy a break. According to Ziggy, in the original history, he
collapsed at work today, right in the middle of a trauma
room." Sam raised his eyebrow. "Yeah, not the best
place to pass out, huh? Anyway, he spent about two and a half
weeks in the hospital with a bad case of pneumonia and actually
signed himself out way to early. He relapsed two weeks
later."
"Well, I changed that, right?"
Al nodded. "Right. Now, Scott’s in the _future_ with a
bad case of pneumonia. If you want to believe Ziggy’s
preliminary prediction, she thinks you’re here to just give
Scott some downtime."
"Downtime?"
"Well, the guy’s…., well, a wreck. Can barely keep
his eyes open, delirious, stuff like that."
Sam looked down at his hands. "Did he say anything about
Christine? She had some nightmares last night." He paused.
"They weren’t just ‘nightmares’, Al. The
little girl was terrified and shaking after them. Four times last
night I had to go into her room and just pick her and rock her
back and forth. She settled down eventually, but, Al, no little
girl should go through nightmares like she’s having. And I
can’t even guess what they are about."
"Neither can Scott. What I found out, or Beeks could get out
of him, was that Christine has been having these nightmares since
her mother left."
"Left? You mean the divorce?"
"Yeah. Scott couldn’t tell us that much, but it turns
out that his wife, Cara, just left one day, without packing. She
left Christine sitting on the counter and that’s where Scott
found her when he got home from work." Sam saw Al’s
eyes glance off at that sentence. He just looked up. Al’s
past was a bit of a mystery to him, but he did remember something
about his mother leaving. However, it wasn’t enough to
question Al.
"Poor kid. Is that what the nightmares are about?"
Al shrugged. "He doesn’t know. During the day
she’s a normal kid, but at night she gets those terrors. His
co-worker, Linda, has been telling him he should take her to a
shrink."
Sam sighed. "Please don’t tell me I’m here to take
a little girl to a psychiatrist."
"Nah, Ziggy gives that only 23% odds. Beeks says at that
young, she may just remember the dreams being scary, but not what
they are about. Taking her to ‘seek professional help’
may only scare her more. She could never open up."
"So what am I supposed to do?"
"Well, maybe you should start with your job. I think
you’re being sought," Al answered pointing to the nurse
in the door with a chart in her hand. Sam got up and took it
walking out, surprised at the lack of a comment at the fact the
nurse was attractive.
"He’s losing it. First it’s talking to thin air,
then it just gets worse," she muttered to herself as she,
too, walked into the hallway.
******************
Eight o’clock rolled around and Sam was glad to finally get
to go home. Another night of nightmares from Christine was not
something he was looking forward to, however. Al had nothing more
to offer on the problem, and their visitor was having a hard
enough time being lucid enough to remember his own name at this
point. So, Sam brought home another load of paperwork (though he
didn’t think he would get a chance to do it), and found
Christine standing in the door, a story book in her hand. She
looked disappointed to see that Al wasn’t there, so Sam took
the book from her hands, and paid the babysitter.
"We finger-painted in art, today," she announced
proudly as she held up a painting. Sam took one look at the paint
in her hair and herded her upstairs and went through a ten minute
argument on why she needed a bath.
"But I don’t want a bath!!!" Her high pitched
voice was adding to the headache that Sam already had from work.
"You _need_ a bath," he said, lifting her towel wrapped
self and placing it in the tub, ignoring the squeals. She did
settle after a few minutes and succeeded in splashing and
completely soaking Sam. He immediately felt for every parent and
the many clothes they must get wet during baths.
A half-hour later, after a story and two trips to the bathroom,
Christine was asleep, but if tonight was to be anything like last
night, he knew it wasn’t going to last long. He searched the
medicine cabinet and came up with two Tylenol for his headache
just as he heard the chamber door opening behind him.
"If it means anything to you, Christine missed your
story-telling tonight. I’m just not the same," he said
as he swallowed the Tylenol.
"Nobody ever is," was Al’s reply. Sam wished for
the life of him that he could remember Al’s four daughters,
but he could still only remember the four ex-wives. It took time,
he supposed, and his swiss-cheesed brain may never remember it.
As long as he was leaping anyway.
"Please tell me that you’re not just here to say
hi," he said, with a tired sigh. "And that you know why
I’m here. _Completely_."
"As a matter of fact, Ziggy just dug something up."
"What would that be?" He shut the cabinet.
"Well, two days for now, Scott - you - drops Christine off
at preschool and goes to work. Sometime between the time you drop
her off and noon, Christine disappears."
"Disappears?" He lowered his voice as he walked past
Christine’s bedroom and down the stairs where he found Al
waiting for him at the bottom.
"Without a trace. The teacher had her back turned for a
second, but when she turned back, Christine was gone. In the
original history, Scott had been out of it at the hospital, but
when he found out what had happened he signed himself out early.
You changed history on Scott’s end, but Christine still
disappears. The article Ziggy found on the disappearance says
that the police suspected foul play."
That got Sam’s attention. "Foul play?"
"Yeah, it seems that Scott never bought that. He thought she
was taken by one person."
"Her mother," Sam replied before Al could continue.
He nodded. "And Ziggy says that the odds that she’s
going to take her are 89%. Either way, whoever takes her, she
never comes back. Even in our time, she’s still on milk
cartons. Guess Scott never gave up on looking for her."
"So I just won’t let her go to preschool that day. That
seems easy enough."
Al shook his head. "Ziggy says even if you can keep at home,
the chances of you keeping her completely within your sight are
low." He lowered the handlink and sighed. "She’s
four. She won’t just stay put. Even if her father were here,
which he’s not, _he_ couldn’t even make her sit
still."
Sam threw his hands up. "So now what do I do?"
Al shrugged. "Buy one of those kiddie hand-cuff like things?
Beth used to have one of those with Trudy. As soon as she learned
to walk, she learned to wander."
Sam just looked at him. "Somehow I don’t think
that’s going-" His sentence was interrupted by a
scream.
"What did you say?" he asked Al as he walked out of the
now sleeping girl’s room.
"Oh, nothing really. Just the usual stuff."
"What’s the usual stuff?"
He grinned. "How dreams can’t hurt you and sometimes
they are like pieces of a puzzle that’s not quite put
together in your head. And when some pieces get mixed up, well
you get bad dreams."
Sam had to smile at that. "Who told you that?"
"Well, one night Trudy had such a bad nightmare that Beth
and I couldn’t say anything to calm her down. I don’t
know how I came up with that, maybe it was a lack of sleep, but I
did, and…she went to sleep."
He shook his head. "Four daughters," he repeated to
himself.
"You don’t remember them, Sam?"
He looked up at Al. "No, not really." He wasn’t
going to tell Al that he remembered another lifetime. Not yet, at
least. He’d changed things for the better for Al; he
didn’t need to know the details. He just hoped he’d
never figure there _were_ details.
"You look beat, Sam. Get some rest," Al took him before
disappearing and Sam found himself staring into the thin air
where he had been for a few minutes afterward. He’d had a
couple of leaps after he changed Al’s life before this one,
but he didn’t find himself dwelling so much on it before
now. He was glad to see his friend happy; glad to hear about four
women that neither existed before. He sighed and walked over to
the paperwork he had left on the coffee table, pushing it out of
his mind.