“You were unconscious,” the doctor continues, “so they brought you here.” She indicates the equations on Jonas’s arms, left bare by the hospital gown. “Those are very unusual tattoos.”

“There’s a long story behind them,” he demurs. Thoughts are flying faster than he can catch them. He dares to allow himself to feel giddy.

“I’d imagine.”

He feels the doctor assessing him, scanning for signs of madness. He sees a phone on the wall and catapults himself—still tethered to the IV stand—toward it, as eager for a change of subject as for the phone. “I need this,” he says and removes the receiver. There’s no touch pad underneath it. “How do I use this?” He tries without success to keep the desperation from his voice.

The doctor stares blankly at him. “You should get back in bed,” she says.

Jonas grips the receiver tight. “I need to call someone,” he says. “I need to call someone right now. Please. Please.” He imagines he must seem out of his mind. He doesn’t care.

The doctor regards him with pity. “It’s a hospital phone. There’s no outside line.”

Jonas sags. He must cut a pathetic figure because the doctor reaches into her lab coat and produces a phone protected by a case dotted with a floral pattern. She enters a four-digit code to unlock it and then hands it to him as if it were a five-dollar bill and he were a beggar. “Here,” she says, her voice sympathetic.

Jonas grabs the phone and punches in the number for the apartment he shared with Amanda, hoping she lives there, hoping the number hasn’t changed, hoping and hoping and hoping.

One step at a time.

He listens to the synthetic beeps designed to approximate a ringing phone but which just sound like the trill of birds. His palms are sweating. The phone feels slick and heavy in his hand.

Finally, a woman answers. “Hello?” She sounds exhausted.

Jonas does a quick calculation: it’s currently 3:00 a.m. in New York. “Amanda. Amanda?” he blurts, practically screaming.

“No,” the woman answers.

Jonas’s stomach drops along with his hopes. The voice on the other end doesn’t belong to his wife.

“This is Emily,” the stranger says.

Jonas looks down at the tattoos on his forearms—the formulae, the calculations, the work of two Jonases, the sacrifice of two Evas—and weighs how they could have betrayed him. It doesn’t seem possible. He is speechless. He doesn’t know what he looks like in this moment, but the doctor is staring at him with grave concern. He leans against the wall. He can’t feel his legs.

The doctor observes him with concern and pity, apparently questioning whether she did the right thing by letting him make a call. Jonas ignores her. His heart is crumbling.

“I’m house-sitting for Amanda while she’s out of town,” Emily says.

Jonas’s head lurches forward. His mouth springs open.

“Is there something I can help you with?” Emily asks.

But Jonas can’t answer. Words won’t breach the wall of sobs he’s coughing out, unable to draw breath. Tears plume. Snot escaping from his nose. A primordial release of fear and tension.

Somewhere, the doctor is asking him something.

“She’s okay,” Jonas manages to say. Not a question. “She’s okay,” he repeats, astonished.

“Who? Amanda?” Emily asks. “Amanda’s fine. She’s—” Jonas feels her suspicion rise. “Who is this?”

Jonas ends the call. He’s learned everything he needs.

Spent, he lets his legs go limp. His back slides down the wall until he’s sitting on the floor, the phone in its cute floral case clutched tight in his hand. His face is slick with tears.

I’m house-sitting for Amanda while she’s out of town. He rolls the phrase around in his head, examining it from all sides, all vantages. I’m house-sitting for Amanda. Amanda. His Amanda. Who has an apartment. Which requires someone to watch over it. While she’s out of town. Because she’s out of town. Because she’s here. In this reality. Alive.

Tears that were so hard to surface in grief now flow unrestrained from joy. Jonas’s heart feels so big it might burst, and even if it did, he still could not imagine himself more content.

“Are you okay?” the doctor asks.

It’s all Jonas can do to nod. He slowly rises to his feet, his face contorted in a grin so wide it hurts. He thinks about calling Emily back and asking whether she might get a message to Amanda, but every scenario he can envision strains credibility to the breaking point. Another search on the doctor’s phone confirms that this reality’s Jonas Cullen, Nobel laureate, died two years ago. Whoever Emily is, she isn’t equipped to tell Amanda that her husband has returned from the dead.

Another search yields the location of an American Express office, a thirty-minute walk from the hospital. He’s already rehearsing a story in his mind when the doctor asks him again if he’s okay, assessing whether Jonas presents a danger to himself or others.

“I’m fine,” he says. “I just want to go home.” This is the absolute truth.

“And home would be . . .”

“New York. Manhattan.”

“Well, you certainly are a long way from home, Mister . . .”

“Monroe,” Jonas says, using Amanda’s maiden name. “Evan Monroe.” He could do without the good doctor researching “Jonas Cullen” and discovering a dead man was walking around her hospital.

“Mr. Monroe, your body has suffered a trauma. I think you should get back in bed and rest. There are a number of tests I’d like to run.”

“I feel fine.”

“Be that as it may,” the doctor rebuts, “you showed up at a highly advanced and highly secure scientific facility with nothing in your pockets but a cloth patch embroidered with the number eight. I’m sure the police are going to want a word with you.”

“Excuse me?”

“The police—”

“No,” Jonas shakes his head, suddenly desperate. “The patch. Do you have it?”

The doctor reaches into the pocket of her lab coat and produces the Ouroboros patch that Eva gave Jonas. He takes it from her and fights off a spate of emotion.

“I just want to go home,” Jonas says, wiping away an errant tear. He holds up the phone. “There’s an American Express office nearby. They can give me a new card. I can use it to get home.”

“I’m not sure about that,” the doctor shrugs.

“Don’t worry,” Jonas says with confidence. “I’ve done it before.”

“That’s wonderful,” the doctor says, “but like I said, the police are going to want to speak with you.”

“Have I broken any laws?”

“I’m not an attorney. But I suppose there’s an argument to be made that you were trespassing in the Spire.”