He is still absorbing these revelations when the doctor enters. She appears to be in her late thirties and wears a white lab coat over medical scrubs. A stethoscope is draped over her neck. A name is embroidered over her right breast, but it’s in kanji.
“Kon’nichiwa. Anata wa totemo kōun’na hitodesu,” she says.
“Do you speak English?”
“Of course,” the doctor says. “Are you American?” Jonas nods. “Interesting story about you,” she continues, her voice warm and friendly. “Spire security found you unconscious.”
“Spire security . . . ,” Jonas echoes, his voice ragged. His spirits dive-bomb. Hope withers.
He hasn’t gone anywhere.
The doctor nods. “They had no record of you having even entered the facility. Nothing in their logs. Nothing on the security cameras.”
Jonas sits up. A tiny green shoot of hope springs within him. Kobayashi said the Spire didn’t have security cameras.
The doctor continues. “Until you just popped up on them. Out of the clear blue. Two different feeds. ‘Popped up,’ that was their term. You just appeared on one of the catwalks. Like you came out of nowhere.”
Jonas feels a swell of elation, suddenly buoyant with reverie.
“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.
