The Time Traveler's Detective
Prologue
JOHN: They wanted me to write about cases at the hospital. I took a shift when I came back. It seemed prudent. It was with a supreme sense of irony that I wrote in my blog, 'Nothing ever happens to me.' Because that was a lie, and yet an eternally unchanging one, because it's strange to think that I could use that as a method of clinging on. So as if those pixels on a screen were rocks, barnacles on the mountain of time, and I am slipping, slipping, ever slipping. Some days I am on top of the hill and looking down at the world, all the Greenwich meters of it, and at others my hairy feet are in twin squelches of a Mrs. Gemma Hamish from Brighton's best fertilizer, at 3:58am two miles away from her Bury farm, at least by following the cows' road, on January 9th, 1994. Turning around and trekking the other way will only bring curses at how my bollocks are whacking against my legs and startle a shriek from a passing truck, which will make me backtrack and wind up at her front door and finding out her name. It's one of those moments where explaining is sadly necessary but will probably wind up with me in jail regardless or with buckshot in my butt cheeks.
The world is every kind of spine-chilling, hair-raising cold to naked men, even army-trained doctors who you'd think had developed a resistance to cold from having been trained in the backwaters of the most bollocks-freezing hills in the world. Being a doctor, you'd imagine that I'd have gotten over my nausea factor but I haven't, or least not for the normal things. That would simply be from sipping tea, looking at my husband's face, the shy, crooked smile that he shows to no one but me, poring over cases in our shared flat. And everything seems to have this halo around them, but especially him, and there's a twisting in my gut and I'm waking up naked near Harry's bedside, throwing up on her floor, then staggering to hold her hair because there's vomiting coming from the toilet. Or I'll throw up on Sarah's favorite desk, in the room that was being converted to my bedroom circa 1972, in a mosque when the lazy sunlight throws floral patterns on a prayer-day circa any Friday in 1921, or on my own naked feet in a wide variety of times and places.
When I am out there, in time, I am inverted; I am the true person of my shell, a jockey who clings tightly to the horse he's riding. Before Afghanistan, I hated it. Now I cling to it, some measure of excitement that my mundane will never contain. Being headed for medicine, the best way to study a disorder was to experiment on myself; loud noises, stress, standing up too quickly, all of those could trigger an episode, in the past. Now, after Afghanistan, they come as a complete surprise to me, but not for too long. The places where I go, when I go there, are hardly safe.
Some of these episodes last only moments - I am alone, in an empty car, walking through a high school in the dead of night two nights after their prom and the decorations have come fluttering down, on a beach. Just as often I appear in crowds, mobs, audiences, protests. I fear, for their sake, appearing in a prison cell, an elevator full of people, a restaurant where candles are being lit for two men the owner thinks are a couple. How could I explain? I carry nothing with me, no ID, no clothes, no money. I spend much of my sojourns trying to acquire clothing and searching for places to hide. Fortunately I don't wear glasses.
It's ironic, really. For all that I crave this excitement (secretly, heart-poundingly) my simple pleasures in life are in its domesticity. A comfortable chair beside the fireplace in winter; the feel of my favorite jumper, striped and soft in the yarn. Homemade jam, the bright taste exploding on the tongue. A mystery novel in bed, Sherlock's smooth skin on mine, the tone in his voice as he dissects the plot of the novel, the prose of the novel, and eventually the author of the novel. A postcard, from Harry on vacation, sugar dissolving into boiling tea, the symmetry of grocery bags, filled with milk, on the counter amid the dispersed smoke of one of Sherlock's chemistry experiments. Even as I am flung away into another encounter which I so crave, I long for these things, long for them dearly.
And Sherlock, always Sherlock. Sherlock when he is deducing from a scrap of the smallest information, his eyes bright with interest and fierce with determination. Sherlock, tracing the path of a stab wound with gloved fingers, remarking on measurements with a steady tone. Sherlock reading my blog again, his chin resting on my shoulder and hair falling around his face, framing it clearly in the reflection of the screen. Sherlock, putting on and off accents to amuse me as others would take on and off clothes. Sherlock's low voice is in my ear often.
I hate to be where he is not, when he is not. (I could do with his analysis, at times.) And yet, I am always going, where he cannot follow.
SHERLOCK: It is difficult to be left behind, but not untenable. I do not wait for John, for I know he will return. He has, to me, from when I was young to where I am today and all the way into the unknown future. I existed before John came and left my life, again and again, a theater without a play, an audience without a diversion. I keep myself busy. Serial killers occupy my time now, mere pittance to amuse myself without John around. Researching a cure for his disorder takes up most of my intellect, finding a source, an effect, a cause, a time. Questions, philosophical questions, are answered as John exists. But more arise, to do with changing what John believes is fated. I refuse to accept that, though John rejects my refusals.
Why do I continue to pour my time into this? I will make a breakthrough. I will discover what John has, and how to reduce the episodes, so that I will have my John, all of him, young and fresh with the vitality of life, middle-aged with the wisdom of years, until he is old and still rasping my name, until I can hold him, and go with him to the places I did or could not follow.