CHAPTER FOUR
Grandfather Paradox

Saturday, November 5, 1955
9:55 AM

Marty led them in a short run several blocks away. By that time, Emma tasted the buttery crust and sweet tartness of the cherry pie again, her head spinning from pain and nausea.

"This way."

"Marty, I can't," she panted, now cradling her left arm. "I have to sit down. I'm going to be sick."

She slid down the trunk of a nearby tree to the ground, resting her forehead on her knees. She turned away from the street, her good shoulder pressed into the course bark. The bullet wound pumped sweat to her brow. She shut her eyes, trying to breathe evenly.

Marty felt his stomach knot with guilt at the sight of her. Enough was enough. He shouldn't have let it go this long; she had a goddamn bullet in her, and he had to get her to a hospital. He paced the sidewalk next to her ready to suggest as much when he noticed the bike propped up against the other side of the tree – George's bike.

Marty stepped towards the street earnestly in search of his father. He was nowhere to been seen up and down and across the street, but at the hint of a few falling leaves, Marty looked up, surprised to see his father lying on a tree branch. With binoculars.

Marty followed the binoculars' line of sight to the top floor of the house directly across the street and glanced between the top right window and his father a few times. A young woman's torso was visible through the bright green treetop edging the window. Very visible, in fact – she wore only her undergarments, white as the window frame and curtains surrounding her. Marty glanced between the girl's adjustments and his dad's eager crawl further up the limb. Realizing just what he was witnessing was yet another moment in Marty's life where he was not proud of the scrawny guy above him. Marty made a face somewhere between disgust and disappointment as more leaves fell from overhead.

"He's a Peeping Tom!"

Emma's eyes fluttered open from the other side of the tree. She tried to shift in the direction of Marty's voice. "Who is?"

Just then, George dropped out of the tree and into the middle of the street on all fours. Emma started at his materialization, glancing from him to the tree limb to Marty in quick succession. She placed her hand against the trunk to stand, and halfway there, Marty's voice broke over the peaceful suburban street.

"Dad!"

Followed by a car horn.

She didn't hear herself shriek; she felt her shoulder pain buckle her knees as one hand grabbed the tree and the other flew to her mouth. In the span of time it took her to blink, Marty had raced into the street towards his father, pushed the awkward kid to the other curb, and unsuccessfully braced himself into the hood of the moving car. Marty backpedalled from the force until he was on the ground, the sound of his head bouncing off the asphalt making Emma's stomach drop.

"Marty!"

Dogs barked from neighboring yards. Sky and trees meshed with crooked houses. He lifted his head in her direction. It lingered momentarily, eyes clouded as she hurried to him. Before she could reach him, however, his head dropped to the pavement once more.

"Marty! Oh my god!"

Emma knelt, her hands trembling slightly as she checked the back of Marty's head.

"Marty, please, please, wake up," she murmured, lifting one of his eyelids. She patted his chest gingerly, then took a fistful of his shirt and shook more vigorously.

"Marty!"

"Is he breathing?"

Emma looked up at the portly man standing over her. "Yeah, he's breathing, but he won't wake up," she rattled out without taking her own breath. "He was standing right there and –"

"Hey, wait a minute! Who are you?"

George stumbled past them in a daze, his face flush with adrenaline. He met Emma's eyes once, and they silently apologized with a glance from Marty's motionless body to her wide eyes. Emma's shoulders fell in disbelief when he turned his bike around and sped away. She made to shout after him in desperation, but the gentleman's hand touched her injured shoulder, and a cry leapt from her throat instead.

Sam Baines stepped back. "What's the matter with you?" he asked incredulously. "You were clear over there!"

"Oh for goodness sakes, Sam, what happened this time?"

Emma slowly unfolded herself, biting her lip to stay the tears in her eyes. A pair of tidy red women's loafers approached from the other side of Marty. The owner, a homey woman, stout like her husband, rested her hands on her hips with a sigh and shook her head at the scene before her.

"He came out of nowhere, Stella!" Sam said, gesturing wildly at Marty. "Him and her and some other kid that took off down the street!"

"Honestly, Sam…"

"Don't you kids know to look both ways before you cross the street?"

"Sam."

The man withheld further complaints with a wary eye at Emma, ultimately offering his hand. Emma swallowed, carefully accepting with her right hand. A grimace flooded her face regardless, and she pulled her left arm into her chest when the Baineses stooped to get Marty to his feet. The cherry pie hit the back of her tongue. As Sam and Stella fixed one of Marty's arms around each of them, she shut her eyes again to dispel the vertigo.

"Is this young man your brother?"

Emma opened her eyes, heart hammering.

"Ye-yes."

"Aw, well then, you come inside with us, honey," Stella said. "Come on, now. We'll take care of him."

Emma hesitantly followed. She looked down the street in the direction in which George had taken off and back to Marty's head swinging lifelessly between his shoulders. Nearing the door, she inhaled as much of the cool morning air as she could to settle her scattered wits before Stella ushered her inside a living room wallpapered with tiny bunches of blue flowers and family pictures.

"Milton! Toby! Come help your father!"

Emma finally calmed her psyche enough with one last deep breath, the scent of brown sugar, cigars, and freshly pressed clothes hitting the bottom of her lungs. Two boys came running around the corner with a little girl in tow, the tallest in a coonskin cap. The younger boy's mouth fell open.

"Wow, Dad! What'd you do?"

"I didn't do anything," Sam repeated sternly. "He ran in front of the car. Grab his leg, Toby."

"Did you kill him?"

The girl pouted. "Daddy killed him?"

"No, sweetheart, Daddy didn't kill anybody," Stella reassured gently, touching the girl's light tresses. "It was just an accident. We're going to let him rest, then he'll be good as new."

Thud.

The three girls looked up the stairs sharply. Sam guided the boys in maneuvering Marty's head out of a baluster.

"Watch it, Milton."

"Toby did it!"

Stella frowned at her husband, to which he grumbled "We're going, Stella," through gritted teeth. "Watch the corner, boys. Get under his knee there. Sally? His shoe fell off. Pick that up for me."

Stella Baines cast the disheveled girl next to the plant stand an apologetic look. Her blonde hair was poking out of a ponytail in odd tufts, her pants were stained with brown and gray streaks, and the oversized denim jacket she sported made her face look frailer and paler than she probably would otherwise. If she hadn't been there right after it had happened, Stella would have thought this poor girl was the victim of Sam's negligent driving, not the boy currently being toted upstairs.

Ever the model hostess, Stella gave Emma a kind smile, her hands clasped neatly in front of her.

"There is another bed upstairs if you care to rest, too. Or you can sit in the family room over here."

Sam, Toby, and Milton continued to grumble at one another as they disappeared up to the next landing, little Sally in tow with Marty's shoe. Emma glanced up the stairs after them while horribly sour cherries still burned the back of her throat, Stella waiting patiently for her reply. Blinking back her nausea, Emma swallowed, slowly nodding once at the stairs.

"I'd like to stay with my brother. Make sure he's okay."

"Of course," Stella practically cooed, touching her arm. "It's right up at the top of the stairs here."

As feather-light as Mrs. Baines's touch had been, the nerves in Emma's shoulder lit up. She bit her lip, quickly moving directly behind the woman to hide the pained twist of her features. Gingerly holding her left arm against herself again, Emma ascended the stairs behind Stella as casually as she could.

The last to reach the top landing, Emma followed everyone into the door off to the right. She stepped to the left of Mrs. Baines as her husband and three children fixed Marty under the large comforter of the nearest bed. Emma's stomach flipped all over again seeing him in such a state. She'd seen him unconscious twice before, but both instances were hardly as upsetting as this. He had come to almost immediately those other times.

This unresponsiveness made her want to snap a rubber band right between his eyes. That would wake him up.

"Take his other shoe off, Sally."

The little girl untied Marty's shoe and took it off, placing it at the foot of the bed with the one that had fallen off on their way upstairs. When the two boys and Mr. Baines had him settled, Emma silently approached the bedside. She looked him over gravely, willing him to open his eyes.

Stuck in 1955 and you get hit by a car.

Wake up, you big sissy.

From the other side of the bed, Mrs. Baines came into her peripheral vision with a damp washcloth and bowl of water. She squeezed the excess water from the cloth and carefully dabbed his brow, frowning at the bruise blossoming just along his hairline. Emma stared at it, wondering how on earth he had received a bruise there when he has fallen backward.

Then she remembered Marty's head greeted nearly every baluster up to the bedroom.

"It's not too bad," Stella assured, seeing Emma's stony expression. "I'm sure he'll sleep it off. Maybe not without a good headache, but I think we can assume it could have been much worse."

Emma mentally let out an exasperated sigh. Who was she to say it wasn't? You weren't supposed to let people with head trauma just go to sleep. He probably had a concussion from as hard as his head had bounced. Bleeding? Memory loss? Those could just be discounted, too, because the nice homemaker put him to bed and said so?

Emma practically glowered at Marty. If this is your sad attempt to get me to the hospital…it might work, she admitted to herself. Her knees felt weak again.

"Oh, dear, you look so pale," Stella said, putting the bowl and washcloth on the small nightstand between the two beds. "I would be, too, if I had been through what you have."

If Stella Baines had truly had any idea of just what Emma had been through in the last twelve hours, Emma was sure that the woman would faint on the spot. But as it was Emma who stood a great chance of fainting herself, she didn't object to Stella's offer of rest; she shuffled over to the other bed wordlessly and sat on its edge.

"There now."

Amongst the bowl on the nightstand, two small, white porcelain swans and a box of tissues fell silent as the tall lampshade above them darkened with the pull of a chain. The handful of framed pictures on the wall became faceless, and the layers of wispy white curtains behind her stilled once Stella moved a few of the smaller pillows to the end of the bed. Emma adjusted the ones that remained as Mrs. Baines smiled from the doorway.

"Get some rest, dear. We'll check on your brother in a bit."

Emma couldn't tell if she had expressed her thanks aloud before Mrs. Baines closed the door, but the moment she had, Emma squeezed her eyes shut as her cheek touched the pillow, curling onto her right side.

Her injured shoulder throbbed angrily above her. A few shaky exhales trembled out of her. A small sniffle. She had never felt such searing, mind-numbing pain before, not even when the welding torch got her leg a few years ago. She tried focusing on parts of her body that were uninjured, but this bullet wound was all-encompassing, refusing to be ignored. It made her temples scream, the space between her shoulder blades stabbed with each breath.

Emma looked at Marty, the few clumps of damp hair at his brow poking out like odd shadows in the dim room. She was briefly jealous of his unconscious state; he could escape this awful reality without memory for a while and wake believing he had dreamt it all.

And with such terrible pain exhausting her, Emma's heavy limbs and gentled heartbeat were a welcomed gift as she slowly fell out of the whirlwind of her waking world. Her eyelids touched and opened; touched, opened. She watched Marty's chest rise and fall with soft exhales and matched them, soon fast asleep.

A cool autumn thundershower moved over Hill Valley sometime in the late afternoon. Rain fell steadily over the grayed town, coursing along metal gutters and trickling through the foliage of trees to the damp earth below. Small streams of water ran along the streets and sidewalks outside the Baines residence, and while dusk was not very far off, the streetlights came on earlier than they normally would have.

Emma's wound roused her with a moderate ache, but then a sudden, hot stab sent her gasping into the pillow. She took a few calming breaths, listening to the leaves brush rainwater against the window. Her eyes opened on Marty weakly; he was still out like a light. As much as she just wanted to go back to sleep until he woke up, it was apparent that the bullet hole in her shoulder wasn't going to let her.

Sliding her feet to the floor and using great amounts of effort to get upright through the pain, Emma stood at Marty's bedside, casting an uneasy frown over him. She moved his tuft of brown hair aside with the back of her hand, and even in the poor lighting, she could make out the bruised spot high on his forehead. Her fingertips grazed it tenderly; it wasn't as badly swollen as she had anticipated. It was more so the back of his head that concerned her, the split-second image of it hitting the pavement replaying in her mind.

She sighed, letting his hair fall back over his brow.

You are so stupid sometimes.

Marty said nothing.

She lingered another thirty seconds before wondering if the Baines kept Tylenol; if memory served from health class last year, 1955 was the year an acetaminophen suspension was released for children, but the drug wasn't going to be a staple in the American home for a while yet. Besides, a bottle of that elixir would probably be a drop in the bucket towards relieving her pain.

Once they found her father and got home, she would relent and go to the hospital if her dad and Marty hadn't carried her there first.

Emma ventured over to the white oak bedroom door, quietly turning the knob. As she looked up to peer out into the hallway, she started; a young woman's face was inches from hers just on the other side of the door. She leaned back in surprise, batting her wide, pretty eyes shyly.

"Hi. I was just coming to check on you and," - she craned her neck to try and see past Emma, a sweet, breathy sigh on her words – "your brother."

Emma nodded once, eyeing her.

"My name is Lorraine."

And there it was – the odd sense of familiarity that was beating her over the head suddenly had a name, and Emma's eyes grew slightly.

Marty's mother! What were the chances that they had encountered both of Marty's parents in the same day, let alone it being the very day her father had punched into the keypad of the time circuits as the day he invented time travel?

She had only met Mrs. McFly a handful of times, usually when Marty took a rare turn in having her over to work on their school projects at his house. In those brief encounters, Emma was sometimes within earshot when Mr. McFly called his wife by her first name. And while thirty years and fifty pounds had definitely transformed the woman, her face was unmistakable. So many of her young, soft features reminded her of Marty in an instant, and Emma almost laughed at how absurd this day was turning out to be. She wouldn't speculate for fear of what might happen, but anything seemed possible.

"I'm Emma," she managed. "Do you know what time it is?"

"It's almost 8:30," Lorraine said, glancing over at the nearby clock on the wall. "I wanted to see if you were both awake. We're about to have a late dinner."

Oh, sweet merciful heavens, she could smell the meatloaf and buttered rolls as if Lorraine were holding them right under her nose. She suddenly became aware of how hungry she was; she hadn't eaten anything proper in nearly twenty-four hours, save for those two or three bites of pie. And despite how ill the pain from her shoulder had her, she was certain she could tuck away a good meal without hesitation right now, feel even worse later, and regret nothing.

Emma stepped back, opening the door a little wider for Lorraine to enter. "He's still asleep."

Lorraine stood in the dark doorway, tightening her sweater around herself as she stared at the boy in her sister's bed, intrigued.

"Oh. Well, go on down to dinner. I just finished helping set the table."

Emma went out into the hallway, turning back to see that, instead of following, Lorraine had retreated further into the dark bedroom.

"Aren't you coming?"

"I'll be down in a minute," Lorraine assured her, closing the door so that only her face was poking through with an overly polite smile. "I just want to make sure he's doing alright."

Emma stared. Was she really getting kicked out of the bedroom where her friend was unconscious and hurt? By his future mother? Did she somehow know it was her son?

Whatever it was, she was acting strange enough for tiny red flags to pop up in the back of Emma's mind. She felt the urge to rush back into the room and assert herself as Marty's liaison and caretaker. It was some juvenile jealousy doing this to her, and although she scolded herself, she knew that if had been Jennifer Parker edging her out of the room instead of his future mother, she would have a lot more to say.

"You should get some meatloaf as soon as it's sliced," Lorraine suggested. "And the mashed potatoes before Milton eats them all."

Oh. Food.

Marty was fine.

"Thanks."

Awkwardly starting downstairs by herself, Emma straightened when she heard the bedroom door shut. Part of her wasn't really sure what just happened, but it sent more red flags up in the distance.

Just as she made up her mind to go back for Marty and strongly suggest that they had to leave, the two boys that had helped carry him upstairs with their father that morning came out of a different bedroom, galloping towards her. They paused their horseplay when they saw her in the middle of the stairs, but it didn't seem to deter them; the smaller boy beamed at her.

"Are you staying for dinner?"

Emma gave a small smile. "That's where I'm headed."

"Come on, then!" Toby said, leading her and Milton downstairs to the dining room. "Mom! This girl's awake! She said she's staying for dinner!"

Stella came round from the kitchen with a perfect meatloaf in hand. Emma felt blissfully happy as the heavy, savory steam knocked her between the eyes. She returned Mrs. Baines's smile genuinely.

"That… smells amazing."

"Tastes even better," Stella winked, setting it on the table. "Come sit down and help yourself. As you can see from the way my boys eat, I've made plenty."

Toby hurried to pull up an extra chair, and Emma could hardly take her eyes off the table as she sat down. Platters and bowls and dishes spanned the whole of the tabletop in a picturesque display. Within two minutes, Emma had a full plate. And by the time she'd realized Marty was taking a seat next to her, half her slice of meatloaf and most of the mashed potatoes were gone. Her fork hovered over her plate when she caught Marty eyeing her. She swallowed without breaking eye contact; she was not going to apologize for enjoying this meal or the glob or gravy in the corner of her mouth.

"You know, Marty, you look so familiar," Stella said. "Do I know your mother?"

Marty and Emma both sat straight at this, Emma busying herself with wiping her mouth so her eyes couldn't dart to Lorraine as Marty's had.

"Yeah, I think maybe you do."

"Oh, then I want to give her a call. I don't want her to worry about the two of you."

"You can't. That is…nobody's home."

"Oh."

"Yet."

"Oh."

Emma raised an eyebrow at her 'brother' during a long sip of milk. Marty could see a hint of amusement in her face as she lowered the glass, forced to smile into her napkin at the increasing exasperation of his level brow. Having won round two of their awkward staring contests in front of his future relatives, Marty was about to slip the telephone book page from his pocket he had taken from Lou's that morning when Lorraine spoke up.

"Mother, with their parents out of town, don't you think they ought to spend the night? After all, Dad almost killed him with the car."

Emma leaned forward, just now realizing how close Lorraine was to Marty. She gripped her fork.

"That's true," Stella considered. "I think you should spend the night. I think you're our responsibility."

"I don't know…"

"Marty can sleep in my room."

Immediately, Marty leapt backwards from the table, nearly knocking his chair over. Before she could even glare at him, Marty yanked Emma up by her good arm. She stumbled, ungracefully catching herself on little Joey's playpen.

"We gotta go! We gotta go, right Em?"

"Yeah," she agreed blindly as Marty marched her to the door by the small of her back. "Time to go."

"That's right! Time to go. Thanks very much, it was wonderful, you were all great, see you all later," he said, pushing Emma out the door. "Much later."