Felt As a Mistake in Translation
Five ways Jordan Collier didn't find out about the abduction.
Author: greatunironic (formerly Meridian Siler)
Rating: T (minor language)
Author Note: This is entirely because I hadn't written The 4400 in a while and I love Jordan Collier with my whole heart and I don't think I can't wait till the end of the season to see him. -- Also, to sarahofearth, because she thinks I'm funny. And we totally do have to produce that series; you have Patrick, and I'll take Billy. -- Title, cut, and section headers from "a falling in autumn," by Noah Eli Gordon.
1. so the tree is an exit, a door into weather, a symmetry in the spectrum & the stasis of an open page
The last clear memory he had of Samantha was from Pesach, '99, at his parents' house in Philly. They had been dancing in the kitchen to the Band on the radio and it had been right before the whole brisket fiasco. They had twirled and dipped and had danced around, much to the amusement of their daughter, and their nephews and nieces who thought their crazy uncle from Washington (the state, he had always been quick to remind them, not the district) was great.
But then the brisket was on fire and the kids were screaming and he had been trying to beat out the fire with the dishtowel as Samantha had wrangled the frightened children. After it was put out and the kids were calmed, the adults had conferenced in the living room and Samantha had volunteered to run out to the Eagle and get new brisket.
It had been an hour before anyone realized that it shouldn't take that long to pick up some brisket and another half an hour before the police had arrived.
And then they had found the car, crashed off of the road near the Eagle, and Samantha was nowhere to be found.
-
"Thanks for staying so late, Mia," Jordan said, hanging up his coat in the front hall. The Band played softly, singing to them to knock on the door, from the television in the living room, and he ignored it.
"No problem, Mr. Collier," she said, getting up from the coach and clicking off the TV. "Jack's a joy to watch. And you've got one awesome system to watch DVDs on. I really like that Last Waltz one," she added, pulling the DVD out of the player and putting it back in the box.
Jordan watched her from the hall. "You should take it," he said. "I don't watch it anymore."
"Really?" asked Mia, unsure. "I—I thought it was your wife's."
He was used to people speaking about Sam in the past tense; it had been five years, after all, and Jordan had given up privately hoping that she would come home months before. At least, that was what he told himself.
He would never tell Jack that.
"Go ahead," he said. "Think of it as overtime."
Mia smiled, wavering in his watery vision that he told himself was only because of allergies: "Okay. Do you need me to stay late at all next week?"
Jordan consulted his mental calendar. He should be home by five on Monday, barring any unforeseen explosions at work; they were testing the rocket on Tuesday, should be done by eight; Wednesday was bring your child to work day; he had mandatory training Thursday; and Friday was another rocket testing day. He was going to be off next weekend.
"Maybe Tuesday and Friday," he said.
"Okay," she said again, picking up her backpack. She slid the DVD into the front pocket and slung it on, walking towards him.
He opened up his wallet and pulled out a twenty: "Thanks again."
She took the money and put it in her pocket, saying, "No prob. I'll let myself out." Mia moved past him, her high-heeled shoes—the vogue of late, if Jordan remembered correctly—clicking down the hall in a staccato beat.
Nodding to himself absently, Jordan wandered into the kitchen and put his briefcase down on the table. He stared at it. The old brown case was distorted, just like Mia's face, and Jordan rubbed at his eyes, because no matter what he told himself, no matter how he had changed or how Jack had grown up, he still missed Sam.
The doorbell rang and Jordan , thinking that Mia had forgotten something, yelled, "Door's unlocked!" Because, when you had got a gun and you were in the Navy, you kind of didn't care about locking the door anymore; especially when you still thought that maybe today was the day she would come home, even though you swore you didn't hope anymore because you had gotten used to it being the two of you, you and your daughter, and you had moved on. (The best you could.)
He realized it was not Mia when the footsteps were heavier, and there were more. He turned around, staring at the intruders. A man and a woman at the fore, another man behind them, dressed in suits.
"Mister—uh, Lieutenant-Commander Jordan Collier?" asked the first man, correcting himself when he saw Jordan 's shoulders. Jordan blinked.
"No," he said.
"You're not Jordan Collier?" asked the woman skeptically.
"Well, I am, but he demoted me a rank," Jordan told her, almost petulant. The second man snorted into his hand and Jordan smiled crookedly at him, like he got the joke too.
"So you are Jordan Collier, though, right?" asked the woman. "The world renowned astrophysicist?"
"I wouldn't go so far," interjected Jordan .
"Daddy?" asked Jack from the doorway, the eight year old rubbing her eyes. Everyone turned to look at her. "Who are these people?"
"Daddy's friends," Jordan swiftly lied, because Jordan had gotten good at lying after all those years. "Go back to bed, Jackie-O."
As Jack walked away, the first man looked back at Jordan . "Your file didn't mention you were married."
"My wife went missing five years ago," said Jordan stiffly.
"Missing?" asked the second man.
"Yes," said Jordan , "just outside of Philly in 1999."
"Her name isn't Sam, by any chance?" asked the woman.
Jordan 's eyes narrowed. "Yes. And I'm not particularly crazy about these questions so—"
"Oh, boy," said the second man softly. "Of all the physicists."
The woman nodded in agreement while the first man glanced down at the floor, thinking intently about something or other. Jordan 's jaw tensed.
"I'd like to know what's going on," he stated, Commander and father of an eight year old girl voice in place; "if you wouldn't mind."
"Have you been watching the news lately?" asked the woman.
He shook his head: "I build rockets. No time."
"Oh, boy," said the second man again. He stepped forward. "My name's Tom Baldwin. I work with NTAC. I think you're going to want to come with us."
2. here, morning unfolds from moment. Recasting the body in sound
Even as it happened, Tom could tell that this was going to be a very permanent memory. He knew, without a doubt, that he would close his eyes at night and see this new memory, playing alongside of the memory of Kyle, unconscious, and Shawn, nowhere to be found. It would be hyper clear, this memory, the bad kind of clear because every time he will recall it in his dreams, Tom will be right there again and, oh God, there will be nothing he can do, the guns are firing and there is the crack and the pop, and Jordan is going down, down, down.
Tom screamed, his voice a gong, resounding over it all, "Someone fucking catch him!"
And, suddenly and under the hail of bullets, Tom was falling down onto his stomach and crawling beneath it all, over to where Jordan lay on the floor, not caught. Jordan 's eyes were wide open, shocked and frightened and unnatural, and his skin was getting paler by the moment. He breathed heavily against the bullet holes and the blood pooling on the ground seemed more silver than red, unearthly. Or maybe that was just the moon, streaming through the windows. He would have liked to think—
He laid an arm over Jordan 's chest and began to drag the wounded man to safety, his legs kicking ferociously, as everyone else took down the gunmen. Tom was not sure if he was crying, but he might have been.
"Tom, Tom," Jordan said. His wide, unnatural eyes flitted back and forth off of objects around the warehouse. He sounded confused, like he didn't know what was going on, like he wasn't grasping the fact that he just got shot and blood was pouring out of his chest like a faucet, like his breathing didn't sound like an empty cage.
"Shut up," Tom whispered harshly, still dragging his friend. There was a track of blood in their wake.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Jordan muttered again and again, pawing at his wounds. Tom whispered more shut up's against Jordan 's low words. Shut up's and you're going to be fine's. But then, with great dignity, Jordan died.
-
"The prodigal returns!" shouted someone from outside the office, breaking Tom from his reverie. It sounded like Sebastian Garrity, had the same cadence and stretch, but it was higher than normal, with a kind of happiness that had been vacant from the halls for a long time.
Tom leaned back in his chair, staring out into the main office area. There was a crowd of people, so thick that he couldn't see around them to what they were surrounding. He thought he knew, but he didn't want to give up hope. He turned back to his desk, and the desks across from him in the office he shared with Diana and Sebastian and—
"Let the man through," Diana said from somewhere in the crowd, her voice distant but like a bell, and Tom flipped a page in his report. "He's on crutches, for God's sake."
There was the distinct noise of the pat-pat of someone on crutches coming up to Tom's door; Tom looked up.
Jordan lifted his hand from one of his clutches and waved his fingers.
They stared at each other for a moment, before breaking the silence manfully, the only way they knew how. Two grunts:
"Hey."
"Hey."
-
And Tom was in the hospital. He spent an abnormal amount of time there as it was, with his son lying in a coma a few wards above. But he was in the ICU now, with the beeping of machines and the hiss of assisted breathing.
Jordan had been dead for five minutes out in the field and Tom brought him back to life. He kissed Jordan's dead mouth and breathed in life, pounding on Jordan's chest with his hands and if there was the crack of a breaking rib, he didn't care, because Tom was losing his son in a hospital, he'd be damned if he lost his best friend on the cold concrete ground. So he pressed his hands on Jordan 's chest and beat his heart and bumped Jordan 's blood, and breathed for Jordan , and, if he cried as he worked, nobody ever mentioned anything.
The paramedics got there two minutes after Tom got Jordan breathing again, three minutes after Diana and Sebastian tried to help and Tom pushed them both roughly away, and four minutes after the firefight got under control.
People were being arrested and led away as they lifted Jordan onto a stretcher and into the ambulance. Diana and Sebastian held Tom's arms until they realized it didn't matter and they let him go, to climb in with Jordan and be with him as people tried to save his life.
Jordan was in surgery for twelve hours; one of his lungs deflated and his aorta had been nicked. Tom waited for him, because they were best friends, brothers, and this was what brothers did for each other. Jordan had sat with Tom as Tom sat with Kyle for many nights, amongst the dark and the beeping of machines. Now, Tom waited for him, waited for Jordan to wake up and whisper that he sure was ugly looking in the morning.
Tom sat by Jordan 's bed, waiting.
"Coffee?" asked Sebastian from the doorway, voice somber and low. Like he could wake Jordan if he was loud—like human voices could wake him, like Tom hadn't tried to.
"You could use some," added Diana softly, who held two cups of coffee, from Sebastian's side. They hung out together a lot, and Tom and Jordan had always wondered if they were sleeping together, because it was all the office gossip, Sebastian and Diana. (So were Jordan and Tom, but they always ignored it.)
"Thanks," said Tom, getting up and grabbing the cup. He sat back down and Sebastian and Diana stood there for a moment, before going to wait outside again, because they understood.
If Jordan was awake, Tom knew he would say: They're probably actually going to go do it in a broom closet somewhere.
Tom chortled to himself and froze suddenly, the noise dying in his throat like a stopping heart, as the beeping on Jordan 's machines sped up. Tom leaned forward, looking intently and reaching out for Jordan 's hand, and Jordan 's eyes flickered open, a pair of blooming flowers.
"Hey," Jordan whispered around his breathing tube.
"Hey," replied Tom, voice soft like Sebastian's, like Diana's. He squeezed lightly on Jordan 's fingers. Jordan 's eyes flickered closed just as quickly as they opened, in time with the beeping, and there were little smiles on their faces, and Tom thought: Alive, alive, he was alive.
-
"I didn't know you were getting out today," said Tom, staring. "I would have been there, if I had."
"Well, neither did I, so it's okay." Jordan winked, like an imp, as if he wasn't on crutches because he could barely stand up after being shot three times in the chest.
"Broke yourself out, did you?" asked Tom, a smile stretching across his face.
"It's not breaking out when you're assisted by a nurse," replied Jordan , one finger raised.
"You slut," Tom said, good naturedly, as he pushed back in his chair. It made a scrapping noise that would have been grating before, but now was just the white noise of the room, because alive, alive.
They were in each other's arms before they knew what was happening, Jordan dropping his crutches, and they whispered things they never would again: "I missed you" and "I was so scared" and "it's okay" and "shut up" and there might have been a quiet "alive, alive, you're alive" but it was lost, if it had ever been said before.
Tom said, "Don't ever do that to me again," and punched him lightly and manfully in the shoulder.
"Yeah," said Jordan , "You don't handle loss well. And some one needs to help keep up with the Sebastian/Diana flowcharts."
"Yes." Tom nodded. "The flowcharts."
They kept holding each other for a long moment, though.
"Hey," said Diana from the doorway, wryly, "if this love-fest is over, I think there's something you guys need to see."
The pair of male agents exchanged a quick look—hope she didn't hear about the flowcharts—before pulling away from each other, Jordan picking his crutches back up.
"What is it?" asked Jordan for the both of them.
"Well, there's this thing coming towards us…"
3.what's lost in the margins
"Hey, Collier! Hold the elevator!"
Jordan stuck out his free hand, holding the door open, while the other clutched his shoulder bag. He watched as his editor slipped in, hitting the archives floor button, and Jordan let go, the doors sliding shut.
"You're going to Seattle this week, right?" asked Ira. "To see that girlfriend of yours?"
"Diana? Yeah." He pulled his bag a little higher on his shoulder, keeping his fingers on the flap so none of his papers would fall out and, damn, this thing was heavy. "Why?"
"I'm going to need you to make it a business trip."
"Why?" asked Jordan again.
Ira got the glint in his eye the Jordan normally associated with the sociopaths he had interviewed for that one assignment, the one that damn near made him a household name. Ira said, "There's this thing, Collier, coming towards us. It's gonna be big and I want you there to cover it."
"Big?"
"Huge," he said. "Massive. A story this big—I'm thinking it could win you a Pulitzer, Collier, if you play your cards right."
"Pulitzer," repeated Jordan , turning things over in his head. He had come close, before…
The elevator doors slid open and Ira backed out, saying, "Big, Collier, big. A household name. I expect your first draft for the Sunday edition next week on Tuesday."
Jordan watched the doors close and Ira disappeared behind them. He bit his lip: it was late Saturday night and Diana would so kill him dead for missing dinner tomorrow, but she would understand. He smiled and tightened his grip on his shoulder bag, ideas running through his head.
Pulitzer, eh? Household name? Ira certainly knew how to push his buttons but Jordan was definitely going to be there.
4. noise isn't what's been lost on ears, roots or dying limbs
Jordan remembered quite clearly the day Jack had come home. He had been cooking in the kitchen, with his apron on, and Jack had run in, eyes filled with tears, throwing herself into her father's arms, sobbing that Shawn had gone missing and something was wrong with Kyle too. Jordan loved his daughter, and really liked his daughter's boyfriend, Shawn, despite the fact that he was two years older than Jack. He liked that the boy was funny, and nice, and had a good family, and had no faith in Jordan 's cooking ability which made him family because nobody else did either (especially after the latke fiasco), and absolutely worshipped the ground that Jack walked upon.
Jack stayed home from school for three days, and Danny and Nikki and Mama Farrell came to see her, to tell her it was going to be fine, they were going to find Shawn. Even Jordan 's ex-wife, Jack's mother, flew in from California to be with her daughter.
It hadn't helped; she wouldn't even let them in her room. The only person she let in was Jordan himself. And then she found out that Kyle wasn't waking up and she spent several days at the hospital, waiting with everyone else as Jordan came in and did a battery of tests on the boy, because he was a doctor they trusted. It didn't help: Kyle wasn't waking up and Shawn, her Shawn, their Shawn, was lost. And Jordan swore he heard his daughter's heart breaking—and his too.
-
"I'm glad to know you're having more fun than you've had in years, Jacqueline," said Jordan, the phone pressed between his head and shoulder as he tried to tie his tie, "but I'm going to have to hang up, because I've got to go to work."
"Fine, fine," said Jack. "I'll see you in a couple of days, Dad."
"Love you," Jordan said.
"Love you too. 'Bye."
"'Bye." Jordan hung up the phone, put it down on the sink, and was going back to his tie when the phone rang again. He picked it up with a put upon sigh: "What did you forget to tell me, Jack."
"It's Max," said the decidedly masculine voice on the other line. He sounded urgent.
"What is it?" asked Jordan .
"You need to come to work now, man," he said.
"Okay, I'll be there in twenty minutes."
"No, now, Jordan," said Max.
"I can't be there any sooner," snapped Jordan .
"Yes, you can," Max said. "There's a car waiting outside for you. Military escort, my friend."
"I am the military," replied Jordan , pinning on his silver oak leaves. "I'm hanging up on you now."
"Just as long as you get in the damn car," replied Max. Jordan hung up halfway through Max's sentence, grabbed his beret, lab coat, and an apple, and rushed out the door. There was, in fact, an escort waiting for him. The Sergeant standing by the car snapped off a salute and Jordan sent him one back.
"We'll take you in, Lieutenant-Colonel," said the sergeant, opening the door. Jordan nodded, decided against telling him he preferred 'doctor', and slid into the car; he could get used to this.
-
When he got in, Max found him almost immediately and filled him in as best he could, Carey nodding his head furiously at his side. When they were finished, Jordan 's head was spinning and he had a nurse by his side, carrying an armload of folders. Max and Carey wished him the best of luck and took off with their own nurses to go see their patients. Jordan blinked.
"Shall we?" said the nurse, leading the way. Jordan trailed behind her, thinking about balls of light and weren't the Air Force supposed to be the guys with the aliens?
He checked in on seventy-five returnees in the day and it was almost like doing war triage again. He wasn't even sure how he got home and back to the office again because suddenly it wasn't even halfway through the second day and he had already seen thirty patients. He was heading for his thirty-first when Jordan walked up to the door, picked up the file from the nurse, entered the exam room, began to say, "How are you doing today," failed at 'you,' and damn near dropped the file in shock as he stared at the young man on the bed.
"Doctor Collier?" asked Shawn, sitting up straight. His eyes were wide and frightened as he stared at Jordan .
For his part, Jordan waited all of two seconds before rushing to Shawn and wrapping the boy in his embrace.
"Doctor Collier?" repeated Shawn when Jordan pulled away, tears in his eyes.
"Shawn, you were gone for so long," he said.
"Three years," said Shawn, "yeah, I know."
They stared at each other for a long moment before Jordan sat the medical file down, saying, "Seeing as I'm already pretty familiar with your medical history, I guess I won't need that. Let's get straight on into the exam, shall we?" He pulled out some gloves from a drawer and put them on. Shawn watched him patiently as they both tried very hard to pretend everything was normal.
Jordan warmed his stethoscope up on his sleeve and placed it on Shawn's heart, listening. "Breathe in," he instructed several times as he moved the tool around.
The boy was completely silent throughout the stethoscope and then the eyes and throat exam. When Jordan turned away to make some notations on the chart—Shawn was in perfect health, a bafflement seeing as how the boy just dropped out of a ball of light—Shawn drew in a shaky breath and asked, "How's Jack? Is she—does she"—he took another breath—"is she going to college now? Did she take that year off, like she was going to? Is she—?"
"Yeah," said Jordan , turning back around. "She's going to CalTech, for math. Just finished her first year."
"Wow." Shawn smiled proudly, because, in his head, she was still his girlfriend. Jordan still thought of Shawn as family too but Jack had dated three boys since Shawn left and Jordan had no idea where Shawn stood now, in his daughter's mind. He wasn't prepared to tell Shawn that.
"And I took her out of high school her senior year," Jordan said. "We went down to Africa , worked with Doctors Without Borders."
"Did she like that?" asked Shawn. "She used to talk about going with you all the time."
It was hard not having Shawn know the things that they had been doing, what Jack had been doing; but it was even harder to have Shawn still remember little things from three years ago when Jordan could barely remember the things from last year. Of course, for Shawn, it was just days ago.
"I think it scared her a little," said Jordan . "Seeing the children and the parents, all dying. But she rose to the occasion. She actually got her GED halfway through the year, then."
"What's she doing now?" asked Shawn. "It's the summer, right?"
"She's at a math thing at MIT," he said. "She's coming home in a couple of days, to stay with me, not her mother. I get her in the summers, now, because she's at college near her mom."
"And Jewish holidays still?" Shawn asked, because he still remembered.
"Jewish holidays," repeated Jordan , closing the file. He smiled at Shawn: "Well, you seem to be in excellent health. In fact, from the exams I've done today, and yesterday, all of you seem to be in perfect health. I'm going to recommend about another week or so of quarantine, to make sure nothing strange makes an appearance."
"Then you think we can go home?" asked Shawn.
Jordan sighed. "Probably not. I'm just going at this from the medical point of view. Security wise, you guys could be in here for months. And then finding families for everyone—some of these people, Shawn, have been taken from the fifties, the forties."
"That's a long time to be out of time," said Shawn.
"Yeah," agreed Jordan , "it is."
They stared at each other in silence again before Jordan moved from his position, putting the file under his arm and going towards the door. He said, "I'm sorry to just leave you like this, but I have a lot more patients to see before the day is out. If I can," he added, "I'll try to come back tomorrow, see how you're doing. Would you like me to try and contact your mom?"
"I think someone already did," said Shawn. "It would be nice to see you again, though, if you could come back tomorrow."
"I'll see what I can do," Jordan said, opening the door. He was almost out in the hall when Shawn called out to him.
"Do you think—do you think that, when Jack gets home, I-I could see her? Maybe?"
Jordan smiled at him: "I think maybe I can work that out."
It was Shawn who smiled now, genuinely happy, and Jordan walked away, hoping he could get his daughter in—hoping that she would actually agree to come.
Stopping a nurse—because his apparently abandoned him—he told her that Shawn Farrell in exam room two was cleared to return back to his barracks and Jordan went on his way to return Shawn's file to the filing room. After he had put it away, he left the room and went to the nurses' desk, to find out what room his next patient was in when he was accosted by one of the NTAC agents he had come to know and count as family.
"Hey, Doc."
"Hello, Tom," said Jordan , turning around to the agent.
"I hear you're recommending that they be let go in a week or two," said Tom, leaning against the counter.
"From a medical point of view, yes," he said. "Of the ones we've examined—they are all in amazing health, Tom, I have no idea why but they are."
"And that doesn't worry you?" Tom asked.
"A little," admitted Jordan . Tom cracked a smile, a tiny one, because Tom didn't smile much anymore. Which reminded Jordan —"How's Kyle, by the way? I haven't been in lately to check his stats."
Tom's smile dropped away. "The same."
"Hm," said Jordan , tapping his chin. "I'll stop by on my way home, make sure they haven't missed any unusual brain activity."
"Why?" asked the agent.
Jordan shrugged: "Miracles seem to be happening in droves lately, I don't understand why Kyle should be left out."
"You're buttering me up for something." Tom didn't look pleased and Jordan held up his hands.
"Guilty as charged," he said. "It's just—one of the returnees, he was very close to Jack, Tom, and I was wondering if maybe she could come in to see him."
"Shawn," said Tom. Jordan looked at him.
"You know?"
"Yeah. Isn't Jack in Massachusetts ?"
"When she gets back," said Jordan .
Grudgingly, Tom said, "I'll see what I can do." He looked at his watched and then clapped Jordan on his shoulder. "Gotta get back to the interviews and you need to get back to clearing health."
"Work, work, work," said Jordan , picking up a file. Tom chuckled and they parted, going opposite ways down the hall.
-
The next day, Jordan couldn't get in to see Shawn—too many patients, too few doctors, just he, Max, Carey, and some others—but he did manage to write out a short note and send a recent picture of Jack with a nurse to the boy. The nurse replied back that Shawn seemed to brighten considerably and that he sent his profuse thanks back. Jordan was happy with that.
-
Before Jordan knew it, he was picking up Jack from the airport and she was chattering away about what she had done, all the theoretical experiments, and she met this boy, Dennis, who really liked her and she thought he was cute but he was from Philly so it wasn't going to work out, and did he know anything about what was going on with that ball of light that hit Seattle the other day? And is it true that people came out of it?
"As a matter of fact," said Jordan slowly, "people did come out of it. People who had gone missing over the past sixty years."
"Whoa," Jack said, leaning her head back against the car rest and closing her eyes. "That's freaky, Dad. How do you know all this?"
"I work for NTAC, Jackie-O," he said. "I'm the returned people's doctor."
Her eyes snapped open. "Double freaky. So you and Doc Max and C-Dog are all working on them? And everyone else? Were they returned with any weird diseases? Three eyes? What?" Her eyes narrowed. "You're hiding something from me; I can tell. Spill, Dad."
"It's never going to stop being weird to hear you refer to my colleagues by your nicknames for them," he said, trying to skate the subject.
"Dad." She may have been 19 and a college student, but she still had the stern voice that Jordan 's ex-wife had perfected to a science down pat.
"Shawn's among them, Jack," he said. "He was one of the people that were taken and returned."
She was silent for a long moment, working things over in her mind. She said, "Take me there."
"Jack—"
"Dad, take me to where they're holding him. I want to see him, I want to see Shawn."
Jordan was a father with only one child, a daughter, and it had been safe to say that, from the moment she held onto his finger in the hospital, she had him completely under her spell. So Jordan took a left where he should have taken a right and, in twenty minutes, they were where she wanted to be. Jordan turned the car off, unfastened his seatbelt, and was out of the car before he realized Jack was still sitting there.
"Honey?" he asked, leaning through the car door. "What is it? We're here; I thought you wanted to see Shawn."
"I do," she said. Her words came out in a rush. "It's just—is he different? Has he aged? Does he know I'm in college? Does he know I've dated other boys since he's been gone? Does he even want to see me?"
"Jack," he said, closing the door and moving around to her side of the car. "He's exactly the same as he was when he ate dinner at our house. He hasn't aged a day. And, yes, I told him you were going to college, CalTech, and he's very proud of you, and, no, he doesn't know you've dated other people, because I thought you should tell him that yourself and I know he'll understand, because he's Shawn and he still cares about you, even if he was gone for three years."
"I still care about him too," Jack said, unbuckling herself. Jordan reached out and grasped her hand.
"And, yes, he wants to see you," Jordan said. "You were the first thing he asked about when I examined him. He wanted to know everything about what you had been doing and he misses you."
Jack nodded and got out of the car: "Okay."
Jordan smiled and wrapped his arm around her, leading her into the building. They walked passed Tom, who nodded at them, and walked into the meeting area, where the returnees could speak through glass to their families.
"It's like a prison," muttered Jack. Jordan didn't say anything.
After a moment of being alone in there, Shawn walked in on the other side. He saw Jordan first.
"Doctor Collier, hey, how are you?" he asked. His eyes fell on Jack, who smiled shakily. "Jack."
"Shawn. I haven't heard your voice in so long."
Shawn slipped into a chair and the teenagers stared at each other for a long time. Jordan stood off in the corner and watched as his daughter reached towards the glass and placed her hand upon it. He watched as Shawn reached up and put his hand under hers, like a man under glass, and smiled. Jack's eyes filled with tears because Shawn was back and Jordan felt a burning in his eyes because maybe, just maybe, his family was whole again.
Jack said, like a prayer: "Say something."
5. & this is the silence we're playing back to the sky
As far as fairytales went, this wasn't one of the better ones.
In this story, there was a little girl and a little boy who had both been stolen out of time; a little girl with flowers clutched tightly in her hand and an antique dress, and a little boy in his older sister's tie-dye and an old, dented RFK for President button pinned to his front. Their eyes were wide and bright and written on with silence and sound, with time.
They appeared with 4398 others, standing in the middle of a lake on a dark, foggy night. The little girl and the little boy were two of the youngest people that appeared, each shivering away in a surprisingly cold July night and oblivious to the paths that were being laid out before their feet, like the paving of a sidewalk at night so no crowds would tread in the cement, to mark it up.
The two children did not know each other then, and would not know each other for seven days.
During the first three days, the little girl would befriend a woman not amongst those who came home and the little boy would befriend a young man who had come home. The little girl would learn she was sixty years out of time, a great aunt to her sister's children's children, and the little boy would learn all his brothers and sisters were dead and he was thirty years lost to the deceased.
On the fourth day, both children would learn that fiction had progressed and they were lost in it, two footnotes of missing history; they would learn of elections and progressions. They would learn of how they were left behind in time and the little boy would pull on his tie-dye with tears in his eyes, the little girl doing the same to her dress. They would get new clothes.
On the fifth and sixth days, the little boy broke down first and then the little girl, crying for their lost families; and, on those days, they would learn they came back changed and that maybe, just maybe, new futures, right futures were put before them to walk into.
On the seventh day, the children would pass each other in the hall, eyes locking and committing one another's faces to twisting memories. Then they would blink together and be facing away, lost but found, hands grasped by doctors as they walked metal corridors to different rooms, for different purposes.
On the eighth day, they searched one another out, unconsciously, and the little girl and the little boy found each other in the middle of a crowd of people. They were dressed in tiny little scrubs, clothes foreign to each of their stations, minds, and times. The little girl was used to a dress and the little boy was used to his older sister's tie-dye. The flowers and the button had been lost.
Stepping in time with one another in a time neither knew well, they came close to each other, breath mingling like smoke in the air. Their noses almost touched.
They stared at each other for a long moment, each unfamiliar stories written in antique languages where a lot was left unsaid so more could be spoken. They reached out and the little girl and the little boy touched their index fingers, a shock being sent between the two of them like trading pasts, before letting their hands fall down to their sides.
The little children had found something in each other, kindred spirits from clear across the temporal divide, and they knew trust when they saw it.
Said the little girl: "I see the future."
Said the little boy: "I make things happen."
And the little girl held out her hand for the little boy to take. The little boy hesitated.
"Don't worry," the little girl said, all seriousness, "I won't let anything happen to you."
"No," said the little boy, bravely taking her hand, "that's my job. You are the princess, I am the prince; I'll protect you."
The little girl smiled. "I know. You'll do a good job."
The little children stared at each other, and the little girl blinked, her eyes wide and faraway, before saying, "I'm going to marry you."
"Okay," the little boy replied, holding her hand with all his little boy strength. "I think I'd like that."
"Good," said the little girl, because she knew. "I'm Maia."
"I'm Jordan ."
Together, they turned and walked away, hand in hand, like they were on a playground amongst the adults. Maybe they were looking for the swing set, or the slide.
They had been lost but now they were found and, as far as fairytales went, this wasn't one of the worst ones.