Ad infinitum

To infinity without end

She'd been beautiful in the first breath; cascading brown curls and eyes so green they stopped his heart. And he'd told her as much, in that crowded bar, when he finally remembered how to open his mouth. Because his experiment hadn't warranted such a discovery - the night out had been meant solely to understand his peers better, to grasp the twenty-something college bar scene they were all drawn to. A simple cataloguing of the human experience, truthfully; something he never intended to repeat.

But she had been there, wearing a black dress with a glass of wine in her hand and as soon as she threw her head back with laughter he was enraptured by her. In love with her. It was completely unquantifiable, something he would've argued wholeheartedly just mere minutes before.

Before he'd seen her.

It was she, who taught him that love at first sight existed. It was she, who changed his belief in fate. Because what was science when there was Rose?

#

He found he loved her more with each passing day, yet another fact he couldn't reason. There was the afternoon she discovered composting available in New York City and dug all of the remnants of food out of their garbage can and even when she smelled of onion skin and orange peels, she was passionate and radiant. Or the night when the full moon shone completely through their bedroom window and instead of shutting the curtains she'd ripped them off the wall and shoved the bed into the middle of the glow and curled into his side; her eyes had fluttered shut and she'd drifted off to sleep like some midnight angel and he'd loved her even more then.

Or the evening she'd come running in from work and disappeared into the bathroom and come out glowing brighter than the sun and he'd been able to do nothing more than tuck her into his arms and kiss her. Taste her lips and bite her tongue and swear to her that he'd never loved her as much as he did right then. That love at first sight was nothing compared to love at five-hundredth.

Except she'd whispered other words into his mouth. Words that tipped his very knowledge of their life on its side, emotional whiplash tearing him from her grasp.

"I'm pregnant."

But he was too young, they were unprepared, it was all too soon. He still had years left in his education, her job was barely enough to pay for the measly apartment they shared. A child was out of the question, at least for now. Until he could support her, support them.

"What are we going to do?" he'd whispered, still so taken aback. Still so unready for such a conversation, such a development.

And that was her emotional whiplash, tossing her backwards. Wiping the smile from her face and knitting her brows and jutting her chin out. "Excuse me?" Because she was the dreamer and she had dreamt this story a thousand times - her belly swollen with his child, his goodnight kiss against her lips, the gold band adorning her finger. She'd dreamt them a life together, a future. While the timing wasn't the best, it was their first step.

"Well, we can't keep it," he'd muttered, science still greatly outweighing emotion in his mind. Though he'd tasted the powers of love, he'd yet to understand it fully. The ever rational; her opposite.

And where he stood to fight, she turned and ran. Out the apartment door; banging on the elevator button three times before taking off down the stairs; through the lobby and into the street.

He heard the screech of tires from the stairwell at the third floor, trying desperately to catch up with her. A crowd had mingled when he reached the road, sirens already echoing from far away. It was she, who taught him that love could hurt. It was she, who changed his belief in the good of the world.

It was the paramedics who pronounced her dead at the scene.

#

He'd been a different man in the first layer; naive, twenty-four. Unready for the heavy burden of falling in love. And he'd carried that with him for many years. It was the first Randolph Lewis who never married, who never kissed another woman (though he longed to), who dedicated his life to a single ideal. He moved to Seattle, joined a medical practice.

But it was this Dr. Lewis who became the dreamer; who picked up pieces of his lost lover and sewed them into his skin. He drew sketches of a machine in the margins of his notes, dreamt up concoctions that could alter the very fabric of the mind - drag pieces of memory from the darkest recesses. He dreamed of making it real.

And then he did.

It was this Lewis who lost himself in his grief and gave of himself for his science. For his dream. For his Rose. And it was this Lewis who did it all over and instead of saying what he'd said before, when she told him she was pregnant, he'd simply kissed her harder.

#

Senna, he'd named her. Senna Grace on a September morning and he'd learned again of love at first sight. With her mother's green eyes and her father's dark hair and a set of lungs that could rival every child in the hospital ward.

He had loved her with her screaming cries, her midnight wails, her daylight babbles. He'd loved her first word ("Cat!") and her first steps and the first time she called him Daddy. He'd loved her from the apartment in New York City to a house they bought in Seattle and he'd loved her even more when she begged them for a sister.

He planted a garden for their family: his bright red Rose, his yellow Senna (multiglandulosa) flowers, and on a night in late June - Gardenia Joy.

Only, in the breaths where his life finally felt complete, he watched something alter. Something he couldn't make sense of with equations nor rational thought, because it was a shift in her eyes. He couldn't explain it even to himself, but it was there.

And then she wasn't and there was still no explanation. No Senna Grace in her booster seat at the kitchen table, no Gardenia babbling noisily from her playpen in the living room, no Rose in their bedroom leaving a trail of her perfume in the air. As abruptly as the first time, he was alone.

It was this Lewis who buried himself back in the machine. Perfected the pieces, redesigned his concoctions, let them speak of him on the news in the hope that she would hear his name and come back to him. Just like he came back to her, time and time again - to the moonlight in their New York bedroom, to the first evening in their home in Seattle, to the first time he saw her and the last time he kissed her and each of their daughters' births.

But he couldn't make a change. He couldn't risk their lives. Couldn't risk Senna's giggle or little Denia's hands. Could never risk extinguishing the light in Rose's eyes.

It was this Dr. Lewis who began vomiting, who lost his appetite. Who found his days run rampant with nausea and exhaustion. It was he who was diagnosed with cancer.

And he regretted it all, every second he'd tried to get back, when she'd shown up at his door. Dark hair and green eyes and begging for a job. Because she believed in the machine, she believed in his idea, that people could return and relive what they'd lost.

It was Denia who sat next to the chair in his final months, who tucked blankets tighter around him and offered him sips of water when he coughed too hard. It was Denia Hamilton who'd dreamed her whole life of a father she'd never known, stories of whom her mother had taken to her grave, whose name could not be remembered by her older sister. It was she who found herself sitting next to him as the cancer slowly killed him.

It was this Dr. Lewis who never told her.

#

It was Callie who accessed the third layer, who fixed the pieces he'd been too afraid to change. Who took the pain of the car accident he'd dreamed into oblivion and sat in his chair and saved her lover and somehow saved his, too.

It was the third layer that found a bolder Dr. Lewis, a man who searched for the woman he loved before it was too late. Before life and age and the taste of death could pull her from his fingers again. And he kissed his wife and hugged his daughters and they were all different women than he remembered.

It was Senna, seventeen and bleach blonde hair who clung to rational thoughts. Denia who was swayed by emotion, who'd longed for a father and then flourished in her mother's arms. Each a half of the two of them. And then Senna had graduated and applied to medical school and that alone had made him prouder than her first word or her first steps - more than he even knew possible and everything had made sense again. Everything had felt complete.

It was his dear, sweet Denia who followed her mother into the flower shop she'd started in Lynnwood and who was standing beside her when a heart attack stole her from him once again.

The dreams began in the wake of her funeral, pieces of a life he didn't understand racing at him in the darkness of his bedroom. Because he was a different Dr. Lewis once again, but he hadn't come from the layers of before - he had merely existed here and so had his machine and when a life that hurt him filled his head, he had to write it down. He had to write it all.

By the time the cancer took control, he knew the missing pieces. He knew the extraordinary things he'd done. When he slipped into a coma, his daughters knew them, too.

#

He closes his book, a deep breath filling his chest. He lets it out slowly, enjoying the sensation. He still remembers how it feels not to be able to do that, to struggle just to stand. He takes pride in his health, now; he knows the grim fate of the other side. The other layers.

But here he is healthy. Childless and alone, but healthy just the same. He counts his victories where he finds them, however miniscule they may seem. Because he's sixty-three this month and he's nowhere near the naive twenty-four year old on that New York street.

He has lived his share of lifetimes, three times over. Once with Rose. Once with his daughters. And one just like this, sitting in his chair, reading books, working long hours at the practice even as he transitions into retirement. He has lived every layer of possibility and two of them have killed him. He can be thankful for his health, when he is sitting in this one.

The streets of Seattle stretch below his window, the threat of rain looming in the clouds but putting barely a damper on the people strolling down the sidewalk. He spots them instantly, hands clasped, one tanned finger pointing at something in a shop window. He smiles when she does, her face twisting to look at the woman beside her.

A left hand combs through blonde curls, wedding ring firmly in place. Exactly where a young Dr. Torres had placed it years ago as they said I do. Arizona presses a kiss to her wife's lips, uncaring of the crowd around them, the prying eyes. Another hand settles on a swollen stomach, stilling the flutter of a child growing within.

They are happy, he thinks. In love. Another victory worthy of recognition.

Because they've never known of the machine. There's been no talk of things lost, no drunk driver on a rain slicked street. They have not been ripped apart here, they have simply lived.

For that, Dr. Lewis is grateful. That is his extraordinary.