#poor em

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I felt as if I was going crazy. 

After Izzy’s parallel universes, that seemed to be the only thing I could think about. 

Though there wasn’t much supported literature in the library, I turned to online communities, conspiracy theories, I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep. 

I needed answers. 

I needed to know if it was possible to go across again. 

If other people had experienced what I had. 

Sure people claimed they had travelled through the universes, but none of them matched mine. No shimmer or portal that transported them. They reported they fell or woke up in the wrong time.  

“Are you feeling ok?” Izzy asked as I stared blankly at my ipad. 

It had been another night of researching and little sleep before work, the dark bags under my eyes gave away my nightly activity. 

“Hmm?” I stared at her trying to get my eyes to focus, but everything blurred. 

Two Izzy’s stared at me, both in concern. 

“Have you been sleeping? Like at all?” She shuffled closer giving me a once over. 

My hair was unwashed but pulled back into a tight bun, though my bangs pointed every which way. 

I had on odd socks, my nursing uniform though it was wrinkled was mostly clean, and my cardigan, that was probably not mine since I had plucked it off a random chair in the nurses station wrapped around my shoulders. 

“Sometimes.” I mumbled turning back to the screen to type my notes into the app. 

“Emily.” Another voice called me. 

My manager stood in the door of her office, beckoning me in with a strange look. 

I slumped down into the seat opposite her desk, stifling a jaw breaking yawn with my hand. 

“Emily, do you know why I wanted to speak to you?” She asked with her arms folded over her desk. 

I gave a shake of my head, crossing and uncrossing my legs in anxiety. 

“Myself and the rest of the staff are very worried about your mental health at the moment.” 

“Oh.” My voice slipped from my lips. 

“All you do is work and then go home. You pick up shifts, never go on holiday. You're working far more than you’re allowed to.” A worried tone laced into her delicate timbre. 

“You actually have too much annual leave at the moment, so I’m going to need you to take a holiday for about three weeks.” She sat up straighter in her chair and began clicking her mouse before she turned her computer screen to face me. 

My leave balance was reading at its maximum, and beside it she had pulled up an email from her boss requesting me to use the time off. 

“I think you should get some rest and take some time for yourself.” Her lips pulled into a thin worried line. 

I sat in the chair, numb to my surroundings, only half aware of what was going on. 

“Ok.” I mumbled before I stood up and wandered out the door. 

—------------------------------------------------------

I don’t think taking the three weeks annual leave was a good idea. My fixation on finding my answers only got worse. 

Sometimes I realised I hadn’t moved in hours, legs numb, jaw clenched, a half-drunk mug of tea cold beside me.

I never left my apartment, and when I did it was to stand in the street in the middle of the night waiting for the shimmer to show up again. 

My Don wasn’t dead, he was living alongside me just out of reach. All this time I thought he had passed and had come to terms we would never see each other again. 

But with the new possibility that maybe, just maybe I could have him all over again. It broke my heart anew. 

I had left thinking I was making the right choice, believing I was doing it for the greater good. 

When in reality I should’ve listened to Don. 

Who begged me to stay, who pleaded for me to choose him. 

And now I was here, alone, angry and hurting. 

Regretting ever stepping back through the shimmer, cursing it for showing up again and taunting me.

Sleep was even more unkind than before, riddled with nightmares, but what was worse than the nightmares was the dreams. 

They felt so real, Don was beside me again, I could feel the warmth of his hands, feel his soft lips pressed to mine as he said my name like a whisper in my ear. 

In my dreams, I always forgot he was gone. I forgot the shimmer, forgot the war, forgot everything except him. 

For a few stolen seconds, I was whole again.

And then I would wake up, alone. 

So bitterly alone. 

It was like relapsing and withdrawing all at once, the ecstasy of the high and then the comedown crashing me back into reality. 

I was compulsive, obsessive, reading over his letter, dragging my fingertips over his carved words that hung next to my heart. 

I was losing myself, falling into a dark abyss. 

There was no day, no night, time didn’t seem to exist. It all just blurred into one long moment.  

It was a pit of muted blind agony. I was on my knees wailing, screaming, ripping out my hair, smashing my fists into the walls even as my body sat perfectly still, swallowing every ounce of pain.

Chewing me from the inside out.  

“Em?” A strangled gasp pulled me from my dissociative state. 

My head snapped up to find a horrified looking Izzy. Her eyes scanned around my living room, papers were scattered everywhere, take out containers still half full of food, clothes strewn around the room. 

The place was an absolute tip, but I couldn’t get myself to move to clean it. My reason was what was the point, I didn’t have the energy to care. 

“Are you trying to kill yourself?!” She shrieked, looking pale and queasy. “Em what the hell have you been doing?” 

I watched as she waded through the mess to get to me, and when she did she flinched back covering her mouth from the smell. 

I’m sure it was me. 

“What the fuck are you playing at?” Izzy’s eyes filled with tears, I was unsure if it was due to the stench or her emotions. I’m sure it was a mix of both. 

“Get up.” She commanded. 

“What?” I was barely coherent, lack of sleep and too deep in my dissociated state to even comprehend the words that left her mouth. 

She didn’t repeat herself, instead she hauled me up from my chair and marched me to the bathroom. 

“Strip.” She began tugging at my clothes, “And don’t say you’re too shy, I’m a nurse for godsakes I’ve seen it all before.” 

I stood there and let my friend strip me bare. Standing naked in my bathroom, goosebumps arising on my skin from the cool air. 

Izzy stomped over to the shower and turned on the head, water splashed down onto the tile and before long the small room was filled with steam.

“I don’t care what you do, but for the love of god go stand under the water please.” The blonde pushed me into the small glass box before she shut the door. 

“And stay in there until I’m back.” 

I gave a small nod and watched her leave and the door click behind her. 

It could’ve been an hour or even three, my fingers were pruny from the time I had spent under the water. 

Sitting on the warm tile, I let the warm shower spray down my back as I tucked my knees under my chin. 

Soon I stood and began to wash my body, my hair. 

Tracing the scars of my past, not with malice or hate but with longing. Even the bullet hole in my shoulder, I wished to go back to that day. 

It was one of the worst days of my life, I hated being in my own skin. But that didn’t compete with the pain I felt now, the void that took up the place where my heart used to beat in my chest. 

I would go back and relive that pain and trauma again just to see his face, for his arm to wrap around me once more. 

We sat in the shower that night together, until the water turned cold. He had whispered how sorry he was and how much he loved me and how brave I was. Scrubbed me until I felt clean both physically and mentally. 

In his eyes I was strong. 

I wondered what he would think of me now, if he saw what state I was in. 

I curled in on myself, taking my place on the tile once more, to try and relive the memory that seemed too far away. 

And then someone else was in the shower with me. 

My head snapped up, heart lurching with hope before I could stop it. 

But it wasn’t Don, he hadn’t come to clean me up. 

It was still Izzy, her brown eyes scanned over me clinically, I was skin and bones at this point. Food just seemed to turn to ash in my mouth. 

I felt her sink down to sit beside me, still fully clothed, her arms wrapped around my frame and for the first time in a long time I broke down. 

My body heaved with sobs as I wailed endlessly, trying to emit all the pain from my body, but the more I pushed the more that filled its place. 

“Shhhh, you’re safe. I’m here.” Izzy cooed as she rocked us back and forth. 

I clung to her like I was about to circle the drain myself. 

I was so thankful for Izzy, she had gathered me from the shower, dried and dressed me, and now I sat at her feet as she brushed my hair. 

The living room she had found me in was now somehow spotless, no smell, no clothes, no dirty dishes. 

Izzy must’ve scrubbed the whole place clean as I sat in the shower feeling too sorry for myself to be able to do any of it. 

I didn’t say the words, or thank her. Instead I sat quietly at her feet and let her take care of me. 

The knots were already out but she continued the soothing motion, raking the brush through my hair in a rhythmic motion, until my cries turned to sniffles. 

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” She asked tentatively once she had blow dried my hair completely and my head layed on her leg. 

Izzy’s warm hand rubbed circles into my back as I closed my eyes. 

I hadn’t realised how lonely I had become. 

So used to being surrounded by my comrades, there was never a moment you were truly alone. Even if you stepped out for a breath you’d walk right back into the family you had made, waiting for you with no questions. 

Since then I had slept alone, ate alone, and worked alone. 

The closeness I had felt to those men unfortunately wasn’t the same relationship I held with my colleagues. 

Except now Izzy was here, filling the void that had been so dull and bitter until now. 

“I’m going to sound crazy.” My voice was hoarse from my sobs, and it stung making the words but I pushed through. 

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll listen no matter what.” She turned my head to face her, crinkles formed at the sides of her eyes as she smiled gently down at me. 

“I can prove your theory right.” I sat up, taking a deep inhale readying myself for what I was about to tell her. 

“My theory?” Clearly I was the only one who had been so hung up on conversation a little over a month ago. 

“Parallel universes.” I reminded her. 

“Oh, right yeah.” She sounded puzzled. 

“When you were asking who I was looking for, I said my relative and the men she served with.” I explained again what we had spoken about. 

“Yes, and you said the people she was with you couldn’t find in the books.” 

I nodded as she recalled the conversation we had. 

“Well it wasn’t my great grandma I was looking for.” I took another steadying deep breath. 

I hadn’t told anyone since I had been back what had happened, not even my therapist. 

Izzy leaned forward, sensing something shift.

“It was me.” 

I watched her brows furrow in confusion and tilt her head like she was solving a hard math equation. Izzy’s mouth opened and then closed while I watched her process everything. 

“What do you mean?” Izzy laughed once, a thin, nervous sound that didn’t reach her eyes.

“One night while I was still studying, I came home from lectures and I was walking to my door, and then I saw it.” I began explaining. 

“Saw what?” Izzy asked in apprehension like the answer would jump out and scare her. 

“A portal, which I called a shimmer, since it glittered in the light. I touched it and it dragged me in. And in a blink I was in a different town, a different country.”

I could tell she didn’t quite believe me but listened intently anyway. 

“I was in occupied Holland,” I whispered, unable to hold her gaze. “And the year was 1944 the middle of world war two.” 

“Did you hit your head?” she murmured, leaning forward, her fingers threading gently through my hair as she searched for bumps.

I swatted her hand away and caught it in mine.

“I’m being serious,” I said, almost begging her to understand.

“So am I,” she replied, though the teasing in her tone was already melting into concern.

“I was in the war from 1944 til it ended, my company finished in Austria. That’s when the shimmer showed up again. And I thought—” The words snagged in my throat. I pressed a fist to my mouth, eyes squeezing shut as if I could hold the emotion in.

“I thought I’d gone back in time,” I choked, voice tight and thin. “That if I didn’t leave, I would tear the world apart. Rip time open. Unmake something important.”

“So I went back, I left the love of my life behind because I thought I was doing what was right.” My voice broke on the last word.

“And I had come to terms with it,” I went on, hollow. “I’d grieved him. Grieved my friends. Grieved the life I had built there.” I swallowed hard, my throat burning. “I told myself it was worth it. That I’d saved everyone.”

I dragged in a shaky breath, blinking up at Izzy. “But then we were talking after we had got back from the dinner, and you introduced the theory of multiple time lines.” 

“And then the thought came into my head that maybe I was wrong all this time, maybe I could’ve stayed like I had so badly wished.” The tears burned behind my eyes. 

“Because it wasn’t my future to change, it was someone else’s and I would just be a small blip, no one would notice if I stayed or went.” A humourless laugh escaped me, small, sharp, painful. 

“It sent me into a spiral.” I admitted shamefully, staring into my open palms like it would give me an answer. 

I looked back at her, eyes wet, breath quick. “The thought that I had made a mistake and that in reality I could’ve stayed and been beyond happy and never had to come back here to this emptiness I was so used to.”

“I found my people, my family and I was courageous enough to leave them because I was saving them. I was sacrificing my peace for them.” I said, barely above a whisper. 

My chest caved as the truth finally fell out of me.