Page 54 of Parallel

Quinn and I are both quiet on the way home. She gazes out the window with unseeing eyes. Her hopelessness destroys me.

“Hey,” I say, reaching out to grab her hand, “don’t give up, okay?”

She forces a smile. “It seems unlikely to me that we will meet a second time traveler to answer all our questions.”

“There are lots of other possibilities. You’re seeing Dr. Patel on Friday. Don’t give up on regular medicine just yet.”

She sighs. “This is obviously not a standard tumor. Can an oncologist even help?”

I’ve tried to avoid thinking about it, because I can’t stand where my head goes. Right now, I just need to believe in something, and so does she. “We have no idea until we try.”

She’s quiet for a moment, staring out the window. “Why did you decide to do your residency in London?” she asks suddenly.

The question surprises me, mostly because I really have no answer to it. “I have no idea, to be honest. It just hit me when I was in high school, and I never seriously considered anything else. Why?”

She runs her thumb over her lower lip. “I had a dream about it last night. We were teenagers, and in my dream, I was the one who wanted London, not you. It’s just strange you wound up there anyway.”

She points to a street and I turn, pulling up in front of a small house that’s seen better days. In a neighborhood that’s seen better days as well. I hate the idea of leaving her here alone.

“How much longer is Jeff out of town?” I ask.

Her lips press together. “Just until Thursday night.”

I shouldn’t have asked and I also shouldn’t ask the question I’m about to, but it seems like a very lonely life out here by herself, in this depressing box of a house. “What do you do at night, when he’s gone?”

She shrugs. “Usually, I just go home. Sometimes I go out with my friends or walk down to the harbor for a while. People swing dance there when the weather’s good.”

My spine tingles. It’s one of my two recurring dreams—me with a girl I assume is her, dancing in the grass. I never gave it too much thought until now, but I’m pretty sure we were swing dancing, that I was teaching her how. Did it happen before? Is it supposed to happen now? “And you just watch?”

She smiles sheepishly. “I’m too uncoordinated to dance, and I’d look pretty damn silly out there alone, even if I did know how.”

“Anyone can swing dance.”

Her mouth opens to speak, and then closes again. Whatever she was going to say, she’s decided against it. “Not me.”

“Maybe I’ll come down there sometime and prove you wrong,” I say softly.

A hundred emotions flicker over her face. Love and hunger and desire and, finally, grief. I’d give anything to heal that grief, except I think I’m the source of it.

I go to work, but the thought of Quinn and everything we’ve just learned is never far from my mind. I stare at the images from a recent scan of one my Alzheimer’s patients, studying the tangle of amyloid plaques that indicate its progression. There will be nothing happy about the conversation I’m about to have with his children. I don’t regret my decision to enter neurology, as depressing as it often is, but for the first time, I truly consider what led to it.

If Quinn’s life changed, mine must have too. Was there a part of me that somehow knew she’d have problems this time around? Knew my best shot at finding her again was by entering a specialty she’d be likely to seek out? Or did some piece of me just long for her and attach to the discipline that led me to her in the first place?

There’s a tap on the door and Meg walks in. She’s been at a conference for the last week and I didn’t expect her back until later today, but based on her presence here now and how deeply unhappy she appears, I assume she came home last night instead…and wants to know why I wasn’t there.

Guilt kicks sharply in my stomach. Even if I can cut myself some slack for what I did with Quinn, unknowingly, the bigger issue is this: discovering just how much I feel for her has proven I don’t feel enough for anyone else. What Quinn said last night was correct—I let things get this far with Meg because it didn’t seem fair to ask for more when Ryan wound up with nothing. But Meg deserves to be more than the penance I pay for what I did to my brother.

“I thought you weren’t coming back until tonight,” I say, at a momentary loss for words.

She sinks into the seat across from mine, her arms folded over her chest. “Yes, that became pretty obvious to me when you didn’t come home last night.”

I rock back in my chair. “I went to a show in Baltimore, and it was late so I just crashed there.”

Her eyes narrow while she looks for the cracks in my response. Thank God it’s actually true. “Alone?” she asks. “You went to Baltimore alone?”

“Yeah,” I say. A small lie, more for her protection than my own. “But I think we need to talk.”

She freezes. I suppose the phrase we need to talk never leads anywhere good. “Talk about what?”