At a table in the sunroom at Eric's house, we worked on the remaining parts of our biology projects. Eric was trying to create a model of rough endoplasmic reticulum with ribbon and glue, and I was on my laptop writing about its functions within the cell. Daylight savings time had ended that day, the clocks were set back an hour and the cloudy sky was darkening earlier than usual. The sunroom was chilly, but Eric wanted to work there instead of at the kitchen table so we wouldn't be bothered by his family.

"I didn't take AP Bio to do craft projects," Eric grumbled as he struggled. "If Mrs. Birch wanted to assign stuff like this she should've been an art teacher."

"Look at it this way; it gives you a chance to practice your hand skills," I said while I typed. "If you're going to be a surgeon, you need hand skills. You should probably do more crafts actually. Perhaps you should take up knitting. Or crochet. Or embroidery."

"Vanessa," Eric interrupted. The seriousness in his voice startled me and when I peered over the laptop screen, his eyes met mine and I felt even colder.

"Or cross-stitch," I continued, looking back down at the screen. "Or mosaics."

"I have a question."

"No."

"You don't even know the question yet."

"No questions. Unless they have to do with crafts or cell bio."

But of course he ignored my stipulations and asked anyway. "Were you actually seeing someone last summer? Or was that a front for your other activities?"

"Um, I was, actually. Seeing someone."

"Okay, because Sophie said she never met him, and that the things you told her about him, like where he worked, turned out to not be true. So what was the deal with that? Why all the secrecy?"

"I explained all that to Sophie like a month ago, so don't worry about it. We're good." I waved my hand dismissively.

"What exactly did you tell her?"

"You know what? I don't have to explain it to you." I closed my laptop and slid it into my bag on the chair next to me. I did not sign up for this conversation and I was going home. "I think you've got the project from here."

Eric hooked his foot around the leg of the chair holding my bag and dragged it out of my reach. He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. "So it's over with this sketchy guy you had to lie about all summer?"

"It's over. Like, forever." My lip started trembling, so I bit down on it. I stood and reached for my bag, but Eric hoisted his leg up and rested his foot on top of it. So he was going to hold me hostage? Cool.

"Because he went back to school, like you said? Or because the pool closed?" He was focused on peeling dried glue from his fingertips. When I didn't answer, he asked, "Is that why you went to...where you did? All those times?"

I responded with a firm,"No," but as I said it I covered my face with my hands and that was all the answer he needed.

"Whoa Ness, that's-"

"Messed up. I know." My words were muffled by my cupped hands. "Drop it, okay? Please don't say a word."

"I was only gonna say that's kinda sad."

"Yes, it was sad. And now I'm sad, like, all the time," I said in a weird, strained voice that didn't sound like my own.

"I mean, it's kinda sad you felt like you needed to go through all that trouble for some guy. I'm sure there's at least a couple around, like, this century, that would go out with you."

He was such a jerk. Like I should be desperate enough to fall at the feet of whoever might be willing to go out with me. Maybe that's how it worked for him. He burned through nearly everyone who looked at him a certain way. But that wasn't how it worked with me. I had standards. And after knowing Pete, I feared my standards had become even higher.

"Maybe it was worth the trouble," I muttered.

"Was it though? How long did it last? Two months? Do you realize it's been more than two months since that ended? Maybe it's time to put all of that behind you and stop being so sad all the time."

Angry tears stung my eyes. I hugged myself tight to try to hold it together, but it wasn't working. I was falling apart.

I turned and escaped to the nearest bathroom, sunk to the floor and cried as quietly as I could. I wished I'd fought harder to get my bag back before I stormed off. Now I was stuck there until I could compose myself.

The thing I was afraid to admit, even to myself, was that I didn't know anymore if it was worth it. Pete and I had a few days together, one summer, and then I was stuck with this feeling for how long? Did it hurt so much because Pete and I had something special, or because I'd hardly been with anyone else?

And how dare Eric set an expiration date for my misery when he had no idea what I was going through? It wasn't only that I lost Pete, but also that I was losing control of myself. My grasp on time and space was unraveling and Mr. Perfect thought I was being too much of a downer. If he didn't like it, he didn't have to pester me to come over to help him with his project or his papers. Why did I even agree to it anyway? Was it just to distract myself for a few hours?

As the tears began to run out, I looked up at the black and white tiled walls and shivered at the thought of all the things those walls had seen. The Rockmore House had so many different past lives. A hospital, an inn, an old people's home and what else did Eric say? An apartment building?

I got up and leaned over the sink to pat cool water on my face and wash away the salty tracks of my tears. When I stood upright and faced the mirror, fuzzy black dots began to blot out my vision. I knew that it was probably because I stood too fast, so I gripped the edge of the pedestal sink and squeezed my eyes shut until the dizziness passed. When I opened my eyes, I saw a different reflection in the mirror.

There was a green cabinet behind me where the striped shower curtain had been. Blinking hard didn't make it go away, so I tried rubbing my eyes. But once I let go of the sink, my knees buckled and I dropped back to the floor.

On the way down, my head snapped forward as something caught the back of my head and pain ripped through my scalp. I curled up in the fetal position on the floor, holding my throbbing head and trying not to swear out loud. I managed to keep my expression of agony to a few small whimpers. My hands were getting warm and sticky and the metallic smell of blood was starting to make me feel nauseous. I was still dizzy, but I needed to clean myself up and possibly seek medical attention.

I slowly rose to my hands and knees to avoid passing out again and planned to crawl across the floor to get some toilet paper to stop the bleeding. But the toilet was gone; replaced by a cart holding glass jars filled with cotton balls and gauze. Those would work, too. But when I tried to lift the lid of the gauze jar, it didn't budge. There was a neatly stacked pile of white cloth on the middle shelf of the cart, so I grabbed one of those and pressed it to the back of my head.

The green cabinet was still where the shower should have been, its textured glass doors obscuring the contents of the shelves. In the middle of the room there was a metal stool next to a bench covered with a white sheet. It was a tall bench, more like an exam table at a doctors office.

When I felt confident enough to stand up and too curious to try to return right away, I slipped through the crack in the door into the hallway. The walls were pale green instead of white and there was a sticky sweet smell in the air.

In the Anderson's airy living room, there was a row of white metal-framed beds along the wall. Clipboards hung over the headboards of the beds where patients lay under the white sheets. Slices of golden afternoon light spilled through the tall windows. A woman wearing a nurse's cap and a white dress was writing at a table in the middle of the room.

That was all I needed to see to confirm my suspicions that I'd landed in the hospital era of the Rockmore House. I turned back toward the room I'd come from to try to get myself out of there when I overheard low voices coming from further down the hallway. "Mrs. Brennan" rose up from the mostly unintelligible words and wormed its way right into my brain.

I nearly fell over again. Was Mrs. Brennan Pete's wife? Was I about to see how he'd moved on? Was this what it was going to take to get over him?

Another nurse swept down the hall toward me.

"Visiting hours are over, Miss," she scolded. Then with nothing but an authoritative demeanor and the urgent swishing of her skirt, she escorted me down the hall, out the front door and clicked the lock behind me.

I braced myself for the cold, but a warm summer evening awaited. The air was still and heavy, but smelled more alive than it had on the afternoon I'd left behind. Cicadas chirped from the leafy branches of twisted, ancient trees. The cars parked in the gravel driveways at the surrounding houses were boxier and older than anything I'd seen in 1953.

A man pacing in front of the hospital stopped at the sound of the door closing. His hopeful expression faded when he saw me standing there on the front steps.

"Visiting hours are over," I repeated, because I felt the need to say something.

"Don't I know it," he said. "That nurse is something, isn't she? Runs a tight ship. I suppose they all do though."

He lifted a cigarette back to his lips and inhaled deeply as his eyes scanned the second floor windows of the hospital, like he was waiting for a sign. The hair combed over from his hard side part was becoming undone and the collar of his shirt was rumpled. It looked like he'd had a long day.

I pulled the cloth away from my throbbing head to see if the bleeding was slowing down. It didn't seem like it. Between the heat and the pain and the blood, I started to feel dizzy again and I sat down.

The man took one look at the bloody cloth and exclaimed, "Oh! What was she thinking turning you away? Let's get you back in there."

He led me by the elbow back up the steps and rapped on the door. The same nurse opened the door and frowned.

"Dr. Brennan!" she scolded. "I've asked you several times to go home. Your constant interruptions are keeping me from the patients, including your wife."

"I have a patient right here that you threw out. Can't you see she's bleeding from the head?"

She looked a little surprised by this news, and then said coolly, "We're very busy this evening."

"So, she's on her own, then? Look at her, she's white as a ghost. I'll see to it myself if you're all so busy."

"You don't have privileges at this hospital." She pursed her lips and closed the door a bit more, but he gripped the doorframe to keep her from shutting it all the way.

"Then lend me a suture kit and I'll take care of it on the front stoop. Won't that look nice to the passersby?" He finished with a wicked grin.

She huffed a sigh and led us to an empty room.

"I've got a mind to lock you in here," she said to the man as she waved her finger in his face. "You can help yourself to whatever you need, as long as you do not leave this room."

She turned on the heel of her polished black shoe and stormed out.

He started to wash his hands at the sink. "You don't mind if I fix you up, do you?" he asked over his shoulder. "I could use a distraction, and from the look of it, you could use some fixing up."

I shook my head. If I'd have known that was the one good look I'd get of his face, I would have studied it more to suss out the similarities to another Brennan I'd known. I did notice that he had the same kind eyes, with that relaxed, almost drowsy look, even when he was clearly not relaxed.

"Alright, then." He gestured toward the metal stool. "Have a seat."

I did as I was told and winced as he parted my hair and inspected the back of my head.

"So what happened here?" he asked. "An accident at the farm?"

"Huh?"

"The dungarees," he explained, gesturing at the denim overalls I was still wearing from the early afternoon leaf raking that seemed forever ago.

He blotted a wet cloth against the back of my head. The warm water dripping down the back of my neck started to make me feel sleepy, but the stinging pain kept me awake. I inhaled sharply through my teeth and squeezed the sides of the chair to get through it.

"Okay. I've got a better look now, and it's not as bad as you'd think. Head wounds bleed like the dickens. I'm going to have to trim your hair back a bit. But let's get it feeling better first."

I heard him opening and closing the cabinet doors and placing supplies on the metal cart. I was determined to avoid looking at the instruments necessary for sewing my scalp back together. But I made the mistake of glancing over just in time to see him draw some liquid into a metal syringe from a glass bottle.

"This is gonna hurt," I whispered to prepare myself.

"To tell you the truth, you're gonna see stars for a few seconds here, but after that it'll be alright."

He was right. The injection of local anesthetic around the cut brought tears to my eyes, but then it stopped hurting and I was able to form complete thoughts again. A light breeze drifted through the open window and cut the scents of disinfectants and ointments and whatever it was that smelled sickeningly sweet with the smell of fresh grass and flowers.

"Your wife...is she..." I began.

"I'm going to be a father. Any time now."

"Oh! Congratulations."

"Thank you. We're not out of the woods yet, though. She had rheumatic fever, which makes this more dangerous for her and the baby. If I had my way she wouldn't be in this country hospital. Well, and we wouldn't have moved to this town in the first place. So you can see how often I get my way." He said it lightly and then sighed. "Right about now I wish I knew less about how these things can go sometimes."

I squinted to get a better look at the calendar on the wall. It had a print of a white church in a bucolic landscape at the top and a pad of small tear-off pages at the bottom with the months. The current page said it was August 1933. My brain was still a bit foggy, but I remembered from my almost daily Google searches that Pete was born in August of 1933.

"You're a doctor," I said in surprise.

"Nah, I thought I'd give it a try today though to pass the time. How am I doing?"

I chuckled and as my head moved I felt the stitches tighten.

"Hold on," he said.

He snipped the loose end of the suture and dropped the black string on the cart. Right as I thanked him, the small sound of an infant's cry drifted through the window. Dr. Brennan stared up at the ceiling and the lump in his throat bobbed as he audibly swallowed.

"Excuse me," he muttered, and then despite the nurse's warnings, he bolted out the door.

I felt awash in relief, even though I knew both the baby and the mother would be okay. I'd meet them both in about twenty years.

Pete never told me his father was a doctor, but he did say his mother and father met while she was in nurse's training in Detroit. So it made sense that Dr. Brennan was Pete's father, and the baby crying upstairs was Pete. In ten years he'd lose his dad. Was there anything I could do? But what would be the effects down the line?

I noticed sticky blood on my hands, but I couldn't turn the knob at the sink to get any water to rinse it off. There was a metal bowl on the cart filled with what looked like water stained with blood. It was better than nothing. I dipped my hands in the water and began rubbing the blood away. Then I felt very heavy, like I was being sucked down to the ground. Knowing what was coming, I dropped to the floor on purpose.

When the vacuum lifted, I was sitting on the polished wood floor in the walk-in pantry at Eric's house. Owen was standing over me, rifling through the contents of a shelf of snack foods.

"What the?!" he stumbled backward when he saw me. "You alright down there?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry."

I scrambled to my feet and quickly pulled my hair into a ponytail to hide the stitches and the spot where my hair had been cut back all the way to my scalp. Owen had showered and changed and smelled like woodsy man soap. But I was too shaken up to appreciate any of it.

"Are you hiding or something?" His eyes narrowed after the initial wide-eyed shock of finding me there. "Is my brother being a dick?"

I grabbed a bag of pretzels from the shelf. "Um, no, I was just getting some pretzels and I got a little dizzy and had to sit down for a minute." I gestured toward the door. "I'm just gonna sneak right past ya."

"You sure you're okay?" He backed up against the shelves to let me through. "Do you want to sit for another minute? I can get you a glass of water or something."

"Thank you. I'm fine," I said as I darted out of there.

I would be fine as soon as I got out of that house. Eric was still sitting at the table in the sunroom where I'd left him. There was darkness beyond the windowpanes, and it looked like he'd abandoned the Bio project to move on to Calculus. The chair with my bag on it was back where it belonged. I dropped the bag of pretzels on the table.

He looked up at me when I walked in and raised his eyebrows. "Did you see a ghost?"

"Maybe?" I croaked.

"I would've checked on you, but it seemed like you needed a minute." He tapped his phone and the home screen lit up. "Or, like, forty-five."

"I was gone for forty-five minutes?"

"Yeeah." He grimaced.

"I gotta go." I pulled on my jacket and grabbed my bag.

When I got to my car I saw that Eric had already sent me a text.

I'm sorry.

I tossed my phone on the passenger seat. At that moment, I didn't even remember what he had to be sorry for. And I didn't care. My mind was firmly planted in the past.