She buckles her seat belt. “Now you have me curious.”
“You’ll know it when you see it, even if it’s not from your memory.”
“You think so?”
We exit the freeway, and Ava says, “I think I’ve been this way before.”
We drive up a boulevard that ends at our destination. My nerves jangle to the point that I can almost hear ringing in my ears as we approach the complex.
“What’s that tall tower ahead?” Ava asks.
“I think it’s supposed to be a beacon of hope or something,” I say. “No one has ever fully explained it to me.”
We pass a hospital sign, and Ava sucks in a breath. “This is the children’s hospital.”
“It is.”
Ava peers out the window. “This is where we met.”
I pull into the parking lot.
Ava is rapt, staring at the entrance. “Do they still have the disco room like in our story?”
“They do.”
“Well, this is exciting.”
I park and lead her to the front entrance. A security guard in a blue uniform opens the door.
“We’re headed to the epilepsy monitoring unit,” I tell him.
“Are you visiting someone?”
“We were here a few years ago. It’s how we met.”
He chuckles. “Well, that’s a new one. I don’t know of any couples who met here at the hospital.”
“We were seventeen.”
“I don’t think they let just anyone up, even if you met there,” he says.
“I made an arrangement with a nurse. Marsha Stephenson. She said you could call up and verify it.”
“Let me contact the unit.” He picks up the information desk phone.
The hospital is quiet. Stuffed animals fill the window of a gift shop. Ava examines the art installation near the information desk, where a series of balls travel through a complicated maze of pulleys, tunnels, and obstacles.
The security guard sets down the phone. “You guys are cleared. Do you know the way?”
“I think I can find it again,” I say.
I take Ava’s hand, and my heart soars when she lets me. So far, so good.
We wander the halls of the hospital. It was built around a courtyard, so the wards branch off a central square. We climb a set of stairs and follow the signs until we arrive at the circular layout that makes up the epilepsy unit.
“This feels strangely familiar,” Ava says. “I don’t recognizeanything, but the way the rooms make a circle seems right. I feel like I know my way around.”
“Your wayaround?”
