I would learn that I was one of thirty-six people who walked away from the crash.
When I step out of the examination room of the hospital we’ve been taken to, I’m dazed. A woman in a uniform is in the hallway, talking to a man with a bandaged arm. She is part of an emergency response team from the airline that has overseen medical checks by physicians, given us clean clothes and food, and flown in frantic family members.
“Ms. Edelstein?” she says, and I blink, until I realize she is talking to me.
A million years ago, I had been Dawn McDowell. I’d published under that name. But my passport and license read Edelstein. Like Brian’s.
In her hand she has a checklist of crash survivors.
She puts a tick next to my name. “Have you been seen by a doctor?”
“Not yet.” I glance back at the examination room.
“Okay. I’m sure you have some questions…?”
That’s an understatement.
Why am I alive, when others aren’t?
Why did I book this particular flight?
What if I’d been detained checking in, and had missed it?
What if I’d made any of a thousand other choices that would have led me far away from this crash?
At that, I think of Brian, and his theory of the multiverse. Somewhere, in a parallel timeline, there is another me at my own funeral.
At the same time, I think—again, always—of Wyatt.
I have to get out of here.
I don’t realize I have said this out loud until the airline representative responds.
“Once we get the doctor’s paperwork, you’re clear to leave. Is someone coming for you, or do you need us to make travel arrangements?”
We, the lucky ones, have been told we can have a plane ticket anywhere we need to go—to our destination, back to where the flight originated, even somewhere else, if necessary. I have already called my husband. Brian offered to come get me, but I told him not to. I didn’t say why.
I clear my throat. “I have to book a flight,” I say.
“Absolutely.” The woman nods. “Where do you need to go?”
Boston,I think.Home.But there’s something about the way she phrases the question:need,instead ofwant;and another destination rises like steam in my mind.
I open my mouth, and I answer.
I have heard these songs that are in ancient tombs,
What they say about aggrandizing the one on earth,
And diminishing the necropolis.
But why is such done against the land of eternity,
A just and righteous place without fear?
Mayhem is its very abomination!
No one there dreads another.
