Page 104 of Meet Me on Greenwood

I crouched beside the nearest machine and looked at the output panel.

My heart stopped.

The voltage. The current. The configuration of the terminals.

It wouldn't be perfect. I'd still need to modify the connection, find the right gauge of wire, manage the conversion carefully enough not to fry the circuits, but it was possible. For the first time since I'd arrived in 1920, it was possible for me to go home. It wasn’t just enough to power my phone, the ORI needed the right wave frequency to get me back to my own timeline. I realized I needed to replicate what the lightning did to get me here.

I stood slowly.

Stradford was saying something about the ballroom’s capacity that I wasn't hearing anymore. I made the appropriate sounds of interest before following him back through the corridor and out into the lobby where the light bouncing off the chandelier made everything look like a dream.

I had found my way home.

The thought should have made me feel relief. It did, briefly, like a door swinging open after a long time in a locked room.

And then the relief shifted, and something else was standing behind it.

Houston.

I thought of his hands cupping my jaw in the rain. His voice on the porch steps, stripped of everything careful. The way he stared at me from across the hospital ward like he'd been looking for me before he knew he was looking.

"Are you all right, Dr. Cross?" Stradford asked.

I looked at him. He was a man building something beautiful in a city that was about to burn.

"Yes," I said. "I'm just—it's going to be a wonderful evening."

He smiled, satisfied. "I’ve bored you, I’m sorry, but I warned you I would."

I thanked him and walked back out onto Greenwood Avenue.

The morning had gotten brighter while I was inside. The street was fuller now, voices and movement, as people meandered through a community that had built something from nothing and intended to protect it at all costs.

I walked back the way I'd come and tried not to think about the fact that I now had everything I needed to leave.

And about the fact that I didn't know if I could.

"Gema!" A voice called. "Gema!"

It was C.J., running down from his building. "C.J., what is wrong?"

"There is no time. It is Houston. He is in the hospital."

I jumped into C.J.’s car and he sped through the streets until we reached Frissel Hospital. "Why is he here?" I asked.

"Someone set his office on fire. He ran in to save his assistant."

"Donna? Is she okay?"

"I don’t know?"

"Houston?"

He turned, his eyes full of worry, and I got out of the car before the tires came to a stop.

I could smell the smoke even before I reached the hospital unit. My lungs were burning from running over half a block.

"Where is he?" I asked the first nurse I recognized.