Tomorrow by C. K. Kelly Martin Page B

No one calls me Robert. To everyone aside from Freya I’m always ‘Rob’ or ‘Robbie,’ but I tell the voice yes. “Holly Allen’s suffered a concussion and we’re currently examining her at Vancouver General Hospital,” the voice explains in a perfunctory tone.
    My brain stutters over the information. At first hearing some stranger say ‘Holly’ tricks me into thinking she must have called the wrong phone number and be talking about someone else.
    But I’m Robert Clark , just like she said, and Freya’s Holly Allen. The Holly Allen who is lying injured in a hospital bed.
    “A concussion?” I repeat breathlessly. “What happened? Is she okay?”
    “She took a fall and lost consciousness briefly,” the woman explains. “But she’s awake now. I’m not yet sure whether they plan to release her tonight or keep her overnight for observation.”
    “I’ll be right there,” I tell her.
    Head pounding, I tear into the elevator with my bike, fly up Main Street , and shoot along West Twelfth Avenue. This is one of the times I wish we still had the money-pit car old Freya bought us —a thought that flings my mind back to the moment old Freya was murdered. It was both a miracle and a nightmare, and almost as incredible to me now as the day it happened. That older version of Freya coming to help us because I’d died . I would’ve done the same thing if I’d lost Freya that day, thrown myself back into the chute another seventy-eight years so I could try to rescue a newer Freya and Garren. But I didn’t have to. Freya was the one left to face another journey through time, and then decades of waiting for the right moment to save me, giving us both another chance.
    The memory deepens my anxiety. Timelines tangle in my brain, fraying, unknotting, and snapping before slithering back together. Freya has to be okay.
    It’s a primal, paranoid fear . Losing her. There’s every reason to think this Freya —my Freya— will be fine. Otherwise the woman at the hospital wouldn’t have said they’d release her tonight or tomorrow.
    W ithin fifteen minutes I’m tearing into the E.R. and giving them Holly’s name. It’s another thirty-five minutes of staring anxiously at my hands and feeling sweat gather around my hairline until they call for me. A male nurse takes me in to see her, and Freya smiles tiredly up at me. “I’m okay,” she says. “Just stuck with a headache.”
    I rub her arm, so relieved to see her in one piece that I exhale like someone blowing out a match. “What happened? My mind was running wild.”
    “Didn’t they tell you I was all right?” Freya’s forehead crinkles in sympathy.
    “They did.” I shrug, suddenly feeling ridiculous.
    The nurse hands me an information packet. “Sorry to interrupt. She can explain when you get home, but there are some things I need you to look out for. We can’t release her unless there’s someone to watch over her for the next twenty-four hours.”
    “I’ll do that,” I say quickly.
    “ Good,” he says. “You need to keep an eye on her. If her speech becomes slurred or if she gets confused or the headache worsens, or there are any other strange symptoms, bring her back right away. She should be woken up every two hours during the night so that you can check that her condition hasn’t changed. And her family doctor should check her out again in a day or two.”
    “When can I go back to work?” Freya asks , her fingers bunching up in her lap.
    “Not until you see your regular doctor and he tells you it’s okay. For the next few days we don’t want you doing anything except taking it easy, all right, honey?” Freya nods obediently and we both listen to the nurse explain that it could be a week or two before she’s back to her old self.
    But at least s he can come home with me now, and Freya and I slowly make our way out of the hospital together. I hail a passing cab, thinking that I’ll have to come back for my bike tomorrow night when it’s