The Last Time We Met

February 2005, Brentwood, California

Sunlight glared through the hospital windows as we entered the room, my hand caught up in my mother's. Dad went straight to the bed, where the woman I knew as Grammy lay beneath a blue blanket, her face and hair blending in with the white of the sheets.

"Is Brent here?" I asked.

"Who?" Mom said, absently, leading me to an empty chair near the windows. She didn't seem to want an answer to her question, and she hadn't answered mine. She sat me down and knelt before me. "Okay, I want you to play quietly, okay? Grammy is very sick and your daddy wants to spend time with her."

"Okay," I whispered.

I didn't like looking at the bed, so I turned toward the windows and the plants lining the windowsill. I didn't remember this many plants when Brent was here. I stood up and held up the plastic Fisher-Price camera I got for my birthday and took pictures. They weren't real pictures, like the ones I used to take when I had a real camera, but I pretended they were real and that Brent would see them and be happy that there were so many plants in his room.

Outside the windows, people walked in and out of the hospital. They weren't very interesting, so I went to the bag Mom had brought with her and took out paper and crayons. Lying down on the floor, I started drawing. I drew a picture of Brent and the other me on our wedding day, even though we never got married for real. We talked about it a lot, and someday I hoped I would find someone to love as much as I had loved Brent and Henrietta and all the others.

"What are you drawing, honey?" Mom asked, and took a look. "Oh, this is nice..." Her words were nice but her voice sounded strange. "Who are these people?"

"That's Brent," I said, pointing. She should have known the other one was me. "Can we go look for him? Maybe he's still here. At the hospital."

Mom glanced at Dad, then nodded. "Okay. Let's go for a walk." She tucked my drawing under the other papers, then held my hand and we walked.

There were a lot of rooms and a lot of people rushing around, and other people moving very slowly with walkers or wheelchairs. Mom let me peek in the rooms that had open doors, but only for a second. No one here looked like Brent. They were all old people.

We went on the elevator and Mom let me push the buttons.

The elevator dinged and when we got off, the air smelled different. These halls didn't have as many doors, but they did have big windows, only they were too high up for me to see. Mom lifted me up to see the rows and rows of little beds, each with a baby swaddled inside.

Then I blinked and there were rows and rows of big beds, each with a white sheet between them.

"Aren't they cute?" Mom asked, bouncing me on her hip a little. "Do you want to have a little brother or sister?"

The beds were back to being full of little babies. A nurse walked through – not Henry, this nurse was wearing pink pants and a shirt that had flowers all over it. She smiled and waved at us. I waved back, then buried my face in Mom's sweater. Brent wasn't here. He was gone, and he had come back as a girl and she was gone, too. I didn't know how I was going to find him again.

Cosima's voice led me away from that moment. "Now we're going to leave this memory, and go back even further, to before you were born, when you were in a prenatal state."

I kept my eyes closed, sliding easily back and back until I was surrounded and safe. Only distantly I recognized Cosima's voice guiding me through how I felt then, safe and excited for a new life where I could find Brent again. She led me through a door of light and into my mother's arms, and then started talking about another doorway filled with light, that led to the past.

"I want you to go back, further back than your most recent life. Back to a life you may not have remembered yet. Know that you are safe and loved, and release all expectations of what you will find when you step through that door."

The doorway glowed with a soft blue light. A life I'd never remembered. I stepped through.

___

How far back do you think he's going?