Lavie Tidhar - The Apex Book of World SF 2

We made everyday chit-chat because it seemed absurd that we were no longer a couple and soon he would leave my life for good, for there is no leaving as definitive as death. We laughed into the phone and sometimes I felt he was sitting very close to me, whispering in my ear—still we didn’t meet. We didn’t say our relationship had ended because it was different from breaking up.

He left for India and I went back to work. After a few months, I had to admit that breaking up was meaningless. I was still thinking about him, counting the days, and I was just as scared. The fear wouldn’t lift until the year had passed, and maybe not even then. Sometimes you recognise things that are meant to be forever.

Then I saw my father on the tram.

I hadn’t talked to him since I’d been burdened with his prophecy. My first thought was to get off the tram before he noticed me; in the end I shoved my way to him through the crowd of passengers and, skipping the hello, I said:

“You shouldn’t have told me.”

He started. He hadn’t noticed me, and his face showed embarrassment—and maybe a little guilt.

“How can I keep it from happening?” I grabbed his arm.

“Put it off, you mean?”

“Don’t play with me. You know very well what I mean! Turn it back, pre-empt it… I know what will happen. I can slow it down, right?” The passengers froze. They turned away with so much care that their attention filled us with tension.

“You can’t slow it down; it is the future,” he said and nervously glanced around. “Listen, can we get off?”

I laughed even though I didn’t want to. The laughter choked me.

“You still want to control what and when you tell me?” I flicked my wrist. “Whatever. Let’s get off!”

The tension followed us to the tram stop. I didn’t wait for the people to leave the platform.

“I don’t believe it is futile,” I said. “Your prophecies…they cannot be gratuitous. They must be changeable!”

His eyes were tired.

“You want an answer from me? I only tell what I see. I don’t make up the future. I don’t control it.”

I pushed him hard, surprising myself as much as him.

“I don’t believe you haven’t ever tried!”

“I have,” he said bitterly. His eyes showed some passion at last. “I have tried but in vain! The only way is acceptance or you go mad. That is my advice to you, as well.”

I shook my head.

“I wish you hadn’t told me at all.”

“I’m sorry.” He extended his hand, perhaps to draw me close, but we never felt easy enough around each other for an embrace. I stepped away.

“Or you told me to make me try…” I looked up, realising this was it. This had to be the reason. “I have to try, maybe…”

“Don’t!”

“Then why?”

“Because I, too, can make mistakes!”

I shook my head.

“Then tell me what will happen to me ! What will I do?”

A familiar face, yet confusing. Do I love him? Hate him? Despise him?

“It doesn’t work like that. I cannot control what I see and what I don’t. Don’t you think I would have done it? Judit, listen to me…” He reached for me and this time touched me before I could pull away.

“Then tell me something, anything that will happen to me before the year passes!”

The next tram arrived. People shoved past us as they rushed towards the crosswalk. I saw his gaze darken.

He rubbed his face.

“One of your patients will die within six months while you are on your shift. I don’t know exactly when. You won’t hear her calling.”

“Would I be able to save her?”

“I don’t know. I’m not a doctor and I see only what I am allowed to see. Judit! There is no point.”

“There is.”

I left him there, without even a goodbye. I didn’t care if he was right or wrong, but I knew my only chance was to reject his advice, to believe that fate can, indeed, be changed.

My plan was quite simple: if I could change my own future, I could change Iván’s. Somehow. Because I couldn’t believe that fate was already written.

It was a test. On my shift I did rounds every fifteen minutes to catch anything serious that might happen. We usually didn’t have critical-surgery patients; I was sure that if one of them crashed, there would be enough time to notice.

A few of them indeed had serious conditions, an old woman crashed in the corridor, but I was close by. A month passed, then another, and I became doubtful. What if the danger has already passed? What if the old woman who crashed was the one I had to save? Had I changed the future or not?

Sometimes I thought I could relax, but then came distress again; I didn’t dare break my new habit for fear it would be the hour of the augured death. I began to understand what it was like to be my father: knowing and yet not knowing, waiting for something unclear with the certainty of the threat breathing down his neck.

I knew nothing about Iván’s death, only the approximate time. I imagined him run over by a car, shot by a madman, having a heart attack despite his age, or getting sick from the Indian tap water. Oh my God, he commits suicide because…

Because I left him.

No, I told myself, and again: no, no, no, but the thought had already stabbed its hooks into me.

One evening was especially depressing. The sickly yellowish light of the nurses’ room painted the walls, and the clock ticked. I was alone, and suddenly fear seized me because, in that moment, I was sure Iván would die because of me.

“It’s late,” said my father when he picked up the phone.

“How will he die?”

“Who?”

“You know who! Iván.”

His sigh felt close.

“Judit, don’t torment yourself with this! Won’t you come over and talk? It would be easier to accept—”

“How will he die?”

“I’d rather not say.”

Rage burst out of me.

“Because you are a coward! I don’t believe this! You have your gift and just sweep it under the carpet? I don’t think so! The world doesn’t work like that. It’s your choice not to do anything, but don’t expect the same from me. I am not like you!”

“You make it more difficult than—”

“So what? It’s my life! Even if you behaved like a proper father, my life wouldn’t be yours to decide what I should do with it. Oh, fuck, I don’t believe this! Now you want to protect me?”

Chilly silence. I had to press my hand against my forehead to cool my feverish brow. I could have said more: obscenities, accusations, suppressed hatred burnt my tongue and I bit my lips to hold it all back. I knew what I’d already said was more than enough.

“He will be hit by a branch,” said my father at last, and he put down the phone.

“That’s it?” I shouted, but the line was dead.

I sat with my cell phone in my lap. It tired me to move and when I finally stood, my knees trembled. I went out to check on my wards.

The corridor shone coldly as the night lighting reflected off the tiles. I had got my answer from my father and yet I felt empty. When I looked into the third ward I froze. I saw a patient with a pillow in her hands leaning over another patient, but the sight seemed abstract.

I don’t remember moving.

I tore the pillow from the wizened old hands. She scratched my arm. “She wanted to kill me!” the old woman shrieked. “I saw it in her eyes, I knew it… she wanted to steal my money this afternoon; I had to hide it under my pillow.”

I leant towards the dying woman’s mouth—it was parched and smelt of age—but I was too late. I already knew it. I started CPR for I had to try. Only afterwards did I grab the old woman’s trembling arm. She babbled on.