Susan Squires: A Twist in Time

The parking structure was empty except for one car down at the end that looked like it had been there awhile. A tire was flat. She pushed herself up, squinting against her headache.

The machine glinted in the fluorescent light, quiet, heavy, utterly real. And about ten feet to the right of it lay the young bearded guy from another time who’d been wounded in the battle.

Lucy couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t a dream at all. She’d traveled in time and now she was back, though somehow she wasn’t in the lab, and she’d brought something with her after all, a guy who was Saxon or German or maybe from Camelot. She’d probably just changed the fabric of time or the course of history or something. He’d fallen against her just as she was disappearing. Inconvenient timing. Worse than inconvenient. This was awful .

She eased her bag off her shoulder and crawled over to the man. Was he dead? He was lying in a pool of blood. His chain mail, made of small interlinking loops of metal, was rent over his shoulder and covered with gore. She dared not look closely at the flesh beneath if she wanted to avoid fainting or, worse, vomiting all over him. Even as she reached for his throat to feel for a pulse, he groaned and rolled his head. His helmet clanked against the cement. Okay. He wasn’t dead. Was that good or bad?

She pulled off the helmet. His hair was darkened with sweat and matted against his head. Two small braids hung from his temples. He was at least six feet—probably really tall for back whenever she’d been—and big through the shoulders.

His eyes fluttered open. He muttered something. German? Scandinavian? She couldn’t understand. She shook her head. He tried again. This time he sounded vaguely like a reading of Beowulf she’d heard once at a coffee-house in college. He tried to raise his head. That made his shoulder ooze redly. Great . Whatever blood he had left would end up on the cement at this rate.

She looked around, panicked. At least she was in the right century for medical help. This was apparently the underground part of a parking structure. A green exit sign glowed in the corner. Probably stairs. She’d never get this guy up stairs in his condition. She peered the other way at a sign fizzing weakly. Did it say: Elevator ? She scrambled to her bag and fumbled for her iPhone. If she could get a signal down here, she could call the paramedics and use the map locator function to tell them where to pick up the injured guy. She hit the button at the bottom, but no screen came up. Great . She’d charged it earlier today . . . apparently time traveling took the charge out of her phone. No phoning the paramedics.

“All right, buddy,” she said with false cheer. “You have to rally round here. If I go for help, you’ll probably be dead by the time I get back.” She knelt beside him and wormed her arm under his shoulders. He got the idea and with her help he managed to sit up with a grunt. He was woozy with loss of blood. Hope this parking structure is on a busy street . Maybe they could flag down a passing Samaritan.

“On your feet, soldier,” she ordered, putting as much grit in her voice as she could and pulling on his good arm. He managed to get his feet under him and shoved himself up. His leather breeches were soaked with blood on one side under a long rip in the leather. She pulled his arm over her shoulder. Could she do this? If he fainted, it was all over. She staggered as he leaned against her and she put her arm around his waist, slender for the width of his shoulders. They took a few tottering steps. Abruptly he stopped.

“What’s the deal?” She tried to tug him forward. Like that was happening. He just braced his feet, peering around. He spied his bloody sword and pulled her over to retrieve it. He almost toppled over on her as he straightened.

“Okay, you’ve got your sword.” He gripped the gruesome weapon as though it was salvation. There was some kind of engraving on the blade. “No more stops.” They staggered to the elevator. When the doors opened, white showed around his pupils. No elevators in whenever he was from. “Trust me. We need the elevator.” Like he could understand her. But he let her drag him inside. When the doors closed, his lips went grim. She punched Lobby . The result of her disastrous foray into history braced his feet wide and brandished his sword as they rose through five floors. Yeah, elevators felt weird even if you realized what was happening.

The first thing that greeted them when the doors opened was red and white cycling lights across an asphalt drive in front of a huge building blazing with light. The guy stiffened and held up the wavering sword. Two ambulances were backed up to wide glass automatic doors under a sign that shouted: Emergency Room into the cold night air. It was drizzling.

“I . . . I know this place,” Lucy whispered. It was San Francisco General. They had come back through time to the parking lot in front of the only trauma unit in the city.

How wild was that? Had she been thinking about that at the moment the machine slung them forward? Whatever. The General was just what her guy needed now.

“Hey!” she yelled to two paramedics just pushing their empty gurney out the doors. “Help me. This guy is bleeding.”

One thing about paramedics, they decide quickly and they don’t waste any time following through. One big blond ran across the asphalt, dashing in front of a car on its way to the parking structure, and the other one pushed his gurney over at a trot. Her time traveler started to put up a struggle. “It’s for your own good!” she yelled. The paramedics finally wrestled him onto the gurney as he weakened. She put a hand on his chain mail. “It’s all good,” she said, softer this time. He looked up at her. Even in this light she could see that his eyes were really blue. He was breathing hard, but under her hand she felt him stop his struggle. When one paramedic tried to take his sword, her Beowulf guy growled something and gripped the hilt.

“Better let him keep it,” Lucy advised. She lifted the blade to lay it on the gurney.

“Hey, was this some kind of reenactment?” The blond pushed the gurney over the asphalt. The other pulled and steadied it. “This chain mail is really authentic looking.”

“Reenactments hardly ever result in actual blood,” the other observed as they rushed the patient in through the emergency room doors.

“Got a live one, ladies. Ready, camera, action.” The blond pushed the gurney past the women at the registration desk and through the big double doors to the emergency room. Lucy trailed after them in time to see the patient roll his head and try to sit up.

“Bay three.” A big black nurse in green scrubs pointed. “Doctor! Trauma.”

The paramedic at the big guy’s head pulled him back down. “Take it easy.”

A doctor stuck his head out of a curtained bay. “Type him and get an IV going. Epinephrine. How’s our blood supply?”

“Depends on his type.” The black nurse directed people who appeared from everywhere. “Page a gas passer,” she ordered a young girl.

“I . . . I’m O positive, if you need blood,” Lucy said into the hubbub.

“That’s good,” the big nurse said, but her attention was elsewhere. “Let’s get those wounds prepped. I want a tourniquet ready for his leg just in case.” She beckoned impatiently to a harried tech pushing a crash cart.

Lucy watched with wide eyes as orderlies and nurses swarmed her guy and began pulling off the chain mail. They cut off a sleeveless leather jerkin sort of thing he was wearing and then his shirt. Another pulled off his boots and cut the leather strips that held his breeches on. One ripped open some sterile packaging and produced a needle. The big man started to struggle again at the sight of the needle. He was shouting in what sounded like a Scandinavian language again.