Time and Time Again Chapters 3-5
Here is the continuation of Time and Time Again by Bonnie Grove (click here to read the first two chapters). Feel free to share this link, or to refer to/copy to this work on your blog–simply link back to Fiction Matters and be sure to list me as the author. Chapter 3 Gwen “Sit down.” Brad doesn’t look up from his computer screen. I close his office door behind me, hiding a smile. It has been only a few hours since the debriefing about the time traveler, and Brad has given in already. He called me to his office moments ago to discuss my “interests in the new patient”. I sit in one of the two compact leather chairs in front of his desk, cross my legs and swing my foot back and forth, slow as a metronome. I’m the picture of practiced indifference, but my stomach quivers. Brad is blandly good looking. A one-time quarterback now washed out from too many hours indoors behind a desk, softened by too many quickly eaten meals. His hair is neither blond nor brown, and when he bends his head down, I see it’s thinning on top. He looks up and watches my low-heeled black pump tick off the seconds. I’d dug the shoes out from behind my desk before I’d come. They are hardly red carpet glamour, but set against the institutional environment of The Center, they’re darn right sexy. The look in Brad’s eyes tells me they’ve accomplished their task. In the four years I’d been working at The Center, I’ve seen that particular greedy expression on his face millions of times, although it’s rare for him to focus his gaze on my foot. I melt back in my chair, casual as an old friend. Brad glances at the door behind me, mouth open, as if expecting an intruder to enter the room the moment he speaks. “Gwen, I want you to know about some recent developments in the time traveler’s case.” I sit straight, my spine a soldier at attention. I knew he wouldn’t leave me out. He says, “I’ve called in Dr. Svenson.” My eyes widen, the only indication I’ve heard him, the only record of my shock. Brad taps his middle finger on a short stack of papers on the desk in front of him, his look grim. I understand the gesture. There’s an old glitch in my paperwork, my dissertation, or rather, the lack of one. I haven’t handed it in, haven’t defended, and therefore still do not possess my doctorate. It’s an oversight, a technicality I’ll rectify when I can make the time. Besides, I’ve been head of The Center’s psychology department for nearly two years after the sudden departure of Dr. Ahmed. I’ve been doctor enough for that position, why isn’t that enough for Brad today? For the time traveler? The look on Brad’s face tells me not only is he calling in Dr. Svenson, but I’m being cut out completely. Dr. Svenson, internationally known expert in hypnosis and psychotherapy, and world class blow-hard, will work with the time traveler. Not me. Brad continues, “Dr. Svenson is a logical choice given his vast knowledge and expertise.” I glare at the floor so Brad can’t read the contempt in my eyes. Svenson has expertise in time travelers?...
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After the amazing success of the free/$2.99 ebook download of Talking to the Dead, I’m left dizzy with happiness to have so many people reading my work for the first time. I never expected such an intense and massive outpouring of love (and downloads) from readers. Talking to the Dead was published in 2009. A quick check of the calendar reveals it is now 2013. So, where are my other novels? Why aren’t they published? What’s going on? Publishing is a tough, tough business. It’s hard to break into, and harder to remain. I made some choices and decisions that may have slowed down my publication journey, but they are choices I know were right for me, and I have not a shred of regret. I’ve completed three novels since I wrote Talking to the Dead (I’m working on two more at present). My agent is working on finding homes for two of those novels. I have no idea if or when this will happen. The only thing I’m certain of is I’m a writer, too far gone to stop writing, too bull headed stubborn allow the passing years without additional novels published to get me down. Well, maybe a little bit down some days. But that’s when a cute guy named Steve, and two smoochie children hug me and make me feel good again. In order to prove that I haven’t been sitting idly low these many months and (gulp) years, I’d like to offer up this Chapter One (and two) of my novel called Time and Time Again. (Later this month, I’ll post Chapter one of another one of my as yet unpublished novels: The Season In Between.) Time and Time Again by Bonnie Grove “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to someone, I do not know.”-St. Augustine Begin at the End Gwen I imagine him splayed on the cold linoleum like a sacrifice. On his back, arms pushed to the sides, neck arching his head pushing into the floor. So thin I count his ribs, run my fingers over them like an instrument – quick and light over the keyboard of bones. I summon the pain of being ripped away, stitched back again. This, of course, was before I’d heard his name, before I read his letters, before I loved him. Back then, all I knew was his descriptive, those two words – unbelievable as they were – time traveler. Chapter 1 Gwen If you were perched outside the second story window, a bird maybe, or a bit of paper pressed to the glass by a strong wind, there would be little to see; a massive mahogany table surrounded by twenty or more people clad in white lab coats, sitting, a morning meeting, and nothing more. There is an empty chair at the head of the table that no one in the room looks at. We study our cuticles, thumb through papers without reading them. We don’t speak. We are coiled, waiting, our faces arranged in bland expressions of professionalism. Dr. Brad Johnson, The Center’s CEO and mouthpiece for its mysterious, international Board, strides in, fills the empty chair. Our silence intensifies. He gets straight to the heart of the meeting. “Doctors, the rumors you’ve heard are true. We have a time...
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