True: An Elixir Novel, Page 2

  “No problem. I’m here. Text or call if you need anything.”

  I hang up quickly as I see a man in a white lab coat stroll into Sage’s room, and I duck in after him. He disappears behind the curtain around Sage’s bed and I hover by the door, staring at the red container of USED SHARPS for the eternity until he emerges again.

  “How is he?”

  Something flashes in the doctor’s eyes when he looks my way, and I know he recognizes me. I’m far from famous, but my family’s filled with some of the decade’s biggest political players, not least of whom is my mom, Senator Victoria Weston. We’re not the Kennedys or the Clintons, but I’ve had my picture in enough newspapers and magazines that some people know who I am. The doctor’s professional enough that he doesn’t say anything. He also doesn’t question if I’m authorized to hear private information about Sage, so maybe the recognition is good.

  “He needed stitches and blood,” the doctor says, “but he’ll be fine. The biggest worry in a case like this is infection, so we have him on IV antibiotics plus a painkiller, and we’ll want to give him a tetanus shot . . . unless he’s had one in the last ten years?”

  “I’m not sure,” I say.

  “That’s fine. We’ll do it as a precaution. We’ll want him here for another couple hours, then you can take him home. The stitches will dissolve on their own, so just keep his wound clean and dry, and bring him right back to the emergency room if he develops a fever or shows any sign of infection.”

  “I will.”

  “Good.” He nods toward the curtain around Sage’s bed. “You can go in, if you’d like. He’ll drift in and out of sleep, but when I left him, he was awake.”

  I don’t even respond; I dart past him and pull aside the curtain.

  Sage is awake, but he looks like he’s in a daze. He stares down at the back of his good hand, where the IV line disappears into his skin. His other hand is bandaged, to hide the brand-new stitches. For a moment, I concentrate hard enough to stencil Sage’s old body over this one: dark hair; angular face with the slightest growth of stubble around the mouth, chin, and neck; sinewy body; Italian olive skin and chocolate eyes.

  It’s an impossible image to hold. The eyes are still there, but every other part of him is milk-fed farm boy.

  “Thank you for bringing me here,” he says. His voice is relaxed and dreamy.

  “Of course. You were hurt.”

  “No . . . I mean thank you for letting me see this.” He raises his hand with the tube snaking out of it, then turns to indicate the IV stand and electric monitor that beeps as it measures his vitals. “Magnificent.”

  “Magnificent?”

  It sounds bizarre, until I think about it. “I guess if you haven’t been in a hospital for five hundred years, it’s pretty amazing.”

  “Five hundred years? I knew it was a long time . . . but that long?”

  “What do you mean? Don’t you remember?”

  He shakes his head. “I remember Magda, that old woman in Japan . . . the things she showed us . . . images from a long time ago. People . . . you and Ben, but you didn’t look like yourselves. And I was there too, but I always looked the same, year after year after year. . . .”

  His dreamy voice rings out in the room, and I dart my eyes to the curtain separating us from the next bed. I lean in close to Sage and whisper, “That’s because you never died. You drank the Elixir of Life, remember?”

  “I do remember. . . . I remember knowing about the Elixir, and that I’ve had a long life . . . but I don’t remember living it. Does that make sense?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “That day I met you in Brazil . . . I took one look at you, and knew I loved you, at that moment and forever.”

  “Right. Because you already knew me.”

  “I suppose . . .”

  “You suppose?”

  He squeezes his brows together, as if struggling to find something in his mind. Then he gives up and shrugs. “It’s not there. I don’t remember. I remember you. Clea Raymond. The minute you and I met . . . that’s when my memories start.”

  two

  CLEA

  A moment later Sage is fast asleep. He drifts off smiling, still holding my hand in his. The bandages make his unconscious grip feel inhuman, and I slide away from his touch.

  Or maybe it’s not the bandages that leave me cold. The minute you and I met . . . that’s when my memories start. They’re the kind of words that would make Rayna swoon, but that was never Sage’s and my story. That started long before I was even alive. It brought us together, a soul connection that stretched throughout history.

  A soul connection.

  Could that be what happened? When he cut our soul connection, did he keep our love, but lose our past? Or is his memory loss from the soul transfer?

  There’s so much I don’t understand, and I feel like I have to before he and I can figure out what’s next. Or explain things to Rayna. I shudder. I definitely need to know more before I talk to her. How can I expect her to handle all this if I can’t comprehend it myself?

  I don’t want to wake Sage, so I pull a chair next to the bed and text Ben. I ask him to scope out the closest motel, then I check my phone’s GPS to see where we are. Vermont. We haven’t left Vermont, so we hadn’t been driving very long when I woke up in the car. I feel a little better knowing that even if I passed out, it was only for a bit.

  Sage twitches and thrashes as he sleeps, murmuring angry words I try to understand but can’t. It hurts to hear him—whatever torture he feels, it rips at me, too. When he curls into a ball and whimpers like a kitten, I can’t take it anymore.

  “Shhh, shhh, it’s okay.” I reach for him, but the minute my hand touches his damp forehead, he bolts upright and grabs me. He clutches my wrist in both his hands. His grip is so hard it hurts, but I remind myself that this is the man I love; I shouldn’t be afraid.

  “Help me,” he rasps. His eyes are wide open, but he’s looking through and past me. I don’t even know if he’s really awake. He’s trembling, and I put my other hand over his and rub them gently, trying to calm him down.

  “I want to help you, Sage. Tell me what you need.”

  Instead he closes his eyes and falls back onto the bed, still now and sleeping soundly. At some point I nap too—a dreamless sleep that ends when I feel someone right in front of me and open my eyes to see Nico’s—Sage’s—grinning face. He puts a finger to his lips.

  “We’re busting out of here.”

  “What?” I feel woozy, and there’s a crick in my neck.

  “Aw, dude, come on!” calls a voice from the door. “I’m supposed to wheel you out! It’s my job! I’m gonna get in trouble!”

  Standing in the doorway is a mountain of an orderly, who can’t be more than nineteen. He holds the handles of an empty wheelchair and shifts uncertainly from side to side, darting his eyes around for whatever authority might come yell at him if he doesn’t get Sage into the chair. I don’t know why he’s worried; he takes up the entire doorway. There’s no way out except through him. Sage sighs and reluctantly plops into the chair. In his new body, he and the orderly look like they’re teammates on a college football team: an injured quarterback getting pushed to the locker room by his oversize linebacker.

  “I used your phone and called Ben,” Sage says as he’s wheeled through the halls. “Hope you don’t mind.”

  When the doors outside slide open, Ben’s already there, smiling ironically as he leans against his car.

  “Your chariot,” he offers.

  I’m squinting against the low morning sun, so it takes a second to see what he means. The “chariot” looks more like a junkyard swamp creature. Ben is the most cautious driver in the world; he washes his car every two weeks and is meticulous about regular service appointments. He’s been driving his little black Corolla since he bought it himself—used—when he was eighteen. Now it’s coated in a thick layer of dirt, pitted with dents and scratches, and the entire undercarri
age is matted with clots of mud and grass.

  “Oh, Ben . . .”

  “You should see the driver’s side,” he says, then shakes his head. “Actually, you shouldn’t. Trust me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Ben shrugs. “Badge of honor, right? Besides, you’re always telling me it’s time to get something new.” He opens the back door, and the Offensive Tackle Orderly puts the brakes on Sage’s wheelchair and comes around front to lift him out with a bear hug, but Sage stops him with a perfectly arched eyebrow.

  “Uh-uh,” he says. “I’m fine.”

  He climbs into Ben’s car and I follow, tossing the orderly a “thank you” on the way.

  “So where to now?” Sage asks once Ben’s inside and driving.

  “I already have orders from Clea,” Ben responds. “The nearest motel’s just ten minutes away.”

  “Motel?” Sage asks.

  “You should rest,” I say, though it sounds disingenuous. Whatever haunted his dreams before, Sage seems fine now. Almost back to himself. Maybe I’m just making excuses to put off facing Rayna.

  Maybe . . . but I am tired, and Ben must be exhausted. As for Sage, he’s trying not to show it, but I can tell his playful burst of energy is fading. His head lolls against the back of his seat, and he struggles to keep his eyes open. It’s not surprising; he’s on hard-core antibiotics—the kind of thing he’s never experienced before. At least, his soul hasn’t. Maybe his body has?

  Whatever—we all need to rest.

  Ben pulls off the highway into a patch of barren blacktop, nestled onto which is a Denny’s, a Chevron, and the generic box of a Red Roof Inn. It’s perfect. He pulls up to the office and turns around in his seat. Sage’s eyes have closed, and Ben keeps his voice low. “I’ll go in if you want to stay with him.”

  “Great, thanks.”

  But Ben doesn’t leave the car. He furrows his brow and sucks air through his teeth.

  “What?” I ask.

  “It’s just . . . I’m thinking . . . one room, right? Two beds and we bring in a cot?”

  “You want to chaperone?”

  “No,” Ben says, blushing. “I just . . . we’ve all been through a lot . . . especially, you know . . . and . . .”

  “Two rooms,” Sage says without moving or opening his eyes. “Adjoining. Ben bunks with me.”

  “I’m on it,” Ben says, and slips out of the car before I can object. When he’s gone, I unbuckle my seat belt and move closer to Sage.

  “Open your eyes,” I whisper.

  He does, and everything else blurs as I focus in on only those brown orbs. “It’s true. The eyes really are the windows to the soul. That’s why yours stayed the same.”

  “Did they?”

  “You haven’t looked at yourself in the mirror,” I realize.

  “I’ve caught glances, that’s all.”

  Unbelievable. To me the change in Sage is so glaring and obvious, it didn’t even occur to me that he hadn’t fully seen it.

  “When we get to the room,” I say, “you’ll get a good look.”

  “Like it or not.”

  That’s when it hits me. He’s afraid. I’ve seen Sage face death without fear. It didn’t even occur to me that he’d be afraid to see his own reflection. I slip my hand into his. It’s clammy, but this time it’s not from the gash in his wrist.

  “If it helps, I know exactly how you feel. I’ve seen myself in another body.”

  Something shifts in Sage’s eyes, and I feel like he’s looking for more.

  “I know how strange it is,” I tell him, “when you see yourself, but it isn’t you. I remember the first time I dreamed of us, before I’d even seen you outside my pictures. I was Delia, singing at a club where you played piano. You watched me when I performed. . . .”

  I can see it in my head, and it takes my breath away. At the time I thought it was the most vivid dream I’d ever had: me as a singer in the 1920s, tied to a mob boss named Eddie but sneaking off to meet Sage, the secret love of my life. It was wild and romantic and dangerous . . . and completely real, though I didn’t know that right away. It was a memory of a past life Sage and I had shared. Yet when I look at him now . . . he isn’t sharing it at all. There’s nothing in his eyes except wistful sadness.

  “You don’t remember any of that, do you?”

  Sage shakes his head. “I remember seeing it—bits of it—through Magda. But it’s not like I lived it. I did, I understand I did. But it doesn’t feel that way. I’ve lost the memories.”

  “Just for now,” I assure him, though there’s no way I can know. “Maybe they’ll come back to you in dreams. The way they did for me.”

  “I hope so. I don’t want to lose any time with you, Clea. Not even time in the past. It’s just . . .”

  His eyes are filled with the same look I remember from my dreams. The one that promises he’s mine, now and forever. But there’s something else in there too. There’s pain and . . . doubt?

  “What is it?”

  “I might know why I can’t remember. I made a choice, while we were apart. I saw you and . . .” His eyes drift to the driver’s seat. “I don’t even know if it was real, but I . . .”

  He clenches his jaw, and my stomach hurts because I know what he’s seeing. In a fit of jealousy over Sage and another woman, I’d tried to seduce Ben. Even though Sage was miles away, he saw it—the incriminating part, before Ben rejected me. That’s why he broke our soul connection.

  “Sage . . . look at me . . . please.”

  He doesn’t want to, but he does. The mix of anger, hurt, and guilt I see there is almost unbearable, but I won’t let myself look away. I take his hand and squeeze it. “I know what you did,” I say, “and I know why. And if that’s the reason you can’t remember . . . if that past is gone for us . . . that’s okay.”

  “How can it be okay? Clea, while we were apart . . .”

  I know he’s about to tell me about Lila, but I can’t hear him say it out loud. The only saving grace of Sage’s new body is that it’s not the one I see tangled together with Lila’s every time I blink.

  “I already know,” I say. “Just like you know what I did. What I tried to do. It didn’t . . . I wasn’t . . . I was jealous. What you saw . . . that’s all that happened.”

  It’s my penance that I have to watch this sink in. Sage slips his hand out of mine and stares at me like he’s seeing me for the first time. He did what he did with Lila because he was held captive. Playing along with her was his only way to maybe get back to me, and he only gave in completely when he thought I didn’t want him anymore. What I did with Ben had been on purpose, designed to wound. A million questions fight in Sage’s eyes, and he leans back into his seat with a heavy sigh.

  “So the past is gone forever,” he says. “All we have is now.”

  “Isn’t that all anyone has?”

  Before Sage can answer, the door opens and Ben flops into the driver’s seat. He leans back and hands two key cards each to Sage and me before starting up the car. If he notices the tension in the air, or Sage’s glare, he doesn’t show it.

  “I shall now drive you both to our very own parking spot,” he says. “It’s quite luxe.”

  Silence.

  “What?” Ben asks. “What’d I miss?”

  “Nothing,” Sage says. “We’re speechless over the luxe accommodations. Let’s check them out.”

  Ben cocks his head, clearly debating whether to ask any more questions, but he decides against it, and we drive all of ten feet before we park. As we get out of the car, Ben heads to the trunk and grabs three plastic Walgreens bags, all filled to bursting.

  “What are those?” I ask.

  “It’s not just the accommodations that are luxe. While you were in the ER, I got us all brand-new outfits. Very chichi.”

  The minute he says it, I realize how harsh and heavy my dirty and bloodstained jeans and T-shirt feel against my skin. I don’t care what kind of clothes Ben managed to find at a drugstore
in the middle of the night; they sound like heaven.

  “Two rooms, two showers,” I say. “I call first round.”

  “Wrestle you for the other one?” Ben asks Sage as we climb the stairs to the second floor. “I’ve been working out. I might be able to take you.”

  Sage gives Ben a half smile, but it doesn’t reach his eyes, and his fists are balled at his thighs. “You go first. You don’t want to wrestle me.”

  “Two-ten and two-eleven,” Ben says. He gestures for me to open one of the doors while he gets the other.

  Sage follows behind me like a shadow as we walk into room 211. It’s a simple box, decorated in browns and creams, and the light streaming in the open curtains at the far end gives us a perfect view of what we’re waiting to see.

  The mirror.

  It’s on the door of the closet, just a few feet in. We approach it wordlessly, and I take Sage’s hand as he turns to face it head-on.

  He stares, but his eyes are unreadable. He lets go of me and touches his own face, watching his fingers as they trace its new contours. He reaches up to finger a thatch of blond hair, so much shorter than the dark mane he wore all his life. He clenches his fists; sinews stand out in his forearms. He gazes down at his thick biceps, watching them grow as he flexes.

  It’s weird, but watching him discover Nico’s body, I’m blown away by how completely Sage he is. Nico was always languid and relaxed; the man who stares into the mirror is tightly coiled. He leans forward slightly, ready to spring into action, his jaw tensed and gaze steeled.

  I can’t know what Sage sees when he looks at his new self, but I see the final proof that the man I love is alive and well.

  He moves closer to his reflection. “Nico didn’t have brown eyes?”

  “Blue. Strikingly blue. I remember them. Rayna said they reminded her of a place we went on the Italian Riviera, where the water’s so clear you can see down to forever.” I smile, remembering how Rayna sighed over the cliché like she was the first one who ever said anything like it. Then my throat clenches. “I don’t know how I’m going to tell her.”

  Sage puts an arm around me. I know he’s trying to comfort me, but I see our reflection through Rayna’s eyes: Nico, the man she thought was the love of her life, cuddling with me, her best friend. Even if she realizes the eyes are a different color, even if she sees that the way he stands, the way he acts, the way he does everything is different from what she knew, she’ll still see Nico. I know because I’d do the same thing if it were me. I’d want to see the man I love so badly that I would see him, even if he wasn’t really there.