Gate M41

cw: mentions of suicide, murder, sex, and terminal illness  

Balloons, apparently, are a weapon of mass destruction. Even the one that I’m fighting to get past security at this very moment—an 18” round one with the words GET WELL SOON printed above a cartoon sun wearing sunglasses. The more I look at it, the more it bothers me that the sun, in theory, is protecting himself against himself. 

Out of all the people in our lives, we hurt ourselves the most, my husband had warned me before I left. Are you sure you want to visit this woman? 

“She’s dying—as in, terminally ill dying.” That's the honest explanation I gave to anyone who asked, including the security guard arguing with me right now. This would be my good deed of the year. This is how I'd atone for all the sins I'd committed in my thirty-seven years of life; how I'd pay my penance for the two-sided tendencies that have plagued me for as long as I can remember.

“Then why tell her to get well soon?” the guard asks, humored. "I mean, if she's terminally ill?"

With a gloved hand, he confiscates my balloon, making me, at thirty-seven years old, feel like a child. Sometimes I think the guards inconvenience us on purpose, purely out of envy. Only the top three percent can afford time-travel. In fact, most can’t even afford to travel economy. The last time I traveled, there was an issue with my shampoo and the time before that an issue with the studs on my heels. 

The guards also tend to dislike us for the reasons we travel. Some elite travel to alternate timelines to have sex with more athletic versions of themselves. Others travel to alternate timelines to kill less successful versions of themselves, to which their lawyers always end up successfully arguing is suicide, not murder. 

I explain to the guard that I am not that type of traveler, however. Contrary to what he may believe about me or the top three percent in general, I’m not that type of rich person. I do not want to perform sexually creative acts on a leaner version of myself. Nor do I want to slaughter a weaker version of myself for my own sick pleasure. I simply want to deliver a 99-Cents-Store balloon to a dying version of myself, atone for all the times I've deceived people in my life and then go home to my two boys and husband where we will count our blessings. 

But he refuses to return my balloon and points me to Gate M41.

***

In the first letter I ever wrote to the dying version of myself, I asked her why—out of the infinite number of variations there were of myself—her life will end the most abruptly. We had the same genetics, after all. The same family history and predispositions to different types of illnesses, albeit different life decisions that had led us in radically different directions. 

She responded almost immediately to my letter. Probably due in part to the fact that she only has so much time left in this universe—but also because time-postage costs a fraction of what it costs to time-travel. 

Even someone like her, buried in medical bill after medical bill, could afford it. 

The air is bad here, she wrote back. The food is bad, too. Pumped with preservatives and chemicals that deform your organs. Probably why I have heart disease and you don't? Your world is better, cleaner.

Did I mention I can barely afford my blood thinners? she added. My blood is as thick as gravy, and I’m only thirty-seven. I probably won’t even live to get married. Become a mother. Those are the two things I've wanted to do most before I die.

I offered to travel to her—to pay for every medical bill, no matter how large. We were connected, after all—maybe even more so than sisters or lovers. The more I wrote to her, the more I felt for her, too. We had the same handwriting, the same 90-degree Ls that could stab and carefully closed Os with not even the smallest gap. At one point, I thought I loved her. Not in a romantic way or even a familial way but in the way my therapist once told me that I needed to love myself more. Perhaps this was the closest I’d ever come to self-love, given what a terrible person I am at my core, in this and every timeline. 

So I offered and offered. I’d pay for the blood thinners; I’d pay for the hospice care; I’d pay for the teddy bears. Though I didn’t mean to brag, I made it clear to her that it would be at no cost to me. Our realities, though vastly different, still used the same currency.

When she finally agreed to the money, we decided I’d deliver the money in person to make sure it ended up in the right hands. 

You can’t trust people, she'd written. People are terrible. Especially where I’m from. 

***

I buy a new balloon when I arrive. It’s almost identical to the one taken from me, except this one doesn’t say GET WELL SOON. It says SUMMER FUN, even though it is December.

The air is thicker here and the smog covers the sun, but the other me assured me before I arrived that it would take a life-long length of exposure for me to end up in the same position she’s in. 

As I search for her room number, my anxiety builds. I worry what I will say when I walk in. What she will say when I walk in. The handle of the suitcase of money becomes damp in my hand. I remind myself that I've talked to myself in the mirror before; had hypothetical practice conversations and practice arguments with myself in the mirror. I've even kissed my own reflection. Talking to this alternate version of myself would, in reality, be no different. I'd visited alternate versions of myself before, but never any that were dying.

“Mary?” a voice like mine says as I push the door open. 

“Hi, Mary. It’s me, Mary.” 

We both laugh uncomfortably. I try to hug her, but the plastic nest of tubes enveloping her small frame make it more awkward than it already is. We look identical, except for a scar on her left cheek. She’d mentioned in one of her letters a Terrier that attacked her at at her uncle’s BBQ, something that had never happened to me because of a slight variation in my own timeline. The more I look at her, the more I recognize myself in her.

“Your face is so much more beautiful than mine,” she says, touching her scar, and reaching to feel my own face.  

Unsure of how to respond, I tie the cheap, curly balloon ribbon around her limp wrist. She admires the Cartier bracelet around my own wrist and then looks back down at the ribbon tied to hers.

“You’re so much better than me,” she says in a croaking voice. 

“Well, I am you. Just you under different circumstances.” 

We’re both silent for a moment until I get to the point. “This is the money.”

She looks at the suitcase. “Straight cash?”

“It’s the only way to deliver it.”

“I know. I’m just in shock.” She lowers her voice. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“How much exactly is in there? Don’t say it too loud.”

I take out my phone to type it out for her. She looks at my wallpaper and smiles. “Is that your husband?” she asks solemnly. 

“Yes. That’s Ted. And our two boys. Bradley and Hunter.” 

“You’re so lucky.”  

“Don’t be jealous,” I say light-heartedly. “Marriage isn’t as great as it seems. And kids . . . boys especially!” I roll my eyes light-heartedly and change the subject. I type in the amount with my freshly manicured nails and show her the screen.

“No,” she says, point blank. “I only need a fraction of that amount for the blood thinners."

“Spend the rest on whatever you want,” I say. “Sincerely. Spend it on whatever you’ve dreamed of doing before you die."

***

I tuck Mary in her bed under the starchy hospital sheets and kiss her on the forehead goodbye. She's out on morphine by the time I book a trip out, so there are no awkward goodbyes and she can no longer beg and scream at me for leaving early as the nurses hold her back.

In a matter of minutes, I leave this reality and go back to my own where my husband embraces me and my two boys barrel down the stairs to tug at my skirt. 

“How was it?” asks Ted.

“Good."

"Did she take the money?"

"Yes."

"That's wonderful," says Ted, pulling me in but then pushing me back so that he can see my entire face.

"Mary," he says, startled. "What happened to your cheek?"