E.M.'s Study @em-kane - Tumblr Blog

Sewn

I've been workshopping this one for a while, and I am DEEPLY normal about it I promise.

---

Ms. Marjory’s hair was made of pink and blue cotton candy.

This was the only thought buzzing in the static behind Raj’s eyes while he stared, and nodded, and nodded harder at all the white noise coming from Ms. Marjory’s mouth. It wasn’t that anything Ms. Marjory said was boring or unimportant. To the contrary, everything Ms. Marjory had to say was important on a scale Raj could not put in words.

It was just that Raj had already memorized this speech from the Sewn website, and hearing those words recited verbatim did not feel real. Ms. Marjory did not feel real, Raj thought, as his heart slammed and his palms went slick around the envelope in his hands. ‘Hold harmless’ and ‘no liability’ slipped from Ms. Marjory’s mouth, and—well—Ms. Marjory’s white wispy cumulous hair was dyed pink and blue, like bubblegum cotton candy, Raj thought to himself.

“Do you understand all of that?” Ms. Marjory asked with a mask of a smile.

“Yes,” Raj said, both a lie and the truth, and he handed over his life savings.

Ms. Marjory assessed the envelope, her smile frosting at the corners, and she took the sticky envelope from Raj’s hands. She opened it cautiously and slipped the cashier’s check from its folds. She spared only a glance at the monetary value stamped on it.

“Full cost is usually handled later,” she said. Did the smile touch her eyes? Gray and crow-footed behind gold-chained glasses.

“I’ll pay up front,” Raj said, and he wondered if it made him sound stupid. Raj was not stupid. He was something so much better: Raj was desperate.

“Okay well, we can deposit this in a trust account in your name to pull payments from. Any unused balance will be refunded at the end.”

“Yes, sure,” Raj said. The money was meant to sway her, make her respect him. His parents had beaten it into his bones that respect took money. And yet nothing in Ms. Marjory’s gray eyes changed. She simply slipped the envelope out of sight, and Raj watched a house downpayment, a child’s college fund, and an early retirement for him and Lizzy disappear into the drawer of Ms. Marjory’s desk.

Ms. Marjory shut the drawer, ball bearings clacking, and Raj’s eyes settled on the yellow rubber ducky perched beside her left elbow.

“Before we leave here today, I’ll email you a document with our full cost break-down. A deposit is due today—covered, already, with your check—” The rubber ducky was painted like a sailor. Its color was wearing thin, splotches of yellow peeking through patchwork clothing. “—The deposit will be used to cover the first round of surveying and assessing. If you choose to not move forward past that point, the difference in the deposit minus the survey costs will be refunded. If you move forward, the rest of the deposit will go toward your final cost, with all additional costs due ahead of completion.”

“Okay,” Raj said, because he knew this already.

“I’m now going to ask you about the person of interest. Do you need any time to prepare?”

“No.”

“Name?”

“Lizzy McDaniel.”

“Date of birth?”

“May 26, 1996.”

“Relation?”

“Fiancé.”

“How long have you been together?”

“Eight years.”

Ms. Marjory was jotting notes while she spoke.

“Do you grant permission to Sewn to use all materials you’ve provided—including but not limited to photos, messages, personal effects, and possessions—to scan and identify the person of interest?”

“Yes.”

“Please sign this.” Ms. Marjory slid a piece of paper and a pen to Raj. “Do you agree to absolve Sewn of any liability should any personal effect or material possession incur damage in the scanning process?”

Raj hesitated. He touched his thumb to the bare skin of his ring finger.

“Yes.”

“Sign here.”

Raj did.

“Do you understand that Sewn provides no guarantee of a scan match, and all contracts with Sewn are on a best-effort basis?”

“Yes.”

“Sign here.”

Ms. Marjory pulled the papers back. She was smiling, again, in that way that left Raj just a bit unnerved. The bay windows framed her behind her desk, two vast pits of tar. The sun had long since set, and no stars shined in the sky. Maybe those windows made the room soft in sunlight, during the day. Raj couldn’t know. The fluorescent lighting poured down.

“Now,” Ms. Marjory grew her smile, squinted her eyes. Her glasses chain clattered like windchimes. “Has anything happened in the last several years which, to reasonable expectation, may have resulted in the loss of your life?”

“Yes,” Raj answered, sharp and immediate. He leaned in. His back peeled away from the chair, shirt damp. “I had cancer.”

Ms. Marjory’s eyebrows shifted, her gray eyes pulling up from her notepad.

“Five years ago I was diagnosed. I was in treatment for two years. In remission as of three years ago—June 2022—but it was touch-and-go, for a lot of my treatment. Uncertain prognosis those first 18 months. And we almost didn’t catch it—friend from med school practicing an exam on me caught it, and that was just—I was helping him study. I could have just as easily never caught it. Could have failed at treatment. There are… a lot of ways it could have killed me.” Raj twisted his fingers together. By habit, he tried to spin the ring that wasn’t there. Ms. Marjory was not watching his hands. She was writing, nodding.

The silence sat heavy on Raj’s ears.

“Lizzy took care of me. That whole time,” Raj added, aware that Ms. Marjory did not ask, and did not need to know. “I had no family support. It was all Lizzy. She did everything for me.”

Ms. Marjory nodded.

“So I think it’s only fair—”

“—I understand completely, Mr. Desai.”

“—I just think it’s fair that I—” The words stuck in his throat. His and Lizzy’s life savings were in a desk, beneath a rubber ducky.

“We understand, entirely, at Sewn.”

“I just need her back,” Raj said, breathless, and he wasn’t sure he meant to say it. It fell out of his mouth as naturally as a sob.

“Sewn provides no guarantee of a scan match,” Ms. Marjory reiterated, and her eyes found his once more. “But we do promise a best-effort attempt.”

Raj nodded, cheeks heating. He felt like a child who’d answered a math problem wrong. He knew that. He knew that, of course. It did not change the veracity of his statement.

…

Raj answered all remaining questions mechanically. Endless logistics. Endless personal information. Several more waivers. A box of Lizzy’s possessions, handed over. (“Our rings are in the ring boxes, here. Please don’t lose them.”) Ms. Marjory assured him all possessions were handled with utmost care.

Raj drove home with fingers numb and a head full of cotton. He was mortally aware of every headlight that passed him in the night. He felt the doppler heave and sigh of their wheels, skimming against his. He wondered if any might swerve and hit him. His mind had spent far too much of the evening fixated on ways to die.

His front door opened to a dark pit of musty air, dust-skirt whispering with the swing of the door. Raj dropped his keys in a bowl, flicked the lights, and the bulbs pinned him like a butterfly specimen.

He stood in silence. He stood and soaked in the machine noises of that silence—HVAC hum in the walls, mothwing titter of the ceiling light, street traffic, mumble of television through the wall. Everything was loud when there was no one around to cover them.

Raj fished his phone out of his pocket. He wondered if he was insane to do all this. He wondered if anyone he knew would ever care enough to tell him not to. He lit the phone brightness to his face. There weren’t many messages that weren’t from Lizzy. There weren’t many contacts that weren’t Lizzy.

He tapped his mother’s contact, and he wondered if he’d be insane to call her. It at least wouldn’t be the most insane thing he’d done today. His thumb hovered over the phone symbol.

His thumb hovered over the Delete Contact option.

His thumb hovered. The silence of his apartment was so loud.

Raj stowed his phone. He shrugged off his tattered coat and approached Aunt Priya’s coat rack. The estate lawyer had said the rack was real gold, and quite valuable, and all Raj’s, to sell, surely.

Raj covered it with ten dollars’ worth of coat. He peeled off the rest of his clothes. Found his bed. Too large. He curled a cocoon out of the sheets and wondered if he would ever stop thinking.

…

The next day Raj broke protocol. He kept his personal cellphone stashed in his scrubs. Every titter and beep of his pager set his mind alight, because maybe that was his phone, maybe it was Ms. Marjory with news.

When Ms. Marjory did call, Raj missed it. He was too busy beating his heels against the floor, running to keep pace with a gurney as he pushed a crash cart down the hospital hallways, shouting and being shouted at. They got a pulse back in the old man. Raj’s phone went to voice mail.

Raj took his break in the little windowless office where all the students on rotation were stuffed. He’d sat down for less than a second when he noticed the missed call, and listened, and bolted from the room.

“Hey, Desai!!” Dr. Wang called after him after being nearly knocked off her feet. Raj’s attending physician. He threw out a wave of apology before disappearing around the corner.

“Sorry! Family emergency—I need to step out for a bit!”

Dr. Wang stared back confused. And it was a tonally confusing statement, for the glee in Raj’s voice, uttering “family emergency” like a man who’d just learned his first child was born.

Raj would deal with that later. In the meantime he played Ms. Marjory’s voicemail again, and again, as he buckled his scrubbed self into his car and hit the gas with too much abandon.

“We’ve found a match. Lizzy would be happy to have you back.”

…

Raj was right. Ms. Marjory’s office glowed in the daylight. She smiled at him with her same cardboard smile. The rubber duck on her desk was different today—dressed as a pirate.

“So what do I do? What do I need to sign?” Raj asked, voice bubbling, effervescent. It didn’t feel real.

“Well,” Ms. Marjory laughed. “First, logistics! Always logistics, first.” She grabbed a two-inch stack of papers from her desk, thumbing through them quickly. “Sewn’s surveying has successfully identified a bridgeable universe to ours where Lizzy McDaniel is alive, and Rajesh Desai is not. Raj—you—from that universe succumbed to cancer. Just as you thought. He did not catch it until it was too late and died within six months of diagnosis—January 12th, 2021.”

Raj nodded at the good news.

“Surveyed universes are tagged with a globally unique identifier, which you can find in the document, but usually for clients we refer to it by the last four characters in its sequence. For this universe, that is C489. The criteria for a bridgeable universe is very strict. It must be similar enough to our own that no bodily harm comes to those crossing, and no damage comes to either universe. Universe C489 has just a small enough aberration delta to qualify as bridgeable.”

Raj nodded, because he also knew this already, and Ms. Marjory had explained as much last night.

“Though we cannot guarantee the total lack of bodily harm when bridging, Sewn holds itself to the absolute highest standards when helping clients cross. So then, Universe C489—” Ms. Marjory handed the two-inch thick stack of paper over to Raj. “—You’ll find it’s quite like ours. Survey has identified 14,074 notable categorical aberrations, most of which you’d never encounter. It does have a few quirks. Panama does not exist in C489. Colombia and Costa Rica just—” Ms. Marjory pressed the beaks of two rubber ducks together, “—kiss! Arbor Day does not exist there either. But they have a fun little holiday called Stamps Day, though from speaking with myself, no one really celebrates it.”

“Yourself?” Raj asked, because for the first time he was hearing something that threw him off.

“Yes! Ms. Marjory from C489. She wears a little clown flower on her lapel. You know, the kind that spits water? And I’m Ms. Marjory from 3DCA. I have a fun little collection of rubber ducks.” Ms. Marjory took the opportunity to hold up her pirate duck and squeak it.

“Are you one of the aberrations?”

“Always. I like to have a little quirk to identify myself by. And I have the same idea in every universe. There’s a Ms. Marjory who does pumpkin carving. A Ms. Marjory who collects sea glass. A Ms. Marjory who—you really have to see it—but these fun little hand-woven baskets, she weaves them all. I haven’t seen her since 2019. Covid never happened in her universe—lucky duckies—” She squeaked the duck again. “—so now the aberration delta is too high to ever visit her again.”

“That’s very cool, and look sorry if I’m being impatient but, Lizzy? C489.”

“Right, right right right.” She put the duck down. “No Panama. No Arbor Day. Yes Stamps Day. Japanese-Mexican fusion food is also really having a moment. But nothing stands out as anything you can’t handle. The biggest thing is this universe is three months behind us—which happens—so we will have to put you in deprivation for three months to prepare. Can’t have you bridging over there bringing stock market secrets from the future with you!”

“Wait,” Raj said, pulse quickening. He leaned forward as the sweat beaded on his forehead. “No no, I specified I want Lizzy to come here. Lizzy from C489 should come here to—”

“3DCA.”

“Yes! To be here, with me, in our apartment, in this universe.”

Ms. Marjory sucked on her teeth, face feigning the motions of compassion. “Ms. Marjory—with the clown flower on her lapel—talked to Lizzy about this. Lizzy is caring for her sick mother. She doesn’t want to hop and leave her whole family behind.”

“Lizzy’s mother is sick in this universe!” Raj answered, sharp, and he left out the ‘and I’ve been taking care of her,’ lingering on his tongue, because he wasn’t sure if he could say that honestly ever since—

“Your loved ones are sick in many universes… You’ll hurt your own heart thinking about it too hard,” Ms. Marjory answered.

Raj’s skin prickled.

“I’m finishing med school in two weeks from now. Literally two weeks. I had to leave for two years because of cancer, and another three months after Lizzy died—after Lizzy spent two years nursing me back to health and a drunk driver, in an instant—”

Raj stopped. He swallowed.

“Can I take it with me?” Raj asked.

“Hm?” Ms. Marjory tilted her head.

“My doctorate title. I have an anesthesiologist residency lined up here but—maybe I can get it again, in C489. CAN I bring my medical degree over?”

“I’m afraid not,” she answered, with a trained creasing of her brow. She folded her hands on the desk. “Rajesh Desai of C489 has been dead since 2021. He has no record of completing med school. You’d be starting over.”

“But he’s not me. I’M me. And I’m about to finish med school!”

“Is Lizzy not Lizzy, then?” Ms. Marjory asked, like an icicle in Raj’s sternum. “It’s regulation, I’m sorry, dear. Bridging cannot be used to cause economic misbalance between universes without fair compensation. You are only entitled to who you were in C489.” Ms. Marjory brought back up her plastic smile. “You could apply for med school again in C489.”

“Fuck that,” Raj whispered, more naturally than he meant to. “Apply to med school again… I’m 29. I’m already 29. I’ve been in med school for 6 years. I’m a doctor, two weeks from today. Despite everything. I’m not… Don’t ask me to start over. Please don’t.” Raj slipped quiet. The bright bay windows felt like exposure now, like he was a zoo animal on display for Ms. Marjory’s observation. He swallowed. “Can you scan again? Like, wider, farther? Is there another bridgeable universe where Lizzy would want to come here?”

Ms. Marjory offered another practiced look of sympathy. “The further we scan, the fewer compatible universes we will find. The original scan already covers, statistically, 70% of bridgeable universes—”

“Meaning there are 30% you haven’t scanned?”

“You can picture it like a sphere. Compatible universes are dense and concentrated near us at the center. When you extend the search radius, the volume grows rapidly, and compatible universes are much sparser. You reach diminishing returns.”

“If I asked you to double what you’ve done. Scan that… amount, again, beyond where you stopped, how much will that cover?”

“Statistically, an additional 15%.”

“It would take us from 70% to 85%?”

“Yes. The cost—we’ve emailed and mailed you the bill breaking down the scanning cost—we would charge you that amount, again, plus any fees for unexpected complications that we—”

“Do it.”

“Are you sure?”

Raj was running the math. It made him feel sick. His and Lizzy’s nest egg, sitting under a rubber duck, which Raj was flushing away on the outside hope that—

“Do the next 15%. Find out if there is a Lizzy in those universes who would come here, come home, with me…”

…

Raj performed his rotations by muscle memory. He changed catheters and ran PICC lines and took every dressing-down from Dr. Wang about what he wasn’t doing fast enough. He stood on feet going numb at surgery-side, monitoring vitals and adjusting dosages while his breath fogged his glasses through his mask. He ran a lot, mostly to patients, and one time away from a patient who’d managed to sneak a knife past triage in a body cavity Raj did not want to think about.

He poured over books by the lamp-light of the library annex, stowing himself away mouse-quiet in hopes that the night janitors would not tell on him for staying past the 2am closing. He submitted final papers and penned final exams and walked in circles around the campus courtyard while the sun bled onto the 4:45am horizon, because he did not want to go home alone to his apartment.

After five days, Ms. Marjory called. They scanned the next 15%. No matches.

“How much more will you cover is you scan again?”

“7%.”

“Do it.”

85% => 92%. Raj paid the cost all over.

…

Jeremiah grabbed Raj’s shoulder two hallways shy of their biology class, “Hey! Desai, Raj, man, thanks.”

Raj startled. He did not shrug off Jeremiah’s hand, and Jeremiah took this as invitation to lean into Raj and match his pace.

“Thanks again, just by the way, in person, dude,” Jeremiah continued. “For the tickets. Absolutely clutch, man.”

“Not a problem at all.”

“My dad couldn’t get off work so he thought he couldn’t come to graduation. But his boss had a change of heart—or a heart attack, I dunno—one of those—but he loosened up so my dad—it’s a 2 day trip—but my dad—”

“Really not a problem.”

“My uncle too. He’s crazy excited. ‘Dr.’ Jeremiah, he keeps calling me. Keeps calling me that on Facebook. I’m like, ‘Dude, it’s Waggoner. Dr. Waggoner, gonna be—‘”

“Yeah.”

“And Dr. Desai.”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks for the ticket. Two tickets. I ran out of mine already. Thought Dad wasn’t coming, so I gave my last two to my sister and her husband, wasn’t gonna uninvite them, so I needed two more. Mal is selling her extra tickets for $1,000 each. Can you imagine spending that much money at once—besides on med school.”

“Yeah.”

“Wowee. We’re a million dollars in debt. That money’s not real. But ramen is.”

“Yeah.”

“Ramen doctors. Big bucks soon, though. Big bucks. Thanks for the tickets. Is your family not coming? Live too far away?”

“Yeah,” Raj lied.

“I hate that. I mean my dad’s driving up from Arkansas. 22 hour drive. Uncle was a trucker, though, and they’re trading off. I said Dad don’t let him do anything crazy. Like he might try to run cars off the road, but he’s in a little sedan now, hybrid, Dad’s car. Good mileage. You have anyone coming to graduation?”

“Um.”

“No one?”

“It’s logistics.”

Jeremiah’s hand tightened on Raj’s shoulder. He rocked his steps a little less and reigned his tone in. “I have Lizzy’s ticket, don’t I? I get it man. I’m sorry man. This is a gift. I’ll treat it with respect.”

“You don’t… have ‘Lizzy’s ticket’,” Raj answered, skin prickling. “The tickets are fungible. I had five tickets. You have two of them now.”

“Capping everyone at five tickets is insane. What are you doing with the other three?”

“I don’t know.”

“You should sell them. Undercut Mal. $990 each.”

“Should I be charging you $990 per ticket for the ones I gave you?”

“No. Nope. Those were a gift. Hey—” Jeremiah released Raj’s shoulder and prodded him in the sternum. The biology room door was approaching. They slowed. “—Mr. Five Tickets And No One At All, come to my party on Sunday.”

“Graduation is Monday.”

“Come to my party Sunday.”

“I’d rather get to bed early.”

“You keep saying no, but you have to do stuff again, eventually, man. I gave you space with Lizzy—”

“—This isn’t—”

“—but you have to be you, also. You have a good time at my parties. I’ll cover all your booze.”

“I don’t know ab—”

“Last time you’ll see everyone, come on. Last chance for all of us to see each other.”

Raj slipped inside the classroom, happy for the out as their professor cleared his throat and kicked off the final class of the term.

Raj wondered who ‘everyone’ was.

…

Raj finished his final class. He submitted his last paper. He attended a fitting for his graduation gown. He showered at the campus gym. He hadn’t done laundry in three weeks. He saved a woman who slipped into cardiac arrest moments after identifying herself as “here because of a funny feeling in her arm” during ER triage.

Ms. Marjory called. No matches.

“How much if you scan again?”

“3%.”

“Do it.”

“This is—based on your account balance, Mr. Desai, this is the last scan we can do. You would have to top up your funds for any scan past this. And—the bridging process, too—you have to account for that cost. It is your responsibility as the client to account for and provide all funds. There is a cost breakdown in the sheet I’ve emailed to you.”

“Understood,” Raj answered. There was no money left to top up.

95%.

Raj hung up. He stared at his phone, and he hated the condemnation of the math running in his head. How much was still enough to bridge? What were the odds of that amount even mattering, of even finding a match? It had felt so doable two weeks ago. He’d had so much money two weeks ago.

There were three extra tickets sitting on his apartment kitchen counter. Maybe $3,000, if he sold them, if anyone was actually paying Mal’s prices. He didn’t like the idea. He’d rather let the tickets rot. The pang in his chest at the thought meant something else.

Jeremiah’s Arkansas dad would be sitting in one of Raj’s seats. Jeremiah’s Arkansas uncle, too. Raj felt some indescribable tightness in his lungs that lashed and festered and was almost hatred. But it was too wounded for that. Everything was too unfair. Jeremiah had worse grades than Raj, a worse residency lined up, so his dad was a fool and a simpleton to be so proud of him.

Raj’s chest was a crater. He sunk down on the ground where he made himself smaller. His phone still burned in his hand.

He pulled up his mother’s contact again, and he stared at it until the anger trembled in his hand.

…

Raj showed up two hours late to Jeremiah’s party. Jeremiah was too trashed to care, as he slung his arm around Raj’s neck and dragged Raj inside with wide teeter-tottering steps. He shoved a mixed drink under Raj’s nose, half of which spilled with the gesture, and which Raj scarcely avoided spattering his shoes.

“What is this?” Raj asked.

“Really good!!” Jeremiah answered, and that was good enough for Raj.

For the next four hours, Raj played catch up to Jeremiah. He downed drinks twice as fast. His smile bloomed loose and gentle and sloppy on his face, genuine, for the first time in too long. He hollered along with Jeremiah to the pop anthems bludgeoning out bassy from the sound system. He lost spectacularly at beer pong and guzzled the cups after working his knuckles into the beer to fish out the ping pong ball. He fell into an emphatic conversation about how really really really good Star Trek was, like, really—at least the episodes he liked—it got bad after they changed things, at some point. And then when Jeremiah melted into the crowd, Raj was talking to Cassy—he was pretty sure her name was Cassy—about silly stupid things—he wasn’t sure—but he was making big arm motions and pantomiming a story retelling that had Cassy giggling just as stupidly into her own cup. Raj did not have enough of his brain together to really think thoughts, but somewhere queued in his mind was the idea that Cassy was pretty, and that she might be single.

The next morning Raj woke up in his bed, a horrible head-pounding shell of himself. And he remembered everything in his apartment was gray.

Raj checked his phone. One missed call from Ms. Marjory. Voice mail. “No match.”

Raj got up. He showered. He put on his graduation gown.

…

Raj sat elbow to elbow with the two students whose last names directly enveloped his, sweating out his hangover. The air was sweet. The sky cloudless. He tuned in and out for the school president’s speech, and the valedictorian’s speech, and all the saccharine musings about the enormous amount of good this body of soon-to-be doctors was about to do in the world.

The graduates moved in groups, one row at a time, to mount the stage and receive their diplomas. Roars met them from the crowd, some louder than others, some brazenly loud, some a circus of vuvuzelas and hollers and screams of delight. Raj did not watch the crowd. But he watched the expression on the graduates’ faces—the delight and the embarrassment and the warm knowledge that they were loved.

Raj approached the stage. When his name was called, the president gave him a firm handshake, a glowing smile, a diploma passed into his hands.

Raj watched the crowd. Polite claps pittered out like rainwater. No one yelled. No one screamed or bellowed for him. No one echoed his name.

There was one empty seat somewhere in the vast audience, where Lizzy was not sitting.

…

Dr. Rajesh Desai went home to an empty apartment. He opened the whispering dust-skirt door and dropped his keys into the bowl and flicked on the fluorescent lighting, which tittered like moth wings until it caught and soaked him in light.

Raj pressed his back against the wall. He slid down, slowly, gown pooling in his lap. He stared at the coat rack, its gold tarnished under decades of neglect. Just an ornament of Aunt Priya’s house. A trinket in disrepair. Valuable—five figures valuable—but valuable without even being a drop in the bucket of Priya’s total wealth. It had been her husband’s wealth, first. Raj was too young to remember the horrible man who had been Priya’s husband. Raj could imagine Priya as nothing other than a widow, endowed with terrible knowledge of life’s trappings.

Raj loved Aunt Priya from his very earliest memories. She’d sneak him candies. She’d tell him naughty jokes. And Raj was still quite young when he caught on to the way his parents and his whole family hated her. But she held a certain power that struck awe in Raj, that made his parents hold their tongue around her and silently bristle when Priya spoke so brazenly ill of her dead husband—awful man, wife-beater, drunkard. It had scared and fascinated Raj. At family gatherings, she could say so many things, and no one challenged her, and at the end of the evening—at Priya’s dismissal—everyone retired to a separate room in her enormous house.

At 13 Raj had made the wrong kind of friends according to his parents. And he clashed with his parents over them, screamed things, got the front door shut in his face. Bitter and cold he’d scrounged up the money for a taxi, took himself to Priya’s mansion angrily wiping his snot and tears, because maybe with all her brazen disrespect for the family, she’d let him in. “Good boy,” she’d told him at the door, and she’d given him a bed, and given him a credit card, in case this ever happened again. “You’re a good boy for standing up for your friends. That is respectable.” At night, alone in that enormous bed, Raj reconsidered whether Priya had ever been truly disrespectful.

She was gospel to him after that. He went to Priya with his anger, and she would know when it was righteous. He went to her with his passions, and she never had a cruel thing to say.

There was only one piece of Priya’s advice that Raj regretted following. ‘Don’t get married young.’ Not like her. Married off at 15. Never with the chance to live her own life until her husband died first. Raj took that advice. Pursued his doctorate first. He’d waited to propose. He’d wanted everyone to be proud of him. He’d wanted Priya to be proud most of all. Proud of him and Lizzy both. Priya had liked Lizzy. Priya had loved Lizzy. Raj missed that so much his bones hurt. He hadn’t known his time with them would be so short. How could he have known? Lizzy had outlived Aunt Priya by only 6 months.

Raj stared at the golden coat rack. His eyes felt cloudy. He wondered how much it might pawn for. Was it enough to pay for another scan? Was it worth believing another scan would change anything?

Raj was so entirely alone.

He fished his phone from his pocket, eyes to the voicemail notification from Ms. Marjory which he had not yet dismissed.

He unlocked the phone. He pulled up the contacts. He did not hesitate this time.

He dialed. It rang, and he expected no one to answer.

The connection clicked.

“Hello?”

Raj’s breath stilled. He cursed himself in his head for being so stupid. The inside of his chest was an open wound he wanted anyone to heal.

“Mom?” Raj asked.

There was a long silence, like water at the precipice of dripping from the faucet. “Rajesh,” his mom answered. “Why are you calling?”

“I’m a doctor now,” Raj said. He thought of Priya. He thought of Jeremiah’s dad. “I have my diploma now. I’m Dr. Rajesh Desai. Thought you should know.”

“Okay.”

Something in Raj’s ribcage twisted. “‘Okay’?”

“What else should I be saying to you, Rajesh?”

“Anything a mother should say to her son who became a doctor, maybe.”

“Why should I say anything to you before you have apologized to me, Rajesh?”

“Apologize for what exactly?”

“You know. Do not be dumb.”

“Explain it to me, exactly.”

“You have been horrible to this family. You have treated us horribly.”

“Because of how shit you and Dad were to Lizzy, come on, Mom. We’ve been—” Raj leaned into his knees, free hand to his temple. His chest felt raw and open. He hated this cycle. He did not know why he was invoking it again. “I was never horrible. I only loved Lizzy.”

“You should never have been dating a black girl, Rajesh. She was very terrible for you—”

“She was never terrible. Not ever. She was the only person who took care of me when I had cancer. She dropped out of grad school to take care of me.”

“And she gave you bad ideas. Taught you disrespect—"

“—And she’s dead now. Does that not make you love me again?”

Phone silence lingered.

“You chose to treat your whole family badly. It showed to everyone what a bad son you are to us. Not just the girl. It showed us you are horrible and disrespectful. And so ungenerous with the money foolish Aunt Priya gave you.”

“Don’t talk like that about Aunt Priya.”

“She was the same as you. She left all her money to you because she recognized you have the same cold heart as she did.”

“Well I’m not being stingy with the money, good news! Because it’s all gone now.”

“…Aunt Priya’s money is gone?”

“Bye, Mom. Thanks for never calling me even once while I had cancer.” The phone lingered by his face, breath held. Raj stared at the coat rack. Gold. “Bye forever, Mom.”

Raj hung up the phone.

He stripped off his graduation gown. Kicked off his shoes and tore off his socks. Stripped himself bare and, with a cold toe, pressed open the kitchen trash can. Raj let his diploma slip from his grasp and fall onto a bed of spent coffee grounds. The trash lid fell shut.

Raj dug into the back of his closet for anything resembling clean clothes. He pulled out a graphic tee, mothy and musty, and slipped it over his head. Underwear. Old slacks. Whatever shoes were nearest the door. Phone, keys, wallet. For the last time.

He doubled back, and he grabbed the coat rack.

Raj tore open the front door. He opened Dr. Wang’s contact and messaged “Consider this my resignation. You will never see me again.” Foolish, maybe, when rotations were ending so soon. It was far more damning when he sent it to the anesthesiologist about to take him in for residency. To Jeremiah. And to no one else—they could figure out what happened to him, if they cared.

He laughed, and laughed again. Gleeful. Free. A doctor for three whole hours before he was going to throw it away. And it made him joyous. Who had he been proving himself to, when the only two people who would be happy for him were gone? What did any of it matter if Lizzy wasn’t here for it?

“Panama,” he declared, turning the ignition over and throwing his car into reverse, mind and fingers buzzing, staring past the coat rack in his back seat. “I’ve always fucking hated Panama. GoodBYE Panama. Good FUCKING riddance, Panama.”

And he tore out of his driveway for the last time.

…

Raj did not consider the possibility of Ms. Marjory having a client until he had already shoved himself bodily through her office doors. Luckily, she was alone. She looked up, startled, in a way that Raj swore he heard the faint squeak of a rubber duck.

“Mr. Desai.”

“Send me there. C489. Do whatever. Put me in whatever deprivation whatever. I want to be with Lizzy. I have enough money left to complete the bridging process. Do it.” Coat rack pawned, cash in hand.

Ms. Marjory’s face morphed into a mask of practiced sympathy, which Raj had seen too many times at this point, and yet this time it made his blood run ice cold.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Do it.”

“I was just recently speaking with Ms. Marjory from C489—with the clown flower on her lapel. Lizzy has rescinded her offer.”

“What?” Raj’s palms were slick. “What do you mean rescinded? Why would she do that?”

“Because Rajesh Desai from BA21 took her up on her offer to bridge to C489.”

BA21. That didn’t mean anything to Raj. He needed it to mean something.

“What is that? What does that mean?”

“Well I spoke to Ms. Marjory from BA21 about it—she has many little teacups, from many little tea sets. Rajesh Desai from BA21 has been a doctor for two years now. He never had cancer—See, your father successfully quit smoking when you were a child, in BA21. One of the aberrations. But Rajesh from BA21 still lost his Lizzy in the same accident that took yours. Weird how these things can still come together. He was willing to give up his life and doctorhood in BA21 to be with Lizzy in C489.”

Raj was nauseous. He shook his head.

“Tell Lizzy I want to be with her. Make her choose between us.”

“She’s chosen already.”

“I love her!”

“So does every Rajesh Desai I’ve met.”

“She loves me. She nursed me day and night while I was dying of cancer. She was the only one.”

“Yes. And Lizzy from C489 watched you die of that illness. Slow and horrible. Could you blame her for choosing to be with the Rajesh Desai who never had cancer over the one who is just in remission?”

Rajesh felt like his organs were tying themselves together.

“I’m not some… pedigree fucking show-dog. I’m a human. I had cancer. That’s not a mark against me.”

“If you had your choice of many Lizzys, would you not want the one you’re most likely to live a long healthy life with? You were already ready to choose the one who would come here to our universe over Lizzy from C489.” Ms. Marjory folded her hands, smile tight. “I just don’t want to see you mad at Lizzy for her choice.”

Raj’s organs were eating themselves. Like they had when the police knocked on his door, on the night Lizzy did not come home.

“I love her,” he said.

“So you’ve said. What do you love about her?”

The question unnerved him. It smacked him like a cold palm across the face. “Are you testing me?”

“No, sorry.” Ms. Marjory straightened her head. “We like to ask matches this, sometimes, so we can understand compatibility. What do you love about Lizzy?”

“Everything.”

“Tell me.”

Raj’s heart was stuttering. “She…” He ran his hand through his hair, “she brought me back from cancer. What more is there than that? She gave up everything to do it.”

“I asked what you love about her.”

The words were dry in Raj’s mouth.

“Lizzy McDaniel from C489 has so many things she loves about Rajesh Desai,” Ms. Marjory said. “So many sweet things.”

“Her…” Raj started. He couldn’t get his thoughts straight. He couldn’t think. “Her—her—her music. Her singing. Her smile—she—"

Ms. Marjory was staring. Raj was fraying.

“No. No, no… Please…” He grabbed his hair, pulling, releasing, palms pulsing. “How much extra do I need to pay you to send me there… and let me kill myself there. Send me to any universe where Lizzy and I are both alive, and I’ll kill my other self.”

“Haha,” Ms. Marjory tittered. And then her smile froze over to ice. “I’m going to pretend I did not hear you ask that, alright? We don’t offer that service.”

The walls were closing in on him. The world was closing around him. Raj paced. Desperation welled like a parasite in his chest. It wanted to rip through his ribs.

“There… has… to be another Lizzy who lost me. I had to die of cancer in more than just C489.” Raj slammed his hand against the wall. “I almost died here! I don’t believe that C489 is the only bridgeable universe where I died. You didn’t search far enough. I must have died a thousand times in a thousand universes! Send me there. Any one of those!”

“You’re right. You have died of cancer in many of the worlds we scanned. 438 worlds, in fact. I spoke to many fun Ms. Marjorys. One collects Santa hats. One has such a nice model train set up. One—”

“Then send me there!” Raj stopped pacing. He braced his fingernails on Ms. Marjory’s desk, leaning in, digging his fingers in. “Any of them! I’ll let you pick!!!”

She was staring at him, again. Plastic, condescending, pretending to sympathize.

“I cannot. All of those other Lizzys already have a Rajesh back safe and sound with them, thanks to the efforts of Sewn, and all my other Ms. Marjorys.”

“Am I last? Am I somehow last?!” Raj demanded. His temper boiled in him, like tar, thick and dark and black, threatening to choke his airway.

“Not last. Just statistically out of luck, my poor boy.” Ms. Marjory finally deigned to stand. “These things happen. A bridgeable universe is, by definition, extremely similar to ours… So in the majority of those universes, Rajesh Desai survived his battle with cancer, because that is similar to how you survived your battle with cancer here. And in the majority of those universes similar to ours, Lizzy McDaniel died in a car crash, because that is similar to how Lizzy McDaniel died in a car crash here. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Similar things happen in similar universes.”

The words soaked in to Raj’s mind like a cold puddle through sneakers. Damp socks, squishy toes.

“You said I was dead and Lizzy was alive in 438 worlds you scanned.”

“Yes.”

“So then what was the opposite number? In how many bridgeable worlds am I alive and Lizzy dead?”

“1,873,276 worlds.”

“1 million--?”

“and 873,000, yes.”

“And if every Raj—every me—had the idea to go to Sewn… even half of them… I’m competing with a million of myself to find the handful of close-by universes where I died instead…?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?!”

“I’m not allowed to coerce you.”

“Horseshit. That’s not coercion that’s…” Raj tensed his hand in the air, lost, before slamming it on the desk. “That’s telling me the facts! Why didn’t you tell me the facts!?”

“I cannot pressure you into making a decision to bridge. It’s a very serious matter, legally. I’m sorry, dear.”

“You did this to milk me, didn’t you? To milk as much money out of all the me’s across all these universes trying to get Lizzy back. My life savings. Priya’s money.”

“You’ll find you signed all the waivers and consent forms.”

“My fiancé is dead!” Raj’s voice cracked. He watched as, subtly, Ms. Marjory pressed a button under her desk. Security, Raj was sure. “Lizzy is dead.”

“And you have my deepest sympathies.”

Raj dropped his hands from the desk. He was breathing too hard. There had to be an answer. He backed up a step. “The… the opposite has to be true, somewhere, right? Is there a cluster of far-away universes—too many ‘aberrations’ away from us—where me dying is the norm? And Lizzy surviving is the norm? And there are a million of Lizzy competing for the 400 of me that didn’t get picked off?”

“Does it help you to consider that might exist?”

“No. Tell me anyway. Does it exist?”

“Most likely. Infinity is vast, Mr. Desai.”

“Okay.” He forced his breathing steady. His tone was calm. He held himself calmly. But he evaluated Ms. Marjory in a way that felt wrong. Shorter than him by a few inches. Less broad at the shoulders, frailer in build, 60’s—maybe—or 70’s. She was weaker than him, surely. That was one power he held over her, surely. His only power over her. “Then fix the balance. Send me there.”

“It is not possible. Regulation dictates the aberration delta must not exceed—”

“I don’t care about regulation. I’ll sign any waiver. I don’t care if it kills me.”

“That is not your decision to make. And those are not your universes to find. You’d need me to scan for them, and I will not scan for them.”

Raj wondered if security truly was coming. He wondered if his time was running short.

“Is it possible…” His energy was leaving him. Desperation was becoming him. Raj was not violent, but he wasn’t sure who he was right now. “to force you?”

“Not without qualifying for an assault charge, I imagine,” she said with a smile almost sympathetic. “And even then, no. You don’t know how to run the process without me.”

“I—”

“And with that, I believe our professional relationship has come to an end. Your bridging offers have reached zero, and your balances do not qualify for additional scanning. I’m so sorry to part on disappointing terms, but I have prepared your discharge paperwork, which, nicely enough, you can pick up right now and leave with.” She tapped a set of papers on her desk, three inches thick at least, a series of stapled bundles held together with a thick binder clip. “I’ve taken the courtesy of updating your title on these, Dr. Rajesh Desai. Apologies for my earlier slip-up, and congratulations.”

Raj took the papers, still smelling of fresh printer ink. They were heavy in his arms. There was no violence in his body, and no hope, and nothing left of who he thought he was. He stared only at the first page.

“If you could see yourself out, Dr. Desai, I have another client’s work to attend to.”

Raj read no further than the first page. Dr. Rajesh Desai was printed in bold black at the head of the paperwork. He stared at it. One letter difference. His vision blurred, wet.

“I don’t want these…” he said. “I don’t want it.” The title. The doctorate. All his years of hard work. “I want her. Please—"

Raj looked up, surprised to momentary silence at all the nothing that stood in front of him.

No sound and no movement had preceded Ms. Marjory’s departure. The door was still shut. The windows had not opened. But Ms. Marjory was gone—bridged, probably, elsewhere. Beyond his reach. Beyond anywhere he could know. Off, somewhere, where Lizzy maybe existed, and he was not allowed to follow.

Dr. Rajesh Desai was alone again.

Alone, with the two rubber ducks that sat on the desk, basking in bay windows.

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