Chapter 1: Where Am I? WHEN Am I?

Atlantic City, NJ

June 21, 2021

My first time in Atlantic City: sitting in the back of an Uber, watching the rain, looking at all the neon, and musing on what brought me here. At fifty-five years old, my life had fallen apart. It started with the pandemic, but that only dealt the first, glancing blow, costing me my job of 13 years when my employer got panicky about customer demand during the pandemic. Ironically, I was the best in my team at remote work and got the boot just as we moved to all-remote working in mid-March 2020. We (my then-wife and I) were financially stable even with the lost income and would have had no problem making it through the job loss.

Unfortunately, my wife had become increasingly unstable. March also brought the first of our children’s departure from the house, moving across town with a roommate. June brought us the departure of our other child for a summer job that became permanent. We survived as empty-nesters until October, when my wife decided she could no longer stand my company. Roughly the five hundredth time she’d declared her intent to move out turned out to be the one where she meant it.

This felt both inevitable — after all, she’d threatened to move out monthly for the past twenty-five years — and startling; after so many times, it was easy to believe it would never happen. There were genuine issues, but never the ones that triggered the declaration. My relationship skills were shaky, I won’t lie, but the failure owed far more to her volatile personality than to my failings. She moved off to the adjoining town, where her job was located, and we limped along burdened with extra payments we couldn’t afford until the divorce became final.

With the final decree, things spiraled further down. No wife meant no health insurance, unemployment was running out, and in my segment of the software industry the jobs weren’t coming back. I’d applied for roughly 100 positions in the past year and gotten a call-back on two of them. Neither got as far as an interview. I moved into my parents’ house, which was sitting unoccupied in Houston. My mother passed away years ago and my father had moved into a retirement home because he could no longer manage at the house. But the house move was a stop-gap at best. It was in lousy repair, and I could never afford the neighborhood once he passed away and the property taxes were no longer capped.

That brings me to Atlantic City. I had a job offer; hardly the job I’d been doing, not even close, but a solid job offer, to lead IT support for a large casino. I could do it in my sleep. The job wasn’t that hard, the team was good, and I knew their systems inside and out. It paid well enough. I had very little interest in moving to the east coast, but having health insurance and not starving were motivation enough.

I was sitting in the car, looking out the windows at the bright lights, imagining living here for the next decade — hopefully allowing me to retire on schedule — when I saw the truck. Or, more specifically, the chunks of tire tread coming off the truck. It veered off course, horn blaring, bouncing off one car, then another, with another chunk of tread flying, and then settled on a course aiming directly for me. I watched, horrified, knowing there was no time to do anything. I couldn’t even have gotten free of the seat belt in time, much less gotten to safety.

There was a loud crash, intense pain, and then blackness.

Houston, TX

I recall nothing between that moment and waking up. Waking was itself quite a surprise; I was a former Lutheran turned Unitarian and my beliefs on the afterlife were inchoate, even to me. I believed there was something, but what? I had no idea what I was even expecting.

Whatever it was, this wasn’t it. My head throbbed, my arm and knee hurt a bit, but nothing else was crying out for attention. This was baffling, since I’d felt my leg being crushed by the truck. Blinking, I opened my eyes and looked around. The light intensified my headache too much to keep them open, so I closed them. But what I saw confused me even more: dirt, rocks, and some grass. None of this was any part of the Atlantic City street I remembered. Even if the impact had somehow thrown me clear, there was nothing around that looked like what I’d just seen.

I took several deep breaths and got the headache at least a bit under control. Not much, but a bit. Better, anyway, or at least I could pretend it was better. I took another look. Yup, rocks, dirt, grass. Trees, too. Trees had no place on the street I’d been on. The intense light was still threatening to make my head explode, but I fought it and moved. Shifting, I found that I was still slightly entangled with something metal.

Examining it, I felt a sudden, deep chill. It was a bike. Specifically, it was my childhood bike, nicknamed ‘The Crate’. A friend named it that — for reasons that were never clear — in elementary school, and it had stuck. It was blue (except for a few rusty spots), reliable, and built to take some bumps, which is good, because it was very much a boy’s bike. I looked at myself — well, as much of myself as I could see. It looked like I was shorter. And thinner - not skinny, but thinner. And wearing ratty tennis shoes on feet that were five sizes smaller than I’d expect. So, was I that boy? What the hell? That I didn’t panic is testimony to how overwhelming the headache was.

I struggled to my feet, then immediately bent over and threw up. The headache was now much, much worse. I wanted to just lie down and rest, but a part of me insisted that was a terrible idea. I listened, figured out how to get my bike upright, and considered riding it. However, with my nausea and lack of balance, that looked like a terrible idea. The bike’s flat tires eliminated that option.

I saw a path up the hill that I must have been riding downhill before wiping out. I sighed and forced myself to work my way up the incline, with the bike providing at least some stability. After what felt like hours, I emerged from the wooded lot onto a quiet street — one I recognized. I’d ridden down this street as a boy (wait, I am a boy!) many times, and we’d all done dirt trail riding in the empty lot. I’d even wrecked there a few years ago, but not hurt my head.

I couldn’t think very clearly on the walk, and given my pounding head, getting medical attention was the priority. I could think a bit, though. I was ... how old was I? Not fifty-five. Taking a guess on my height, I was maybe 5’4” or so, judging from things I could guess the height of. I’d topped out at 6’ before, and my growth spurt had been a bit late. So, I was going with fourteen or fifteen.

This wasn’t the time I’d wrecked here before. I was twelve then, and I wasn’t twelve now, I was pretty sure. But — it looked like I was me, far younger. Therefore, my parents would likely be who they were before, at the same house, with the same number. So, that was a start on getting help. And I needed help, that much was clear.

I made it to the closest house — or, rather, to the driveway gate. This street was a precursor to gated communities — large homes on large sites, gates on most of the driveways. I could drag myself to the next house or press the intercom on this one and hope. Given that my headache was not getting better and I was in danger of losing even more of my lunch (if there was any left), I opted for the buzzer.

Buzzzzzz... “Hello?” A woman’s voice. This was encouraging.

“Yes, I um ... I wrecked my bike and I’m injured and I can’t get home. Would you call my parents?”

“Oh! Oh goodness, yes, of course! What is their number? I could take you there.”

“I’m ... a bit bloody, and I really don’t want to walk any further.” I gave her my parents’ number and sat down. A few minutes later, a woman came down the driveway. The fifty-five-year-old me thought she was likely a trophy wife, while the current-aged me knew she was at least a decade older than me and therefore simply old.

“You poor thing. I brought you some water.” She handed me a glass.

“Thank you, I appreciate it”. Slow sips seemed wise. My stomach was still in turmoil. The cold water helped, but I couldn’t handle much of it at a time.

She stood there awkwardly, not seeming to have much in the way of parenting skills. That was fine by me — I didn’t need much parenting.

A few minutes later, the family Volvo station wagon rolled up. My parents jumped out. I could seldom remember them moving so fast — but then, they were decades younger than my memories.

“Oh! Oh, Steve! What ... what happened?” Mom was beside herself. She looked more worried than I could ever remember.

“I ... fell and hit my head. I don’t feel very good.”

Dad was all business. “Let’s get you into the car. I think you need to go to the emergency room.” Emergency room? I thought I’d be going home. He might have a point, though. My thoughts jumped around and the word ‘concussion’ popped into my mind. I’d had one years ago and could barely remember having it, but I remembered the year of doctor visits and EEG tests. Not very fondly, either.

“Y ... yes, Dad. If you think so, you’re probably right.”

The lady, whose name I hadn’t caught, said, “I can keep the bike here, inside the gate. You just call when you’re ready to pick it up.”

Mom smiled. “Thank you, Mrs... ?”

“I’m Shari Mooney. You know where I live. Just push the call button! I hope your son is all right!”

“We’re in your debt. Thank you so much for helping!”

Into the car I went. To my surprise, Mom climbed in the back with me. I couldn’t remember that ever happening. She sat next to me, hand on my leg, the entire way. Anytime I tried to drift off, she forced me to wake back up. I can’t remember any of the conversation, if there was any, but I think there wasn’t.

I had it together just enough to notice the city, and what I could remember told me, again, this had to be around the early 1980s. They hadn’t widened the freeway yet, and the train tracks were still there. Everything checked out with my vague and headache-ridden memories of that time.

The hospital was a blur of activity. They sent my parents to wait and shuffled me off down a series of brightly lit corridors. Doctors and nurses ran tests, then more tests. They shined lights in my eyes, in my ears, up my nose. My head was poked and prodded — yes, it hurt! Could I hear this? Feel that? Any pains anywhere else in my body? Especially shooting pains? Or numbness? It went on and on. They took X-Rays of my head, and I heard a doctor complain that the “damn newfangled CAT scanner was on the fritz again.”

I admitted to gaps in my memory — what was I doing when I wrecked? No idea. How hard did I hit my head? No idea. What day was it? No idea, but, summer? It felt like summer. It’d been hot. What year was it? I took a guess and said 1980. That seemed to be the right answer; if it was summer, then I was fourteen.