My Time Machine, And I

I went back in time and met a ghost.

I have a Time Machine. It isn’t super secret, but most people don’t realize it’s there. It looks different than yours; than most. You didn’t realize Time Machines were a thing? They’re everywhere. And they all look a little different.

The TARDIS (Doctor Who) – One of the most iconic time machines, the TARDIS looks like an old-fashioned British police box on the outside, but it’s much larger on the inside, with advanced technology and numerous rooms.

The DeLorean (Back to the Future) – A famous time machine that takes the form of a sleek, silver sports car, the DeLorean is modified with a flux capacitor and time circuits to enable time travel.

The Time Traveler’s Machine (The Time Machine by H.G. Wells) – In the original book, the time machine is a small, reclining chair-like device surrounded by a set of controls and a crystal-like structure.

And then there’s mine. It has automatic doors, and there’s never any parking. I step inside and nostalgia fills my lungs like my inhaler does when my asthma kicks in, except this time, it makes it harder to breathe. It’s familiar though — almost pleasant? If it weren’t for the anxiety that seems to incubate just long enough in order to hatch inside my chest as I walk up to the front desk. I need a pass to roam the hallways of this Time Machine. I need elevator access. I need blue gloves, a plastic gown, and Sketchers sneakers (double-knotted) if I want to go back far enough to see my Dad lift his hand off of his bedside for the first time. Again. But would I really want to see that again? Would that really be the moment? No. I don’t think so. But I don’t get to choose. Here I am, replaying that moment alongside the others like fragile collectibles displayed on a cheap black shelf that you’re afraid might fall over, breaking them all, spilling dark goo all over your new Air Jordan sneakers (still double-knotted).

When I walk into my Time Machine I don’t just see the shelf of memories, I am placed on the shelf, myself. I remember the heat when summer came and I remember when I discovered the roof access from our usual waiting room. I remember the melty heat was a fair trade for the blistering boredom of the hospital chairs. I remember the hill in the parking lot that my sister and I did cartwheels on and I remember my uncle teaching me how to whistle with a blade of grass. I remember the vending machine, that holy vending machine. I remember the feeling of my vision clouding inward when I saw him for the first time, and I remember the nurses who gently laid me down, fanning my now pale face drained of blood and innocence. I remember them cleaning the tubes surrounding his entire body and the convulsing sounds and movements as they did.

“Are you okay?” They asked me as I watched. “Yeah, I’m totally fine.”

I remember my eighth birthday. We had to go outside of the hospital for the candles, and it was windy, which made me sad. But then Dan said, “The wind is helping you blow them out,” and suddenly, I felt better.

Today, I went back in time and met a ghost. She knew me. She came up with gentle eyes and softly said, “I was one of the brand new nurses in the ICU. I worked on your Dad when he had his car accident.”

That was fifteen years ago. Fifteen. This woman was gray-haired and wrinkled. And she remembered my Dad. She remembered me.

And now we sit in that same hospital’s chapel. Singing praise to a God who exists alongside cancer. And car accidents. And she cares for my loved one, in this Time Machine housing lives and lights that dim and brighten by the hour; flickering like old headlights in a rainy storm.

Every time those automatic doors confidently slide open, every time I inhale the scent of lives being lost and saved and changed, every time I get into an elevator and mutter the room number I’m trying to remember — I travel back in time. And I am seven years old again. Seven going on thirty. Processing my world and seeing through the well-meaning white lies of grown-ups like the stained-glass windows of my childhood church.

I still double-knot my sneakers. Just the way he taught me.