My pediatrician’s office hadn’t changed much since my earliest memories of coming here as a child.
The bright yellow painted walls of the waiting room were decorated with framed prints from animated children’s movies, and the black and white checkerboard tile floor smelled of lemon-scented cleaner.
In one corner sat a basket of long-neglected toys. They would remain that way, lonely and forgotten, a relic of a time gone by.
At age seventeen, my classmates and I were the youngest people alive on Earth. There would be no more children coming along to enjoy the assortment of toy animals and trucks and puzzles.
A nurse poked her head into the waiting room where my parents and I sat, each absorbed in our own holoconns. Mom was watching some sort of home renovation show on hers while Dad checked sports scores. Mine was tuned into music vids.
“Mireya—you can come on back,” the nurse said.
Mom stood to go with me, but the nurse shot her an apologetic smile. “Just Mireya this time. The doctor will meet with you and your husband afterward if there’s any need to.”
“Oh,” Mom said, and sat back down, looking a bit perturbed.
I followed the nurse down a short corridor to one of the exam rooms. They were all painted primary colors. This one was royal blue and featured a mural with cartoonish fish and one large, smiling whale.
After weighing me, taking my blood pressure, and asking the usual basic questions, the nurse assured me Dr. Rex would be right with me.
“He just stepped out to get a bite to eat—your visit was unscheduled—but he’s on his way back right now. Should be no more than a few minutes.”
She exited the room, leaving the door standing open.
I sat upright on the edge of the exam table as I waited. The paper covering crackled every time I shifted my weight, which was every few seconds. I’d been coming here for regular check-ups my whole life, but for some reason I felt restless and uncomfortable being here today.
The brightly colored walls seemed glaring instead of cheerful, the lemon-scented disinfectant smell cloying rather than pleasantly familiar.
And though Dr. Rex was the closest thing I had to a grandparent figure in my life, today I felt a strange aversion to seeing him.
A nervous energy shimmered through my muscles as if trying to propel me through the door and out of the clinic into the copse of woods that bordered the base. Weird.
It was so powerful I might have actually gotten up and left the building if I didn’t know my parents would only drag me back here again—with an even greater determination to find something “wrong” with me.
I was so tense that when a tall figure ducked into the room, I literally yelped. It was a young guy—the same one I’d seen on the day of my last exam. Milo, maybe?
The name didn’t seem to fit him for some reason, but I was pretty sure that was how he’d introduced himself before. Then again, that had been months ago, and I’d been so mesmerized by his remarkable blue-green eyes my memory might have been a little scrambled.
“Hi.” He smiled. “Sorry I startled you. You probably don’t remember me. I’m—” “Milo,” I blurted. “I remember. Dr. Rex’s new assistant. We met last time I was here. I’m Mireya.”
The guy’s smile dimmed slightly. If I didn’t know better I would have said he looked disappointed.
“Yeah. That’s right.”
For a long moment he was quiet, those spectacular eyes studying my face like he was trying to see through my skin and bone to the brain matter beneath.
An acute sense of self-awareness washed over me, causing my skin to prickle in response to his penetrating gaze, and my stomach did a weird little flip-flop.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
Milo shook his head briefly as if trying to clear it. “Uh… yeah. I was just…”
His voice drifted away as he appeared to search for words.
“I mean, sure, yes, everything’s fine with me,” he said. “How are you? I mean—are you okay? Why are you here? Are you feeling… anything unusual lately?”
Was it my imagination or did his voice sound hopeful? I wasn’t sure what was going on but it was the strangest encounter I’d ever had with a guy.
Of course, he was a stranger, whereas all the other guys I’d ever known were almost like brothers to me. We’d gone to school together since preschool and saw each other at every recreational event and occasion on the base. Definitely no mysteries to uncover there.
This guy though… he was mysterious. But also familiar somehow.
“This is going to sound strange, but you seem familiar to me,” I said.
His eyelids flared, and he beamed at me. “I do?”
Wow. He was even cuter when he smiled.
I nodded. “I feel like we’ve met before—I mean other than the last time I was here.”
My face heated as I realized how crazy I must seem to him. I’d never left the military base, and he was clearly not from here. He appeared to be several years older than me, he was a physician’s assistant, and he’d only recently started working for Dr. Rex.
He probably thought I was flirting with him. Mortification swamped me, and I started to sweat a little.
Shaking my head, I hurriedly tried to retract. “Never mind. I’m sure we haven’t. You must think I’m really weird.”
Instead of immediately excusing my blunder or even agreeing about my weirdness, Milo gave me a soft smile.
As if a lightbulb had exploded overhead, I got a flash of imagery and visceral emotion. I was back in my daydream from earlier about the hike in the forest.
The tall guy walking in front of me turned, and this time I could see his face. His brilliant smile.
It was Milo.
Blinking the vision away, I returned to my awareness of the exam room, of Milo standing in front of me in real life.
What was going on? I’d never been hiking with him— this was only the second time I’d ever seen him.
Before, I’d been ready to write the strange sense of deja vu off as nothing. But this didn’t feel like nothing. It felt like… something. Something real and important.
But why? It made no sense at all.
Milo reached behind him, shut the door, then turned and stepped closer to me. His voice was low and urgent sounding.
“I don’t think you’re weird at all, Reya. In fact, I’ve been waiting—”
The door burst open again, and Dr. Rex strode into the exam room, eyes down on the chart in his hand.
“Sorry for the delay, my dear—oh.”
He stopped short as he looked up and spotted Milo. Displeasure emanated from the older man in waves.
“What are you doing in here?”
Milo immediately moved away from me. “I stepped in just one second ago. Joyce said you were on your way back, and actually I assumed you were already in the room with the patient.”
Dr. Rex gave Milo a narrow-eyed glare then turned to me. His expression morphed into the friendly smile I’d seen in this office since early childhood.
“I hope my assistant wasn’t bothering you…” The doctor’s brows lifted in a question.
For some reason, I answered him with a lie. “Uh… no. Like he said, he stepped into the room right before you did. He didn’t even speak to me.”
“Ah.” Dr. Rex seemed satisfied, smiling once again.
He looked down at the chart in his hands. “Well then, it seems you may have had another absence seizure during school today.”
“I don’t think that’s what it was. I told my teacher and my mom already—I was finished with my test and looking out the window. I think I just tuned out the noise of the end-of-day chime.”
He nodded reassuringly. “I see. Well I guess there’s nothing to worry about then. And you’ve been taking your meds?”
“Yes. Every day.”
“Good.”
He glanced down at the chart then brought his eyes back up to connect intensely with mine. In fact, the look in them made me uncomfortable.
“What about dreams?” he asked. “Having any unusual ones? Nightmares? Anything upsetting or confusing?”
My heart kicked back into an accelerated rhythm.
Whether it was a desire to just get out of there and go home or some sort of warning instinct, I wasn’t sure, but I told him the exact opposite of the truth.
“No. Nothing like that.”
He approached the exam table, coming to a stop uncomfortably close to me. In my peripheral vision, Milo tensed.
“Are you sure?” Dr. Rex asked. “You can trust me, you know, Mireya. I’ve known you since the moment you entered this world.”
It was true. I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t know Dr. Rex. He had never hurt me apart from the pinch of the occasional injection. Still, a little voice inside me advised me to hide the truth in this instance.
Though my pulse pounded in my ears, my voice came out sounding surprisingly calm.
“I promise. I’ve been sleeping like a baby lately. I don’t know what my mom is so worried about. I’ve never felt more normal in my life.”
That answer seemed to please Dr. Rex. He gave me another smile, this one more genuine and relaxed.
“That’s good to hear. As far as your mother, she’s been through a scare with you recently, and she’s acting like any loving parent would. That’s normal, too.”
“Well her ‘normal’ is going to drive me crazy,” I said with a laugh. “She watches me like a hawk.”
“Parents can be like that,” Milo interjected. He’d been standing quietly in the far corner of the room since the doctor came in.
“My father can be a bit overbearing as well,” he confided. “What are you gonna do, though? Parents—can’t live without them, but sometimes you wish you could live several miles away from them—and change your holoconn number.”
I laughed out loud, feeling more seen than I had in a long time. The doctor’s assistant wasn’t just good-looking. He was funny too.
Dr. Rex rolled his eyes. “Parental annoyance aside, I think you’re both lucky to have families who care about you. Mireya, you can go ahead and join your mom and dad in the waiting room. I’ll call them back to my office for a chat in a few minutes.”
I slid from the table. When my feet hit the floor, Milo went to the exam room door and opened it for me. He appeared ready to follow me into the hall, but Dr. Rex called him back.
“Milo, come with me to my office please. I want to prepare my notes before meeting with Mireya’s parents—you can sit in on that conversation as well while Mireya walks home.”
I glanced back, locking eyes with Milo briefly once more.
“Bye Mireya… keep your chin up,” he said. “Try high-fiving yourself in the mirror every morning. I read that it helps.”
