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I don’t understand, I want to weep. What’s happening to me? Why am I in two places at once and sick in both of them?

“It’s just a fever,” soothes Marie, leaning over us. “You’re as panicked as a new father.”

“It’s more than that,” Henri argues, running his hand through my hair. “She keeps telling me you’re with her, saying there’s something in the stew.”

“Stew,” I whisper. “Don’t eat. Trap.”

She smiles at me over his head as if I’m a sleepy toddler. “We haven’t had stew in weeks,” she says. “You’re dreaming.”

My eyes open in the dark room once more. Marie is on the pillow across from mine, unmoving, her lips bled of color.

“No,” I reply, though no one is listening. “I think I’m the only one who’s awake.”

* * *

All night I’m feverish, going from Henri to the room with the cots, uncertain which of them is real. I’m awakened the next day by a guard who slams his gun against a metal pipe to rouse us. I’m shaking so hard it’s a struggle to climb from the bed, and I do so too slowly for the guard’s liking. I’ve just pushed myself to standing when he plants his boot in my stomach, sending me flying backward. I go to my hands and knees, certain I will throw up.

“I should put a bullet in her head,” he says to the other guard. “She’ll be dead by morning anyway.”

I push to my feet and nearly fall in my haste to join the other women. I follow them down a long, poorly lit hallway, all metal and concrete block—back to the cafeteria, where we line up like lambs to the slaughter.

They push gruel at us instead of stew this morning, but my mouth waters with desire for it just the same. I pretend to eat, and when the woman next to me empties her bowl, I replace it with my full one.

“Watch them carefully today,” says a guard who passes only a moment later. “They’re decreasing the sedative. The ones we’re looking for will be the first to wake.”

The ones they’re looking for. I know this means I need to be careful, even though it’s not me they’re after, but I can’t. Fighting my desire for the gruel and that noise overhead, that noise that never goes away, has exhausted me. My eyes close, despite my best intentions, and remain so until I feel Henri’s palm on my forehead. My eyes flicker open to find that I’m in our bed, the curtains drawn but sunlight sliding through the cracks around them.

I want to ask him why this is happening. I want to ask him if I’m being punished for my sister’s death. Or perhaps just the hundreds of times I used time travel to get myself ahead—to finish a paper I’d forgotten, to learn something I didn’t know would be on the test, or when I needed tuition money,

All because of time travel, I want to tell him. My mother was right. Don’t let us make this journey.

But the words never come. A sentence in my head becomes only a gasp, a single syllable, as it exits my mouth.

Doctor Nadeau leans over me, his brow furrowed. “She’s been poisoned,” he concludes. “I’ll give her castor oil to bring it back up.”

Henri stiffens. “Poisoned? How?”

“Mushrooms, juniper berries, even too many apple cores maybe,” says Doctor Nadeau. “She’s American, yes? Perhaps it’s not common knowledge there.”

I’ve never seen Henri look as desperate as he does right now. He knows something else is going on—he just has no idea what it is.

Help me, I think, and his hands go to the sides of my face.

“Tell me what you need,” he begs, as if he’s heard my words. “Tell me what to do.”

The shrieking catches my attention and pulls me away before I can answer, if I was even capable of answering. My eyes open to find I’m back in the cafeteria and being pushed toward the door. What just happened? Was I hallucinating, or was I—sort of—in two places at once?

There’s a faint taste of castor oil in my mouth, but it’s not until my stomach starts churning in response to it that I have my answer. I was, somehow, in two places simultaneously. I have no idea how it’s possible, and I don’t know why that shrieking noise doesn’t entirely keep me in place. At this exact moment, I wish it would, though. We enter the hall and the first wave of nausea hits. I walk faster, but the women shuffle so slowly I can’t go anywhere. When we turn a corner I vomit, letting it fall in a trail to my right as I walk.

“Which of you stupid whores threw up?” shouts a guard behind me. I hear a thwack and someone falls, suffering a punishment that should have been mine. I continue walking, despite the nausea, despite the guilt, as if my life depends on it—which it probably does.

We are pushed into a large room which holds chairs and nothing more. Some of the women sit, and some wander, muttering to themselves, lost in a dream world. Right now, as I stumble toward a chair as far from the guards as possible, I wish I was in a dream world too. Even if it’s only in my head, a dream of Henri is better than this, with my stomach rolling, sweat dripping into my eyes.

I’m going to be sick again. I drag in air, begging myself, begging the universe for help. Please. Not here. Not now. It comes up anyway, but the guards aren’t looking at me. Instead, they stare intently at a woman closer to them who is fading in and out—the same thing Henri insisted he saw me do.

“Did you see that?” one asks. “Kick her and see if she’s awake. Just don’t kick her in the stomach.”

The other grunts. “I’ll kick her wherever I please. There’s no hidden child nowhere to be found with this lot.”