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Back 3 a.m.
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  67. 3:46 a.m.

It whirs to life.

“Okay,” Ewen says. “Here we go.”

I whisper to myself. “Goodbye, Henry Bins.”

::::

I open my eyes.

Shapes and sounds swirl around me.

Something hovers over me. Something touches me.

“Henry.”

This sound means nothing to me.

“Henry.”

What is going on?

Where am I?

“Henry?”

The creator of the sound shakes me.

“He doesn’t recognize you,” a voice says.

“We have to get him back to the house,” says another.

I’m moving.

Upward.

I blink my eyes.

Look down.

Look at the two figures holding me up.

Touching me.

“Do you know who we are?” one of them asks.

I move my head up and down.

I do know.

“Yes,” I say.

Ingrid and my father gasp.

My brain feels foggy. The thirty seconds I spent in the machine the previous night must have jumbled up my short-term memory.

Slowly, the events of twenty-four hours begin coming back.

Lying in the machine.

The loud whirring.

Running through all my memories, knowing they would be gone in the next few minutes. My dad teaching me how to leg wrestle. My dad teaching me to drive, then taking me to the McDonald’s all-night drive-through. Playing poker with my dad every Wednesday for nine years. The first time I woke up with Lassie on my chest. Tickling him. Rushing him to the vet. Him licking my nose and telling me I was his bestie. Playing with Murdock when he was just a puppy. Murdock stealing and eating an entire Thanksgiving turkey out of my dad’s fridge. Ingrid. The first time I laid eyes on her. Our first kiss. The first time my eyes soaked up her deliciously naked body.

I couldn’t let these memories go.

No matter what price.

I jumped out of the machine.

“What are you doing?” Ewen roared.

“I am exactly who I’m supposed to be,” I said.

“No, get back in there. We need to see if this works.”

“I’m not an experiment,” I said, then smashed my fist into his face.

I grabbed the gun and pointed it at him.

“Go lie down in the machine,” I ordered.

“No way.”

I pulled the trigger sending a bullet zipping past his head.

“I’m not gonna ask again.”

He backpedaled, then laid down in the machine.

I pointed the gun at him for the next seven minutes, waiting for him to move.

At 3:59 a.m. I made my way into the hallway and laid down, exactly where Ingrid and my father had found me just minutes earlier.

“I didn’t go through with it,” I tell them.

“Thank God,” my dad says, then pulls me into a long hug.

“No matter how many hours it would have added to my life, it wasn’t worth losing the memories of the people I love.”

The three of us hold each other tight for a long minute.