Krystal had stayed for another hour after I wept into her hands. She took it as my assent to go live with her, and maybe it was. She patted my back as I cried. I had been wrong about everything.

When the time came for her to leave, we both stood. I hugged her goodbye. She squeezed my hands, promising that she would be back, that all would be made right. She would talk to the doctors. I would go home with her, and I could see her new house, her new life. We would start our new lives together. Her face was shining, hopeful. She looked like a real person now, the one I might have become had I gone a different way. The way I wanted to remember her.

When dinner was served I sat at my table quietly. I took in my surroundings. The sun was low in the sky, nearing the golden hour. People moved and talked around me, and I felt the river of time pull at me once more. I thought of Krystal and my father, my mother, of Hernan. Of Geannie and of Jim. Of Rita. They were all there with me. I closed my eyes. I had reached my destination.

Now there’s only a short way to go. A hallway with one door at the end. And if I try, I can see the room on the other side, the version of Bonnie Lincoln that waits there. It is my future and my past; it has already happened and will happen again. I move toward it slowly, wanting to reach it before it shuts forever.

On the other side, in my room, in a state of neurotic agitation, I wait for sunset. I turn onto my side and gather Ray’s teddy bear into my arms, his final animal gift. In front of me, the window glows. Behind me, footsteps in the hallway are fading, fading.

From the belly of the bear I extract the screen with shaking hands, and I make sure the earplugs are firmly in place. I press Play. When the music hits I grunt-snort to myself, breathing through my mouth. Outside, the last of the sun sinks into the sea.

My dearest friends walk across the screen and I see all the dead alive again, in all the old places in the old days, all the sleepless, grieving nights and sad, angry hours erased. Inside their rooms my existence is cradled, its rough corners sanded down into one fond longing. Everyone looks so young and happy, good people on the brink of good things, and I recall being born again within each of them, unaware of any past or future, borrowing their freedom, their open arms. Such beautiful, deathless characters!

Was I not them for a time? Did they not live in me still?

Darkness falls. The room, and the past, and the pain, recede. I shut my eyes. One episode ends its journey and another begins, and in my chest my living heart beats. I dream.