The Chronos Effect
Chapter Eleven: After the Storm
They kept Amy in the hospital for three days. Observation, they called it, though I think they were as surprised as anyone that she'd survived a truck crashing through our bedroom wall with nothing more than a concussion and some bruised ribs.
I got discharged after twenty-four hours with stitches in my forehead and a prescription for pain medication I didn't plan to take. Everything hurt, but it was the good kind of hurt. The kind that meant I was alive to feel it.
"You look like hell," Amy said when I walked back into her room with coffee from the vending machine.
"You should see the other guy."
"I did. Marcus showed me the photos of our apartment." She shook her head, wincing slightly at the movement. "How are we even alive?"
I sat down in the plastic chair beside her bed, the same kind of chair I'd sat in while waiting to hear if she'd make it through surgery in another timeline. "Lucky, I guess."
"Lucky." She laughed, but it turned into a cough. "A drunk driver crashes through our bedroom wall and we're lucky."
"We're alive. Our baby's alive. That feels pretty lucky to me."
Amy's hand moved instinctively to her still-flat stomach. We'd been having this conversation in fragments for two days now, circling around the reality of it like cats around a new piece of furniture.
"Are you okay with it?" she asked. "Really okay?"
"With what?"
"All of it. The baby, the timing, the fact that our apartment is currently uninhabitable and we're probably going to be living with my parents for the next month while we figure out insurance and find a new place."
I reached over and took her hand. "Amy, three days ago I thought I was going to lose you. Everything else is just... details."
"Details." She squeezed my fingers. "Our entire life being turned upside down is details."
"Our life was already turned upside down. We just didn't know it yet."
She studied my face with the intensity she usually reserved for patient charts. "You're different."
"Different how?"
"Calmer. Like you've been expecting this or something."
If only she knew. "Maybe I have been."
"Expecting a truck to crash through our bedroom?"
"Expecting things to change. Expecting to have to figure out how to be brave when everything I thought I knew got turned upside down."
Amy was quiet for a moment, processing this. "Is that what this is? Being brave?"
"I think so. Either that or I'm in shock and the reality hasn't hit me yet."
"Well, the reality is that we're having a baby, our apartment is destroyed, and I'm probably going to lose my mind trying to plan a wedding and figure out where to live and deal with morning sickness all at the same time."
"Who said anything about a wedding?"
Amy froze. "I just... I assumed... I mean, we've been talking about it for months, and now with the baby..."
I stood up and walked to the window, looking out at the parking lot where normal people were living normal lives, probably unaware that reality had almost collapsed a few days ago.
"Amy, can I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"Do you want to marry me because you love me, or because you're pregnant?"
"That's not fair."
I turned around to face her. "It's a fair question."
"Fine. Both. I want to marry you because I love you, and I want our baby to have married parents."
"And if we weren't having a baby?"
"Then I'd still want to marry you, just maybe not quite so urgently." She crossed her arms, defensive now. "Why are you asking me this?"
"Because I want to make sure we're making decisions for the right reasons."
"What's the wrong reason?"
I sat back down, choosing my words carefully. "Fear. Obligation. Because it's what people expect us to do."
"And what's the right reason?"
"Because we can't imagine doing this with anyone else. Because even after a truck crashes through our bedroom, the first thing I think about is how grateful I am that you're okay. Because when you told me you were pregnant, my first thought wasn't 'oh shit,' it was 'of course.'"
Amy's expression softened. "Of course?"
"Of course we're having a baby. Of course our life is changing in ways we can't control. Of course we're going to figure it out together."
"You really felt that? When I told you?"
"I felt like everything finally made sense."
She was crying now, tears streaming down her face. "God, I love you."
"I love you too."
"But I still think we should get married."
"Me too. Just not because we have to."
"Because we want to."
"Because we choose to. Every day. For the rest of our lives."
Amy wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Are you asking me to marry you right now? In a hospital bed while I look like I got hit by a truck?"
"Would you say yes if I were?"
"Are you kidding? I'd say yes if you asked me in the middle of a hurricane."
"Good to know." I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small velvet box. "Because I bought this three months ago and I've been carrying it around ever since, waiting for the right moment."
Amy stared at the box like it might explode. "You're kidding."
"I'm not kidding."
"You've been carrying around an engagement ring for three months?"
"I kept waiting for the perfect moment. Perfect dinner, perfect sunset, perfect everything." I opened the box, revealing the simple solitaire I'd picked out after weeks of research. "Turns out the perfect moment is right now. In this hospital room. After we almost died. While you're crying and I'm covered in bandages."
"Damian..."
"Amy Chen, will you marry me? Not because you're pregnant, not because our apartment got demolished, not because it's what people expect. But because I love you more than I thought it was possible to love another human being."
"Yes."
"Yes?"
"Yes, you idiot. Of course yes."
I slipped the ring onto her finger, my hands shaking slightly. It fit perfectly, catching the fluorescent hospital light and throwing tiny rainbows across the white sheets.
"It's beautiful," Amy said, holding her hand up to admire it.
"You like it?"
"I love it. But more importantly, I love you."
We sat there for a while, Amy admiring her ring while I tried to process the fact that I was engaged. That in a few months, I'd be a husband and a father. That somehow, by choosing to let go instead of holding on, I'd ended up with everything I'd ever wanted.
A knock on the door interrupted my thoughts. Dr. Martinez, Amy's attending physician, poked her head in.
"Sorry to interrupt, but I have your discharge paperwork."
"Finally," Amy said. "I was starting to think you were going to keep me here forever."
"Well, your latest scans look good, and the baby seems completely unaffected by the trauma." Dr. Martinez smiled. "You're one lucky family."
"That's what everyone keeps saying."
After Dr. Martinez left, Amy started gathering her things—the few belongings that had survived the crash and made it to the hospital.
"So what now?" she asked. "Where do we go from here?"
"Literally? Your parents' house until we figure out insurance and find a new place."
"And metaphorically?"
I thought about that. A week ago, I'd been a graduate student obsessed with quantum mechanics and theoretical physics. Now I was an engaged man about to become a father, someone who'd discovered that sometimes the most profound changes come not from action but from acceptance.
"Metaphorically, I think we take it one day at a time. Plan the wedding, prepare for the baby, try to be the kind of people our kid can be proud of."
"Think we can do that?"
"I think we can do anything."
Amy's parents arrived an hour later to drive us home. Mrs. Chen cried when she saw Amy walking under her own power, and Mr. Chen shook my hand with the intensity of someone who understood how close he'd come to losing his daughter.
"We set up Amy's old room for you both," Mrs. Chen said as we drove through the French Quarter. "I know it's not ideal, but—"
"Mom, it's perfect," Amy said. "We're just grateful to have somewhere to go."
"What about your thesis defense?" Mr. Chen asked me. "Isn't that coming up soon?"
I'd completely forgotten about my defense, scheduled for the following week. In all the chaos of hospitals and insurance adjusters and figuring out our immediate future, academic deadlines had seemed suddenly unimportant.
"I'll probably have to postpone it."
"Why?" Amy asked.
"Because we have more important things to deal with right now."
"Like what?"
"Like finding a place to live. Like making sure you're okay. Like figuring out what we need for the baby."
Amy turned in her seat to look at me. "Damian, your PhD is important too."
"Not as important as you. As our family."
"They're both important. You've worked too hard to postpone now just because our life got complicated."
"Our life got more than complicated. Our life got demolished by a drunk driver."
"And we survived. And now we move forward." Amy reached over and took my hand. "You defend your thesis next week, like we planned. I'll be there in the front row, cheering you on."
"You'll be recovering."
"I'll be recovered enough to watch my fiancé become Dr. Torres."
Mrs. Chen glanced at us in the rearview mirror. "Fiancé?"
Amy held up her hand, showing off her engagement ring. "He proposed this morning."
"In the hospital?" Mr. Chen asked.
"Best proposal ever," Amy said, grinning at me.
Mrs. Chen pulled the car over and turned around to look at us properly. "Are you serious? You're engaged?"
"We're engaged," I confirmed.
She started crying again. "Oh, honey. After everything that's happened... this is wonderful news."
"Mom, you're going to make me cry again."
"Let me see the ring."
Amy extended her hand for inspection. Mrs. Chen examined the ring with the intensity of a jewelry appraiser, while Mr. Chen watched in the rearview mirror with barely concealed amusement.
"It's perfect," Mrs. Chen announced finally. "Absolutely perfect."
"I'm glad you approve," I said.
"We more than approve," Mr. Chen said. "We're thrilled. Welcome to the family, son."
The rest of the drive passed in a blur of wedding planning and baby talk. Mrs. Chen had already started making lists in her head—venues to call, doctors to schedule appointments with, cribs to research. The woman could plan a military campaign if she set her mind to it.
Amy's childhood bedroom was exactly as I remembered it from the few times I'd visited—twin bed with a pink comforter, posters of boy bands she'd outgrown years ago, shelves lined with medical textbooks and romance novels in equal measure.
"This is going to be interesting," Amy said, looking at the narrow bed.
"We'll make it work."
"For how long?"
"However long it takes."
Amy sat down on the edge of the bed, suddenly looking exhausted. The last three days had taken more out of her than she'd let on.
"Hey," I said, sitting beside her. "You okay?"
"Just tired. And a little overwhelmed."
"By what?"
"All of it. The engagement, the baby, living with my parents again." She leaned against my shoulder. "Three days ago we were just Damian and Amy. Now we're an engaged couple expecting our first child, living in my childhood bedroom while we rebuild our entire life from scratch."
"Is that bad?"
"No, it's not bad. It's just... a lot."
I wrapped my arm around her, careful of her still-tender ribs. "We don't have to figure everything out today."
"I know. It's just hard to turn off my brain when there's so much to think about."
"Want to know a secret?"
"Always."
"I've been thinking about marrying you since our second date."
Amy pulled back to look at me. "Our second date? Really?"
"You remember what we did on our second date?"
"We went to that terrible movie with the zombies, and you spent the whole time making fun of the plot holes."
"And you spent the whole time laughing at my jokes, even the bad ones."
"They were all bad jokes."
"That's when I knew. Anyone who could laugh at my terrible zombie movie commentary was someone I wanted to spend the rest of my life with."
Amy kissed me softly. "For the record, I knew on our first date."
"Really?"
"You were so nervous you knocked over that candle, remember? And instead of being embarrassed, you just started explaining the physics of fire spread while you cleaned up the wax."
"That's when you knew you wanted to marry me? When I gave you an impromptu physics lecture?"
"That's when I knew you were different. That's when I knew you were going to matter."
I held her closer, breathing in the familiar scent of her hair. In a few months, this room would be too small for all of us—me, Amy, and the baby who would change everything again. We'd find a new apartment, probably bigger than our old one. We'd get married, maybe in Mrs. Chen's backyard or maybe at that little chapel Amy had always liked. We'd become parents, probably terrified and wonderful parents who made mistakes and figured things out as we went.
But for now, this was enough. This narrow bed in this childhood room, holding each other while the world rebuilt itself around us.
"Damian?"
"Yeah?"
"When you defend your thesis next week, can you dedicate it to someone?"
"I think so. Why?"
"Dedicate it to our baby. To the future we're building together."
I smiled against her hair. "I think that's perfect."
"Good. Because Dr. Torres has a nice ring to it."
"Not as nice as Mrs. Torres."
"We'll see about that."
Outside, I could hear Mrs. Chen in the kitchen, probably already planning dinner for her newly engaged daughter and future son-in-law. Mr. Chen was mowing the lawn, the sound of the mower a comforting background hum that spoke of normal life continuing despite everything that had changed.
In a few days, I'd defend my thesis and officially become Dr. Torres. In a few weeks, we'd find a new apartment and start building a new life. In a few months, we'd get married and become a family of three.
But right now, Amy was falling asleep in my arms in her childhood bedroom, our baby growing safely inside her, both of us alive and whole and ready for whatever came next.
And for the first time since this whole nightmare began, I wasn't afraid of tomorrow.
I was excited about it.