Three of a Perfect Pair
Dr. Sherwood Wolf-Palmarium

A coma is a funny thing.
Well, not in the American primetime sitcom sort of ha-ha funny way. It's more of an hmmm…that's weird, 'where did I put my car keys' sort of way.
	But my situation seems to be a synthesis of the two.
	"Oh, Mr. Cazalet, you're awake" someone says. It's a woman, a nurse. 
	For the uninitiated, a coma is a deep sleep that is past waking voluntarily. No amount of light or pain can stir the comatose. The patient achieves a profound state of unconsciousness. Sort of like watching TV, but without the commercial break. A transcendent and cerebral HBO.
	"According to this, you've been out since September 8th, 2007. Two days short of fifty years."
I'm not really sure if I heard correctly, but I think she just said fifty. 
"There's a letter here, want me to read it to you? It says," why did she even ask if she was going to do it anyways? If she wasn't so cute, I'd be pretty frustrated with her right now. "Dear Parker, things are probably pretty strange for you right now, eh kiddo?" The nurse continues. "Well, your brother Caden is the one to thank for this boner. He was imitating that wrestling show that he loves and hit you in the head. With a frozen loaf of bread. He was pretending it was a steel chair or something silly like that."
	Most comas last a week or two, maybe a month depending on the cause. 
For me, it was about 50 years and a frozen loaf of bread caused it. 
Once again, carbs is the enemy.
Cue the laugh track.
"The hospital is going to call us as soon as you wake so don't you worry. We love you and have been praying for you the whole time you were out. Awww…" She has a pretty smile. "Try not to be too mad at your brother when you see him. See you real soon. Love, Mom. I'll go call your mother." And the nurse leaves the room.
On the other side of this funny dichotomy – the weird funny bit – I lost fifty years of my life.
One moment, I was just your average ordinary hungry teenager fixing a sandwich, the next I'm a senior citizen. 
Wake up! It's the year 2057 and you are 68 years young. I totally slept in. Jeez, I am a prize idiot. 
Thanks to my brother Caden, Wonder bread and the sport of professional wrestling, I am never going to have a family of my own. Goodbye to a wife and children. Trade the house for the old age home. The textbooks for the golf clubs and a nice pair of slacks. A quantum leap from frosh to fogy.  From complaining about homework to young whippersnappers. 
Oh gosh, how many times did I hit that snooze button?
From going to bed at night, wondering if tomorrow will be the day that I lose my virginity to wondering if I'll see tomorrow period.
Yeah, you get the picture. 
This really makes me wish that I had done more with eighteen years, spent less time on the couch. Oh well. 
I suppose there's a lesson to learn from all of this. I'm not going to live by "carpe diem", or seize the day, but rather a related quote: "memento mori", or remember that you will die. I feel the latter is more appropriate since I'm now over the hill. From now on, I should make the most of what I have. I may be a lot older, but I still have a life to live. 
I would start now, but there seems to be a problem with my legs. And arms. And neck. I can't move. I guess I was just meant to be a vegetable. My destiny is to watch T.V. – how comforting. 
"I called the number here, but the message said it's not in service. I doubt you'd have any idea where we can reach your family?" 
I try to talk, but all that comes out of my mouth is phlegm and some scratchy noises. This leads to a lot of coughing. Until I finally get out, "I" cough "can't" cough "move" cough.
"Oh that. Right. Well you see, since you haven't moved in about half a century, your nerves are a bit of a mess. I've had to administer shots to your body everyday since I started working here so that you wouldn't deteriorate into a bag of goo." And she laughs her adorable laugh.
Still coughing, I squeak out, "thanks."
"You may not realize it but I've told you all of my deepest and darkest secrets. You were just so peaceful and you looked like you'd be a good listener so I couldn't help myself. Yah, talking to you became the highlight of my day. That and the sponge baths." 
Is this what it's like when a girl hits on you? I'm pretty sure she is hitting on me, but I don't think I've ever experienced it before. This must be what the kids call flirting.
"Want a tour?" She asks, presenting a wheelchair. "I'm sure you have a bunch of questions. After all, you did miss quite a bit." 
She pulls back the bed sheets and drags my lifeless frame to the edge of the bed, wheelchair parked nearby. 
I suppose that was a rhetorical question, much like all the others that she has posed.
"One…two…three" and she lifts my limp body off the bed and into the wheelchair. 
My hospital gown catches on the armrest of the wheelchair and I'm totally exposed. I start coughing out of panic. She has a clear view of my junk and my arms don't work so I can't cover myself. 
She laughs. 
I have to admit, not the reaction I was hoping for. I kind of wished that the first time I was naked in front a girl, that I would garner a remark of awe and that it would be under different circumstances. 
Second life lesson learned today: beggars can't be choosers. 
"Don't worry, I've seen that before." She says, winks, and covers me up. "Plenty of times."
Standing in front of me, she cheerfully says, "I'm Audrey and I'll be your tour guide today. Are you ready for a good time?"
I cough.
"I'll take that as a yes," she says as she moves behind me, my wheelchair begins to move and the tour begins.

(end of part one)
	It's not that the life I left behind was fun at all. Actually, I hated it. And it's not like the life I missed out on would've been all that special or extraordinary either, but I feel as though it would have at least shaped me into a better person. Well, aren't conflicts supposed to teach you stuff? I doubt that I'm as patient as the other 68 year olds who have had to put up with years of being married, raising children, television reruns and the government making bad decisions – all that jazz.
	Apparently, the United States underwent a second civil war. And the South won this time. The North was not happy with losing to what they supposedly called "a bunch of backwards, simpleton extremists who are fuelled by a narrow-sighted and misinformed love of Christ."
	Well, at least that's what Audrey said in cutest and most enthusiastic voice possible as we pass this creepy, digital advertisement of a weight loss product. The ad is a project image and from far away, I would've guessed that this was a real human being in a swimsuit in the middle of the city magically losing and gaining weight every 30 seconds.
	The civil war started in 2030 when the President was assassinated. His name was Robert Dorey and he was the first homosexual leader of this great nation of ours. Well, first one out of the closet. I'm pretty sure that President Clinton was up for any kind of party, regardless of gender. 
The crime was linked back to this evangelical group in Topeka, Kansas and what came after that was a "massive anti-Christian backlash" which split the country in half. The war ended in 2042 and it's only now that everyone is just starting to get used to the after effects – like the new capital being in Atlanta, Georgia, for example. 
There's still the occasional extremist attack on places of science or churches, but before it gets out hand, the Government seems to quell the assaults.
Audrey, she's explaining all of this to me as she pushes me through the streets in a wheelchair. 
It's a little funny – weird funny – to me that despite all of the technological advancements and changes in society, the wheelchair has stayed relatively the same. Except the foam inside the armrests has been upgraded. The old stuff apparently gave you cancer. Speaking of which, cancer has not been cured. Nor have AIDS. Both have been made easier to live with through something called viral therapy.
The common cold, however, completely gone. Same as Parkinson's. And Alzheimer's. The same guy cured the first two. Dr. Maxwell Zippel. He's somewhat of a legend nowadays. She couldn’t remember the name of the guy who cured the memory affliction.
And she assured me that 68 really isn't all that old anymore. It's more like what 42 was like in the Era Vulgaris. That's what she calls my generation, just for the record. I don't get it. I think it's Latin or something.
Although this all happened pre-civil war sequel. Science is kind of taboo now what with all of the religion. Science and religion never really got along.
Audrey thought it was strange how my first question was about television and not why there are Confederate flags all over the place, despite this being in the New England region of the States. 
According to her, television is now distributed over the internet and the internet is now completely wireless which is now ubiquitous.
The tour came to an end upon the realization that I have nowhere to go. Nowhere to live. The hospital needs the bed and my family could be anywhere. I asked if there were any famous people with the last name Cazalet that I may be able to leech off of. She unfortunately said no, not that she knew of.  
"The only option that I can see short of just leaving you out in the cold would be…if you came to stay with me!"
I started to cough out of excitement. 
"Golly, it'll be tonnes of fun."
Hmm…all of the advancements, but the word "golly" is still around? 
The future is here and it is weird.
"…but, I'd have to see if Andy would be okay with that." She crossed her arms and thought for a moment, pressing her index finger against her chin. "I'm sure he wouldn't mind. I mean, you're no trouble at all and really quite a sweetheart." 
The word "sweetheart" danced out of her mouth like the finest poetry and floated gracefully to my ear. And then it hit my pants. Or would have, if I could feel my body at all.
I'm not sure if it's my new found old age or if it's my paralysis, but regardless of which it was, it just saved me a great deal of embarrassment. This hospital gown is not the most concealing piece of clothing. The type of embarrassment I was spared was the type that you only get when you have an erection in front of your entire high school Math class. The type of embarrassment that follows you around like a bad nickname. The kind where no girl wants to even be seen talking to you, let alone dare to go with you to Prom. 
Cue the sympathy track. 
"Who's Andy?"
"My husband. He's great. You'll love him. He's a scientist!"
Ah, lame. 

(end of part two)
	Audrey and the rest of the Graham family live in a salmon coloured house. Don't ask me how they live with such a colour.
	She and Andrew, whom I have yet to meet, had three kids. Err, two kids. Actually, technically, two point three children. Literally.
	There's Elliott who is twelve, loves reading, peace and quiet and looks just like Audrey. 
	There's Adele, who is ten, oh my mistake – ten and three quarters, cute as a button and is also a spitting image of Audrey.
	And then, then, there's um, Tierce. Who is two, I think. And would look just like Audrey if…he? She? 
It. 
It would look just like Audrey if it had a face. Or body. From what I can tell, Tierce is just a blob. Just a fleshy, faceless pile of stuff that is kept on this fancy, satin pillow. 
	Audrey wheeled me off to the side after meeting the family, "You're probably wondering about, um, Tierce." 
	"Yeah, a little."
	"Well, Tierce is just like any other kid. The pregnancy and childbirth felt normal and everything just seemed normal, same amount of pain as I had with Elliott and Adele and everything. Tierce just came out…different. Not normal."
	"Uh-huh."
	"Listen, Tierce is a functioning human being. He –"
	"Oh it's a he?"
	"Keep your voice down."
	"Why? Does it have super human hearing? I didn't see any ears –"
	"Parker, stop it! Please. I know it must be strange for you to accept this but Tierce is a human being, just like you and me. What do you expect Andrew and me to do? Kill him? He has all of the necessary organs. He just lacks a skeletal structure, eyes, and ears. That's all."
	"Okay, I'm sorry. It's just that between Tierce, losing fifty years of my life and you seeing me naked is a quite a bit to take in all at once, you know."
	Audrey smiles and brushes a lock of hair out of her face.
	"It's okay. It's not your fault. C'mon, I'll introduce you to Andrew." She says, pulling the wheelchair forward by way of my limp arm.
	"Honey, can you come up here a minute?" Audrey says into an intercom on the wall. She looks at me out of the corner of her eye, smiling, "We have a visitor."
	"I'll be up there in a second." The voice says through the speaker.
"Andrew locks himself in the basement for hours, doing God knows what down there. No one is allowed in the base—err, laboratory. He always corrects me. I did the same thing as a little girl. I had this tree house that I named the Magical, Mystical Mountain in the Sky and would always correct anyone who dared call it otherwise, so obviously I understand."
	I wouldn't care if this woman were the one responsible for my coma. I wouldn't care if she murdered my entire family in the most grisly and brutal way possible, explaining why the number was out of service. I wouldn't care if she were the one responsible for this supposedly awful second civil war. If she sabotaged Dr. Zippel from finding the cure to Parkinson's or that other guy with the Alzheimer's. If she was the one who created cancer in the first place. If she was the snake in the Garden of Eden.
	She'd still be adorable.
	I hear this 'bing' sound and a section of wall slides away. I suppose hidden elevators are standard practice in these modern houses. Behind the wall, there's this metallic door. It's a matter of seconds until that opens and I come face to face with who I now consider my rival. Right now, I'm curious as to what the man who won over this amazing woman looks like. He most likely has devilish good looks with a heavenly charm. Broad shoulders and a square jaw. An incredible sense of humour and not afraid to cry in front of others. Neat hair and an astute flair for fashion underneath his lab coat. And he's a scientist so you know he's a genius.
	The metallic door parts and out steps the antithesis to most of my expectations.
	Audrey rushes him, hugs, and kisses this man who is the same height and looks to have about the same muscle mass as she does. I guess she doesn't need to feel protected. With facial structure, stance and the fact that he's skinny makes him look a little feminine, actually.
	The two of us don't speak for a moment. Me staring him down, sizing him up. Him smiling politely.
	 Audrey and Andrew look shockingly similar. How narcissistic of them both.
	He extends his hand and sheepishly says, "I'm Andrew, nice to meet you."
	"I'm Parker. I would shake your hand, except I can't."
	"Honey, Parker has been in a coma for fifty years. He can't really move." Audrey explains.
	"Oh, I think I can fix that." Andrew says in such a low tone that it's almost a whisper. What a shy man. I suppose a quiet life of science does that to some people. Andrew turns and presses the button for the doors to open before moving behind me and wheeling the chair into the elevator.
	The doors close.
	"So, you're a scientist I hear."
	"Yes, I am."
	For a moment, we stew in awkwardness, staring at the LED number "1", waiting it to change to a "B". Honestly, if his wife wasn't Audrey, I could see us getting along. I'm just so baffled as to how this guy ended up with such a catch like Audrey. There must be something about human chemistry that I don't understand.
	"So, you do lots of experiments?"
	"Yes. Yes, I do. It's all I do."
	The 'bing' sound rings again and the doors open. Andrew rushes off the elevator to the middle of the floor and extends his arms towards the ceiling.
	"This is my laboratory!" He yells enthusiastically. 
	The doors close in front of me. I think in all his nerdy vigour, he forgot about the whole paralysis thing and how he's going to have to wheel me all over the place. 
	The doors open again, with Andrew standing there, making the same face Audrey made when my hospital gown caught on the wheelchair.
	"Gee, I'm sorry about that."
	'Gee'? This guy understands the reason stuff is the way it is; he conducts experiments of all sorts, but 'gee'? I stand by my previous 'golly' related sentiments: the future is strange.

(end of part three)
	I was wrong about Andrew.
	There's a reason for why he's quiet and shy. Why he's not everything that I envisioned, but more. Why he seemed a little feminine. Why we ended up getting along really well. How he successfully wooed Audrey. It was through him showing off to me with his experiments that this revelation came to me. It was out of an act of trust, of kindness, of a desperate need of friendship on both our parts.
	Andrew is Audrey.
	Or was.
It's kind of confusing.
Have to be honest here; I'm not really sure where to begin. 
When Audrey graduated from University, she had two possible paths. She could've been a nurse or she could've been a scientist. 
Originally, she chose the latter and science began to overwhelm her life. When she went to Graduate school, she lost her enthusiasm. She didn't see her friends all that much due to the heavy work load and they started to disappear. The same goes for a boyfriend – just no time. 
Audrey spent the next several years learning about quantum physics and mechanics and even won an award for her thesis paper on the "Many Worlds Interpretation". 
This was an interpretation, whose roots lie with Einstein's work, which claimed to have resolved all of the paradoxes of quantum theory by allowing every possible outcome to every event to define or exist in its own "history" or "world". Andrew explained as this: when a person comes to an important choice to make, times splits into two and continues its path in a linear fashion. Each time we come to a decision, there is another split.  Each of these decisions run on a separate "world line" playing each possibility out in real time, in 4-D.  
It was through this extensive research that Audrey discovered two things: one, time travel and two, because of all of her time devoted to quantum mechanics that her biological clock had completed its countdown. She could no longer have kids. It was now too late to start a family. 
When the preliminary tests for time travel had proven successful, she travelled back in time to the year before she had to make her profession choice between becoming a nurse and becoming a scientist. A time where she could still have a bun in her oven. 
And then she got a sex change and legally changed her name to Andrew. 
Andrew made this naïve version of himself fall in love with…himself. 
Audrey, young and enthusiastic, ready to start a life and become a nurse fell for all of her future-male-self's lines, of course. And they started a family.
With breakthroughs in male testosterone injections and pills, Andrew was able to create sperm, just in case you were wondering.
The only sign of inbreeding was Tierce, the way he turned out. And Elliott could very well be sterile, but as demonstrated by Andrew, there are clearly ways around that. 
Andrew did not explain how this time-travel worked, as it is seemingly too complex for me to handle without knowledge of mechanics and refused to demonstrate due to the high risk factor. But he assured me that he did it. 
And I believe him. 
Andrew is a family tree all by himself.
And Audrey doesn't know about this at all.
What he did show me, though, was these world lines. These alternate realities and their prolific histories. With transcending the world line, the traveler has access to that reality's "Akashic record book". The Akashic records are a recording of every single life event and therefore, everyone has contributed to this book in their lifetime. It was somewhat of a mystery to those in my generation, the Era Vulgaris, but was widely agreed by many to be a collection of mystical knowledge. 
This American psychic named Edgar Cayce claimed that when we died, before we got to Heaven, we were subjected to our own Akashic record before getting in. 
This man named Michel Desmarquet wrote a book called the Thiaoouba Prophecy, where he claims that he was abducted by some supreme alien beings who guide him through something called the Psychosphere, or the Akashic records. The author's understanding is that the Psychosphere is like a "vibratory cocoon, which turns at a speed seven times that of light. The contents of this cocoon are inaccessible to us on Earth - we have no way of 'reading the story'." 
These beliefs, in Andrew's eyes, are as silly as those primitives who once believed that the world was flat.
The Akashic records were only available to an esoteric society consisting of psychics and mystics.
Until now at least.
I'm not sure how well Einstein and Nostradamus are getting along in Heaven right now, because of what Audrey discovered.
Science has extended past psychic ability and made the Akashic records available to those with the ability to time travel, in this sort of meta-enhanced cinematic experience. 
We even had a remote control.
It's so much cooler than an IMAX theatre too.
At first, we looked at what the world would have been like if Hitler had won the Second World War. If the events of 9/11 did not take place. If President Dorey had not been executed.
I treated these almost as a warm up for what I really wanted to see.
What my life would have been like without the coma. 
I would have graduated University on time, as expected and without much difficulty. Nothing really radical took place in those four years though.  I didn't even get a girlfriend or anything. 
At least not until Grad school where I met this amazing girl with chestnut hair. She was perky, but not in the annoying way. She was so far out of my league it was ridiculous, but for some reason liked me. Loved me. And her name was Audrey. 
As in, my nurse Audrey. 
As in, mad scientist Andrew Audrey.
We would've fallen in love. I would've lost my virginity to her. And yes, that was played out in this alternate reality. I didn't even have to tell Andrew not to fast-forward through it. Well, there wasn't much to fast-forward through, actually. I thought 38 seconds was pretty good for my first time.
She worked as a nurse and I worked as an English Professor. We had four kids. Elliott, Clare, Gloria and Holden. We didn't make all that much, but we were happy. Really happy. And we would've died much earlier than we were supposed to. It would have been three years ago. 
It would have seemed like any other Wednesday, Audrey and I both working. But this day, I decided to cut class and I visited Audrey, bringing along flowers. A dozen white roses. At the nurses' station, I had her best friend and co-worker, Nicole, page her. I waited and joked around with Audrey's co-workers. Nicole kept paging repeatedly, but there was no sign or word from Audrey. She suggested that I go look in room 1337 as that's normally where she would be at this time of day, feeding the legless Mr. Halligan his lunch. Just for the record, I'm not that good with navigation. Nicole's directions were clear enough, but I seemed to be lost. I kept looking at the numbers on the door for direction – 1662, 1663, 1664 – I was nowhere near where I was told to go. It felt like I was wandering up and down the same hallway, carrying these flowers, worrying that they would die before I found Audrey. 
"Parker!" she called from behind me.
The light shone in behind her through a wall of windows, transforming her into a silhouette. Her pace didn't quicken at all, though it should've. Right as she passed room 1666, an enormous boom sounded off. This was soon followed by a wall of flames that engulfed us both, together, but about ten feet between us. 
It was an attack on the Hospital by the Southern militants in retaliation for a Northern attack on a church in Louisiana a month or so before. 
The world line ended there. 
Andrew was crying at the end of my alternate life mini-movie. And he looked at me with what I can only describe as love in his eyes. It was strange. I've never had a transsexual in love with me before. 
At least not that I know of.
But after seeing that, it makes me more in love with Audrey, not Andrew who was actually the version of Audrey that I would've been with in this alternate reality. No, this Audrey now. It's almost as if being with her is the only way I can make up for my missed opportunity. 
Make up for fifty years lost by a loaf of bread.
Cue applause.
(end)