But Kyungsoo made it look so easy.

That was all Lana could think as the bus spun out of control, slamming into a wall with a deafening bang. She heard glass shatter and the crunch of metal as it grinded against the concrete barrier, but when the vehicle jolted to a stop, nothing inside the bus seemed to have changed. As the smoke settled, it took the teenager a minute to collect herself. Though she had been thrown into the steering wheel and would likely have a bruise for weeks to come, she hadn’t been pulverized in the impact as she would have expected. And peering up at the windshield, which she had definitely heard shatter to pieces, she realized it too was intact. Kyungsoo obviously wasn’t lying when he said the interior of the bus was kept in a suspended state.

Lana hopped up from the driver’s seat, hurrying to the twin bed where her friend lay unconscious, the wound on his arm still oozing blood. After dropping by a saloon somewhere in the Wild West, the stupid kid had gotten himself into a duel with a drunken cowboy who just couldn’t keep his hands off of Lana. He was lucky the man was so inebriated he could hardly walk two steps, let alone fire a gun in the right direction. The bullet had barely grazed Kyungsoo’s bicep, but the damage was bad enough that he had fainted at the sight of his own blood as soon as the two hopped aboard the bus. Naturally, the crazy cowboy was still running after them, tripping over his own feet every step of the way, so Lana was forced to take the wheel.

And thanks to her lack of experience driving antique time-machine school buses with complicated dashboard consoles from a hundred years in the future, the two had ended up crashing headfirst into the wall of a hospital basement’s parking garage somewhere in 2016.

Lana kicked at the boy’s foot, urging him to come to. She jostled him, but he refused to stir. Groaning, she demanded, “I’m going to get some gauze and a first aid kit. Stay put.” He was still out cold, but she needed someone to snap at.

She quickly ripped the case off of a pillow and fashioned it into a tourniquet, tying it taut around his arm before hurrying to the back of the bus for the Clothesatron 10K. Lana wasn’t exactly used to operating machinery from thousands of years in the future, but it wasn’t too hard to figure the console out, and soon enough, she was spat out in a brand-new pair of nurse scrubs. The getup would have to do for sneaking inside the hospital to borrow a few medical supplies. If Kyungsoo were awake, he would undoubtedly have a forged keycard to swipe, but Lana would have to find other methods. She hopped off of the bus and scurried to the garage elevator, promptly boarding it and rising to the first vacated floor she could find. The doors slid open on the fourth floor, and she peeked out of the lift, finding no one in the hall on either side.

Perfect.

She hurried off of the elevator and scanned the hallway, eyes easily landing on a door propped open. The light inside was off, but from a distance it looked like it was filled with shelves full of medical supplies. Lana slipped into the storeroom and shut the door before hastily rummaging through the assorted boxes, making a mental checklist of the supplies she needed for Kyungsoo. Medical gauze, maybe antibiotics of some sort—

“Oh, there you are!” a voice burst out, interrupting Lana mid-thought. “I’ve been looking all over for you!”

The teenager whirled around, a look of horror spread across her face, having not even heard the door open. She was face to face with a similarly garbed woman who was beaming ear to ear.

“You’re the new intern, right?” the lady nudged, extending a hand for Lana to shake. The teen took it hesitantly, and the woman refused to release grip even as she continued, “What perfect timing! I was just grabbing some ultrasound gel for my next appointment. You should come observe!”

Lana parted her lips to object, but before she could utter a sound, the mortified girl was already being dragged out of the closet and down the hall. She could do nothing but follow in terror as she listened to the sonographer babble on and on, “The patient is eighteen weeks along today. She’s so sweet and can’t wait to find out if she’s having a little boy ‘just like his daddy.’ Such a shame the father doesn’t seem very interested. He didn’t even show up to the first ultrasound, so he hasn’t seen the baby yet.”

Lana scoffed inwardly. The uncaring father scenario rang a few too many bells, and no sooner had she turned the corner into the room than she realized there was a very, very good reason for that. Stretched out on the exam bed was the teen’s visibly pregnant, twenty-year-old mother, and seated nearby was Kris, uninterestedly thumbing through who knows what on his cell phone.

Lana couldn’t spin around fast enough. Faster than a speeding bullet, she pulled the facemask over , desperately trying to hide herself as much as possible. Although logically there was no way the young parents-to-be would recognize someone who didn’t even exist yet, she still had to be careful to avoid being remembered in the future.

Taking a deep breath, she turned back around to face the couple. The ultrasound technician was already in the middle of spreading the goop onto Yunee’s inflated belly, which a little, tiny Lana was undoubtedly swimming around inside. Kris continued to ignore the goingson, not glancing up from the phone for even a second as the sonographer began the exam, chattering away with young Yunee, who was clearly expecting a boy by the way she continuously called the baby “Kris Jr.”

Normally, Lana would have laughed knowing the rude awakening her mother was in for. But she couldn’t anymore. In her urgency to get first aid for Kyungsoo, she had almost forgotten about the dark cloud that had been looming overhead for the past week. The woman she was looking at would be dead in a matter of months, and there was still nothing she could do to stop it. She tried to ignore the sinking feeling in her chest as the tech announced, “Congratulations! It looks like you’re having a girl!”

In an instant, Yunee’s face dropped abysmally, the wide beam on her lips replaced by a look of confusion and distress. “But he’s a boy!” she whined, grabbing her husband’s forearm and shaking it roughly. “Kris, he’s a boy, right? Tell me he’s a boy.”

Only at Yunee’s insistence did Kris finally look up. He set the phone down on his lap and straightened up, leaning forward to take a look at the monitor with a bored expression. The image was fuzzy and unclear, but a growing baby was definitely visible within. The father-to-be gazed for a long moment, eyes suddenly transfixed on the unborn child as his wife continued to jostle his arm. He hardly even seemed to notice anymore. Without chancing even a short glance away from the screen, he mumbled unsurely, “That’s my daughter?”

Realizing she was being ignored, Yunee promptly pouted. The sonographer just giggled and answered, “Yep, and she’s still tiny enough to fit into one of Dad’s hands! Isn’t she cute?”

Kris peeled his eyes from the monitor only to look down at his hand, staring intently at it. And then, before Lana even realized what was happening, he had broken into tears. Everything seemed to have changed in a heartbeat, and even though he was crying, he looked so happy—happier than Lana could ever remember. She wanted to hug him, to wipe his tears and apologize for all the trouble she had caused, for doubting his love for both his daughter and his wife, and for being so insensitive toward Mom. But she couldn’t do anything but stand frozen in place, blinking back tears as she watched helplessly.

When the technician realized he was crying, she smiled and set the transducer down. “We’ll give you two a minute alone,” she said, motioning for the teen to follow. As Lana trailed the woman out of the room, she couldn’t help but sneak one last look back behind as Yunee took Kris into her arms to comfort him.

It wasn’t until she was back in the hallway that she remembered why she had come into the hospital in the first place. Suddenly recalling the urgent mission from before, she quickly excused herself to the bathroom and darted back down the hall, aiming for the storeroom. After gathering the first aid supplies, she hurried back to the elevator and descended to the garage.

When she boarded the bus, Kyungsoo had already awoken and was now clinging tightly to the pillowcase wrapped around his bicep. Lana greeted him and immediately set to work cleaning the wound and binding it taut with gauze. He silently watched as she did so, only prodding once she was finished, “Hey, what’s wrong?”

Lana bit her lip, not having realized that the emotions were still all over her face. Sighing, she decided it was better to tell Kyungsoo what had happened inside the hospital than to hold it all in. And so she told him everything, all about her mother and her father and the way he cried when he saw his unborn daughter for the first time. It wasn’t until she had finished that she realized she had finally broken into tears.

“I think,” she whispered, “it’s time for me to go home. I should be with my parents.”

Taken aback, Kyungsoo widened his eyes. But before he could even say a word, something incredibly unexpected happened. There was a crack of thunder, and the bus teleported out of 2016 all by itself.

Author's Note
Blaaarrrggghhh...