The Last Time We Met

25

James, you are not sad or afraid. You are in control. You are leaving this life, returning to the current place and time.

"James," Cosima Blue's voice hit me loudly. "I will now count from one to ten. As I count, you will begin to feel more aware and alert and in control. One... Feel the surfaces that safely support you and allow them to ground you... Two. Focus on your breathing. Three. Begin to reacquaint yourself with your body, wiggling your fingers and toes..."

Cosima counted me back up, even though a cold dagger of panic made it hard to catch a full breath.

By the time she said, "Ten," I had climbed up out of the cloud of smoke and could breathe, even if my heart tripped along painfully.

"Breathe, James. I pulled you out as soon as I noticed you were starting to panic. Can you tell me what you experienced?"

I blinked my eyes open and tried to focus on her. Focus on being in the present. "Uh, it was bad," I said.

She raised her drawn-on eyebrows slightly. "Can you be more specific?"

"I was... like, a neanderthal woman. No, not neanderthal. A cave woman? I don't know. It was a really long time ago." Cosima nodded me along. "And my love—" I choked off on that word. "Uh, he was basically my husband, but that word didn't exist. And he died of some plague that made him bleed out of his mouth. And then the people in the village took his body and threw it into a hut with all the other dead bodies, and they thought I had something to do with the plague, and they threw me in there with him, and they burned the hut. And that was how I died."

"Take a breath, James. Remember, those events happened in the past, and they are not happening right now, okay? No one is going to kill you. Your boyfriend is still very much alive. Yes?"

"Yes." I was breathing easier that that point. I nodded and looked at her. "So what does this mean?"

"Well, generally past life regressions are less... traumatic than all that. Which makes it all clearer that your past lives have left you with a deep-seated fear of disease. You fear what disease will take from you, to the point where you have now forgotten the love that came before it."

Cosima said more, but I had stopped listening. In the life I had just visited, I had a vague impression that there had been a disease that ravaged the village where I had grown up, that caused my family to move away. The men thought I had caused both diseases. They were backward and superstitious, but what if they were right? I could have been a neanderthal Typhoid Mary.

I could be a modern-day Typhoid Mary.

The news kept warning about people being asymptomatic. Cedric thought that meant COVID wasn't something young people like us needed to worry about, but asymptomatic could also mean a carrier, moving through the world and killing off everyone in a six-foot radius.

My breath caught, thinking about hugging Cedric the other night.

"I'd love to do more sessions with you, James. This is a very unique situation, with your youth and your clear memories of the past. What do you think?"

I snapped out of my panic and closed my gaping mouth. "Uh, I need to think about it."

"Of course, of course. Please, feel free to reach out to me if you remember anything more. I'm going to email you a list of books and websites I think would be helpful to you."

Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to end this call. "Great, thanks." She tried to say something more, but I cut her off. "I have to go. Thanks so much! This was really helpful."