"Jacob's Other World"

Jacob lay on the white bed, his eyes still closed. Sounds around him, hurried footsteps, beeping machines - a hospital, he realized. His head ached intensely, and the memories were blurry. He remembered walking on Allenby Street in Tel Aviv, on his way home from the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day event. And then, all at once - blinding lights, screeching brakes, and a violent impact.

"Gdzie ja jestem?" Jacob mumbled in Polish as he finally opened his eyes. He was 80 years old, a Holocaust survivor who had come to Israel after the terrible war. Hebrew had never been his first language.

The nurse beside his bed smiled at him warmly.

"Jest pan we Wrocławiu, w szpitalu. Miał pan wypadek, ale już wszystko w porządku"

("You are in Wrocław, in the hospital. You had an accident, but now everything is fine.")

she said in soft Polish.

Jacob felt a sudden dizziness, and not just from the blow to his head. Wrocław? Poland? What was he doing here? Where was Tel Aviv, where was Israel?

"Ale ja mieszkam w Izraelu, w Tel Awiwie. Jak się tu znalazłem?"

("But I live in Israel, in Tel Aviv. How did I get here?")

he asked in confusion.

The nurse's expression turned worried.

"Obawiam się, że nie rozumiem. Nie ma pan na myśli Wrocławia? Tu się pan urodził i wychował, zawsze pan tu był."

("I'm afraid I don't understand. Don't you mean Wrocław? This is where you were born and raised, you've always been here.")

A few days later, when he was finally allowed to leave the hospital, Jacob found himself walking the unfamiliar streets of his childhood city of Wrocław. But it wasn't the city he remembered.

He walked slowly, trying to get his bearings, until he noticed a familiar building - the city library. Inside, with trembling hands, Jacob leafed through encyclopedias and history books. He searched and found nothing - no mention of World War II, the Holocaust, Hitler. As if all the horrors he had experienced, all the terrible loss - had never happened at all.

Almost in a trance, he went outside, his face pale. And then, suddenly, he heard a familiar voice calling his name. He turned around slowly - and froze.

"Jakub, bracie!" A man and woman in their 70s hurried towards him. He blinked in shock. It couldn't be... There was Róża, his little sister, and there was Michał, his baby brother, who had been cruelly murdered in the ghetto when they were just children. But here, in this impossible world, they lived. They had grown old. They had been waiting for him.

"Róża? Michał?" he whispered, tears starting to roll down his cheeks as he fell into their arms. This can't be, he thought as they hugged him warmly. He had lost them over sixty years ago...

In the evening, as they all sat around the dining table in his childhood home - the home that had survived, here, the war that never was - Jacob told them his harrowing tale. About the Nazi occupation, the ghettos, Auschwitz. About how he became the sole survivor of his family, about immigrating to Israel and the life he built there.

They listened in tears, holding his hands tightly. "But it didn't happen, Jakub," Michał finally said gently. "Here, by some miracle, it just didn't happen. We never lost you."

Jacob nodded slowly, still stunned, trying to digest it. He looked at the beloved faces, still young in his memory and now aged and smiling. Was this an alternate reality? A dream? A delusion? He didn't know.

But one thing he knew - that he had to make the most of the time he had been gifted. To live every moment, to soak up every hug. And when the time came - if it came - to return to the other reality, he would carry these memories with him. The knowledge that somewhere, if only in thought, his family lived and was whole.

Because maybe, he mused, this was the universe's way of healing - or at least somewhat dulling - the deep pain of survivors like him. To show that love and memory are stronger than any loss. That somewhere, we are always connected to our loved ones.

For now, Jacob decided to simply keep living - here, in this world devoid of the Holocaust - day after day. To love, to laugh, to hug his lost-and-found siblings. And to hope that if he returned at some point to the second reality, the one he knew - he could carry this peace with him there, the realization that the universe holds infinite possibilities.

And so, with a heart full of both hope and pain, Jacob walked hand in hand with his sister and brother towards the stunning sunset, ready for whatever the next morning would bring - in whatever world he found himself in.