Chapter Text
7:15 AM
Lisa Taylor was barely registering anything around her. It was 7:00 AM, entirely too early to focus on literally anything, in her opinion. Her sister had, the previous night, gotten engaged to an asshole of a man, someone had broken into her car while she was at dinner celebrating the engagement, and her landlord had adopted a fun new habit of complaining about every imaginable, or entirely unimaginable, infraction. All of which meant she had a lot on her mind for 7:00 AM, and therefore whatever little focus she was able to muster was occupied wholly by everything other than her job. Which, right now, was taking the order of the increasingly annoyed woman in front of the register.
“Venti latte with a triple shot. And two pumps of raspberry.”
That sounds horrible, Lisa thought, but thankfully had just enough focus left to know not to say. “Can I get a name for that?”
“Heather.”
Lisa, absentmindedly, picked up a sharpie and wrote “Heathen,” in clear, crisp handwriting, on a clear plastic cup and pushed it down the bar.
“That’ll be 5.67. Do you - oh, gosh, I’m sorry - do you have our app?” she asked, question punctuated by a yawn.
“Why would I?”
I don’t know, why would you? “Some customers do. You can insert your card when you’re ready.”
Lisa gave in, closed her eyes, and rested her forehead on the edge of the walls around her cash register. She listened to the sound of the woman entering her pin number, and walking away, without so much as a thank you.
Lisa opened her eyes and lifted her head again, prepared for the next customer, ready to deal with whatever they threw at her, literally or figuratively.
“What can I…get…you?”
Lisa’s words trailed off as her brain and eyes battled to clarify the person in front of her. They seemed…blurry, but it wasn’t a normal sort of blurry. It felt real, like it was outside of her eyes, hanging in space around the person in front of her. After a few seconds, though, the blur cleared, so quickly Lisa wondered if she’d imagined it. Clarity of vision did not, however, give way to clarity of understanding.
The person at her register, smiling at her, was - or at least appeared to be - a nurse. Or just as easily, Lisa thought, if it was possible, a time traveler. They were dressed like a nurse, but one from roughly 1943, in a crisp white dress with a gold pin on the lapel and a white hat pinned in their shoulder length brown hair.
A hat? For real?
Lisa shook her head as if it would shake the image from her eyes, but when she opened them again, the nurse was still standing there. They had an aesthetically incongruous backpack hanging over one shoulder, and their head tilted slightly to the side, looking her over with an intensity that their dark sunglasses did nothing to disguise. The sunglasses looked more like they belonged on a rockstar than a nurse, but somehow they matched perfectly.
“Are you alright?” the nurse asked.
Their voice was incongruous, and American, a solid octave higher than Lisa had expected, with a soft sweetness behind it.
“I’m fine. Just a bit tired. I’m sorry. What can I get you?”
“What’s the blackest thing you have?”
“How dark are you thinking?”
“Road tar,” the nurse answered, face surprisingly serious.
“I, uh…a venti black dark roast with a double shot is probably the darkest thing I can give you.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Lisa picked up a cup, hesitated, and studied her customer. Something in the back of her mind told her not to ask for a name. She listened to it, wrote only the word “Nurse” on the cup, in the nicest handwriting her sleepy hands could manage, and pushed it down the bar.
“3 pound 43.”
The nurse reached into their pocket, searching, and pulled out a small handful of coins which they placed directly, gently, and without looking at them once, into Lisa’s outstretched hand.
“Thanks, honey,” they said, sweetly, and walked away.
“Wait! You didn’t get your…change?”
Lisa stared into the pile of coins in her hands - the exact change in her hand. £3.43.
How did you…?
“Coffee.”
The voice of the man standing in front of her, not even waiting for a hello, cut into her thoughts.
“Sorry. What can I get you?”
7:32 AM
Walter Finch did his best to sink into his music. Headphones on, world off. The magical wonders of noise cancellation. A long commute was generally a point of consternation, but not for Walter. He was grateful for it. People often scolded him for living so far out of the city, telling him his commute sucked so many hours out of his day. What he could never get anyone to understand was that it was on purpose. His commute afforded him an enforced hour to himself, with nothing he could potentially accomplish. It gave him the permission he so badly needed to focus entirely on his music.
He forced himself to open his eyes and looked down at his phone. This playlist wasn’t doing it for him. Poor taste on the part of its author. The train slowed, and stopped, but he ignored it completely. He had several more stops to go, anyway, so no use paying attention now. He did this every day, so he didn’t, generally, take note of the people getting on. But for some reason this time he did.
He wasn’t sure if it was intuition, one of those weird feelings you can’t quite account for, or only that the corner of his eye had been caught by the bright flash of white. He lifted his eyes from his playlists to take stock of the boarding passengers. A couple of teenage girls, deep in affectionate conversation. A staggering number of suited businessmen. A woman with a baby. And the source of the white flash - a figure in a nurse’s uniform. A real, honest to goodness nurse’s uniform, not scrubs, but a white dress, perfectly tailored, with lightly puffed sleeves, clean white tights, white shoes, nurse’s cap. They were sipping from a coffee cup and looking directly at him, with eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. Water had the distinct and uncomfortable feeling of not only being looked at but looked through.
And then they spoke to him.
“Find any good bands lately?” the nurse asked, their tone friendly. “You look like you have good taste.”
The train was crowded, but their voice was as clear as if they had been sitting next to him. They weren’t shouting, though, and somehow no one around seemed to notice.
“A few, yeah. I’ve been getting into Australian psychedelic lately. King Gizzard, Tame Impala. That kind of thing.” Walter wasn’t normally a fan of talking on the train, or of talking about his music in general, if only because the people he was talking to never seemed to actually care, but for some reason he wanted to talk to the nurse. There was something in the way they’d asked the question that had felt sincere.
“Check out Pond and MGMT,” the nurse said. “Probably right up your alley.”
“I’m always looking. Thank you.”
“Happy to help,” the nurse said, and shifted immediately back into their own apparent inner world. They were standing, feet under shoulders, holding on to nothing, but they seemed unfazed by the motion of the train.
Walter reached towards his neck, to put his headphones back on - and found them already on his head. Exactly where he’d left them. He had never taken them off. Of course he hadn’t - the sound of the train had remained distant. He looked across the train at the people in the facing seats having a conversation with each other - a conversation he could not hear.
But they’d been speaking to him. The nurse had been talking directly to him, and their voice had been right there, kind and clear, like they were only a few inches away.
Walter hit play on his music and decided some things seen on the tube were best left unexplained.