Aida screamed. She screamed and kept screaming, and when she raised her head and opened her eyes, she found herself alone. There was no Levi, no Violet, no distraught medical team, no Hopper and Gabe, no Charles and JoAnn. Aida was all alone.
She looked around. Though quite confused, she recognized the surroundings, or at least she thought she did. It was nighttime on a familiar street in New York City, nowhere even close to California. And it was cold outside. The weather was cold, so cold that she was actually wearing a jacket. Aida pulled it closer to her body. She had just been with Levi, and when he unexpectedly passed, she had been wearing shorts, appropriate for the hot summer weather.
Where the fuck am I, and what's going on? Aida thought. She walked and found there was no one else around, an oddity for the city that never slept. Then across the street, she saw it. It was her old apartment building where she used to live in the City. Scurrying across the street, she saw the main door was open. Aida walked inside, her eyes wide with confusion. She walked into the elevator and rode it wordlessly to the eighth floor. It opened, and down the hall, Apartment D was ajar. That was her old apartment, the one she had shared with her brother. Inside, by the window, there was a small crowd and a loud commotion. Instantly it came back to Aida. The apartment, the cold night, the scene before her as someone was obviously on the floor, surrounded by people. It was like the night Eli had died. Walking a little closer, her eyes could barely believe what they were seeing. Aida was looking at an image of herself and her brother from that fateful night.
"Aida."
The voice was familiar. Aida turned to see the woman she had met outside of Hopper's. The older woman who had looked so familiar.
"What's going on?" Aida asked frantically. "What's happening?"
The woman was eerily calm.
"You know where you are," she answered
"I, I don't understand. I don't know why I'm here. I don't know how I got here. My, my boyfriend, he just died out in LA and I...I was with him and his family, and now I'm here and I don't know what's happening."
"Do you know who I am?"
"No," she mouthed as tears welled. "I just, I think I saw you outside the bar where I worked a few months ago, but that was in California and..."
"I was there. I was in your dream."
"My dream? My what? Lady, who are you and what are you doing? Please tell me what is going on! I have to get back to Levi."
"Levi is in California."
"Levi is dead!"
"Not yet."
Aida wiped at her nose.
"What are you talking about? I was there! I saw him! One minute he was fine and the next he just...slumped over, and his daughter started screaming. The doctors came in, and they pumped his chest and tried to work on him, but it was too late. They, they couldn't save him."
"It is 9:31 p.m. In Lake Forest right now it is 6:31. Levi Hudson just picked up his daughter from an after-school program. They will go and get pizza and fall asleep watching a movie."
"Shut up!" Aida screamed. "Levi is dead! Are you not listening to me? I was fucking there. The doctors say it was a blood clot and it went straight to his lungs. I watched them try to save his life."
"Aida..."
"How do you know my name? How do you know his last name? I did not tell you his last name."
"My name doesn't matter. What you need to know is Levi is not dead. Not yet."
Aida was incensed.
"What? What are you saying? You think I imagined it?"
"Something like that."
"Lady..."
"Some would say you have lived a very selfish life. You never sacrificed. Not for Eli, not for Van or Paloma. Not for anyone."
"I, I did the best I could! How dare you stand there and judge me? You don't know me! You don't know my life!"
"I know more than you think, Aida."
Aida closed her eyes and buried her head in her hands.
"This isn't happening. I had some sort of freak-out when Levi died, and now I'm dreaming. This, you, is all a figment of my imagination. None of it is real. This is not really happening right now. Please God, let me wake up. Please, please. Let me go back home. Violet needs me."
"Listen to me, Aida. I need you to understand."
"And I need you to go away! Please. Go away, just please leave me alone."
"Aida..."
And then it hit Aida—why that voice, why that woman's face had sounded so familiar in the first place.
"Oh my God. You, you were here. I mean, I thought I saw you, but I know I heard you the night Eli died. What are you doing to me?"
"Death is nothing but an exchange of souls. One soul must leave so another soul can stay."
"No!! That is what he said to me the night he died! Eli said it, I heard him. I heard him!"
"You heard me. It was my voice you heard."
"No..."
"You are a good person, Aida. You have a good heart. You gave life an honest shot. You lived with so many demons. Sometimes you fought with them, and sometimes, well sometimes, you let them in. But you're at a crossroads. Everyone must face their own mortality at one time or another. There comes a time in life when you must make decisions, difficult decisions. Not everyone gets the chance to make this decision."
"Please stop it. You're scaring me."
Aida backed away. She intended to run but her legs wouldn't move. All of sudden, her memory flashed back to that night. Not the night Levi died but the night Eli did. She heard the music. She had smoked cigarettes and drank with their friends. They were happy. And the drugs were plentiful.
"Sissy, come on. Let's kick these people out of here. You've had enough. We have had enough."
"Just one more, Eli. Come on. One more hit. It's okay."
They had done it a million times together. Aida placed the drug on the spoon. The syringe was ready. They had a lighter, some water, and a cotton ball. Aida found her makeshift tourniquet and tied it around her arm, feeling relief as the vein, on the verge of collapse, finally came to life.
That feeling. That warmth and euphoria that one first feels when the milk flows through their veins. In the moment, it was pure beauty. She and Eli shot up together, and then she watched his face. His eyes bulged and his face turned a purple color. Gasping for air, her brother doubled over.
Aida could see it. It played in her mind as she stood in front of the strange woman.
"You have the chance to save the person you love," the woman said.
Aida looked horrified. The tears spilled down her cheeks.
"No! No. What are you asking me to do? You're making me choose? Save my brother's life or my boyfriend? An exchange of souls?"
"Eli isn't dead, Aida."
"But..."
"How do you feel?"
Aida, standing beside the woman, was experiencing the same feeling as the mirror image of herself a few feet away getting high with her brother. The intense euphoria and the tightening of the chest. It was happening all over again, but this time the story was different. Eli doubled over and vomited, then instead of collapsing, he wiped his mouth and shook it off. Aida stood, took a few steps, reached for her brother, and fell to the ground.
"What's happening?" Aida turned and whispered to the woman. "That, that is not how it happened when Eli died."
"Aida!" Eli screamed and fell to his knees.
He hovered over his sister as their friends looked on.
"You know it, Aida. You feel it. You feel it now and you felt it then. This is the time you took too much, went too far. It's scary, and your life flashes before your eyes, and..."
"The future, the future you could have had but are not going to have...you see it, you live it in detail, but in actuality, it's just a few seconds," Aida finished for her. "Oh my God."
And in a heartbeat, it all made sense.
"Eli wasn't dying. It was you. This whole time, Aida, it was you. And that life in California, moving back in with your parents, working at the bar, reconnecting with Levi—that was a glimpse of your future, the future you would have had if you had lived."
"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God...I'm...I'm dead?"
"Not yet. You can choose. You must choose. You can exchange another soul for your own."
"If I live, Levi dies. It was me. All along it was me. That's why I had no memory of how I got from New York to California."
"I'm afraid so."
Aida looked at the scene in front of her as it unfolded, her brother and friends desperately trying to save her from a fatal overdose. And Aida remembered vividly her future, the one she'd had in California and with Levi. It was too much. It was all too surreal in what had turned out to be an alternate reality.
"Please fix this. You, you have to change it. You have the power," Aida pleaded.
The woman shook her head.
"Only you have the power. And the power is in choice, Aida. You must choose."
Aida closed her eyes. It was an impossible choice. If she lived, the man she loved, the man who had a family, a daughter, would not.
"What, what happens?" she asked after a few minutes. "If I live, if I choose to live and Levi dies. What happens to me?"
The woman shrugged.
"You live."
"But what kind of life? Will I relapse again? Levi is my soul mate. Without him do I ever find love? What about my daughter? Will my baby ever let me back in her life?"
"Some people are meant for great success and notoriety. Some are meant to give and receive love. And some...well, some just exist. No matter the goodness that lives somewhere deep inside them, others just aren't meant to see it."
"And that's me? I, I just exist."
"That is the life you were meant to have."
"What about Eli? Does he still die if I live?"
"Eli was never meant to die that night. The overdose was yours, not his. His death was a figment of your imagination because you could not process your own fate. He lives whether you do or not."
"And Levi?"
"What about him?"
"If he lives, he'll be happy, right? He will love and be loved. He will have his daughter."
The woman said nothing, but her eyes spoke volumes.
"Aida, you must choose."