Vincent laughed. “I wouldn’t know.”
“I guess you wouldn’t. I can assure you, even with all of security measures that surround my travel that flying across the Atlantic has never taken me several days. Now,” she said seriously and looking straight at him, “what is going on?”
Vincent shrugged and responded in mock sarcasm. “Are you referring to the fact that you’re the President of the United States during World War I or the fact that I have somehow taken the place of my great-grandfather during a battle of that same war?”
Libby allowed herself to laugh mildly. “I am referring to both.”
“I don’t know. I can tell you that one moment I was standing beside the memorial in Ypres and the next I woke up a soldier – my great-grandfather to be specific – in the battle that the memorial was honoring.”
Libby nodded. “I had a similar experience. I remember being shot and then taken to a hospital in Belgium. You were at the same hospital. I came and visited you in your room. You were in a coma.”
“A coma? Wait…you did?” Vincent interrupted. “Why would you come visit me? You’ve never met me.”
“I guess I wanted to visit the only other American in the hospital there to make sure they were taking care of you. Anyways, I must have blacked out. The next thing I remember is me waking up in the White House as Woodrow Wilson.”
Vincent was amazed at this. “You actually took the place of Woodrow Wilson?”
“I did. And let me say it was strange, even more so when I met his wife, a personal role model of mine, and she saw me as him.”
“So what happened then?”
“Well, I filled the role of the President, something in which I do have a little experience. But then something changed. I can’t explain it. It was like I was waking up from a dream. The next thing I knew, everything else was the same but people were calling me President Williams as if I belonged there.”
Vincent considered her words. “It just doesn’t make any sense. If we’re both back at the hospital and we’re dreaming this, how are we in the same dream and how are we interacting with each other in this dream?”
“I’m not sure that we are dreaming. I’d like to think we are. But I’ve never had a dream span this many days. It’s like somehow, if it ever was a dream, it has now become real.”
“You’re right. In fact, now that you’ve just mentioned the change in people – that they recognize you as you and they expect it to be you even though we’re in the year 1917 – I’ll tell you I’ve had the same experience. At first everyone was calling me by my grandfather’s first name. Then, they started calling me by my first name.”
“When did you first notice?”
“It was right after I shot…” Vincent stopped.
“What? Who did you shoot?”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Vincent said to himself, speaking the words aloud.
“What doesn’t make any sense?”
“This has to be a dream. When I shot him, it was just part of the dream. There’s no way anything actually happened because of what I did in a dream.”
“What are you talking about? What did you do?”
“Hitler. I killed Adolf Hitler.”
Now it was Libby’s turn to be shocked. “Hitler is here?”
“Yes, Hitler fought in the battle we just finished. He was only a young soldier but this battle was the beginning of his rise. He was on the front line and I shot him in the chest. I didn’t see him die but I don’t see how he could have lived.”
“So let me get this right. You and I are supposed to believe that because you shot Hitler and therefore changed history, that everything actually changed? Is this some kind of sick joke? I have to be in some sort of medical coma or something and the medication is causing me to hallucinate.”
“Libby, look…”
“Don’t call me Libby.” She was confused and angry. “You can call me Madam President or President Williams if you like.”
Vincent was confused and angry as well but he didn’t let her scolding affect him. “President Williams, I don’t know what’s going on here either. What you and I both are saying doesn’t make any sense. Maybe and hopefully we are both stuck in some kind of dream. It’s bizarre that we would be here together but who knows, maybe this type of thing happens all of the time. I don’t know, I’ve never been in a coma before.”
Libby knew she had spoken harshly and took a deep breath to calm herself. If her years in business and politics had taught her nothing else it had taught her never to let her emotions impede a rational decision. She needed a make a rational decision now and anger at not understanding her current situation would not be beneficial to either of them.
“Vincent, I apologize. I don’t mind if you call me Libby. You are the only friend I have here right now and you don’t need some pompous middle-aged woman who is not getting her way spoiling that friendship.”
“Accepted. But no, I shouldn’t have called you Libby. Obviously I knew that your family and friends called you that but I don’t know why that name was in my head. I have always referred to you as President.”
“That’s fine. Now let’s go through this again. Tell me about your killing of Adolf Hitler.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Washington, D.C. – June 1921
Soon, the Great War was over. The Treaty of Versailles was signed. During another life, the
