The machines beep and whir around me, counting out the measure of my life with their mechanical precision. In particular, there's one keeping track of my heartbeat which I hear above the rest, and sometimes it sounds like a countdown. All the noise, though, fades to a dull pulse behind the steady sound of Adam's voice.

He's telling me a story, I'm sure, but I can't stay awake long enough to make out the words anymore. Still he keeps going, though I don't know if he knows I can hear him. There was another story... some time ago, I can't keep track, about a Phoenician man, the captain of a fishing boat. I could hear the words then, and the story was funny. I wanted to laugh -- I tried -- but in the end I couldn't do more than curl my lips in a weak smile.

Perhaps I didn't even do that.

It gets harder and harder to separate the dreams from the things that have really happened, and more and more I'm thinking it doesn't matter. Adam's words paint pictures in my head, and I live in them. I see him as the Phoenician captain, trying to get the fish back to shore before they spoil. I'm on the boat with him, trying not to laugh as the situation becomes increasingly ludicrous. Or sometimes we're artisans, in a time and place I can't recognize, and he's laughing at the lopsided bowl I've spun while trying to help our daughter pour a glass of milk. Or sometimes I'm a waitress and he's a grad student and we're out on our honeymoon.

I remember the start of our travels clearly, but I don't remember when Adam started telling me stories: we'd see a wall, in France, and he'd tell me how it was constructed; we'd eat in a restaurant in Germany and he'd tell me of all the different restaurants the building had seen; we'd take a taxi ride in Greece, and he'd offer up word-pictures of the trade routes and the merchants who moved silk and spices through Europe before there were cars and planes.

In Italy we ate an impromptu picnic under an olive tree when my strength gave out one day. After the meal, I laid down for a nap and awoke to find Adam had left and returned with two fruit sorbets... he told me the Italian name for them, but I've forgotten. We fed each other spoonfuls of ice and laughed so hard our aim failed and our faces were covered sweet stickiness. Adam licked it off me, delicately, with such reverence I wanted to cry. The sky was the palest of blues, the color of redemption and my mother's china. I used to play with the china when I was a child. Momma would take it away and tell me one day it would be mine. I don't know who it will belong to now.

Adam sometimes leaves here, too, but he doesn't come back with sweets. Once, it seemed he was gone so long I wondered if I had dreamed all of him, and that seemed more likely than not. After all, it made more sense for him to be a dream than for a mysterious, wonderful stranger to have fallen in love with me at first sight and swept me off on a world tour. But I hear him now, so if he's a dream, then I'll keep sleeping.

I remember in high school the physics teacher tried to teach us Einstein's Theory of Relativity, and with the tunnel vision of a teenager, I assumed he meant the way that physics class always lasted twice as long as any other period.

Now I understand though, the un-real nature of time. We artificially name spans of time 'minute' or 'lifetime' and think those words have meaning and count them. We're all fooling ourselves. Marie sat next to me in physics; she got pregnant, and the baby died after only breathing a few breaths. It seemed so sad then, but it makes sense now. 'Minutes', 'lifetime' ... there is no distinction. We live in a timeless state, we just don't see it.

I remember being cold, but it's always warm now, cocooned in Adam's voice. Sometimes I wonder how long I've been here, or I hear the machine-beep of my heartbeat and wonder how much time I have left, then I laugh -- or think I do -- and the thought dies away.

We went to Rome, Adam and I, and he took me to the Coliseum and a thousand other places I'd only ever seen on tv. We walked, and rode in carriages and cars, and he told me of the people who'd lived in those places, how they lived and how they died. He was concerned, at first, that hearing about the distant past would make me sad. But I touched the crumbling walls and thought about the lives long gone and it made it better somehow. We live, we die. I understand now.

At first, I thought he was making the stories up, then I thought he'd just spent far too much time reading history books. Then I thought perhaps both were wrong... and then I found I didn't care, and simply begged him for more. So most nights, and some days when I didn't have the energy for travel, we'd sit, or curl up in bed, or I'd lie with my head on his lap, and he'd tell me stories until his stomach growled with hunger. Then we'd eat -- or he would eat and I would try -- and he'd start up again.

Sometimes he squeezes my hand. His hands are strong, and warm, and oddly callused for a man who spends so much time in libraries. My hands are weak and thin and it takes more effort to move them than I can manage. Still, I'd like to touch his face again, run my finger down that nose he made fun of when he was charming me into falling in love with him.

I remember a life I used to have, where I waited tables and saved money for college, and knitted and played with the neighbor's dog and washed dishes and went to movies. Women used to cook flat bread on wood-burning stoves made of stone. Fishermen used to catch fish when there were no refrigerators to keep them in and the fish sometimes spoiled. None of these activities belongs to me any more than any of the others. They are part of a world I can no longer touch.

I touch Adam, though, and he touches me. His voices weaves in and out of my mind, and soothes me. I'm slipping away, and it's like leaving a cage. I understand now.