It was a struggle to get out of bed. My body was weak, the muscles shrunken from disuse. It brought back memories from times of war, when at the end of the day I would walk to my tent and have energy for nothing but sleep.

“It will get better,” Dr. Rossi said, helping me walk to the door and back. I hated that sweat formed on my brow from the minor exertion.

“Let us hope,” I said.

It did, slowly. By the end of the first week, I could walk to the end of the corridor. There were others in the rooms beside mine. Some were still sleeping, while two were awake and like me.

“Lina,” I called out. She was walking hurriedly away. There was a small park in the institute, a five minute walk from my room that I hadn’t yet been able to do. It was almost certainly where Lina was going. She was almost due to be released from the institute. Sometimes her family came by, a sweet older couple that had no idea their daughter was gone, and that only her shell remained.

Lina turned around, her hair coming loose from her makeshift bun. “What?”

“Let’s go together after breakfast,” I said. I didn’t want to go alone. If I fell in the corridor, or had to sit to take a rest, it would be humiliating. At least if Lina was there, she could help me.

She walked back. “Are you sure you’re ready?”

I wasn’t, but I nodded anyway. Sir Ward would’ve gotten angry at the implication that he was weak, but I knew my new body better each and every day. Whoever Ravi had been, he hadn’t been a fighter.

We made it, slowly and with a few stops along the way. I fell into the park bench and took a deep breath of fresh air, the first time since waking up on the hospital bed. It was a relief to inhale and not smell disinfectant.

“What was your old name?”

“Reginald,” Lina said. “Reginald Blackberry.”

I turned and saw Lina pulling her hair back into a bun. She was always tying up her long hair.

“The adjustment is more difficult for some than others,” Lina said with a chuckle. “I’ve come to terms with the change.”

I stayed silent, not knowing whether to sympathize with her or congratulate her on adjusting to the change.

“Elric Ward,” I said. The name sounded more distant than it had a few days ago. Like it was someone else’s name and not mine.

“A pleasure,” Lina said, her mouth curved into a lopsided smile. “Dr. Rossi says I’m going to be discharged on Monday. I’m going to Tucson.”

I’d spent my free time watching television and studying the world I was now in.

“Arizona?” I asked. She nodded. It had been a surprise, learning about the existence of the country I now lived in. England was an ocean away, and this massive land was now my home. I learned about it little by little, scouring the Internet for whatever I was curious about. The Internet… if learning about America was a surprise, finding the internet was a shock.

“Have your memories started coming in?” she asked.

“Only a little,” I said.

Lina leaned back on the park bench, her arms stretched out over the back of it, her legs straight and crossed at the ankles.

“It gets easier when they do,” she said. “I’m not entirely Reginald anymore, I think.”

She paused, using one hand to undo her bun. “Her memories are sweet. Her family is kind.”

Ravi’s family hadn’t visited yet. Dr. Rossi said they lived on the other side of the country, and that they visited for a few days each month. They were due soon, and Dr. Rossi had given me a file containing their information to study. She hadn’t told them yet that I was awake. I wondered if I would find it easier to accept this new body once I saw the way Ravi was loved.

My own parents, dead for decades even before my own death in 1450, were distant people. They had too many duties as the lord and lady of a manor to care for a third son. They were happy to take pride in my achievements as a knight, but never to show affection or care.

Some of Ravi’s memories came to me in my sleep as patches of conversation or familiar smells. I knew things without no knowledge of learning them, a fact that was unsettling no matter how often it happened. I knew his mother made him a special breakfast for luck every time he had exams. It seemed too intimate, possessing such knowledge.

“People can afford to be kinder in these times, it seems,” Lina said. “They tell me they’ve planned a party to celebrate my return. I have a grandmother who video calls me every few days. I entered into this contract thinking it would be a punishment to be borne, but it’s a gift.”

“What is?”

“We have another lifetime before us, in which we will be loved, Ravi.”

The devil would not give you such favorable conditions, the youth had said, and I had to agree.