Carmen locked her car. Turning, she clicked her keyfob again to ensure the doors locked. She sighed relieved when her headlights flashed. She hurried into the convenience store. A freezing wave of bleach-scented air washed over her when she opened the door. Carmen waved at the surly attendant. Arms crossed, he nodded back. She pulled a protein bar off of a shelf. She passed a refrigerator, paused, and pulled a fruit smoothie out of it. She lapped around the store, and when she saw that she needed nothing else, Carmen brought her protein bar and smoothie to the attendant. Arms crossed, he watched her set her purse on the register's countertop and reach into it for her wallet.

“Do you have a bathroom,” she asked. The attendant tapped a sign that read, “Bathrooms for customers only.” Carmen hastily handed her credit card to the attendant who took it and swiped it and retrieved a key from under the counter. He handed it to Carmen with her debit card, pointing off to his left. Carmen slung her purse over her shoulder with her breakfast tucked inside. 

After she relieved herself, she washed her hands in the sink, looking up to check her reflection in the mirror. When she saw her reflection, Carmen's heart sank into her stomach. Her purse slipped from her shoulder. When it hit the ground, its contents scattered. She tried rubbing it out of her eyes, but there it was. Clear as day, she had a second reflection. It was subtle, but it was there staring back at her and her own older reflection. Carmen shakily scooped the contents of her purse back into the bag and rushed out of the convenience store. She did not hear the attendant shouting behind her. She did not realize that she still had the key to the bathroom.

She saw it on the mirrors in her car. It was in the rearview mirror. It flashed in her driver's side mirror. It was even in the glass of the windshield - her second reflection. She started and stopped in traffic, too afraid to go to work, too afraid to go home, too afraid of everything.

Carmen met her supervisor in his cubicle at the office. He greeted her warmly. She was late but not too late and more often than not on time. He understood that things happened. Carmen nervously asked to speak with him privately. He nodded and locked his computer. The two walked to a conference room together to be alone. Along the way, he asked the polite questions.

“Are you okay?”

“Are you doing too much?”

“Has there been an emergency?”

Carmen could only bring herself to shake her head.

In the conference room, they sat down at the end of a long conference table. Carmen's supervisor leaned forward to ask her what was wrong. Staring down at the table, gripping her knees in her fists, she said it as plainly as she could, “When I woke up today, I had two reflections.”

Her boss exhaled deeply and said,  “Oh, no.”

He made arrangements for her quickly. He assigned her casework to a coworker. He gave her a week off of work.  He offered to drive her home, but Carmen refused. On the way out of the office, he gave Carmen a warm hug. Carmen accepted it but did not hug him back.

“If you can remember, call me next Tuesday,” he said. “This should all be over by then.”

The days passed uneventfully when Carmen went home. She did her best to avoid mirrors and reflective surfaces, but at times, it could not be helped. She caught herself out of the corner of her eye, stopping, staring, seeing a radiant and young reflection superimposed over one that was already deteriorating. Thinking about anything else took great effort, so Carmen tried not to think too much. She cleaned her apartment, took long walks, and spoke with friends and family over the phone.

“You seem stressed,” her mother broke a particularly tense silence. 

“I am,” Carmen sighed into the receiver. She spun the stolen key from the convenience store on her coffee table.

“Do you want to talk about it,” her mother asked hesitantly

“Yeah,” Carmen replied. She stopped spinning the key. She left her finger on it, staring at it, staring through it. Then she sobbed into the phone, "It's happening to me. I have two reflections."

Her mother was quiet on the other end of the phone.

“Hello,” Carmen called into the receiver.

“I'm still here,” her mother said. She sounded as uncertain as Carmen had ever heard her. “How long has it been?”

“At least four days,” Carmen answered.

“Four days,” her mother breathed. “So I won't be able to see you?”

“No,” Carmen shook her head.

“I wish you had told me,” was all her mother said. 

They cried together. They reminisced together. They held each other at a distance. There was nothing to be done. Carmen tried her best to explain that there was nothing to be done. Visit or no visit. Her mother did her best to understand.

While she waited for the inevitable, Carmen took to entertaining herself. She ordered out at the restaurants that she always wanted to try and watched every television show that she had been too embarrassed to watch. Sometimes she did forget. Sometimes she took her mind off of things. Then the show ended or she ran out of coffee or she thought twice about brushing her teeth in the kitchen away from the bathroom mirror. It always came back. Carmen knew that it was unpredictable. Researching the condition would be futile, so she waited and only occasionally glanced at the reflections in the mirror. At about five days, her old reflection began rotting. It was too much for her to see, so she left her apartment for the grocery store.

Carmen needed nothing in particular. She needed to be somewhere else. She aimlessly walked the aisle, picking up cucumbers, sorting through hummus, staring down her ice cream options. She bit her lip and cried on her way out of the frozen foods section. Carmen threw her shopping basket to the floor and stomped out of the store. She leapt into her car, driving away. When she tumbled into her apartment, she upended furniture, raging, raging, raging against what could not be helped. 

Carmen thought she heard her neighbor knocking on her door. She stopped to listen but could differentiate it from the knocking sound of the pulse in her ears if it was happening at all. She stared, confused. She went to open it, but there was no one there on the other side. She slammed it shut again. When there was nothing left to overturn or toss, a deep exhaustion seeped into Carmen's chest and shoulders. It led her from the living room to the bedroom where she collapsed on her mattress.

In bed, Carmen cocooned herself in her comforter. She shut her eyes to the day, turning over with a huff. Sleep came more suddenly than she expected. It was an uneasy sleep full of strange and upsetting dreams. Unfamiliar arms, unfamiliar legs, sprouted out of unfamiliar shapes in a haze of parts and pieces. Just as soon as Carmen fell asleep, she was up again, but it was dark outside. Some time had passed. She dragged herself out of bed to turn off the lights in her apartment.

Carmen stopped at the bathroom door. Resigned and curious, she stepped inside to the mirror. Her new reflection stared back at her beneath the dull bones of the old. In the morning, she would be gone. Carmen shuffled away around her apartment, turning off every light. She went back to bed, lied down, closed her eyes, and let go.

When she awoke in the morning, she had forgotten her name as well as the feel of her bed and the comforter's softness. She laid there fingering her blanket. She reached for the phone nearby, and when she checked it, she saw that people called her Carmen. In the latest text thread, someone had simply written, "Call me."

The woman on the other end explained that she was Carmen's mother. She explained Carmen, her childhood, her adolescence, her adulthood. Carmen thanked her mother, and they made plans to see each other. When she got off of the phone, she thumbed through the rest of her contacts. She was pleasantly surprised that there were many friends, and a large family. She discovered that she was loved. When she finished scrolling through her phone, Carmen walked through her home, wondering who made such a mess of it. She spent the afternoon cleaning up. When she finished, she wandered towards the bathroom, vaguely aware that that was where she cleaned herself. She looked the shower up and down thinking through the way it worked when she noticed the mirror. Her reflection stared back at her, new and perfect, until Carmen returned her attention to the shower.