The Watchmaker's Doctor ✔️

XXII

2004, Fourteen Years Backwards

Anaya tossed onto her right side, then to her left. For a while, she tried to lie on her back. But sleep would not come.

How can I even think that it isn't fair? I would never have gone to college, got treatment for Dad, helped them stay together or met Matt.

She turned to him. His dark skin almost blended into the night. Her pale hand over him stood out in stark contrast, like the moon. It isn't fair.

She crept out of bed, careful not to disturb the quiet. But what she really wanted to do was grab the world by both hands and shake it until the light of reason dawned on it.

She had a whole fourteen years left to live. When you put it like that, it seems like a decent amount of time. But every time she began to accept that she deserved to be happy, she'd be reminded of her death at thirty-five. If we're destined to live to three score and ten like the Bible says, then half a life will be taken from me.

The good half, too. Life was a series of battles, each one with an unidentified foe. The war could only possibly be won in your mid-thirties when you discovered what you were made of. She'd never get to enjoy that.

Terror gripped her with its chilly fingers as she imagined how it would happen. But would I still walk into the path of the minivan knowing it killed me before? She tried and failed to moisten her mouth as she remembered Greg had said her heart would stop anyway. I'll give myself a heart attack and end it now if I don't stop thinking like this.

Desperate to shift the spotlight off herself, she imagined what someone else would do in her place. Would they write a will, take out a massive insurance policy, or plan their funeral? Perhaps she'd leave instructions for Nickelback's 'Photograph' to be played at hers. Okay, this is not working.

But then, it wasn't like she could talk to anyone about it. A shrink might have her locked up. Who else ever got to redo their mistakes? Given a chance, would anyone pass that up? In essence, she'd almost perfected the best days of her youth. But was that better than living through to old age?

Making herself a hot chocolate, she dropped three marshmallows into it. Delish. Her mind instantly travelled to the awful coffee she'd brewed on the last day of her old life. It seemed like she held metaphors for her different lives in her hands. I wouldn't have wanted thirty-five more years of that crap.

And that was the thing, wasn't it? When life rode on its highs, you wanted it to go on forever. But in the depths of the invariable dives, you'd be happy to be put out of your misery, because whatever awaited beyond this life had to be better than this shit on Earth.

So, as she did each night before she could fall asleep, Anaya crept back in their comfortable bed, snuggled next to the warmth of Matt, and counted the things that she felt grateful for. She closed her eyes, concluding that she'd rather have had one day of living with no regrets, than thousands more being ignoring what needed to be fixed.

***

The phone rang at noon. Kait's mom called hers with the news. Kait had died in her sleep.

Anaya's vision darkened from crimson to blood to rust. She, the only person in the world who knew it would happen, had done nothing about it. Less than that. How could I have done this to her?

She threw everything black that she owned into Matt's onyx suitcase. Matt. I'll deal with him later.

Anaya barged through the front door like a tortured bull and slammed it so hard it seemed to cling to its hinges. Her parents were waiting for her outside in the car. One glance at her sufficed for her father to confirm her mood and he said nothing as he opened the trunk.

A note was stuck to the back of the headrest of her mom's seat. Anaya forced herself to read it through her scorching eyes.

I called Matt. He will come to Emberswick tonight. There are pills in the seat pocket if you need them. We are right here when you want to talk.

Mom

It took every ounce of her will not to rip the note into the tiniest shreds and throw them at her parents in the front seats. They are not the traitors, I am. She trapped the note between thumb and forefinger, as if they were tweezers gripping contaminated evidence, let it go, and watched it float to the carpet.

Her parents probably thought she was just angry and grieving. They have no idea that I might as well have murdered her myself. She silently ground the paper under the ball of her foot with so much force that the friction felt like it would ignite a fire. Good. Burn.

They'd said dying in her sleep was a good way to go. What the fuck? Even the cause of death is called SADS. SADS, for fuck sake! But Kait had been identified curled up in her bed, with a 'peaceful' look on her face. How many people must have picked and poked at her? Shoved in a fridge, gutted like a fish and preserved from decay.

She knew all the medical jargon that had followed, in more minute detail than her mother could ever know when she related it. Ventricular fibrillation. All Kait's twenty-two years of beauty and resilience had ended with that. She'd simply fallen unconscious when the blood decided, by itself, to stop flowing to her brain. And in the end, Kait apparently went willingly, with no visible traces of struggle, calm and serene.

Anaya wouldn't even dare think of her as her best friend. She stuck her thumbs in her eyes as if to pry the guilty organs out. I saw this! Drug-induced or not, Kait had died in her sleep. Again.

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G.