The Watchmaker's Doctor ✔️

II

2018, Fall Equinox

Anaya gasped for air. She whipped her focus from the bench she found herself sitting on once more, to Greg, and back again.

Am I alive?

The crossing, the van, the moment it hit her, she remembered all of it. As her death reprised in her mind, her need to escape intensified exponentially. Yet she just sat there next to him, unable to move a single limb.

"Ana, you're safe now." Greg tried to hold her by her shoulders.

Her heart was already pounding, demanding her consciousness pry back from fantasy into reality. But it was his touch that flung her over the edge. Adrenaline surged through her veins and propelled her into action. She threw his hands off and pushed back.

He breathed deeply and waited, like time itself stood still at his command. An eerie calm appeared to emanate from him. "Look at me, Ana."

As if in a trance, she obeyed. The pond's reflection of a sudden break in the clouds illuminated him. He appeared incandescent, his face as soft as velvet and eyes teeming with empathy.

She'd seen Greg every day for more than a year, and even confided in him. He would never hurt her.

I'm alive... Her breathing began to slow, but her mind continued to reel.

"You did have an accident, but the watch I gave you turned back the time."

Anaya's eyes scoured the road for the van but found it deserted and the lamp post undamaged. She didn't know how long it took her to tear her eyes from the scene and for her brain to digest that he was holding out his watch to her, but a millennium seemed to crawl past while it happened.

She turned her wrist over and over, tugging at her sleeve as if it might have crawled up her arm. She'd just been wearing it when she... And now it was on him. Again.

Anaya couldn't process anything beyond one word. How? She wasn't sure if she said it aloud.

"I've spent most of my life studying time, its history and movement. I've made hundreds of watches for my customers, but couldn't part with this one. As I learned more, I modified it. With every passing year, I tinkered with it. Until, at last, I found a way to rewind time..." Greg paused. "That was forty years ago. Since then, I have travelled back to that day and lived my life over and over. I've done all that I had to do. I decided that I wanted to pass on that chance to someone else, and you seemed like you could use it."

She lowered her gaze to the pavement. That's insane. I'M insane! Even if it were real, why me?

Greg must have recognized her doubt because he interjected. "I don't think asking why is the right way to spend the little time you have left. You have a second chance at life, Ana. Choose one moment to return to and do it over. The watch rewound to the minute I gave it to you. But as its maker, I can take you back to any time in your life."

How about the day I was born? Anaya's sarcasm tended to pulse its sinister thoughts into her brain at the dark moments she could do without.

"I don't know if my long years are a blessing or a curse. But I've seen many lives pass mine by, and I think the point is to leave this world with no regrets. The question you should be asking yourself is, what's yours?"

Anaya's brain and her heart were in violent dispute now. The part of her that wanted to live considered this unfathomable opportunity, but the rest froze with inexplicable dread.

"You have a few minutes left before your death, Ana. A vehicle doesn't need to hit you again, but your heart will stop beating at your time of death. And it's approaching fast. Choose now, or you will die."

"Dropping out of school at seventeen." Anaya's voice seemed to disappear inside her as her words ran over the lungful of air she'd consumed. She knew precisely what she regretted. She'd obsessed over it regularly on the nights she smothered herself in self pity. "I wasted years of my life doing whatever I wanted—and lost more after I realized I couldn't do anything at all. The consequences... a sad existence, and nine years of night school, almost a decade later. While everyone else I knew was well on their way to success, I had to start from the bottom again."

Self-preservation was a chameleon. In this instance, it deftly adapted to the form of logorrhea. But she'd never told anyone that she regretted that. Told Greg many things, yes, but not that. And now that he'd rattled the deadly contents of her Pandora's Box, deep-seated in layers of denial and selfloathing, it had come spilling out in all its toxic glory.

And there was no stopping its release now. 

"Of course, I wanted to help people who couldn't help themselves, the same way those wonderful doctors treated me through the injuries and the abuse. So, I chose medicine. But it was an impulsive decision. Like the reverse of choosing the career your parents wanted you to. Mine never really guided me, so I just idolized the people who were there to restore me. I never had the chance to explore what I wanted. All I know, is that it's no fit for me. And... You're right. I should be the patient seeking the help right now, not the one giving it."

Greg searched her face intently, trying to be sure. "Then, at 11:52, I will rewind the watch to the day you dropped out. Whatever decisions you make along the way may alter how you end up living, but when this day dawns again in eighteen years, your life will end, Ana. Death can't be cheated, but there are endless ways that life can be lived."

Her heartbeat hammered in her ears. What if she made even worse mistakes? If this one decision she'd made was meant to be, would changing her course lead her to be punished in other, unimaginable ways? "How can anyone function, armed with the knowledge of when they're going to be killed?"

"Something kills everybody, whether it's murder, sickness or old age. And we all know we're going to die one day, Ana." Then his voice deepened as if he were reciting. "'Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.' I can't take the credit for that, though. That was all Mahatma Gandhi."

None of this makes sense, but what am I to believe? When faced with the question of whether to die now or rewind to live a different life than the one she'd led, with a chance to amend her mistakes, Anaya chose instinctively. And when she glimpsed a white minivan speeding down an intersecting street blocks away, she tore off the watch and thrust it towards him.

"Do it. NOW!"

As the hands started to whir faster, their sound grew fainter, and her last thought began to fade. Would I have done this if I had any other option but the grave?

Hi all!
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G.