The Watchmaker's Doctor ✔️

XVII

2002, Sixteen Years Backwards

Why can't it just slow down? The weeks whizzed by, and Anaya needed more time. She was petrified of being distracted. All her energy was needed for her purpose of living without regrets.

As she padded to the shower, she called to mind the nightmare she had last night of the only relationship of her previous life. Disaster. With a capital D.

She'd met Antonio at a nightclub. He was the organizer of an exclusive event at the venue and she was struck by him from the moment he captured her eye. Six years older than she was, he displayed an inexhaustible zest for life and passion for love. With that foreign accent and satin-smooth voice, he could get her to do anything.

Her memories came flooding, as she remembered the last time she was with him.

In a crazed, drug-induced fit he dissolves into hysterics when she asks what they should do for dinner. She loses consciousness when one of his kicks breaks her left arm.

When she comes to, battered, bruised, and infected, Anaya limps to the safest place she could think of. She stays in the mental asylum for six months, healing fractured bones, multiple STDs from the rape, and depression. It becomes her motivation to go back to school and become a doctor.

Anaya pulled herself back to her present life. Abuse could be a slope as slick as ice after a shower of freezing rain. But Matt isn't Antonio. It was unjust to punish this guy for another man's crimes. And if I run from every interaction because of my past mistakes, I won't have lived at all.

In her shock and renewed fears from reliving the hurt and the pain, Anaya hadn't even noticed that her shower must have been scalding. Her back felt scorched and sore from where the water had beaten down as she went through the horrors of that time in her first life.

No halter top today, then. Anaya gingerly put on a white cotton dress and boots, and stuffed a beanie and jacket in her bag, just in case. She'd checked the local weather channel, and it promised, "a dreamy day, with a chance of drizzle."

"Well, hello, sunshine." Her mom blew on her coffee as Anaya walked into the living room. She might be on summer break, but her mom held a nine-to-five at the local mall. For keeping their books in order, the clothes shop gave her an honest wage. "That looks amazing on you."

"Thanks, Mom. Perfect weather for it, too."

"Poor kid's not gonna know what hit him," her dad tsk-tsk-ed away.

"Say what?" asked Anaya.

"What? Matt asked me for permission to take you out. And I permitted."

Anaya curtsied to her dad.

"We're so happy to see you making new friends, Ana. You've been acting so old and grown up these past two years, we were concerned you'd be bringing home a bunch of cats soon." Her mother gave her a mischievous look, but she couldn't hide the underlying seriousness in her eyes.

They're worried. Time to start being a bit more nineteen and a lot less thirty-five.

"Seriously, though. I like Matt. Don't make me lose a good employee."

She wasn't too worried about that. She was the thirty-five-year-old, in mind at least. But this was the perfect time to start acting more her age. This was the life she was living after all. "No sweat, Dad. If I cause him too much excitement, I'll just give him a pill for overstimulation. I carry them on my person at all times."

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