Doing it All over

Chapter 7

Okay, I'm going out on a limb with this chapter. Due to the specifics of the plot at this particular junction in the story, I am not able to provide a sex scene in this installment. It simply would not work and would run counter to the characterization. I thought I would put that right out front since this is, after all, a sex-stories newsgroup. If anyone does not wish to read this chapter because of this I will understand, but be advised that if you skip this chapter you most likely will not have any idea what is going on in the next chapter if you choose to read that one. My thanks in advance to all whom will bear with me for this chapter in which much is resolved but in which nobody gets laid. I would also like to thank Tony Tiger, a frequent corespondent of mine, for providing me with the nodal and cascading theories that appear here. Putting names to what I was thinking helped me immensely.

I went with Mom and Dad to pick up Tracy at the airport on Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. For any of you that have ever been to a large metropolitan area's air terminal on such a date you can appreciate the chaos that results from having five times as many people in the building as the fire code probably allows. It was wall to wall people pushing from one place to the next, all of them dressed in winter clothing since an early snowstorm had decided to descend upon our fair city. The noise and the crowding were suffocating and Tracy's plane arrived nearly thirty minutes late.

But when we saw her walking out of the skyway towards us it made it all worthwhile. Unlike Mom and Dad, I had not realized how much I'd missed my sister until I saw her. Being younger I beat them to her and got the first hug of greeting.

Before Mom and Dad could reach us Tracy whispered in my ear. "You promised me a talk."

"Soon." I told her. "Soon."

It was nearly eleven o'clock before we got home that night and all of us went straight to bed. There would be no talk that night. The next day relatives began to pour in from other parts of Spokane and from as far away as Sandpoint, Idaho and Moses Lake in the southern part of Washington. Mom made a huge turkey dinner that we all demolished and Tracy and I took our turns in the barrel having our cheeks pinched and being told how much we'd grown. By the time all of the relatives cleared out it was nine o'clock and we were all exhausted once more.

Mom and Dad had a long-standing tradition that they shared with another couple, the male half of which was a private pilot. Each day after Thanksgiving they would pile into a rented airplane and fly to Seattle to have lunch at the space needle. It was an annual event that they'd participated in for as long as I could remember. They'd even continued to do it in my previous life after Tracy's death. They'd offered, halfheartedly I might add, to cancel it this year since Tracy only had a few days with us before she returned to Berkeley, but both Tracy and myself insisted they go.

"Bill and I can find something to do." Tracy told them, looking sharply at me.

"Yeah." I agreed. "We'll keep ourselves busy."

So it came to pass that Mom and Dad piled into their car at eight o'clock on Friday morning for the trip to the small municipal airport from which they would depart. Experience had taught both my sister and I that they would not return until at least six o'clock that evening.

Their car couldn't have been more than a mile from our suburban house before Tracy got off the couch and headed up to her old room. I gave her a puzzled look that grew more puzzled when she returned carrying a twelve pack of beer in her hands.

"Okay," She told me, slapping the beer down on the coffee table. "I scored us a twelver of this imported shit back in California and brought it all the way here for this talk." She ripped open the package, which was green and contained a brand of beer I'd never heard of; something called Steinlager. She pulled out two bottles and popped the tops with a bottle opener.

"Tracy, it's only eight in the morning." I protested. "I haven't even had breakfast yet."

She smiled. "Little brother," She said. "If you want to be successful when you go to college you'd better learn to drink beer first thing in the morning. It's a requirement." She handed one to me.

I took it, surprised to find that it was icy cold.

"Something else you learn in college." She told me, taking a huge swallow. "If you want to keep your beer cold in the absence of a refrigerator, store it outside in the cold. I put this on the roof outside my window last night. Thank God it didn't get below freezing."

I took a swallow, finding the beer very tasty despite the early hour. "Not bad." I told her, drinking some more.

"Okay," She said. "Enough preliminaries. Let's talk."

I set my bottle down on the coffee table, struck by the strangeness of drinking a beer while still dressed in the clothes I'd slept in, my baggy sweats and a T-shirt. Tracy too was still dressed in her customary long T-shirt, this one with the University's logo on the front. Her legs were crossed Indian style on the couch, her eyes looking expectantly at me. I still had no idea what I was going to tell her, how much I should tell her.

"Why don't we start," I told her. "With what you DO know and what you think is going on here. Tell me that."

"Why do you want to hear that?" She asked.

"I just want to see how this whole thing looks to someone close to me."

She thought for a second and then nodded, taking another sip of beer. "Fair enough." She told me. "Here's what I know. I know that the day you told me about the accident I was scheduled to be in the first time, your personality underwent a radical change. One day you were immature little Billy, the next day you were hugging on me, telling me you loved me, and you weren't sure of the exact date. You got into a fight with a huge bully at school, something completely out of character for you, and you put him in the hospital. You came home that day and caught us smoking pot in the living room and you reamed us for it, the same way an adult would, but also different somehow. You also made Cindy's asshole boyfriend back down, and let me tell you, he doesn't back down too often.

"So I'm forced to conclude that whatever happened to you, happened on that day. Am I right?"

I nodded. "Yes. That was the first day."

"That night you came to my room and told me that creepy-ass story about the car accident. You gave me exact details, exact, about what would happen, who would be in the car, etc. You told me things you had absolutely no right knowing and they turned out to be true.

"About the same time you completely lost all of your shyness. One day I was wondering if my little brother was EVER going to get himself laid and the next day you're suddenly a male slut, bagging everything left and right and apparently, if my information was correct, doing a very good job of it.

"You also developed a sudden interest in the stock market and in finding a job. Your grades improved overnight. And I even heard that you put a few teachers in their places."

"Okay." I nodded, surprised at the amount of information Tracy possessed. Again I was forced to wonder just how much my parents knew or suspected. "So tell me, what do you think all of this means?"

"Well obviously something very strange happened to you on that first day." She offered.

"Such as?"

"I think you had some sort of well, psychic flash. I think you had some sort of Scrooge type experience while you slept that night. Something that showed you what the future was going to be like and was realistic enough that you were unable to simply discount it as a dream. That doesn't explain everything of course, but I think that's something like what happened to you. I don't know how such a thing is possible, or why you were chosen to have this knowledge, but somehow, you were shown the future, including my death, and you were able to stop certain things and start others. Am I close?"

"Kind of." I said, taking another sip, surprised to find that the bottle was now empty. I leaned forward and grabbed another one, opening it up with the bottle opener. "You are somewhat on track here but the truth is actually a little stranger than that."

"So what IS the truth?" She asked, grabbing a fresh beer of her own. "Like I said before Bill, I think I have a right to this information."

"And you do Tracy," I agreed. "You really do and I think that maybe with both of our minds working on some of the problems that have cropped up here, maybe something can be done. But there is one thing."

"What's that?"

"If I tell you what I know, what happened to me, you can never tell anyone else. NEVER. If you were to do that and word about what happened got to the wrong people the consequences could be disastrous. Mostly for me, but also for our family. There are people in the world that would literally kill in order to possess the information that I have. Do you understand that?"

"Yes." She nodded. "I won't tell anyone anything. You did see the future, didn't you? You do know things that are going to happen, don't you?"

"Tracy," I said, "I didn't just SEE the future. I lived through it."

She looked at me confused. "You mean when you had your dream or whatever it was like you'd lived through the future? Like you lived through the years while you were asleep?"

"No." I shook my head. "Like I said, it's even stranger than that. I literally lived through the future in somewhat of an alternate timeline. I'm sitting here before you looking like a sixteen going on seventeen-year-old kid. But that's not what I am Tracy. I've actually lived almost thirty-four years now."

She took a moment to digest that, staring at me the whole while. "I'm not sure I'm following you Bill." She finally said.

"Okay," I started. "You've acknowledged the fact that I know aspects of the future, right?"

"Yes, but…"

"The day I woke up with these startling changes. Think back to that day Tracy. Do you remember how confused I seemed, how glad I was to see you, how I didn't know what day it was? And then later in the day, at school, I had to ask you what my class schedule was? Do you remember all of that?"

"Yes." She nodded, her eyes widening.

I took another sip. "The reason I was so confused and so glad to see you was that, from my perspective, I'd gone to bed the night before as a thirty-two year old man in the year 1999."

"1999?" She said, with disbelief.

"In the year 1999 I was a paramedic working for a private company. My sister Tracy had been killed on her graduation night and was sixteen years in her grave. My parents, after Tracy's death, had become victim's rights advocates. My friend Mike was a total loser, still living with his parents.

That was my life when I went to bed that night. When I woke up the next morning, I was fifteen years old again, back in my parent's house, my sister still with the accident in her future, and I had all of my memories from my previous life still intact."

"That's unbelievable Bill." She told me. "You're saying that you lived until 1999 and then were suddenly put back in 1982?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying." I affirmed. "That's what happened to me. The reason I told you about the accident that night was because, at the time, I wasn't sure if I was suddenly going to wake up back in 1999 the first time I went to sleep. I needed to try and prevent your death if that was the case. And though I did not go back to 1999 the next day, my little speech to you that night was apparently effective. Without any further interference from me you strayed off of the path that would have ended with you dumping into the Spokane River."

She shook her head in denial. "I'm not sure I can believe this." She told me. "You are saying that you lived until 1999. That you went day by day through this life and then suddenly you were put back in 1982? That's not possible."

"I wouldn't have thought so either." I answered. "What we're talking about here is time travel. And though the possibility exists that I simply dreamed this entire life that night, I don't believe that is the case. Too many things have come true. My memories of that previous life are too detailed, too complete. That is what happened Tracy. I am nearly thirty-four years old and I lived seventeen of those years in an alternate life."

She took a huge drink of her beer, finishing half the bottle at a swallow. She then picked up another one. "This is way trippy." She told me. "If you lived until 1999, tell me who the President's will be."

I saw this as an interrogation technique to see if I was lying. She would be looking for any hesitation in my answer.

"Reagan won again this year." I said. "You already know that."

"It didn't take a psychic to figure THAT out." She said cynically.

"True." I said. "He'll serve out his term but the last year of it will be taken up by a scandal in which he gets caught selling arms to Iran in order to get hostages released and to fund rebels in Nicaragua after congress cut off aid to them. George Bush will be elected after Reagan. He'll gain immense popularity because of the way he handles an invasion of Panama early in his term and a war in the Persian Gulf at mid-term."

"A war in the Persian Gulf?" She asked.

"Iraq will invade Kuwait, a small country nobody has even heard of at this point in history but that supplies a good chunk of oil. Eventually American forces will bomb the living shit out of Iraq and then ground forces will go in and occupy the country. We'll lose less than two hundred people in the entire war and the country will love old George for it. For a while. Unfortunately for him he'll fuck up the economy so bad that even the success of the Gulf War won't get him re-elected. In 1992 Bill Clinton will win the presidency."

"Who the hell is Bill Clinton?" She asked, staring at me.

"Right now I believe he is the governor of Arkansas. He'll do a fairly good job of getting the economy back in shape, in fact he'll succeed in balancing the budget, but he'll also be mired down in sexual scandals his entire run. Apparently Bill has a little trouble keeping his dick in his pants and the Republicans will jump all over that. Despite this he'll be elected to a second term. When I was recycled back to 1982 he was still serving it although the Republicans had mangaged to impeach him because he got caught lying about getting a blow-job from an intern in his office."

"They impeached him because he got a blow-job?" She asked in disbelief.

"Well, what the charges actually amounted to was lying under oath. But yeah, it was because he got a blow-job. The house impeached him because there was a Republican majority but the Senate cleared him because, although they had a Republican majority also, it wasn't enough to add up to a two-thirds vote." I shook my head sadly. "I can sympathize with old Bill, let me tell you. You think you're having a casual little encounter with someone but it can sure come back to bite your ass."

"Wow." Tracy whispered. "You're telling the truth. You could not have made up all of those details off the top of your head."

"No." I said. "I couldn't."

She took another drink of beer. "But why did such a thing happen to you Bill?" She asked. "Why were you picked to do this? Are there others?"

"This is how it happened Tracy," I said. "Like I told you, I was a paramedic. On the day before I came back I went to a call at a convalescent facility in North Spokane. My patient was an old Chinese man with cancer. He was dying fast. So I…" I told her the complete story. It took about twenty minutes. She listened with rapt attention throughout it.

"So you think he granted you a wish?" She asked when I was done.

"It would seem so." I told her. "The next morning I found myself back in 1982. Fifteen again, just like I'd asked, all memories intact, just like I'd asked. I don't know how he did it, but he did."

"Wow." She said.

"Do you believe me?" I asked her.

She looked up at me. "I don't want to." She said. "It's scary as hell to think that what you're saying is true. It changes my entire perspective on what's real and what's not, on what's possible and what's not."

"Uh huh." I agreed whole-heartedly.

"But all the same," She continued. "I am forced to believe what you say is true. When you explain it everything adds up. It's the only answer that makes sense."

"Yep." I agreed.

Tracy suddenly glared at me. "So here you are, a thirty-something year old man trapped in a child's body. And what have you been doing? You've been screwing sixteen and seventeen year olds! You're a fuckin' pervert Bill."

"I agree." I told her.

"You do?" She asked.

"I'll be the first to admit that I made some poor decisions when I was given this gift. Yes, I had sex with high school girls, something I probably shouldn't have done. I abused a power that was given to me for my own pleasure, not just once but multiple times. I would like to say, in my own defense, that although my mind is that of a thirty-two year old, my body is a teenager's, through and through. I have testosterone surging through me like mad. I thought I was horny as a thirty-two year old but I hadn't seen anything. We forget what it's like to be in the middle of adolescence, let me tell you. That's not a very good excuse I know, but it's all I have to offer. I never once tried to screw an underage girl when I was an adult. Not a single time. But suddenly I found myself able to do it legally and with my body crying out for it. I didn't put up much of a fight but I couldn't help it."

"Are you saying that you are not doing that anymore?" She asked.

"I'm trying not to." I said. "It's cost me a lot. I told you that Nina and I were no longer talking to each other."

"You did." She nodded. "I figured it had something to do with your extracurricular activities. I tried to tell you once that she loved you. And I was pretty sure that you loved her too. You didn't listen."

"I know. And you were right on both counts." I said. "Unfortunately I waited too long to realize it. I screwed around until Nina had her eyes opened to what I was like. She basically told me to fuck off and stay away from her. She won't even talk to me now."

"I'm sorry." Tracy said honestly. "I like Nina. I thought you two were perfect together. I still think that even though I now know you're actually seventeen years older than she is. Maybe she'll come around."

"Maybe." I said. "Or maybe not. In any case, Nina is part of why I called you at the bookstore with that warning. Nina and Mike and some other things have made me realize that fate has a pattern to it. A pattern that it keeps trying to put things and people into. You are part of what has fallen out of pattern."

"Because I didn't die on graduation night?" She asked slowly.

"Exactly." I nodded. "In a way I'm glad that these other things have happened. They allowed me to see what was going on, that fate was attempting to re-align things. When I saw that, I was able to give you that second warning and you were able to heed it when fate took a second shot at you."

She shuddered. "I still get the creeps when I think about how close I was to getting in that car with Darren that night. Jesus. What other things have you seen as far as these patterns go? Maybe if I know how strong this thing is…"

"Okay." I said. "There's you first of all. As you know, in my previous life you died on graduation night. In this life I prevented that. But I also knew Nina in my previous life, in school of course but also years later, and that Nina was not a pleasant person at all."

"What do you mean?" Tracy asked.

"In my first life Nina was a doctor in one of the emergency rooms. And she was a total bitch. She was the shining example of a big-time inferiority complex. If anybody did anything good in front of her, she would find a way to criticize it. If anyone did anything wrong, she would jump down their throats. She was a miserable person and it was quite plain to me why she was a miserable person."

"Because of the way she was treated in school." Tracy said.

I looked at her, smiling. "You know Tracy, you're pretty smart for a youngster."

She giggled nervously. "This is so weird." She commented. "Trying to adjust myself from thinking about you as my 'little' brother. You've got seventeen years on me now."

I snorted. "Older doesn't necessarily mean wiser Tracy. Believe me. Anyway, when I came back I decided to eat in the cafeteria one day and I saw Nina sitting in there alone. That brought back memories of how bitchy she was as a doctor and led to the speculation as to its cause. So I, thinking I was the great superhero, the fixer of oppressed people everywhere, decided to befriend her and maybe change her personality a little."

"And she fell in love with you." Tracy said.

"Yes." I nodded. "At first everything looked rosy. Nina came out of her shell, she started to socialize with people, and she lost a lot of her shyness. I figured that there was no way she could turn into a bitch after all of that. But I was wrong. She finally caught me with a girl and that opened her eyes to what I was like. The next school day, the very next one, she was back in the cafeteria, eating alone, being uncommunicative, being the Nina that she'd been before I came along. I have no doubt in my mind that if things continue the way they are going, she's going to end up a bitchy doctor married to a prick neurosurgeon, making life miserable for everyone around her but especially for herself. Though the catalyst for this was of my making I was frightened to the core by the absurd ease with which she slipped right back into the pattern."

"But Bill," Tracy protested. "It's only natural that she would react that way after catching you with another girl. As a fellow girl I can understand exactly how she would feel when the guy she loves turns out to be a…"

"An asshole?" I suggested.

"Well, yeah." She said. "But anyway, just because of that, you can't decide that fate is trying to realign itself."

"You're right Tracy." I said. "But that's not the only thing."

I told her about Beirut and the bombing and, most importantly, of the 240 casualties in both timelines. I told her about Mike and about his fate in the previous timeline and what had happened to him in this one; how he kept trying to slip back into his pattern.

"He was smoking pot at the fire station?" She asked, seeing instantly the ramifications of that.

"Yes." I nodded. "Marijuana. The same thing that destroyed his career in my first life tried to destroy it in this one. The coincidence of that struck me as a little bit more than coincidental."

"Jesus." She said, shaking her head. "This is scary Bill."

"I know." I told her. "But there's hope I think. Quite a bit of it."

"What do you mean?"

"First of all, when Mike got busted with the pot and the counselor signed him up for independent study once more, I went and saw the counselor."

"You did?"

"I intervened on Mike's part by talking plainly to the counselor, talking as one adult to another, something I don't like to do too much these days since it makes me feel kind of exposed. But anyway, she listened to me. She got Mike his position back at ROP and at this moment he's back in the running. I was able to pull him back out of his pattern again after he drifted back into it. Now it remains to be seen whether or not he'll go back into his old ways. I certainly can not discount that possibility, but it looks to me like he might have learned his lesson, that he might be all right."

"That was nice of you Bill." Tracy said. "Do you really think he'll turn out okay?"

"I hope so." I said. "I've done all I can do for him and I can only hope that fate or his own personality doesn't fuck him again. It's pretty much up to him." I took a deep breath. "But there's another reason why I think fate can be thwarted."

"What's that?" She asked.

I looked up at the ceiling for a second and sighed. So far Tracy had taken all I'd said remarkably well and had been reasonably unjudgmental. But I didn't know how she was going to react to this one.

"Anita." I said softly.

Tracy looked at me puzzled. "Anita? What does she have to do with anything?"

I swallowed nervously. "In my previous life Anita met a man shortly before your graduation. By the time I left for college she had married him and moved away. She hasn't done that in this reality, or at least she hasn't begun that relationship."

"I don't understand." Tracy said. "Why hasn't she?"

"Because of me." I said.

"You?" Tracy asked. "What do you…" She stopped suddenly, staring at me in horror. "Oh my God." She whispered. "You haven't been… sleeping with Anita have you?"

I nodded shamefully.

"Anita?" Tracy repeated in disbelief. "You've been fucking Anita? Our neighbor?"

"Yes." I said.

"Jesus Bill." She said, shaking her head. "You ARE depraved. Anita? I can't believe this. I simply can not believe it. The high school chicks are bad enough, but Anita?"

I shrugged. "It seemed like a harmless thing at the time."

"No wonder you used to spend so much time over there. Christ! How long were you doing her?"

"Do you remember the night that I offered to talk her into letting me babysit her kids instead of you?" I asked.

Her eyes widened. "Yeah."

"That was the first time. I went over to her house later that night and I seduced her. Well actually I led her to believe that she was seducing me. She had a little thing for teenaged boys you see, something I didn't realize my first trip through but that I'd realized as an adult. I took advantage of the situation."

"God." Tracy muttered.

"After that it became an ongoing thing. I never realized I was doing any harm. I just thought I was having fun."

"Fun?" Tracy asked. "With Anita? That's fuckin' gross!"

"Not really." I said. "She's quite good in bed. In fact, of all the sex I had in both of my lives, I have to say that she is physically the best at it."

"I'd rather not hear about that." Tracy said, making a sour face. "Are you still doing her?"

"No." I said. "I came to some hard realizations over the past month. One of them was that Anita had deviated off of her path and thought she was in love with me. She did not go out with the man she was supposed to marry when he asked her the first time because she thought she was in a long-term relationship with me."

"Christ." Tracy commented. "You really do know how to fuck up people's lives, don't you?"

"I offer no excuses except selfishness and stupidity." I said. "It seems that I figured that since I was a teenager there were no consequences to sexual relationships like there are when you're an adult. I was wrong. Very wrong. As soon as I realized all of this I broke off the relationship with Anita, hoping that would put her back on the path she was supposed to be on. After all, Mike, Beirut, Nina, and now you, all of you tried hard to resume your previous pattern. Why not Anita?"

"But she hasn't?"

I shook my head. "No." I said. "She hasn't. In fact she's getting out of control now. She keeps calling the house and asking Mom if I can come over to do some chore for her. And I keep making excuses why I can't. It's already plain that Mom has some suspicions. I don't know how much longer she's going to be able to keep ignoring them. In truth, I don't know WHAT to do about Anita but I've got to do something.

"But the point of this whole Anita discussion was to make you feel better. You see, Anita is living proof that you CAN deviate from your path. If Anita can do it, then so can you."

Tracy finished off the last of her current beer. She immediately reached in and pulled out two more. She opened them up and handed one to me. I took it even though I still had a quarter of a bottle in my hand.

"I must say," Tracy told me. "That what you said today does make me feel better."

"It does?" I asked.

She nodded. "Fate." She said. "Is trying to get me. That's true and that's something I'm going to have to accept. But if I'm to believe you than I'm already supposed to be dead, twice now. I'm living on borrowed time anyway. I'm inclined to believe that, like you said on the phone to me, certain pre-conditions need to be met for that fate to come true. It seems that if I avoid putting myself into the situation of a drunk driver and a car, than maybe, just maybe, I'll be safe. Did you ever take a philosophy class when you were in college, you know, before?"

"Yes I did." I told her. "Philosophy 1A. A general education elective."

"I'm taking it now." She told me. "I like it. They go into a lot of the stuff that I think about when I get stoned. One of those things is the nature of fate and the consequences of meddling with it."

"Really?" I said, interested. If they'd explained that in my philosophy class nearly fifteen years in my past, I certainly didn't remember it now.

"One of the things they talk about is the ramifications of changing fate. As you've pointed out, fate will try to re-align itself if you do that. The question is whether the re-alignment effort will be nodal or cascading."

"Nodal or cascading?" I asked.

"Yes." Tracy nodded. "I'm hoping we're not dealing with cascading here. In cascading you would have started to stress the system starting on the night that I did not get into that car. That would be graduation night. If that is the case then my continued existence will begin to build up that stress until it is almost inevitable that a corrective action will occur. In other words, my continuing to live will be unacceptable to fate and it will not stop until it gets me, one way or the other. If that is what we're dealing with, than I might as well make out my will. I could lock myself in my room forever and still I would die."

"That's pretty depressing." I said softly.

"I know." Tracy told me. "But from all you've said to me today, I'm inclined to believe that we're dealing with nodal here."

"Nodal." I nodded, waiting for her to explain.

"In nodal, the stress on the system would have started on the night you TOLD me about the accident; at the point that you first took action to assist in my thwarting of fate. The stress would have begun to build that night and would have reached its peak on graduation night, the night I was SUPPOSED to have died. I think I might have chosen wisely when I simply stayed home that night instead of going out anywhere. When I think about it now, there was no real reason for me to do that. I wasn't with the people you'd named and logically, I should have been safe as long as I didn't actually engage in the circumstances you described. But instinctively I knew NOT to go out anywhere. I think that fate was on the prowl for me that night and might have bagged me no matter what I did, as long as I got into a car with someone. Do you follow me?"

"Yes." I said, "I do."

"So what you have here is the stress peak on that day. As more and more days go by, the stress on the system caused by my survival decreases as humanity accepts my presence here. There will of course be further attempts to right the wrong in the system. When I nearly got into that car with Darren, that was an attempt to do that. But thanks to your warning, it didn't happen. Fate was thwarted again. The fact that all of those factors needed to come together leads me to believe that the strength of these attempts will weaken over time, eventually allowing me to live a normal life; do you understand?"

"You're saying," I paraphrased, "That the longer you survive, the more likely you are to continue to survive."

"Right." She said. "Now with Mike and Nina, the stress is not related to any one particular event as it was with me. It is simply a lifestyle. If you asked Mike in his previous life, where he was thrown out of the Air Force for smoking pot, you would have found that he'd smoked pot throughout his entire career there and he'd simply had his number come up when they drug tested him. This is a broad event, not a specific one. And with Nina, she simply was responding to a lifestyle also. There would be no specific event to lock her into it. With both of them, the stress would have started the instant you changed things for them. With Mike it would have been when you talked him into firefighting as a career, with Nina it would have been the first day you talked to her in the cafeteria. For both of them the peak probably came early because of the lack of a specific event. Both of them gave into the peak and drifted back into their previous lifestyle.

"You managed to pull Mike out of it because there were no lethal consequences to his actions. Fate will continue to be stressed by this for a while and will continue to pull at him. But as time goes by and he establishes himself in this reality, it will be weaker and weaker with each passing day. If you can get him through this year, he might be all right. But I would keep an eye on him. The pull will still be strong."

"So you think he might get caught smoking pot again?" I asked.

"It's possible." Tracy said. "And the possibility is the strongest at this point in time. He is in the greatest danger of relapse right now."

"And Nina?" I asked.

"Nina." Tracy said. "She has also been pulled back in line by the short peak in the system. She has also been left alive due to no lethal event. Things are as they should be with her right now, at least in your previous reality. Here we have the curious effect that the longer she stays in the pattern the harder it will be to pull her from it. If you do manage to pull her from it somehow, than she will be like Mike and myself. She will initially be easily repulsed by your affections. One small slip up on your part in the early days and she will be right back where she started. If you do manage to win her back, you'll need to be careful." She glared at me. "Damn careful, do you understand?"

"Yes." I nodded.

"And then there's Anita." Tracy said next.

"The exception to the rule." I agreed.

"Actually, she's not an exception." Tracy told me. "She fits right in with the rest of it."

"How so?" I wanted to know.

"With Anita, the stress began on the day you first had sex with her. It came to a peak on the day that her intended boyfriend asked her out. If you asked her, I bet she would tell you that when this gentleman asked her out she felt a curious impulse to say yes, that she felt a strange attraction for him even though she felt she was in love with and committed to you. He probably even asked her out a few times after that, each time with her feeling the same compulsion to say yes, but each time that compulsion getting weaker.

"With Anita, the stress was just as great as with everyone else. The difference here is that her feelings for you were able to override the natural compulsion." She shook her head. "You must really be something special little brother. You've managed to fuck over fate Itself."

"And so," I summarized, "The longer that Anita does not go out with this guy," I started.

"The less likely it is she ever will." Tracy finished.

I took another long swallow of beer. "So you're saying," I said, "That in the case of both Nina and Anita, I need to act quickly."

"Very quickly." She affirmed.

"And you?"

She smiled. "Now that I know what I'm dealing with here, I think I'll be able to take care of myself."

"I hope so Tracy." I told her. "Because you are still the most important thing. The day I came back I vowed to myself that if I accomplished nothing else, that I would not let you die. I've done that so far. And now, I want you to be able to piss on my grave, do you understand?"

She laughed. "Little brother, I plan to squat and let loose a fuckin' torrent on your grave."

Tracy flew back to California Sunday morning. There was no sense of dread as I watched her plane rotate off the runway and streak into the overcast sky, headed west. There was only a sense of hope.

Monday afternoon I crunched through the fresh layer of snow on Anita's walkway, leaving virgin footprints behind me. My mind was set as I looked at her door, at the solid surface that I was about to pound upon, alerting her to my presence at her domicile for the first time since our horrid discussion.

Mother had told me quite shortly that Anita had called AGAIN, asking that I come over and change the oil in her car. This time I agreed, knowing it was time to fully extricate myself from this situation. I was not looking forward to what I had to do but I intended to do it. I'd been faced with similar situations as a paramedic, having to do distasteful tasks, though never had they had the emotional quality this encounter promised.

Resolved to my task, I raised my fist and knocked on her door firmly.

It was less than ten seconds before it swung open and Anita herself, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt appeared to me on the other side.

"Billy!" She said, her face beaming. "Come in! I knew you'd come back."

"I'll stay out on the porch Anita." I told her firmly. "What I have to say won't take but a minute."

Her face clouded, trying to retain some of the hope it showed when she first saw me. "What do you mean?"

"Anita," I said. "I'll make this short and to the point. Our relationship is over. Over and done. I'm sorry I ended it so abruptly and I'm sorry I hurt you, but it is over. You need to stop calling my house and asking for me to come over and do chores for you."

"Billy, I was just trying to stay friends with you." She told me, fresh hurt marring her features. "Don't you want to still be friends?"

"You know that being friends after a sexual relationship is not possible." I told her. "That is not why you're calling. You're hoping I'll come over and resume where we left off. I will not do that. You need to stop it. You're making my mother very suspicious and if you push much harder the consequences are going to unpleasant."

She became indignant. "Well maybe your mother SHOULD know about what happened between us. Maybe I should just tell her."

I shook my head, disgusted with both her and with myself for bringing her to this point, this desperation. "Think about that for a second Anita." I told her. "Do you think that if you tell my mother about our relationship she's going to order me to come over here and marry you? Is that what you really think? Well I'm here to tell you that if you tell my mother anything it will be the worst mistake you'll ever make in your life. Mom will be very offended by it and she will not be directing her offense at me. You are the adult in this situation and in case you forgot, I am a minor.

"I imagine Mom would probably call the cops about this and you would end up with a criminal charge of some sort. You may not be convicted of anything but you would almost certainly have your children taken away from you. Is that what you want?"

Though the shock that overcame her expression was painful to watch, it was also a relief. I had managed to break through to her, to get a point across.

"Your mother wouldn't do that." She protested, but weakly.

"To tell you the truth Anita, I don't really want to find out. I didn't come over here to torment you and despite what you probably think, I don't hate you. I just need you to acknowledge that our relationship is at an end. That it's over. I don't want you to get into trouble Anita, I just want you to leave me alone."

She gulped, tears running down her face. "I'll leave you alone." She whispered, barely audibly.

"What was that?" I asked.

"I said I'll leave you alone." She nearly shouted. "Are you happy?"

"No Anita." I answered. "I'm not. But I'm glad you agreed with me."

This time I was able to get away before the sound of her sobs reached my ears.

Before she left Tracy was royally chewed out by my mother for not calling or writing more often. She left us with a promise to phone at least once a week. It had been three weeks since she'd left and so far she'd kept up with her promise well. As to how long that would last was anyone's guess.

I was home alone when she called on Wednesday evening, a week prior to Christmas vacation.

"Hey Bill." She said cheerfully. As before I could hear girlish revelry going on in the background. "Just making my obligatory weekly call so that Mom doesn't cut off my funding."

"Well, you wasted a call." I told her. "There out at Dad's school's Christmas party. They probably won't be home until midnight or so."

Tracy giggled. "And when they do get home, Dad will be drunk and Mom will be ragging on him about having too much to drink and swearing that she's not going to take him to next year's party."

"Gee," I mocked, knowing that Tracy was correct. "You sound like you've lived through this before."

"Oh, I might've witnessed something like that a time or two." She agreed. "So how's things with you?"

"Well," I said. "I think I have the Anita problem stabilized. She's not calling here anymore, hasn't since I had that little talk with her."

"It was the right thing to do." Tracy assured me. "It worked didn't it?"

"But it wasn't terribly fun."

"Well," Tracy opined, "Maybe you'll learn to consider the consequences of your actions a little better."

"Maybe." I agreed.

"How about Nina? Any developments there?"

"Unfortunately, no. She still won't talk to me or have anything to do with me. It's kind of hard to declare your love for someone who is repulsed by your very presence."

"I told you Bill," She said. "She's not repulsed by you. She probably still loves you. She just doesn't want to subject herself to pain again. If she can get away from you when you try to talk to her, she will. You need to put yourself in a situation where she can't get away from you, where she's forced to listen to you. Then you can say your piece to her. And it had better be a good piece."

"How about kidnapping her at gunpoint?" I asked sourly.

"That might not serve your interests very well." Tracy commented. "Don't worry, you're a smart guy, you'll think of something. You'd just better do it quick. Remember the more time that goes by…"

"The harder it will be." I finished for her. "I know that very well, thank you. So how about you? How are things on your end?"

"I'm hanging in here." She answered. "I don't get into cars at all anymore.

I bought a bicycle and I use that to ride everywhere that I need to go. It's not terribly fun, especially when it rains, which it does a lot here, but at least it's keeping me in shape."

"That's good thinking Trace." I told her. "Very good thinking."

"I do what I can." She said.

"Are you still coming home for Christmas?"

"As soon as Mom and Dad buy me the ticket." She said. "Try to have some good news to share with me when I get there, okay?"

"I'll try Trace. I'll try."

They say that fortune favors the bold. That may be so. But sometimes it favors the clumsy and the inattentive. This is especially true if the clumsy and the inattentive are blessed with quick thinking.

It was Monday afternoon, the last week of school before Christmas break. I was at my ROP worksite in the basement of the trauma center. My work partner, Brett Jackson, and I were about to begin putting together some sterile chest tube kits for the emergency department. In a few years Jeff Foxworthy would put out a list of indicators that you might be a redneck. Brett would fit nicely into many of them. He was a large, jovial kid that continually fidgeted and whined during the work period because, in the sterile environment of central supply, he was not allowed to suck on the large plug of chewing tobacco he habitually stored in his bottom lip at all other times. As we finished up laying out the sterile packaging on the sterile table with our sterile hands that were encased in sterile gloves, Brett was regaling me with his favorite, indeed his ONLY subject of conversation.

"So I got the Hearst shifter put in with my last paycheck," He told me, "And with my next one I'll be able to put a down payment down on a set of glass packs."

I had only the vaguest idea what he was talking about. Cars were not and still are not my forte'. I had picked up that glass packs were mufflers but as far as a Hearst shifter went I was pretty much clueless. I figured it probably had something to do with the transmission although why a Hearst shifter was superior to the one that had come with the car was a mystery to me.

"That's cool Brett." I said absently, putting down the last piece of packaging.

"Yep." He said, nodding. "And if I get hired here at semester break I can double my salary and quit workin' at fuckin' McDonald's. More money and more time to work on my car. That would be sweet." He said this last the way other males talked about having two women at once, in the tones of mystical fantasy, of the ultimate pleasure.

I walked over to the autoclave, where the instruments we would need had just finished the sterilization process. "How much money have you spent on this car?" I asked, picking up another set of sterile gloves that I put on over the ones I already had so I could open the autoclave.

"About two grand." He told me as I opened the autoclave and stripped off the second pair of gloves. "We need six keagle hemostats and six number eight scalpels to start with."

"Got it." I answered, dropping the gloves into the nearest garbage can. I reached into the autoclave, which was stuffed full of a variety of surgical instruments lined up in trays. Brett had loaded the machine earlier and I was not surprised to see that it wasn't the neat, precise way that I did it.

To each their own I figured, dismissing this.

"So you got two grand worth of car parts on that thing?" I asked him, grabbing the hemostats. "Does it run any better now?"

"Well," He answered, "Actually my gas mileage has gone down the shitter. But it LOOKS cool."

"And that's really what it's all about, right?" I said, smiling to myself as I handed him the first set of instruments to put in his sterile tray.

"Right." Brett agreed enthusiastically, pleased that I was on his wavelength.

I had another bright and witty thought that I was going to share with him, one of those patented Billy-remarks I'm famous for, so I turned my head to speak just as I reached into the autoclave for the next load. My hand, unguided by my eyes, contacted one of the steel instruments in the tray and I felt a sharp, burning sensation stitch across the webbing of my right thumb.

"Ow." I muttered, thinking that I'd poked myself with something. That would be a royal pain in the ass if the integrity of my glove had been compromised. If that had happened we'd have to re-sterilize everything in the autoclave. I pulled the hand out to take a look.

"Oh shit." I said, staring. My glove had a neat line about two inches long stretching from the base of the thumb to nearly the wrist. Blood was welling from a corresponding line on the flesh beneath. Some of the blood was dripping from the incision in the glove and pattering to the floor at my feet but most of it was being trapped beneath the latex, creating a rapidly swelling, water balloon effect.

Brett turned to see what was wrong and his face paled. "Dude!" He yelled in horror. "You're bleeding!"

"No shit." I told him testily, starting to feel pain now, a burning, throbbing pain that radiated up my forearm. I looked in the autoclave to see what had done this and saw the culprit immediately. It was a scalpel that had been placed in the tray with its blade sticking upward. That was a no-no for this very reason. Thank you Brett.

"Goddam Dude!" Brett said, backing away from me as if my injury might be contagious. "Are you gonna be all right?"

"Yeah." I nodded, looking around for something to use as a bandage. On a cart next to me was a box of surgical swabs that were supposed to go into the packs we were assembling. Though I would be violating the sterility field by putting my hands on the tray, I figured that under the circumstances I would be forgiven. I picked up a handful of them with my uninjured hand.

"Hold these for a second." I told Brett, holding out the swabs to him.

"Dude, I don't like blood." He said shakily, refusing to take them.

I swallowed, my eyes boring into him. "Brett," I said calmly, firmly. "Hold the fucking swabs."

Gingerly he stepped forward and took them from my hand. "What are you gonna do?" He asked, his voice broken and near panic.

"I'm going to put those swabs on the cut." I told him. "But first, I'm going to have to take off the glove. Can you hang with that?"

"I don't know Man." He answered, looking a little green now.

"It's just a cut." I told him gently, wondering why I was the one doing the comforting here. "It's nothing lethal, okay? All you have to do is hand me the swabs when I take the glove off. Are you with me?"

He nodded rapidly, seeming to gather his courage. He looked like a GI hyping himself up to storm out of a landing craft onto Omaha Beach. "I'm with you." He finally said.

"Okay." I said, looking at my glove again. It was getting very swollen. "I'm going to do it now."

"Okay."

Wincing in pain, I stripped off the glove, releasing about a cup of blood, which splashed to the floor. I dropped the glove down there with it. Blood continued to pour from the cut, dripping into the puddle the glove had left.

Housekeeping was certainly going to be displeased with me.

"Give me half of them." I told Brett.

With a shaking hand, he did as I said. I took them and swabbed all the blood away from the injury. When it was clear I took a quick look at it before fresh blood could obscure it from my view. It was a neat incision, two inches long, with fatty tissue clearly visible. I didn't see any tendons protruding so probably just some stitches were in order. I flexed my thumb and my index finger to make sure they still worked. They did, but considerable pain and the expellation of a large glut of blood accompanied the action.

"Give me the rest of the swabs." I told Brett.

He did as I asked but made the mistake of taking too good of a look at the wound. He hiccuped once and vomit sprayed from his mouth, splashing the front of his scrubs. He charged off for the nearest bathroom, trailing puke in his wake.

"Fuckin' pussy." I muttered, pressing the clean swabs to the cut and applying as much pressure as I could. Like emergency services workers the world over, a routine part of my job had been handling emergencies and remaining calm during them. As such, I held in contempt any one who did not possess this same ability. Human nature I suppose.

Our supervisor was Mindy Watson, a forty-year-old woman who had worked in central supply since she'd been in high school herself. I went off in search of her, wondering if this was going to affect my chances of getting hired. The gauze I was pushing to the wound slowly turned from white to red but I was no longer dripping on the floor. I had never seen anyone die from this sort of injury, not even a hemophiliac, so my mind was untroubled in that regard.

I found Mindy at the back of the large room. She was sitting at her desk and compiling some lists from the orders that had been sent down.

"Mindy?" I said. "I've had a little accident."

She looked up at me, saw the blood on the gauze, and sighed. "What happened?" She asked, resigned.

"A scalpel got left blade-up in the autoclave." I said. "And my hand found it."

She gave a sour look. "Let me guess." She said. "Brett loaded the autoclave?"

"Well…" I shrugged.

"I see." She nodded. "How bad is it?"

I lifted the gauze for a second to show her, wondering if she was going to get sick like Brett. She didn't. She gave it a quick glance and said, "Well Bill, like I said in your evaluation; when you do something, you always do it well."

I smiled despite the pain. "Thanks." I told her, covering the laceration back up.

"You got the bleeding under control?" She asked.

"It's getting there." I told her. "You might want to send someone to check on Brett though. He, uh, wasn't feeling too well."

"He'll live." Mindy told me, digging through her desk and pulling out a notebook. She called out for another one of the students. When she came over Mindy ordered her to go find some fresh gauze and some roller bandages.

When the student returned Mindy wrapped up my wound as efficiently as I could have done. She then took out a pen. "Start from the beginning and tell me what happened."

It took less than five minutes. She took notes on the conversation and then stashed her notebook away.

"You're covered under the hospital's work comp." She told me. "They'll cover the hospital bill but, unfortunately, since you don't make any salary, there's nothing to compensate you for time off work. You should've dragged yourself to your paid job and pretended you did it there."

"I'll do that next time." I said.

"Anyway," She continued. "Why don't you head up to the ER so they can stitch you up? I'll call your parents for permission to treat and send up the authorization. Then I'll start the reams of paperwork you've just dumped on me."

"Right." I said morosely, thinking about the ER. This was the busiest hospital in the Spokane metropolitan area. It's ER alone dealt with over eighty thousand patients every year. Great. When I'd come here with the stab wound to the abdomen they'd treated me right away of course. But this was not a life-threatening problem. I would not be high on their list of priorities. If I was lucky, they might get around to stitching me up before the ten-hour deadline for suturing a wound expired. The last thing I wanted to do was spend all day and part of the night sitting in the waiting room among the scrotes that this hospital attracted. It was too bad I couldn't go somewhere else to get my stitches. Any of the other hospitals could…

I stopped suddenly at that thought.

"Uh, Mindy?" I said.

"Yeah?" She asked, rummaging through her desk drawer now.

"Do I HAVE to get my stitches here?"

She gave me a puzzled look. "Why would you go somewhere else?" She asked.

I explained about the eighty thousand patients, and the wait, and the deadline. "I think if I went to another hospital, say Holy Family, I would get treated a lot quicker."

"Holy Family?" She asked. "That's clear out in North Spokane. How were you planning to get there?"

"My car." I said. "I can drive myself there."

"Is it a stick-shift?" She asked.

"Oh no." I lied. "Automatic, all the way."

She thought for a minute. "Comp will still cover it." She said. "But I don't know if your parents are gonna go for that. Since you're a minor we have to do whatever your parents say."

"Let me talk to them." I said.

She shrugged and spun her phone around, offering it to me. "Dial nine before the number." She said. "And let me talk to them when you're done."

I called Mom since she was the easiest to get hold of during the workday. I assured her I was all right but that I'd had a little accident at work that was going to require some stitches. After the obligatory mother interrogation as to my health and well being, I told her that, although I was located downtown in the trauma center, I wished to drive to North Spokane to get my stitches.

"Why Billy?" She asked. "What's wrong with getting them where you're at? After all, they treated you pretty good when you had, well, your little fight that time."

"Yeah Mom." I said. "But they're pretty busy here. I could end up waiting for hours."

"Okay." She said. "But why Holy Family? There are other hospitals that aren't so far away."

"Well Mom, I thought maybe it would be nice to go to, uh, well, the hospital where Nina works."

There was a long pause, almost long enough for me to think I'd been disconnected. Finally Mom said, "I think that's a fine idea Billy. Sometimes Fate works in mysterious ways."

"You ain't kidding." I told her.

"What was that?"

"Nothing." I said. "My supervisor wants to talk to you. I'll head over to Holy Family and hopefully I'll be home before dark."

I quickly realized why Mindy had been concerned about the layout of my transmission. I hadn't even made it to the freeway before the gauze on my hand began spouting flowers of red from the action of operating the gearshift. By the time I pulled into the parking lot of the suburban hospital my hand was throbbing and the gauze was stained with my blood.

I locked up my car and, authorization form in good hand, walked up to the emergency room entrance. The automatic doors led me into the emergency waiting area which, I was gratified to see, was not even a quarter full of people. I signed in somewhat clumsily since my right hand was my good hand and was shortly called up to a little room to be triaged. The nurse listened to my story impassively, took my blood pressure, pulse, temperature, and respiratory rate. She examined my wound and then re-wrapped it in fresh bandages. I was then sent me to the waiting room.

I sat down in one of the chairs and took a look at the magazines lying around. They were outdated even for this when. I ignored them and began to wait.

It was less than five minutes before the door that led from the emergency room to the waiting room creaked open. My heart quivered in my chest as I saw who poked their head out. It was Nina. She was dressed in a pair of surgical scrubs that hid all the curves of her body. Her hair was pulled into a tight ponytail. And she looked very pretty, very Nina as I looked at her. I knew then that I'd made the right decision by coming here. I only hoped Nina would too.

She had a chart in her hand. She glanced at it for a moment and then said to the room at large, "Matthew Miller?"

Across the waiting room from me a large blonde woman holding a crying baby with a runny nose stood up. The baby, who I figured was the Matthew Miller of whom she spoke, was tugging on his right ear obsessively. Matthew's mom carried him to where Nina stood and they all three disappeared, closing the door behind them. Nina had not seen me sitting there.

Twenty minutes passed. I sat there with my hand throbbing and my brain working on overdrive, trying to figure out what I should say to her, how I should say it, and how I could keep from saying the wrong thing. I passed a thousand scenarios through my mind, laying out a thousand scripts and rejecting them all. Finally I concluded that I would just have to take things as they came. That was one of my shining abilities.

When the door opened again Nina had a fresh chart in her hand. Her mouth opened to shout out a name as her eyes locked onto the paperwork before her, her lips beginning to form together to say the first name; William. Then she stopped. Recognition filled her face. Slowly her eyes left the chart and began to examine the waiting room. It was less than a second before they locked onto me sitting there.

I offered her a smile as she studied me, as she fought to compose herself. Finally, keeping her face neutral, her voice toneless, she said, "William, if you would follow me please?"

I stood up and walked over to her. She turned her back to me and led me into the emergency room.

The ER was almost exactly as I remembered it being on my many trips here as a paramedic. There were a few additions and coats of paint that they had yet to do, but otherwise I knew its layout fairly well. I even recognized a much younger version of one of the old biddy nurses that worked in there. Despite the relative emptiness of the waiting room, the treatment area, which only contained ten beds, was full. Several elderly people were being treated for breathing or cardiac type problems. Two children were waiting to be stitched up like I was, and of course there was Matthew Miller, who seemed to have an ear infection. Nina led me to an empty room, which was actually a hospital gurney surrounded by a yellow curtain.

"If you'll have a seat here." She said, waving me to the gurney. "The nurse will be in to see you shortly."

"Thank you Nina." I told her.

She looked at me for a moment. "Why did you come here?" She asked.

"Because YOU work here." I told her. "I wanted to see you, to talk to you."

"I don't have anything to say to you." She informed me. "And we won't be speaking any further. Sorry you wasted your time."

As she turned to go I said, "I'm not giving up that easily."

She gave me one more glance and then marched out of the room. She made a point of staying out of my line of sight. But, as I told her, I wasn't giving up that easily. This might be my only chance. Though it had been more than eighteen years, I had once been an ROP ER tech too and I knew well what their duties were.

A nurse came in a few minutes later, gave my wound a cursory examination, and then told me what I already knew; that I was going to need some stitches. She told me the doctor would be in as soon as he could to do that. "Anything we can get you?" She then asked, "Some water or a blanket or something."

"I'm fine for NOW." I told her.

She left the room, slipping between the flaps of the yellow curtain. I knew that she would be telling Nina, the ER tech, to set up a suture kit in my room. It was part of Nina's job and she certainly would not be able to refuse to do it.

Sure enough, Nina pushed back through the curtain less than five minutes later, carrying one of the sterile suture kits, the sort of kits I assembled all the time in central supply at the trauma center, in her hands. She kept her eyes off of me as she walked over to the stainless steel wheeled stand next to my bed and set the kit down.

"Nina." I told her as she opened the un-sterile outer seal and folded it back. "I'm miserable without you. I miss you terribly. More than I ever imagined I would. I was an asshole before but I'm trying to change, I really am."

She looked at me impassively. "Don't touch any of this stuff." She told me.

"It's sterile and if you put your hands on it you might get an infection."

She smiled. "We wouldn't want that to happen now, would we?"

"Nina," I started again. "Do you remember when you told me…"

"I have work to do Sir." She said shortly. "You won't be seeing me again." She turned and headed out the door.

I sighed. How much time did I have before the doctor came in to stitch me up? Not much I figured. I sat quietly at my bed until I saw a nurse pass by outside.

"Nurse?" I asked, making her stop in her tracks and peer questioningly in at me.

"Could I possibly have some water? I'm awfully thirsty."

"Sure." The nurse nodded. "Just a second." She disappeared again.

Sure enough, a minute or so passed and then Nina reappeared in my cubicle, this time carrying a plastic cup of water in her hands. She walked quickly over and held it out to me.

"Your water." She said.

I didn't take it. "Nina," I said. "You told me once you had feelings for me. Do you remember?"

"Do you want the water or not?" She said testily. "I have lots of work to do."

"Tracy tried to tell me that once." I said. "Remember the time she and Cindy got you high? She tried to tell me that night but I didn't listen. I should have listened. I should have told you the things I'm trying to tell you right now at that moment. But I didn't. I was an asshole, I was stupid, and I regret that with all of my heart now."

She stared at me for a moment as I recited this to her. She then set the water down on another tray and left the room again.

Was this doing any good? It seemed it wasn't. But I was committed. All I could do was keep trying.

"Nurse?" I asked the next time one passed by.

"Yes?"

"I'm kind of cold in here. Do you suppose I could have a blanket?"

"Why sure." She said, disappearing.

A minute later Nina entered the room yet again. This time she carried a blanket in her hands. Her eyes bored into me. "Your blanket." She said.

"Nina, what I'm trying to say," I said. "Was that I was wrong. I was wrong about everything. Since you've had your talk with me I haven't gone a day without thinking about what I screwed up with you. I miss our talks about books, about life, about everything. I miss being with you. I didn't realize how happy I was when I was with you; how good you made me feel, until it was gone. I NEED you Nina and I want you to come back to me. I'll accept any terms you want to offer. Anything. But please, come back to me.

Be with me again? You told me that you had feelings for me once. Are they completely gone? I realize now how deep my feelings are for you."

She was now chewing on her lip as she listened, the first break in her professional, neutral face. She still held the blanket in her hands. I sensed that she was about to throw the blanket at me and flee. It was time to lay down all the cards.

"Jesus Nina." I said. "I'm sitting here talking about 'feelings', just like you did that day. Why don't we cut the shit? You were right about me and you have absolutely no reason to believe what I say based on my past behavior, but I'm going to say it anyway. " I swallowed. "I love you Nina.

I love you deeply, intimately. You're all I can think about, you're all I want in this life. I waited too long to realize it, to say it, but it's the God's truth. I love you and I want you to be with me forever. I'll do anything you want me to in order to prove this to you but I love you. I LOVE you."

She stared at me, her lip quivering now. Suddenly she shook her head almost violently. "No." She said. "This has to stop. If you have feelings for me as you say then you'll leave me alone like I asked. Just leave me alone. Stop talking to me, stop thinking about me. I need to get you out of my life and keep you out of it."

"I'll do that if you do one thing for me." I said. "Just one little thing."

"What's that?"

"Look in my eyes and tell me you don't love me. If you can truly say that you don't love me, that you don't miss me, then I'll leave you alone forever."

She sighed, tossing the blanket on the foot of my gurney and wiping a tear that was forming in her eye. "I do love you Bill." She said. "If I didn't this would be a whole lot easier. I've loved you almost since the first time we started talking together. Don't you see that that is the problem? Love like that doesn't just die. You hurt me badly. You devastated me. You showed me how blind I could be about seeing certain things because of love. You showed me how much love could hurt me and how it could keep on hurting me long after I stopped talking to you.

"Don't you understand? I'm just now getting to the point where I can go for an hour or so without thinking about you. I'm just now starting to get you out of my system. And here you are telling me everything is all right and we should just go back to the way we were. I can't do that! I will not live through that hurt anymore."

"You won't have to Nina." I told her. "You won't have to. I'm not saying we should go back to the way things were. I want more with you now. I want to be with you always, don't you see? I am not the same person I was last month. I've changed. I will never hurt you that way again."

"Bill, if there's one thing I learned through all of this," She said, really crying now. "It's that love sucks. We weren't even going together, we never even kissed each other, and you were able to hurt me. How much more could you hurt me if we did start going together? How much more, Bill?"

"A lot more." I said honestly. "But I won't. I promise you that. I won't."

"How could I believe you? After all the girls you had, after all the girls you used and then tossed over your shoulders like a beer can, how could I ever trust you not to do that with me? What's going to happen when you get tired of me? How long will that take?"

"It'll take forever Nina." I said. "I will never get tired of you and I will never treat you the way I've treated other girls. When I was doing that I was being stupid and immature. I was being self-centered. But I've learned a few things. Getting your teeth kicked in by consequences does that for you. The most important thing I learned was how much you meant to me and how stupid I'd been to not see what you and I had together, to not seize it while I had the chance.

"I want one more chance Nina. Just one more. I've given you all the promises I can and you can take them for what they're worth. I can give you all the assurances I can and you can take them the same way. But what it comes down to is your choice. If you want me to, I'll walk away from you now and never enter your life again without permission. If you ask me to do that I will, and I'll be feeling the same hurt, the same guilt, the same feelings that you've felt, that you're feeling now.

"If you give me that one chance, you'll be taking a chance of your own. You'll be gambling with your own feelings that I am true to my word and that I won't hurt you again. I think that love is like that. But if you tell me to leave you'll be taking another kind of chance. You'll be taking the chance that it might have worked out and you will never have known it. I think we have something special Nina, something very special. Thanks to my stupidity we never got to explore it fully. I'd like to try now. Just one shot Nina, that's all I ask. Just take one little gamble."

She wiped her eyes again with the back of her hand and then sniffed. "It's not a little gamble." She said. "It's a big one. The biggest one."

"We can start slow Nina." I told her. "I'm not saying we should rush out and get married. I just like to be with you. I'm not complete when you're not with me. I know that sounds like a freakin' cliche from a romance novel but it's true. I think about you all the time. I want to be with you, to talk to you. Is that too much to ask?"

She shook her head. "I don't know anymore Bill." She said. "I just don't. I need some time to think about all of this."

"Take all the time you want Nina." I said. "Just don't tell me to leave yet. Just don't tell me that until you've thought it over. I will if you want me to, but I hope you won't."

"I have to get back to work." She said. She turned and headed back through the curtain.

"Nina," I said.

She turned to look at me.

"Thanks for listening to me."

She nodded and slipped out of my sight again.

The doctor came in a few minutes later. I don't know if you've ever had stitches before but it is certainly not one of life's greater pleasures. He stuck a needle into my hand in eight different places in order to inject lidocaine. The pain from this rivaled everything associated with the time I'd been stabbed. There are an obscene amount of nerve endings in a person's hand. When he was done I had a neat line of eight stitches keeping the wound closed. He promised he would write me a prescription for some pain pills and then he shot off to his next patient.

It was Nina who came in to give me my discharge paperwork. Her face was once again blank as she entered the cubicle, clipboard in hand, and sat down on the stool the doctor had used. I looked back at her.

"You know something?" She asked me quietly.

"What's that?" I asked.

"The girls at school have been complaining about you lately."

"They have?" I asked, not at all sure where this was going.

She nodded seriously. "I hear them in the bathroom and between classes all the time, just like I always did before. Of course before I could never bring myself to believe what I was hearing."

"Nina I told you…"

"Shhh." She hushed me. I shut up.

"Anyway," She continued. "Lately they've been saying things about how you're getting kind of uppity and so forth. Saying you won't go out with anyone anymore, won't do your vacuum cleaner routine," She gave me a sharp look, "Whatever THAT is."

I swallowed, blushing.

"I ignored them when I heard them talking about you." She went on. "Like I said, I didn't want to hear ANYTHING about you lately. But after what you just said, it came back to me."

"Did it?"

She nodded. "It did." She looked at me for a moment. "What I'm trying to say is," Another deep breath. "Well, if you're not doing anything else at lunch tomorrow, why don't you come over and sit with me? I just read a cool book and I've been dying to discuss it with someone who has some intelligence."

I smiled, my heart warming as I heard this. "I'll be there Nina. I've read a few books too."

"I'll keep an eye out for you." She said, "Now, here are your discharge instructions. You need to keep this wound dry and change the dressing every day. When you take a shower…"