The month showing on the calendar was December 2023 whichwas consistent with Lily’s appearance.
I hadn’t gone back two days in time.
I had gone back more than a year.
Chapter Four
2023
“I need to go back to my room,” I said, flustered. “I’mfeeling a bit sick.”
I wasn’t lying. The enormity of what might really behappening was making me feel quite nauseous. I needed some time to try to makesense of it all.
“Do you want me to get you anything from the pharmacy when Igo to Sainsbury’s?” asked Phoebe.
Good old Phoebe. Despite being the youngest, she oftenmothered me and Lily.
“No, don’t worry. I’ll be alright later. I just need a bitof a lie down,” I said. “I didn’t sleep very well last night.”
“Well, make sure you’re fighting fit for tonight,” saidLily. “Double celebrations, remember?”
“I’m so glad we’re not working this year,” added Phoebe.“Not after Tessa getting assaulted on the ward on Christmas Eve. It’s not safeat this time of year.”
I might not remember much about my own last few hours, butif this really was a year ago, then what they were saying made sense. This yearhad been that rarest of things, a New Year that I had genuinely enjoyed. Thegirls had persuaded me not to sign up for work and to go out with them instead.
It had been pretty decent, all things considered. They hadeven remembered to wish me Happy Birthday at midnight despite theirintoxication, a rarity indeed.
As for Tessa, she had been the nurse attacked on the wardsby a drunken punter, the very incident that had led to the panic buttons beingput in. Phoebe mentioning this was just one more piece of evidence that Ireally had travelled back to 2023.
“I’m looking forward to it,” I said, recalling a few vaguedetails of that night out, which for me was a year ago. I was probably lookingforward to it more than I had been the first time around when I had approachedit with apprehension. This time, I had no such qualms. I knew it would turn outfine because it already had.
How strange was this going to be, living the same night outover again? Perhaps I could even improve on it now I had a second bite at thecherry. That’s if I could remember all of it. It’s surprising how much youforget in a year, and it didn’t help that this had been one of those occasionswhen alcohol had also blurred the details.
I made my way back into my room, lay down on the bed andtried to get my dizzy, confused head in order.
Everything I had seen pointed to me being transported backin time by just over a year. The calendar and the conversation made me prettycertain it was 31st December 2023. I reached over for my phone forconfirmation.
Yep, there it was, crystal-clear on the 4k display. Itseemed beyond doubt now that I had gone back in time.
I had no idea of the actual mechanics that had caused thisunlikely event but I wasn’t unfamiliar with the whole concept of time travel.From The Time Traveler’s Wife to About Time, I had seen andenjoyed all the movies. I had always thought of them as pure fantasy and neverin my wildest imagination had I ever believed I might find myself in such asituation myself. But here I was.
My presence here in the past was almost certainly somethingto do with the mysterious “Doctor Gardner”, as he had called himself. Whateverhe had done in that room back at the hospital hadn’t been a dream at all – itreally had happened and it had brought me back here.
So what had happened to him? Had he been transported back intime, too? And if so, where was he? Not here, that was for sure. Might he be atthe hospital still? Was it worth going to look?
What about me? Where was my younger self? If my body hadbeen transported back here, shouldn’t there also have been a younger version ofmyself sleeping in this very bed when I woke up? The questions were being firedat me faster than Bradley Walsh on The Chase, and I couldn’t answer anyof them.
Clearly there wasn’t another me here so maybe there wasanother explanation. I sat up and looked closely at myself in the mirror. Hadall of me been transported back, or was it just my mind? Did my soul nowinhabit the body of my younger self?
It was impossible to tell just by looking in the mirror. Ilooked exactly the same as I expected to, but then people don’t age that muchin a year. Unlike Lily, I didn’t radically alter my hair, get new tattoos, ormake any other radical changes in my appearance on a regular basis, so there wereno clues there. I didn’t feel any different either.
Funny, isn’t it, how as people we barely change from oneyear to the next, yet over time small changes imperceptibly mount up? Put twophotographs of any adult taken a year apart next to each another and you’dstruggle to pick which one was older. Try the same thing with two picturesseparated by a decade and it would be quite a different story.
What little evidence I had to go on led me to conclude thatI was in my younger body. I based that primarily on the lack of a counterpartand that I was wearing my old T-shirt. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
The more I thought about it, the more I came to theconclusion that there wasn’t anything bad about this at all. Yes, it wasunsettling and disorientating, but it seemed I had been given a whole year ofmy life to live over again and who wouldn’t take that if it were offered? Therichest person in the world couldn’t buy that.
Whether it had been a good or a bad year wouldn’t matter. Ifit had been a bad one, then surely it could all be turned around with theforeknowledge of what was to come. And a good year – well, that could always bemade even better.
From my perspective, it hadn’t been either
