The Undoing of Ms. Germaine (Part 6)
Ms. Germaine confronts her past-self directly in a desperate attempt to save her daughter.
If you’re new here, I sometimes post fiction I’m working on. Welcome!
I’ll get back to normal Imago Dad type fare next week.
This story is about a woman in handcuffs who claims she traveled through time to undo the one mistake that haunts her.
Catch up on the previous episodes here:
“If she lived, then why are you here?” the doctor asked again.
“Is your brain as thick as your neck?” The woman slammed a fist on the table, rattling the cuffs. Just as suddenly, her rage melted, and she collapsed onto the table. After minutes of heaving shoulders gave way to whimpering sobs, she regained her composure, wiped her face on her hands, and pushed her auburn hair back behind her ears.
“I was there the moment Gloria flatlined,” she said with a raspy voice.
Her little body trembled as she struggled for breath, and then her heart stopped. Nurses poured into the room, then the doctors. They did everything they could, but they couldn’t revive her.
I was in shock.
I just stood there and stared as they pushed me back. It’s one thing to know she died in the womb repeatedly. One thing to know she died in there, where I could only see a grainy picture. But now it was in my face.
Now I watched her die.
The nurses spoke to me, trying to ask me questions, and I didn’t hear any of them. I just stared at her little body as they tried to bring her back.
When I couldn’t see her behind the cloud of scrubs, something clicked, and I turned on.
While a nurse was holding my shoulder and telling me I needed to leave the room, I pulled up my bracelet and I made the jump. Right in front of her. It was the first time I’d done that.
I can only imagine the look on her face when I disappeared, back to an hour before, with that precious little baby struggling for life in front of me.
I made up a story about noticing something strange to convince the doctors to intervene earlier, before the alarm bells went off. They ignored me.
So, I burned through jumps. Watched her die and couldn’t help. So many times.
Then I went back to the day before and asked for tests. I told them exactly what would happen.
They listened. They ran tests. But they chalked most of it up to motherly worry. The older ones shrugged it off as a very high likelihood for a preemie with comorbidities. Each shrug shouted the unspoken truth that there was very little they could do. But I didn’t give up.
I jumped again and again into those hours and days where she fought for life.
I tried everything that, Oor…the AI could help me think of to save this child, but it never worked.
“Wait, I didn’t catch that,” the doctor said. “’You tried everything, what?”
“I misspoke,” the patient said without hesitation. “I was talking about the AI like a person, and its nickname almost came out. But it’s not human. It’s not alive.”
The doctor made more notes. “I’d like to get back to that, but please continue.”
I didn’t rest.
Didn’t go home, or sleep, or eat. If I had to guess, I was up for two or three days straight during those trips until I finally understood the truth: Death can’t be reversed.
Death is forever.
Once I had made that decision—when I was still a clueless child—once I decided to kill her, to abort her; that sealed her fate. She was always going to die, and any small changes I could make would never change that.
Never.
I had charted my course, and hers, and set me on this path to Hell.
Each time the nurses swarmed in to save her, the only difference was my own reaction. Eventually, I was numb to it as I came to realize the truth. I was only filled with questions: Was this God punishing me? Why hadn’t I heard from Him since I came back in time?
Was that robotic voice that tantalized me with hope really a devil? Was the AI somehow possessed with some sinister spirit?
That’s what people thought when the bots first showed up, Doc. And if that was true, how on earth could I know?
Why would it do this? What was the purpose? What did it get out of tormenting and torturing me?
The doctor held up one finger as he scrabbled in his notebook with the other hand. When he’d finished writing, he looked up and asked, “Earlier I asked you if you were hearing voices. Would this AI agent fit into that question? Could it be that you were just imagining it speaking to you?”
The patient shook her head. “No, doctor. If there’s a speaker on a device, it can speak through all of them. And everyone hears it. Either that, or we’re all mad in the future for believing such things.”
The doctor nodded and continued writing.
All those swirling questions came down to one focal point—my choice. My choice when I was barely more than a girl. Everyone promised me it meant freedom. But it trapped me in a grief that ballooned and swelled with each experiment.
And with that grief came anger.
The gloom filled me up, choked out every other emotion, until all I felt was rage, and that rage had one single target: Me. My one choice.
I failed every time. Now I knew there was no saving Gloria, but while self-loathing stirred on that dreadful night, I was no longer rational. I no longer believed I could save her. But there was still, somewhere in me, a spark of hope that I could stop myself.
Or maybe it was the same lies from a different direction, the residue of hope sparked by that cursed computer.
In my heart I said goodbye to that baby dying in a plastic box. I wouldn’t go backward anymore, not to try to fix things. And there was no way for me to go home.
I didn’t know if I could jump forward. We had never figured that out. So, I did the only thing that made sense in my anger and my desperation.
I decided to confront myself directly.
“And by this you mean...”
“Going to the clinic.”
“The incident that happened today,” the doctor said, with a husky voice.
The patient bit her lip and nodded, almost imperceptibly, except for the subtle sway of her hair.
I jumped one last time—before all the conversations and the paperwork. Then I waited in my empty house. That stupid bot was the only thing I could talk to.
It kept trying to convince me to try again. I said no for weeks and it drove me crazy. But every time it spoke up, I remembered Gloria’s last breaths and that fire blazed inside me again. That thing motivated me right up to the moment when they called her number in the clinic.
I stood outside in the parking lot and watched as Melissa stood up and went to the desk.
All my rehearsed speeches flew from memory. I just knew I had to stop her. To tell her what she was doing and what the consequences would be. But, I also had to stop myself from tearing her to pieces.
So, I ran and threw open the door. Everyone inside looked at me, staring in shock. Melissa looked me right in the eyes and I saw her fear.
The fear I had felt when I was in her shoes.
“Melissa, you can’t do this,” I said.
Her fear turned to confusion and she asked if I knew her.
“Melissa, I am you,” I said. “You probably won’t believe me…” And then I told her the whole crazy story—I blurted out that I was from the future there to stop her, that I had tried so many times and failed, and I said so many other things, made everybody in that room think I was a lunatic as I raved with her about the consequences of her choice, and the grief it would bring, and how it could never be changed.
At first, it was simply passionate. But soon enough, the staff moved between us and urged me to leave. I screamed as they ushered her into the backrooms. I screamed for her to stop, to wait, to try something else for her own soul.
But they kept pushing me. Not physically at first, but when I wouldn’t leave, some of them grabbed me. I waved them off and backed toward the door, but eventually I wasn’t moving fast enough, and they tried again.
It turned into a fight, scuffling, shouting. And then in the middle of all the chaos, one of them grabbed me, and I fell and hit my head.
The siren of a police car was coming when I fell, but I woke up in the cruiser.
It’s not surprising I was out for a while, considering it was the only sleep I’d had for days. Grief and insomnia are like besties.
“And that’s the whole story?” the doctor asked. “That’s how you ended up here?”
This is part 6 of 7.
Read the rest here.
This fiction is inspired by several women who have told me of their regret after an abortion. I dedicate it to their silent struggle in a world that ignores their stories.
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In addition to speculative fiction with spiritual themes, Brandon Wilborn also writes articles about Faith, Fatherhood, and Classic Values on the Imago Dad Substack. Learn more about his speculative fiction at BrandonWilborn.com or his children’s fiction at DogKnights.com