“You didn't break him,” Jake said firmly. “You tried to help him. Sometimes trying to help goes wrong, but that doesn't make you responsible for everything bad that happens.”
“I pushed him toward experimental treatment because I couldn't handle watching him get worse. I made his medical decisions based on my own fear instead of what was actually best for him.” River's voice cracked with exhaustion and guilt. “Maya's right. I've been trying to fix him instead of just loving him.”
Jake was quiet for a moment, studying Finn's peaceful face. “You know what I think? I think you've been loving him the only way you knew how. That doesn't make it wrong, even if it didn't work out the way you hoped.”
Around three in the morning, River noticed the first strange thing. The room grew cold suddenly, like someone had opened a window to winter air, but all the windows were closed and the heating system was working fine. River pulled his jacket tighter, but the cold lingered in a way that felt unnatural.
Then the lights flickered. Not the steady flicker of electrical problems, but a deliberate pattern, like someone was sending signals. River looked around the room, expecting to see a nurse or maintenance worker, but they were alone.
“Jake,” River said quietly. “Are you seeing this?”
Jake looked up from his phone, noting the flickering lights and the way their breath was starting to mist in the suddenly frigid air. “That's not normal hospital weirdness.”
The flickering stopped, but the cold remained, and River felt the strangest sensation that they were being watched. Not by hospital staff or security cameras, but by something that understood more about Finn's condition than any of them did.
“There's someone else involved in this,” River said, the realization hitting him like ice water. “Someone who doesn't want Finn to get better.”
“What do you mean?”
“The interference we've been noticing. Equipment failures, power outages, the way his episodes always seem to happen at the worst possible moments.” River stood up, pacing beside Finn's bed as pieces of an impossible puzzle started clicking together. “What if someone's been manipulating his condition? Making it worse on purpose?”
Jake looked skeptical but didn't dismiss the idea completely. “Who would do that? And how?”
River was about to answer when he saw something that made his heart stop. In the doorway of Finn's hospital room stood a figure that looked exactly like him, but older, more weathered, wearing clothes River recognized from his own closet. The figure watched them with eyes that held years of accumulated grief, then turned and walked down the hospital corridor like he belonged there.
“Did you see that?” River whispered, his voice barely audible.
“See what?”
River looked at Jake, then back at the doorway where the impossible figure had been standing. Nothing there now except empty hallway and the distant sounds of hospital activity.
“Nothing,” River said, but his hands were shaking as he sat back down beside Finn's bed. “I thought I saw something.”
But he had seen something. Someone who watched them with the careful attention of a person waiting for specific events to unfold. The same way River had been watching Finn, but from the wrong side of time.
River spent the rest of the night staring at the doorway, finally understanding that his own strange experiences - the inexplicable familiarity with Finn, the misplaced memories,the moments of knowing things he shouldn't - hadn't been separate from Finn's condition. They'd been part of the same phenomenon, just manifesting differently.
Thomas Wright appeared the next morning carrying a leather satchel and looking like a man who'd been debating whether to get involved in something he didn't fully understand. River recognized him from the lighthouse museum—the old curator who collected maritime stories and seemed to know more about local mysteries than he usually shared.
“Heard about what happened,” Thomas said, settling into the visitor's chair with the careful movements of someone whose joints had seen too many years. “Brought some things you might find interesting.”
“About what?”
“Your situation.” Thomas opened his satchel and pulled out a slim folder. “Been researching families like yours for decades. People dealing with temporal displacement, unexplained episodes, reality that doesn't behave the way it should.”
River leaned forward, desperate for any information that might help him understand what was happening. “Other people have had episodes like Finn's?”
“Similar patterns, going back over a century.” Thomas pulled out a faded newspaper clipping from 1943. “Young woman named Sarah Caldwell started having what her husband called 'time slips'—episodes where she seemed to experience other versions of her life. But here's what caught my attention: her husband reported seeing an elderly version of himself during her worst episodes.”
River's blood turned to ice water. “Someone who looked like him but older?”
“Exactly. And according to his account, this figure seemed to be trying to communicate something. Usually warnings about treatment approaches or medical decisions.” Thomas showed River another document, this one from 1967. “Here's another case. James Morrison's wife had similar episodes, and he swore he saw his future self trying to prevent him from seeking certain treatments.”
River stared at the documents, his mind reeling. “You're saying this has happened before?”
“The pattern is consistent across multiple cases spanning decades. The displacement condition affects more than just the patient—it seems to create temporal echoes that allow glimpses of possible futures.” Thomas studied River's face with sharp eyes. “Have you been seeing things you can't explain?”
River wanted to lie, to dismiss what had happened as stress-induced hallucination, but Thomas's documentation suggested he might be the only person who would understand. “Last night, I saw someone who looked exactly like me, but older. He was watching Finn.”
