Every Last Minute (Time Wrecker Trilogy Book 1)

by Ellen Smith

Date: April 11, 2011

  From: Dr. Olivier

  To: Mara Gaines Sterling

  Cc: Dr. Chen, Dr. Young, Dr. Zimmerman, Ms. Poole

  Subject: Your employment

  Mara:

  I would have appreciated being told that you were pursuing a timeline rectification before the research center director called to discuss it with me. He believes that we cannot afford to be associated with someone who doesn’t uphold the study’s mission, and frankly, I agree.

  As you know, my research involves tracking long-term data on the effects of traumatic events. It is a clear conflict of interest for my research assistant to be gathering data on the effects of trauma while privately pursuing a timeline rectification for herself. Given your lack of transparency on this issue and your quick exit this afternoon, it is obvious to me that your involvement in a timeline rectification is not merely a rumor.

  You are dismissed from my research team and your employment has been terminated with prejudice. Furthermore, you are banned from the research center property effective immediately.

  Dr. Francine Olivier

  Chapter Eighteen

  WILL

  Mara hadn’t texted at all since their lunchtime argument. Will had the presence of mind to stop at the grocery store for flowers. Peonies. The little bouquet Mara had bought on Saturday were already wilting and turning brown on the table in the dim living room. Truthfully, he was also dragging his feet about going home. It was going to take a lot more than flowers to make this up to Mara.

  The florist was a little too eager to help him. “One dozen or two?” she asked.

  “That depends. How much are they?”

  The florist tsked as she pointed to the price in the book. “You want my advice? You better make the bouquet match the apology.”

  “Who says I’m apologizing?” Will said, feeling a bit stung.

  The florist put a hand on her hip. “Are you planning a wedding?”

  “No.”

  “Funeral?”

  “No.”

  “Is it her birthday?”

  “No.”

  “Get two dozen.”

  The pink, fluffy blooms made his car smell like a perfume ad. Well, it was worth it. Will didn’t know how many flowers it took to apologize for accidentally outing them as time wreckers, but he hoped two dozen was a good start.

  Mara was in the kitchen when Will arrived at the apartment. He could hear her banging around in there. “Hello?” he called. “Mara?”

  “In here,” she singsonged.

  That was new. Will walked into the kitchen, holding the flowers in front of him like an offering. “Everything okay?”

  Nope. Wrong thing to say. He had a knack for saying exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time lately.

  Mara swirled the ice cubes in the bottom of her glass. It looked like she was drinking a soda. That wouldn’t be any good for her heartburn.

  “Thought I’d pour myself a drink after my last day of work. Want one?” Mara asked. Her voice was bright, but her eyes looked like she’d been crying.

  On the counter behind her, Will saw the two liter of Coke and a half-full bottle of rum.

  “What are you doing? You aren’t supposed to drink with all the meds you’re taking.”

  “I’m not supposed to do a lot of things,” Mara said.

  “Mara.” Will put the peonies down on the counter. How much rum had been in that bottle? He couldn’t remember. “How much have you had to drink?”

  Mara took another sip from her glass. “Just a little less than not enough,” she said. She smiled at her own joke.

  “What’s going on with you?” Will asked. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Why am I doing this?” Mara asked. “Why am I doing this?” Her brown eyes snapped and sparked in the middle of her too-pale face. “I am doing this,” she said, drawing out each word, “because I have just been fired.” The F in fired whistled between her teeth.

  Will stepped a little closer. How did alcohol affect the painkillers she was on, exactly? He wasn’t sure he wanted to find out. “Okay. Let’s just talk about what happened. What did Dr. Olivier say?” Another step forward.

  “She emailed after I left today. I have been dismissed from her research team and terminated with prejudice.” Mara took another drink and repeated herself. “Terminated with prejudice.” The second attempt was actually a pretty good imitation.

  Note to self: drunk Mara can pull off a decent French-Canadian accent.

  Gently, Will put his hand around the glass and took it from her. She let it go without much of a protest.

  “See, what happened was,” Mara said, pointing a finger at him. He could smell the rum on her breath. “What happened was, I spent the last eight years doing exactly what I was supposed to do. If I had physical therapy exercises, I did them. If I had a doctor’s appointment, I kept it. After the shooting, I only took off part of a semester from school and I still graduated on time. And then, when I couldn’t find a job, I kept applying and searching until I found one. And since I’ve been at the research center, you know what? I do everything I’m supposed to do. Every. Single. Thing.” She poked his chest three times, emphasizing each word. It didn’t hurt.

  Mara continued. “I get everything done right, done on time, and I don’t make excuses. I don’t even take half the accommodations I’m technically allowed to have, and Elliott still breathes down my neck, waiting for me to prove that I’m a freeloader. And now, I get this email. See this? They found out about the time wreck.”

  Mara thrust her smartphone at him. It was already open to her email browser. Will read the email and sucked in his breath.

  “She just fired you over email? She didn’t even try to have a conversation about it?”

  Mara’s head sagged. Obviously.

  Will put the phone down on the counter and reached for Mara’s empty hand. “You’re going to be okay. If the time wreck goes through, none of this will have happened. It won’t matter. And if the time wreck doesn’t happen, you can probably sue over this. I don’t know if this is a case for wrongful termination or not, but I would bet—”

  Mara was already shaking her head. “I was an at-will employee. I already looked it up. It would be really hard to make a wrongful termination case. And now I can’t even get a reference for my next job.”

  “Hey,” Will said. “I know. But you’re so smart. You’re so good at everything you do. Another employer has to see that. And until someone does, I mean, we lived off my salary for two years. We can do it again if we need to.” He shrugged, hoping he looked more confident than he felt.

  That made things worse. Much worse.

  “It took me two years to find this job,” Mara said. She was yelling again, but there was no fire in it. She looked exhausted. “And now I’m going to be back at square one, back to job searching. I barely got two months of employment before the rug got pulled out from under me. Again.”

  “And that’s my fault,” Will said. “I shouldn’t have told.”

  There was a moment when he was afraid Mara was going to keep yelling. Instead, she leaned in and rested her head on his chest.

  “No,” she said. “You shouldn’t have told.” She exhaled slowly. “But it was an honest mistake. And it’s not your fault how they reacted. You didn’t ask for this, either.”

  It felt like forgiveness. Will wrapped his arms around her tentatively. She didn’t pull away.

  “Neither of us asked for this,” he said. “And neither of us need it, either. Whether the time wreck gets approved or not, we’ll be okay.”

  “Yeah,” Mara said. She was quiet now, leaning more heavily on him.

  “You really scared me,” Will said. “You’ve never started drinking before. That can’t be good for you. There are warnings all over your pill bottles about that.”

  Mara one-shoulder shrugged, her head lolling a bit on his chest.

  “Thanks for the
peonies,” she said.

  * * * * *

  Will called in sick to work the next day. It had been a long night, watching and worrying over Mara. She’d fallen fast asleep on the couch, giving Will plenty of time to look up “why can’t you mix narcotics and alcohol” on the Internet. After the first three search results, he’d called her neurologist. He’d kept calling until the after-hours answering service gave him the doctor’s cell phone number.

  Dr. Ricci sounded annoyed when he answered the phone, but his voice quickly became concerned after Will explained. “It’s not like Mara to do something like that,” Dr. Ricci said. “Do you think this might have been an attempt? Did she seem suicidal in any way? Did she have a plan? Did she leave a note?”

  “No! No, she’s not thinking like that at all. Mara just said some stuff about wanting to cut loose because following the rules never paid off. I’ve known her since we were eighteen, and she’s never even sipped champagne because of the meds she’s on.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “If I wasn’t, I’d already have her in the ER.”

  “It couldn’t hurt to go to the ER anyway, just so they can monitor her for any effects from mixing the medicine with alcohol.” Dr. Ricci sighed. “How much did you say she’d had to drink?”

  “I’m really not sure. There’s about half a bottle of rum left, but I don’t know how much was in it before she started drinking. I know it wasn’t full.”

  “So it’s hard to gauge . . . and Mara’s thin, with no tolerance to alcohol. Plus she’s on a higher dose of the meds. How is she breathing?”

  “Normal.”

  “And does she usually fall asleep around this time?”

  “If she’s had a bad day, then yeah. I’d say about fifty percent of the time.”

  “Does she seem disoriented at all? Have any memory loss?”

  “She didn’t really even seem that drunk. Just mad.”

  Dr. Ricci sighed again. “Okay. Here’s what I want you to do. Watch her tonight, make sure she’s breathing normally, that when she talks, she makes sense. If she seems more tired than usual, depressed breathing, seems disoriented or confused in any way, take her straight to the ER. If not, I’ll see her at the office tomorrow morning. Just bring her whenever she gets up. I’ll squeeze her in.”

  “Okay. Th-thank you,” Will stammered. Dr. Ricci hung up.

  That was the start of a long night—longer even than the ones when Will woke up with nightmares. Mara slept for three hours before she woke up and ran to the bathroom.

  “You okay in there?” Will called through the door.

  Mara threw up again before answering. “I feel terrible.”

  “Can I come in?” No answer. Will let himself in and soaked a washcloth in cold water.

  “Not that I’m advising you to make a habit of this,” he said, wringing out the washcloth, “but in general terms, if a soda makes your stomach queasy, adding rum isn’t going to help.”

  Mara smiled wanly as he gave her the cloth. “Thanks for the tip.”

  “How are you feeling, seriously?”

  “My stomach is awful, my head kind of hurts, and there’s this nerve damage in my right shoulder that just won’t go away.”

  Still sassy. Mara couldn’t be too bad off.

  “You should eat something.”

  Mara groaned.

  “I’m not going to give you runny eggs or anything. Just toss something down there to soak up whatever’s left of your little do-it-yourself cocktail. Bread? Crackers?”

  “Okay,” Mara said, wiping her face with the washcloth again.

  That wasn’t exactly a choice, but Will decided to leave it. He went back to the kitchen and made her a plate of white bread and plain crackers. He cracked open a cardboard box of yogurt and took out a cup of vanilla-flavored.

  In a few minutes, Mara shuffled down the hall. “Hey,” she said, sitting down at the kitchen table. Will moved her laptop and a stack of papers out of the way and put down the plate in front of her.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  Will shrugged. “Everyone does dumb stuff.”

  Mara bit tentatively into a cracker, chewed, and swallowed. “Most people get away with doing dumb stuff. I don’t.”

  “Neither do I,” said Will. “I accidentally outed us as time wreckers to my extremely judgmental, holier-than-thou mother. That’s probably not going to smooth over any time soon.”

  Mara rubbed her temples. “Believe me. I know.” She ate another cracker. “I just want to say one thing,” she said, and Will’s cheeks turned hot. “How come other people can do dumb things and get away with it? If we make one wrong move, we pay for it forever.”

  Will shrugged. “I don’t know. Bad luck, I guess. Or else we’re overachievers.” He rubbed his chin, as if deep in thought. “Although most people start small. An overdue library book here, a thoughtless comment there—you don’t have to jump from perfection to risky drug interactions in one step.”

  Mara almost laughed at that. Good.

  “I’m not perfect,” she said. “Even if the shooting hadn’t happened. Or if it gets undone or whatever. I still won’t be perfect.”

  “I know,” Will said. “But you’re perfect for me.”

  VA Congressman Denies Daughter, Son-in-Law Involved in Time Wreck

  April 11, 2011

  In a statement earlier today, Congressman Joel Gaines spoke out against “unverified reports” that his daughter, Mara Gaines Sterling, was involved in planning a timeline rectification. These “unverified reports” include a statement to a radio station from Sterling’s brother-in-law, Christopher Sterling. Several individuals have come forward claiming to have knowledge that Mara Sterling and her husband, William, have indeed been asked to participate in a timeline rectification, although we have so far been unable to verify these reports.

  Timeline rectifications are considered a parole-alternative for rehabilitated convicts, allowing them to return—literally—to the scene of the crime and choose to undo their actions. If Mr. and Mrs. Sterling were indeed asked to participate in a timeline rectification, it is very likely in reference to the shooting at Adams Morgan University, of which Mrs. Sterling was the victim and Mr. Sterling a witness. The offender, Jason Mann, has served eight years of his twenty-year sentence for the crime, making him eligible to apply for parole or a parole-alternative.

  Congressman Gaines is doubtlessly eager to squash rumors of his daughter and son-in-law’s potential involvement in a timeline rectification due to his own political stance. The congressman has long been “tough on crime,” even during his own scandal, when the congressman himself was accused of embezzlement. The charges in his case were cleared, and Congressman Gaines has continued to fervently represent the interests of Virginia’s eighth district. Following the shooting at Adams Morgan, the congressman lobbied for harsher punishments for offenders convicted with violent crimes, rather than lobbying for stricter gun laws. His stance at the time drew harsh criticism from anti-gun advocates, while those who support an individual’s right to bear arms applauded his decision to “punish the criminal and not the tool.”

  Whether he is simply denying an ugly rumor about his family or making a calculated statement against timeline rectification, it’s clear where Congressman Gaines stands. For much of the country, however, timeline rectification is a deeply divisive issue. In a recent poll, 42 percent stated that they would participate in a rectification if offered the chance, while 46 percent felt that they would never consider a rectification, regardless of circumstance. However, 72 percent of those polled believed that timeline rectification should be legal “in exceptional circumstances,” while only 28 percent felt it should be illegal. Nearly 90 percent of respondents felt that timeline rectification “should have more stringent controls,” while 10 percent felt the process was already well-regulated.

  What do you think of timeline rectification? Why do you think the congressman issued
his statement? Let us know in the comments!

  Comments:

  MissusMarie said:

  Not only do I think his daughter is planning to have a time wreck, but I also think the congressman arranged it. Sorry, but I think this is a case of Daddy being against something on principle but moving heaven and earth to get it for his little princess. I remember being shocked that he didn’t introduce tighter gun control legislation after the shooting. Now it makes sense. It was probably his plan all along to try to erase the whole thing.

  DanTheManStevens said:

  Yeah, why would people have timeline rectifications, anyway? Locking people up and throwing away the key totally solves the problem of rehabilitation and reintroducing criminals into society. Oh, and it’s just our tax dollars funding the prisons. We like throwing our money into perma-homes for criminals instead of, I don’t know, helping them change. /sarcasm.

  ~~ANGELonEARTH~~ said:

  Personally, I can’t see myself ever having a time wreck. I just don’t feel like I could go that far, ethically. I feel like it’s important to take the life you’re handed, good and bad. But that’s also my choice, and I understand why people who don’t feel like I do would want to have the choice to do a time wreck. I don’t know. It’s tricky. All the best to the Sterlings, whatever they decide ❤

  N0L005ER5HERE said:

  So what, the shooter got put away and that’s still not enough for the little brats? Do you know how many shootings and cold-blooded MURDERERS get waved off in this country because of insufficient evidence or mistrial? This case already got prosecuted with a lot more zeal because the victim was a congressman’s daughter. Now that’s not enough and they want to undo it completely. Meanwhile, people are shot dead in the streets and no one bats an eye . . .

  Chapter Nineteen

  MARA

  The neurologist office regularly opened at nine o’clock. At 9:05, Will and Mara had signed in at the front and had been escorted back to a room. Mara sat uneasily on the paper-covered table. Every time she moved, she could hear the paper crunch underneath her.