Wednesday November 25, 1998

Some friends are there for you when you need it, every time.

Felicity Randell sat at her usual table in her dorm’s cafeteria, alone, as usual. It had been nearly three months since she began her freshman year of college. In that time, she had gone from optimistically hopeful about making friends and finally finding somewhere where she felt she felt like she fit in to realistically pessimistic about the fact that despite all the changes in her life, there was something that she could not change. Deep known, at her very core, there was something wrong with her. She didn’t know what it was. She thought she was reasonably nice to people and reasonably competent at most things she set her mind to. She was not the most outgoing person in the world and she liked to sleep in more than she should, but these were not unique or even particularly uncommon traits among 18-year-olds. Felicity tried hard to fit in, but she made sure she wasn’t trying too hard. She worked hard in her classes, but no matter what, there was always something wrong, some slip up, some lazy mistake. No matter what, whatever was wrong with Felicity was both invisible and inescapable. 

This is how Felicity ended up there, at this lonely table, on the day before Thanksgiving. Almost all the other students had gone home. The air was cold and dry outside, and even drier inside. She looked down at her sad salad and her second piece of cake, thinking about what she was going to do with the rest of her day. She knew that there were three papers that needed writing, but they could be put off for one more day, or one more week. Pretty much everything was closed and the sun was setting earlier everyday, so both indoor and outdoor activities were out. There was a TV in the lounge, but there were always other people there and she didn’t feel comfortable just being there by herself where other people would see that she was by herself, where they would think she was even weirder than they already thought her to be. Once again, she would likely retreat to her room as soon as she was done with dinner, read a few chapters of a book, maybe think about her work, take a shower that was probably too long, and then go to sleep too early, all to wake up too late the next day and do the same thing day after day after day. 

That was her plan at least, until someone sat down at her table. He was muscular, a little on the short side, with hair so short it made her wonder if he was prematurely balding. There were plenty of empty tables, so he sat there because he wanted to, not because there weren’t any other places to sit. 

“Hey,” he said brightly without even introducing himself or asking if she minded that he join her, “Do you like classic movies? Some friends found an unlocked room in the art department where they screen movies and dragged a couple couches in there. We’re going to watch Casablanca later if you want to join.” 

“Um,” Felicity was startled by the mere fact that someone was talking to her, “Yeah, I love classic movies. I’ve heard Casablanca is good but I’ve never actually seen it.” 

“Sounds great!” he beamed. “My name is Ramon by the way.” 

“Felicity,” she introduced herself hesitantly. 

“Nice to meet you Felicity. What year are you?” He asked politely.  

“I’m a freshman,” she answered. 

“Nice,” he said. “I’m a sophomore, but I missed a big chunk of last year because I fell off my bike and had a little traumatic brain injury. Everything's ok now though, but I’m technically a freshman due to the whole not finishing classes thing. So, how is your year going so far?” 

Felicity knew that some people were over-sharers, and she thought that was most likely what Ramon was, everyone’s friend who will tell you everything that is going in their life. She was not that type of person, but deep down, she saw the appeal. 

Felicity and Ramon ended up talking for three hours before one of his friends found him and told him that they were starting the movie. Felicity didn’t remember a time where she had clicked with someone so quickly. She became a member of Ramon’s friend group and suddenly she had people she actually liked and people who liked her to spend time with. She had a level of support that she had never experienced. The dark thoughts that were swirling in her head eventually receded, allowing her to see that even if there was some unknown thing deep down inside of her that was wrong, there was hope she could have a good life.

For twenty years, Ramon was the most stable thing in her life. They went to the same medical school and somehow managed to become residents at the same hospital. When Ramon got married, Felicity was right next to him as his best man.  They started to drift apart physically when Felicity moved to the other side of the country to begin a spinal surgery fellowship program. Then Ramon moved to the UK when his wife was offered a professorship there. They went months or years without talking, but whenever their ‘let’s get lunch’ finally materialized they quickly found that just because they hadn’t spoken for months or years, didn’t mean that they couldn’t pick up their conversation just like they had done in college when they spoke at lunch and then at dinner.

 Even when they were living in different cities and hadn’t talked in a long time, Ramon seemed to have an almost supernatural sense of when Felicity was at her worst or when she just needed some calm, level headed advice. He somehow was her savior when she was emotionally fragile. Once, during her first Doctors Without Borders surgery trip, she managed to get bit by a snake in Tennessee of all places, and her instinct told her to call Ramon, even though it was 3 am his time. He answered the call sounding like he was perfectly awake. She told him about the snake and he was able to identify it just by the description and told her that it was poisonous. Her doctor told her that that snake was very rare in the region and if they hadn’t known exactly what snake it was she would have likely died. 

This was why, when Ramon turned up on her doorstep and told her that his brain trauma clinic was organizing a medical mission trip to treat impoverished patients needing specialized treatment in Pondicherry, and he needed a French speaking spinal surgeon for the trip, she answered yes without a question. In the back of her mind she did question whether there were enough French monolingual people that she would be needed, and whether her out of practice Cajun French was even mutually intelligible with the people she would be treating, but she knew that Ramon researched everything he did meticulously and he planned every detail carefully, so if he said she was needed than she was needed. 

Felicity ended up being right that the French she knew was useless in Pondicherry, but enough people spoke English, so it didn’t matter. The clinic there that Ramon worked with also did not see many patients she could help, most of its patients were suffering from brain trauma, not spinal cord trauma, so there was nothing she could do for them. She did a few consultations, but did not do any surgeries. Instead, most days her schedule was completely empty, and she accompanied Ramon’s wife Mariam as she did touristy stuff in the city. 

Two weeks into the planned month trip, Mariam stormed out of the house they were renting, followed by Ramon. Felicity sat in their rented car, looking over the map of where she and Mariam were planning on going for the day, outside the city, in search of pictures of a very particular bird for a colleague of Mariam’s. 

“What is wrong?” Felicity asked them both. 

“Apparently, this is too dangerous,” Mariam said, rolling her eyes. 

“Why? We did the exact thing yesterday.” Felicity said, “I didn’t hear anything about it being dangerous yesterday.”

“I just have a bad feeling.” Ramon said in a huff. This was unlike Ramon. Normally he was easy going, and Felicity had never seen him impose on any of Mariam’s plans. 

“And your coming with us will help?” Felicity asked. 

“It can’t hurt.” Ramon said, “I need a day off. I’ve worked for two weeks straight without a day off.” 

Ramon put a damper on their morning. There was no indication that what they were doing was the least bit dangerous but he still seemed to be looking over his shoulder every few seconds. This troubled Felicity. Normally Ramon had such good instincts. It would be strange for his gut feeling to be wrong. 

As they ventured further and further into the jungle, Ramon kept becoming more and more paranoid, but Mariam wasn’t having any of it. She was excited as ever for the prospect of helping her colleague get the picture of this bird that they need for their research. 

“Stop!” Mariam shouted excitedly. 

“What’s wrong?” Ramon said. 

“There is nothing wrong.” Mariam snarled. The bird only lives in that kind of tree. It might be near. Mariam jumped out of the stopped car and took her camera out. Felicity hoped she could fulfill her role as a buffer between Mariam and Ramon. “I think I saw it!” She exclaimed. 

Mariam ran forward, abandoning Felicity and Ramon by the road. She ran through the trees following a screech and a rush of yellow feathers. Then she stopped dead in her tracks. 

In front of her, deep in the jungle were three men all carrying AK-47s. They had a stack of tightly wrapped white bricks. Mariam turned around and started running towards the car. One of the men silently aimed his gun and pulled the trigger. The bullet struck Mariam in the lower back, tearing through her lumbar spine. She fell onto the ground. Through some miracle the men did not see Felicity or Ramon. They picked her up and placed her in the back of the car. Ramon held her hand and comforted her. Felicity worked hard to contain the blood spurting out of the wound. 

“There is a house up the road there.” Ramon said authoritatively. 

The driver drove quickly and then pulled off the side of the road near a small house. A woman opened up the door and saw the ruckus “Ici, ici,” she gestured. 

“Excusez-moi Madame,” Felicity said, struggling to remember while also putting pressure on the pulsating wound. Ramon and the driver carried Mariam while Felicity monitored her. 

“La mettre en elle.. sur le lit.. sur le lit en elle…” the woman said. 

“In here, on the bed,” Felicity translated. “Pouvez-vous s'il vous plaît me procurer des serviettes et de l'eau bouillie s'il vous plaît?” She struggled. The woman rushed off and grabbed some towels and put on a kettle and some pots of water. 

“Turn her on her back,” she told Ramon and the driver. Mariam was losing blood fast. She had fainted, which was good for her, because she was likely in a lot of pain. “If I did not stop the blood, she could die. If I did not repair the spine, she would be paralyzed.” She explained to Ramon. 

“Repair it.” Ramon said. “Otherwise she’ll develop cauda equina syndrome, be paralyzed, be in constant pain, and not have any bowel or bladder control. She’ll kill herself next year.” 

“Are you sure?” Felicity asked. “That is a lot of extrapolation.” 

“Do it.” Ramon said. 

Felicity turned to the awaiting woman, “Excusez-moi Senora, pouvez-vous nous apporter quelques couteaux, des ciseaux et du fil?” She ran through the mental checklist in her head of what she would need for an emergency surgery and what household appliances she could substitute. “Et aussi un marteau, une scie et un aspirateur si vous en avez.” 

The woman came back with thread, scissors, and some kitchen knives. A teenager followed her with a large rusty saw. Felicity had already begun her work of trying to decrease the blood flow and to survey the damage. 

“Avez-vous de l’alcohol?” Felicity asked the woman. She shook her head. The teenager left the room and came back with a half full bottle of what smelled like durian moonshine. Felicity poured the bottle over the sharpest looking knife. “Just know I’ll try my hardest, but no guarantees.” Felicity told Ramon. 

Felicity began to work on Mariam’s body, but the blood kept flowing and flowing. There was just too much damage. It was unlikely she could have repaired her spine even in the most advanced first world trauma center, much less some stranger’s bedroom in the middle of the jungle. Felicity made the decision to abandon trying to fix the spine and do the minimum to keep her alive. As she worked to close everything that needed to be closed, less blood started to come out, and it started coming out slower. Mariam’s heart was slowing. Even when she was stitched up as best as she could until she got to a surgical center, Mariam was deteriorating. Ramon began attempting CPR, but Felicity stopped him from doing chest compressions because it would further damage her abdomen. 

As they waited for help to arrive, Mariam quietly stopped breathing. 

Felicity sat down next to the body, taking a deep breath. Losing a trauma patient was not a novel experience, but she had never actually seen anyone get shot. When she saw gunshot victims, they were already prepared for her, draped in paper, under anesthesia, the body anonymized to the point she only saw the open back. She had never done surgery on someone she knew, and she had never had a situation this stressful. 

“I’m sorry Felicity,” Ramon said. She looked up at him. He was the only other living person in the room. He had a gun pointed at her head. 

“No, you don’t need to do that, I tried, I really tried.” Felicity begged. “Where did you even get a gun?” 

“I really like you Felicity, so I’m really sorry I have to do this.” He undid the gun’s safety. “Next time she won’t die. You did better this time than you did last time.” 

“If you shoot me there won’t be a next time.” Felicity said. 

“There will be. I’ll shoot you in the head, I’ll go to sleep, and then I’ll wake up on Wednesday, November 25, 1998. I’ve told you this before, you’ve never believed me.” 

“What?” Felicity asked. 

“Every time you die we start this whole process again. It is 1998. You are a freshman, you are depressed, we become friends. You don’t kill yourself. The next time you try to kill yourself is residency. I switch shifts to be there with you. Then the snake bite in Tennessee. You have no idea how many times I had to figure out what was going on before I figured that one out. A car crash on New Years Eve. A salmonella outbreak. You. Just. Can’t. Stop. Dying.” Ramon said, coldly. “Every time you die. I have to live my whole life over again. At first, it was bothersome. Then I learned to like you. Then, Mariam died, and I used it, whatever it is, to try to fix it. I can’t live in a world without her and I know how to go back and fix it. I just need to do everything in the right sequence, then eventually everything will work out.” 

“Ramon, put down the gun.” Felicity said, sweat building up in her face. “You are under a lot of stress, you are imagining things.” 

“No, this is true.” He said. “What movie did we watch on the first night we met?” 

“Probably Sharknado, you all have terrible taste in movies.” Felicity said, trying to calm him down. 

“No,” Ramon said. “It was Casablanca. Do you know how much work I had to put in to convince all of our friends to watch Casablanca?” 

Felicity slowly approached Ramon, hoping that she could take the gun out of his hand. 

“I’m sorry Felicity.” He said. “We’ll watch Casablanca tomorrow and start this whole twenty years over again.” 

Ramon aimed the gun at Felicity’s head once again. She panicked, grabbed a knife, and plunged it into his neck before he could pull the trigger. 

“I’m sorry.” She sobbed. “I couldn’t let you do that to me.” 

As the chaos settled down, the police arrived. Mariam and Ramon’s bodies were taken away. Felicity willingly went with the police to the police station. She sat in a cell, Mariam and Ramon’s blood still covering her clothes. She gave her statement and she was sent back to the cell, with only a thin blanket and a hard bench to sleep on. She sat on the bench as the hours past and her cell got darker and darker. She tried to sleep but the adrenaline was still racing. Eventually she closed her eyes and drifted into sleep. 

Felicity expected to wake up, restless and tired, in an Indian prison cell. Instead, when she woke up she was in her own bed, in her old college dorm room. She reached for her cell phone, hoping it would tell her what was going on. She couldn’t find it. She also seemed to have lost 30 pounds overnight and gained several inches of hair. Her face had lost 20 years. There was a calendar on the wall. November 1998. Had Ramon been right? She pinched herself to confirm this wasn’t a dream. She didn’t know whether that trick actually worked, but she didn’t wake up, so there was a decent chance she was awake. She looked for something to confirm what day it was. How did people know what day it was in 1998? A digital watch. 9:08 am, Wednesday, November 25, 1998. 

She picked up a book and started writing down everything she could remember. What not to do. What stocks to buy. Everything she thought might help her. Before she knew it, it was getting late. She went down to the dining hall, got her food, and sat alone at her usual table. 

Before long, she saw Ramon walking up to her. “Hey,” he said brightly without even introducing himself or asking if she minded that he join her, “Do you like classic movies? Some friends found an unlocked room in the art department where they screen movies and dragged a couple couches in there. We’re going to watch Casablanca later if you want to join.” 

“You tried to shoot me.” She told him. He opened his eyes widely. 

“Do you remember?” He asked almost in a whisper. She nodded. “Just the last time, or all the times?” 

“Just the last time.” She said. 

“Well, welcome to the time loop.” Ramon said with a smirk. “It’s weird at first but you’ll get used to it. It will certainly make medical school easier. Also, I did succeed in shooting you. Twelve times. I don’t think I’ve ever died before.” 

Felicity looked out the window, thinking about the next twenty years in front of her. She had a chance to redo everything, but she also had to experience the grief and loss and failures that she knew she was headed for, and she missed people she had not even met yet, like her yet to be born niece and nephews. 

“Have you ever married anyone other than Mariam?” she asked wistfully. 

“The first thirty two wives were all different. There was one man for variety.” Ramon said with a sigh. “But once I met Mariam I married her fifty seven times.” She closed his eyes for a moment. 

“You really can’t live without her,” she said. 

He took a deep breath in. “You and I were married once. Not for any romantic reason, just some weird insurance and immigration fraud. You were Premier of Nunavut. I was smuggling counterfeit koi. You ended up dying of neurosyphilis in an Antarctic prison.” Felicity just kept looking at him. "I don't know how to end the loop. You lived a very healthy life once, running ironman's, meditating, the whole thing. You died a quick and painless death, surrounded by your friends and family, at 118 years old. I thought that time had to have been the last one. I had kept you alive as long as a person can be. But I still woke up here again." 

Felicity took a moment and took a bite of her meal. “You know, we don’t have to watch Casablanca. I know I’m the only one that likes good movies. We can watch Sharknado if you want.” 

“Thanks, but I already did all the work to get the VHS and convince everyone that we should be watching it,” he said. “Also, Sharknado won’t premiere until 2013.” 

“Sucks for you then.” Felicity said. 

“It does,” Ramon agreed.