Before I was

My bedside monitor beeped again. That maddening, relentless pulse that reminded me that I remained here—whatever here was supposed to be anymore.

I woke up to the same hospital ceiling I'd been staring at for... damn, I couldn't even remember for how long. Time gets all jumbled up when you're stuck between worlds like this. The nurse—Bethany, I think her name was—she'd told my wife yesterday that I'd been out for three months now. Three months since the accident to eat with.

But that wasn't the weird part. The weird part was what happened when I closed my eyes.

I died last night. Again.

I know it sounds daft, but just listen with me here. Every time I fall asleep in this hospital bed, I live through another part of my life—backward. Starting with my own death a few weeks back. Cancer, as it turned out. Seventy-three years young, surrounded by strangers who somehow felt like they belonged to me. Children, grandkids maybe. All crying over this old man.

Night after night, I come back. Yesterday, sixty-five, closing the book on one of those careers at an insurance company. Day before yesterday, fifty-eight, divorcing some woman called Linda. Day before that, forty-two and buying my first home.

And I sense it all. Not as if I'm viewing a movie of my life, but living it. The odor of that disgusting coffee in the insurance firm, the aroma of Linda's perfume when she unrolled her bags, the excitement when I owned that little blue house.

But this is what's got me all tied up inside. I'm starting to realize these aren't dreams, not truly.

"How are you today, Vincent?"

Bethany returned, manning those annoying machines once more. Always the same thing, as if I would somehow answer her today for the first time.

If only I could talk, I'd explain to her what I understood last evening. I was thirty-one years old, just married my first wife—not Linda, a different woman entirely named Carol. I was dancing at my wedding reception, and I can smell her hair, feel the fabric of her wedding dress between my fingers. But here's the strange thing: while I'm having this moment, I can also feel this hospital bed under me. As if I'm lying there in both places at once.

That's when I become aware. My brain—it's progressing in reverse along the timeline as my body remains stationary here. Not a dream. Literally living my life in reverse as the machines continue to keep this damaged version of me alive.

Carol. I had completely forgotten about Carol until I experienced that wedding night again. Six years I was married to her. She died in a car accident when I was thirty-seven. I remember after the funeral, I just... closed off for a time. Maybe that's why I had forgotten her so completely in my life from then on.

"Your wife called again," Bethany said, straightening my pillow. "She'll be here around dinner time."

Wife? Linda, I guess. Although in the reversed one, we've already gotten divorced and she's with some accountant-type guy named Roger out in Arizona.

The really strange thing is that I am getting younger every night. Last night I was twenty-eight, working at a gas station. The night before that I was twenty-four and completely broke, living off ramen noodles and what free grub I could find at the bar where I was washing dishes.

I keep holding out to be eighteen years old, watch to see what happens when I reach childhood. Do I keep going? What comes before the start?

Because that's where this is headed, isn't it? Back to before I ever existed.

I am not afraid now. At first, yeah—greeting the living dead was quite scary. But now I wonder. What was I before I was me? What happens before that first breath, that first beat?

Bethany was finished with whatever she was doing and abandoned me alone again. Sunlight was pouring through the window onto my face, warming it. In about six hours, I'd sleep and be twenty-five again, probably doing something stupid like attempting to impress some girl whose name I'd know in perfect detail for eight hours and forget for all time.

But then, as I'm lying here in this middle ground, I can feel both of them. The me going back and the me that's wedged forward. And I'm starting to think I have a decision to make.

I may be able to fight. Struggle towards consciousness, attempt to wake up normally and go back to whatever life I led before the accident. Linda would care for me, at least for a while. I'd relearn to walk, to talk, start over with whatever brain damage I incur.

Or I could keep going in reverse. Ride where this strange journey takes me.

In my backward life, I'm more joyful as I grow younger. Less stressed about money, less afraid of taking chances. Yesterday evening at twenty-eight, I remember laughing so hard at something my roommate had joked about that I nearly choked on my beer. When did I ever laugh like that in my forward life?

The sun moved across my face all day. Linda came around six, as Bethany had described she would. She grasped my hand and talked about her day, the bills that were piling up, how the insurance company was being recalcitrant. She cried a little, but not much. We weren't exactly. well, we divorced in the backward version, so I guess we weren't exactly happy in the forward one either.

"I don't know how much longer I can keep this up, Vince," she said eventually. "The doctors were saying maybe it was time to consider alternatives."

After she had left, I lay there and reflected. In the inverted version, I never encounter Linda until I am thirty-nine. Until then, it is Carol and me and this whole other life I had forgotten. Carol who could make me laugh, who painted horrible watercolors that I put up on every available inch of our apartment anyway, who sang flatly in the shower every morning.

Night descended, and I closed my eyes.

Twenty-six. I was working construction, my hands all hard and callused. I could carry twice as much as I can now—well, as much as I could before the accident. I went out with the crew after we finished work, and I met this woman named Angela? We talked for hours about books and music and all that you discuss when you're young and you think you have forever.

But as I live this, I can still hear the beeping of those machines in the hospital. Can still feel Linda's hand around mine, can still hear her talking about decisions.

I'm getting close to something. I know it. In the reversed one, I'm almost to the beginning. Then I'll be a teenager, then a kid, then...

Then what? What comes before?

When I was twenty-six in the reverse life, I remember staying awake one evening, thinking about death. Not pathetically, merely out of curiosity. Where do we go when we're done here? What did we exist as before we got here?

Now I might just find out.

The next night I was twenty-two, and I'd just dropped out of school. My parents were furious, but I couldn't have cared less. I would be a writer, and I would travel the world, and I would have adventures. I was sleeping on my friend Danny's couch, and I was making minimum wage at a bookstore, and I'd never felt happier.

The next evening, nineteen. High school graduation. My mother crying, my father in opposition. I was scared to go out but excited too, as though the whole world was opening its doors for me.

Eighteen. Seventeen. Sixteen.

Each night, I am younger and the memories are more vivid. Brighter. As though the closer I get to the beginning, the more real everything is.

Fifteen. I'm in love for the first time with a girl with a freckle on her nose, Rebecca. We stroll hand in hand to the movies and I fear my heart will burst with happiness.

Twelve. I'm building a fort in our back yard with my brother Tommy. We're certain we can live there forever, just us and the comic books and the sandwiches Mom sends along.

Eight. I loose my first tooth and put it under the pillow for the tooth fairy. Dad sneaks in late at night to leave a dollar, but I just happen to be awake and see him. We both pretend I'm still asleep, and it's our secret.

Five. Kindergarten. I'm scared but trying to be brave. Mrs. Patterson has soft eyes and she shows me how to hang up my backpack.

Three. Tommy's born and I help Mom give him a bottle. He's little and red, and I promise to always protect him.

And then...

One year old. I'm just learning to walk, staggering from the living room into Mom's outstretched arms. She's laughing and crying at the same time, and Dad stands by with the camera.

The next night, I can't walk. I'm crawling around, exploring everything. The world is huge and new and wonderful.

And then I'm little, fresh, and all is cozy and safe and right.

And then...

The time before.

I'm floating in the dark, but it's not void. It's full of... possibility. Love. Light that doesn't burn to behold. I can sense myself being molded, created from something larger than me. I understand now that this darkness is not nothing—it's everything, waiting to become something specific.

I am a part of that which is infinite, and I am choosing to be finite. Choosing to be born, to live, to die, to love and lose and try again.

And I know that this hospital room, these machines, Linda's tears, the accident—this is all part of the same story. The forward version and the backward version, they're both real. They're both me.

In the hospital, I can feel the rhythm of my breathing changing. The machines are beeping faster now. Bethany is requesting a doctor.

But before, the choice is mine.

Because I could stay here in the never-ending peace, let my body continuing on disappear. Or I could choose differently—be born, live, make different decisions this time.

The funny thing is, I realize both options are right. There is no wrong answer here.

And yet as I float in this world before life, I think of Carol's laugh, Tommy's bike ride, the girl Angela I encountered at twenty-six. I think of all the things I did backwards, all the joy I overlooked along the way forward.

And I am considering Linda, clutching my hand in this hospital room, talking possibilities.

I open my eyes.

Not in the hospital room. Not in the previous time.

I open my eyes for the first time, new and fresh, taking my first breath in a universe of infinite possibility.

And somewhere, in some other hospital room existing in another plane of the same story, Vincent starts to wake up.

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