Al Steiner: Doing It All Over

"I'd like to be fifteen years old again." I told him truthfully. "Knowing what I know now. How about you Mr. Li?"

He smiled, not answering my question. He simply said "Not bad." And then his eyes closed.

His breathing became rapid for a moment and then ceased entirely. I looked at him in alarm, knowing that I could do something about it but forbidden to by a doctor's order. I'd encountered this situation before in my career but it was never easy. I watched the heart monitor after his breathing ceased. His heart rate accelerated to more than one hundred and sixty for a few moments and then began to slow down. It slowed to less then twenty and then ceased entirely, leaving a squiggly line tracing across my EKG machine. The squiggles soon turned to a flat line. Mr. Li was dead.

I finished out my shift, not thinking too much about Mr. Li once I'd dropped him off at the hospital. I ran a few more calls, ate dinner from a greasy fast-food joint, and then went home to my cheap apartment in South Spokane. Once at home I drank a few beers while I watched a movie on HBO. I then put myself to bed, falling asleep and anticipating another twelve-hour shift the following day.

Music woke me up; the blaring of my clock radio. The song was "Heat of the Moment" by Asia. That was strange, I realized immediately. My clock radio was always tuned to a modern music station, the sort that played Matchbox 20, Alanis, Goo Goo Dolls, and other contemporary musicians. I hadn't heard "Heat of the Moment" in years, since I was a kid. I didn't remember tuning the radio to a classic rock station and, since I lived alone, no one else could have done so. I opened my eyes and froze solid in my tracks.

I was not in my bedroom; at least not the apartment bedroom I was familiar with. This was the bedroom of my parent's house in West Spokane, but at the same time, it WASN'T. I'd visited them just the previous week and I knew damn well that my old bedroom had long since been converted to a guest bedroom, complete with new carpet, new bed, and new wallpaper. This room was set up just like it had been when I'd lived there; wood-grain paneling on the walls (my parent's had done that back in the 70's), posters of rock musicians on the paneling. My old stereo, 8-track player was sitting on a shelf near a black and white television set. Dirty laundry was scattered everywhere along with record album covers (Van Halen, Journey, Led Zepplin) and other debris. I stared at this, wide-eyed.

Was I dreaming? I must be, I figured. But it sure didn't feel like a dream. I sat up suddenly and realized that I felt physically very strong and energetic. There was no ache in my lower back like usual. There was no congestion in the back of my throat from too many cigarettes. There was no faint headache from the beer I'd drank last night. I even, I realized, had a morning hard-on, something I rarely experienced anymore. I turned my eyes downward, taking in a sharp intake of breath. My chest, bare as always when I slept, was hairless, as if it had been shaven smooth. My stomach was flat, without a trace of the beer-belly I'd begun to develop. What in the hell was going on here?

I pulled myself out of bed, feeling almost high with youthful energy that I'd long since forgotten about. Behind my bed was a mirror with the emblem of Aerosmith etched on it. I'd won it, I remembered, at the county fair when I was thirteen (NINETEEN years ago! Part of my mind screamed). I looked into it. Instead of a face with a scruffy growth of beard and bleary red eyes I saw a smooth, unlined face with a tangled mess of long hair atop it. I barely recognized the face before me. It was ME when I was a teenager.

I stared at myself (and yet NOT myself) in this mirror, transfixed. What the hell was going on here? I was not dreaming, I could not even begin to convince myself that I was. Reality was too firm around me, too detailed. With a start, I remembered the old Chinese man last night. What is your greatest wish? He'd asked and I'd told him to be fifteen again, knowing what I know now. Well I was looking at a fifteen year old's face in the mirror right now. But that was crazy, impossible. Wishes weren't granted. Time travel wasn't possible. Was it?

A pounding on the door made me jump nearly to the ceiling.

"Bill?" Came my mother's voice. "Are you up? C'mon, you gotta get ready for school."

School? "Oh my God." I muttered, staring at the door.

"Bill?" The door creaked open, revealing my mother, only not as I'd seen her the previous week, but as I'd last seen her about seventeen years ago. Her blonde hair had not a trace of gray in it, her face without a wrinkle. She was about thirty pounds overweight, a period she'd gone through, I remembered, when I was an adolescent. Later she would shed all of those extra pounds. Her eyes locked onto me and I realized that I was standing in the middle of the room in my underwear.

"Bill? What are you doing?" She asked, looking at me suspiciously, her mind no doubt thinking about drugs.

"Uh… " I stared back, my mind whirring, "Uh… nothing Mom. Just trying to, uh, wake up."

This seemed to ease her mind a little. "Oh." She said. "Well, hurry up or you're gonna be late for school. Tracy's out of the shower now."

"Tracy?" I said, surprised. "You mean, Tracy, my sister?"

The look she gave me would have been funny under different circumstances. "Yes." She said carefully, her eyes telling me that she was worrying about drugs again. "How many Tracy's live in the house, Bill?"

"Sorry." I said numbly, full of elation. "Still trying to wake up I guess."

She nodded doubtfully and then, with a last worried glare, shut the door.

Tracy! I thought in disbelief. Tracy my older sister. She'd been killed on the night of her high school graduation when the car she'd been riding in, piloted by a drunken college student had plunged into the Spokane River. Tracy, along with one other teenaged girl, had drowned before she could pull herself out of the submerged car. Tracy was alive!

I sat back down on my bed, my mind now well into overload status. Part of me was refusing to believe what my sensory inputs were telling me; that I was a teenager in the early 80's instead of a thirty-two year- old, burned-out paramedic in the late 90's, that my mother was in her mid-thirties now, that my dead sister had just gotten out of the shower, leaving it free for me instead of resting, decomposed, in a sealed coffin in River View cemetery. But the cool, logical part of me was forced to accept the circumstances. I WAS a teenager again. Would I now have to live through the next seventeen years all over? Could I change things? Was I trapped here now? There were so many ramifications that I had to consider. What about Becky, my four year old daughter? What about her? She didn't exist yet. If I was able to change things, and I did so, Becky might never live. This was deep, very deep shit.

I was still sitting there thinking when my door burst open again, revealing my father. Like my mother, Dad looked considerably younger than I was used to. He was dressed in slacks and a sweater, obviously on his way to Milton Junior High School where he had (DID, my mind corrected) taught eighth grade English and Physical Education. He stared me up and down, probably advised to check on me by my worried mother (mom had always worried about me being on drugs, I remembered).

"Are you planning to go to school today?" He asked me after a moment.

I stared back at him for a moment. It was strange. I was unable to take parental authority seriously, so long had I been without it, but my father didn't realize this. Finally I responded. "Yes Dad." I told him. "Just heading for the shower now."

He nodded, seemed about to say something and then decided not to. He closed the door.

I dug through my dresser, pulling out some clothes, marveling over my high school tastes. It seemed I had nothing to wear but 501 jeans and sweaters or T-shirts with rock band emblems printed on them. What was the weather like? I wondered. Was it summer, spring, autumn, or winter? Should I wear the rock band T-shirt or the rock band sweater? A glance outside informed me that it was winter. There was snow on the ground and angry gray clouds drifting overhead. I found a robe (my old red robe!) in my closet and pulled it over my body, opening my door and heading for the bathroom to shower.