Dr. Marcus Reid stared fixedly at his computer screen, the blinking numbers were those of his bank account and believe his eyes, it was quite respectable.
A small smirk stretched his red lips, slightly whitened from fatigue due to his work and his operations of the day.
- "Being a neurosurgeon is no walk in the park at my age..." he sighed. "Today that makes me what? 32 years old?"
A life filled with financial success but less so in the social and romantic domains... And so his days were a succession of dull and boring repetitions that he filled with work but also by reading books that he devoured until all hours and made him travel far from this boring world.
Marcus can assure you that waking up at 5:30 AM, having a big cup of the blackest coffee that could possibly exist, even Mister Popo from DragonBall wasn't as black, then heading to the hospital wasn't exactly joyful.
On the other hand, repairing the brain or studying each case that came to his office was very exciting!!
- "The brain..." he smiled thinking about it while leaning back in his chair. "An entire world within each human being just waiting to be explored!"
That was his problem that had completely screwed up his social and romantic life. His obsession with everyone's brain, this inner world unique to each individual made him ask 10,000 questions that constantly returned to his mind, like an obsessive litany.
He was compelled to study their behavior, their expressions and try to guess their thoughts despite their facial expressions, understand their inner world and that had frightened more than one person.
Perhaps that was why he had chosen neurosurgery, the brain, this fascinating organ that contained all the mysteries of human consciousness. But even while exploring its most intimate convolutions, he had never found satisfying answers to his existential questions.
The rain drummed against his office windows, creating rivulets that distorted the city lights. It was almost midnight, once again. How many evenings had he spent alone in this hospital, fleeing the emptiness of his personal life?
Ugh, I'm pathetic, he thought while putting on his jacket. Thirty-two years old and not a single lasting relationship. Women always end up fleeing from me when they understand that I analyze them more than I love them. But hey, I'm now a brown mage on the scale of hardened bachelors and virgins.
He burst out laughing in the hospital corridors that were almost deserted at this hour. Only a few ghostly interns remained wandering between the services, their footsteps echoing on the waxed tiles. Marcus mechanically greeted the night team wishing them good luck and headed toward the underground parking.
His BMW was waiting for him, impeccable as always.
- "Wow!" he whistled. "The interior and exterior are magnificent, the perfect woman ahahah."
I should maybe take a vacation, he finally thought while stopping at the red light. Go somewhere where nobody knows me, maybe someone will want to talk to me.
The light turned green. Marcus pressed the accelerator, completely lost in his morose thoughts. He didn't see the truck that ran the perpendicular red light, launched at full speed by a driver who had dozed off at the wheel.
In any case, that was the last thing Marcus saw, that damn completely asleep driver.
- "SHIT OLD MAN!" he screamed. "You shouldn't have screwed your wife so late last night!"
Marcus's last words before the impact with a smoking body, glass debris and some expensive paint was instantaneous, violent and undoubtedly final.
The two vehicles remained prostrate in the middle of the road, smoking but nobody called emergency services, normal since nobody was awake at this hour and the impact had surprisingly only awakened a few alley cats.
The sky suddenly tore open and a fine rain came to slowly pour into this mixture of blood, fire and steel before flowing quietly onto the frozen concrete.
- "A sensation? what is that?" Confusion resonated.
Absolute confusion, his mind was haggard and completely disordered. He was dead, he was sure of it, the truck, the accident, the blood and the impact, all of that was real, right?
He then tried to open his eyes and realized with horror that he no longer controlled anything. His eyelids were heavy, his limbs very weak.
Panic seized him and he tried to move his body which didn't respond to his desperate call.
What's happening to me? Where am I?
Slowly, painfully and with an effort that seemed more difficult to accomplish than climbing Everest as a torso man, he finally managed to half-open his eyes. The world around him was slightly blurry, but he managed to distinguish shapes, colors and it wasn't at all his BMW that had gotten its body penetrated by a truck.
I seem to be... lying down??? he thought.
He tried to turn his head but it was like asking a baby to accomplish the twelve labors of Hercules, completely impossible. And speaking of babies...
No. No, no, no. This isn't possible. He told himself hearing the sound that had come out of his mouth.
A childish and extremely juvenile cry.
His sight gradually managed to adjust and he began to distinguish the details of his immediate environment. He was wrapped in a blanket, itself placed in a wicker basket. In front of him, a massive door made of fairly dark wood that was adorned with ironwork that seemed to date from another era than the one Marc was used to.
Did I land in front of an antique dealer or what?
Above the door however, a tarnished brass plaque bore an inscription in what he recognized as English but his sight couldn't fully distinguish the content.
The building's architecture, the uneven cobblestones under the basket, the smell of coal and humidity that floated in the air... all of this evoked Victorian England. Or at least, a modern version that had preserved the aesthetics of yesteryear.
A dream haha. It can only be a nightmare for sure...
But the sensations were too real, too precise. The cold that bit his cheeks, the discomfort of the wet diaper, the hunger that was beginning to gnaw at his newborn stomach. All of this was strikingly realistic.
Wait????? Don't tell me I'm dead, he realized with sudden clarity. I'm dead and I... reincarnated?
This thought should have terrified him, driven him mad with anguish. Instead, he felt a strange fascination. He, the man of science, the Cartesian neurosurgeon who only believed in verifiable facts, was confronted with the impossible. And in the absurdity of the situation, his dreamer's mind then took over.
Please haha I said this prayer so many times and here it is granted, my God I will never doubt you again if you exist AHAHAHA!!
A sound of footsteps echoed in what seemed to be a cobbled street and made him jump in the middle of his internal monologue of disturbed mental. Voices were approaching, speaking with a marked English accent.
He then listened carefully, trying to catch their words.
- "... another one, poor little one..." "... in front of Saint Augustine's orphanage..." "... at least he looks healthy..."
Orphanage??? Shit I was abandoned, the bastards! I'm starting life in difficult mode this time. If I'm in the past though I should be able to manage. He thought.
A thought however came to disturb his sweet comfort.
SHIT, World War Two or the first! SHIT, please no, please please please.
He almost cried and a sound of lamentation came out of his little throat, loud enough for the door that seemed massive to Marcus to open.
Gentle hands then lifted him from the basket. A middle-aged woman, with gray hair strictly pulled back in a bun, examined him with a mixture of pity and professional resignation.
- "Another little one without family," she murmured to her colleague. "How can one abandon such a young child?"
So young me?? I was 32 years old, treat me with respect ! you old bat with a sympathetic air, he thought with bitter irony.
They took him inside, into a building that reeked of beeswax and bleach. The corridors were dark, lit by wall sconces that evoked gas rather than modern electricity. Everything in this architecture screamed England at the turn of the century.
He was installed in what looked like a spartan nursery. Other cribs lined up in the room, occupied by babies of different ages. The subdued lighting and general atmosphere reinforced this impression of having fallen into a time machine.
While they changed him and tried to make him drink a bottle, his mind continued to analyze every detail. The staff's clothing, everyday objects, visible technology... Everything seemed to indicate that he was somewhere between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.
His prayers continued to pray not to be at the time of the world wars.
The hours that followed were a mixture of frustration and fascination. Frustration at not being able to communicate, at depending entirely on others for his most basic needs. Fascination at rediscovering the world with newborn senses, hypersensitive and virgin of any experience.
But what troubled him most was this strange sensation that had inhabited him since his awakening. As if voices were murmuring beyond his conscious perception. Distant echoes, indistinct, that seemed to come from... everywhere and nowhere at once.
Echoes resonated however continuously, like whispers that never ceased and that sometimes amplified, sometimes diminished in volume but were never comprehensible and Marcus couldn't discern their origin or silence them, like an annoying and particularly stubborn fly.
Constantly his eyes swept the room but apart from the other babies and the old lady, nobody was speaking as he heard it.
The trauma of death, he told himself rationally. My brain is trying to make sense of this impossible experience. I'm not crazy, I'm not crazy.
Yet, deep down, he knew it was more complex than that. These whispers weren't hallucinations. They had something real, tangible about them, as if they emanated from invisible spirits that observed him with curiosity.
Night fell, bringing with it a heavy silence that only the occasional moans of other infants disturbed. Lying in his crib, eyes wide open in the darkness, he contemplated the humidity-stained ceiling while trying to take stock of his situation.
Former thirty-two-year-old neurosurgeon, reincarnated in the body of a newborn, in an era and place that defied all his bearings. Confronted with inexplicable sensory phenomena and a reality that questioned everything he had believed in.
Outside, a cold wind made the shutters moan and whistled between the stones of the old orphanage. In this nocturnal cacophony, the mysterious whispers seemed to become more insistent, more present, as if night freed them from all constraint.
He closed his eyes, exhausted by this day that had turned his existence upside down. Tomorrow, he would have to start understanding the rules of this new world, learn to navigate in this impossible reality.
But before sinking into sleep, a last thought crossed his mind, perfectly summarizing the absurdity of his situation.
- "This fucking joke is already more exciting than my entire life."