I was outlining the Bitcoin video when my mom arrived.
She came through the door like a force of nature—short woman, dark hair pulled back in a hasty ponytail, still wearing her work clothes, looking simultaneously terrified and ready to fight someone. The expression on her face was one I'd seen many times but had forgotten the intensity of: a mother who just got told her kid was in the hospital.
"Alexis." She was at my bedside in three steps, hands on my face, checking me over like I might be concealing additional injuries. "What happened? Are you okay? What did the doctors say?"
"I'm fine, Mom. Really. It's—"
"Fine? You collapsed. You're in a hospital. That's not fine."
"Okay, I'm not fine, but I'm stable. They're running tests. It's a heart rhythm thing, probably something I've had my whole life that just decided to act up now."
She pulled the chair over and sat down heavily. Up close, I could see the worry lines around her eyes, the tension in her jaw. She looked older than I remembered her at this age, but that might have just been the stress talking.
Or maybe I'd forgotten. Maybe in my memory she was always the older version, the one from the 2030s and 40s when she'd retired and mellowed out and we'd had a better relationship than we did now.
In 2012, things were tense between us. I was seventeen and thought I knew everything. She was a single mom working long hours to keep us afloat and dealing with a teenager who spent all his time on a computer. We didn't fight exactly, but we didn't connect much either.
Looking at her now, I felt a weird guilt. Because I knew how the story ended. Knew that we'd eventually figure out how to talk to each other. Knew that she'd be proud of me, eventually, even if she never fully understood what I did. Knew that I'd miss her terribly when she was gone.
But right now, to her, I was just her frustrating kid who'd landed in the hospital.
"What were you doing at McDonald's?" she asked.
"Working. They have wifi."
"We have internet at home."
"It's better there."
She gave me a look that said she knew I was bullshitting but was too worried to call me on it. Our home internet was garbage—spotty connection, ancient router, shared with the whole building. But she didn't know enough about technology to argue specifics.
"The doctor said something about your heart rhythm," she said. "What does that mean?"
"It means the electrical signals that make my heart beat are sometimes wonky. It's probably genetic. They're going to test for it."
"Genetic." She said the word carefully, like she was trying to remember if anyone in the family had heart problems. "Your father's side or mine?"
"Don't know yet," I said. In my original timeline, we never figured out which side it came from. My father was gone, and my mother showed no symptoms. It could have been a spontaneous mutation, or a dormant gene from either of them. "Could be either. Could be a random mutation."
She was quiet for a moment, processing. Then: "Are you going to be okay?"
And that was the question, wasn't it? With medication and lifestyle changes and regular monitoring, I'd managed it for fifty-five years. But "managed" meant four cardiac events, multiple hospitalizations, an implanted defibrillator, and eventually dying from it anyway.
Was I going to be okay?
"Yeah," I lied. "It's treatable. I'll need medication probably, and I'll need to be careful about some things, but it's not a death sentence."
She didn't look convinced. "What things do you need to be careful about?"
"Stress. Stimulants. Overexertion. The usual."
"You're seventeen. You're supposed to be stressing and overexerting. That's what teenagers do."
"Then I guess I'll be a boring teenager."
She almost smiled at that. Almost. "You're already boring. All you do is sit at that computer."
Ouch. But also fair. Teenage me had been boring. No sports, no parties, no girlfriend, no social life to speak of. Just coding and gaming and slowly teaching myself skills that wouldn't pay off for over a decade.
I'd been lonely, I realized. Really lonely. And I'd dealt with it by throwing myself into projects that kept me too busy to think about it.
"The doctor said I should rest," I told her. "Not think too hard about things. Lower my stress levels."
"Then why is your laptop out?"
Because I couldn't stop myself. Because even knowing I should rest, I was already planning and scheming and trying to figure out how to leverage this impossible situation into something useful.
"Just checking email," I said.
She reached over and closed the laptop. "Rest means rest. No computer."
"Mom—"
"No. Computer." She said it in that tone that meant the discussion was over. Then she softened slightly. "They're moving you to a room upstairs. I'll stay with you tonight. I already called work and told them I won't be in tomorrow."
"You don't have to do that."
"Yes, I do. You're my son and you're in the hospital. That's exactly what I have to do."
There was no arguing with that logic. And honestly, a part of me—the part that was still somehow seventeen despite everything—was glad she was staying.
A different nurse appeared with a wheelchair. Time to move upstairs. They made me sit in the wheelchair despite my protests that I could walk fine, wheeled me through corridors and elevators to a different floor, settled me into a private room that was somehow both more and less depressing than the ER bay.
The room had a window at least. View of another building, but natural light. A TV mounted on an articulating arm. A bathroom. A chair that converted into a bed for visitors. All the standard hospital room amenities that I'd seen too many times in my previous life.
My mom helped me get settled, fussed over the blankets, adjusted the bed height, asked the nurse three times about call buttons and visiting hours and food options.
I let her fuss. It seemed to help her feel more in control of a situation where she had no control.
Eventually, she sat in the visitor chair and just looked at me.
"You scared me," she said quietly.
"I scared myself."
"When the hospital called... I thought..." She didn't finish the sentence. Didn't need to.
In my original timeline, she'd outlived me. I'd died first. But there had been scares along the way where she'd thought she might lose me earlier. The cardiac events. The close calls. Each time, that same look on her face.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"Don't be sorry. Just be careful. Whatever you were doing at that McDonald's, whatever project or game or code thing you were working on—it's not worth dying for."
She had no idea how wrong she was. How many things I'd eventually decide were worth dying for. How many times I'd push myself past limits, ignore doctor's warnings, prioritize work over health.
But looking at her now, at the worry on her face, I thought maybe this time I could be smarter about it.
"I'll be careful," I said.
She nodded, not quite believing me but accepting the promise anyway.
We sat in silence for a while. The room had that particular hospital atmosphere—too quiet except for the periodic beeps and the distant sounds of staff moving around. The kind of quiet that made you hyper-aware of your own breathing and heartbeat.
"Are you hungry?" my mom asked eventually. "The nurse said they'd bring dinner around six."
I wasn't hungry. The penny taste was gone but my stomach felt weird, unsettled. Probably the stress hormones still working through my system.
"I'm okay," I said.
"You should eat something. Keep your strength up."
"Mom, I had a cardiac event. I don't think hospital food is going to affect my recovery either way."
"Don't be smart."
"That's literally my only skill."
She shook her head but I saw the corner of her mouth twitch. Almost a smile.
My phone—the flip phone—buzzed in the bin of belongings. She grabbed it, looked at the screen, frowned.
"Someone named Jeremy is asking if you're still coming over tomorrow to work on something?"
Jeremy. It took me a second to place the name. Friend from school. Sort of friend. Acquaintance. We'd worked on a few projects together. He was better at front-end stuff than I was, back when I still struggled with basic CSS.
"Tell him I'm in the hospital and probably not going to make it."
She typed out a response with the focused concentration of someone who still wasn't quite comfortable with phone keyboards. "He says what happened. Should I tell him?"
"Tell him I'm fine but stuck here for observation. Heart thing. Nothing serious."
She typed. Waited. "He says feel better and to text him when you're out."
"Okay."
She put the phone down. "Is Jeremy the one with the skateboard?"
"That's Tyler."
"The tall one?"
"That's Marcus."
"The one who came over that time to work on the... thing?"
"Yeah, that's Jeremy."
She nodded, filing this information away. My mom had a terrible memory for my friends' names because I didn't have many friends and didn't talk about them much. In her mental model, my social life was mostly a blur of interchangeable teenage boys who sometimes appeared to work on mysterious computer projects.
Not entirely inaccurate, honestly.
"You should invite people over more," she said. "I worry that you're too isolated."
"I'm not isolated. I'm focused."
"You can be both."
Also not inaccurate.
A different nurse came in with dinner. Hospital food on a tray: something that might have been chicken, might have been fish, definitely was neither. Steamed vegetables that had been steamed into submission. A roll. A cup of juice.
I ate because my mom was watching and I didn't want her to worry more. The food tasted like what I imagined sadness might taste like if you could cook it.
"It's not that bad," my mom said, watching me struggle through the alleged chicken.
"You want to try it?"
"I'm good."
We both laughed a little. First genuine laugh since she'd arrived.
After dinner, she gathered her things. "I need to go home for a few hours," she said. "Shower, change, get some proper rest. I'll be back first thing in the morning." She picked up my laptop and put it in her bag. "And I'm taking this with me. You need actual sleep, not just lying in bed coding."
I started to protest but she cut me off with a look. The discussion was over.
After she left, I was alone again, finally.
I thought about asking for my laptop back but it was a moot point now. She'd taken it with her and would give me grief if I asked. And maybe she was right. Maybe I did need to actually rest.
But my brain wouldn't stop working.
I lay there, staring at the ceiling, thinking through everything I knew. Everything I could do. Everything I needed to do.
The video idea was good but it was slow. Months of work before I'd build an audience. Maybe a year before it translated to anything useful.
What else?
I could reach out to people who would later become important. Try to build relationships early. But I was seventeen and unknown. Why would they give me the time of day?
I could start coding something. Some tool or utility that people needed. Open source it, build a reputation. But that was also slow and offered no clear path to money.
I could try to get a job at a tech company. Google, Facebook, Microsoft. Get in early, learn from the inside, make connections. But I was seventeen with no degree and no track record. Nobody would hire me for anything meaningful.
Every path I could see was slow. Long. Grinding.
Which made sense. That's how it worked the first time too. No shortcuts. Just years of consistent effort until something finally clicked.
I'd hoped having future knowledge would give me a cheat code. A way to skip the grind.
But knowledge without resources was just trivia. And resources required either time or luck, neither of which I could control.
The frustration of it sat in my chest like a weight.
I'd died at seventy-two. Woken up at seventeen. That gave me fifty-five years. Fifty-five years to do everything I'd done before but better, faster, smarter.
Except I'd probably die at the same age. Long QT syndrome didn't care about time travel or second chances. The genetic mutation was still there. The heart defect was still there. Even with perfect treatment, my odds of making it to seventy-two again were maybe fifty-fifty.
Which meant I had less time than I thought.
And I was wasting it lying in a hospital bed, eating terrible food, unable to even access my laptop.
The helplessness was maddening.
I closed my eyes.
Tried to breathe slowly. In through the nose, out through the mouth. The rhythm the doctors always recommended for calming your heart rate.
It sort of worked.
The beeping of the monitor slowed down. Matched my breathing. Found a steady tempo.
And somewhere in that rhythm, in the forced stillness of the hospital room, I started to let go of the urgency.
Started to accept that this wasn't going to be a sprint.
It was going to be the same grind as before. Just with better information.
And maybe that was okay.
Maybe that was enough.