Patient File No. 7
My legs carried me toward the bakery without my fully willing it. Patient No. 7, behind me, followed with unsteady steps. Mr. Monday, for the first time, made no movement at all — he just stood, watching, as if even he didn't know what was about to happen.
The bakery door was open. A dim light spilled from inside, along with the smell of bread that was neither fresh nor rotten — something in between, something that defied description.
I entered.
The shelves were full of bread, endless rows, each slightly different from the next — some fresh, some moldy, some just the hard, dried skeleton of what had once been bread. It was as if each shelf represented a different version of the same moment, frozen in time that had never truly passed.
And at the end of the shop, behind the counter, they were there.
The Sadeghi family — or what remained of them.
Father, mother, son, daughter — but not one version of each, rather dozens, perhaps hundreds, all at once, like overlapping images of a photograph taken multiple times in a single frame. Some versions were laughing. Some were crying. Some just stood motionless, eyes open but empty, like people trapped in an eternal moment, neither alive nor dead, just... suspended.
Patient No. 7, behind me, gasped and fell to his knees.
"This..." he said, his voice breaking. "This is what I've always been running from seeing."
I stepped forward, slowly, while every instinct told me to turn and run.
One version of the daughter — the same five-year-old girl I had seen in my dream, on the swing — turned her head toward me. Her eyes, unlike the others, were clear, aware.
"Who are you?" she asked, her voice small, frightened, but real — more real than anything else I had heard in this ordeal.
I couldn't answer. My throat had closed.
"We're waiting for Mommy and Daddy to come back," she said, innocently, without understanding how many decades had passed, without understanding what had happened to them. "I think they went to buy something. They'll be back, right?"
Behind me, Mr. Monday's voice came softly from the doorway: "This is the part I could never fix, Doctor. No matter how many times I rewound, no matter how many times I tried, there's always a moment where they get stuck, right here, waiting for something that never comes."
Patient No. 7, still on his knees, said in a choked voice: "Can we set them free?"
Mr. Monday was silent for a long time.
"I don't know," he said at last. "I've never tried just letting them go. I always thought that if I let them go, it meant accepting that I could never fix it. It meant accepting total failure."
I turned my gaze from the little girl and fixed it on Mr. Monday.
"Perhaps," I said, my voice quiet but firm, "accepting failure is the only way you can truly help them."
A heavy silence fell. The little girl was still looking at me, waiting for an answer I couldn't give.
Mr. Monday, slowly, stepped forward — not in a threatening way, but with a caution I had never seen from him. He reached out his hand, slowly, toward the nearest version of the family.
"If I do this," he said, his voice trembling, "if I let them go, I can never rewind them again. Ever. And perhaps... perhaps I won't be able to exist anymore either, not in this form. Because if there's nothing left to experiment on, if there's nothing left to rewind..."
"Maybe that's not a bad thing," I said quietly.
He looked at me, and in that gaze, for the first time, there was no threat — only a question, pure and terrifying: Am I willing to lose myself to save them?
Patient No. 7 rose to his feet, stepped forward with trembling steps, and stood beside me.
"I'm here too," he said, facing Mr. Monday. "Whatever it takes, whatever I have to pay — let it end now. For all of us."
Mr. Monday placed his hand on the nearest version of the little girl.
The light in the room, suddenly, began to waver — not the usual flickering, but something deeper, as if reality itself were deciding what shape to take.
"If I do this," Mr. Monday said, his voice now louder, trembling with something between fear and hope, "we might all go together. This might be the last Monday any of us ever sees."
I looked at Patient No. 7. He nodded, ready.
I looked at Mr. Monday.
"Then let it end," I said.
The light, suddenly, flooded the entire room — not white, not black, but a color I had no name for — and the Sadeghi family, all their versions at once, drew a single deep breath, as if for the first time in twenty-two years.
And then, silence.
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To be continued in Chapter Twenty, the final chapter...