I didn't believe in miracles. I prayed all day every day for weeks when my mother was dying of cancer, just like she prayed all day every day for weeks when my father went missing in Afghanistan, seventeen years ago, before I was even born.
Actually, it was my seventeenth birthday the day the first miracle happened. I was in my second year of university, way beyond all of my peers, and in an unfamiliar country.
When my mother died, I was carted off to live with my only living relations, my aunt and her seven children in Utah.
No, I have no idea what a bunch of nutty Catholics are doing in a state known for its Mormon population, but I do know I don't really make any friends living with "Bible-thumpers" as the people at the local Macey's (it's like Tesco for Americans) say when we walk in.
I grew up in a small town outside Bristol. I won't tell you which one, because Mary Sawyer can't be too common of a name in a town that size, even if it is Mary Theresa (Joan) Sawyer.
The Joan is a recent addition; I was confirmed in the Catholic Church last year. Does it count, being confirmed, if I think about my thesis when I'm in Mass and don't believe in a God?
My Aunt Margaret is so strict that when I mentioned Harry Potter (I had to, I mean, Lake Silencio!) she was so furious she made me copy "I am the Lord, you shall have no other God than me" on a chalkboard over and over.
When I showed up here on Lake Silencio, I spent a lot of time standing on the huge cliff faces (not considering suicide, no matter what my cousin Catherine thinks) that overlook the water. There isn't much water here.
At home, we lived so close to the water we had a boat we went out on all the time. I love the water. Leave it to me, the only remaining family I've got, living in a desert.
Every week I drive out to the lake—I got this really old car from the money I got selling the boat—and hike up for miles.
It was April 22th, 2011, probably 5:30ish when I sat down to eat a crunchy-peanut-butter-and-marshmallow-fluff sandwich on a cliff face I probably shouldn't be on. The wind was rushing across the rocks, making stranger sounds than usual, and there was a funny orange glint on the water.
I'd actually just begun to wonder if there was something burning in the lake when—
"Mind if I join you?" A young man asked.
I glanced up at him. He looked sad, even with a huge grin plastered on his face.
"Not a problem." I replied. "Who do I blame if you murder me?"
He laughed and flopped onto the rock beside me. "The Doctor. And technically, I'm dead. My body's down there, in a rowboat, burning. I don't exist in any database, because I'm an alien. That's my ship." He pointed behind us.
I glanced behind me and scanned the new addition to the cliff, a big blue box.
The Doctor grinned. "Do you believe me?"
"Well, there is a boat-shaped fire on the lake, that box wasn't here before, and you show no signs of lying." I said levelly.
"Ha! You believe me. What's your name?"
I don't know what made me say it, but—
"Mary Theresa Joan Sawyer."
I offered him a triangle of the sandwich. "Would you like a Crunchy-P-B-&-Fluff, Doctor?"
"Don't mind if I do."
We sat there watching the little boat burn in silence until I managed to drink enough water to speak.
"So… How exactly did you survive?"
"The body in that boat? Robot. Looks just like me, and since I couldn't avoid the fixed point that said I had to be there, 2011/05/25 at 17:02, I hung out inside the robot until it burned." He pointed to a sandy scrap of shore. "Those are my friends, Amy, Rory, and River." He chuckled. "River. She's there twice, you know. She killed me, and she watched. She also married me in a world that no longer exists."
"And I thought my life was complicated."
"What's up with the extraordinary human life of Mary Sawyer? Who are you?"
"Well, my Mum died, and I got shipped off here to America, and now I live with really strict Catholics, and I'm in university even though I'm only seventeen, and my cousin is dying of muscular dystrophy and all my Aunt will do is pray. She's refusing to allow any treatments that involved stem cell research."
"Sounds like we're both a long way from home." He said, starting to lean back.
I stopped him. "Don't lay down on that spider. You'll crush him."
The Doctor watched me as I picked up the long-legged arachnid. "You save spiders." He said, sounding ridiculously pleased about that. It would be a long time before I understood why.
"Yes. Yes, I do."
"Good." He laid back and put his hands behind his head. Then, absently, "That's good."
I looked at the dark shapes as they packed up slowly and got into the red and white van. "Your friends are down there." I said. "Why don't you go to them?"
"They're all in danger as long as they know I'm alive."
I hate people in my personal space. I don't like strangers. I'm definitely not a cuddle person, or a conversationalist.
But I did reach out and take his hand.
"What's she dying of?" He asked an hour later, as the sun was setting.
"Muscular dystrophy caused by a genetic fluke. Her baby brother has it too, but he won't show signs for another few years."
"If you could save them—just them—would you?"
"I've met them. The other families who have it, you know? I couldn't. Why me? Why my family? I don't believe people deserve to be in pain for lack of faith, and I don't believe people deserve to be saved for faith alone."
"It's not just your family," The Doctor said. "It's two innocent lives."
My seventeenth birthday present was Cathy taking her first steps on her own in two years.
And the next night, when the doctors stumbled out of her hospital room flummoxed by her recovery, the whole family was praying to thank God. I sat by the window and looked up at the stars.
"Thank you."
X-x-X-x-X
"Hello, Doctor."
My voice is loud in the quiet side chapel. It'd be silent, actually, except for the sound of my breathing and the hum of electric lights.
"Four years ago today, you saved my cousins with a weird little medicine you brought out of your blue box. Catherine's getting married soon, this Christmas.
"I've got a thing… It's around the corner, a huge birthday banquet. Not my idea, but Catherine's an actress now, and she's famous already—after all, she miraculously recovered from a terminal genetic disorder four years ago.
"I'm pretty famous as well, a doctor. I'm an astrophysicist, and I also have a degree in psychology. Twenty-one years old, and I have eight years worth of college. They call me a genius in all these magazines.
"But I still save spiders. I still visit Lake Silencio every year on my birthday at 5:02. Sometimes I see letters for you laying there. I never open them, but they're there, usually just three.
"You probably can't hear me. Just come back.
"Come back for me, Doctor."
I picked up my clutch and walked away.