Omi as always
Kim for somehow managing to beta despite a hospital stay
Becky for pushing me to make the fic better
Lee Ann for convincing me it was good
And all the BTN Live Open Beta participants - a huge thank you!
Disclaimers:
"A vague disclaimer is nobody's friend" - Willow, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
I do not own the characters Charlie, Don, Alan, or Amita nor do I have
any rights to anything related to the TV show Numb3rs. I plead fair
use and claim only my own writing and characters.
Chapter One:
Time has a mathematical precision. Every human being gets sixty seconds per minute. A person simply can't lose time.
Charlie ponders this as he stares up at the ceiling of his classroom, wondering what happened to the time between when he was addressing his class and now.
He blinks and is startled to open his eyes to a crowd of students staring down at him. They couldn't have all moved in that split second it took to blink, could they?
He's their teacher... He should be doing something, telling them something... But Charlie can't make that connection. He manages to open his mouth but there's just nothing...
He blinks again and is disoriented when he opens his eyes and finds himself somewhere else. There's movement and a man in a uniform is hovering over him. An ambulance... That's good, he thinks, someone called an ambulance.
When he opens his eyes next, there's a woman hovering over him. She's in a white coat. There's no movement. Emergency room...
Time seems to have no meaning now... Life is reduced to flashes of images, not much more than snapshots in time. Seen once, they tell their story then are put aside in favor of the next in line.
He struggles not to close his eyes, not wanting to miss more time, but it's a fight he can't win. Each blink steals more of his precious minutes away. Minutes of his life he'll never get back.
The darkness between is longer now. What he sees when he next opens his eyes shocks and confuses him.
He's in a room, in a bed, a hospital bed. This is not surprising, but what he sees in the room is.
Don, his brother, has his arms around Amita. How could he do that? Don knows how much Amita means to him.
It takes him a moment to realize their embrace is not romantic. He's consoling her. She is crying into his chest and as his brother turns slightly, he can see the tears on his face as well.
Don is crying, he thinks, this must be bad... He's worried now and wants to call out to them to tell them that he'll be okay.
And then he blinks.