At the Cooper family home, after hanging up the phone, Grandma Connie noticed her three grandchildren looking at her with worry in their eyes.
"What did she say?" Sheldon was the first to ask.
"The doctors are still running some tests, but everything points to your dad having a bad case of gas."
After a brief pause, Grandma Connie decided to lie to calm everyone down.
"You two can go lie down."
"I don't want to stay here. I want to go to the hospital to see my dad," Georgie Jr. interrupted impatiently.
"Oh yeah? I also want to go to Vegas to see Willie Nelson, but that's not gonna happen." Grandma Connie replied with a sarcastic tone.
"That's stupid." Georgie Jr. said, walking off, irritated.
After a few more questions, Sheldon and Missy went to their rooms to try to sleep.
Connie went out to the backyard to have a drink and relax, but she ended up falling asleep. That gave the kids the chance to grab the car keys and escape to the hospital.
…
At the hospital, Mary and Melinda talked about their situations and discovered that their husbands had the same problem. They found sympathy in each other.
Meanwhile, Alex stepped away to give the two women privacy. He walked down the hospital hallways.
Looking in a certain direction, he saw a door that stood out. It caught his attention, and he walked over to it.
He turned the doorknob and opened it. Looking inside, he remembered that in the TV series, Sheldon came here to pray.
Walking into the dark room, he shut the door behind him and found a place to sit.
Alex needed time to think about his life. Since arriving in this new world, he had noticed some coincidences with the Cooper family.
But he hadn't expected the coincidences to go this far.
He thought about his previous life. At that moment, particles of light started to gather and formed a screen.
Then the screen lit up, and scenes from his life appeared in the illusionary projection.
Alex thought it was a hallucination created by his overdeveloped brain. He didn't realize that what he was doing was observing the past through quantum observation.
Watching his memories from a third-person point of view, he was amazed by his own abilities.
It's unclear how much time passed while Alex watched those memories. At that moment, he was reliving the dream he had—until a sound came from the door opening.
It snapped him out of that wonderful state, and the screen disappeared.
Looking at the figure in the doorway, Alex fell silent and said nothing.
Sheldon also noticed the other presence but said nothing either. He simply found a place to sit.
They remained in silence, understanding each other without speaking, until one of them finally broke it.
"Do you believe in God?" Sheldon asked.
Alex looked at him and answered sincerely.
"I do."
"I heard your dad is in this hospital too. Did you see him?"
Sheldon thought for a moment, remembering the scene he had witnessed, and lowered his eyes.
"Yes... But why would God do that to them?"
Alex remained quiet. How could he even answer that?
"That's a really hard question. There's no way to know those things."
He sighed quietly. There were too many questions and too few answers.
Sheldon, hearing this, remained silent. Who knows what he was thinking?
"They're going to be okay," Alex said.
"How can you be sure?" Sheldon couldn't help but ask.
Looking at the young Sheldon, Alex answered, "I'm not. But as long as the chance isn't zero, anything is possible."
Sheldon didn't understand that analogy, and Alex didn't expect him to.
After that, Alex stood up, said goodbye to Sheldon, and left.
There were still many things he needed to do, and staying there wouldn't change anything.
After reorganizing his thoughts, he realized that his mindset had been far too small. He didn't know if there were limits to his growth.
If he had a status panel, it would be much easier to understand the changes he was going through. He still didn't know what that mysterious being had done to him…
But he felt that it was far from simple.
___
Author's Notes:
I tried to write this chapter many times, but I just wasn't feeling up to it. Nothing I wrote seemed good enough.
Or maybe it just felt that way to me. I even thought about giving up on writing this novel.
To be honest, I started writing it because of a woman. I wanted to show it to her, but in the end, she didn't even bother to read it.
You can laugh at me if you want — it's embarrassing to consider giving up on something just because someone doesn't care about your effort.
If there's any mistake in this chapter, let me know. I might repost it with a few changes later.
Until next time. See ya...