Voenix Rising

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Sometimes when you can't sleep, your mind wanders to some interesting places…

A Christmas Fantasy

We first saw him one afternoon as he was leaving Starbucks: an otherwise unremarkable older man in tweed coat, a button-down shirt, black trousers, black lace-up boots and a red bow tie.

I pointed out to Ben the man's resemblance to the fabled Doctor Who of BBC fame (albeit much older) and added that with the Universe being as unfathomably huge as it is, the possibility of a character like The Doctor actually existing (if not in our unfathomably huge universe, then perhaps in one or more of the the innumerable parallel ones) was undoubtedly quite high.

I didn't think anything more of it until this man reappeared at Starbucks several days later, quietly sitting in one of the padded chairs by the window. Neither Ben or I had noticed him sitting there when we arrived, or had we noticed when he'd come in. He was sipping some hot beverage, and I could tell from his expression he wasn't quite sure if it suited him or not.  He'd take a sip, make a face as if trying to decide whether or not he liked it, and then put the cup back down on the low table in front of him, studying it intently. He repeated this several times until our eyes met.

There was a twinkle in them, something that said he was either much younger than he looked—or much older, having lived through enough that he now found wonder in the most common of occurrences.

I went back to my reading, but from that point forward, every time I looked up our eyes immediately met. He wasn't flirting; I know what flirting looks like. No, it was almost as if he was studying me.

I got caught up in reading some article online, and the next thing I knew, this very odd gentleman was standing beside our table.

"Excuse me," he began in a decidedly British accent, "but this beverage…what do you think of it?" And he held out the steaming cup.

I took a cautious sniff and said, "Peppermint mocha. It's a seasonal thing they brew up. Not my personal favorite, but not bad overall."

He looked at Ben and then back to me. "Forgive me for saying this, but you two are a very unusual couple."

Ben looked up. "How do you know we're a couple?"

"Oh it's obvious," he said. "The way you look at each other, your body language. How long have you been together?"

"A little over three years," I said, wondering why I was even having a conversation with this stranger.

"Ah, newlyweds!"

"Not exactly," Ben said. "We can't get married in Colorado."

"That's rubbish!" he exclaimed. After a brief pause: "What brought you here?"

"Ben is in the Denver Teacher Residency Program," I said.

"Brilliant!" he said. "This world needs more teachers!"

"Yes it does!"

"If you don't mind my asking," he said, looking directly at me, "your voice…?"

"Cancer," I said. "Nine year survivor and counting."

At that point he pulled up a chair and sat down, and stared at me intently. I glanced at Ben, who had a frozen, puzzled look on his face, and then the rest of the world ceased to exist. It seemed as if a cone of silence had descended around the stranger and I.

He reached toward my neck and uttered those infamous words, "Don't worry, I'm a doctor." He palpitated my neck and gently drew back my collar. "A tracheostomy?"

"In the beginning it kept me alive, and my doctor said I would probably have it the rest of my life."

"Barbaric!"

At that point I knew I'd slipped into an alternate universe, because from his jacket pocket he withdrew something that could only be a sonic screwdriver. It gave it a quick twist, the end lit up green, it emitted that distinctive sound, and he pressed it to my neck.

I blinked. He was gone. And the rest of the world had returned to normal.

I reached up and felt my neck. The trach tube was gone.

"OH MY GOD!" I said, shocked by the return of my old voice.

Ben looked up. "What?"

I pulled down my collar.

His mouth dropped. "Wha…? When…? Your voice!"

"Do you remember the old guy in the tweed coat?"

"Yeah, he came up to the table and commented how we were such an unusual couple and then wandered off."

"No! He did more than that!  He's fucking Doctor Who! We have to find him!"

We packed up our backpacks and rushed out onto the snowy street.  Looking back and forth he was nowhere to be found.

"It's a Christmas miracle!" Ben said.

After a few minutes we gave up looking for him and started walking back home. As we passed the parking lot north of Starbucks I happened to glance left and saw it: the big blue British Police Box, sitting right in the middle of the lot. People were getting out of their cars and walking right past it, as if it was the most common sight in all of creation.

The door opened, and the bow-tied stranger stepped out.

"All right, you lot. Don't just stand there! We have places to go!"