Seven Minutes in Zürich

"What time is it?" Dr. Berger asked as the cardiac monitor flatlined.

"Seven minutes past four," Nurse Tanja replied, already reaching for the defibrillator.

Seven minutes. That's all it took for Eliza Reed's life to unravel completely. Seven minutes from the moment the lidocaine entered her bloodstream to the moment her heart stopped beating.

The clinic room in Zürich blurred into frantic motion—Dr. Berger shouting orders in Swiss-German, the crash team bursting through the door, her mother's perfectly composed face cracking with genuine fear for the first time in Eliza's eighteen years.

But for Eliza, time had ceased its linear march. As her body convulsed on the examination table, her consciousness expanded into what neurologists would later call a Temporal Fugue State—a rare phenomenon where the dying brain, flooded with endogenous DMT, creates hyper-realistic simulations spanning what should be impossible timeframes.

Seven minutes in the external world. A lifetime in Eliza's mind.

Minute One: 4:01 PM

The lidocaine injection. The strange tingling. The first hint of wrongness.

"Doctor," Eliza had tried to say, but her tongue felt suddenly thick, uncooperative.

Dr. Berger looked up sharply. "Eliza? Are you alright?"

The room tilted sideways. Her throat constricted, airways closing as if invisible hands were choking her.

"Allergic reaction!" Dr. Berger shouted, dropping the syringe. "Tanja, epi-pen now! Call the crash team!"

Her mother rose from the chair in the corner, manicured hand flying to her mouth.

"What's happening to my daughter?" Caroline Reed's crisp English accent fractured with fear.

Why do you care now? Eliza wanted to ask. After rushing me to Switzerland the moment you found out? After arranging everything so there would be no record, no inconvenient evidence to follow us back to Bristol?

But the words remained trapped as darkness crept in from the edges of her vision.

Her last coherent thought was of Mateo—not his face or his voice, but the smell of him: earth and pine and that awful cologne he thought made him sophisticated. She'd never told him how much she hated that cologne. Now she never would.

Minute Two: 4:02 PM

As the medical team swarmed around her physical form, Eliza's consciousness detached, floating above the chaos. She watched the epi-pen jab into her thigh, saw Dr. Berger counting compressions on her chest, observed her mother backed against the wall, knuckles white around her designer handbag.

One-two-three-four-five. Breathe. One-two-three-four-five. Breathe.

The scene dissolved, reforming into a montage of the past:

Caroline discovering the pregnancy test hidden under Eliza's mattress.

"What is this?" Her mother had held the plastic stick with two pink lines like it was contaminated.

"Don't be dramatic, Eliza. It's just cells. We'll take care of it before you start Oxford."

No discussion. No questions about the father, about Eliza's feelings, about what she wanted. Just a problem to be solved with clinical efficiency.

Her mother's phone calls, leveraging her grandmother's Swiss connections.

"Luckily your Swiss citizenship makes this straightforward. No UK paperwork to follow us home."

Brexit had made many things more complicated, but Eliza's dual citizenship provided a convenient loophole. No counseling sessions required by UK law. No waiting period. No chance for Eliza to change her mind.

Then Mateo, the gardener's son—his dark eyes widening when she told him, his calloused hands gentle on her still-flat stomach, his voice breaking when he said he would support whatever she decided.

"Whatever you decide, Eliza. I'm here either way."

Did he mean it? Would he have stood by her? Eliza would never know, because she'd never given him the chance. Had never seriously considered any option besides the one her mother orchestrated.

Now, watching her own body fail beneath Dr. Berger's increasingly desperate efforts, Eliza realized how easily she'd surrendered her agency—not just about the pregnancy, but about everything. University choices. Career path. Even the books she read and the clothes she wore had been subtly guided by her mother's expectations.

Minute Three: 4:03 PM

"No pulse!" Nurse Tanja called out. "Beginning CPR!"

The sound came from very far away, as if Eliza were underwater and the medical team were calling to her from the surface. Something was pulling her deeper, away from the clinical emergency and into a place where time operated by different rules.

Eliza's perception splintered further, consciousness racing ahead into a future that would never exist:

She saw herself, heavy with child, standing in a small Zürich apartment. Sunlight streamed through uncurtained windows, catching dust motes that danced in the air. The walls were painted a soft yellow—not her choice, she somehow knew, but Mateo's. "Like sunshine," he'd insisted. "For the baby."

Mateo was there, having followed her to Switzerland, arranging furniture in what would become a nursery. His father, Miguel, was hanging a mobile of paper stars above a secondhand crib, while Mateo's mother, Sofia, sorted through tiny clothes.

"Your mother will come around," Sofia was saying, folding a yellow onesie with practical efficiency. "When she sees the baby, she will not be able to help herself."

"You don't know my mother," Eliza heard herself reply. "She's already revised her story for her friends—telling them I'm doing a gap year, interning at the Swiss office of her law firm."

Sofia's weathered hands stilled on the tiny garment. "Shame is a poison that affects the one who carries it, not those they direct it toward. Your mother's shame is hers to bear, not yours."

The scene shifted. Eliza in a delivery room, the pain unlike anything she'd imagined—primal, all-consuming, beyond language. Mateo holding her hand as she pushed. The miracle of a daughter being placed on her chest, slippery and wailing and perfect. The overwhelming love that crashed through her, erasing every doubt, every fear.

"Lucia," she whispered to the red-faced infant. "Your name is Lucia." Light.

Another shift—a Christmas morning, their daughter, Lucia, toddling toward a modest tree. Caroline Reed sitting stiffly on the sofa, watching her granddaughter with a complicated expression that slowly, incrementally, softened as the child offered her a clumsily wrapped present.

"I made it for you, Granny," Lucia said, English accent already tinged with Swiss-German cadences.

Inside the package: a clay handprint, painted in garish colors.

Caroline's fingers traced the tiny palm print. "It's lovely," she said, her voice catching.

"Even the hardest hearts can change," Miguel said, appearing beside Eliza. "Not quickly, not easily. But they can."

Minute Four: 4:04 PM

"Charging defibrillator! Clear!"

The first shock jolted through Eliza's body, electricity arcing through cells and synapses. Her back arched off the table, then collapsed. The monitor continued its monotonous flatline wail.

"Nothing," Dr. Berger said, jaw clenched. "Continue compressions."

But Eliza's consciousness remained adrift, now cycling through alternate futures with dizzying speed:

A graduation ceremony, her daughter on her hip as she accepted her diploma. Not Oxford—the local university, where she'd pieced together credits between feedings and diaper changes.

Mateo opening his own landscaping business, pride shining in his eyes as he showed her the logo—a stylized tree with roots extending deep into the earth. "Like us," he said. "Roots in two countries, still growing strong."

Their tiny family facing challenges—money tight, tensions high, sacrifices made. A night of bitter argument when Lucia had an ear infection and they couldn't afford both the medicine and the rent.

But also joy—beach days on Lake Zürich, bedtime stories read in halting Spanish so Lucia would know her father's language, birthday candles reflected in wide, wondering eyes, first steps on their small balcony, school plays where their daughter shone like a star.

A life unplanned but fiercely loved.

Then suddenly, darkness—the future dissolving, receding like tide-smoothed footprints on sand. The hallucinations of a dying brain, nothing more.

Yet they felt so real—every laugh line on Mateo's face as he aged alongside her, every sticky handprint on their refrigerator, every struggle and triumph their unlikely family weathered together.

More real, somehow, than the pale imitation of living she'd done for eighteen years.

Minute Five: 4:05 PM

"Still no pulse! Charging to 300! Clear!"

The second shock failed to restart Eliza's heart. Dr. Berger's face grew taut with worry.

"How long has she been down?" someone asked.

"Almost four minutes," Tanja answered, voice steady despite the urgency.

Caroline had moved to the corner of the room, phone clutched in her hand. Eliza could see her mother's fingers trembling as she watched the medical team fight for her daughter's life.

You're scared, Eliza realized. Not just for me, but for yourself. How would you explain this? 'My daughter died during an abortion I arranged in Switzerland because I didn't want the inconvenience of a teenage pregnancy to ruin our family reputation'?

The thought came without bitterness—just a clear-eyed understanding of the woman who'd raised her. Caroline Reed wasn't a villain; she was a product of her own upbringing, her own fears, her own desperate need for control.

In the suspended reality of her mind, Eliza confronted what she'd always known but never acknowledged: she'd never truly decided about this pregnancy. She'd simply allowed herself to be swept along by her mother's certainty, her mother's plans, her mother's vision for Eliza's future—Oxford in the fall, law degree to follow, then a position at Reed & Associates.

No inconvenient baby. No embarrassing connection to the gardener's son. No detours from the carefully plotted trajectory of Eliza Reed's life.

But what if there was another path? What if the visions weren't just hallucinations but possibilities?

It's your last night on earth, again, a voice whispered in her consciousness—a line from one of those melancholy songs Mateo loved to play while tending the roses.

Last night. Last chance. Last moment to choose differently, to choose for herself.

The path ahead would not be easy. She was eighteen, pregnant, with no degree, no career, no real plan. Fear lurked at the edges of her consciousness—fear of failure, fear of judgment, fear of losing her mother's approval forever.

But there was another fear, deeper and more profound: the fear of never truly living, of reaching the end of her life and realizing she'd only ever been a character in someone else's story.

Minute Six: 4:06 PM

"One more time! Charging to 360! Clear!"

The third shock slammed Eliza back into her body with brutal force. She gasped, eyes flying open as oxygen flooded her lungs.

"She's back!" Dr. Berger sagged with relief. "Eliza, can you hear me?"

The room swam into focus—medical equipment, worried faces, her mother standing near the door, uncharacteristically disheveled.

"What happened?" she managed to whisper.

"Severe allergic reaction to the lidocaine," Dr. Berger explained, checking Eliza's pupils with a penlight. "Anaphylactic shock. Your heart stopped. We almost lost you."

"The baby..." Her hand moved instinctively to her stomach.

Dr. Berger's expression turned solemn. "I'm sorry, Eliza. The medications you took before the reaction... they've begun the process. We'll need to complete the procedure once you're stable."

Grief crashed through Eliza, surprising in its intensity. The future she'd glimpsed—that impossible, beautiful future—was gone. Just a hallucination, her oxygen-deprived brain conjuring comfort in her final moments.

Lucia. The daughter who would never exist. The life she would never live.

Caroline approached the bed, her usual composure fractured. Mascara smudged beneath her eyes, hair escaping its perfect blowout.

"Darling, I was so frightened. When they said your heart had stopped..." Her voice broke. "All I could think was how would I explain—" She caught herself. "How would I live with myself if something happened to you."

How would I explain my daughter dying in a Swiss abortion clinic, Eliza mentally finished for her. Always concerned with appearances, with repercussions, with what people would say.

Yet beneath her mother's self-interest, Eliza glimpsed something genuine—actual fear of losing her only child. Caroline Reed loved her daughter, in her way. A flawed, controlling, conditional love, but love nonetheless.

Minute Seven: 4:07 PM

As the paramedics prepared to transfer Eliza to a stretcher, a strange fluttering sensation moved through her abdomen—so faint she thought she might have imagined it. Like butterfly wings or fish darting through water. Her hand pressed against her stomach.

"Wait," she whispered. "I felt something."

Dr. Berger frowned. "That's unlikely. The medication—"

"Please," Eliza insisted, stronger now. "Check. Just check."

After a moment's hesitation, Dr. Berger reached for a portable ultrasound machine. "It will only take a moment," she said to the paramedics. "Tanja, dim the lights please."

Caroline hovered anxiously. "This is unnecessary. She needs to get to the hospital."

"One minute," Dr. Berger said firmly, applying gel to Eliza's abdomen.

The cold sensation made Eliza flinch. She watched Dr. Berger's face as the wand moved across her skin, searching for something, anything. The screen remained dark, empty.

Then—a flicker. A rhythmic pulsing.

"Is that...?" Eliza breathed, hardly daring to hope.

Dr. Berger adjusted the wand, focusing. "A heartbeat. Faint, but there." She looked genuinely surprised. "You appear to be carrying twins, Eliza. The medication affected one, but the other..." She shook her head in disbelief. "It's rare, but not unheard of. The second fetus must be protected by a separate amniotic sac. A dichorionic twin pregnancy."

"Twins?" Caroline repeated, incredulous. "That's impossible. The test only showed one."

"Early ultrasounds can miss a second fetus, especially if positioned behind the first," Dr. Berger explained. "And in cases of heteropaternal superfecundation—"

"In English, please," Caroline interrupted.

"Twins with different fathers," Dr. Berger clarified. "It's extremely rare, but possible if a woman ovulates more than one egg and has multiple partners within a short timeframe."

Caroline's face paled. "Eliza, you said it was just the gardener's boy."

Eliza flushed. "It was! I mean... there was Jason from debate club, but that was a week before..." Her voice trailed off as the implications sank in.

Two possible fathers. Two possible futures. The universe had granted her the most literal of second chances.

"Extraordinary timing," Dr. Berger murmured, still studying the ultrasound. "One twin appears unaffected by the medication. A medical anomaly."

A miracle, Eliza thought, though she'd never been religious.

"So what happens now?" Caroline demanded.

"Now," Dr. Berger said, looking directly at Eliza, "we take her to the hospital, stabilize her, and discuss her options. Again."

Options. The word hung in the air between them. No longer her mother's decision, but hers.

Nurse Tanja leaned close as they prepared to move Eliza to the stretcher. "Swiss law protects your right to decide," she whispered. "Not your mother's right. Yours. As a Swiss citizen, you have options here—healthcare, social support. Your mother would have no legal authority."

The clock on the wall read 4:07 PM. Seven minutes had passed since the injection. Seven minutes that contained a death, a rebirth, and the glimpse of a thousand possible futures.

As they wheeled her toward the door, Eliza shifted on the stretcher, sitting up slightly, straightening her spine. A small gesture, but a deliberate one. No longer passive. No longer swept along by her mother's current.

Her hand cradled her stomach, feeling the subtle curve that hadn't been there eight weeks ago. Inside, a tiny heart beat alongside her own—a survivor like its mother. Perhaps Lucia wasn't lost after all, just waiting to be born in this reality instead of the one Eliza had glimpsed beyond death's threshold.

"We'll talk about this at the hospital," Caroline was saying, already on her phone, rearranging flights, extending their hotel stay, managing the logistics of crisis. "Once you're thinking clearly again."

Eliza caught Dr. Berger's eyes and gave an almost imperceptible nod. The doctor returned it with the faintest smile—an acknowledgment, a promise.

Seven minutes had changed everything. In seven minutes, Eliza had died, lived an entire possible life in her mind, and returned with a clarity she'd never possessed before. The path ahead wouldn't be easy, but for the first time, it would be truly hers to choose.

The church bells of Zürich began to ring the quarter-hour as they wheeled her out of the clinic. Seven minutes past four. The beginning of whatever came next.