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Isabel Diaz has seen a lot of things in her life. The most remarkable of them happened when she was in her early twenties.
To this day, she’s still not sure why it happened. All she knows is that she went to bed one night and then woke up a week earlier. It took her all of the first day to realize what had happened or, rather, guess. After all, how do you know for certain that you’ve been sent back in time?
For the most part, Isabel acts the way she did the first time. She’s slightly terrified of what might happen if she changes anything or does anything wildly different. The only thing she does do is change how much time she spends with people. She accepts an offer for lunch that she turned down in favor of work the first time, has dinner with her family when she’d just gone to bed before, and accepts a second date with a young man.
Whatever caused her to go back in time the first time must not happen again because Isabel goes to sleep on Saturday and wakes up on the Sunday immediately after, not the Sunday before like she had a week ago. It’s insane and Isabel’s not entire certain she didn’t just imagine repeating a week of her life, so she just…never mentions it to anyone. Not her husband, not their children, not her grandchildren, and not her great-grandchildren.
She doesn’t even consider that it might happen again, might be happening to other people, until it happens to her Pepita, her Eddito, and Christopher.
Pepa calls her early in the morning one day in August, earlier than she knows her daughter likes to be awake on weekends, but it’s the shaken way Pepa references her dream that tells Isabel that something’s going on. It’s not concrete, and the memory of what happened to her as a young woman doesn’t even cross her mind. She convinces Pepa to come over dinner, confident she’ll be able to reassure Pepa and, hopefully, figure out what’s got her so scared.
The feeling gets worse when Eddie and Chris show up at her house. They’ve only been in town a couple of months, and Eddie, smart boy that he is, has still been getting familiar with her home in L.A., learning its ins and outs. So, when he navigates it with ease, pulling himself a glass of water and refilling Chris’s cup without issue, no question about where anything is and without bumping into any furniture, a clearer suspicion, an impossible thought, begins to solidify.
It sticks in her mind when he fusses with her back porch, stepping outside for a phone call that Isabel waves him off to take, even when he knows that phones are only for special cases at her house. Christopher, her ángel, has been chattering about time travel since they arrived.
He’s not a subtle boy, her great-grandson.
Pepa’s dream when she describes it after dinner that night, the coherency of it, the bone-deep terror and grief as she describes not only Shannon’s death but the rest – Eddie, Christopher, and this Buck that Pepa describes, someone Eddie will love, probably loves already if Isabel’s slowly forming guess is correct – all of it makes Isabel think about how the only thing Christopher talked about today was time travel. And then, finally, Isabel’s decades-old memory of waking up a week in her past floats to the surface.
“You know,” she starts, holding Pepa’s hands in the silence of Pepa describing waking up after Eddie what did – didn’t – Isabel can’t bear to think of it. “Christopher was talking about time travel today.”
Pepa frowns, true skeptic that she is. “Time travel? Like in the movies?
Isabel shrugs. “Stranger things have happened.” She doesn’t mention her own brief brush with it. That won’t help Pepa, and it certainly won’t help Christopher and Eddie. Tomorrow is Eddie’s first day as a probational firefighter at a station, after all. She hopes he’s well prepared.
The earthquake would’ve been nice to know about ahead of time, Isabel thinks months later, scared and alone in her house because Pepa and Eddie are at work and Christopher is at school. She keeps her radio on to listen, just in case, but she breathes easier when Pepa calls her long after dark, frantic to know if Isabel’s okay and to let her mother know that she’s safe.
As soon as she’s hung up with Pepa, the sound of an unfamiliar car on her driveway filters through the storm door. Isabel’s out of the front door just in time to see a young blonde man sitting in the driver’s seat, a miraculously unharmed Christopher and an equally unharmed and unsurprisingly dirty Eddie walking towards her from the passenger side of the large black Jeep.
Christopher’s excited enough to only put up with the tight hug she sweeps him into for a little bit, squirming out of her hold to turn back to the Jeep. Eddie, on the other hand, holds her just as tight as she holds him, and submits to her fussing in front of the stranger who’s brought her family home.
Isabel’s patted his cheeks a few times for good measure when she finally looks around him to the man in the driver’s seat. “And who is this?” she asks warmly, smiling at him from around Eddie.
“This,” Eddie starts, bouncing back towards the car, “is my coworker, Buck.”
The young man smiles politely up at her while Isabel finally puts a face to the name. He’s become a household name, at least for her, whenever Eddie and Christopher are here, not to mention the way Pepa talked about him that day, months ago. “Buck,” Isabel says, looking at Eddie. She turns back to Buck with a smile. “Thank you for bringing my boys home.” She goes down the steps carefully, since Eddie’s always getting on her about it these days, and joins Eddie at the rolled-down passenger side window. “Please, come inside for dinner. I’m sure Eddie’s already offered.”
The little cough Eddie lets out tells Isabel that no, Eddie had not already offered Buck dinner with her.
“Oh, no,” Buck says with a shake of his head and a wave of his hand. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”
Isabel turns her sharp eye onto him. “Please. I insist.”
“C’mon, Buck!” Christopher calls from the porch. “Abuelita’s food is amazing!”
She smiles at Buck, warm from her great-grandson’s glowing review, before looking at Eddie expectantly. Eddie, who’s looking at Buck like she used to look at his grandfather, like she’s seen Ramon look at Helena. “C’mon. I’m willing to bet Abuela made enough food for a small army.”
“Edmundo,” Isabel chastises lightly, though she knows he’s not wrong. She’s not expecting Pepa tonight, was hardly expecting Eddie and Christopher with the way traffic probably is, but she has more than enough food made to fill some hungry bellies.
“We already made the detour,” Eddie adds, and Isabel takes a second to process the fact that Eddie apparently wasn’t going to check on her after the earthquake – at least, not in person – and she smacks his arm. “I was gonna call you!”
“I wanted Abuelita’s cooking,” Christopher says, and Isabel rolls her eyes at her grandson.
“Besides,” Eddie says a moment later, looking at Buck while rubbing his arm where his grandmother smacked him, “I need someone to take me and Chris home after this.”
Interestingly, that seems to be what convinces Buck to stay. He climbs out of the Jeep and walks over to where Eddie and Isabel are still standing by the passenger side. Isabel doesn’t let him get a word out before she drags him down into a hug. He’s obviously shocked when she lets him go, patting his cheeks fondly. Anyone dear to Eddie and Christopher is dear to her, and Buck is no exception to that rule.
“Now then,” she says. “How about the three of you come in and tell me what you all got up to today, hm?”
Isabel thinks, a few weeks later, hip definitely broken, lying on the ground in pain while Christopher calls 911 using her landline, that this would’ve been nice to know about as well. “She’s back here,” Christopher says a few minutes and an agonizing eternity later.
Nice people in dark blue uniforms surround her, a dark-skinned young man directing people around. “Ma’am,” a firefighter with bright red hair starts, putting a hand on her shoulder, “what’s your name?”
“It’s Abuelita,” Chris chimes in from the porch where Isabel can just see a police officer sitting with him.
“Isabel. Isabel Diaz,” she manages with a weak smile.
“Okay, Isabel, I’m gonna need you to bear with me here for a second,” the red-haired firefighter says. “My colleague’s gonna check you out, okay? It looks like you took a pretty nasty fall there.”
“Hip,” Isabel moans and cries out a moment later when skilled hands gently prod around her hip.
“Definitely broken, Cap,” the other firefighter says, looking up at the dark-skinned young man.
“Okay, Mrs. Diaz,” the captain says over her head. “We’re gonna take care of you. We need to check your vitals and see if anything else hurts, okay?” Isabel nods. The red-haired firefighter shifts out of the way, moving to kneel over her head while another firefighter with a stethoscope around his neck comes over to check her pulse.
The I.V. going into her hand for the pain medication is nothing compared to the radiating pain of her hip, and she lets the nice firefighters put a collar around her neck, take her vitals, and wrap up her legs before transferring her, and again, onto a gurney to travel around from the back of the house to her driveway where the ambulance is backed in, doors open. Isabel hears Christopher chattering to one of the firefighters, but the pain medication makes her fuzzy, her focus slipping as she tries to listen to his words rather than those of the firefighters around her.
She concentrates long enough to give them Pepa’s name and phone number – she hates having to pull her away from work, oh and Christopher – but otherwise, the firefighters do what they can to keep her conscious with meaningless conversation on the way to the hospital.
The doctors and nurses are very nice when she’s rolled in, and they take her to get x-rayed, the red-haired firefighter from before promising to stay with Christopher until Pepa arrives from work. It’s a lot and luckily the pain is dampened most of the time.
It’s a while before she gets into a room, and a doctor has just started talking about her hip when Pepa and Christopher appear in the doorway. Isabel lets Pepa discuss most of it with the doctor, humming in the appropriate places and answering questions that Pepa and the doctor ask. Christopher sits on the chair at her side, and he very carefully takes her hand, his palm soft and small under hers.
He slips out soon after, watching her for a while before taking himself back out into the hallway. Isabel wouldn’t be surprised if he charms everyone he comes across. Pepa thanks the doctor a few minutes later, and her eyes go wide when she looks at the chair to find it empty. “He’s off charming the staff,” Isabel says with a fond smile.
“Mami,” Pepa scolds lightly, shaking her head. “He’s so little – he shouldn’t be wandering off by himself.”
“He’s a smart boy.” Even if he hadn’t been sent back in time for who knows how long, Isabel’s certain that Christopher knows who he can and can’t speak to. “So, my Pepita, how terrible is it?”
Pepa sighs. “It could’ve been worse, but it still isn’t good.” She takes Isabel’s hand, gentle the same way Christopher was. “You’re going to be here for a little bit, and it’ll be a while before you can go dancing again.” She gasps a moment later. “I haven’t called Eddie.”
Isabel hums. “You’ve been busy, mija, and so is Eddie.” Pepa opens her mouth, and her mother shoos her away. “Go – they wouldn’t let me sleep in the ambulance, so I’m going to go now. They’ve given me the good pills, you know,” she says mischievously.
Pepa shakes her head, leaning over to press a kiss to the top of Isabel’s head. “You promise you’re going to sleep?”
“Go,” Isabel insists, making a show of getting as comfortable as possible on the hospital bed. Pepa sighs, but she takes herself out into the hall, cell phone in hand, as Isabel closes her eyes.
(Pepa checks on her after Eddie hangs up, saying that he’ll be there as soon as possible. True to her word, Isabel is fast asleep.)
Days later, when Isabel’s made herself as friendly as possible with the nurses, Eddie and Christopher come to visit with an unfamiliar woman. “This is Carla,” Eddie introduces. “She’s a home-aid and I’ve hired her to help me out with Chris.”
Isabel would shake Carla’s hand if it wouldn’t tire her out, so instead she smiles up at her. “It’s lovely to meet you.”
“You as well, ma’am,” Carla says, keeping herself out of the way as Eddie and Christopher get themselves set up in the chair. “I’m so sorry we had to meet like this, but I’ve heard wonderful things.”
Isabel waves her hand. “It’s all lies, I promise,” she says with a smile before turning her attention to Christopher.
Carla hovers on the edge of the visit, and when Christopher says he wants snacks, Carla’s the one who goes with him to the vending machine. “Where did you find her?” Isabel asks, turning to her grandson once the two of them are out of sight.
Eddie’s cheek flush, and Isabel smiles a little wider. “Buck actually helped me out. He, uh, introduced me to her a couple of days ago. Apparently, he set it up after he heard me complain about all of the paperwork.”
Isabel hums. “Buck,” she says in a knowing tone that she knows Pepa’s picked up from her, and Eddie, predictably, tries to bury his face in his hands. “And when were you going to tell me that you and Buck were together, hm?”
Eddie mutters something under his breath, and Isabel can’t bring herself to make fun of him for it when he looks so happy. “That only happened after he introduced me to Carla,” her grandson admits, and Isabel squeezes his hand in hers.
“I’m happy for you, Eddito,” she says, making sure that he’s looking at her for this. “He seems like a good man, and you’ve been happier since you met him.” Isabel won’t say anything about the time travel, not unless they say something first, but it’s true. Ever since that first day, Eddie’s been smiling easier, and it’s not hard for Isabel to guess that Buck has had a hand in that.
For a moment, Isabel thinks back to her conversation with Pepa in August and the way that she described Eddie’s grief after the tsunami, all-consuming and devastating. There are some things she hopes will change this time, but a natural disaster at that scale is unavoidable. Still – Eddie’s obviously in full flush of love, and this is no time for sad thoughts and maybes.
She will, however, make her grandson drag Buck to the next family dinner when she gets out of the hospital. The earthquake was one thing, but she needs to welcome him properly.
The aftermath of the fire truck blowing up is devastating to watch. Carla had brought Christopher to Isabel’s house for dinner with her and Pepa when her husband had texted her. She hadn’t been able to stop herself from looking up at the three of them. Isabel and Pepa had looked at each other with dawning horror, neither of them looking at Christopher, his face solemn and resigned.
Isabel holds onto Christopher and Pepa sits still beside her, her hands clasped together and pressed to her mouth, the TV turned to one of the channels covering the bombing. Carla’s taken the armchair, and none of them are stopping Christopher from watching the news footage with them. Isabel’s been muttering prayers under her breath the entire time, and by the time Buck is pulled out, finally, all of them flinch at his scream, the microphones just good enough to pick it up even though they must be pretty far.
They stay long enough to watch Buck get wheeled into the ambulance before Christopher turns to Carla and asks to be taken to the hospital. “To wait for Buck,” he says simply, and Isabel sees the look in her great-grandson’s eyes, determination she’s sure he was supposed to learn in a few years.
Isabel doesn’t know what to do with herself, certain that Eddie and the rest of his team are devastated, but she watches Carla take Christopher, admittedly not without hugging him tightly for several long moments before letting him go.
The strangest part about it is looking at Pepa and knowing that she’s watched this happen – Christopher too – watched Buck be crushed and worry that he wouldn’t survive. They know, presumably, how Buck’s recovery will go and if Buck will walk again, be able to work as a firefighter again. Isabel has a guess, based on what Pepa told her all those months ago before she got to the tsunami and the heartbreak that came with it.
“He’ll be out of the hospital in time for Eddie’s badge ceremony in a couple of weeks,” Pepa says after Christopher and Carla have left, the TV long since gone dark. They’re standing at Isabel’s front window where they’d watching Carla and Christopher drive away.
Isabel sets her shoulders. “He’ll need good food in the meantime. Surely he can’t be happy with the hospital food – I certainly wasn’t.” It’s a promise, one that she doesn’t know will be true or not this time. Things have changed – all of them, Isabel, Pepa, Christopher, Eddie, Buck – they’ve all changed things, whether they’ve meant to or not. There’s no guarantee that their lives will play out the same way twice.
The next week is chaos – Eddie and his team have been visiting Buck in the hospital as often as they can, though they all still have shifts at the fire station preventing them from moving into Buck’s room completely. Isabel gets her updates from Pepa and, unsurprisingly, Christopher, who’s taken it upon himself to borrow his father’s phone to call her every night.
From what she knows, the doctors are optimistic, though Buck’s sister, the former nurse, has brought up concerns of blood clots. “Maddie says it happens in their family,” Christopher says in a rehearsed voice, and Isabel wonders exactly what happened that made them so worried when they went through this last time.
It’s one of Buck’s last days in the hospital, Isabel knows from Eddie’s last phone call, by the time Isabel manages to visit. Eddie’s hardly been away from Buck’s side from what she’s been told, assisted by the fact that Christopher wants to visit Buck any chance he gets.
Christopher’s been telling Isabel story after story about things that Buck’s been telling him. With only a handful of days left, she thought that Buck might like a homemade meal as a break from all of the hospital food he’s been subjected to. (She remembers it well from when she broke her hip. She was more than happy to get out of there and back to her own kitchen.)
So, Isabel makes enchiladas and packs them up, Tupperware in a reusable grocery bag as she takes a taxi to the hospital. She reassures her driver that she’s not in danger, just visiting a relative, and he wishes her well when she pays her tab. The nurses at the front desk are more than happy to point her in the right direction.
“His fiancé and their son have been here basically every day,” the nurse who tells her Buck’s room number says with a smile. “They’re such a sweet family – I’m glad that he’s got so many visitors.”
Isabel doesn’t tear up when she hears Buck and Eddie refer to as engaged, though it’s a close thing. She’d hope, of course, that Eddie would have the courtesy to tell her if he’d proposed or if Buck had proposed to him.
Buck’s room is easy enough to find, and there’s a few kind nurses along the way to point her in the right direction when she finds herself turned around. Though, truly, the sound of her great-grandson’s laughter should be the only compass she needs.
“…and the beds,” Buck’s complaining, an open tease to his voice. “You’d think that they’d be more comfortable.”
The sound of Eddie snorting comes through the door just before Isabel turns the corner. “Trust me, these beds are gonna be just as uncomfortable in a couple of years.”
And, really, that’s Isabel’s cue to step in before they start talking about things Isabel’s not sure she wants to know. “Eddito?”
All three of them look up at her, Christopher snug on Eddie’s lap where they’re both sat on the chair, Eddie’s hand holding Buck’s non-IV hand. “Abuelita!” Christopher greets loudly, wiggling in his seat.
“I didn’t know you were coming to visit; we would’ve stopped to pick you up,” Eddie says, and Isabel waves him off before he can start to get up.
“I thought it’d be a nice surprise,” she says, placing her bag on the empty chair in the corner. She stops to smell some of the flowers on the table beside it, bright reds and yellows lighting up the room as much as Christopher’s smile, before crossing to Buck’s other side. “Besides, Buck here hasn’t had a chance to taste my cooking in a while.”
Eddie offers her a sheepish smile, but Buck just grins at her. “Thank you, Isabel. Hospital food’s no substitute for a home-cooked meal. Though I’d kill for my own bed right now,” he groans, shifting as much as he can with his leg raised.
Before Isabel can ask, Christopher says, “But Buck, your bed’s upstairs.”
Isabel shoots Eddie a pointed look, and Eddie shakes his head slightly with a smile. “Well, I guess there’s only one thing for it,” he says, squeezing Buck’s hand. “Looks like you’ll have to come stay with us.”
“You’re not staying on the couch,” Buck says almost immediately. “That thing nearly ruined my back when –” He cuts himself off there with a quick look at Isabel.
She fights the urge to roll her eyes and tuts over Buck. “The three of you, keeping secrets,” she fusses, fixing Buck’s blanket. “Would it kill you to let an old woman know that this wouldn’t kill you?”
Judging by the shocked silence, Isabel’s been successful in surprising them. “Abuela?” Eddie asks, Buck’s hand a vice around his. “Did you –?”
“Not this time,” Isabel cuts him off gently. “Many years ago, and from what I can tell,” she adds with a sly smile, “not nearly as eventful as you all seem to have had it.”
And then Eddie and Buck laugh, free and relieved in a way Isabel’s not heard from them. “Okay, we are terrible at this,” Buck manages between giggles.
“No kidding,” Eddie agrees, holding the railing on Buck’s bed to keep himself upright. He manages to calm down enough at her raised eyebrow to say, “When everyone came to visit the first time, we found out that our team’s known something was up for months.”
“Not just them,” Isabel says, “since Pepa came to dinner that day you came with Christopher, before you started at the station.” Eddie winces when she looks at him. “Rambling about time travel isn’t something I hear every day, you know.”
“Sorry,” Eddie and Christopher say in unison, and Isabel waves them off with a smile.
“You’re all safe for now,” Isabel says, resting a hand on Buck’s shoulder. “Though, don’t think that your Tía Pepa didn’t say something about a tsunami in a few months.” All of them go a little quiet at that, and Isabel assumes that Pepa’s mentioned that to them though, if she’s right, they’ve all been through that and come out the other side. “Nothing to worry about now but let an old woman fuss.”
Buck reaches up to put his hand over hers, and she can’t say she’s too upset about it when all of them are feeling a little raw at the moment. (Isabel’s had a hard time getting the image of Buck under the firetruck out of her head. If, if, Eddie’s going to go through something similar in a few years, then she’s going to need all of the strength she can get to support them.)
“Thank you, Isabel. Really,” Buck says, and he looks so earnest and young when Isabel meets his eyes.
Isabel shakes her head. “You don’t thank family, mijo. I’m just glad you’re okay.” She doesn’t know what Buck’s situation is with his family, other than his sister Maddie who he’s incredibly protective of (she heard what happened in the spring). What she does know is that Eddie’s made it more than clear that Buck’s family, and she won’t treat him any other way. “If you do something this stupid again, don’t think I won’t be upset.”
Eddie and Christopher tease Buck about possible punishments – denial of her cooking, for one – and Isabel brings the food and the chair it’s sitting on closer. She lets them settle down as she pulls out the Tupperware, and in the lull says, “Though, it would’ve been nice to know when I broke my hip.”
Yes, she thinks as Buck laughs, time travel is still weird for her to think about, but it’s worth it if this is the result.