The Psychologist's Deadly Second Chance

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In my last life, I was the top-ranked psychologist in the state, and I talked a low-income scholarship student down off the roof of a building before she could jump.

She was covered in bruises, bullied so badly by rich kids that she couldn't even meet another person's eyes.

To help her climb out of that darkness, I brought her home, tutored her, and paid out of my own pocket to put her all the way through Harvard.

No matter how many times her extreme wariness cut me, I loved her like my own daughter.

Until seven years later, when she became a celebrated, sought-after genius scientist.

At the ceremony where the whole country honored her.

There, she played a spliced-together recording and broke down, accusing me:

"Mr. Henson was never any kind of savior. He told me I was something he'd picked up off the street, so I had to do whatever he said."

"Every single day he'd call me into his room for a 'talk'..."

The furious mob hounded me online until I couldn't leave the house.

Someone dug up my fiancee's private life, and she couldn't survive the slut-shaming. She put on a red dress and jumped from the twenty-eighth floor.

I went to my grave never understanding it. The girl I'd saved and given everything to—why would she invent all of that and turn on me?

I lived it again. The wind screamed across the rooftop.

That girl in her ragged clothes, once more with half a foot hanging over the edge, reached out to me, crying:

"Mr. Henson, pull me up..."

I didn't step forward. I took out my phone, called the police, and started recording.

"Is this the fire department? Someone's about to jump."

......

I kept my eyes fixed ahead, and kept talking.

"Rooftop of the classroom building. A female student, half her body over the edge."

"I'm a man. I can't intervene without risking accusations, so please send a female officer right away."

The wind was strong. Gwendolen Winfield was still crying.

The skin under her sleeves was a shocking mess of bruises, dried blood at the corner of her mouth, and half a foot already planted outside the railing.

"Mr. Henson... please, pull me up..."

Her voice was desperate, pitiful.

In my last life, I pulled her back.

I treated her like my own flesh and blood, paid her way to a doctorate, and watched her become a genius scientist.

Then, at that ceremony where every eye was on her, she played a spliced-together recording.

Tears streaming down her face, she accused me of being a monster who had molested her for years.

To this day I remember the mob hounding me online, how I didn't dare step outside my own door.

I remember even more clearly my innocent fiancee, doxxed, called and screamed at over the phone until she sank into severe depression.

In the end she jumped from the twenty-eighth floor.

I died without ever understanding why she turned on me.

This life, I stood three meters back, holding up my phone, recording, and I did not move a single step.

In the end the female officer pulled Gwendolen back over the railing.

They wrapped her in a foil blanket, and she trembled all over.

But through a gap in the crowd, she suddenly turned her head and looked at me.

That look.

In my last life, after she was saved, she'd had the exact same look.

I used to think it was gratitude, the relief of someone who'd cheated death.

Now, seeing it again across the blood debt of a family destroyed in another life, a chill ran through me.

The female officer came over, something puzzled and reproachful in her eyes.

"Mr. Henson, you know her?"

"No. I called it in and recorded it. There was no physical contact at any point."

My voice was cold.

When a few teachers helped Gwendolen down the stairs, she happened to pass right by me.

She stopped abruptly, weakly put out a hand, and caught the hem of my clothes.

"Thank you..."

Her voice was very soft, like a startled fawn, as if afraid others might hear.

I lowered my eyes, let my gaze travel past her bruised wrist, and land on her nails.

The nail beds were perfectly clean, no sign of scratching or a struggle.

Worst of all, her nails were coated with a sheer, pale pink polish.

Applied carefully, the edges flawless.

My stomach turned over.

I said nothing. Bit by bit, I pulled the hem of my clothes hard out of her hand.

The dean of students finally couldn't hold back and called after me.

"Mr. Henson, even if you had to protect yourself, why didn't you just save her back there?"

I looked at him.

"An adult man, no third party present, in violent physical contact with an emotionally collapsing female student."

"Dean, if something had gone wrong, would you have taken the ruin of my name for me?"

He opened his mouth and said nothing.

I turned and left.

That night, I listened to my own heartbeat and lay turning it over for a long time.

Not whether I'd been right or wrong not to save Gwendolen.

But one utterly terrifying detail.

That was the lunch break. At least six or seven teachers had passed along that rooftop corridor, plenty of them women.

Gwendolen called out to none of them, paid attention to none of them.

Yet the moment I reached the rooftop door, she suddenly broke down sobbing and said, "Pull me up."

She didn't know me.

So why me, of all people, to beg for help?

In my last life I hadn't cared, thinking a dying person will grab whoever happens to be near. Perfectly normal.

But this life, having crawled back out of that particular hell, I couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong.