Life in Rewind – Terry Murphy

‘Time equals progression. Progression equals death.’This is a thought that consumes Ed Zine, a handsome, athletic, twenty-four year old.The victim of a debilitating form of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), Ed's illogical mind tells him that if going forward in time moves him closer to death, reversing an action will carry him away from it.The youngest of four children, Ed Zine's life was thrown into turmoil when his mother, the centre of his universe, died from ovarian cancer when he was just eleven years old. Not warned by his family that his mother was sick, and beaten and screamed at by his father on the night of his mother's death for leaving the lid off a jam jar, Ed was shell-shocked when his mother died and, for years, kept quiet about the fact that he witnessed his mother's last breath and never truly grieved her death.Ed's trauma over the loss of his mother manifested itself in bizarre physical affectations and as he became less able to articulate his sorrow and his pain he became more and more isolated from other humans.Thirteen years on, Ed Zine lived alone in a basement, meticulously counting and rewinding any action he made in an obsessive and illogical attempt to prevent his loved ones from moving towards death.All efforts to help him, from members of his family, and numerous medical professionals, had been in vain, until Dr Michael Jenike, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and one of the world's leading experts in research and treatment of OCD made the long drive to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. This was just the beginning of the extensive and difficult journey the two were to endure together…