Ethan arrived at the Paramount lot fifteen minutes early, which already made him different from every other eighteen-year-old actor in the waiting room. Most boys his age were slouched on the chairs, practising lines under their breath, or scrolling through old Nokia phones and pretending not to be nervous. That was the big difference — they pretended not to be afraid.
Ethan didn't pretend.
He was afraid.
But he also knew something none of them knew:
He had lived this, failed this, regretted this… once already.
Now he had the chance to fix everything.
He took a slow breath, stretching his fingers — years of auditions in his old life still lived in his bones. Every mistake, every flubbed line, every nervous twitch had carved itself into muscle memory. But so had the successes. The tiny sparks of truth he had learned from rejection, heartbreak, and time.
He wasn't the terrified kid he appeared to be.
He was a man with a second chance.
The assistant from the day before — a woman in her thirties with sharp eyes and a quicker voice — walked through the waiting area holding a clipboard.
"Ethan Hale?" she called.
Several heads turned, mostly the kind that belonged to teenage boys silently wishing whoever she called first would choke on stage.
Ethan stood smoothly. "That's me."
"You're up first today," she said, already turning. "Follow me."
"First?" Ethan blinked. "Isn't that usually…"
"—the spot nobody wants?" she finished for him, glancing back. "Yes. But you made an impression yesterday. The director wants to see you before he gets worn out."
For a moment, Ethan couldn't move.
He'd waited decades — two lifetimes — for a chance like this. And now he had to step into it fully.
He followed her down a hallway lined with posters from paramedic and medical shows: ER, Chicago Hope, Third Watch. Some of these shows had shaped the very first decade of his youth. Posters he had once taped to his dorm walls, believing he could be even a small part of that world someday.
Now he wasn't dreaming about standing here — he was standing here.
They reached Studio 4.
"Take a breath," the assistant said, noticing the tension in his shoulders. "Don't act like you want this too badly. Just… be."
He nodded. Be. Something he'd spent his first life failing to understand.
The door opened. Inside the small audition room sat:
Colin Tartley, the casting director
Marsha Bloom, the associate casting director
And Robert Carter, the episode's director, a man known for his stern face and high expectations
They all looked up as Ethan entered.
Robert pointed at the X taped on the floor.
"Stand there."
Ethan crossed the room, each step deliberate, respectful of the moment. His heart pounded, but he kept it low in his chest, like a controlled burn.
"We read your sides," the casting director said. "Interesting choices."
"Good, interesting?" Ethan asked lightly.
Marsha smirked. "We'll find out."
They handed him the monologue. It wasn't long — just four lines of dialogue from a paramedic describing a car accident. But the scene wasn't about the accident. It was about holding your emotions steady while witnessing someone else's world fall apart.
In his first life, Ethan hadn't understood the emotional weight behind those lines. He had recited them cold and flat, like he didn't want to mess up. He had been an amateur trying to make ends meet.
Now he wasn't guessing what the character felt.
He knew it.
The director leaned forward. "Whenever you're ready."
The room became silent. Even the air felt tight.
Ethan dropped into the space — not the character, but the truth behind the character.
He took a breath… and imagined everything he'd lost in his first life. Every moment he stood inside a real ambulance answering phones at a charity hotline because he'd needed money. Every time he held the hand of someone who didn't make it — acting jobs where he had to simulate grief, he had truly lived. The regrets, the loneliness, the feeling of watching dreams slip away.
And then… he imagined finding hope again.
He started.
"I tried to stop the bleeding…"
His voice cracked gently, just enough.
"—but I don't think he even noticed it was happening. He kept asking… if his daughter was still in the car."
Marsha stopped writing.
Ethan continued, softer now.
"And I told him she was okay. That she was safe. I told him… because I needed him to hold on. I needed him to believe he still had something left."
His breath trembled.
Honest. Not pushed.
Then he finished the last line:
"And when he didn't make it… I just kept thinking… I hope somebody lies to my family like that. If I ever need them to."
Silence.
A stillness so heavy that even Ethan felt afraid he'd gone too far.
Robert sat back in his chair, arms crossed, studying Ethan as if he were a puzzle he hadn't expected to solve today.
Marsha whispered, "Jesus Christ."
Colin cleared his throat. "Do you… have formal training?"
Ethan shook his head. "No. Just life."
Robert tilted his head. "Most kids your age can't tap into emotion like that."
Ethan held his gaze steadily.
"I'm not most kids."
Robert's lip twitched — the closest he ever got to a smile.
"Read it again," Robert said, "but this time… forget the emotion. Just speak the truth. No performance."
"Understood."
Ethan read again.
Simple. Clean. Honest.
This time, the room leaned in as if caught off guard by the quiet intimacy of his delivery.
He finished.
No theatrics. Just silence.
Robert stood up.
"Thank you, Ethan," he said. "That's all."
Ethan nodded, heart pounding. "Thank you for seeing me."
As he turned to leave, Colin spoke up sharply.
"Don't go far. If we cast you, we'll need you this week."
Ethan paused.
Colin wrote something on his sheet.
"Actually… stay in LA. Tonight. And tomorrow. And the next day."
Marsha added, "You may want to skip whatever plans you had."
Ethan tried not to smile too widely. "Alright."
He walked out of the room with the air of someone holding a secret. The assistant who had brought him in, waiting outside, raised an eyebrow.
"Well?"
"They liked me," Ethan whispered.
"No one comes out of that room smiling unless they booked it," she muttered. "Holy hell… kid, what did you do in there?"
Ethan took a long breath.
A breath that tasted like a second life beginning.
"I told the truth," he said quietly. "For the first time."
Ethan walked out of the building, feeling sunlight on his young skin, the air tasting sharper, cleaner, realer than anything he had felt in years.
This wasn't hope.
This was something deeper — a shift.
A sign.
A ripple across the life he had once ruined and was now rebuilding piece by piece.
He sat on a bench outside the lot, staring at the sky.
He wasn't supposed to get this chance.
He wasn't supposed to exist twice.
He wasn't supposed to remember the pain, the heartbreak, the failures.
But he did.
And now that he had been given this callback — this quiet nod of recognition — he understood something:
This wasn't just an audition.
This was his rebirth being acknowledged.
He wasn't just stepping into Hollywood.
He was stepping into the life he was meant to live.
One he earned through suffering, regret, and the harshest teacher of all — time.
The phone in his pocket buzzed — the old flip phone he had forgotten how to use. A message popped up from his mother:
"Dinner at 7. Don't be late :)"
Ethan smiled.
He wouldn't be late again.
Not to dinner.
Not to life.
Not to his second chance.
Tomorrow, they'd tell him the truth:
Whether he booked the role.
Whether Hollywood was finally ready to see him.
Whether the universe had meant for him to return.
But tonight?
Tonight, he could breathe.
He had survived the callback.
He had impressed them.
He had done what his original self never could.
He had become — at last —
Ethan Hale.