Dr. Timon Juarez is back from work for the day, yet again, and he is just as tired of being a doctor as he was a decade ago. He is going to be fifty soon, and he can't believe he has wasted his youth preparing for this career and is now wasting his middle-aged years carrying it out. He resents the fact that he spends his days getting coughed on, spit on, peed on, vomited on, bled over, screamed at, and cussed out. He treats all ages, and sometimes the patients are okay, but he also sees them at their worst because of whatever brought them to need a doctor in the first place. At least the nurses usually take the worst of it, but then they're always complaining that the doctors don't respect them enough (and, in fairness, they're probably right). Everybody seems to want him to just magically fix their problems, and hardly anybody wants to do what he tells them to do even if their life actually depends on it. And even the slightest mistake on his part will be yet another malpractice suit, which he might as well pay out of pocket if the insurance gets any higher.
All that stuff might be worth it for someone who actually became a doctor for some kind of higher calling to serve humanity and help people live a better life, but Timon only became a doctor because he thought he had to. He was the first in his family to go to college, and naturally they all expected him to go for the most prestigious study pathway. And of course, doctors make money, and everybody wanted their star student to get rich and get out of the slums. No matter that his brother Andre ended up starting a very profitable furniture business, or that his sister changed her name to Stella and became a well-known local painter who regularly sells exhibits for hundreds of dollars. Everybody's hopes for upward mobility always had to be solely on Timon, honors biology student, future doctor.
Well, you know what? Doctors do make a lot of a money. But Timon is still paying off the gargantuan debt from the decade of higher education that his family couldn't afford, and from his first marriage that ended in a very unfavorable divorce. And his relatives are still treating him like he is some kind of millionaire even though he is living in a fairly modest one-story house with an exploitative monthly rent, trying to make the best life he can for his second wife Matha and their teenage son Clifton. Timon loves them both, but he doesn't love the path his life took to get here. He feels like he works harder than anyone else, just to live a fairly average life.
It is with all this emotional baggage that Tim looks down on his coffee table and finds a ring sitting on the counter, as though it's just been sitting there waiting for him. What could it be? Entranced, he places it on his finger. A mental voice rings out in his head as soon as he puts it on: "I am the Choness Ring. You are my master, reality is your servant. Your wish is my command." The startled man flinched a little bit, not expecting the sudden intrusive thought or the strange golden glow from his new piece of jewelry. "I really have been working to hard," he chuckles to himself. "Heh, I wish I didn't have to go to work tomorrow." He rolls his eyes and goes into the kitchen.
Ten minutes later, the phone rings. It's the clinic where he works. It's one of the other doctors. The test results from one of his patients turned out to be a worse disease than he expected: a highly contagious bacteria that he'd only ordered a test for to be absurdly careful and cover his ass from any potential lawsuit. It could be an outbreak of a new strain, and the health department wants to get it under control. Timon is going to have to quarantine for at least a few days, maybe more if he tests positive. Hanging up the phone, he is pissed off that being a doctor has screwed him over yet again, but he's also kind of relieved that he can just stay home tomorrow after all.
Looking back at the ring reminds him of his wish. Working in a scientific field, he is aware that it's probably just a coincidence, and that the voice was probably just in his head, and that the glow was probably just a trick of the light. He knows the power of stress and wishful thinking, both first-hand and also from encountering mentally unwell patients, but that doesn't stop him from talking to the ring again. "If you really are a magic ring, would you like to know what I really wish? I wish I could live an easier life, with a lot less work, not having to worry about all this doctoring and debt crap anymore." It really felt good to get that off his chest, even if it did feel a bit silly.