Thanks!! I followed that, but the vbox was actually causing an issue with the "click" imagemap area of the screen being unclickable (so the timer would run without a way to jump out of it and always go to timeout). Solved it by removing the vbox and doing "use timed_choice_visual(adjusted_time)" with a copy of the same screen that instead has a yalign added to it. That way it appears on a fixed spot but doesn't seem to block input for the point n click.
Putting that here in case someone runs in the same issue.
Thanks a million for this mechanic and being so quick with a reply!