Free Wishful Thinking by Kamy Wicoff

the broom closet. Look!”
    Vinita did not look as long as Jennifer thought she should have. “Or you scraped it when you passed out in the bathroom,” she said.
    “On what?” Jennifer demanded. “The toilet bowl?”
    The intercom cut in again, disrupting their standoff. “Dr. Kapoor, please pick up. Emergency on line one.”
    “I’ll be right back,” Vinita said. “Don’t go anywhere.”
    Left alone, Jennifer searched her phone again and wondered, was Vinita right? Had it all been a dream? Had she passed out in the bathroom, her desire for the app so great it had knocked her out like some kind of mommy roofie?
    A few minutes later, Vinita walked back into the room and closed the door behind her. “Sorry,” she said. “Julie’s off, and all these walk-ins, and naturally the computers are down.” She stepped toward Jennifer and took her hand. This was an unusual thing for Vinita to do. As a rule she was not the touchy-feely type. Perhaps for that reason, Jennifer did not find it reassuring at all. “I think I know what might have happened today,” she began.
    “I don’t,” Jennifer said quickly.
    Vinita ignored her. “I think what happened today was what’s called a dissociative episode,” she said, “brought on by extreme stress. I’d have to run some tests—an EEG, an MRI— and refer you to a psychiatrist, of course. But that’s what I think.”
    Jennifer was silent.
    “A dissociative episode is a kind of … break,” Vinita went on. “A mental break, where you can experience powerful hallucinations, like a waking dream.”
    Jennifer pulled her hand away from her friend’s.
    “Think about it,” said Vinita gently but firmly. “All the things you’ve been dealing with.” Jennifer winced. “Jack’s speech issues. You get no support from Norman. You’re under tremendous pressure at work. And your mom.” This last she delivered with special care, trying to go easy. “Losing your mom.”
    My mom,
Jennifer thought,
would have believed me.
    But would she have? Either Jennifer had come into possession of a time-travel app nobody on the planet had ever heard of, installed on her phone by a woman she’d never met, or she had had a dissociative episode. It wasn’t hard to see which was the more likely explanation. It had occurred to her to call Julien, to ask him if she’d been at his recital or not. But suddenly the idea just seemed nuts. She looked at the clock.
    “It’s ten after six,” Jennifer said. “I gotta go.” Vinita’s office was so close to her apartment that if she hurried, there was still a chance she’d be only fifteen minutes late.
    She slid off the table. Vinita pressed two prescriptions, one for the EEG and another for the MRI, into her hand. “You should get these tests done as soon as possible,” she said. Jennifer nodded. “I’m here for you, okay?” Vinita said. “Can we see each other in the next couple of days?”
    Jennifer nodded again. “Love you,” she said, trying to sound normal.
    “Love you too,” Vinita answered.
    It was time to run again. It was time to go home.

six
| H OME
    J ENNIFER GOT HOME AS fast as she could. At 6:20 p.m., however, after walk-running down the hallway and unlocking her door, preparing to usher Melissa out with cash for a cab, she opened it to find a very unpleasant surprise: Norman, right there in her living room.
    He was playing some kind of tickling-wrestling-punching game with the boys on her couch. The cat was sitting at a decidedly disapproving distance on the windowsill. What was Norman doing there? Aside from Saturdays, he was generally not seen or heard from except at the occasional school function, Julien’s winter soccer games (maybe Norman should find a way to get Jack a spot, she thought), and, lately, at Julien’s music recitals. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d laid eyes on him in her house on a weeknight. Couch cushions were everywhere. Plates of half-eaten spaghetti were on the table. She