Free Wednesday's Child by Alan Zendell Page B

how my meeting with William went, then dutifully pretended that my perfunctory “fine” was actually a response. 
    When Ilene described my situation to Jerry, he offered to meet us in his office this morning at ten.  I didn’t know him well, but the few times we’d chatted at cocktail parties had left a positive impression.  He was one of those highly accomplished people who inspire confidence by speaking softly and surely, without arrogance. Even his car, which was parked in front of the dazzling white building, suggested unostentatious quality and efficiency.
    “You’ve had quite a week,” he said, shaking my hand and directing me to an ergonomic wing chair.  Ilene sat unobtrusively to one side on a brown leather couch. 
    “I’m amazed that you still have your wits about you,” Jerry began. I smiled at what I took to be a compliment.  I imagine that my body language, still reflecting the buoying effect of the meeting on the boat, affected Jerry as it had Ilene on Saturday, the perversity of which wasn’t lost on me.  I’d been shown an apocalyptic view of New York’s future that only a handful of people even suspected and come away feeling renewed.
    Jerry explained how unusual it was to treat a patient who was closely related to a friend or colleague, even more so for her to be directly involved in our conversations. “I only agreed to this after I was sure I could be objective.  Even so, many people would question my judgment.”
    “I have no reservations about your objectivity, Jerry.”
    “Good.  We’ll observe strict confidentiality, and decisions concerning treatment options, if any, will be yours.  If I become concerned about your well-being I won’t pull any punches.  Ilene told me what’s been happening, but I want to hear it from you.  Start from the beginning and take your time.” 
    I did, over the next hour, notwithstanding the irony that starting at the beginning only made sense in a linear world.  To his credit, Jerry listened patiently, displaying no recognizable emotion or expression.  He wasn’t someone I wanted to play poker with. 
    “You’ve said several times that you were terrified by all this,” he noted when I was done, “yet you sound like you desperately want it to be real.” I felt like a kid caught doing something he shouldn’t. 
    “Ilene asked if I’d rather live never knowing what day I was waking up to if I could make it stop by taking a pill. It’s not that I want it to be real, I know it is.  What scared me was thinking I was a random victim of some quirk of quantum physics.  I never understood that stuff very well.”
    “You no longer think you’re a random victim?  What, then?”
    “I know how it sounds, but I feel like I’ve been singled out, somehow.”
    “How do you know a thousand other people didn’t experience what you did?”
    “Impossible.”  My certainty surprised even me, but there it was.  “The more people who skipped Wednesday, the more likely we’d be to know.  Some of them would have been bound to freak out over it.  There’d be reports of time-displaced people checking into hospitals, kooks claiming the end of the world was at hand, you name it.”
    He reacted with a non-judgmental smile.  “Let’s see if I’ve got this right.  It’s easier for you to accept someone or something deliberately causing you to live days out of order, than to believe it was a random accident.  Do you really think either is possible?”
    I shrugged.  “You’re the doctor.  What do you think?”
    Jerry considered that for several seconds, looking somber.  “I don’t know, but I understand how you feel.  I wouldn’t like my life determined by random events, but if I believed this was happening by design, I’d want to know who or what was manipulating me.”
    “I think I’ll only find out if it wants me to.  It’s only reasonable that if some entity powerful enough to make me live days out of order is doing so by