The Retort

Unwitting

October 21st, 2011 by Kevin Miles For The Retort

“Doctor Irving, thanks for seeing me on such short notice.”

“Not a problem Harvey, my nurse said you sounded distressed.”

Doctor Irving was my therapist, a shrink by any other name. I wound up with him after a solid streak of medications that didn’t help and a few really bad… episodes.

“You could put it that way, sir. It’s started happening again.”

“Alright, it’s not that I’ve forgotten but please, elaborate. What’s started to happen again?”

“The blackouts, sir. I’ve been losing hours of my day, waking up in strange places in the morning, tired like I haven’t slept at all. I thought it was over, thought everything had settled out, but-“

“Calm down Harvey. Relax. Alright, before this recent string when was the last Incident?”

I could hear him put that rogue capital in, like the word meant more with me than his other clients. I wondered, briefly, how many of them had been shuffled off to other days or time slots to accommodate me, his rich and eccentric patient. No insurance, everything in cash out of my trust fund, the one my parents had left when they… died.

“A few months ago. I lost two whole days!”

“Yes, yes, I remember. That was right around the time of that string of burglaries, wasn’t it?”

“I think so. I don’t really remember.”

“Alright then Harvey. What about this most recent one?”

“Last night sir. I went to bed in my penthouse as usual. Doors all locked, windows locked, alarms on, everything secure. And then I woke up on a rooftop in Hell’s Kitchen!”

“That’s rather far to sleepwalk. None of your vehicles moved?”

“None. And I didn’t call a taxi either, not anywhere the building’s cameras could see. No one, not even the cameras saw me leave, and the alarms were still on when I got home!”

“That’s very disturbing and unusual, Harvey. Nearly unbelievable. Not,” he held up a hand to forestall my protest, “that I don’t believe you. You’ve certainly provided enough evidence to support every word.”

“What should I do, Doctor? I just want this to end.”

“I still don’t know what exactly is happening. Sleepwalking wouldn’t cover this range of movement, and I haven’t got another explanation handy. Why don’t you go home and rest for a while, and I’ll talk it over with a few colleagues of mine, and see if anyone has heard of a similar case. Alright?”

“If you think it’s best, sir.”

We shook hands, and I headed down to the lobby and out to my waiting town car. The newspaper was waiting for me along with a cup of coffee. As my driver pulled us out into the late morning traffic on Manhattan Island, one of the headlines caught my eye, though I couldn’t really understand why. I read a few lines further in, just to satisfy my itch for drama before turning to the sports section.

Last night an arsonist was foiled and captured by an unidentified man in Brooklyn. Eyewitnesses were unable to give a clear description of the hero, but all agree that he was, indeed, a hero.