Saturday, 2:34pm
Dedi Perlman texted while she walked. It was a bad habit, and she knew it, but texting had become one of her primary modes of interacting with her daughter, and the walk from Bellevue to the Union Square subway station constituted most of her free time. At work, she couldn’t text, and in the tunnels of the subway, the reception on her phone was unusable. From the moment she entered the station until she emerged from the station down the block from her home, she knew that she’d receive no messages. It wasn’t uncommon for there to be four or five messages from her daughter queued up by the time she emerged onto the street.
After a lifetime living in Manhattan, Dedi felt safe on the lower east side, and did not worry about the stories she had heard about muggers targeting people who paid too much attention to their phones and not enough to their surroundings. She was more worried about the kids on skateboards in Union Square; she barely avoided collisions with them on several occasions. The skateboarders were out in force today, enjoying the beautiful weather.
As she approached the entrance to the station, Dedi was focused on her attempt to finish a text to her daughter, asking her whether there was anything she needed from the grocery store and to please empty the cat tray before Dedi returned home. As she pushed the send button, she looked up just in time to avoid walking into a woman who was emerging from the entranceway.
“I’m sorry; excuse me,” Dedi apologized, expecting no response, but acknowledging that it was her lapse that lead to the near collision.
The woman stopped in front of her, effectively blocking the entrance. She was not a large woman; average height but thin, and with long, white hair. She was dressed well, in a long gray skirt-jacket. Dedi expected to be mildly harrangued, but not physically assaulted.
Dedi was relieved, but not put off her guard entirely, when she noticed that the woman was smiling.
“It’s polite of you to apologize,” the woman began, trailing off in mid-sentence.
“Oh, you’re Doctor Perlman!” she resumed, in a more animated tone. “We’ve never met; so don’t worry that you don’t recognize me. But I remember that you gave a talk in Boston six years ago, on rapid the diagnosis of traumatic injuries of the brain, and three years ago on surgical techniques to relieve stress due to swelling of the temporal lobe and improve the healing process from skull fractures over the surface of the temporal and parietal lobes. I believe that talk was in Los Angeles–but it was very similar to the one you gave later that month in Denver, and I might have them confused.”
Dedi didn’t remember much about the talk she’d given in Boston, but she did remember the talk she’d given in Denver. It had been a small seminar–no more than a dozen attendees. This woman hadn’t been one of them; Dedi would have remembered.
“I find your work on traumatic head injuries very interesting,” the woman continued, reciting a list of publications, some of which Dedi could scarcely remember writing.
Dedi began to suspect that she was dealing with a lunatic. This woman appeared to have an obsession with head injuries, and, what was worse, seemed to know quite a bit about her.
The woman paused for a moment, and when she continued her tone was more subdued. “You probably think I’m a little crazy, stopping you like this. But I was just reading some of your papers recently, and then bumping you into the street was like some kind of serendipity. I’m sorry to have kept you, but I feel very lucky to have met you!”
The woman paused again. “Are you going to answer that?”
Dedi realized that her cell phone was ringing. She turned away, shielding the screen of her phone from view–a habit most doctors learn in order to preserve the appropriate level of confidentiality for information about their patients. Dedi didn’t recognize the number, but recognized it as an opportunity to release herself from this strange conversation.
“Please excuse me; I have to take this,” Dedi said, turning back to the woman.
The entranceway was empty. Dedi was alone.
