Infinite(19)

“I’m serious,” I told her.

She studied my face carefully, as if looking for a lie. “Say the word,” she said finally.

“What word?”

“You know.”

“I don’t. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Infinite,” she said. “Say it.”

“Why?”

“Say it,” she repeated like an order.

I shrugged. “Infinite.”

Dr. Brier eased back on the bench. I didn’t know what she expected would happen, but nothing did. She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, as if the lake breeze was making her cold.

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” I asked her.

“You seriously don’t remember me?”

“Dr. Brier, I already told you. We’ve never met. The first time I heard your name was when I saw the poster for your event at the hotel.”

“Call me Eve,” she said. “Please. Anything else sounds strange. I need to ask you some questions.”

“Okay.”

“Have you been having blackouts? You wake up and can’t account for where you were or what you did?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Even when you drink?”

“How do you know that I drink?”

“Just answer the question.”

“No, I haven’t gotten blackout drunk in years. Typically, I remember the stupid things I do.”

Eve frowned. “Have you experienced any kind of trauma lately?”

“Yes. The worst trauma of my life, in fact. I lost my wife in a car accident.”

“Your wife,” she exclaimed.

“Karly. Our car went into a river. She drowned. I wasn’t able to save her.”

Eve inched away from me on the bench. Her voice grew frostier. “I’m very sorry for your loss. That’s a terrible thing.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Is it possible you experienced some kind of memory loss after the accident?”

“If I did, you’re the only thing that got erased,” I told her. “Look, you obviously think I’m someone else. Are you going to tell me how I supposedly know you?”

Eve stood up from the bench and reached out a hand to me. I stood up, too, and we walked eastward, away from the fountain. We crossed the outer drive and then continued until we were within a few steps of the lake. I could taste the spray on my lips. Out in the harbor, sailboats bobbed, their ropes clanging. Beyond the piers, I could see whitecaps dotting the rough water. The skyscrapers glowed behind us.

She turned and faced me. In her high heels, she was taller than I was. The wind whipped her silky hair. “You’re my patient. That’s how I know you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’ve been coming to me for therapy for several weeks.”

I backed away from her. “What?”

“It’s true.”

“No, it’s not. I don’t even know you.”

“Believe me, you do. And I know you, too. Of course, you never told me about being married, which is a surprise.” She cocked her head, studying me like a clinician trying to get inside my brain. “This must be some kind of memory loss. Although I suppose there’s one other possibility.”

“What’s that?”

Eve frowned. “You could be suffering from multiple personality syndrome. Your mind has split into different versions of yourself. One Dylan doesn’t remember what the other Dylan has done. I never saw any signs of that, but other personalities can be very convincing. I guess it’s also possible that my treatment made your condition more severe.”

“Treatment?”

“Yes. You were my first patient in a new experimental protocol I developed. I call it my Many Worlds therapy.”

“What the hell is that?”

“It’s a way of breaking down barriers between the separate lives that our brain creates. Of bridging the parallel universes. It’s similar to the concept of past life regression, but instead of going backward in time, it’s like going sideways into your other worlds. That’s why I had you say infinite. That’s our code word, the signal that triggers your brain to end the session. Wherever you were, whatever world you were in, you could say that, and you’d be back with me. I wanted to see how you reacted to the idea of saying it.”

“I didn’t react at all, because it meant nothing to me.”

“Yes, that’s interesting. I’m not sure what to make of that.”

I shook my head. “How does this treatment work?”

Eve glanced at the sidewalk near the water. We were still alone, but she obviously didn’t want anyone to hear us. “Have you ever heard of a San Francisco psychiatrist named Francesca Stein? She was in the news a few years ago when she was found to be altering the memories of her patients using a combination of psychotropic drugs and hypnosis.”

“If you say so. I don’t know the name.”

“Frankie and I are friends. We were in school together. We’ve talked a lot about the therapeutic possibilities behind the Many Worlds theory. She believed it might be possible to use a technique similar to what she used in altering memories to get people to ‘experience’ their other lives. I’ve been exploring the idea ever since.”