Chasing Paradox

The Mirror Patient.

He only had two clients today, he saw in his calendar. He scratched the back of his head and stared at his calendar for a moment.

A man, the first client, came in. He didn’t sit down immediately but stood behind the chair, staring briefly at the new clock. As he sat down, he said the clock looked familiar, shaking his head slightly from side to side.

Ronald looked at him questioningly, and before he could say anything, the client started talking about his weekly events. Then the first client left, tripping slightly over the doorframe, and quickly returned. Ronald looked at the client and at the report he had written. For a moment, he was completely lost in thought, but that was quickly interrupted.

A woman, the second client of the day, knocked on the door and came in. She closed the door and sat in the chair across from Ronald. She seemed very confused and looked around nervously.

After a long sigh, she began to talk about a dream in which she saw herself sitting in Ronald’s chair while he sat across from her, crying. She kept looking at him, she said, and asked him, “Is that you?”

He replied:
“I am who you were. And you are who I will become.”

Ronald wrote it down and smiled kindly. But later that evening, he found that same sentence in his own notebook, written days earlier. His handwriting. A different color of ink.

Another me?