The new friend

My apologies for keeping everyone waiting.

It has been a very strange period for me lately. I am a neurologist and see patients daily who are suffering from terrible afflictions caused by injuries or illnesses like catastrophic head injuries, strokes, Parkinsons disease and Alzheimers.

I need to have constant attention to detail, as I am dealing with quality of life, and in some cases life itself.

Although it has not affected my work yet, I am doing my best to guarantee that IT NEVER does, so I write on this blog late at night in my desperate attempt to cleanse myself of the immense distress I have been going through.

Anyway, back to that strange weekend, and here we are at Sunday.

For most of the morning my wife was exceptionally nice to me. She would call me "honey" repeatedly, and on a few ocassions she called me by my baby name (the name my mother calls me to this day).

My wife would only act like this when she was extremely happy, or when she was preparing to persuade me about something.

Anyway, about mid-morning, although I didn't realise at the time, my wife started on what was probably a well thought out plan to introduce me to a new person she had apparently just met.

She started making references to a "James", a man she met through her work, but according to her had never met in person once.

She however did mention to me that she had spoken to James 4 or 5 times on the phone (although she mentioned nothing about emails).

Now I counted 7 separate references to James on that Sunday, all I believe designed to sound innocuous, but I could feel that there was more to this than that.

Now James is a lawyer. She met him through work, and because he also has a Chinese wife, she became friends with him. he is anglo by the way.

Sounds plausible right? Well its not. There's more to this than my wife has been letting on.

By the 7th mention of James, my wife said:

"Would you like to meet James? I told him about you."

I replied by saying:

"Why would I want to meet a stranger?"

My response was terse, but I had grown frustrated with this charade by my wife, and it was a desperate display as far as I was concerned, but she still persisted in trying to put an innocent spin on events.

Well, she stopped talking about James after that.

But later on that night, I remembered something that she asked me about 4 months ago. I didn't think anything of it back then, but it was a strange comment none the less.

The more I think about it, the more it all fits.

It seems that James and I are not actually strangers after all. In fact I think we teach at the same university.

Just lying in bed that night I knew a lot of things didn't make sense. The email episode, her claim of only 4 or 5 phone calls, and her strange comment about 4 months ago.

..its starting to make a bit more sense now...but maybe I need to check on a few facts first...but more on that later.