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tenth round, he went on about his daily life and ignored the heavy plaster that had almost forced his eyelid shut.
    Now though, this was a different situation. Because now he knew doc Brooks was right. Now he was paying the price for all his past carelessness, and now it was payback time to the body he had taken for granted for so long.
    It was obvious this was all just a hallucination at the restaurant. And he was almost sure that he was going mad.
    But he had witnessed insanity first hand. In fact, he had written a two page report on the subject for his column just two years previously. He had visited the clinic for the mentally ill, and it had almost frightened him. He had seen people there who were perfectly normal, right up to a point in their lives, until something bad had happened to them. Then it was goodbye to their cranial system.
    He had been shown a guy who was once a high rolling banker. A guy who was so confident in everything he had done in life. A life and soul of the party type guy whose financial advice kept his friends and family rich beyond their wildest dreams. But when this man’s beautiful wife and baby daughter were killed in a plane crash, his mind refused to accept it.
    Dan almost cried as he watched the man drool over his chest as he rocked back and forward in his seat.
    The guy would talk to his wife and child as though they where still there, laughing and joking with them, then turn violent when he thought someone was asking them to leave.
    â€˜Guys a no hoper,’ the orderly had informed him, in a cold, ruthless sort of manner. Now money meant nothing to this sad, pathetic, sick figure seated in front of him.
    Yeah, Dan had seen these mentally ill people all right. Their minds all mangled up. He would die first though, he swore. Die from his own hand before he would end up like these sad unwanted individuals. Beyond the point of no return, he thought, and then some.
    No way was he going to sit for hours in a straight jacket banging his head off the freekin walls of his ten by eight padded cell, even if he may not know about it.
    Then to have someone spoon feed you and maybe abuse you later when no one was looking. Oh yeah, he’d heard the stories too. And if this hallucinating were to get any worse, then it was goodnight buddy, as far as Dan was concerned.
    *  *  *  *  *
    Dan put his head into his hands and sobbed at the thought of what had happened at the restaurant. ‘I’m your wife,’ the woman had said. And although Dan found this hard to contemplate, he had a memory of sorts. A memory of something.
    Suddenly his brain was coming alive with thought patterns. Wild surreal thought patterns shooting and darting back and forth like invisible bullets, ricocheting around in the deepest recesses of his mind. Nonsensical but somehow illuminating thoughts that made him tremble visibly.
    Dan was aware of how the brain can sometimes play tricks on people. The brain is a much too complex an organ, he thought.
    This though, was different. These dreams he had been having were more like memories. Real and proper memories, that stayed in place, and could be recalled up later. No; to say these were dreams he was having would be wrong. These were real events that had actually happened to him sometime, somehow. And of this he was now certain.
    A shiver ran down his spine as he concentrated hard.
    He was starting to have flashbacks of the bedraggled woman who had come to him at the restaurant. In his memory though, this woman wasn’t like this at all. She was beautiful. He could visualise her clearly now. She was standing in the sunlight smiling seductively at him. He could even remember her smell. ‘Beatrice,’ the woman at the restaurant had called herself. “I know you Beatrice,” he whispered. “I know you.”
    Memories of the pair of them together crashed through his mind.
    He had flashes about a visit to Paris, and of strolling arm