The Tictoc Man

While doing research on the state of our mental institutions for a paper I was preparing for ‘Psychiatry Monthly’, I came across the peculiar case of the Tictoc Man, a patient under the care of one Robert Headmaster M.D., St-Joseph Psychiatric Institute’s leading psychiatrist. 

It’s a warm June day and Dr. Headmaster has asked that we continue the interview outdoors (he needs a cigarette). “Tictoc Man – that’s a strange name for a patient,” I say.
The doctor has lit up and inhales deeply. After a long pause he says: “That’s what we call him. Not his real name of course.” We are walking along a path leading to a bench facing the river. The man seems preoccupied, worried even. After nervously extinguishing his cigarette with the heel of his shoe, he immediately lights another one. Suddenly he stops, grasps my arm, and says: “Do you agree that most creatures can see only the three dimensions of space?” He looks at me as if he expects me to dispute the statement.
“Of course,” I say, “length, height, and width.”
“What if I tell you that it’s possible for someone to see the fourth dimension of – time?”
“I’d probably be wondering what you were smoking,” I say, pointing to his cigarette.
“I know what you mean. I was skeptical too – at first. We get all kinds here, as you may well imagine, but this particular case intrigued me and, when the patient was brought to us a month ago, I decided to personally look into his case.”

“When he entered my office, I saw a slightly balding thin man in his late sixties. Everything about the patient (we didn’t call him the Tictoc Man then) was gray: his eyes, his hair, and his complexion, he even appeared to favor gray clothing. My overall first impression upon meeting him was that of being visited by a ghost. To set him at ease, I introduced him to my cat, Ophelia, our resident mouser. “I am told that you can see time,” I say casually, “can you describe for me what you see when you look at my cat?”
The patient crouched next to the cat, and gently began stroking her. “It’s difficult to put into words,” he says. “I see every instant since she was born; it’s as if every day were pearls on her necklace of life.” When he glanced up at me,  I could read sadness in his face. “And I see the last pearl – in two weeks,” he adds.
“Is that how you perceive time – pearls on a necklace?” I ask.
“Generally, although sometimes it’s like a long snake with the head representing the ‘now’ and the tail the ‘beginning’.
“What do you see when you look at me?” I ask.
“Do you really want to know when you will die?” he asks.
I swear his words rang with such assurance that I shivered as if the cold fingers of death were running down my spine. “Well no, I guess not,” I say quickly, “just tell be what I’ll be like next week?”
And the patient says: “Next week, you’ll be walking with a cane.”

I can’t help noticing that the doctor’s fingers are shaking when he pulls out another cigarette out of his pack and lights up. “Would you believe that the following week I sprained my ankle and needed a cane?” he says. “Of course I attributed the incident to coincidence.” He draws deeply on his cigarette, and then exhales before adding: “When Ophelia was run over by a car a week later, I again saw it as a coincidence.” Doctor Headmaster looks absently in the direction of the river. “Today, I’m no longer sure.”

“When the nurses heard of the patient’s quirky vision they began calling him the Tictoc Man, some found it amusing to ask him a reading of their horoscope. However, when the Tictoc Man’s predictions unfailingly materialized the game was no longer amusing. If anything, his visions had become something to be feared. After all, no one really wants to know …” Dr. Headmaster gives me a searching look.  Abruptly he stubs out his cigarette on the sidewalk, gets up, and turns to head back to the hospital.
“Before you leave doctor – one last question,” I say. “What happened to the Tictoc Man?”
Doctor Headmaster gazes anxiously at the sky. “For unknown reasons, the patient has fallen into a semi-comatose state. He keeps muttering the strangest thing though.”
“And what is that?”
“It’s the end of time. He keeps repeating: – It’s the end of time –”