"Did you see me take my antibiotic?" he asked his wife while they were lying in bed.

"I don’t know," she replied. "I wasn’t paying attention."

"Maybe I should go downstairs and take it," he said. "Do you think if I took it, it would be bad if I take it again?"

"I don’t think so," she replied.

"Okay, I’m going to go downstairs to take it. Do you need anything?"

"Nope."

He got out of bed, didn’t bother to put his slippers on, and headed downstairs. On the kitchen island, he fingered through the collection of assembled pill bottles neatly lined up in search of the antibiotic that just a few days prior his dentist had given him to combat an infection in an old root-canalled tooth that had begun to hurt.

$140 to x-ray a tooth and prescribe an antibiotic. The thought of it still irritated him.

There on the kitchen island were his allergy meds, acid-reflux pills, antidepressants and vitamins, but not the antibiotics.

Curious. He then realized that they might be in the bathroom in his Dopp kit. He and his wife had returned that afternoon from the Christmas holiday with his family. He had placed enough of his daily meds and vitamins into a Ziploc bag for the trip, but had decided to take the whole bottle of antibiotics so he wouldn’t get them confused. Plus, he figured, the larger bottle would stand out in a sea of floating individual pills inside the Ziploc, and remind him to take it.

He walked down the hall, opened the bathroom door, and was greeted by the smell of burning plastic and the site of his pill-toting Ziploc, partially melted, folded over a burning candle on the sink-side table.

Fuck! He quickly removed the bag and blew out the candle.

That’s weird. Not the burning candle. Not the melting Ziploc. He had taken a bath before retiring for the evening, and along with dimming the overhead light, had lit a candle and put on some classical music to relax himself. He must have emptied out his Dopp kit on the side table to retrieve his toothbrush, toothpaste and other toiletries after getting out of the bath, and in doing so, left the Ziploc bag too close to the candle and had forgotten to blow it out.

No, none of that was weird. He had gotten used to himself as an absent-minded individual. Once when he younger, he fell asleep with a candle burning in a decorative tin on a shelf above his headboard. When he woke up in the middle of the night to realize that the tin itself had burned to black, he grabbed it off the shelf with his left hand, searing it in the process. He then dropped it on the bed and grabbed it with his other hand to throw it to the floor. Both of his hands quickly blistered and he spent the next few hours in the bathroom running his hands under cold water, trying to figure out a way to wake his father up and tell him what had happened without his father yelling at him. There was no time for that. He needed to get to the hospital.

He had accepted his absent-mindedness and, as it turns out, his bad luck with candles. What was so weird was that just a few minutes ago he had lain in bed next to his wife wondering if he had taken his antibiotic. Had the antibiotic been on the kitchen island with the rest of his meds, or had he wondered if he had taken his allergy pills, or his acid-reflux pills, he wouldn’t have made it as far as the bathroom. He would have stopped at the kitchen.

At that point he surmised that one of two things had to have happened. He intuitively sensed the impending danger of leaving the candle burning unattended and was called upon to question his own taking of the antibiotic, leading him downstairs to the bathroom. A psychic episode of sorts.

The second option could only be divine intervention. God, the Great One, the Great Spirit, or perhaps a deceased relative looking out for him, had placed this doubt in his head in order to inform him of the trouble brewing in the bathroom. And since he had no evidence of previous psychic episodes in his life, he had to disregard the first option. Not that he had plenty of proof of divine intervention either, but he had to believe the latter was more likely.

He took his antibiotic with some water and headed back upstairs to the bedroom, deciding for the moment not mention this brush with divinity to his wife. Besides, earlier he’d some fun with the fact that she placed a plastic food container on top of a hot electrical burner in order to warm the chicken inside, only to have the container melt and stick to the burner. He was certain she’d move right past the notion of divine intervention and straight to pointing out that when it came to doing dumb things, they were even.

Instead of mentioning this, he just got back in bed next to his wife, who had settled in and was flipping through a catalog.

"Did you take it?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said. He grabbed his book from the bedside table and scooted himself closer to her so their feet could touch.

But he didn’t read. He sat there and tried to absorb what had happened to him in what was barely the last five minutes. He believed in Karma, and while Karma certainly doesn’t necessitate the presence of a divine being, he liked to combine the two concepts. Maybe when it came to Karma, God was some kind of divine financial manager handling everyone’s account. When he noticed a dangerous situation afoot in William Green’s bathroom that evening, he quickly checked Green’s Karma account, realized he could withdraw, and placed some doubt in Green’s head regarding his antibiotics. Green having a free will of course, God just hoped he’d take the hint, get up out of bed and discover the situation.

While William Green believed in Karma, he also knew it probably didn’t work that way. If it did, well, had he made a Karma bank deposit recently? He couldn’t really think. The Christmas holiday with his wife and family in New Jersey had gone as well as could be expected. He was patient and kind, he thought, and brought joy and love to the family. They had spent quality time together and had talked through various family dynamics and when he left, felt that as a family, they were in a good place. But he had smoked a little too much on the trip, and that couldn’t be good, especially coming off an illness a week before. It was as if he had thumbed his nose at his health only a week after his body had fought so hard and successfully to get itself better. That was certainly not good Karma.

On the other hand, the body is probably exempt from karmic principle, at least in the broad sense, as it really has a karmic universe all to itself. Things go in; things go out. You’re good to it; it’s good to you, etc. Fucking with yourself likely only comes around and hurts you, save for those people whose alcohol, drug and gambling problems affect everyone around them. Secondhand smoke? Well, he smoked outside.

William Green surmised that he had been a decent husband, son, uncle and overall family member and person over the holiday, but had done nothing worthy of divine intervention.

Having already discounted a psychic episode, that left only one other possibility. A third option he had not originally thought of.

Coincidence?

Could the whole thing have been a mere coincidence? A random collision of separate events in space at an opportune time for all parties involved? If it was random that he questioned his taking of his antibiotic and got out of bed and went down to the kitchen and finally the bathroom, he could have just as easily thought that he had indeed taken his antibiotic, not got out of bed, and the house would be on fire. He could have questioned his taking of his allergy pills, as he had pondered before coming up with his psychic episode and divine intervention theories, and the house would be engulfed in flames. His wife could have brushed him off and assured him that he took all his pills, just to keep him from getting up again. They could both be dead.

Dreadful scenarios based on this new coincidence theory began to rage in William Green’s head. What if I tripped down the stairs on my way to the kitchen and broke my leg, never making it to the kitchen? Or what if as I was lying at the foot of the stairs, calf-muscle facing in the same direction as my knee cap, and I smelled smoke and called out to my wife, who raced down to help me, only to notice that there was a full-blown fire raging in the bathroom and needed to get us out of the house, but after calling 911, couldn’t pick me up to carry me out of the house -- a matter made worse by the extra twenty plus pounds I was carrying due to poor portion control during the holiday season?

But William Green was a bright man, and knew that random scenarios work both ways. He could have taken a warm shower instead of a bath, and wouldn’t have needed to light a candle in the first place. Had he questioned his antibiotic imbibing, and was led to the bathroom; he would have been greeted by the same Ziploc bag, in a darkened bathroom, and would probably been back in bed and asleep by now.

Was all life like this? Coincidence? Just a series of random scenarios punctuated by the occasional crash of agreeable or disagreeable circumstances?

William Green fell asleep.

In the morning, William Green awoke, drank coffee with his wife in bed while watching the morning shows, showered, dressed and kissed his wife goodbye in the driveway before they both headed off to their jobs. To toy with his new-found consciousness of a coincidence theory, he decided to take a different route to work and observe the consequences. At a red traffic light, he stopped behind a car with a bumper sticker that read, "Visualize Tacoma." Hmmm. Visualize Tacoma. What does that mean? Is there some significance to it? Is there a reason I’m stopped behind this car on this morning that I chose to take a different route? Am I supposed to move to Tacoma? Or is it merely coincidence?

The better part of him decided it was likely merely nothing, and when the light turned green, he made a point of passing the vehicle, rather aggressively -- a symbolic snub of the driver, car and sticker that had distracted him from his important work of observing the events of his altered commute.

From his driver-side rear-view mirror he watched a very tall and imposing officer emerge from the cruiser and approach his car. He tapped on the driver side window with his knuckle. William Green lowered the window.

"License, registration and insurance, please," the officer said.

"Uh, sure, was I doing something wrong, officer?" William Green inquired as he reached over to his glove box to retrieve the requested documents.

"Caught you zipping around that car back there at 53 miles an hour. This is a 25. Residential."

William Green froze in his stretched position and turned to look at the officer. He slowly returned to his sitting position in the driver’s seat and handed the officer his registration and insurance information.

"License?"

"Uh yeah," William Green said and twisted himself off the seat to retrieve his wallet from his back pocket. He then pulled out his license and handed it to the officer. "Did you just say, ‘zipping?’ "

"Excuse me?" asked the officer while taking the license.

"Zipping….you said you caught me ‘zipping’ around the car."

"Mr…..(looking down at the license)….Green, what are you talking about?"

"You used the word ‘zip.’"

"Yes."

"It’s just that last night, I had this bizarre situation involving a Ziploc bag, and then you said ‘zipping’ and it reminded me of that."

The officer folded his arms across his chest. "What was in this Ziploc bag, Mr. Green?"

"Oh, nothing, just some pills I was supposed to take."

"Mr. Green, I’m going to have to ask you to step out of your car." The officer stepped back a foot.

"Is there something wrong, officer?"

"Mr. Green, step out of your car."

"All right, all right," William Green said. He opened the door and stepped out.

"Let’s go around here to the back of your car."

William Green obliged.

"Do you know what ‘Visualize Tacoma’ means?" he asked the officer as he made his way around the car.

"No sir, I don’t. Please turn around and put your hands on the car and spread your legs. Are you on any drugs this morning?"

He turned around into frisking position. "Just the stuff I normally take."

It was at that moment that he had a thought.

William Green was supposed to take his antibiotic twice a day.

"Can I make a call?" he asked the officer. "I need to call my wife and ask her something."