Depersonalisation

Today is different. Today, he is not. He feels himself walking into the waiting room. He hears himself for the umpteenth time calling out names, he watches himself shepard people into cubicles, he listens as he opens with his sombre Hello there, I'm so-and-so, what brings you here today. His hands explore and probe tender areas, his stethoscope finds areas of dissonance. His pen documents.
But he feels depersonalised. He watches himself, distractedly. His heart is not in it - where usually he never watches himself, and his moment is the here and now. Or rather, where usually has become the usually he has crafted, painstakingly retaught himself how to think.
He doesn't know what to think anymore today. He feels that hurling himself into his work would salve, instead it becomes a burden. His specatators notice his weariness and tell him they find it funny.
There's so much he doesn't know what to - do, to think, to feel. He doesn't know, where he stands.
Except that it is not here, and not now. And it must not be yesterday. (Yesterday, he remembers her discussing her plans to visit for her elective, to work at GOSH, and he remembers imagining the things he would want to show her, the places to go. The laughter he might bring her.)
Perhaps, just perhaps it is outside, in the cold by the lake, watching the ducks cavort.