"Progression equals time. Time equals death." It's a thought that consumes Ed Zine, a handsome, athletic twenty-four year old. The victim of a debilitating form of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), Ed's illogical mind tells him that if going forward in time moves him closer to death, reversing the action will carry him away from it. He is trapped in a ritualistic nightmare, living in the basement of his father's home on Cape Cod. It takes 7-10 hours for him to make the 16,384 precise movements forward and backwards that are necessary to get from his bed to the bathroom across the room. With Ed spiraling ever downward, the world's leading OCD specialist, Harvard professor Michael Jenike, heroically takes on this seemingly hopeless case.
It took a full year of trust before Dr. Jenike would be allowed to enter the nightmarish prison created by Ed Zine's isolating obsession. Breaking a cardinal rule of medicine, Jenike decided that the best care he could offer Ed was simple friendship. Medicine after medicine, behavior modification after behavior modification, and even exposure therapy--nothing seemed to work until one day the exhausted doctor broke down in front of Ed, triggering a turning point. Zine had to find a way to honor the love he'd been shown by his great doctor. Using his own determination, Zine forced himself to do fewer repetitions and slowly began to reverse his mental gymnastics. He eventually went back to the gym where he met a beautiful Palestinian woman--they fell in love, and were engaged a month later. When Jenike saw his patient transformed into a hulking, healthy body builder ... he knew Ed would be all right.
