Hospitals are frightening places. US Army photo.
My bosses here at FMG have told me I can indulge in a spot of fiction on occasion, so long as I don’t make a habit of it. This week, I’ll strain that tolerance ….
The sick man awoke gradually. It took a moment to attain clarity. The hospital room was as he had previously left it — bright, cluttered, foreign and terrifying. Something, however, was not quite as it should be.
Like headlights dissecting a foggy road, his mind gradually made sense of the scene. The sick man understood little if any of the machines or their diabolical purposes. At that moment, however, he realized what seemed so alien about the place. Nothing was moving … like, at all.
The displays were bright and clear but unchanging. The very air no longer seemed mobile. That was strange in the extreme. It was then he noticed the young man seated comfortably next to his bed. The man’s eyes were fixed upon him, neutral and implacable. The sick man had always read people easily, but this man was unreadable.
The sick man pulled himself up in the bed. He was surprised at how good he felt. Gone was the ache in his back and hips. He no longer sensed the presence of the sundry tubes violating his spent body. Perhaps this would be a good day.
The silence between the two men soon became uncomfortable.
“Who are you?”
The young man answered flatly, “You know who I am.”
The younger man looked to be in his late twenties. He was handsome and fit, dressed in an unadorned blue t-shirt. His pants were so bland as to be unnoticeable. His eyes had a penetrating quality, like something that could cleave meat from bone. He exuded a palpable calm.
The revelation came suddenly, like an electric shock.
“But I’m not ready,” the sick man said, fear now obvious in his voice.
“Nobody is ever ready,” The young man responded. There resulted yet another uncomfortable silence.
“You’re not what I expected.”
“Literally everybody says that.”
There was no sense of impatience or cynicism. These were simply facts.
“So, it’s really time?”
“Indeed, it is.”
“I still have things I need to do.”
“Like what? You need to pull together another payroll or get that last shipment ready? Have you paid your taxes and signed the forms? Is there something you need to say to someone? You’ve had all of those opportunities and more. That’s all gone now.”
Modern medicine is long on machines. Everybody hates them for a reason. US Army photo.
The sick man struggled to push his natural disquiet back someplace else and focused on the moment. He had always been a problem solver, a man ever cursed with a hyperdeveloped sense of responsibility. This was simply a strange new problem to be solved.
“So, what’s the real deal here? How does this work?” His voice was steadier than his nerves.
The younger man gave the tiniest sigh. It wasn’t exasperation in any real sense, more resignation brought upon by endless repetition.
“Allow me to streamline this for you,” he said. “Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. It’s as predictable as the tides. We can talk here for as long as you wish. You’re on the clock, not me. You’ll find that time means something different now than it did for you previously. However, trust me, letting yourself get too deep into the weeds just makes this harder. Debating the finer points of philosophy will render you muddled. You’ll want your faculties intact for what is to come.”
That took a moment to process. “What is coming?” he asked.
“You already know that,” the younger man said.
“Will I go to heaven?”
“Should you? You tell me.”
The man’s mind raced. He searched for a Bible verse or something similarly profound, but nothing came. Before things got out of hand, the younger man continued, “You’ve answered your own question.”
The fear welled up again. Now teetering, the sick man said, “This is hard.”
Without emotion, the younger man said, “Try my job for a week.”
As predicted, the sick man skipped to acceptance straightaway. On a certain level, he appreciated that trying to negotiate would be fruitless.
“Will this hurt?”
“God is not cruel,” the younger man said. “Regardless of the mechanism or circumstances, it seldom takes long. From the outside looking in, sometimes it seems sudden. Others, it appears, are protracted. The actual event, however, is reliably quick.”
The sick man felt himself begin to rise inexplicably. The pressure of the sheets gave way as he, disconcertingly, began to pass through them. He sensed that he was above himself somehow. None of this felt real.
“I’m afraid,” he said. There was a childlike quality to his voice that had not been there previously.
“I know you are,” he heard the younger man say. The voice now felt distant. “Everyone is. That’s why I’m here. As I said, God is not cruel. Just, certainly, but never cruel.”
In moments, the young man was far away. With his absence, the sick man began to feel cold. The suffocating sense of isolation immediately exceeded his level of comfort. The fear boiled up yet again, stronger this time. He struggled to maintain control. Then the thing was done.
