Healer

                                                  The Healer



The dream always ended the same, flames in the distance, gunfire and screams filling his ears and a light so bright it made the noon day sun seem like a full moon on a cold winter night. As he awakened Simon tried to hold on to all the images, the crowds of people pressing forward, the words he was speaking but he couldn’t hear, and the dark man pointing and shouting at him with rage and insistent hate. It all seemed so very important, so meaningful but, like always, it all slipped away and he was left with nothing more than faint images, the barest memory of feelings and the sense that he had been having this dream forever. The clock went off and erased the dream from his mind and he felt a small pang of regret that it was gone. Before jumping in the shower he checked his phone, still in the charger, to see if his schedule had changed, then hurried to make it in time for his first surgery of the day.





                                                    Unrepentant

Jon’s pace was slow and deliberate. He was about a mile away from the modest barracks that all the monks but the rector shared in the abbey. The sun, rising swirling eddies of heat on the path, was high over head and his thick coarse brown robes, soaked with perspiration, did nothing but hold the heat and humidity closer to his body. His calm demeanor hid both how much the heat bothered him as well as the turmoil of his inner struggles and he barely noticed the peaceful echo his footfalls made across the small pond next to the path. His monthly interchange with the abbot had not gone well at all. “A crisis in faith” is what the abbot had said, what Jon had considered a revelation, a unique insight even, had been dismissed as, at best, wrong thinking or at worst heresy. Jon was not given to flights of fancy or idle thoughts. He tended to consider at length any idea before he voiced it to anyone else. It had been seven years since he had shocked his family and friends and taken his vows and he knew his faith was as strong as ever. It was the same faith the caused him to forsake an assignment to the institute or any of the other dozens of organizations that were anxious to employ his services. Jon had been the youngest PH.D. Candidate in the history of his school and he knew what he believed and why he believed it. Faith, however, still held the requirement of mystery and the obligation of direction. He had only been so juvenile as to suggest that the secrets of the church might be easy to explain and the God could be closer than we think. For this the Abbot questioned his faith and his commitment. No, he had no reason to question his own faith, in that he felt secure but who or what should he have faith in now that was in doubt. He pondered this question as he past the orchards; the old mill and the stables, all the way back to his quarters. He knew he would find out the truth of this matter, the problem with truth was that it was always a little more than we want, but a lot less than we hope for.





 

                                              Freedom



    On the way back to his cell Derrick admired his new tat. T-Bone, his prison name, not the steak, but how they had caught him, when some high Motha had run a light and busted up his car downtown. When he woke up he was in the county ER shackled to a gurney in the hallway. The big needle they had used to finish the tattoo had hurt like hell but he just focused on one thing the whole time, the rope.

    It had taken Derrick eight months to fashion the length of rope he thought he needed, just long enough to get him safely to the ground or so he had been told. Then he waited for a miracle in the desert, for the clouds to gather and the dusty streambeds to fill and flow freely. Just once in a blue moon they said, so rare that only a handful of prisoners had ever seen it. So he waited what else could he do? He wondered sometimes how long it would take to lose himself in this cage, before he was nothing more then a saggy tattoo and the number on his back or if he could even survive the hate, rage and violence of the other numbers. How long till the outside had become just a dream, a foreign land whose inhabitants spoke a language he could not, and knew things he would never understand. Would it be ten years, fifteen or twenty? How long ‘till freedom would be too much to bear and prison was not just the tons of iron and concrete around him but a small locked room somewhere under his stringy gray hair. He never wanted to find out and so he waited with purpose and for the first time in his life, with patience.

      He was shocked when the day came, storms in the forecast, flash flood warnings in several counties and a setting sun, everything he could have hoped for. However, when the moment came, the point when there was no turning back he hesitated, questioning his own motives and what chance he really had to escape. T-bone knew he was no saint, but he wasn’t guilty, at least not of the murder that had sent him here. He threw the last load of sheets and dirty uniforms into the cart and headed to his station. He was always the last to finish up and lock up the laundry, after two years they trusted him that much. He even set the last load to washing before he set his back against big bertha, the largest of the big dryers, and pushed it aside revealing the hole he had made in the wall. He breathed a silent sigh of relief when he saw that the rope and everything else he needed was still there. Now it was almost simple, the fifteen pounds he lost would allow him to squeeze up between the floors and over B block then up to the roof. It was pitch black after he managed to slide the huge dryer back into place behind him and the air in the crawl space was dry and dusty. It took him a few minutes to find the cross-way in the dark and he cut his hands a few dozen times but other than a brief few minutes of panic when he got hung up on a pipe going around the kitchen he reached the roof with no problem. So there he was hanging at the end of his roughly made too short rope about twenty feet from the ground , wishing for wings or at least a ladder when he heard a loud crack and he was tumbling toward the ground. He tried to roll as he hit the ground but all that got him was twisted knee and large knot on his head. By the time he got himself together enough to get going he could taste the blood as it ran down his face.

The steady drizzle had turned into a downpour by the time he heard the distant sounds of the dogs. It seemed like he had been running for hours and the rain was the only thing that had gone according to plan. The pain that had started as a dull ache in his left side was now making it nearly impossible to take in a full breath. He knew his orange prison garb would be easy to spot even in this weather, so he kept up the pace as best he could even though every stumble sent fiery needles of pain through his throbbing head and he was dragging his twisted knee more than using it. The prison was fifty miles from the nearest town and an impossible distance for dry man on foot, but his destination was a lot closer. There was a dry stream bed that once or twice a decade flowed all the way to the river and Derrick was almost there. Every so often the panorama of flat muddy wetness was revealed by the lightning that was getting closer all the time. He hoped the thunder and rain was slowing his pursuers more then himself. The time between the bright flashes of light and the booming sound of thunder was growing shorter and shorter with each passing minute. About the same time he thought he heard the gurgling rush of the stream he felt a strange sensation. The tingling started at the stop of his head and quickly spread down to his feet. A booming crack of thunder shook the ground as the storm center was finally moved right on top of him. Then the air around him for the space of six feet seemed to brighten. He could hear the rain pouring down all around him in a torrent but where he stood in that brightened circle not a drop was falling and the ground was suddenly dry as a bone. Derrick’s guts twisted with fear and his legs turned to jelly as he saw a light like a bolt of lightening rise from the ground directly in front of him. Time had lost all meaning as the light grew and was as wide as three men and as tall as a building. It was now so bright the he fell on his face in fear and even with his face buried in the soft earth it was all he could see. Just then a memory from his childhood floated up into his consciousness. He was in the back of the church his mama made him and his brother go to every Sunday and Wednesday night. Derrick was twelve and his brother Martin was eleven and they were messing around like they always did. Mama, for about the tenth time, came back and told them to hush up. “Derrick you better leave your brother be and listen, you gonna need God someday boy.” The lighting had slowly reached up to touch the sky and Derrick heard a soundless voice speak two words slowly and powerfully. “GO BACK” Shaken and dazed he struggled back to his feet as the light faded. Then the rain was back and the stream was rushing by. He found the marine raft a few dozen yards up stream right where they said it would be. He quickly ripped off the green plastic pouch and pulled the inflation cord. When the raft was almost fully inflated he pushed it into the fast flowing water and watched it quickly disappear from sight. Then he headed back toward the prison to whatever fate awaited him there.

The rain didn’t let up on way back so Derrick headed south so he could walk on the paved road rather then slosh through the energy sucking mud. He expected to be found rather quickly but he didn’t expect to find the gray prison supply truck broken down on the side of the road. The driver was asleep in the front and he didn’t wake up even when Derrick tapped on the window. He checked the door in back and finding it open he climbed in to get out of the rain. Within a few minutes he was asleep, exhausted from his aborted escape attempt. He was awaked a few hours later by the sound of voices and of the truck being backed into the prison loading area by a big tow. He waited anxiously for the door to open and wondered only briefly want he was gonna say to the guards. After several minutes the voices went away and it was quiet. He guessed they had left the truck to be unloaded the next day because everybody was either on lockdown or searching for him. After about thirty minutes Derrick climbed out to discover the truck had been locked inside the loading area which was right next to the laundry. He tried his pass code and found it hadn’t yet been changed and he returned to the laundry to decide what to do next. Out of habit he pulled all the wet clothes he had started earlier out of the washers and started them to dry. By this time he was getting really dizzy and his head was really hurting so he pulled a few clean sheets off the rack and laid down knowing they would discover him there in the morning.

By the time they discovered him in the laundry his orange uniform was dry and they figured he had slipped in the soapy water and busted his head on one of the machines so they carried him to the infirmary. The guards all laughed about how everyone thought he had tried to escape and how long they had searched in the rain all night, they were all happy cause they all got paid double time. All the mud had been washed away from his shoes when was walking on the road and the doctor was more interested in his concussion then his wet socks and shoes. He was shocked when the warden came by to ask how he was doing, but not as much as when he told him his sentence had been overturned. Listening to his mama talk about how all his relatives wanted to see him on the way to the bus station he found out that the DA in his case had been fired and all of his cases had been reviewed. His was one of ten or fifteen that had been overturned. He showed all his boys the tattoo but told them he didn’t think he’d be getting another one. He thought that next time his mama went to that church he might just go along





                                                          The Tenth Life

  In the too bright lights of the scrub room Simon tried in vain to wash away sixteen hours of surgery. The hot water felt good to his aching hands but he was more then ready to escape all the silver, blue and blood of the long day. Simon hated the smell of the beta dine soap they washed in after surgery. Even the perfume they added just made it worse. The smell stayed with him long after he had left the hospital each day. The rest of the team was long gone with the exception of the Barb Clerkston the anesto. She made it a point not to leave the hospital until all the patients had cleared post op. After a hot shower and wearing a set of fresh pale green scrubs he was set to check on all his patients from that day and try to head home. His cell was full of messages, mostly from his son, with a few from Karen sprinkled in. The last few sounded fairly urgent so he was fairly certain that whatever it was would end in an evening visit to the house. He found it only slightly amusing that he was more involved with his family weeks after he had moved out then in all the years before.

The mound of bandages and sparkling clean sheets concealed the seriousness of her condition. The rhythmic clicking and humming of the respirator drowned out the sounds of dozen or so other machines that were all working to keep her alive. All his cases were doing well with the exception of Mrs. Pullsy whom he had waited to see until after visiting hours. Sometime that evening he had decided he wasn’t quite ready to face her family just yet. She was a consult he had taken oven after the old man had another case of the nerves. It was Thompson’s practice of over thirty years that had eventually become the Northside surgery group. Simon had been lucky enough to become their newest and youngest member. Three of the surgeons were on staff at the medical school and they had been watching him all through post grad, at least that’s what they told him later. Of course as the new guy he had to take most of the on call hours and clean up after Thompson’s frequent messes, the latest of which was the fifty eight year old Mrs. Pullsy and the tumor he had removed from her abdomen. After he had removed the tumor and a pus filled infected cyst as big as his fist, nearly all her major organs had been compromised. He didn’t relish the thought of facing the family tomorrow and telling them she only had a few weeks to live.

By the time Simon left the hospital the north Texas heat was no longer stifling merely hot, but the long walk to almost deserted doctors lot was almost pleasant. He called Karen on the way to his car a b-mer, the one they really couldn’t afford but he had a certain standard to maintain didn’t’ he, at least that’s what his side of the argument always was, the side she just didn’t seem to understand. After the a/c had kicked in, the quiet interior of soft brown leather and darkly tinted windows brought him his first moment of relaxation of the long day, so he was fairly calm when she answered her phone. “Simon we’ve been calling all day what happened?” she answered a little more exasperated then usual. “It’s Tuesday, I had a full schedule today plus one of Thompson’s’.” This was how it usually started so he was already braced for it, but she surprised him “Oh I didn’t’ realize, well can you come by for little while Robert needs you.” Simon didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed, the fights they had on a regular basis were all they seemed to have left between them and now Karen had let one this go so easily. “OK I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

The room was just the same as always, bright colors and crayon art on the walls with random toys selectively strewn in their respective places. Robby was a few weeks past his tenth birthday but the very adult expression on his face as he was sleeping made him look more like his father than ever. Karen had given him permission to wake the boy but on the nightstand in purple crayon was a note for him.

“Daddy,

Fuzzy is sick will you please make him better. Mrs. Potter says you can. I love you daddy.

Robbie”



When he kissed his son on his forehead he found he still had the little boy smell he wondered briefly at what age it goes away and how he could feel so much pride in a ten year old boy. He quietly left the room with the note and found Karen outside the door waiting. “What’s this all about?” “The cat you got him last month, it’s sick.” “I figured that, I mean who’s Mrs. Potter.” he answered more fatigued than annoyed. Her face brightened momentarily, “Oh that’s Bernadine the baby-sitter, your mom recommended her. She said that her grandmother was your nanny for a while.” The memories he had of granny Green were faint but pleasant. He still had the impression of something supernatural about her but not frightening just strange. He did remember she made the best sweet potato pie and how she like her TV shows. How many nights he’d fallen asleep on the couch while she watched some TV preacher and she would shout amen and hallelujah right along with the TV audience. She had always been like part of the family and they kept in touch long after he passed that age. He guessed Bernadine was the skinny giggling girl he remembered meeting once or twice when they went to visit her.

The small black and white cat lay still and quiet on a little pink and green blanket in the washroom. The food and water bowl were full and untouched. It had always been smallish and still was not much larger than then when he gave it to Robbie for his birthday. Simon knelt to look for any signs of life but when he picked the cool body up he knew it was too late. He hoped Robbie would be willing to pick out another. As he held the kittens limp body he couldn’t help thinking that it would be so much easier if he could just wish it back to life. “god why does everything having to do with this family have to be so hard” he thought to himself, frustrated. He realized he was just tired and drained from the day. He left the cats body on the mat and after telling Karen he would talk to Robbie next week about a new kitten he left for his apartment which was only a few blocks away.

He could hear the phone ringing before he put the key in the lock. He rushed in to answer the phone thinking Mrs. Pullsy probably had gone bad but wondering why they hadn’t called his cell. He was surprised when he heard his wife’s’ voice on the phone. “Simon what did you do?” She was excited almost joyful. “I ..what do you mean” he answered confused. “What did you do to the cat” She explained. “The cat, nothing, I mean it was dead, there was nothing I could do.” He answered still feeling guilty. “No Simon, you must have done something, it’s not dead it’s sitting on Robbie’s bed playing with some string.”