The Unyielding Future Page 9
“You got morphine, Versed, and Benadryl.” The nurse answered. A triple cocktail. Major league sedation, which explained why I felt like I had been poured into the bed. I don’t remember asking for something so potent, but after Leah and her armed escort had left I probably didn’t offer any resistance to chemically induced sleep.
“Two milligrams of morphine,” I said, and tried not to grit my teeth.
“There are no badges for heroes, tough guy. This is going to be rough.” I finally recognized the nurse. She was the unit supervisor, Sandy Fuller.
“Hi, Sandy. What are you doing delivering patient care? You’re one of the important people.” I grimaced as she lowered my arm and the veins began to re-expand.
“I’ll tell you a secret if you won’t let it go to your head.” She smiled and I nodded. “They’re lining up outside to help you.” She winked. It was without a doubt the nicest thing anyone had said to me in a very long time. “Sorry about Andrea.”
I spent an eternity in a treatment room that morning, with dressing changes and wound debridement (where the dead tissue is cut or scrubbed off). In the end I needed eight more milligrams of morphine to take the edge off. I guess I’m not so tough after all. I slept away the rest of the morning and early afternoon. Leah had visited but didn’t wake me. She left me a note that simply said, Love you.
I finally opened my eyes around two thirty. I was disoriented and for several minutes thought that I was having a dream about work. I recognized our ICU, realized that I couldn’t really move, and that I wasn’t wearing any clothes. I looked around and found a clear plastic bag filled with fluid hanging above my bed. Morphine Sulfate was stamped across it. I followed an intravenous line down from the bag to my arm. “Wheee,” I whispered.
I found Leah’s note, and it took me roughly an hour to read and understand the words. I dropped it to the floor and tried to process what had been happening. Memories and random thoughts flowed through my thick mind, and I tried to arrange them into something that approximated a logical sequence, but my mind refused to stay on task. Like Mia, I wondered where Nitrox, our beloved dog, was this very moment. My brain was swimming in a pool of morphine about ten feet above my body, and from that height I could see both Nitrox and Maggie. The toddler was astride our dog like a jockey, and they were running home through a pine forest. Good girl, I thought. Nitrox must have followed the evil man back to his lair, killed him as Mia had instructed, and rescued Maggie. Suddenly, everything was right with the world. Leah and the kids wouldn’t have to leave, and I would go home. I closed my eyes and it was suddenly evening.
I was more alert, and my narcotic-fueled hallucinations were now just a disorganized dream. I was sore and stiff and began to slowly stretch my arms and neck. As I turned to the left I found Adis smiling back at me.
“How are you?” My mind was clear enough to remember that when he asked this question he expected an answer.
“I hurt and my mind is still in a fog,” I said through my oxygen mask, in a voice too raspy to be my own. “I saw what you did.” My throat felt raw, and a tickle deep in my pharynx warned me of an impending cough.
“I know, and I think that you should keep that between us.” He looked pink and healthy. No unsightly burns or scars. Even his wrinkled face had somehow smoothed out.
“Too late.” I whispered. I tried to suppress the cough that I knew would lead to an episode of laryngospasm.
“Just leave it for now. No one else needs to know.” His voice was soothing like a cool compress on my burned skin.
“Why aren’t you burned?” I whispered. It didn’t seem to matter that the strength of my voice was so poor that I could barely hear my own words.
“Why am I not burned?” he repeated in a soft voice. That was all he said for several long seconds, and then he leaned into my bed and stared at me. He studied my face long enough for me to feel uncomfortable. “At this point it’s not important for you to know why I am not burned,” he finally said. “Knowing won’t help you. But there are things that are important for you to know.” He waited for me to signal that I understood. I nodded. “I am a small cog in a vast machine that maintains balance.”
“Balance?” I whispered, and my sluggish brain conjured up an image of Adis standing on a large exercise ball. I think I may have chuckled.
“Balance,” he repeated. “Without balance there can be no free will. Without free will there can be no balance. We would be left with chaos.”
“So, by extension, you work to maintain free will and prevent chaos.” It took me almost a minute to work that out. “That’s very noble.” I wasn’t trying to be sarcastic, but in retrospect it probably sounded that way. “Who’s free will? Ours?”
“Everyone’s.” His face floated in front of me, which I know was only possible because I had been pumped full of more mind-altering drugs than were used at the last Grateful Dead concert.
“Well, thank you.” I was slipping into narcotic-induced frivolity and I tried to fight it. “So you run into burning buses and kill terrorists so we can choose between cable or network TV? What a lousy job.” His smiling face drifted in and out of focus. “Wait a minute. That’s not right.” The obvious contradiction energized my mind for a moment. “You interfered with those guys, those terrorists. You took away their free will.” In fact he had taken away more than just their free will.
“All for the greater good.”
“And helping Maggie Dale, that’s not for the greater good?” I thought that I had just scored a point.
“Until I know more, as I have already told you, it would be unwise for me to become involved.”
“Unwise,” I whispered dramatically, or as dramatically as a burned man high on narcotics wearing a breathing mask can be. “But it wasn’t unwise to run into that bus. You made that decision pretty quick.” I should have asked him how he knew to be there at that moment, but words were getting lost in my head. “Why aren’t you burned?” It dawned on me that he still hadn’t answered the original question.
“I have a duty, a purpose for being, and for the most part I have been given the tools to do it.”
“That’s why you don’t burn. You’re made of asbestos. The asbestos man.” I was really starting to slur my words as I began to sink back into the bed and oblivion. I fought to focus my thoughts. “How do you know . . .” I kept losing myself. “How do you know—” I really wanted an answer to this question, only I couldn’t get the words out “—who tells you when you can do . . .” That was as much of my thought that I could piece together.
“No one tells me,” he said simply.
I understood his words, but their implications were a little beyond my reach, so I asked the only question my slow brain could generate. “Are you God?”
He laughed loudly. Heartily. It was the same laugh I use when one of my children does or says something in complete innocence. He went on for a while, and I began to feel foolish and made a mental note to remind myself how this feels the next time the roles are reversed.
“Oh, goodness no.” He could barely get the words out. “This is a discussion we need to have when you are feeling better.” He smiled and shifted his position. “We do have an important matter to discuss.”
I nearly cut him off by telling him that Leah had taken care of everything, but for the moment couldn’t get my thoughts out fast enough.
He reached over the bed rail and took my bandaged hand. It should have hurt like hell, but all I felt was a tingling sensation (if I had been working I would have called it a paresthesia) that raced up my arm and into my brain. My eyes snapped open. In a millisecond I was awake and alert. “You need to listen to me now. This is important.”
“I’m listening.” My voice was unnaturally strong for my current condition. I was more than listening; it was as if a recorder had been turned on in my brain.
“I have to stay here in Austin.” He spoke in short sentences that were easily digested. His face looked as if it were made of granit
e. “I can’t go to New Mexico. Not even for a short time. Leah and your children must stay here.” He let go of my hand and I suddenly felt unplugged, but I understood not only what he had said, but what he had left unsaid.
“All right.” I felt somewhat hypnotized. Hypnotized, but afraid. His face began to soften back into Adis-the-grandfather, and a wave of exhaustion washed over me
“These recent events, the high school, the kidnapping, the bus . . .” He paused as he struggled to find the right words. “They are just the beginning. Somehow you and your family have become a focal point for something that remains undefined.” This was the first time that I had ever seen Adis look truly worried. “If your family leaves, the situation will become more complicated. More unpredictable.” He stood, and I was flagging so badly that I couldn’t tell if he actually spoke those words aloud or inserted them directly into my brain.
“Okay,” I said, in a voice that would surely warrant a field sobriety test had I been driving.
“Sleep now. I will see you again soon.” He walked to the door and opened it. I saw an Imperial Guard that stood at least twelve feet tall guarding my room. In his mechanical voice he wished Adis a good night, and the door closed. “But I really don’t like Star Wars,” I said to myself.
Chapter Ten