The Walking Man (15 page)

"No way," I said. "He doesn't care about your weather lady thing. He's got bigger fish to fry. Two Hail Marys."

Next up in my booth was another young man; he sounded like the prior confessor. He told me he was very upset because he recently called his mother a bitch because she was hassling him about his homework. His confession brought back my bad memories, so, instead of forgiving him, I gave him a lecture. "I once called my mother something worse than a bitch," I said. "She died a few hours later. It's my biggest regret in my life."

"Really, Father?" the young confessor said.

"Really," I said. "Big sin. Your penance is to apologize to your mother, and then tell her you love her once a day for the rest of your life."

"But, Father," the boy protested.

"No, buts," I proclaimed in my best God-like voice.

I loved being a priest.

My fourth confessor was a woman.

"Bless me, Father for I have sinned," she whispered. "It's been one month since my last confession and here are my sins." She sounded familiar. My brain went back in time and confirmed what my heart already knew. It was Maria. I'd just heard the confessions of her two boys.

I hated the thought of tricking Maria, but I had to play it out. Running away not being an option, I adopted a James Earl Jones voice and played God.

"Father," Maria said. "I hate my husband. I know it's a sin to hate somebody. But I hate him. I hate the air he exhales. I hate the ground he walks on. I hate everything about him. I even hate the way he brushes his teeth. He's a foul-mouthed drunk, and worse."

It killed me to hear Maria's words.

"Has he hurt you?" I asked.

"No, he did once a long time ago, but he got his nose flattened. He's fundamentally a coward. I hate that about him, too."

"Do you want to divorce him?"

"Yes," Maria said. "But as you know, being a Catholic, I can't. Besides, we have two boys. They're great, and they love their father—I think."

"Stupid rules."

"Pardon me, Father?"

"Nothing," I said. I couldn't handle it. I had to get Maria out of my confessional.

"In the name of Jesus, your sins are forgiven," I declared.

"What about my penance?"

"Living with your husband is penance enough," I said, sounding slightly more severe than Darth Vader. "Hang in there. I promise you; soon you will live in happiness again. Help is on the way."

"You think so?"

"I know so."

"God bless you, Father," Maria said.

I couldn't respond.

As soon as Maria exited, Smitty emerged and removed me from the confessional. One elderly parishioner witnessed the transfer, but she said nothing.

"Father Frank will be returning shortly," Smitty told her. "Father Able Body is needed at an exorcism."

"I understand," the woman said. "The devil never rests."

I was pissed off. I loved hearing Maria's voice but deplored the ruse that facilitated our conversation. And I was worried that I wouldn't be able to keep the promise I just made.

"Smitty, as soon as I cure myself, I'm going to choke you to death."

"Just reminding you that she's out there."

"And Father Frank?" I asked.

"He's currently giving Rodrigo the last rites."

"Rodrigo?"

"Don't worry," Smitty said. "He's going to be all right. Just gas. I heard he overdosed on Ex-Lax."

~ ~ ~

I'd never considered Smitty to be a manipulator prior to his confession ruse. It took me days to calm down and a month to forgive him. Smitty justified his action by telling me he was "not going to let my best friend abandon his dream." As always, his heart was in the right place.

Hearing Maria's sad whispers generated an unprecedented level of determination within my being. I had decided to walk again, or die trying. I went all in on finding a cure. The process cost me another ten pounds of ass, a million dollar tab at Seymour Giff's lab, and required Melvin, of Melvin's Anti-Venom Lab and Delicatessen, to buy three more horses…

After considering all options, I'd decided to adopt the best-known method for producing breakthrough drugs…luck.

In my case, luck involved filling assay trays with Muscle Soup and potential "cleaving agents," i.e., materials potentially capable of breaking the bond between Betty and my nerve cells. Each of my assay trays held one hundred quarter ounce samples. Half of each sample was Muscle Soup, the other half was a reactant semi-randomly selected based upon my ever-increasing knowledge of biochemistry, which continually informed me my odds of success were north of a zillion to one.

For the next five years, once a week I sent an assay tray to Melvin, one hundred samples a week, fifty-two weeks a year. You do the math. In return, every week one hundred vials of potentially curative Anti-me arrived at Room 302. On average, I did fifteen trial injections a day. I was a human pincushion. Rodrigo called me "the guinea pig, the guinea pig."

My break came when an author named Billy Grist appeared on the
Today Show
. Billy Grist was a world-renowned advice guru. He was also Apple's most famous son. He was on "air" promoting the thirteenth edition of his Bible,
Face Value.
Grist was a strange character.
Face Value
was the product of his twenty-year quest to unite mankind within a "pyramid of love." The book was filled with what he called "great truths." Billy Grist was known to offer advice on virtually any topic from home repair to relationships. He was famous for his keen insights, which were often presented in unjustified and terse sentences, for example: "The value of a lamp is inversely proportional to its price."

During the interview, Grist calmly asserted his claims while Matt Lauer attacked.

"Billy, in
Face Value
you claim Jesus was a nice man who ran his mouth and got himself killed, but not the son of God."

"That is correct, Matt."

"How can you proclaim that to be a great truth?" journalist Lauer asked him.

"Isn't it obvious?" Grist said. "If Jesus was the Son of God, he would have invented the internet, or at least indoor plumbing."

Nothing Matt Lauer could say ruffled the ultra-calm and confident advice guru, who had just added a new chapter to
Face Value
on the topic of diet, in which he made numerous claims against the food and beverage industries.

"In the latest edition of
Face Value
, you claim Diet Coke is poison," the uncharacteristically serious Mr. Lauer posited; after all, the world's leading advertiser was under attack.

"I didn't say Diet Coke was poison," Grist flatly stated. "I said Diet Coke was an addictive neurotoxin and a perfectly terrible way to flavor a perfectly innocent glass of water."

Diet Coke. Grist's words infiltrated my knowledge base and fished out the word: Aspartame. The artificial sweetener long rumored to cause neurologic disorders such as epileptic seizures, muscle weakness, and vision problems. I immediately postulated that the amino acids associated with Aspartame had the potential to bring about the chemical reaction I was seeking. I sent Rodrigo to the Coke machine down the hallway and then we prepared a solo sample of Anti-me that I identified as version twenty six thousand, two hundred ninety-three.

Seven days after I shipped my Diet Coke Muscle Soup to Africa, the resultant Anti-me arrived at Room 302, one half ounce vial, just enough for a single injection. As usual, the vial was accompanied by a good luck note from Melvin; also attached was an invoice. Rodrigo did the injection; his price, due to a volume discount I negotiated earlier in the year, had been reduced to $10 per shot.

Rodrigo injected me in my stomach. Immediately upon receiving the shot, a weird burning sensation spread across my abdomen, like a billion tiny balloons popping. Within twenty minutes, the sensation had spread across my entire body. Minutes later, when the burning stopped, I could feel every muscle in my body.

I was cured.

The return of my nerves was accompanied by an overwhelming desire to contact Maria, but I resisted the urge, because I still couldn't move. Forty years of immobility had atrophied my muscles to the point of dysfunction. I could feel them, but I couldn’t move them. I asked Nurse Judy II to summon Smitty to my room. When I gave Smitty the news, he cried like a little girl. No man ever had a greater friend.

Since the hospital employed numerous Shyshirites, I feared Maria would learn of my "miracle" indirectly if I proclaimed my good fortune to the world, so I hid my recovery from the hospital's staff. The last thing in the world I wanted was a visit from Gabrielle Smickers and fifteen minutes of fame generated by the tagline
Forty year Quad Walks!
.

Hiding my cure was difficult. I couldn't move but I could feel, so when the nearsighted Nurse Judy II struggled to insert my catheter, I bit holes in my tongue instead of screaming, and when the bath water was too hot, I hummed
The Battle Hymn of the Republic
.

I began my covert physical therapy by sending Smitty to a medical supply store in Boston to procure a specialized device for restoring pinky flexibility. The contraption used an exoskeleton attached to a solenoid (a small piston) to gently and repeatedly bend my little finger back and forth. The unit exercised my finger fifty times a minute. I wore the device for three hours a night. After a month, I could voluntarily curl my little finger. From there on in, it was just a matter of work and time. Within four months, I could type my name on my iPad using all five fingers on my right hand. I repeated the process with my left hand and was soon typing thirty words a minute, not secretarial speed, but good enough to operate my iPhone to order my next generation of exercise equipment.

Getting my arms to move was my next great challenge. I began by squeezing squishy balls until my forearms were powerful enough to clap my hands together, a movement I used to the keep the beat to a variety of Latin Songs that accompanied my favorite exercise video,
Chacha Crazy
.

As my upper torso became toned, my body started to thrive. In less than sixty days, my abdomen exercises produced a ripped gut and my barbell work produced pecs and biceps capable of moving me along a set of parallel bars I had installed in Smitty's living room.

It wasn't long before my apparent fitness attracted unwanted attention. Dr. Bonjour, no doubt having heard about my mysterious new body, stuck his head in Room 302 on more than one occasion, and I noticed Nurse Judy II began acting strange. It started with gentle body rolls. Then, she began adding perfumed oil to my bath water, and stopped eeking when my penis stood at attention. Worse, I began to look at Nurse Judy II differently. I wasn't attracted to her, but I did notice she had a substantial mustache and more than one unattractive mole.

Soon, inspired by fear of molestation, with my upper-body already chiseled enough to support its own weight, I began working on my legs. I started with round the clock knee bending followed by thousands of simple leg lifts. Within a month, I was standing and in another twenty days I could take five wobbly steps without falling down. At long last, I was a walking man.

As my walking improved, I began making preparations for my departure. I worked on my fine motor skills until I could sign my name and use a set of tweezers to remove a nose hair. I then opened a bank account at Shyshire Savings Bank and gave Rodrigo half a million to buy me a home. My only guidance being the house had to be located in Shyshire and come with a closet full of shoes.

My plan was to simply get out of bed on the fortieth anniversary of my arrival at Leicester County Hospital and walk away, but then something unexpected happened. On my last night at the hospital, after I'd completed my latest exercise regimen, lifting twenty-five pound weights with each arm while jogging in place, one of my computers issued an alarm. I had an unexpected visitor.

In response to the alarm, I put myself to bed, closed my eyes and pretended to be sleeping. Within minutes, I heard my door open and the short breaths of an older man. It was two o'clock in the morning; my visitor was Dr. Bonjour. He had his famous pillow in hand. I let Bonjour get less than a foot away from me and raise his lethal weapon above my face before I acted. To say the least, the good doctor was surprised when I grabbed his wrist and twisted until his elbow was dislocated.

"Gee, that's gotta hurt," I said as I sat up.

Dr. Bonjour was in his seventies, but still smart enough to use whatever good reason he still possessed not to flee, or fight, for I would have beaten him within an inch of his life.

Bonjour was shocked, and said nothing but, "Hmmmm."

"Good evening, Doctor," I said. "In case you were wondering, I've been tracking your car for years. I had my men put a bug in it. GPS is a wonderful thing. I noticed you like cruising highway rest areas at two in the morning—naughty Dr. Bonjour."

Bonjour continued to keep his mouth shut.

"When your car gets within a mile of the hospital a little buzzer goes off on my favorite iMac. Isn't technology amazing?—So how many of us did you kill, Bonjour?"

"I never killed, I just fulfilled my patients' wishes," Bonjour said.

"Sorry, but I don't recall submitting a suicide request."

"You're an exception," Bonjour said. "You know too much."

"Hmm," I said. "I guess you were right. People that can't move think more."

"Hmmm," the doctor said. "You have quite a memory."

"I do."

"Deal?"

"No deals," I said. "Tonight, you are going to leave Leicester County Hospital and never return, or you'll be facing multiple murder charges. Understood?"

Dr. Bonjour hung his head and then said, "Understood."

"Very good."

"They wanted to die," Bonjour repeated. "I was just helping them out. Arthur Slank was a tortured soul."

"Maybe so," I said. "But the last time I checked, you weren't listed as God in the Hospital Directory."

"No, I suppose I'm not," he admitted.

"How many?" I repeated.

"Only five," Dr. Bonjour confided. "One more depressed than the next."