Tunnel Vision (5 page)

7

On the evening of the twenty-second day, Damian and Anthony stopped by the hospital. They had been back a few more times since the prayer incident, for which Maggie had apologized. And being the gentleman that he was, Damian said he had no hard feelings. He had even brought her a bouquet of flowers.

Zack was still breathing on his own, with his vital signs holding normal. But he was still at level two.

They chatted for a while. Maggie asked how they were doing in school, then told them how physical therapists came in daily to exercise Zack’s arms, legs, and feet and how she helped. Anthony was in the middle of a funny story about something that happened at the local mall when Zack suddenly rolled his head and made a strange cawing sound.

“Omigod!” Maggie cried out. Instantly she was on her feet and gripping his hand. “Zack! Wake up. Wake up.”

“He’s saying something!” Anthony said.

“He’s breaking through,” Damian said.

“Zack! Zack, wake up!” Maggie cried. “It’s Mom. Please, honey. Open your eyes.”

Zack’s mouth moved as guttural sounds rose from his throat—the first sounds he had made in three weeks. “Get the nurse,” Maggie said to Anthony, who bolted from the room. She rubbed Zack’s hand. “Zack, it’s Mom. Wake up!”

“His eyes are moving,” Damian said. “I think he’s trying to open them.”

“Zack! Open your eyes. You can do it. Open your eyes.”

While she continued coaxing him, Zack’s eyes rolled under his lids as if he were having an intense dream. But he didn’t open them, just kept muttering nonsense syllables.

A few moments later, Anthony returned with a nurse and an aide. The nurse began to rub Zack’s cheek. “Zack, it’s Beth Howard, your nurse. Talk to me, Zack. Talk to me. Open your eyes.”

Zack winced as if registering her voice. He continued muttering unintelligible sounds, but he didn’t open his eyes. “Zack, it’s Mom. Wake up. Please.”

“What’s he saying?” Anthony asked Damian.

Damian didn’t respond but stood transfixed, studying Zack’s face.

“Whatever it is, it’s a good sign,” said the nurse. The aide agreed, her cell phone in her hand presumably to call the resident. “Hey, Zack, your mom’s here. So are Anthony and Damian. Time to wake up. You can do it. Open your eyes.”

More mutterings from Zack as his head rolled slightly on the pillow. Maggie put her ear close to his mouth as he continued muttering strange syllables. “He’s saying something. He’s saying words.”

“Does he know a foreign language?” the nurse asked.

“He took a year of Spanish, but that’s not what it sounds like.”

Anthony leaned over Zack. “Hey, bro, it’s Anthony. Come out of there. We got some partying to do.”

But Zack made no response to the promptings, just continued muttering.

“It’s just gibberish,” Anthony said. “I do that when I sleep, too.”

“No, it’s not,” Damian whispered. “He’s speaking in tongues.”

“Tongues. What’s that?” Anthony asked.

“Glossolalia.”

“Glossowhat?”

“Glossolalia,” Damian said in a voice barely audible. “The Holy Spirit is speaking through him.”

“Cut the crap,” Anthony said as the nurse’s aide gawked at Zack. “It’s nothing.”

Damian nodded and fell silent.

Through a broken voice, Maggie continued to beg Zack to wake up, but after several minutes he fell silent again.

And anguish raked through her soul as Zack’s mouth stopped moving and his eyes fell still and he sank back into a deep sleep.

Although there were no changes in him, the nurse said it was a good sign that he tried to talk, tried to break through. There would be another time.

She and the aide replaced his IV and checked the monitors. Then the others resumed their vigil around Zack in his coma as acceptance settled over them like snow.

“False alarm,” the nurse said, and left the room.

8

No false alarm. He could hear voices.

His first thought was that he was dreaming. That he was in bed in his apartment, and faceless people were in his room telling him it was time to get up and go to class, to work on his thesis—his deadline was closing in—to get a job, to stop gambling …

Voices. Lots of them, some he recognized. His mother. Aunt Kate. Anthony. Damian. Geoff. Beth Howard, his nurse. Also voices he didn’t recognize telling him dumb stuff like to wiggle his toes and squeeze their fingers and open his eyes. He tried to tell them that he was stuck in a foolish dream, that he’d wake soon and get hustling.

But as in all dreams, he had no control. He could hear them but couldn’t respond. Couldn’t open his eyes. Couldn’t move. It was as if he had become afflicted with some kind of paralysis. But that happened in dreams, like his legs freezing when he was being chased. He couldn’t just shake himself awake. And just as weird was how things moved in dreams, how the familiar world took on non-Cartesian logic, non-Euclidian geometry, and how gravity could be suspended.

Like the snap of a finger, he found himself bodiless and floating above his bed—

no, not his bed, not the one in his apartment, with the blue paisley spread his mother had bought, but a bed all in white in a strange room with colorless walls and IVs dripping and flickering, beeping machines—

and all those people were standing around him making demands. He could see them. And he could see himself in the bed, but from above, as if he were some kind of ectoplasm hovering in the air, and below was himself: dead asleep, eyes shut, face colorless and shrunken, head roughly shaven and cocked on a pillow, arms gaunt and limp by his sides, with tubes and wires running from them and his gut to drips and bags and monitors like so many umbilical cords.

A hospital room, of course. He was asleep in a hospital room for unknown reasons.

And his mother was holding his hand and weeping. Also Anthony—a big guy with pecs like gladiator plates and biceps like muskmelons, fidgeting over his bedridden pal—and beside him Geoff, whose big toothy grin and exuberant face had given way to a solemn mask as he, too, beheld the sleeping figure. And Damian—pale, lean, angular Damian with that sincere ascetic face and premature bald spot, looking like a monk in a medieval painting before the reposed figure in sainthood.

“Glossowhat?”

“Gibberish.”

Anthony. He recognized the voice, but the view outside was wrong. Nothing lay beyond the window. No buildings, no grasslands, no river, no woods—as if fog had clotted the view. Then someone in a low voice said,
“This is good. Right here.”
The next moment, the wind blew sand in his face, filling his eyes and mouth. And his chest felt as if something were threatening to press the life out of him.

Can’t breathe. Can’t breathe, and mouth filling.

“Open your eyes. Open your eyes.”

Can’t. Got sand in them. Can’t breathe. Chest crushed. Heart’s stopped.

Why was this happening? What did they want from him?

Then the lights went on and they were all around him, dressed like picture cards—jacks and kings and queens, black and red, spots all over them—as if he were being hauled away by creatures from some Lewis Carroll looking-glass world. And one jack raised his spade and brought it down full force onto his face, disintegrating into granules that filled his eyes, mouth, and ears. And all went black.

It’s God’s punishment.

He floated above the scene and could see the bloody knob of his head, a broken bicycle on the street, lights, and people swarmed around the twisted body in the gutter.

“Wake up. Please wake up.”

His mother. She was calling to him over the vast expanse. She wanted him to open his eyes. But every time he did, they would fill with sand.

Then he found himself alone again, moving down a gauzy, featureless corridor. But, strangely, he couldn’t feel his feet or solid ground under his shoes (a bright white pair of Nikes!). Yet he was moving through a dim tunnel as if traversing some realm between consciousness and unconsciousness—or maybe this world and the next. As he moved toward the light, he became aware of how totally alone he was. No more voices, no more people, no more sense of his family and friends by his side. Alone in this funnel of mist.

Then that changed.

Suddenly he became aware of another’s presence—as if someone had sidled up to him. He looked around but saw no one, just the gray nothingness. Yet he knew in his heart of hearts that someone else was near him just beyond the threshold of perception.

As he proceeded, he heard a voice, a familiar voice, saying something in a language he couldn’t decipher. And it was coming from the bright end ahead of him. He picked up his pace, and the harder he listened, the more familiar the voice sounded, but the words were meaningless.

As the light got brighter, he stirred, feeling the softness of the bed beneath him. Summoning every fiber of will, he forced open his eyes. Caked with matter, they cracked open to the light. Bright white light. White walls. White ceiling. White sheets. The impressions of his legs running down the length of the bed. Tubes. Wires, beeps. The same hospital room, of course. And with a burst of air he woke himself up.

“Dad?”

The room was empty. Soundless but for the muffled beeps of machines. But the single syllable resonated in his ears. Alone, he closed his eyes to get back. A moment later, he slipped back into the tunnel, now lost in darkness.

False alarm.

9

On the third day, Roman Pace returned to St. Pius Church just outside of Providence. He had no idea why he had been asked to return for his penance or to further confer with the priest. But he feared a setup.

It was a Tuesday morning, and he showed up two hours early. The church parking lot was empty, and so were the few cars parked on the street of the residential neighborhood. He drove around the block several times, finally convinced that cops weren’t staked out anywhere. He entered the church fifteen minutes before ten. The interior was empty, and two candles burned up front. The only other light streamed through the stained-glass windows.

He walked the full length of the nave to be certain that he was alone. No one, not even the priest, was in sight. He went outside again and saw nobody. And the sixth sense that years in his trade had honed did not alert him to an ambush. When satisfied, he went back inside and entered the confessional to wait for the priest. Even if police were staked out, he had not incriminated himself.

He carried no weapon. In fact, he had not carried one since his last kill. That was four months ago, when he had suffered a heart attack and decided to give up contract work. Yes, he missed the money because the recession had hurt his auto body business as people stopped coming in with dings, dents, and fender benders. Furthermore, as an independent, he could not compete with chains that cut pricing deals with insurance companies. Nearing his fifty-second year, he reminded himself, while sitting in the confessional, that his father had died of a coronary thrombosis at fifty-five and his mother a year later of a stroke.

What had brought him to this booth the other day was his reaching out to God. Lying in that hospital bed four months ago and fearing he was going to die, he had sent up a prayer from the bottom of his soul that he would give up the killing if God would spare his life. The next night, he could have sworn that Jesus had appeared to him. It was probably just a dream, because he looked like the Jesus in the picture his mother had on her bureau—a tall figure in white standing on a hillside with people gathered around his feet, listening. And beneath it the Ninety-first Psalm. He could still recall the words:

He shall call upon me, and I will answer him:

I will be with him in trouble;

I will deliver him, and honor him.

With long life will I satisfy him,

And show him my salvation.

But as Roman sat in the dim light waiting for the priest, he recalled the promise of those words and the bargain he had made. He had fully recovered, certain in the belief that God had answered his prayer and forgiven him. Certain that while he lay in his hospital bed, God had visited him like one of the guys from the body shop or softball team. And he knew because he could feel something happen inside his soul—something that told him that God was real. And that God had actually loved him enough to have intervened, telling him,
You still have some work to do, so let me help clean you up.

A little after ten, Roman heard someone enter the other side. Because of the low light and screen, he couldn’t see the profile of Father Callahan.

“Good morning, my son.”

“Good morning, Father,” Roman said. Then he began: “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” The words tumbled out of his mouth like gravel. It was the second time in forty years he had uttered them.