“Thank you,” Allison said to the nurse; then with a nod of assurance she whispered, “You can go now.” Maybe it was the pain that distracted her, but whatever the reason, Allison finally felt brave enough to be alone with Vicky. The nurse departed.
“We’re a real pair,” Allison said to Vicky as she tried to sit up straight and take a deep breath.
“Cracked rib,” Vicky said with a deliberate look, a look meant to communicate something though Allison wasn’t sure just what. “Sorry,” Vicky said, seeming to use every ounce of energy to get the idea across. Vicky was in there and this seemed to be an intentional apology. She was fighting now, fighting to get back to the conscious world of thought and awareness, like someone trying desperately to stay awake during a boring lecture, or even more urgent, behind the wheel after highway hypnosis sets in.
“Frank told you we were in the accident, didn’t he?” Allison said, still uncertain if Vicky even recognized her.
“Yes,” Vicky strained to get the words out.
“I think you’re trying to tell me you’re sorry. Am I right?”
“Yes.”
The humane side of Allison was stirred, the part of her that in her youthful naiveté used to pull for the underdog. But pity was not the only emotion tugging at her. The same buried resentment, as rotting and festering as her dead dreams, kept trying to claw its way out of its grave, like some undead ghoul from a B horror movie. She tried to keep it down but it was an unusually strong and vengeful monster.
Sure it was about her personal history with Vicky, but there was also a deep-seated, more justified anger for anyone like Vicky who had allowed their lives to become such a mess without taking any responsibility. These people were the parasites of society and it made her furious that Vicky allowed herself to become such a person. Vicky had probably exhausted the resources of every charitable organization in this city. She knew Vicky just enough to know how this sickness had most likely progressed. She used and abused the system, she lied and she conned everyone who came across her path, with her good intentions and resolve for change weakening with each passing day until only a self-serving instinct for survival remained.
Yet still Vicky suffered. Was it right to kick her while she was down already? The two conflicting emotions wrestled with one another over the excruciatingly slow seconds that followed, while Vicky lay silent and waiting. The internal wrestling match had been going on since that night in the emergency room when Allison first realized it was Vicky in the alcove next to her.
What the hell, Allison reasoned, as her eyes burned and her throat tightened into a hard knot of resolve. Her zombie monster could use a little airing out.
“You always thought you could get off just by saying you were sorry. How dare you, Vicky!” Allison’s words erupted through a sudden unrestrained burst of tears. “It’s not enough for you to ruin your own life, but you have to go and spread all your hurt and misery to others.
“I suppose I could forgive you for ruining my wedding day, for publicly humiliating me and making me out to be the evil other woman who stole your man when you know damn good and well there was never anything between Frank and me until after you left. I guess I could forgive you for casting a pall over the first weeks, no months of my marriage, so that all I could do was doubt Frank’s love for me, forgetting the fact that it was you who left Frank, not Frank who left you. So after you just walk out on him with nothing left behind but a note stuck under his door, without even the guts to explain face to face, who do you think was there to pick up the shattered pieces? Huh Vicky? Who? I was. So he turns to me for comfort and friendship and you take offense to that? He falls in love with me after you drop him like a hot potato and you’re so freaking shocked by that? How dare he try to move on with his life and forget about you? It was always about you, wasn’t it?” Allison paused a moment, and looking at Vicky she wondered if she was taking any of this in. She wondered if it was wise to continue but felt as if all this venting was like a lid that finally blew off due to the build up of too much pressure. There was no way to put the lid back on.
“Yeah, I guess I forgive you for planting doubts in me, doubts that have lasted our whole marriage, doubts that contributed to the break-up of our marriage. Yeah, okay, let’s forget about that. But how am I supposed to forgive you for jeopardizing my life and the life of my son, not to mention all those other people? Did you know my fifteen year-old son who just got his permit was the one driving? For God’s sake, he could have been killed!
“You did it to yourself, Vicky. It’s hard to feel sympathy for someone who did this to themselves.”
“Sorry,” Vicky said, her face dull and expressionless.
Allison’s humane side made a brief appearance again and tried to reason this out. Why was she so angry anyway? Why should she take the self-destruction of this poor pitiful person she didn’t even know anymore so personally? True, they had been friends once but that was so long ago. Their acquaintance hadn’t been a long one really, just a little over a year. What did Vicky have to do with her now? The savage side just wanted to finish her off! Put her out of her misery! It was the same terrible violent instinct to strike back, to punish, to teach a lesson to that she so often got with her kids when they pushed her too far. It was wild and fierce. It was the same instinct that caused people to abuse their children… but of course Allison never acted on it because she was educated, civilized, and self-controlled–not like the Vickys of this world. If she could’ve screamed she would have. If she could’ve shaken Vicky out of her lethargy she’d do it. But all she could do was cry.
Glancing at her watch, she saw she didn’t have much time before she needed to leave. She couldn’t leave yet, not with everything so unsettled like it was. What to do? What to say? How to bring some resolution to this fruitless mission? It was becoming both painful and awkward to look at Vicky’s dull face which seemed to communicate nothing.
But then Allison noticed. Vicky was trying to lift her arm, which may as well have had lead weights on it considering the strain and effort invested in this simple act.
Allison said her name and Vicky responded with a guttural noise. Yes, she was definitely trying to tell her something, but what? Vicky turned her head to face the opposite wall, and with one last focused exertion, she lifted her arm again and pointed with a shaking index finger to the wall for just a moment before letting the weak appendage drop with a thud.
“Are you pointing to something?” Allison asked. Vicky muttered something which Allison could only interpret as an affirmative response.
Allison looked at the wall opposite them and her eyes fell on the only possible object that Vicky might be pointing to. It was a crucifix.
Oh, that’s right, this is a Catholic hospital, Allison mused. Catholics are so gory! Just what all the patients and their families want to look at; someone affixed with nails to a wooden cross, bleeding from head to toe, hanging there half naked, just waiting to die.
“Are you pointing to the cross?” Allison asked Vicky.
“Yes. Pray,” Vicky uttered through strained words.
“You want me to pray for you?” Allison asked.
Vicky said nothing. Her gaze was transfixed. Allison didn’t know what else to do but sit and stare at the wall too. Maybe in the silence something would come to her to say that might bring about some closure to this botched visit. She looked at the crucifix and thought what a cleaned up depiction of the truth it probably was.
*****
Allison had been educated on the gruesome realities of crucifixion. Not that she ever wanted to be. The first time was in college; some professor got on the topic. What was that class? World History or Civilizations maybe? Or was it an Anthropology class? They were studying the Roman Empire. Somehow it came up; the cruel and barbaric forms of corporal punishment and execution the Romans employed. She learned that crucifixion was one of the most torturous and prolonged forms of execution. The word excruciating, in fact, comes from crucifixion
. She learned that in the class. She also learned that suffocation is what typically killed the condemned. She remembered her professor explaining that the “Y” position into which the arms were stretched expanded the chest and ribcage in such a way that the victim was only able to inhale. In order to exhale the victim had to push up from the feet, bringing the arms into a “T” position. This could go on for days, depending upon the strength of the condemned until finally shock and exhaustion made it too difficult to push up any longer. If the executioners decided to be merciful and speed up the process, they simply broke the condemned’s legs so pushing up was no longer an option. Death came quickly at that point.
That was what she learned in college and she hadn’t given it much more thought until one night last spring shortly after she and Frank separated. Alex was alone in his room with the TV on. He’d been so quiet for such a long time that Allison thought she better poke her head in the door and check on him, just to see what he was watching. Not that her so-called supervision did any good. The quantity and quality of her children’s television viewing had become a battle she just didn’t have the energy to fight since the separation. But she had an eerie feeling this particular night that he must be watching something particularly bad for him to be in there for such a long time with the door closed, so quiet and so engrossed.
She knocked gently on the door, stuck her head in, and much to her surprise, there was Alex, absorbed in some program about the crucifixion of Jesus on the history or science channel. Allison noticed there were a lot of Jesus documentaries on this time of year with Passover and Easter rapidly approaching. She didn’t think much of it and it certainly never piqued her interest, but never in a million years did she think something of such a religious nature would interest Alex. She wondered for a moment if he was on drugs. Even more astonishing was his response when he finally noticed her there at the door. He didn’t snarl at her or make some smart-mouthed sarcastic comment as she fully expected. He said, “Mom, you gotta see this. It’s really cool!”
What? Was he actually giving her permission to enter the inner sanctum? Stunned at first, she tentatively entered, stepping over a pile of dirty clothes which she was tempted to say something about but her better judgment told her not to. She cleared some clothes and papers from the end corner of his bed and sat down.
“Are you all right?” Allison asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said quickly turning his attention back to the screen. He didn’t seem to be under the influence of anything.
A scientist was pointing to a diagram of the muscular skeletal system and speaking in medical jargon that Allison couldn’t quite get her head wrapped around. Then the narrator’s voice came on explaining about scourging with an illustration of a man tied to a pole being whipped.
“Eech! I don’t like this violent stuff” Allison said.
“No, Mom, you gotta see it,” Alex said.
Well, here it was, she thought, an opportunity to make up for all the times she’d been too busy or disinterested to play pitch and catch or a video game or cards with him. He was a teenager now so she didn’t think she would ever have that chance again. But here it was! He had placed his dark adolescent self-absorbed cynicism aside for the moment and invited her into this small space where interest, good cheer, and perhaps even a little hope still lived.
“I didn’t know you still liked science,” Allison said.
“What made you think that?”
“I don’t know,” Allison said still reeling from the pleasant surprise of it all.
Science was his favorite subject until he lost interest in school completely. When he was little he used to say he wanted to be a doctor. The first present that he ever really wanted for Christmas was a little pretend medical kit. So if this was the one place where they could connect, she would try to make up for all those lost times and sit patiently on the end of his bed and watch this boring documentary.
“What exactly is this program about?”
“How Christ died; like the medical cause of death,” Alex said.
Why in the heck does it matter, Allison wanted to say but knew better, not daring to dampen Alex’s enthusiasm.
Next they showed an example of a whip the Romans used to scourge their prisoners. It consisted of long strips of leather with metal balls, sharp pieces of bone, and sometimes jagged bits of wood sewn into them. Flogging was often a preliminary to crucifixion. It was designed to lacerate and rip the skin open, usually resulting in ruptured blood vessels and veins which subsequently led to blood loss and dehydration, leaving the victim in a pre-shock state. The maximum was thirty-nine lashes, forty, it being said, was enough to kill a man. Indeed, the scourging in itself did often kill the victim. The narrator said that Jesus felt the pain more acutely than normal because of what he endured the night before.
“What did he endure the night before that made it worse,” Allison asked.
“Oh, yeah, you missed it. He sweat blood when he was praying in the garden,” Alex explained. “That’s actually a medical condition brought about by severe stress. The capillary blood vessels rupture and drops of blood mix with sweat.
“You’re kidding?”
“No, seriously! He must’ve known it was coming and he was totally freaked. Anyway, whatever that condition’s called, the sweating blood thing; it makes your skin real sensitive afterwards.”
“Wow, that’s…”
“Shh, I wanna hear this,” Alex said.
The narrator went on to explain about Jesus’ second beating, this time from the bare hands of the Roman soldiers who spit on him, mocked him pulled chunks of his beard out, and placed a crown of thorns on his head. Then they struck him on the head with a reed, driving the thorns deeper into his skull. The robe they placed around his shoulders to represent mock kingship, only served to rub against and reopen the scourge wounds on his back, resulting in more pain and more blood loss.
The documentary consisted of comments by medical experts and scientists, interlaced with sweeping panoramic views of current holy sites in Jerusalem, lots of dramatic narrative with plenty of scripture quotes and stirring background music.
They went on about his long and exhausting walk to the execution site carrying the horizontal beam of the crucifix across his shoulders. They told about the nails, seven to nine inches in length and filed to a point which were driven through the median nerve of the wrists, a pain described like that of hitting the funny bone only intensified in magnitude and constant. Then the feet contorted to a 45 degree angle and nailed to the vertical beam, more pain as an artery in the foot is pierced, the spike hitting against the tarsal bones of the feet every time he pushed up to exhale, the scourge wounds reopened and splintered each time his back rubbed against the rough wood of the cross.
“Ooooh!” Allison winced and shivered, trying to regain an objective scientific view of the program, but the part about the nails through the wrist got to her in a way that she could almost feel the pain if she thought about it long enough.
“Harsh dude! You know the band Nine Inch Nails got their name from that?” Alex said.
“How interesting! If I run out of the room suddenly, it’s because I have to go throw up.”
“Not you, Mom. You got a strong stomach. Remember that time I had to go to the emergency room?”
“Which time was that?”
“When I bashed my head against the wall and cracked my head open.”
“I remember.”
“I was totally whack from the sight of all that blood, but you were, like, so calm. You kept me from passing out.”
“I did?”
“Yeah, remember, you kept talking to me, saying ‘Stay with me, Al. Stay with me!’, slapping my cheeks, and fanning me so I wouldn’t go unconscious.”
“I guess I am pretty brave when I have to be. It’s just that part about the funny bone pain that got to me.”
Two medical experts gave their opinions about the actual cause of Christ’s death. They a
greed that his death after only three to six hours on the cross came more quickly than most who were crucified. All indications would suggest that Jesus, a man in his early thirties who traveled all around the countryside by foot was probably in very good physical condition before his arrest the night before. The fact that he was able to talk right up to the end, seemed to indicate his death was not solely due to asphyxiation. The one doctor said it was a combination of shock, blood loss, dehydration, and exhaustion, resulting in heart failure. The other expert said it was due to a cardiac rupture where a blood clot in the heart bursts, noting that the victims of cardiac rupture cry out in a loud voice, become unconscious then die, exactly what Jesus was said to have done in scripture.
They each argued their case based on the blood and water flow from Jesus’ side after the Roman soldier pierced him; the water being a build up of fluid in the lungs and the sac around the heart; the blood from the right ventricle of the heart or leaking of the blood into the pericardial sac if it was a rupture. Although both experts had their opinion, nobody knows for sure which side he was pierced on and which flowed first, the blood or the water. If more of these details were known then the exact cause of death could be determined more readily. They both agreed that the suffering leading up to the final moment must’ve been quite great to have hastened his death so quickly.
“This guy definitely seems more religious,” Allison said of the doctor who argued in favor of the cardiac rupture as cause of death. He said it was the weight of everyone’s sins which Christ bore that weakened his heart.
The other doctor had a much more pragmatic view. He said there was no doubt Christ knew his fate was determined, judging from his agony the night before when he sweat blood. This condition weakened him considerably, making him more prone to hypovolemic shock and exhaustion.
“You know these shows are so frustrating,” Allison said. “They just give you enough information to make you wonder what really happened then they leave you hanging with nobody really knowing for sure. But I guess that really wasn’t the point.” The program was over and Alex did an unusual thing. He hit the mute button on the remote.
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