by Ted Dekker
She suddenly understood. He was still trapped in his illusion, in a dark room. It was both strangely sad and absurd at once. The poor boy was lost in his suffering, groping in the darkness.
The human condition: lost in thought.
She crossed the room and reached for his hand. “It’s okay, Austin. It’s just an illusion.”
His fingers were trembling and cold when she took them in her hand.
“What’s an illusion?” he asked in a thin voice.
“You’re not in a dark room. Lawson’s not here. Everything Outlaw said is true.”
“How did you get in? The door didn’t open…”
He was hopelessly trapped. In his field of perception, she’d just walked through the wall—one that existed for him but not for her.
Aching with compassion, Christy put her arm around him and drew his trembling body close.
“It’s okay, Austin,” she whispered into his ear. “I’m going to take you out.” She pressed her cheek against his neck and kissed it lightly. “It’s okay. Trust me.”
He couldn’t stop shaking so she held him closer, until he finally began to settle. But his world was still pitch black, so he couldn’t see her eyes. She wanted him to be able to look at her, and then maybe he would know.
“Put your clothes on,” she whispered, pressing his jeans and shirt into his chest.
“My clothes?”
“I found them in a pail outside the door.”
“He’s setting us up…”
“No, Austin. I sent him away.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
He hesitated.
“Yes, I’m very sure. Put your clothes on. We’re getting out.”
He took the clothes, quickly pulled his blue uniform off, then struggled into his jeans and shirt, still blind as a bat.
“Good. Take my hand.”
He tentatively stuck out his hand, unsure where hers was.
She took his hand. “Just follow right behind me. Okay?”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. Okay?”
He was still trying to get his eyes to adjust to the darkness. “Okay.”
They got halfway to the door, a good start, but that’s where it ended. Austin suddenly jerked back, released her hand, and grabbed his head as if struck.
“Ah! You walked me into the wall!”
A faint but distinct reddish bruise began to form on his forehead. He’d actually hit a wall. One of his own making, as real as the wall in his mind.
She looked around, trying to see what he saw. “No, there’s no wall here.”
Austin’s eyes searched about, looking for her. “Christy?”
“Here, Austin. I’m right here.”
“Christy! Are you there?”
He couldn’t hear her?
No, she realized. He was on the other side of a sealed wall that was real to him. She had to go back into his room.
Christy walked up next to him and gently reached for his arm.
“I’m here, Austin.”
He whipped his head toward her.
“It’s dark,” he said.
“There’s no wall, Austin. It’s only in your mind. Turn your lamps on and you’ll see.”
“I just ran into it!” he cried.
There’s only a problem if you think there’s a problem, and Austin definitely had a problem. He could no more walk through the wall in his mind than he could walk on water. His lamp was off. And this time there were no spectacles to save him.
What if he couldn’t get out?
“Show me. Touch the wall, Austin.”
“It’s right there… You can’t feel it?”
“No. It’s not right there. It’s nowhere.”
“Then what did I hit?”
“Show me. Touch it.”
He reached his hand out and she watched with some amazement as his palm flattened and whitened against a surface invisible to her. Like glass. A wall that only existed in Austin’s world, where he was locked in a small black room at the back of Lawson’s office.
“It’s right here,” he said.
Then how to get him out?
“What about the door? Show me where the door is. Show me the handle.”
His hands groped along the invisible wall until they wrapped around a knob that she couldn’t see.
“It’s locked,” he said.
It was all quite absurd, really, but she felt genuine compassion for him. She’d been caged in her own suffering as surely as he was now.
Only then did it occur to her that the answer might be a simple matter of trust. Even only a little.
She stepped up to him and took his hand. “Okay, Austin. It’s okay. I assure you that I can walk through this wall. I got in, didn’t I? So hold onto my hand and trust me. Don’t try to see the wall, just trust me, because if I got in, I can get out. Can you do that?”
He didn’t answer. She could see the wheels turning behind his eyes, grinding through the problem as he always did.
“Don’t think. Close your eyes. Let it go. Just hold on to my hand tight and walk.”
He gave a curt nod.
“Close your eyes.”
He did.
“Forget everything but me. I’ll lead you. Trust me, okay?”
He offered a slow nod.
Christy walked forward, leading him. This time they passed the point where his wall had been and she led him all the way to the door out into the hall.
“Open your eyes, Austin.”
His eyes fluttered open. Then blinked. He spun back, wide eyed.
“Is it dark?” she asked.
“No. We… We’re out.”
“No more darkness?”
“No. We’re in his office and the lights are on.”
“His office? What do you see?”
He looked about. “What do you mean? His office. The desk, bookcase… I told you. Lawson’s office.”
He had already forgotten, just as Outlaw had warned them might happen. He was already back in his own illusion. If Lawson was here in Austin’s mind, they would likely be talking to each other at this moment.
Austin’s mind was too strong and too entrenched to step beyond its own understanding. She would have to lead him.
“Okay, Austin. We’re going out. All the way to the front door. Just don’t let go of my hand, okay?”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
She led him out of the office and down the hall. She saw no one, but judging by the casting of his eyes, she knew that he did. Who or what, she could only imagine. Patients, attendants, maybe even Fisher.
“Don’t let go of my hand, Austin. Whatever you do, just keep walking.”
He walked faster and with each step seemed to grow a little more confident. Down the hall, then left and down the bottom corridor.
“No one’s stopping us,” he said.
“Of course they aren’t,” she said. “You’re with me.”
He didn’t respond. His mind was too busy trying to figure it all out. He was still caught in the illusion. And that was okay too.
Holding Austin’s hand in a firm grasp, she led him by the hand all the way to the main reception room, which, like the rest of the new ward, was empty. Then pushed through a door that led into the main hospital.
Christy pulled up and studied the wide hallway before her as the door behind clicked firmly closed.
Two nurses in white uniforms glanced up from a station twenty paces ahead. Beyond them, a man in a plaid shirt leaned against a wall, talking to a doctor who held a clipboard in his hand. Another nurse, this one in a green smock, stepped out of a patient’s room and headed away from them toward a sign indicating that RADIOLOGY was to the left and the EXIT was to the right.
Christy looked over her shoulder at the large door they’d just used and saw that they’d broken through one
of those three-inch plastic barriers with yellow and black stripes that warned the wayward not to enter. UNDER CONSTRUCTION.
The sign above the door identified the wing as PSYCH WARD B.
“Can I help you?”
One of the nurses at the station had stood and was approaching them, surprised to see two barefooted people in street clothes exiting from a ward that wasn’t yet in use.
“We were just leaving,” Austin said, walking forward.
“When does the wing open?” Christy asked.
The nurse eyed them curiously. “Who knows? Soon as they release the funding for furnishing. It’s been completed for a month.” Her eyes lowered to their bare feet. “You aren’t supposed to be in there.”
“Yeah… We got lost,” Austin said and pulled Christy forward, headed for the exit sign.
She strode down the hall, aware of every sound and scent—the distant hum of the air conditioning, the clink of a spoon stirring tea in a glass, the soft laughter from a room down the hall, the scent of rubbing alcohol, and of perfume, and of Austin’s sweat. They followed the arrows through two more turns that led them to the large glass door.
To Christy it all sounded and smelled exquisitely beautiful, like tiny bits of heaven sprinkled through the halls for their enjoyment.
But none of it compared to the overwhelming surge of wonder that met her as she pushed through the doors at Austin’s side.
The first thing she saw was the sky—a brilliant gray so rich in hue and laced with such wispy strands of white that she gasped. She knew that anyone else might see the same sky and frown, but to her it was a staggering canvas, majestically painted just so.
They faced the eastern parking lot, filled with every kind of car imaginable—yes, mostly whites and blacks and various shades of gray, but to her eye they were strangely exotic. Who had conceived of such an incredible device as a car?
She stood next to Austin on the sidewalk ten feet from the side entrance to Saint Matthew’s Hospital and soaked it all in. The fresh air, the sound of a car pulling into the parking lot, the distant sound of a horn, several birds chirping in a vibrant green tree to her right.
It was all so… alive!
“Wow,” she finally said.
“Yeah.” Austin looked at her. But there was a line of worry on his face.
“Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” he asked.
“The birds…”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
His tone didn’t match her own wonder.
“Huh… What just happened?” he asked.
She thought about it for a moment, not remotely sure how to put it into words. She was even less sure what Austin was feeling.
“Everything,” she said.
He nodded. “Crazy.”
“Crazy doesn’t begin to describe it.”
“My head’s killing me.” His fingers felt his pocket, touched the pills he’d taken to carrying loose in his jeans, then quickly reached for his back pocket. He pulled out his cell phone.
It had been there the whole time.
Christy reached for her own and found that it had as well. She pulled it out and tapped the power button. Dead. So that much was real. So was the storage room, she guessed. Which meant her locket might still be where she’d lost it.
“Did you find my locket?”
“It’s Wednesday,” he said.
She looked up and saw that he was staring at his phone.
His eyes lifted to meet hers, mind spinning—she could practically see it.
“Ten days…” he said.
“Ten days?”
“We’ve been gone ten days. How is that possible?”
“There was food in the rec room. I think we were meant to be in there ten days. We had to learn to see.”
He swallowed hard, turned away from her, and lifted his phone to his ear. Listened carefully. Thumbed it off.
“My doctor left me a message. I don’t have a tumor, in case his assistant’s call frightened me. It’s something else he’s never seen. That’s why he wanted to see me.” He paused. “Whatever it is, it’s affecting my mind.”
“You think? I don’t have anything wrong with my brain. I was in there too.”
He shifted his eyes, lost in thought. “I don’t know. I just know that all of that was a hallucination caused by a physical anomaly in my brain. Nothing happened.”
“Everything happened,” she said. “We saw the truth.”
“What truth? That we’re insane?”
He really wasn’t seeing, not the way she was.
“The truth that if we have eyes to see, we can see we are beautiful. We’ve been put right, a long time ago. We’ve just forgotten that. There is no further need for correction and there’s really nothing more to know. Everything Outlaw said is true. So is Outlaw.”
“Outlaw? He’s just a figment of your imagination.” He shook his head. “Nope. Something’s wrong with my head.”
“The only thing wrong is that you’re not seeing how it really is.”
“But I am. I’m seeing just fine now. I’m seeing that I need to find out what’s wrong with my head. This is the real world, Christy. Wake up!”
He was still trapped in the illusion, just like that dark room that had held him captive. What had just happened wasn’t acceptable to his rational, scientific mind, and so he was putting up a wall. It was all too much for him.
And wasn’t that what most people did?
All but the Outlaws, she thought.
I am an Outlaw.
“I have woken up, Austin. I’m wide awake for the first time in years.”
For a brief moment, his eyes lingered on her, and she thought he was reconsidering. But then they seemed to harden and he started to turn.
“I have to get to the doctor’s office.”
“Austin?”
He strode away.
“Austin?”
“What?” he snapped, jerking around.
He was upset, but she felt none of his anxiety. Not even a hint.
She looked down at her body, her hands, her feet, and she found that they looked exactly as they always had. But she—like the gray sky and the cars in the parking lot and the birds singing in the tree—was beautiful.
She felt like laughing, like shouting, like singing this great, staggering truth to the whole world.
Instead, she only smiled.
“My locket,” she said, looking up at Austin. “Did you get it?”
He stared at her, face flat. “It’s still in the storage room.”
WHY THE locket still seemed important to her, Christy didn’t know. The reason felt oddly distant now, like a distant bird on the wind, chirping unseen. But she was curious to track down that bird, if only to see that it was free.
Or, perhaps more accurately, to know that she was free from that desperate search for identity that had imprisoned her. She was now complete, just as she was.
So she headed south over the grass lawn that bordered the hospital’s eastern wall. She wasn’t sure what she’d find in the storage room, and, feeling the cool grass between her toes, she didn’t care.
How she’d managed to live for so long without being aware of the life all around her was a bit of mystery. Did other people feel the kind of awe she did now? Was that normal, and she was only now catching up?
Or did most people stumble through most days, groping in the dark, lights off, eyes shut?
Eyes wide open, Christy.
And they were. Oh, how they were!
Overwhelmed by it all, Christy impulsively cried at the sky.
“I see!”
She didn’t care who saw her—whatever they noticed was likely their own illusion of what should or shouldn’t be. She spread her arms wide, threw her head back, and closed her eyes.
“I’m home! I belong!”
She stared up at the beautiful gray clouds and cried it again, face split by a smile that felt as wide as the sky itself. “I see, I see,
I see!”
And then she was hurrying forward, skipping, tumbling once in the grass and springing to her feet.
She spun back and shouted it one last time in the direction that Austin had taken. “Do you hear me? I’m free! I’m home!”
The driver of a passing car across the lawn had his window down and was staring at her.
She turned and walked briskly, normal on the outside, she imagined, but screaming with joy on the inside. Right to the corner of the old hospital.
Into the alleyway with the large garbage bins.
Straight to the storage room, through the still unlocked door, and right up to the casket which was still scooted away from the wall.
There lay her silver heart-shaped locket.
She reached down, mindful of the trapdoor, shoved the coffin back against the wall, exited the storage room, and headed up the alley the way she’d first come only a short time ago.
Even the bins looked beautiful to her. They simply were what they were and were doing a splendid job being just that.
She came out of the alley with long, even strides, a new woman who had no intention of ever looking back with old eyes.
Traffic hummed in song—how many pumping pistons and rolling tires collaborated to make up that orchestra? Thunder pealed to the south, like drums.
It all sounded so incredible. And the sights. The sidewalk, the street the shops. The bench ahead to her left with the bum…
Christy pulled up and stared at the bench, heart suddenly in her throat. There was a man on the bench, yes, but it wasn’t the bum.
It was Outlaw, leaning back with both of his arms up on the bench’s backrest, one leg crossed over the other, staring directly ahead at the street.
For a long moment, she couldn’t move. Once again, the world around her seemed to slow as her memories of their first encounter in the canyon streamed through her mind.
He was real. In the flesh. She knew it!
Without looking at her, Outlaw lowered his arms, set his boot on the ground, leaned forward, and rose to his feet. Only when he turned did he lift his eyes to meet hers.
He strode forward, coat lifting with the wind at his calves. His lips curved upward in a knowing grin, and his eyes twinkled with mystery.
“Hello again, Christy.”
“Hello, Outlaw.” She couldn’t stop matching his grin.
He looked into her eyes, searching.