Beyond Physical
Page 27
He whispered, “Joy, we have to keep running. Can you do it? Can you follow me?”
She nodded. He ran, now in the direction of the music, while she ran behind him. After several minutes, they found a gas station and peeked through the trees. The loud music was coming from a car refueling at the station. It was a large black pickup truck with a skeleton on it. Next to the truck, there were about a dozen leather-vest-clad motorcycle riders. There was no sign of a police car.
“Oh, no, we’re surrounded.”
Still catching her breath, Joy said, “I refuse to believe we’ve come this far to be trapped here. How do we know they’re in the same gang?”
“Same gang or not, these people look dangerous. We can’t take the risk.”
“Keep your faith on, Richard. Keep thinking about home.”
Joy walked toward them.
“Joy, are you crazy?”
Richard tried to stop her, but there was nothing he could do with his hands tied up. He caught up to her and walked beside her, praying for a miracle.
Joy walked toward the motorcycle rider closest to them. He was a scary giant, bald and covered with tattoos.
“Help! We need help . . . please, somebody help us!”
The man stopped pumping the gas into his motorcycle and turned to her.
When the man saw her, the expression on his face changed completely. He blinked rapidly. “Dr. Clayton? Is that you?”
“Cliff!”
Richard couldn’t believe his eyes when the giant hugged Joy and cried. A memory slowly crept back into his consciousness, and he remembered the scary, tattooed man he’d seen with Joy that day months ago at the Hospice House.
“Dr. Clayton, what happened?”
“Cliff, please help us. A gang of men is running behind us, and they’re getting closer. They’re trying to kill us.”
Cliff took a knife from his belt and cut the tape tying up Joy’s hands and then freed up Richard. He turned to the other motorcycle riders behind him.
“Guys, I owe this doctor a big one, and I need your help to defend her. Are you with me?”
The gang agreed with loud cheers.
At that moment, the four men running behind them came out of the woods, holding their guns up. With a loud yell, the gang of motorcycle riders jumped toward them. Outnumbered by far, the men were soon on the ground being tied up.
Richard turned to Cliff. “Many others are coming. We need to get Joy to safety. And I need a phone to call for backup.”
“For backup? Do you mean you’re a policeman?”
The man who had spoken, one of the riders in Cliff’s group, walked toward Richard.
“Wait a moment! I know you. You’re the man who put my brother Vulture in jail!
Cliff turned to the man. “What’s up, Jim?”
“Cliff, this guy infiltrated himself into my old gang, working for the feds, and took many of us down, including my brother. He treated us like shit. I have no problem helping you with the doctor, but I’m not helping this man. Give him back to the people chasing him.”
Before Richard could react, Joy walked toward the man and put her hand on his arm, looking him in the eyes. “Jim, I’m begging you. He’s with me. If you’re helping me, you have to help him, too.”
Calming down, the man looked at her with a serious expression. “I see, doctor. He’s your man.”
Joy turned to look at Richard with a tired smile. “I guess you’re right, Jim. He’s my man.”
Surprised, Richard held her gaze. Even in the middle of the chaos, he couldn’t help smiling.
Someone handed Richard a cell phone, bringing him back to the present. He called Samuel and filled him in and then gave the phone to Cliff to give directions, still uncertain of exactly where they were.
At that moment, the rest of Clark’s gang arrived in their cars and motorcycles. Richard counted at least ten people.
“Cliff, we need to put Joy in a safe place.”
“Take her to the convenience store and lock her in the bathroom. We’ll keep these guys busy until your friend sends the police. I’m trusting that you’re going to get us off the hook with the cops.”
“I will. I swear I will.”
Holding Joy by the arm, Richard ran to the convenience store. The noise of gunshots and clashing knives announced that the gangs were engaging in a violent fight.
The clerk in the convenience store was hiding under his desk. Richard kept running until he found the bathroom.
“Joy, get in and don’t come out until you hear Samuel or me calling you.”
“Where are you going? Stay here. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I can’t leave Cliff and his people alone; I have to help them.”
“But you don’t have a weapon. There’s nothing you can do to help them, anyway.”
Richard hesitated.
The sound of a familiar voice behind him startled him. “I can’t believe your luck, Fields. You’re one hard-to-kill bastard.”
“Joy, lock yourself in the bathroom, now.” He pushed her in and closed the door.
* * *
Richard turned around slowly and faced Charles Clark. He was pointing his gun at Richard.
“It seems that I’m going to need to do this myself.”
Richard felt he had nothing to lose. Before Clark had a chance to react, he kicked the gun out of his hand and jumped over to him, punching him in the face. He punched him repeatedly before the man was able to recover enough to start hitting him back.
Richard felt a sudden surge of electricity entering his right shoulder. He gasped in pain and collapsed on the floor, his body shaking involuntarily.
Clark shook his head, smiling. “You thought you could defeat me with brute force? I’m offended! You forget that I’m a Lord of the Universe. I have powers and resources that you can’t dream of having.”
Temporarily paralyzed, Richard thought for a moment that he’d really been the victim of some sort of supernatural powers. Only then he noticed the unusual appearance of Clark’s watch and realized that it was some form of compact stun gun.
Unable to move, he stared in horror as Clark searched unsuccessfully around the floor for the gun he’d kicked. It must have landed among the merchandise on the shelves, but was nowhere visible. Clark instead pulled a switch-blade knife from his pocket and walked toward Richard, aiming at his neck.
The delay from looking for the weapon had allowed Richard to start recovering. With a weak voice he said, “Sorry, Lord, you’re hopeless. Carl forgot to teach you something that he did teach me.”
Clark froze in place, taken aback by his words.
Richard spoke slowly. “Your powers and resources will inevitably backfire when you use them for evil. Everything evil you’ve ever done is about to come back to bite you.” He smiled and concluded, “It’s called . . . your karma.”
Clark reacted and charged against him, but the distraction had allowed Richard time to regain some muscle control. He rolled away in time, barely dodging him. Richard clasped the man’s wrist, immobilizing the knife in his hand. He held him up with his left hand and hit him in the stomach with his right. The two men fought for a long time. Richard was exhausted, but he found strength to keep holding the man’s right hand up while avoiding contact with the stun gun watch on his left wrist. He heard the sirens of the police getting closer, and that gave him a new hope.
Hearing the sirens, too, Clark was furious. “You’re not going to get away, Fields!”
Clark used all his strength to bend Richard’s arm down and got the knife closer and closer to him. In a last effort, Richard pushed it back up but lost his grip, and the man stabbed him in the left groin. Richard started bleeding.
Clark got the knife up again and aimed at his neck.
At that moment, an explosion sounded, and Clark collapsed on top of Richard—a bullet in his chest.
Richard saw Cliff approaching with a gun in his hands.
“Are you okay?” Clif
f rolled Clark’s body away and helped Richard get up.
Clark was still alive, holding the knife, but they knew it wouldn’t be for long.
Richard was astounded. “Cliff, you saved my life!”
Cliff sighed in exasperation. “And now I’m going to rot in jail for carrying a gun and killing a man while I’m on parole, damn it!” He paced away.
Richard limped toward Cliff, his groin bleeding profusely, and took the gun from his hand. He wiped the fingerprints with his shirt and shot a bullet into a bag of pet food.
“Now there’s gunpowder on me, too. We’ll tell them that I shot him. I don’t even remember who let me borrow this gun. You’re my witness that it was in self-defense; I’m the witness that you had nothing to do with it.”
The man smiled. “We got a deal.”
The police arrived outside, and the fight ceased. There were wounded men receiving first aid from the policemen and a couple dead bodies strewn over the floor. Richard asked for the loaner cell phone and dialed Samuel’s number. To his surprise, the voice on the other end wasn’t Samuel’s.
“Richard?”
“Carl? Is that you? What are you doing with Samuel’s phone?”
“I’m sitting next to him in his car. We’re not that far away. Are you all right?”
Richard looked at the bleeding from his groin. A pool of blood was forming on the floor, and he could see a red trail marking the route he’d walked.
“I’m not sure . . .”
Feeling dizzy, he passed the phone back to Cliff and sat on the floor.
Joy came running from the convenience store.
“Richard! You’re bleeding!”
“Joy, I told you to wait in the bathroom!’”
“I heard the sirens. Oh my God, you’re bleeding! Somebody please call an ambulance!”
She made him lie down on the floor, unbuttoned his pants, and pulled them down to examine the wound in his groin. A bright red stream of blood was pulsating out.
“Oh my God, it’s an artery bleeding. He hit your femoral artery!”
Joy put pressure on the bleeding wound with her bare fist.
“Someone call nine-one-one!”
Cliff had already dialed and was talking to an operator. He held the phone to Joy’s ear, as her hands were busy.
“I have an FBI agent with a stab wound to the left groin—an arterial injury. He’s bleeding profusely. I need an ambulance—fast!”
One of the policemen came to Joy with a first aid kit. “Can we use a tourniquet?”
Still keeping her fist on Richard’s wound, she shook her head. “It’s a bleeding artery, and we’d have to tie above it—we can’t tie the abdomen. We need to start IV fluids or he’ll go into shock. Do you have IV solutions? Catheters?”
“No, ma’am, mostly bandages and eye washes.”
Joy put on a pair of sterile gloves and opened several packs of gauze, using them to apply pressure. In spite of that, the blood continued flowing.
“He needs fluids. Please, anybody, bring me a case of Gatorade from the convenience store.”
Someone handed Joy a twelve pack of Gatorade and a straw, and she made Richard start drinking.
“Drink fast, as fast as you can . . . drink all of them.”
The policeman left her alone with Richard and joined the rest of the patrols to help load the arrested men into the police cars.
Feeling thirsty after the run, Richard sipped at the drinks one after the other; but he felt as if life was dripping out of him. Everything around him was getting dark.
“Joy, oral fluids won’t be fast enough. I’m not going to make it.”
“Richard, don’t say that.”
“Joy, listen to me. I know what’s going on. I saw my father go through it. You can’t stop the bleeding from a cut artery with pressure.”
“Richard, stop.”
“There’s no time. Even if the paramedics got here right now, there’s no way they can fix my artery if it was truly cut. Only a vascular surgeon can do that, and I doubt there’s one in the small community hospital that is closest. Even if I survived, I’d likely be losing my leg. But I know I’m going to bleed out and die before we make it to a hospital.”
Joy started crying.
He shivered, feeling weaker by the moment. “Joy, you were so brave today. I’m proud of you. I want you to know that everything we did was worth it . . . because we saved you. You’re an angel undercover here on Earth. It makes sense to me . . . that God used me as an instrument to save you . . . and now it’s okay if I go.”
Joy pushed the straw back into his mouth. Her loud voice shook him up. “Shut up and drink! You’re not going to die, damn it!”
Startled, Richard started sipping the drink again.
Her voice was firm, almost angry. “Just a little while ago in the pickup truck, weren’t you sure we were going to be killed? You were wrong then, and you’re wrong now. Have you forgotten everything you survived before? You got run over, you got stabbed . . . How many times did they shoot you?”
He felt as if she were hypnotizing him with her gaze. “Three.”
“How many days have you spent in the ICU?”
“Seventeen.”
“And what did all the doctors say every single time?”
“They said it was a miracle that I survived without consequences.”
Her voice was full of passion. “Richard, this is another of those times. You’re a walking miracle, and you’re going to continue to be. I want you to repeat this: I’m a survivor!”
Richard’s voice was weak. “I’m a survivor.”
Carl’s strong voice surprised Richard—he hadn’t notice him arrive. “Now say it with feeling. I’m going to live! I’m a survivor!”
Richard’s voice sounded a little stronger. “I’m going to live . . . I’m a survivor!”
Putting on the sterile glove left in the package, Carl put his hand next to Joy’s on Richard’s groin. “Now, look in my eyes.”
Richard thought that all the blood he had lost was making him hallucinate. He was seeing a light around Carl’s body.
The light around him revolved, and he felt as if a stream of energy was shooting off his hand and entering Richard’s body. It felt like an electric charge, making his whole body warm.
Carl and Joy took their hands off Richard’s groin. He saw his wound had stopped bleeding, and then everything turned dark.
* * *
Richard could never remember what happened in the next few minutes. He was told he never passed out, that Joy had kept him awake by asking him questions until the first emergency response team arrived and started an IV. But the next memory he had was of him still lying on the floor, IV fluids running, an oxygen mask on, and the image of Carl and Joy hugging.
“Joy, my dear! I’m glad you’re all right! I knew all along it had to be you!”
“Carl! It’s been so long!”
Kneeling on the ground, Samuel hugged Richard. “Man! I was so worried about you! Everything is okay. Just rest now, buddy.”
Samuel walked away, giving orders to the local policemen.
Richard tried to sit up, but he felt so dizzy he had to lie back down.
“Can . . . can somebody explain to me what’s going on?”
Sitting on the floor, Joy put his head on her lap. She kissed him on the forehead and then caressed his hair. “What do you want us to explain?”
He glared at Carl.
“You! All this time, you knew her?”
Chuckling, Carl replied, “This girl was my star student in Psychology 101 at University of Florida. We reconnected years later, when I went to lecture at the hospital in which she was training. I invited her to our meetings—long before people started calling us ‘The Co-creators’—and she became, once again, my star student. One day she told me, sadly, that her husband had forbidden her from coming back.”
“So you did know Michael O’Hara?”
Carl shrugged. “I honestly don’t re
member him.”
Joy intervened. “He never used his real name in the meetings. He attended them for a while, until that day when he got lured by some people who wanted to start their own group.”
“The Lords of the Universe,” said Richard.
“I guess so,” she answered. “I never knew exactly what that group was. He wanted me to join, but I never did. If I couldn’t have Carl as a teacher, I wasn’t interested.”
With a smile, Carl took her hand. “I was disappointed when I learned we were losing you, but I knew you’d be okay. I knew you had incredible potential and always expected you to take my place as leader and Master someday.”
Richard frowned at Carl. “How were you able to stop my bleeding?”
Carl smiled. “I didn’t do it; you did it. We just helped you.”
“That’s not true,” Richard answered. “I felt the energy coming from your hand to my body.”
“It just felt that way. It was coming from you. She and I were just moving it around.”
Richard kept looking at Carl with eyes wide open.
Pointing alternately at Joy and at himself, Carl said, “Faith doesn’t work without action. Action is little without faith. She worked on your body and your mind. I worked on your spirit. You decided you wanted to live and did the rest.”
Richard turned to Joy. “Did you know you have that ability? Can you two cure all those patients that are at your center . . . dying?”
She sighed. “We can’t cure anybody. We can help them release the healing power within so they can cure themselves. Not everybody can or wants to do it, and it’s okay. Many of them are done with this life experience and are getting ready for the next.”
Remembering Bonas’s words, Richard recited, “‘Miracles don’t come as earth-shattering events from rumbling skies. They come disguised as small coincidences we need to act on.’ So . . . the flat tire, finding Cliff . . . Did you do that, Joy?”
With a gesture of exhaustion, she slumped, shaking her head. “I’m as confused as you are! I’ve never done something that big before! I think it was you, Richard. You did it!”
“You both did it,” intervened Carl. “The two of you seem to be an amazing energy combination. That’s the secret I teach. When you are in the right mind frame, you summon the coincidences.”