“You’ve got to jump into the bed of the pick-up beside us! Hurry!”
I look over the edge of the trunk. Six-feet below me is a pick-up truck with big wheels—the sort that rednecks drive down south. It actually has a confederate flag tinting on the back window, believe it or not. It has several stacks of hay around the walls of the truck bed, with loose hay along the bottom of the bed. I duck back into the trunk. “No way! You’re crazy! Pull over.”
“We don’t have the time and we don’t want to raise suspicion of a transfer.”
A transfer. The thought of a transfer invokes a sense of obligation. The body I am inclined to protect—it’s not mine. I stole it.
“They’re watching us,” the driver continues. “Do it now, or you will be captured and you will be tortured until they find your family. Do you understand? You must jump!”
Finally, I manage to bring one leg over the trunk and stand on the edge of tracks upon which the four luxury sedans are chained down on the upper level of the long semi-trailer. The wind is gusty and unpredictable. I don’t think I can do it, but the stranger in the trunk awakens. He reaches for my wrist. I try to pull away from him and lose my balance. If he were not holding onto me, I would have fallen to the highway. He extends the stun gun toward me with his free hand. He yells something at me, but I cannot hear him from the fury of the wind blowing past us. I reach for the trunk’s lid, which is snapping up and down in the stiff wind. I raise it as high as I can and slam it down on him, hitting him in the head and slamming his wrist between the trunk’s lid and the frame with a bone-thumping thud. He releases a voltage from the stun gun when I do, striking me in the elbow.
It knocks me backward, and I fall head over heels off the semi.
I do not remember landing.
42
I WAKE UP ON A hospital gurney, but I’m definitely not in a hospital room. The room is dimly lit by a projected 3D image of a news reporter on the wall beside a pile of beige charts on top of a file cabinet across from me. Beside me, it looks like chairs are stacked on top of each other. Looks like a storage closet. There’s an IV in my arm, but the bag of fluid hanging on the wall behind me is empty. A man to my right is reading a book by the light of a cracked door.
“Where am I?”
“You’re safe.” It’s Tod Farrell’s voice. There’s a gentle click and he says, “He’s awake.”
“Where, um?” My whole body aches. Everything is a blur.
Farrell stands to his feet and comes to the side of my bed. “You’re in an unused back room office of an Emergency Department in Montgomery.”
I try to sit up, but am pressed back down into the bed by the sheer weight of my throbbing head.
“You landed on your head in the back of the truck.”
“He, he shocked me. I fell.”
“We thought you may have broken your neck, but the doctor said it’s just a concussion. You’ve been out for hours, but your vitals have been stable.” He takes a closer look at me and then flips on a lamp beside the bed. “Uh, smile for me?”
I try to smile at him, but the left side of my face feels numb and weak.
“You have some facial asymmetry there. Not, not too bad.”
“Not again.” I touch the left side of my face, but it feels like I’m feeling someone else’s face. My cheek and brow have no sensation. I move my hands and feet. At least I still have strength in my extremities.
“This happened before?”
“I had a stroke a few months back. It went away with the exception of some occasional stut-stut-stuttering.”
He chuckles at my humor, and pats me on the shoulder amiably. “When you were out cold in the back of that pick-up truck, we couldn’t risk stopping on the side of the road or going to a hospital, and we had hours more to drive. Thank God you made it.”
I turn my eyes to the projected 3D image on the wall. My vision is unaffected. On the television is the very same semi-tractor trailer carrying the hover-sedans in which I rode. There are dozens of police lights reflecting off the windows.
Farrell turns toward the projection. “The driver of the semi you were in is about to give himself up. Tom Studdards is his name. Good man. Three kids, lovely wife. Fortunately, his sacrifice saves your life. The feds didn’t see you jump. Their satellite wasn’t quite pin-pointed on your location yet. The copters forced Tom over about five minutes later, and the pick-up truck had already exited the interstate, continuing on back roads south.”
The driver’s side door of the semi opens and Studdards steps out and falls to his knees, placing his hands behind his head.
“He’s been stonewalling for hours with a handgun in the cabin.”
“What?”
I watch as Federal agents approach him cautiously, and then the driver falls to his face. Dozens of agents rush the semi, climb to the second level, and force open the trunk of the lead-paint-coated sedan, only to find a semi-conscious truck inspector with a bump on his head and a fractured hand.
“We have to change everything now that Tom has been captured.”
“Tom? The driver?” Several federal agents frisk the semi driver roughly. I experience a brief, painful flashback to my pitiful condition in the back of that black van that seems like it was weeks ago, but in reality was only half a day ago.
“Help me up.” I grab the rails of the bed and try to pull myself to a sitting position. Farrell tries to convince me to lie still but it feels selfish to just lie there while I watch a man getting dragged away in cuffs, probably to be tortured.
“The doc’ll be here in a minute. Lie still.”
My head begins to spin as I raise my head in bed, and I lay back down. “What’s he gonna do? The driver?”
“He’ll hold off as long as possible, and then spill his guts. It’s protocol under these situations. That’s why we have to modify things. Don’t look so surprised, Doc. When people are property, and all property belongs to and is under the absolute control of the state, torturing an innocent person for information is like flipping a switch or muting the television.” He mutes the projected news story and our eyes fasten. “If people aren’t souls, but are just matter in motion, then killing a dupe or torturing a dissident is like sweeping the floor with a broom and dustpan.”
A familiar woman’s voice sounds behind me, “It’s the Dr. Raymond Verity, back from the dead again.”
I turn. My sister has entered the room.
“Tamara.” I stretch out a hand to greet her as the tears burst from my eyes. “I’m so sorry. I’ve been so, so wrong.”
She inches toward me, hobbling more from her arthritis than she did the last time I saw her. “Before we go another second, please, tell me, a man that’s brushed up against death as many times as you certainly must realize that you’ve got to be ready to meet your Maker at any minute.”
She grabs my hand with both of hers.
I smile broadly at her. “Any minute.” Half my face feels weak, but I hold the smile firm regardless, feeling somewhat proud of my newfound deformity. “I’m ready. I did what you said. I’m trusting in God.”
She smiles warmly, but doesn’t seem as excited about my profession of faith as I suspected she would be. “It’s not those that begin the race, but those that finish that get the prize.”
I sigh, nodding as I meditate on that truth. “True, but I am so, so excited about starting this race. I’m sorry about Tom, Tamara.”
Grief wells in my heart over the suffering he may have to endure for my sake.
A gray-haired man in green scrubs rushes into the room. “Don’t mean to interrupt, but I’m swamped out there and need to move quickly before the nurses get suspicious.”
I am somewhat taken aback at his southern drawl.
“I have a left-sided facial neurological deficit from a hemorrhagic stroke of the right cerebral hemisphere,” I tell him.
He nods and prepares to place his stethoscope on my chest. “You a doctor?”
He must not recogniz
e me. “Several times over.”
After listening to my heart and lungs, he looks carefully at my face. “Wrinkle your brow like this.”
“No, it’s not Bell’s palsy.” I imitate his brow raising. “It’s cerebral. My vision and my extremities are mostly unaffected, unlike last time. I had a TIA once before and had similar symptoms. It’ll pass.”
The physician asks several more questions. He shines a penlight in my eyes to check my pupillary reflexes, and asks me to follow some simple commands. Besides a reversible ischemic neurologic deficit, contingent of course upon it reversing, an improving headache, a sore neck and back, and bruised ribs from the knee in the gut I took from the inspector in the trunk of the sedan, I’m fine.
“I need to know if you get any neurologic symptoms, any general weakness. All right?” His gaze darts to Tod Farrell. “I’m not putting him in the system, just like you asked, but I still need to follow up with him. It’s just good medicine.”
“I understand.” Farrell nods.
“If his stroke doesn’t clear up—”
“If it doesn’t clear up,” I interrupt, “it’ll be permanent, and there’s nothing you can do about it here.” With all that has happened to me, I am not as concerned about my visible defect as I was last time. “Only at my facility could they fix this.”
“Your facility? What facility?” The doc glances at Farrell, who clears his throat with his eyes fixed on Tamara.
From the look on Farrell’s face, it appears he doesn’t want the doctor to know who I am.
The doc’s tone changes. “Tod, you told me he was critical to Alabama’s resistance to the fed’s takeover of healthcare.”
“He is.”
“I am?”
“You are.” Farrell turns back to the Emergency Department physician. “That should be enough.”
The physician shrugs and turns back to me. “Just let me know if you get new symptoms.”
“My body’s good, doc.” I glance at Tamara. “At least whoever-had-this-body’s body’s good. It’s my brain that’s weak, I suppose, which is all that’s left of me.”
The doc looks at me like I just declared I was an alien from outer space.
Farrell grunts uncomfortably.
Whoops. I am risking the discovery of my identity with dumb comments like that.
Tamara hobbles around to the other side of the bed. “It’s Jacob’s limp. Jacob got it when he got right with God and it forever changed the way he walked. In our weakness, God is made strong.”
She’s not referring to her handicap, but mine. I don’t know quite what she means by Jacob’s limp, but I realize that Jacob was a famous biblical figure—the father of Israel—and a limp is a defect in appearance, so the metaphor fits.
The doc gasps, and turns to Farrell, wide-eyed with wonder. “Is this Dr. Raymond Verity?”
I can’t tell if he’s looking at me like I’m a poisonous snake poised to strike, or a famous celebrity from whom he wants an autograph and a selfie.
Farrell puts his index finger over his lips and whispers, “Shhh.”
I spend the night in the back room of this ER, kept away from the nurses and patients to protect my identity. To the physician’s dismay, my facial weakness and numbness do not resolve with my headache. I convince him to spare me the scan, which would just increase the likelihood of being discovered. The neurologic deficit really doesn’t bother me that much. When you’re thankful for the half you don’t deserve and still can enjoy, you are less distraught about the half you don’t deserve that’s lost.
I can’t describe how beautiful the night sky was as I walked with Tamara out of the ER toward her car at the far edge of the parking lot. The whole galaxy took on a new aura of beauty and meaning. I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face—at least until I saw Tamara’s car.
I don’t ever remember being driven in a car that looked so decrepit, much less by a driver that doesn’t appear fit to be on the road.
“Buckle up.” Tamara dons her bifocals in her three-decade-old two-door rust-bucket economy car. As if having rubber tires wasn’t bad enough, they were tread-less and hubcap-less. To make matters worse, she informs me that exhaust fumes come in through the A/C vents, so I had to roll down the window if I wanted some fresh air.
I comply without argument, still euphorically fuzzy from either my head injury or the medicine they administered to me. This is a perfect metaphor for my life, going from a half-million amero hover-limousine, driven by a professional armed bodyguard, enveloped by a perfectly toned and tanned body, accompanied by a magazine-cover-of-a-wife that was the envy of every whoremonger within gawking distance, finally ending up in a miniature, rust-covered economy car designed for impoverished old folks driven by a skinny gray-haired prophetess with a fat rear and deforming rheumatoid arthritis in every joint of her body—and me without an amero to my name and with only half a working face!
I’ve gone from the most elite, careless playboy with blood on his hands, to a guilt-ridden, miserable scientist futilely working to clean them off, finally to a humble, defective fugitive thrilled out of his wits by simple grace.
She cranks the car, and it sputters briefly but quickly falls silent with a “bang” that sounds like a gunshot from the back end of the car.
I look over my shoulder. What in the world caused that violent noise?
She answers my unspoken question, “This old thing still has a muffler.”
“A muffler? Are those still legal?” Talk about old school.
She attempts to crank it again. “The Lord tests my faith every day with this car.” She finally gets the thing started. For a tiny car, it sure does create ruckus under the hood. She raises a trembling hand. “Thank ya, Jesus.”
The formalities do come crashing down when it comes from the heart.
“Where are we going?”
She drives us out of the hospital parking lot. “A meeting.”
“With Governor Whetley?”
“He will meet us there, yes. We have a two-and-a-half-hour drive to Atlanta, and much to discuss on the way.”
I begin by telling Tamara about what happened to me in the trunk of that sedan, there at the end of myself. We both cry, rejoicing in what God has brought me through.
“Once Thomas conned you into sitting on that panel, I wondered if you would ever get born again.”
“Born again?”
“It’s what happens when you turn from your sin and trust in Jesus.” She places her hand over her heart. “You become a new creature.”
“A new creature, huh?” I’ve been a new creature, in a sense, ever since they brought me out of cryo, but the same miserable person in my soul. “Thomas didn’t con me, Tamara.”
“Oh, he didn’t?”
“He believes in Jesus,” I say, trying to defend him.
“Thomas believes in working for his salvation, atoning for his own sin, which, by the way, he will not forsake. Jesus’ blood hasn’t cleansed him of sin because he doesn’t believe it can, and we cannot rise above our faith. He believes in God like the devil believes in God and trembles, yet remains in rebellion.”
I love my sister, but her judgment of our brother just doesn’t settle well with me. Of course, I’ve got my problems with Thomas, but he tries. “He means well.”
“Brother, nothing short of our eternal damnation can satisfy the claims of God’s law if we have ever violated it. All the good works of religion will never make up for sin, and it’s an insult to the sufferings of Christ to cling to sin and a false hope of salvation. Like that panel Thomas got you on, hypocrites do more harm than good when they appeal to godless remedies to improve the quagmires of godlessness.”
I take a deep breath. “Most of the members were pro-family and pro-life leaders who claim to believe in Jesus. Where did we go wrong?”
“The Bible says that we do not war against flesh and blood, but against principalities and spiritual wickedness in high places, against evil spirits. The Word of God is
our offensive weapon in this battle. If we try to fight it through carnal means, without the spiritual armor—”
“Whoa. Milk, not meat. You’re talking over my head. Bring it down to your baby brother’s level.”
She smiles at my childish, enthusiastic desire to understand. “Your panel concluded that people can be murdered as long as certain conditions were met first, right?”
I nod. “Correct, but it’s the best we could do.”
“Says who?”
“Says the conservative, Christian trench warriors, the leaders of the political right.”
“That’s unbelief when God says otherwise.”
“Unbelief?”
“Yes, unbelief.”
“Given the present law, given our President, and given the admittedly pagan culture in which we live, we’ve got to save who we can save. It’s like, uh, Christians in the German Holocaust saving the Jews they can save. It’s like Jesus leaving the 99 sheep to save the one lost sheep.”
“Just because Christians couldn’t save all the Jews, that doesn’t mean that they intentionally sacrificed some in their law proposals to save the ones they did save. And Jesus left the 99 in a safe place. The pro-life movement leaves the 99 to die while trying to save the one—big difference. But even in trying to save the one, you resort to a plan that defies God’s authority, violating His law.” She pauses to give me a chance to assimilate.
“You mean, because our recommendations allowed legal murder to continue?”
“No, you did more than allow it. God allows sin in the sense that He doesn’t forcefully prevent our evil choices. But He doesn’t grant permission to sin. You and your panel gave permission to shed innocent blood. When you give permission for someone to do what God forbids them to do, you have usurped God’s law for a devilish alternative, a counterfeit standard. You’ve tried to supplant Him and put yourself on His throne. He’s the King of kings and Lord of lords—it’s up to us to submit. To break His law because we think that breaking it can help us accomplish His will better—that is unbelief. That is rebellion.”
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