Brody was trying hard not to make any movements, but he was laughing hysterically inside. “She thinks my last name is Bienemy?”
“You like him, don’t you?” Treble looked to the hot RN, then back at Brody. “It’s okay, I won’t tell him.”
A look up from Brody’s multiple-scarred replacement skin at mid-section revealed the yellow suit had an insignia patch on the upper left chest region. It read DSOH, Dry Sea Octofuture Health, spelled out all the way around the perimeter. This was the facility where Brody was flown to after WWIII. The badge kind of went back and forth from blue to green once viewed from different angles.
“How has his abdomen healed after he had to get a dead man’s donor skin to cover where his was peeled off during the wreck?” Treble asked.
“It has recovered miraculously. You almost can’t tell unless he is in the nude.” Chastity looked down lower than she should have and smiled in deep concentration with her eyes.
Now, Brody was aware of who this intern was without even opening his eyes. He thought he knew from the voice. He grew his courage and swiftly popped one eye open, hoping she wasn’t looking at his face. Luckily, she was looking at Treble, who was fixedly staring back at her. Sure enough, he saw her nametag. It was Chastity Sanders from Thermopolis, but better looking than he had envisioned her from high school.
Chastity wheeled Brody to another room that opened into a fountain in the middle. The fountain was of lime green jelly that shot up to the ceiling and splashed back down into a group of encircled baths. It resembled an oversized chocolate fountain at a wedding in the center of a circular deviled eggs tray.
Once the shallow baths of the surrounding polarity pods were three-quarters full, Chastity eased Brody into the ooze and rested his head to the back after stretching out his arms and legs. She proceeded to push down on his forehead with gentle fingers until he was set in the mold. The pressure, or weight, of his head and the mass that it took up, compressed the jelly until it held his nostrils above the liquid so he could breathe and not go under.
Chastity started to rub Brody around the pectoral region of his chest. Treble could swear he saw that patch change to a love-bold red, but it was just the reflection off the color changing ooze.
When Chastity got to his navel, his equipment started to come to life. She didn’t undress him, pull it out, or anything like that. Instead, she just kept massaging around that area, never touching it once.
“See, it is perfectly human and normal for coma patients to feel external stimulation. They will become erect and not be able to control it. Heck, even patients that are awake have it happen to them, but what I am doing is helping him reach recesses in his subconscious that allow him to work from the inside out. This has worked on more people to get them out of their comas quicker than you would think. I have noticed that Brody responds well to my caressing of his body. He has been twitching a lot more than he ever has before. I want to be the one who brings him back. I think it will help my career tremendously. Besides, I haven’t lost one, yet.”
Six other bodies were floating in their tub of hyper-colored goo. The colors kept changing. One would only stay black.
“What’s up with that coma patient over there?”
Oh, Reynaldo Flores? He is a severe case. His neuro-jelly has never changed color. We are doing our best to straighten his fingers out, let alone get him to respond to outer stimuli. He got into a bad car accident and has been dead to the world ever since. Even if he does come back, he won’t be any more than a vegetable. I have to wheel him around everywhere he goes. You know what the worst part about eating vegetables is?”
Where did this come from? Treble thought. He replied, “No, what?”
“Getting through the wheelchair.” She laughed and snorted at the same time. No one else laughed.
“Laugh and the world laughs with you. Tell a bad joke and stand alone. You are just all sorts of wrong.”
“I’m sorry, it is an occupational hazard. It comes with the territory.” Chastity was still amused by her quick wit.
“So, seriously, what is in the fountain o’ slime, the stuff that makes it change color like its doing?”
Chastity straightened up and got seriously sophisticated, and said, “The jelly is fed several neural chemicals that get absorbed through the skin via these porous vinyl suits. The suits are dual-purpose. They are catalysts to speed up the chemical process, and they reduce the complexity of bedsores. Once conduction occurs, and the chemicals reach the brain of each of our patients who are given adequate doses according to their medical charts, then they become mellower. It is just another way to ease their burdens.”
“That is something else. What if you get in the liquid and aren’t in a coma? Then what will it do?”
“Have you ever heard the story about the mortician that marinated a marijuana cigarette in formaldehyde?”
“No, did he smoke it?”
“Sh—yeah! They had to commit him to the mental institute in Evanston. He is perma-fried. He even thinks he is a glass of orange juice, that if you tip him the slightest, he will pour out and die. Do you still want to get into the neuro jelly?”
“No, that’s quite alright.” Treble looked at the liquid then back at Nurse Sanders. She had a big smile on her face. “Whatever, you are knee deep in it, and I don’t just mean the neuro jelly. Do you think you are a glass of orange juice?”
“Alright, you caught me. It doesn’t do anything other than make you more relaxed and forget about anything that bothers you. Well, actually, it makes you forget about everything, like a Calgon bath, it takes you away.”
Like Lethe, Brody thought.
“I like Calgon baths. They make me feel all tingly inside.” Treble cock-smiled at his statement. His whiter-than-blond eyebrow lifted along with his white eyelashes on the same side, which made him look all the more goofy. He didn’t care. That is what made Treble so unique. He was one of a kind but true, through and through, as a friend.
Chastity ended her massage at the bottom of Brody’s feet. He tried to hold back for as long as he could, but that was one of his most ticklish spots. He couldn’t fake it anymore.
Brody sat up from under the cover of goop, like Rambo coming out of the mud in the First Blood trilogy, as the slime dripped down his clean shaven face. He let out the long laugh that he had been holding in since both of them had staged this comical affair. He looked to Chastity, then at Treble, who couldn’t hold back, himself. He had given Chastity the wink after Brody instructed him not to let her know.
“Her beauty overcame me. I tried to hold back.” Treble begged for Brody’s forgiveness. Chastity snuck in and took credit for Brody’s awakening.
“That is the last time you will betray me, Treble Wolffe.” They all laughed. “I am going to tell DeAnn on you. By the way, did you ever marry her?”
“Yep, it’s been five years now. We have a little three-year-old girl who we named Sahara. She is the best-behaved, smartest little girl—and I know she doesn’t get either from me—that I have ever seen. Of course, I am biased because I am her father, but she is already reading first-grade material, and she hasn’t even started pre-K yet. It’s kind of scary, but DeAnn is doing fine.”
“So, does DeAnn know about, you know, Abby?”
“No I haven’t told DeAnn, and I would like to keep it that way. How did you know?”
“Let’s just say, I am aware of a lot more than you think. I am kind of glad it happened. It will give me something to write about. I don’t hold it against you though, Treble, I know it was very hard for you to do. I probably wouldn’t have been able to resist either if you were me and I was you, and the situation was the other way around. Please don’t tell me that is the reason why you have continued to come around—guilt?”
“Well, you know… No that’s not—no.”
“It’s okay, Treble.
Go on with your life. Don’t harbor negative thoughts toward our friendship. Life is too short. Before you know it, it could be over in the blink of an eye or, in my case, in the strike of a pole. Man, that was something else. I have never felt so relaxed in my life.”
“What was it like? You know, when you were out?” Treble sat down at the foot of the bed, looking up toward Brody with an I-really-wanna-know gaze.
“It was… well, put it this way… I didn’t want to come back. I am so confused right now, because I felt accepted when I was out or when I thought I was allowed to go on into the evermore. You know, paradise? I never did feel pain, not even once. You would have thought I did, but by the grace of God, I didn’t. I did see and feel something I have never experienced before. I foresaw the end, but I wasn’t allowed in. Do you know how bad that feels? To be rejected by the door-keep of finality? I seriously thought I was his chosen replacement on a modern-day clone of our planet. I was even able to convince others of the same thing. I was trapped in a treatment facility in the middle of nowhere. I honestly thought I was a supreme being. I made it to the top-level of the desert institutional, robot-shaped building and everyone worshiped everything that came out of my mouth. I had them eating out of my hand, hinging on each and every thought I purveyed. Heck, I even believed what I was saying, like I was a modern day messiah. It was crazy. The worst part about it was that I had six other personalities who were supportive of my holy candidacy.”
“I couldn’t even begin to imagine. At least they picked the right person to withstand all of that. I don’t think there is anyone mentally stronger or anyone who has more heart than you.” Treble lowered his head in shame of himself after the comment.
“You are just saying that to make me feel better. I told you, you didn’t have to keep coming around out of guilt.” Brody sat up a little more after wedging his hospital pillow behind the small of his aching back.
“I mean it, man; you have always been an idol poster-boy for the American Heart Association, really. I know I wouldn’t have been able to undergo what you have and still have the strength to pull myself through. I remember there was a time that you had done hundreds of pushups every day for five years straight. If it weren’t for your wreck, I know you would have still been going strong in that department. People did think you were something else. Everybody in Thermopolis loved you—well, except Abby. She did at one time, but she was also immature. You knew that.”
“I never meant to hurt her, Treble. I had a serious problem with anger, and it just so happened to start right before the wreck. Due to the lack of experience, or knowledge—I don’t know, but there wasn’t anyone in good ol’ Thermop who was qualified to get it out. Leonard Catlin was the closest therapist able to counsel ADHD and multiple personality disorder. Unfortunately, I wish there would have been some psychiatrist who was able to treat it instead of just a psychologist who can only counsel it. It’s no picnic, man. Sometimes I drive myself crazy when I let this tinnitus overwhelm me on top of my hyper-ness.”
“There are more cases of ADHD in Thermopolis, or even more multiple personality disorders in that matter than you know, especially since you have been out. Everyone knows she wasn’t all your fault. Tanner went through the same thing, and he wouldn’t hurt a fly. By the way, what is tennis-eye-tusk?”
“Tinnitus, the doctors said it is the constant ringing one undergoes when they get their bell rung too hard. It sucks. It gets so loud it wakes me up in the middle of the night. Well, at least I thought it was waking me up. Come to find out, I was waking up inside my coma. Anyway, it’s just a dull, constant ringing of my inner-ear that will never go away. Modern technology hasn’t come up with anything to stop it, yet. Actually, they probably have, but we poor folk will never be able to afford it.” Brody looked with a smirk on his face like he was above the acceptance that he wasn’t going to become more than what a majority of the other people in the small town of Thermop willed themselves to believe they couldn’t become. Taking away all the excuses, and accepting responsibility on his own behalf, gave him the American heart award that Treble was just talking about. It is a harder road to accept accountability for what we do in life, but those who do admit to their shortcomings, and keep trying to lessen them, are those who become the most successful in everything they put their mind to. Those who are the most humble and don’t need a hand-out to up themselves in the social hierarchy of success, are those who are true to the validity of what success should be all about in today’s America.
Treble took Brody’s patent to the patent office and handed it in. Within weeks, he was getting calls from all sorts of scientific sponsors. Even NASA wanted to use his ideas for space exploration. Since Mars had already been reached and colonized, highly televised during Brody’s long time out, they were going to use Soma to speed up the process of colonizing the rest of the planets, sort of like a mental time-machine for future predictability. Of course, all they were going to do was tweak here and there, stick a NASA logo on it, call it their own, and save themselves millions of dollars for having to pay Brody. Christopher Columbus was rolling over in his grave as well was Aristotle, neither of which would have ever deduced such discoveries. Columbus had a hard enough time believing that Earth wasn’t flat, and Aristotle only wanted to see the stars and planets from gravity-having soil. It was too late, though; by getting the patent, Brody saved the project for his favorite group of cool science geeks like himself, the team at the think tank of Beyond 2000. It was more than a hit. It revolutionized the modern world and gave hope to future coma patients.
Everyone was going online to Brody’s web page to buy the how-to instructions to build the machine. He did save the secret ingredient, the secret sauce, by doing an affiliate marketing stint to further his ability to never have to work again. Whoever wanted to know what it was that made the dream machine siphon the sleeping dream images from one’s mind to a TV screen would have to click on his little flashing icon on the page where he could get paid even more by other huge commercial carriers. He directed them business by the person giving their information online where they could later be harassed until they purchased other things that pertained to their characteristics. This made Brody the first poor boy going into a coma to become the first millionaire coming out of it; even the Guinness Book of World Records was hounding him for publicity stints. Despite all this, he remained humble, and kept the same attitude he had as an impoverished kid before the wreck. The money just made it a lot easier for him to afford the lifelong rehabilitation he was going to have to undergo from the god awful, nightmarishly freak wreck.
“Chastity, how did I come up with everything I was seeing while I was out? I used to go to church as a kid with my babysitters, and I can remember some of what the church was trying to teach, but the events I foresaw and actually felt like I was living couldn’t have only come from my mind’s adolescent memories. I don’t remember the Tower of Babel, Armageddon, even the planet’s water turning to blood, and the seven plagues. Was it all just in my subconscious?”
“No, Chaplain Charlie has been reading the Bible to you ever since you have been in the dark. He has not missed a Sunday for the last seven years. He goes around to all the coma patients, reading passages to each one. That is probably why you dreamed about the end-times and all the warnings of everything that has come about. You have been in a mental purgatory for the last seven years. The Lord must have forgiven you, because you have been released. This is the afterlife. You were saved.”
“What do you mean this is the afterlife? This doesn’t seem any different than before I left. Besides, there is no money in heaven. Is there?”
“No, everything earthly is gone, and so are the bad thoughts that stem from all that gateway stuff.”
“Good, because I was beginning to think that people were going to expect more of me since I became a millionaire. I just knew there would be people coming out of the woodwork, bragging on the fact t
hat they used to know me and were going to use me for their own psychological uplifting in the needs of the societal hierarchy pyramid. As well, I knew that I hadn’t been given the opportunity to spend eternity in heaven. Heaven would never be this dull and ordinary.”
“You haven’t seen outside, yet.” Chastity took a shard of mirror and held it up to Brody’s face as her body shell fell to the floor like a silk dress and she transformed into an angel. As she floated over and drew the drapes, they altered from a deep blue to a heavenly golden color from her touch. An ethereal light pierced through the opened window and engulfed Brody’s mind for the final time. Thankfully, he had detached from his personalities and was rejected again from going back to his permanent home by his guardian angel, Harmonia.
Good and Evil : Freeland - Part Two (9781628547375) Page 22