One Miracle Too Many

Jason was dying of leukemia at Children’s Mercy Medical. That cheap bastard of a God
saw fit to give my son just twelve years of life, and those years were lousy with doctors and
hospitals and sickness and grief. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair, and it left me fighting like hell to
contain my paternal rage.

Jason was bald from chemotherapy. His ashen face had the pasty bloated look of a corpse
too long in the water. Just over the bed, a dim fluorescent wall light shined toward the ceiling,
casting the rest of the room in a gloom as foul and festering as my malevolent mood. My feelings
were wrong, though, and I knew it. I should’ve been mentally prepared for this moment, seeing
that death had been hunting down my boy since birth. I should’ve had something profound and
fatherly to say to Jason before he’d slipped into unconsciousness, but thanks to my wife I was
robbed of this final act as a loving parent. Through Natalie’s fanatical faith in God she had me
convinced that our son would live a long full life. She lied, and I will never forgive her for it.
Never.

In her black skirt and blouse, Natalie was dressed somberly enough for a funeral. She sat on a chair beside the bed while praying, slipping rosary beads one at a time between thumb and
forefinger. At forty-nine she looked seventy, with her hair hovering about her head like gray
smoke. The stressful years of caring for Jason had eaten away her body fat, giving her the
appearance of a cadaverous old hag.

There were no words for how much I now hated my wife—hated her! I wanted nothing
more than to crush her scrawny neck with my bare hands. She’d considered each day of Jason’s
life a gift from the (supposedly) all-merciful God, and brainwashed me into believing it too. I
believed it because the gift of those days had turned into months and years, so who was I to
question my wife’s faith?

For the first year of Jason’s life my mind was haunted by hallucinatory symptoms of his
leukemia. The curves of his angelic face would turn black as gravestones at night whenever I
held him, as though he were rotting before my eyes. I imagined his limbs going limp, sure that
he’d died in my arms. I would have found myself in a sanitarium if my wife hadn’t led me to
God.

reply to post by jiggerj


I began to pray umpteen times a day right along with her, and attended church services a
minimum of twice a week. In short order I had become passionately sure of God’s love for me
and my son. So sure, in fact, that for years I could think of nothing but the day when the good
Lord would raise Jason from the ashes of his debilitations, to let him soar to the greatest heights
of human endeavor. My son would grow to be the most influential man in the world, or the most
sought after surgeon, or even a skilled racecar driver. It didn’t matter what Jason chose to be, I
just knew it was God’s will for my boy to do incredible things. I mean, what would be the point
of allowing my son to live beyond infancy if the only plan was to kill him twelve years later?
Where the hell’s the blessing in that? The blessing would have been to let Jason overcome his illness. If not that, then a merciful God would’ve taken my son’s life before the disease had a
chance to slowly destroy his hopes and dreams and his body. No, the reality before me was in no
way a blessing. It was heinously cruel and downright evil.

I watched my failing son from the foot of the hospital bed, unaware that my torturous
ruminations were being relayed onto my face. Natalie looked to me and paused in her prayer.
“The Lord has spared our son any discomfort in his final hour.” she said, attempting to ease my
anguish.

My body suddenly trembled with the longing to kill her. If Jason were writhing in pain
she would have said that God was cleansing his soul to prepare him for heaven. The Lord could
do no wrong in her eyes—even in the taking of our son. I needed to get away before I hurled her
religious ass out of the windowed wall of the private room.

I rushed for the bathroom, vaguely aware that I was growling like a vicious guard dog.
Once inside I locked the door and sat on the toilet, quickly discovering that being alone wasn’t
helping. I pressed my hands against my skull, as if the applied pressure would quell my
murderous cravings. It didn’t work. I tried pacing the floor, but there wasn’t enough space for
more than three steps in any direction. Then I caught my reflection in the mirror over the sink.

I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed it before, but I was in no better physical condition than
my wife. My hair was more salt than pepper, and my face looked a ghostly white. My blue eyes
were drained and vacuous, as if they were peering into my future and seeing only an empty man
with a loaded gun to his head. I lowered my angry eyebrows at the beaten fool in the mirror.
What was to be my reward for loving and worshipping God with all of my heart and all of my
soul? The death of my son? The thought ignited the blood in my veins.

“Now you listen to me, God,” I said, watching my reflection grit his teeth and make threatening slits out of his eyes. “If you don’t heal my son I will curse your name for as long as I
live. Right now, and I mean right now, I want to hear my wife call out, It’s a miracle! ”

I held my breath and listened for Natalie’s outcry. When I was sure no miracle would be
forthcoming, my rage ran out of fire upon my first inhale. It was despair’s turn to heave its
unbearable truth upon my tired shoulders—my son would die this day. Whether I accepted it or
not I had to go out and witness his passing. I tucked my white shirt into my brown slacks, swiped
a sleeve across my watery eyes, and unlocked the bathroom door.

I’d barely opened the door before closing it again, startled by what I’d glimpsed out
there. It wasn’t my son’s small and private room, but a long room with at least twelve beds and
twelve patients. I must’ve forgotten that I’d left Jason’s room and mindlessly stepped along the
corridor until I came upon this bathroom. No matter how much I put my mind to it I couldn’t
remember doing this, but it was perfectly plausible considering my all-consuming grief. I took a
reluctant breath and exited the bathroom.

reply to post by jiggerj


As much as I wanted to deny what I was seeing, this was definitely my son’s room. Jason
was in the first of the twelve beds opposite the windows. He was still unconscious, and Natalie
was praying as though nothing at all had changed. I wanted to ask her if she noticed anything
different about the room, but the anomaly had left me speechless. Plus, I didn’t dare say anything
because there were only two possible explanations for this shift in reality. Either I had gone mad,
or God was reacting to my demand for a miracle (and as far as I could tell, not in a good way).

The other patients, ranging in age from nine to ninety, appeared to be as close to the end
of their lives as my son. Some were barely conscious, and some were so still it was hard to tell if
they were alive or not. What manner of hideous joke had the Almighty laid out for me? For some
reason beyond my comprehension, God was making me experience the deaths of others, along with my son’s death. I wanted to scream out that God was making a big mistake by making an
enemy out of me, but I couldn’t. I was not ignorant of the fact that a higher power was at work
here, and it struck me with a fear so great that my legs suddenly felt boneless.

A medicine cart caught my attention. Having staggered to it, I used it to keep myself
upright. The cart had been positioned in the center of the room and had a dozen thimble-size
cups of liquid atop it. Rather unusual liquid, it radiated a toxic green.
Poison?

Did the all-merciful God intend that I should kill these people? The ridiculousness of this
thought actually calmed me a bit. No matter how uncaring God may seem in my hour of
tribulation, He would never order me to take the lives of others. I had to reconsider the
possibility that I had lost my mind.

“You have not lost your mind, Norman,” the angel said from behind me.

Though a whisper from the great beyond informed me that this was the angel Gabriel,
and though I hadn’t yet turned to greet him, I knew immediately that I was in the presence of a
heavenly creature. Gabriel’s voice was a chorus of lilting choirboy tenors, all melodious, and all
utterly bereft of malefic intentions. I wanted so much to be overjoyed by this visitation, and I
would’ve been, had the Lord simply carried out the miracle of healing my son. What remained
my foremost concern, however, were the suspicious complications of the added patients in the
room, and the strange medicine on the cart. My thinking was that if God had truly intended on
saving Jason, then He would’ve just done it. No unsettling mysteries. No making me even more
on edge than I already was. So when I turned to face the angel, my heart was not pounding out of
joy, but of fear.

Gabriel hovered before the window blinds. Adorned in white, flowing, and otherworldly linens, his blindingly brilliant nimbus forced me to hold my hands above my eyes. His long wavy
hair looked of baby-fine strands of gold, and his soul-piercing eyes were dazzling suns. I wanted
to be awestruck, but with the life of my son on the line I didn’t know if this beautiful being
would be my godsend or my ruination.

“Why are you here,” I asked, though I didn’t intend for it to come out as untrusting as it
sounded. I felt like an impatient child, and I had to use every ounce of restraint to keep myself
from saying: Look, I’m not in any mood for games. If you’ve come to heal my son, then just do it,
okay? Just do it!

reply to post by jiggerj


Gabriel’s hair and garment undulated as if immersed in the gentle current of an ethereal
ocean. “Our Heavenly Father has felt your sorrow, Norman,” said the angel. “He has sent me to
deliver you a message.”

“A message?” I exhaled my exasperation, desperately aware that time was ticking down
the last seconds of my son’s life. “I don’t need a message, angel. What I need is a miracle before
my son dies.”

Gabriel shook his head slightly, in regret of what he had to say next. “One of the most
misinterpreted concepts of your world has to do with miracles, Norman. Our Father cannot allow
Himself to intervene on man’s behalf, not in the way you seek.”

The angel could word it any way he wanted to. The answer was no, God would not
create a miracle for me. No, God would not save my son. My legs finally let go, dropping me in
hopelessness and tears to the floor.

Gabriel then said, “There is no need to lament, Norman, for the Lord has granted you the
authority to choose whether your son lives or dies.”

I had tried to stop listening, desiring only that my soul should shrivel up and blow away, but the angel’s message would not be denied entrance into my mind—and thank God for that!
My eyes went right to the green liquid. It was the elixir of life, God’s own ichor, I was sure of it.
I struggled to my feet and took up one of the cups, careful not spill a drop while taking it to my
son.

reply to post by jiggerj


The angel began to speak in a rush, as if to finish the message before I administered the
green liquid. “The Lord has instructed me to say these words to you, Norman: Think carefully,
my son, and consider that one of your options is to do nothing, for the laws of unintentional
consequences are swift and unyielding. You may heal any or all that you choose, but your
actions now may forever alter the universe in ways you—

“I’ve made my decision,” I interrupted. What would God have me do, ponder this thing
until it was too late to save my son? With nothing to lose and everything to gain, I opened my
son’s mouth and poured in the elixir. My wife was still praying on the opposite side of the bed,
apparently disqualified from participating in this miraculous event.

Talk about a potent potion! My son’s breathing became instantly deeper and stronger. His
sandy blonde hair sprouted to shoulder length before my jubilant eyes. His body mass swelled to
that of a healthy preteen. The colors of life saturated his face like water rushing through a desert.
I had no doubt that my son would soon rise to consciousness.

“It’s done,” I said. I wanted to crumble onto the bed, to knot myself into the fetal position
and cry my tears of joy for a month. This was not the time, though. I turned to Gabriel, wanting
to show him that I could never possibly regret the choice I’d made.

The angel was gone.

“Dad? Mom?”

Natalie finally shrieked, “It’s a miracle!”

Her body quaking, in such an exuberance of wailing my wife took hold of Jason and
kissed his face a hundred times, all the while hugging him and touching him with disbelieving
fingers. And then another miracle happened—she reached out for me as I, too, clutched my son
in my arms.

All the irrational contempt I’d felt for her melted away when she squeezed my hand. Over the years my wife had gone through the exact same hell as I had. No, that’s wrong,
she had had it worse. She had to stay at home while I escaped to my job (sometimes twelve to
sixteen hours a day). She had to watch Jason weakening minute by minute, never fully able to
deny the fact that our son would not see adulthood. It would have driven me mad, yet she’d held
it together and gave me the strength to go on. And if it’s true that you always hurt the one you
love, then the atrocious thoughts I’d had of her only proves how much I loved her and needed
her. Without her devotion to me I surely would’ve ended up a drunken homeless lunatic.

“Please hurry,” I begged of my wife. “Get Jason’s clothes out of the closet. I don’t want
to stay here any longer than we have to.”

The Lord’s phrase of unintentional consequences hit me with a pervading sense of
urgency to leave the hospital. Yet, not all of my speculations held such calamitous portents.
While Jason was jumping into his Old Navy T-shirt, blue jeans and sneakers, I noticed a halo of
blue along the perimeter of the closed window blinds. Having made it through the long
insufferable night, the morning light gave me the feeling that our battle over life and death was
finally over—and we had won! My son was alive and well and ready to take on the world. Back
to fear again: I felt as though I’d just stolen my son’s spirit right out of the hands of God. Quite a
scary consideration, seeing that He, in his mysterious ways, could snatch Jason back any time He
wanted to.

Natalie wasn’t suffering from such emotional turmoil. She was positively drunk on her
euphoria while standing beside her son. Her hands were clamped together before her face, and
through trembling lips and gushing eyes she lavished upon God a mumbling of hysterical praise
and prayers, almost as though she were speaking in tongues.

“Please, mister,” a pleading voice beseeched me as I ushered my family to the door. “Can
you fix me too?” It was the red-haired girl in the bed next to Jason’s. Her slight frame made
hardly an impression upon the bed sheets. My heart reached out to her, but my flight response
had me by the heels. I just wanted to take my family and run!

reply to post by jiggerj


“I’ll send in a nurse to give you the medication,” I told her, as I was about to exit the
room. To my consternation, however, I found that I could move no further. My conscience held
me as the door closed by itself, with Natalie and my son on the other side. I somehow knew that I
was the only one who could administer the green liquid. Plus, how I could leave these people to
die? It would torment me through all of my days.

Having raced ten times from medicine cart to bed I had healed all but the last one.
Though my energies were still focused on fleeing I couldn’t help feeling overjoyed by the gleeful
excitement of those I’d already cured. In hospital gowns they had raised the window blinds and
gathered to look upon a new and brighter day for themselves. A weeping motherly type had
taken the red-haired child in her arms. The others were chattering about how they couldn’t wait
to see the faces of family and friends when they arrived. So involved was I in their merriment
that I was quite rattled when the last patient grabbed my wrist and spilled the potion.

The emaciated black man was strong for his advanced age. His hand felt as though it had
been glued to my wrist. The whites of his eyes were jaundiced, but it was the infinite black of his
irises that paralyzed me with their unflinching glare.

“You need to tell me the time, boy,” he said, in a most condemning manner.

“Let go of me,” I demanded. I was in no mood to coddle him. He had spilled the last of
the potion and there was nothing I could do for him. I wriggled my wrist as hard as I dared,
mindful that if I applied any more pressure I might snap his fingers like dried out twigs.

The man would not relent. “I’ll let go when you tell me exactly what time of day it is.”

“Fine, fine,” I said, hurriedly checking my watch. “It’s two-thirty-two a.m., now
release—“My stomach knotted. Outside the windows, it was supposed to be still nighttime, and
as black as the old man’s eyes.

“You broke the world,” the man groused, through jagged yellow teeth. He pulled on me
until our faces were inches apart. “You broke the world!”

The man infected me with a case of the dreads, but the screams that followed shook me to
my foundation. Those that were cured now dashed from the windows and huddled themselves
together upon a single bed. The frightened little girl was pointing to whatever hellish thing she’d
seen beyond the glass.

In the foulest of exhales the black man’s head lay back against his pillow, his dead eyes
staring up at the ceiling. His hand slid from my wrist and flopped onto the bed, freeing me to run
to the windows.

My eyes darted over the sleeping city structures and vacant streets of Queensville,
Massachusetts. I found nothing to warrant the fear in the little girl’s eyes, until—frights of all
frights!—there it was, to the wide-open north, past the distant highway and into the New
Hampshire forest beyond. My upper torso recoiled, but I couldn’t look away from the unnatural
force rolling and roiling this way. The old man’s accusation came back to haunt me—You broke
the world!

It wasn’t a hurricane, but I still considered it a heinous weather beast of some sort. A
wave of electric-veined, nebulous air stretched clear across the horizon. Too distant to tell for
sure, but by the way the white clouds were being sucked in that direction I believed the force to
be as high as the sky. As high as the damn sky!

I bolted for the door, and again my conscience forbade me a hasty exit. What was the
point in curing people only to let them die moments later? I turned and yelled, “Everyone run!”

I was yelling to an empty room with a single bed.

I felt stupid, having just registered that the motherly type woman and the old man didn’t
belong in a children’s hospital, meaning that none of the patients were real. But still, I didn’t
care. My son was real, and very much alive. I took a step toward the window, hoping against
hope that maybe the anomalous storm had vanished along with the patients. To my horror, my
answer came not of sight, but from the reverberation of the storm shooting up through my
loafers. And from sound—I may not have looked out the window, but the hair-raising shrieks
now plaguing the hospital left no doubt that others had seen that abomination of nature. My
instincts were right; I needed to get my family the hell out of there!

reply to post by jiggerj


I threw open the door, launched myself into the hallway, and nearly collided with the
herd of stampeding kids and hospital staff. The children were dressed in street clothes or hospital
gowns, with all of them wearing the same terror upon their faces. I had to run with the pack in
order to avoid being trampled.

“Dad! Dad!” Jason was jumping up and down at the intersection by the nurse’s station,
waving his hands for me to see him above the twenty-or-so ahead of me.

Natalie’s screech of, “Norman! Norman! Norman!” cut through the high-pitched
caterwauling of the children.

Upon reaching my family I spied the visiting area to the left, with its outer walls of
curtain-less windows. “Holy—” I mumbled, of the terrible force lashing out with its countless
whips of lightning. Every manmade structure along the highway, every tree—everything—
disintegrated into dust as the force rolled over it. My family began to pull me to the right of the
intersection, toward the bank of elevators. I didn’t resist.

A tall and strong-jawed doctor stood as an authority figure before the bank of elevators.
Without his smock he could’ve passed for a heavyweight boxer. His voice boomed above the
hysterical children as they stabbed at the already lit elevator buttons. “There’s no guarantee that
any of the elevators will stop on this floor! Those of you who are capable should take the stairs!”

With the hospital shivering from foundation to roof, a mad rush for the nearby stairwell
ensued. I stayed with the handful remaining behind, knowing that if I descended the six flights of
stairs I’d have no energy left to escape the building. Natalie must’ve been thinking the same
thing. We both latched onto Jason’s arms to keep him from going with the other children. With
his newfound strength he turned the struggle around by trying to pull us to the emergency exit.
His pleas were squelched by the thunderous growl of the air wave. An elevator opened, and we
had all we could do to pull Jason into it.

“The power will go out!” Jason yelled, after the doors closed and the elevator began its
unhurried descent.

Dread flowed out from the others to mix with mine. In the scramble-brained rush to flee
the hospital none of the adults had considered the obvious. The electricity was sure to be cut off,
and soon. Fifteen of us were sardined in what might turn out to be our mass casket. The young
RN directly behind me was the only one unafraid. She annoyed us by saying, “Don’t worry,
anyone, this is just one of my nightmares. I’ll wake up in a moment and it’ll all be over.”

The tall doctor wasn’t in the mood for such foolishness (and neither was I). He flatly
commanded, “Cindy, shut up.”

“No, think about the children,” the RN insisted. “Less than an hour ago they were either
bedridden with a terminal disease or medicated into a stupor. Even the physically challenged just
took to the stairs as if they were running a marathon. This can’t be real.”

Cindy was right. Those kids had looked too healthy to be in a hospital—miraculously
healthy. Why did God put me through hell in order to save my son, yet perform quick-as-youplease
miracles for all the other children? I wanted to be outraged, but I had to stay focused. The
weather beast was probably no more than a mile away by now, and as proof, the elevator doors
opened only a foot before my son’s prediction of a power outage came to pass. In the dark, and
amidst the doctor’s bellowing of Go! Go! Go! I could feel these strangers pushing and shoving at
my back. I manhandled my son out first, then my wife. I was whisked out by the wave of rushing
bodies.

It was a mistake to have let my son out first. In his fright he raced away, joining in the
exodus of the screaming and terror-stricken. I had wanted to head to the rear parking lot of the
hospital, to jump in our car and leave the weather beast far behind us. Now my wife and I had to
follow Jason to the front exit, with no idea what to do once we caught up with him. The air was
plagued with the savage growls and grumbles of the air wave, like a nuclear bomb going off in
an endless explosion. The quaking beneath my feet was increasing exponentially. Ceiling tiles
and wall hangings rained down upon us, but Natalie and I made it out of the building just as the
entire first floor ceiling came crashing down, with the upper floors sure to follow.

reply to post by jiggerj


Just beyond the two hundred feet of well-groomed hospital grounds, the awakened city
dwellers were now blaring their horns and racing south to safety (if such a thing could still be found anywhere in the world). The cars were speeding at such a rate that if I had gone for my
own car I wouldn’t have made it onto the street. Out of desperation I would’ve tried, though with
disastrous results. Without Jason realizing it, by running off he had probably extended our lives a
few minutes more.

My wife and I stood atop the long stone stairway of the hospital entrance. Even though I
was the only one who could hear her, Natalie repeatedly shrieked Jason’s name. I tried to focus
on locating my son amidst the fleeing multitude, but it was impossible to ignore the advancing
wall of hell-on-earth.

The weather beast was just a half-mile away, and annihilating the cityscape like
meteorites crashing into sandcastles. Along with the wave’s tendrils of lightning and electric
veins, its membranous surface swirled in the repulsive highlights of an oil slick. Though my
logic wouldn’t allow for this thing to be capable of sentient thought, the wave’s violent blistering
and pulsating gave it an air of deadly intent.

“Jason!” Natalie screamed again, only this time her tone was different. She had located
our son.

Surrounded by a cluster of smaller children, Jason was just ten feet from the bottom of
the stairs. They were standing on the hospital drive, which wound its way from the city street to
the emergency room at the rear of the hospital. I had some difficulty locating Jason even with
Natalie pointing him out to me. I was conditioned to seeing him as bald and physically
diminished—he now stood tall and strong. Though the hospital staff and the older kids went
running for their lives, the smaller children knew they couldn’t outrun the weather beast. They
looked to Jason to save them, and Jason looked as though he was willing to take up the
challenge. I knew he was the hero type. I just knew it!

I watched my son as Natalie and I rushed down the steps. He was facing the road leading
to the rear of the hospital, and his hands were thrust out as if to prevent an approaching vehicle
from passing. A line of tall hedges blocked my view of the road in that direction. I couldn’t hear
Jason above the deafening cacophony of exploding buildings and shattering glass, but I read his
lips as he shouted: Stop! Stop! Stop!

To my ineffable horror a speeding ambulance smashed into the children and kept right on
going. The children were knocked over, run over, and hurled like trash bags. But, my son! My
son! I saw his head cave in under the front tire.

My wife crumbled into merciful unconsciousness upon the sidewalk as. I melted to my
hands and knees. I crawled through the blood and guts of the dead children to reach Jason,
desiring only to hold him, to rock him in my arms while my heart finished tearing itself to pieces,
but I couldn’t do it. The sight of Jason’s broken face destroyed me. I collapsed beside him and
wept into my hands.

Only a few seconds had passed before someone rolled me onto my back and shook me by
the shoulders. And that someone was Jason! To my shock, elation, and disbelief my son and the
other children were perfectly alive! Natalie threw her arms about Jason, nearly knocking him
over while I got to my feet. Unfortunately, her joy (and mine) would last no more than a breath.

The weather beast was now upon us, giving me just enough time to grip my family in a
final embrace. The children latched onto our legs and onto each other. I clamped my eyes shut
and waited for the agonizing demise that would surely turn us into dust. I could sense the air
wave enveloping us, yet no pain came to me. The cries of the children were becoming more and
more audible against the diminishing howl of the storm, and then all at once they fell silent.

reply to post by jiggerj


Did I die? I didn’t think so. I dared myself to raise an eyelid, and—Holy Mary, Mother of God!—the air wave had simply spit us out the other side!

We weren’t the only survivors, either. The weather beast was still destroying all that
mankind had wrought, but harming no man, woman or child. Instead, it was safely depositing the
entire human race here. I happened to notice that, while my heart was still pumping a fair amount
of fear adrenaline through my body, the other survivors were quickly losing their look of
horror—too quickly as far as I was concerned. One second they were running from one hell of a
freakish storm (not to mention one hell of a gruesome death), and the next second they were
smiling serenely in this newly remodeled land. If I didn’t know better I would have sworn they
were all drugged.

Of course I was relieved to still be alive, but frankly, I found the new landscape to be
eerie and foreboding. It was a flat green lawn under a baby blue sky, both endless, and both
ominously surreal. No trees, no hills; no sun, and no clouds. The climate was neither cold nor
hot. Sure, the soft grass felt like plush carpeting three layers thick under my feet, but what were
we expected to do here? There was nothing to eat, nothing to build shelters against foul weather.
Nothing. As far as I could tell we had the option of standing or lying down; and that was it.

The other survivors were really starting to freak me out. They remained motionless in the
exact spot where they’d landed here. No talking, yawning, or even blinking. I could tell by the
ones closest to us that they were still breathing; yet they struck me as more mannequin-like than
human. I had no idea where to go, or even which direction to head in, but I felt compelled to
move my wife and son into a region away from these people.

“Come on,” I whispered, “there’s something very wrong about this place.”

Jason and Natalie were still in my arms. With no response from them I eased myself
away, sick to my soul that maybe they had succumbed to the plastic smile and mannequin-like

state. Not only was my fear well-founded, but as I glimpsed their frozen faces, the color of the
entire world suddenly flashed into black and white. I bolted backwards and inadvertently
knocked a few of the children into the other children. They toppled over like dominoes.

My nerves were stretched beyond my ability to cope, and I ran. From my own loved
ones, I ran. I dodged and weaved between the immobilized humans, trying with the last remnants
of my sanity to not look upon their glassy and unseeing eyes. I ran until I was gasping for air,
until I was soaked in sweat. And then my anger took root. I had had enough of this godforsaken
game, or whatever the hell it was. I started slamming into people, tackling them, all the while
commanding them to, “Wake up, dammit! Snap out of it!” Not one of them so much as groaned
or gave up that damn irritating grin.

My energy spent, I collapsed onto the lawn and turned my attention to God. “Father!” I
yelled, staring up at the drab white sky. “Why are you doing this to me?”

I was about to receive an answer, but not from God. A dark figure in a white hospital
gown raced inhumanly fast into my periphery. Before I could set my arms to flailing and legs to
running, the figure hoisted me onto my feet.

“How dare you blame God for this,” he scolded me, shaking me by the arms. “He didn’t
break the world, boy. You did!”

“You can’t be here!” I blurted, recognizing the old black man from the hospital. “I
watched you die, and you aren’t real anyway!”

“Yeah, well, thanks to you nobody’s dead anymore. Anyone who has ever walked the
earth is now alive and suspended in a state of nothingness until the end of time.”

I found enough defiance to shake free of him. “What do you mean, thanks to me? All I
asked for was one miracle and I’m suddenly thrown into this nightmare.”

The old man chuffed at my ignorance. “You still don’t get it, boy. One miracle from God
is one miracle too many.”

I chuffed right back at him. “You’re not making any sense, old man. Either explain
what’s going on here or I’m walking.”

“Fine, we’ll take it slow,” he said, as though he were talking to an idiot. “After you
healed your son in the hospital, why did you also heal the others?”

reply to post by jiggerj


“The question’s ridiculous,” I said. “What kind of a man would I be if I saved my son and
left the others to suffer and die?”

The old man sighed as though I’d just revealed some great secret. “Then how can you
expect the Lord to say to the world, ‘I will heal this one child and let millions of others suffer
and die’? Who could love such a cold-hearted God?”

The man’s truth hit me so hard it made the world spin about me. In asking God to heal
my son I was inadvertently asking Him to love Jason above all others. For one thing, how could I
worship a God who played favorites, and for another, if He were to heal some other child and not
mine I would hate Him with every fiber of my being. I had placed my own loving God in a nowin
situation.

The old man saw the torment on my face. He spoke less gruff as he said, “When you
unleashed God’s power to create miracles, that power had no choice but to spiral down into
every aspect of life.” He then motioned to the multitude throughout the land. “And this is what
life would be reduced to, a mindless and meaningless existence throughout all of eternity.”

As if in divine revelation my mind was shown the spiraling down effect of miracles on
mankind. If the Lord were to heal the sick and dying, then how could He turn His back on those
who are starving to death? And if he fed the starving, then how could He allow others to be murdered, raped, beaten, or abandoned? Like a protective parent, how could God tolerate his
children suffering in any way?

From sniffles to plagues, and from verbal belittling to all out war, the Lord must either
allow man to experience all the ills of life, or take all the ills away. There is no middle ground for
God to help some of his children while ignoring all the others. And the cure for these ills—the
terrible cure—would be to free mankind from his greed and his selfishness, his ambition and
jealousy, his fear and anger... I have felt the soul-wrenching pain that comes from loving my own
son; so even love would have to be removed from the human equation.

I had comprehended maybe a bit more than the old man had intended. With my shoulders
slumped, I inquired of him, “You said this is what life would be reduced to, meaning that none of
this is real. I’m still in the bathroom at the hospital, aren’t I? And my son is still dying.”

Having experienced such an onslaught of unnatural events I could no longer be struck
dumb as the old man’s eyes suddenly blazed. I simply turned away from the blinding light. When
I looked again I saw that the old man was actually the angel Gabriel. He looked sadly upon me as
he said, “You can stay here forever if you wish, Norman, but is this really the life you want for
your son?”

My heart ached so much that I burst into tears. “An eternity as a statue, or death…these
are not choices, angel.”

Gabriel withheld any comment. He allowed my inner turmoil the time to wrestle itself
into a resolution, and without so much as a reluctant nod from me, he knew when I had come to a
decision. The world faded out as though someone slowly turned a dimmer switch to off, and then
the hospital filled in around me.

I opened the bathroom door and stepped into my son’s room. Natalie was holding onto Jason’s hand.

“He’s gone,” she sobbed.

I can’t honestly say whether the events I’d experienced were God inspired, or if they
were simply the machinations of my own mind, battling to put the loss of my son into some form
of manageable perspective. Either way, it worked. Though I was sick to my soul at his passing,
something about Jason’s face showed me that he was at peace. No more sickness. No more pain.
He was with God now. I knelt down and took hold of my wife’s hands, and prayed.

End

reply to post by jiggerj


Wow... that was really good. Full of emotion and very powerful.
I really enjoyed reading it. It caught my attention quick and I couldn't stop reading.

Thanks for writing this and sharing. SnF

Originally posted by natalia
reply to post by jiggerj

 

Wow... that was really good. Full of emotion and very powerful.
I really enjoyed reading it. It caught my attention quick and I couldn't stop reading.

Thanks for writing this and sharing. SnF

Thank you so much. I only hope people will enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it. It was fun!

reply to post by jiggerj


Yes, a very enthralling tale. Thank you for writing it.

MAN .... you've got talent!
Luv'd it!

reply to post by FlyersFan


Thanks, AI and FF! I've been writing for over 20 years. Had a few small publishing successes, but even I can tell that I don't have 'IT', whatever IT is that nails a story down as well as the popular authors of today. But, I still love my imagination.

Holy cats, what a story. Very tense! Good movement and emotion in it.