The Lunatic Messiah

by Simon Cutting

  Blink. The monitor is beeping again. I'm back. I can feel somebody moving me around and I blink again in time with the machine. It's a nurse, and she appears to be trying to turn me on my side. She's busily singing to herself the latest song by generic R&B artist and doesn't notice me at first, but when she does she lets out a little shriek.

  'Mr Finch?' she says hesitantly, her arms still up by the side of her head where she'd put them in her comical surprise.

  'Carol Baker, thirty two, unmarried?' I ask in reply and she puts a hand to her mouth and backs away from the bed.

  'I'm going to get... I have to go and get Doctor Pontius,' she says, rushing from the room as the blood drains from her face.

  I'm in the hospital, yet again. They've put me in the same bed as before. I look out of the doorway onto the hall where I first saw Lucy walk past. What filled me with terror at the time instils a sort of nostalgia in me now. My snoring neighbour is long gone, and I invent a story for his life. I make it a happy one, giving him a wife and triplets as well as a nice house in the country. I lie there, as there really is very little else for me to do and I would certainly be interested in seeing what Pontius has to say. My neck has very restricted movement and when I reach up to find out why I discover that I'm wearing a plastic neck brace. I tear it off and throw it to the floor, where it hits with an audible splitting noise. My neck is bandaged as well, and when I reach up to touch it I can feel that there are stitches all along the back. I laugh out loud.

  'Well, Joe. It appears you weren't much of a carpenter, just like you said. Still, you certainly managed to wake me up.'

  The bandage around my neck is quite tight, and I'm sure it would be difficult to breath if a plastic tube sticking out of my throat wasn't performing that function for me. This I tear out with a flourish, just as Dr Pontius enters the room. When he sees what I'm doing he rushes towards the bed, calling for the nurse.

  'Mr Finch, now you need that to live, yes?' he says, picking it up from the floor and attempting to place it back into my throat quite forcefully.

  I keep him away from me with equal force and he eventually stops trying once he notices that I am not, in fact, suffocating.

  'Remarkable,' he mutters to himself.

  'It certainly is,' I reply, quite surprised at how frail my voice sounds.

  The nurse, who has returned to the room, is standing beside him looking at me fearfully. She whispers something in his ear that I'm not supposed to hear, but can catch quite easily.

  'He knew my name, and age. He told me when he woke up.'

  Pontius looks at her thoughtfully and then back at me, and with his usual tactlessness answers her whilst looking at me.

  'Yes well, the coma patient can sometimes be fully aware of surroundings, yes? So I can assume that he has heard you speak of these things in his presence and they have registered.'

  'But he knew I wasn't married as well,' she insists.

  Again Pontius continues looking at me as he answers, scratching his chin now with the end of a pen that he has extracted from his pocket to write on my chart.

  'Well you must have spoken to somebody about that while you were turning him. It's really not so uncommon.'

  The answer is simple of course. I don't know anything about this woman, but she is clearly only an extra and of no real importance. Therefore her back story has never been written. Therefore I am free to write it as I choose, and she is forced to accept it as truth. I look at the nurse and smile politely.

  'I also know that when you were fourteen years old you took some peanut butter from the fridge and let the family dog...'

  She screams and runs from the room, leaving Pontius to look after her with a bemused expression on his face that quickly turns into a puzzled one, and then a quizzical one, before finally settling on a curious one. On anybody else, they would all look much the same, but Pontius has a gift for subtlety in facial expression that he lacks in his speech.

  'So, Mr Finch, may I call you Joe?'

  I nod, although neither name is appropriate any more.

  'So, Joe, you are awake at last. You have had a good sleep, yes?'

  'I suppose I did. How long was I gone for?'

  Pontius looks behind him and then back at me, apparently worried that the answer will alarm me.

  'You have been in a coma for three days.'

  'Three days. Fine. Let me ask you this? Why am I not decapitated? I was pretty much counting on the guillotine killing me outright and frankly my continued existence here could prove to be a pain in the neck.'

  Pontius laughs and points at me with an index finger to indicate that I am the one who has made the joke he is laughing at. It is a trifle unnecessary as there is nobody else in the room with us.

  'Yes, very good, very good. Well there is something of a funny story, well not funny of course in the strict sense of the word, but certainly an oddity. Your design was perhaps not too well thought out, and well fortunately for you, your skills as a carpenter are rather, how should I say this...'

  'Quickly,' I suggest.

  'Well let me just say that the mechanism stalled and although you did receive a very serious injury, the police officer at the scene was able to stabilise you until the ambulance arrived. You are very, very lucky, Mr Finch.'

  'Did it not occur to you, Dr Pontius, that as I was the one who placed my head on the block and released the blade that I therefore wished for decapitation? In that case, surely I should be considered unlucky.'

  Pontius writes something on the chart but doesn't take his eyes off me as he does it. He seems a little uncomfortable with the comment.

  'Well, ahem, yes. That is perhaps a question more for Dr Armaita than for myself. My duty now is a difficult one, although there are good and bad sides.'

  'I'll take the good news,' I reply, certain that neither piece of news will be a problem in any way.

  'Well, whilst you were unconscious, your wife signed the consent forms for you to have surgery,' he began and I put my hand up to the side of my head, just above my right ear. Sure enough, my fingertips encountered nothing but soft, smooth skin and yet another scar to add to my growing collection.

  'You were deemed to be mentally incapable of making the decision in view of your... attempt, and so we were legally able to perform the surgery.'

  I shrug. This news, just as I suspected, is of a type totally irrelevant to me. Joe Finch would have cared but I do not. Pontius pauses, and I can tell he thinks he is about to say something of a delicate nature. I wish I could somehow convince him to just tell me these things that don't matter.

  'There was a surprise when we performed the surgery. I am at a loss to explain this to you, Mr Finch, in light of the fact that we did innumerable scans...'

  'You did nine scans.'

  'In light of the fact that we did nine scans I cannot be certain how this has occurred, but the fact of the matter is that the tumour is, well, the tumour was not there.'

  I sense his disappointment at my total lack of reaction and I try to explain it to him in the simplest terms that I can.

  'I know. I convinced Lucy to kill Mr Grey psychosomatically and consequently his manifestation as a tumour was ended.'

  Although those are pretty much the simplest terms I can use to describe what happened, Pontius is clearly far from convinced. Not only is he not convinced by the explanation but it is equally clear that he has no idea what I'm talking about.

  'Never mind. If you're worried about the hospital or being sued or anything of that nature, then I can assure you I have no intention of doing so. Even if I did want to, the legal proceedings would take months and the universe is likely to end in the next two days, so there would be no point.'

  It was a comment designed to put his mind at ease, but it doesn't seem to. He writes something else down on my chart and then places it on the end of the bed. He takes off his glasses, which had been such a part of his general persona that I hadn't even noticed he was wearing them until he removed them.
He wipes them on his tie.

  'I'm afraid, there were certain complications during the surgery. The news is good of course, you have no tumour! This is a thing to celebrate, naturally, however it occurred. But during your surgery you had a seizure, yes? An epileptic seizure, which we were unable to suppress. In fact, during the three days of your coma, you have had no less than twenty five such seizures, and we are unable to treat them in any way so far.'

  I didn't expect him to say that, but it doesn't really matter. I have nothing against seizures in particular.

  'Although you have had these before, the great number of seizures would indicate to us that you have developed temporal lobe epilepsy. It is a normally treatable condition, although it can be debilitating.'

  'Well I'm sure I can live with that,' I reply, and make to get out of bed, but to my surprise, Pontius leans forward and places his hand on my chest.

  'There is another piece of bad news, I'm afraid. When the blade hit your neck, it partially severed your spinal cord. Whilst you have limited use of your arms you may find that they lack strength. More importantly, yes, is the fact that you have no mobility of the legs. I'm afraid that you will never walk again, Mr Finch. There is simply too much damage.'

  I sigh at this news, and Pontius actually takes a hold of my hand in sympathy, a strange gesture, but I can't help but like him for it. Still, as touching as it may be, it's as irrelevant as everything else and I throw the sheet off of my body and swing my legs over the side of the bed.

  'I'm just going to the bathroom, but I really appreciate you telling me,' I say, and then stand up and walk towards the door of the room.

  Pontius watches me with amazement, but then suddenly comes to his senses and rushes after me.

  'You must get back into bed immediately, Mr Finch!' he cries. 'You're breaking the laws of medical science!'

  I can hear him coming up behind me, and I have seen enough hospital dramas to know what to do. The first day of arrival in hospital, it's important to go up to the first doctor you see and hit him with a chair. That way the other doctors respect you. So that is what I do. I pick up the surprisingly heavy visitor's chair next to the empty bed by the door and as Pontius approaches I spin around and hit him across the head with it. He crumples to the floor in a heap and the chair falls down with a clang beside him.

  'I'm sorry about that,' I reply, 'but I really don't have time for this. Armageddon is only two shopping days away.'

  Just outside the door, only a few metres away, are two unrealistically large wardsmen. They see me, and then they see Pontius lying on the ground in front of me. I hold my hands over Pontius, palms facing downwards, and close my eyes.

  'Physician, heal thyself!'

  To my annoyance, Pontius does not move. If anything he gets even more still, as if even his atoms have slowed in their vibration just to mock me. It appears that here, in this world, I am as omnimpotent as Grey.

  'Oh well,' I say to the wardsmen. 'One of you better do it then,'

  I make a dash for it and before too long they are both rushing towards me as if I'm a fox and they're a pair of overly excited hunting dogs with huge muscles and ill-fitting uniforms. I make a valiant effort to escape, but I'm tackled to the floor in a way that would certainly not be in the procedural manual in regards to moving a patient with a spinal cord injury. I struggle in vain, but they are simply too strong, and despite the fact that I am fully aware that neither of them truly exists, they still manage to haul me back towards my room. It appears that whilst my mind has been released from Joe Finch, I am still very much trapped in the prison of his body.

  25