by William Hawk
“He wasn’t at breakfast.”
She and Proof exchanged looks. “I’ll go get him,” Shana said.
No sooner had she taken one step towards the door when Hunter burst into the room. His eyes were alive with energy, and his entire body seemed animated. “Sorry,” said Hunter, “I was busy.”
“As long as you got here,” said Proof.
“William,” said Hunter, approaching him with an extended hand, “I’m sorry about yesterday. Let’s make it up here.”
William looked at his hand suspiciously. Then he looked up at Hunter’s eyes. There was no malice in them, nothing except directness and forthrightness. Then William remembered what Proof had said to him about evil people being masters of disguise, leading lives of lies.
Reluctantly he grasped Hunter’s hand and shook it. The hand felt strong and well formed.
They released the grasp, and both turned toward Proof, who said, “This snap is a little different because you won’t be selecting anything. I’ve made the selection already.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Hunter, clapping his hands together. “Let’s do this! Ready, William?”
William kept his eyes focused on Proof. “Yes I am, Hunter.”
Proof gestured to a pair of pods. “Please enter.”
William noticed that they’d been arranged side by side.
William climbed into one and lay back; Hunter did the same in the other. Shana came to William’s side and affixed the cuff. “Good luck on this one,” she said.
There was a note of warning in her voice. William’s eyes found hers. “Why do I need luck?”
“I just have a funny feeling,” she whispered.
She lowered the top of the pod, and a moment later William felt everything go dark. He waited for the parallax to arrive above, but this time there was only a single image.
CHAPTER 25
NAP.
William found himself lying on a gurney. He was wearing a tiny patterned hospital gown.
Five hundred breaths.
A huge pain was ripping through his chest. His fingers clenched and unclenched, and his gown was soaked in sweat. A beeping monitor to his left told him that things were not all right.
His host was very ill.
The hospital room was modern. A flat-screen television on the wall ahead of him showed a talking head on CNN describing a terrorist attack somewhere in the Middle East. He was in the contemporary era, that much was clear. It was a welcome change from the usual dirt villages and horrific scenes of slaughter that they’d snapped to before.
This suffering, however, had simply taken a different form. William had never known sickness, and judging from the strange, swelling feeling in his body, he wished that he never had. He’d much rather take his chances with a snake or a hippo, not a battalion of tiny, invisible germs. There was no way to combat that, nothing he could do except lie here and wait.
He turned his head. Sitting next to him was a woman, presumably his wife. She was ordinary looking, with brown hair, a simple top, and eyes reddened from crying or fatigue or both.
“Baby,” she said.
“Yeah,” he replied. His voice was a croak.
“The doctor just gave us some great news. Your vitals are coming back.”
He felt himself swell with a little bit of hope. “Which ones?”
“All of them, baby.” She wiped a tear away. “Heart rate, respiration, white blood cells, everything.”
“I’m getting better.” William heard himself say the words, mostly as a reassurance.
His host’s wife gripped his hand. It felt hot and alive compared to his. “We always knew you would come back. Even when you hit bottom last week, I knew you would. Your spirit is so strong.”
He looked around the room. “Where’s Kristin?”
“She went to find a sandwich.”
Four hundred forty-six. Four hundred forty-five.
William settled his head back into the pillow and looked at the ceiling. “I bet I’m prettier than she is right now.”
“Do you want to see yourself, baby?”
William perked up. In all of these snaps, never once had he looked into a mirror. The snaps usually didn’t last long enough, and most of the locations were places where mirrors were luxury items.
“I’ll probably regret it,” he said.
“No,” she replied, “all things considered, you don’t look so bad.” His wife reached into her purse and pulled out her compact and opened it and held the mirror up to his face.
William looked in the mirror. He saw a pasty-faced middle-aged man with no hair, no eyebrows, no eyelashes. He had a bit too much fat around the jowls, and his skin had a yellowish tint that was definitely not healthy. He looked like the definition of a struggling hospital patient.
It took William aback, seeing a different face from his in the reflection. After all, it was a primitive thing, seeing one’s face, and so this experience was deeply unsettling. He gestured for her to lower the mirror.
“Not bad, huh?” she said.
“I guess,” he said. His throat suddenly felt dry, and it occurred to him that he needed some water. He made a few gasping noises with his throat.
“Water? Here you go.”
His wife lifted a small cup of water to his lips, and he felt the cool liquid hit his mouth. It ran down his throat, soothing him along the way.
The door handle turned, and a doctor entered the room. He was Indian, fairly short, and he wore a white lab coat.
Three hundred eighty. Three hundred seventy-nine.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Daniels,” he said, looking at his clipboard. “How are you feeling today?”
Mr. Daniels. William had never heard a host’s name before, at least not in English.
“Better, I guess,” William replied, his voice scratchy.
The doctor studied him for a moment. “I appreciate your optimism,” he said. “A positive attitude has been shown to correlate with positive outcomes. However, I’ve been studying your charts, and there’s still quite a bit of cause for concern.”
William felt his host’s spirits begin to fall. A heat started in his cheeks and spread to the back of his head and down his back. He felt a buzzing anxiety in his thighs. Sweat sprang out on his palms.
Meanwhile, his wife got to her feet and was wringing her hands anxiously. “But Dr. Linder informed us yesterday that everything was improving.”
The Indian doctor lifted his hand up, and she quieted. “I spoke with Dr. Linder this morning about your husband’s case, and after further review he does regret that feedback. The fact is that your husband is not out of the woods, not even close. In fact, we are worried about total system collapse.”
William’s wife let out a shriek. William rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, wishing desperately he could be out of this body, out of this snap, back to himself.
“Doctor, what is wrong with me this time?” he heard himself say.
“Brain tumors are tricky things,” said the doctor. “They affect people in different ways. As they move and grow, they press upon different parts of the body.”
He went on to a disquisition describing William’s host’s case. He had something called a Glioblastoma, and it came with an average life expectancy of fourteen months. He was receiving Temozolomide as a part of chemotherapy.
“So are you worried that it could be spreading?” said his wife.
“Potentially. We’ll know more when the radiologist looks at the scan shortly.” He mustered a smile. “I’ll be back.”
The doctor nodded and left the room.
William’s wife sat in a chair, made a fist, and laid her forehead upon it. She began to cry.
“Sweetheart,” he croaked.
“Not right now,” she said. “I just can’t. It’s just, no, I can’t.”
She left the room with her hand over her face, the door closing behind her. William knew that she was crying and that she didn’t want him to see her doing so.
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Two hundred two. Two hundred one.
The talking heads on television were chatting about six more weeks of winter, the caption read something about Punxsutawney Phil. William watched his hand pick up the remote control and press the big red power button. The screen went black.
His host wasn’t going to make it. He could tell.
William began to think about mortality. His host was going to die, like all of us, but this guy Daniels was going to die sooner rather than later. He felt his host come to an understanding of that, an acceptance, and immediately a sense of calm settled over his body and soul like a soft blanket on a colicky baby. He had faith in something beyond himself, and that’s where his piece came from.
“It’s okay,” said William to his host.
He’d never done that before, making direct communication with a host. Truth be told, William hadn’t even known until just now that he could do such a thing. But the time seemed right. Daniels grew very still. William could tell he was listening.
“You’ll continue your existence later, somewhere else.”
William realized he was having the conversation that people have with spirits before they die, only he was on the other side, playing the part of the spirit.
“I’ve had a good life,” Daniels said.
“Then count yourself blessed.”
“My wife and daughter don’t deserve to be alone.”
“They won’t be. There are billions of people all around them.”
“It feels like you’re right here with me.”
William fought the urge to tell the truth. “I am, but I have to leave soon.”
The door to the hospital room flew open. It was the Indian doctor again, followed by Daniels’ wife, followed by a girl who he presumed was Daniels’ daughter. She was in that awkward stage of growth that ten-year-old girls sometimes find themselves in, a mess of gangly limbs. Behind the three of them were two nurses.
“Doctor, that is absurd!” his wife was saying.
“The results show that total system breakdown is imminent,” the doctor said.
One hundred thirty-nine. One hundred thirty-eight.
“I demand to speak to another specialist,” she said fiercely.
“You’re welcome to do that while we’re sedating and intubating your husband.”
“No,” she said, “putting him on that thing is ridiculous. He can breathe, and talk, on his own, right now.”
The doctor turned to face her, calm. “Mrs. Daniels, this is a precaution for what may be arriving shortly. It’s better to handle it now, when there’s no urgency, than later, when there is.”
William felt his host grow petrified with fear. “What are you going to do?” Daniels asked.
The Indian doctor came over to the side of the bed and stood over him. He looked down with compassion and competence. “We’re going to put you on a ventilator,” he said.
Panic wriggled through his host’s body. William had never felt anything like that before. “I’m breathing fine.”
“You might not be tomorrow.”
“Then wait until tomorrow.”
“No,” he said, “we have to do it right now. The respiratory therapist is already here, and she’s going to take you down to the ICU.”
William heard himself whimper.
The Indian doctor laid a hand upon his arm. “Please, William, it’s for your own good.”
His host looked up at the doctor. “My name is Kenneth.”
The doctor shook his head as though he’d made a mistake. “Sorry, I don’t know why I just said that. Your name is Kenneth.”
“Why did you call me William?”
The doctor shrugged. “It was just a slip of the tongue.”
William looked at the doctor. As they held one another’s eyes, he saw a dark mass slowly form around the doctor’s head. It was a nimbus, a black one.
That wasn’t just any doctor.
It was Hunter.
And his host was placing William’s host on a ventilator, a machine that did the breathing for a person.
In other words, William’s host wouldn’t be taking any more breaths. Then it suddenly hit him: This was sabotage.
Eighty-three. Eighty-two.
The nurses arrived on either side of the bed, lifted the brakes, and rolled William’s host, Kenneth Daniels, out of the room.
“Kenneth, I’m going to take over your body.”
“What?”
“Just go along with it.”
William exerted his newfound influence, and sure enough, he felt himself in total control. Immediately, he tried to roll out of the gurney. When the nurses saw what he was doing, one of them restrained him by placing her arm across his chest.
“I want to leave!” William shouted. Those were his words, not Kenneth’s.
“You’re going to be ventilated,” said the nurse who was holding him down. She lifted a radio to her face. “Code one sixty-nine, south elevators. Code one sixty-nine, destination ICU.”
William attempted to throw himself off the gurney, but his host’s body was so weak that he merely slumped over.
“Can you keep an eye on him?” said one nurse.
“I’m trying!” said the other.
At the elevators, two male nurses were waiting, one holding a pair of plastic straps. Before William knew it, they’d tied his arms to the gurney. He lay back and shut his eyes. Then he opened them and said, “That doctor is trying to kill me.”
“Who?” said one of the nurses. William could tell he was trying not to laugh.
“The Indian one.”
“Dr. Kamil is a well-respected member of our medical community.”
“Maybe,” said William, “but there’s someone inside of him, a bad force named Hunter, who’s trying to get me. I don’t know how to say it, like, spiritually suspended. Do you understand?”
The elevator doors opened. The male nurses glanced at each other knowingly. “Sure, that’s right. Dr. Kamil is possessed by a devil.”
Fifty-two. Fifty-one.
“No,” said William, “stop making fun of me. I’m serious! You’re looking at me. What’s my name. I can’t remem . . . wait. It’s Kenneth, Kenneth Daniels, right? And that’s who my body is, yeah, but the person speaking to you right now is actually someone else! My name, this man inside Kenneth Daniels, is William, and I’m part of a team of Change Agents who are trying to reach Level Three, because that’s how the world ultimately advances and comes to a higher understanding. But this guy Hunter doesn’t want us to do it! He doesn’t want us to do it! He’s corrupt!”
The elevator went down three floors while he was talking, and all four nurses looked straight ahead, smiles turning the corners of their mouths.
“This isn’t a joke!” said William, frantic now. “I’m serious! We have been sent here to temporarily occupy people’s bodies and learn from them, learn empathy, learn whatever helps our spiritual development! We get five hundred breaths in each person. I’m almost done with this body, but Hunter, inside Dr. Kamil, is trying to sabotage me!”
The doors opened, and the nurses pushed him along the corridor into an empty room. The respiratory therapist was already there, tracheotomy tube in hand.
“Don’t do this!” William shouted.
Twenty-three. Twenty-two.
“Mr. Daniels, this is for your own good,” said a nurse.
“No, it’s for William’s bad!” he shouted. “Kenneth Daniels doesn’t need a ventilator! Dr. Kamil is trying to sabotage me!”
Then it hit William like a ton of bricks. I need to speed my breathing up and get the five hundred before they put me on a ventilator. Frantically he began to grasp each breath as quickly as possible.
“Slow down that breathing, Mr. Daniels,” said a nurse.
William’s cheeks puffed in and out, in and out.
Sixteen. Fifteen.
One of the male nurses gripped William’s host’s forearm while the other one arrived with a needle. The tip
broke through the skin and plunged into the blood vessel. William felt the sedative hit him, and suddenly the urgency disappeared. His body went limp. His eyelids grew heavy. His heartbeat slowed.
Nine. Eight.
“Janine, you want to do it now?” asked a nurse.
“No,” came the response, “Dr. Kamil wants to be present. We wait.”
Their voices drifted into murmurs as the sedative spread through William’s host’s body. His eyes blurred, lost focus. He lost the ability to speak. His breathing slowed.
Six. Five.
A blurry brown figure in a white coat arrived. It was Dr. Kamil.
“He’s been muttering about people living inside him,” said a nurse.
“He said there’s a devil inside you,” said another.
“Poor guy,” replied Dr. Kamil. “That tumor is really doing a number on his cognition. All right, Janine, proceed.”
William felt his host’s body prepped, prodded, and poked. Tape on his face. Then suddenly the taste of plastic running down his throat, deep, deep into his chest.
Three. Two.
The final inhale stuck in the host’s throat as the machine took over. One more breath to go, but he was no longer breathing on his own.
This meant one thing. There would be no snapback.
William was suspended at four hundred ninety-nine breaths.
CHAPTER 26
OURS LATER, WILLIAM SWAM UP TO the surface of consciousness and tried to break through. He could feel that he was still in Kenneth’s body, that he was still in the hospital’s ICU, and that he wasn’t breathing. But his host’s perceptions were smeared and blurry, and even his thought processes were slow and disjointed.
He tried to open his eyes, but they wouldn’t crack more than a quarter open. He tried to lift a hand, but it was like pushing against a concrete wall. He even tried to speak, and that’s when he felt it.
The ventilator tube.
The plastic thing that had been shoved in his mouth and down his throat. It was still there. It’d been affixed there with tape and some sort of mask. He felt it pushing air into his lungs and then pulling out the carbon dioxide, in a slow rhythm. In, out. In, out.
