by Ted Dekker
They passed under the cold, harsh lights that illuminated the corridor as they made their way to the elevator at the far end. The world was beginning to slow.
“There are laws that govern the universe,” Lawson said. “Laws that cannot be broken or violated without consequence. You’ve fooled yourself into believing you can live outside those laws. Problem is, those laws are reality. You can imagine until the cows come home; you’re still bound by them.”
Lawson jerked the wheelchair up and dumped him forward, out of the wheelchair. His mind registered what was happening as his knees slammed against the hard floor.
Palms slapping the hard tile, he scrambled to keep upright. He managed to push to all fours, breathing hard.
Before he could react, Lawson planted a foot on Austin’s backside and shoved him off balance. The force knocked him forward, and he slammed facedown against the cold floor.
There was only time to blink once before the heel of Lawson’s boot darkened the edge of his vision. It pressed against his temple, pinning his head to the ground. Unbearable agony flared through his skull as the man leaned his weight into his boot.
Austin grunted.
“Sometimes we just need a change of perspective.” Lawson’s voice was calm and flat. “Tell me, what do you feel?”
Austin sucked a ragged breath. Swirling specks of light formed on the air.
Lawson pressed harder. “Does this feel like a delusion to you?”
“No,” he managed through short breaths. “No.”
“No, what?”
Darkness crept into his vision. “No, it’s not a delusion.”
“See, that’s not so hard. If it’s not a delusion, then what does that make it?”
“I… I don’t know.” The ache in his skull worked into his neck and pulsed down his spine.
“Of course you do. It’s very simple. Think. What does that make it?”
“Real.” The word came slow and drawn out.
“Good boy. The laws of reality are at work. Laws you can trust to be infallible. You fell out of the chair because the law of gravity is real. You feel pain in your body right now due to physiological laws. My boot is stimulating nerve endings, which in turn are sending impulses to your brain. Do you think your brain is lying to you, Scott?”
His consciousness began to slip, like the last layer of sand through a sieve. He wanted to scream, but there was no one to hear. No one to come to his side and tell him it would be okay.
“Speak up! Is your brain lying to you?”
A beat. “No.”
Lawson held his boot down a few moments longer, then lifted his foot, grabbed him by the collar, and jerked him to his feet.
“Follow me.”
Austin wavered on his feet as the sound of Lawson’s hollow footfalls ricocheted off the cinderblock walls. His vision pulsed with the pounding of his heart.
He walked after the man, concentrating with each step so he wouldn’t stumble. With each step, the world drifted slowly back into focus.
Lawson pushed a door open on the right side of the hall and watched him with unflinching eyes.
Austin paused at the door. Another patient room.
“Inside,” Lawson said. He jutted his chin toward the room.
Austin reluctantly entered, then stopped cold. Jacob sat slumped in his wheelchair near the center of the room, perfectly still, face expressionless. He gazed at the floor as if contemplating a riddle that had been etched into it.
Lawson stepped past Austin and stopped by Jacob’s wheelchair. He retrieved a black leather pocketbook from inside his jacket. He unzipped it, splayed it open like a book, and slipped out a silver scalpel.
“Cut him,” the man said, holding out the sharp instrument.
He held the man’s gaze.
“If none of this is real, then Jacob is an illusion. If Jacob is an illusion, then the logic follows that you can’t really harm him.” He paused. “So cut him.”
Austin’s heart pounded. Surely, the man didn’t mean it.
“No? All right then.” Lawson turned to Jacob. He palmed the blade and, using his index finger to guide it, drew the blade across the boy’s porcelain cheek.
Jacob flinched but didn’t cry out. A crimson wound formed beneath his eye and began to seep blood.
Lawson reached down, smeared the wound with his index finger, and shoved it toward Austin. “Taste it.”
Austin’s stomach twisted. His eyes flitted between Jacob and the man. More blood welled up and dripped down the boy’s face.
“Do it,” Lawson said. His voice was flat, void of emotion. “Now.”
Austin hesitated. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.
“No?” Lawson regarded him with stone eyes. “Fine.”
Lawson reached down and drew the scalpel across Jacob’s left cheek. The blade sliced deeper than the first, and the boy shuddered.
Austin world tipped crazily. This couldn’t be happening…
“Why are you doing this?”
“To set you free from the delusion, Scott. Part of you believes that Jacob is nothing more than a figment in your head. If that’s true, then I could carve him up like a pumpkin. But you know that’s not true, don’t you?”
Austin stared at Jacob’s trembling form, pleading eyes locked on his. Real…
“Trust your senses, Scott. Taste and see.” He stepped up and brought his bloodied finger to Austin’s lips. “Open your mouth or I’ll cut him again.”
Austin’s heart thrummed louder. Jacob sat, unmoving. Screaming inside.
“I’m waiting,” Lawson said.
Austin parted his lips. Lawson shoved his finger into Austin’s mouth. A metallic tang assaulted his tongue and slid to the back of his throat.
He jerked back and spit to the side. A glob of blood-tinged spittle smacked the floor.
“You see? Real,” Lawson said. “All of this—real. Isn’t it?”
He wiped his arm across his lips and choked back a gathering wave of nausea. Nodded slightly. “Yes.”
“Good.” Lawson replaced the scalpel and slipped the leather case into his jacket. Walked to the wall, punched a red button, and leaned close to an intercom.
“Edna?”
A thin voice answered through the speaker. “Yes, Dr. Lawson?”
“Please see to Jacob immediately.” He looked toward the boy. “It appears he’s acted out again and cut himself.”
“Right away, sir.”
“Thank you.”
Lawson opened the door. “Let’s go.”
With a parting glance at Jacob, who had settled somewhat, Austin stepped cautiously past Lawson and into the hall. The administrator led them toward the elevator.
Thoughts crowded Austin’s mind, a hundred voices vying for attention.
Deditio…
The single thought sliced through the maelstrom, silencing it for an instant. It came a second time, lower and distant. Surrender. He knew that’s what it meant: surrender. But to what?
Austin stepped into the elevator and the machine hummed, low and thick, as they descended to the hospital’s main level. He listened intently, concentrating on the deep pulsing of his mind as loud thoughts cluttered it again.
Surrender what you think you know… even the need to know. Don’t lean on your own understanding.
The doctor looked at his reflection in the elevator’s polished steel interior. Straightened his tie and smoothed his lapel. His gaze shifted toward Austin.
“Think of me as the law around here, Scott. I’m as sure and reliable as gravity itself. Until you’re healthy, I’m your connection to reality. You’ll come to trust that in time. How soon is up to you.”
The doors slid open and Lawson led them into the main hallway.
“All that you see now is real. Your mind may still be questioning that fact, but I assure you that this is not a delusion. Take a look around.”
He did. Patients shuffled through the hallway, some led by attendants while others moved o
n their own. Ahead, four men in white coats gathered in front of the administration office. Fisher stood among them, motioning as the others listened intently.
Lawson nodded their direction. “They’re visiting from the Mayo Clinic. Word about our remarkable successes here at Saint Matthew’s is getting out. The gentleman on the right is one of most prominent neurologists in the world.”
The air crackled with vitality as Austin walked through the hall with Lawson. With each step, the fog in his mind began to burn away. The world before him was utterly real—the ground beneath his feet, the people walking through the halls, the faint scent of bleach that hung on the air.
Look with eyes wide open, Austin.
“Good afternoon, Doctor,” Fisher said as he passed by with the men in tow. He nodded at Austin. “Hello, Scott. Good to see you again.”
Something lurched inside of him. His attention was drawn to the side of the man’s head where his wound had been, but there was nothing. Of course there was nothing. The man hadn’t died.
Lawson led him into the administration office. The small space swirled with the busy sounds of normal life—a ringing phone, the whirr of a printer, the low drone of a radio somewhere in the room.
The receptionist at a desk greeted them. “I have a few things for you to sign, sir.”
Lawson flipped through several forms, pausing only long enough to scrawl his signature on each, and then passed them back. “Has the report from Dr. Bishop come yet?”
Dr. Bishop? His doctor, Austin realized.
Beverly slid an oversized yellow envelope across the countertop. “A few minutes ago,” she said. “Interoffice courier just dropped it off.”
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said to Austin as they stepped into his office. “I had your file sent over after my conversation with Dr. Bishop yesterday.”
“You know Dr. Bishop?”
“Roland and I go back to our premed days. I’ve tried to lure him into our program for quite some time, but he’s got his sights set on other goals. I requested a consult because your medical records indicated him as your attending neurologist. I would’ve brought you in for that discussion, but you were indisposed.”
Lawson opened the file and withdrew a stack of images as he crossed the room, Austin by his side. Black-and-white cross sections of a human skull. MRI images.
His MRI.
“We had a long talk about your symptoms and diagnosis.”
Austin’s breath thickened. The low-level buzz in his head built to a deafening crescendo.
Lawson stopped by the closet, then turned and flipped the image around so Austin could see it clearly. He pointed to an irregular mass of white that appeared on the frontal lobe.
“A small tumor. Operable.”
“A tumor. I have cancer?”
The room began to blur. Austin stared at the image of the seed growing in his head. It was true then. His mind was rotting from the inside out.
“Cancer? No, but it’s undoubtedly contributing to the severity of your delusions.” He dropped the file on his desk. “Either way, the root of your problem is your refusal to accept that you’ve been delusional for a very long time, long before the presentation of this tumor.”
Austin stared at Lawson blankly. Nodded.
“Good.” A faint smile nudged Lawson’s lips as he put a hand on Austin’s shoulder. “Everything is going to be just fine. And now it’s time to get back to work.”
Austin’s heart quickened as the man placed a hand on the doorknob to his left. The door that led to the black cell. He wanted to run, but there was nothing from which to escape. The enemy was growing in his head. There was nowhere to go.
“In there?”
“Yes, in there. In, until you accept the fact that you’re broken.”
Lawson swung the door open and led Austin into the cell by the hand. The man had said something else to him, but Austin was already drifting into the borderlands of his mind. It wasn’t until the world went black that he realized Lawson was no longer at his side.
Crushed by emotion, Austin groped his way to the corner, crumpled to the ground, drew his knees to his chest, and began to shake. He really was delusional.
Delusional, which meant that he could not know what was real and what was not.
He knew that he was supposed to remember something, and part of him did. Something about never forgetting, about stepping beyond his mind. But none of it was connecting, because he didn’t know how to step anywhere except into his mind.
Without his knowledge he was nothing. Without his beliefs, a mere skeleton.
Who am I?
I am my thoughts.
I think, therefore I am.
I am, therefore I think.
He saw himself in his mind’s eye, sitting alone in a room, staring blankly at the wall. Not him, but a shell of what he used to be.
My mind is dying, therefore I am dying.
If I die before I wake…
Who… am… I?
I am terrified.
REMEMBER, OUTLAW had said. And Christy had. She’d even told Austin to remember, so vivid was that memory.
More vivid than the memory of the canyon and Outlaw was the memory of the love that had roared through her. It was like a lion making an irrefutable claim to dominance. Love had tenderly whispered her name, like a lost lover come to wake her from a deep slumber. Love had washed over her like a waterfall, cleansing her of any other memory besides love itself.
She had known the love more than felt it.
Life is a cycle of remembering and forgetting…
The words echoed through her mind as she paced the room with one arm around her skinny midriff, propping up the other to give her access to her nails, which she chewing on. There was nothing left of them, but her teeth didn’t seem to know.
Life is a cycle of remembering and forgetting…
She now understood why Outlaw had made such a point of this. Less than an hour had passed since Lawson jerked Austin from the room, and already she wasn’t quite sure what she was supposed to remember.
Or which was the illusion and which wasn’t. What if she had it all wrong?
The forgetting wasn’t so much about the words themselves. She could remember what Outlaw had said. She was perfect as she was. She was love. There was only a problem if she believed there was.
The good news is, you can love yourself because you, too, are now love. Everything else is of your own making: a lie you believe; a story from an accuser that ravages you and keeps you locked in that cage of hell.
Sure, she could remember the words. Most of them. But she couldn’t quite get the same feeling of love that she’d felt when she had those glasses on. Those lamps.
In fact, the feeling had all but gone, as if it had been caused by a drug that had worn off.
You’re not your emotions, Christy.
No, but there was more. She couldn’t quite connect with the meaning behind the words either. They said she was beautiful, but she couldn’t get herself to think she was beautiful. And that was a problem, a real problem, never mind what Outlaw said. She didn’t just say so, the mirror said so.
Christy glanced at her reflection for the hundredth time in less than an hour and saw the same thing she’d seen every time. The ghastly skeletal body that she’d convinced herself was beautiful, for a little while at least.
See with lamps on, Christy. Eyes wide open. See yourself as beautiful.
The truth of that command had lost more of its power with each trip across the cold tile floor.
She’d long ago ripped off her yellow skirt, pulled out her pigtails, and washed her makeup off, thinking that the plain blue uniform would help her see past the illusion.
It’s not real, Christy. What you see in the mirror isn’t you.
But it was. In fact, she could no longer even remember why it wasn’t.
Life wasn’t so much a cycle of remembering and forgetting, because there really was nothing to forget in the fi
rst place. She was ugly and always had been.
She knew that the Outlaw image in her mind would tell her that she’d forgotten how perfect she was, but that was wrong. She hadn’t forgotten how perfect she was, because she wasn’t perfect.
She was deeply flawed and she hated herself for it. And yes, she did hate whoever had made her this way. Her father.
End of story.
No, no… That’s wrong.
But it no longer felt wrong.
“Are you ready, Alice?”
She spun to the door and saw him there. Lawson. Her new maker.
“Sorry to startle you.” He smiled and crossed the room, arm held out, palm down. “If you’re ready, we can go.”
“Go? Where?”
“To see the doctor, of course. We’ve been watching you and decided that another slight correction is in order. It will help you accept yourself and break from the more stubborn delusions.”
She lifted her hand and took his, thinking only that it was the only right thing to do.
He’s not real, Christy.
And yet his hand felt perfectly real.
“A correction?”
“Yes. The doctor has been studying the post-operative photographs and has suggested smoothing out some of the grooves. Judging by your reactions, we concur.”
He led her toward the door. The idea blossomed in her mind.
“Smooth out? How?”
“Simple. They kept your own fat cells. They’ll just put some back.”
“They can do that?”
“It’s done all the time. They call it an autologous fat transfer.”
He opened the door and sat her in a wheelchair manned by an attendant she recognized. Something in the back of her mind was telling her to remember.
Remember, Christy. Don’t put yourself back in that cage. No more lies.
“In your case, they might do more than just some,” Lawson was saying. “In fact, Nancy seems to think quite a bit might be just what you need.” He made a fist and gave the air a tiny punch as he walked down the hall beside her chair. “That extra push that puts you over the edge and finishes the job, so to speak.”
An image of the fat Christy flashed through her mind. Fat or skinny, which was she?
