by Rob Heinze
In the room there was a bed and on the bed there was a body. It was a body posited how he had been, until just recently. There were no visitors and the body—the patient—was completely alone. The pull was stronger now, a rip-current at his body, forcing him to stumble (to someone outside his body, he looked perfectly normal as he moved into the room) towards the patient on the bed. Something was moving in the air reminding him of school and snack time and—why?—looking into the underside of those Bugle snacks…
Funnel, it’s a funnel…
It was glowing brilliantly white with tinges of blue masterfully etched into the outline. It rotated, rotated, calling to him with its gravity. He moved towards it, each step somehow harder to resist and yet more pleasurable and enticing. He had no idea what this was, what was happening to him: but there was bliss.
So he didn’t care.
It didn’t even occur to him that he might be dying.
“Hello? May I help you?”
The image was gone, and the gravitational pull vanished, Charley letting out a slight umpf noise as he settled back. He blinked, confused, and turned around. There was a woman with a bag standing in the doorway. She was middle-aged, pleasant looking, but also extremely tired looking. She must have come up from the cafeteria, Charley thought. But where am I?
She saw that Charley was not going to say anything, so she spoke again: “May I help you?”
“Oh, no,” he said, his voice haggard from its sabbatical. “I…I don’t know why I’m here,” Charley admitted.
For a moment, the woman seemed unsure of how to take that response. But she clearly saw his bare butt in the hospital gown, knowing he was a patient. She stayed where she was.
“Why are you here? In the hospital?”
Hospital? Charley wondered. I am in the hospital?
Then he remembered Sarah’s voice, her too wide eyes willing him better, and she saying: coma, you were in a coma.
“I…I just…I just woke up. From a coma.”
The woman’s eyes widened and she took a step into the room. “Really? When?”
“I am not sure,” Charley said. “Recently. I don’t have much memory.”
“What happened to you?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I can’t remember.”
The woman seemed cautious, guarded, but Charley didn’t think it had to do with him…not directly, but more of what he was saying.
“You can’t remember anything? Who you are?”
“I remember that. I remember up till I…I guess until I went into the coma.”
“You remember your family?”
“Yes.”
She stood for a long-time. Charley knew that there were some complex interactions taking place in her mind, cautious associations relative to what he was saying. He didn’t know for how long he stood there, but finally she seemed to get some sort of decision. She stepped forward and smiled.
“I’m Maya…Maya Chandler.”
She held her hand out and Charley shook it. There was no recognition of her name. She saw that his hand was bleeding.
“Ow, you’re bleeding!”
He looked at it in amazement. He was bleeding, pretty badly. “I don’t know how that happened.”
“Where’s your room?” Maya Chandler asked.
“I think down the hall,” he said.
“Let me help you.”
The woman led the young man down the hallway back towards his room with a motherly touch. Once there she talked to him a bit, asked about his life, family, did he remember anything in the coma, had he dreamed? He hadn’t dreamed, so far as he knew, and couldn’t remember anything after entering that house in Queens. It seemed like the woman wanted to say something, to talk about herself, but she did. Eventually she told Charley she had to get back her husband down the hallway. Charley thanked her and apologized for the intrusion. She was more than happy to oblige.
2
Sarah was at his side daily, to the point where he started to get mad at her.
“You have to take care of yourself, babe, I am okay.”
Sarah, who had heard stories about people waking up from comas all chipper and ready-to-go, only to end up falling back into a coma and dying. She had told Charley this.
“It won’t happen,” he said. “The doctors all say I look great. I am coming home in two weeks. I won’t leave you.”
Later, he would think about her comment and that it had been precise but not accurate.
She started to cry. It was impossible not to.
“You better not, you asshole.”
He smiled. “I won’t.”
3
Two weeks passed, and Charley Allen, 26, went home to his suburban house in New Jersey. To his mind, it was as if nothing had happened: just a small missed step and his life resumed. For this family and friends, the step was more of a leap, but they, too, settled back into a life in which Charley was a daily part.
Their world moved on, as it should.
4
Charley awoke one night and sat up in bed. He had awoken from a dreamless sleep, but his mind was reeling, for in it there were two words that seemed to hum and vibrate:
Raymond Chandler.
5
Charley read a book by a Raymond Chandler, but half-way through he knew that wasn’t it, wasn’t the message. He had asked his parents did they know any other Raymond Chandler and they said, no, sorry: no Raymond Chandler here. When he asked Sarah, she thought for a long time, shook her head no, then said:
“Yes, wait! There was a woman in the hospital…a Chandler…M-something…Monica? Monica Chandler? Her husband was in a coma…Charley? Charley, are you okay?”
He wasn’t.
6
Maya Chandler was coming back up from the cafeteria, where she continued to seek comfort in food. She moved heavily these days: hallways seemed longer, stairs steeper and elevators too slow. It was the cast-iron slab of reality, pressing down upon her and she knowing that her husband would never awake from his coma. He was too far gone, and if would have awoken up already, like that young man down the hallway.
Maya, who was not an optimistic woman, walked into her husband’s hospital room and dropped her bag, soda and purse to the floor…
7
“I read your journal,” Charley said to Sarah. “I am sorry you went through that.”
She shrugged. “You okay now.”
He paused for a moment. They were sitting out on her parent’s deck, drinking a glass of wine and enjoying each other’s presence.
“When I woke, was that guy…that guy, Greg, around me?”
“Yes,” Sarah said, remembering. “He was. I didn’t write anymore entries because you woke up. I forgot about that.”
“It’s okay.”
There was a long pause again. Then, Charley said:
“Do you think he…he helped me awake?”
Sarah didn’t think, just spoke: “Yes, I do. When I watched him, Charley, it was like he could touch you, or something…touch your mind.”
“Interesting,” Charley said.
They finished their wine, and that night Charley dreamed of flying.
8
Charley waited until Maya Chandler left the hospital room of Raymond Chandler, her husband, who had suffered a stroke in the bathroom of his office in NYC. He had been transferred this regional hospital in New Jersey, at the request of his family. Charley watched from around the corner until the woman had stepped into the elevator, and then he came around the corner.
Waiting had been hard, for the pull had been strong: a tidal force against his person.
His surroundings became surreal, hyper-focused: he knew how the atoms were bound together in the building materials, the connections of their atoms vibrating. He did not walk but floated down the hallway. He turned the corner of the room and above the bed was the rotating vertex, calling to him with its inevitable pull. It was like a spiraling, hollow worm. He went towards it this time without resi
stance, his body somehow building towards some euphoric release and he not caring. He caught a glimpse of the face on the bed, and there was recognition. He sort of double-bent over, as if expecting to have to fall into the worm-hole (it that was indeed what it was), but that didn’t happen: the worm-hole expanded, then slinked down to cover him. Then he was above, high above, the sensation that everything was small shown below him…the world, the universe, existence…he didn’t know, didn’t care, for he could see speckling, flashing white lights blinking, blinking down therein as he was used to seeing stars in the sky. He fell, then, or the distance came to him (it was unclear). Now he was seeing land—land-masses—countries spotted with these blinking lights like gems (souls) and they grew closer…I want to be there now…and he hovering over a great big city and he saw the shapes then: Those of the Dark & Light, milling back and forth, battling against each other: he could see them all, their radiance (be it bright or dark) betraying their position. Now he was standing on a street in a Queen, NY neighborhood. It was day-light, clear: the world was empty, vacant. He had come back. He looked at his hands, and he saw them as they should be: light hair, freckles, human. He went towards the small, squat house that he now recalled having entered in some mystical part of his mind, the magic of which he would never understand. He stopped in front of the gate, waiting, waiting, waiting in spite of the glowing figure peeping out the window on the front of the house: he waited until the day grew old and the sun began to swoon…and then he saw.
The house was glowing inside, filling with holy white like that spilled out from the windows onto the ground like warm milk.
Raymond Chandler was inside.
The man who had been too afraid to come with him to seek an escape.
He was inside, waiting for salvation and now it had come.
Charley went up the walkway, the light inside growing brighter as he got closer.
(Raymond Chandler, who was inside the house nervously alternating between hiding and looking out the window, saw the white light outside growing brighter and brighter. He knew that One of the Light had come for him, and though he was afraid, he felt joy too…watching, near tears, as the light outside grew brighter. Soon there was nothing to see in the window but radiance, which now seemed a physical thing as it broke into the living room and spread its touch across the floor. The door opened)
And Charley saw One of the Light, a bright figure shedding phosphorescence brilliance. He stepped into the house, and the figure took a step towards him, hesitant.
(And Raymond saw One of the Light come in. It called to him, softly, knowing his name and urging him to come forward. Raymond, swallowing, did as asked)
Charley said: “We must get to the ancient place, and we will do battle, but we will win.” He could see now the outline of Raymond’s face in the white light.
(Raymond saw the creature reach a glowing hand to him, and for a moment longer, he hesitated…then, crying, he reached)
Charley saw the glowing shape of a handing moving towards him, and he grasped it.
###
A short time later, in the hospital room, Raymond Chandler opened his eyes and awoke from his coma.
The End
