SWITCH CHILD 2
A Short Story in the Slice of Life Series
David Lee Howells
Copyright 2013
Catching Up
Karl Hoffman had been a widow for three years; his wife Sophie had passed away peacefully in the night of what the doctors had dubbed a ‘silent heart attack’. Such an odd term for such an event, plaiting truth and lie into a philosophic braid. One evening, he and his wife of over thirty years kissed and snuggled their traditional good-night ritual, while death patiently waited outside the bedroom door.
He woke the next morning. Sophie didn’t. Karl knew immediately that something was resoundingly wrong in the silence hallmarked with pale lips, half opened but unseeing eyes and the incongruity of morning bird song. He remembered praying that it be a nightmare.
The marital survivor was a good man sired by German-born naturalized citizens. Being strong was part of his cultural upbringing from the time he fell when taking his first steps. “Get up, Karl, get up and keep going.” It began the ingrained framework that he now fell back upon. After three days of ‘grieve leave’, he was back full time as the General Maintenance Supervisor at the Granite City Chronic Care Facility. It was a haven and final earthly home for broken people. The residents all had their lives altered to the sad side of dependence on others due to stroke, cancer, head trauma and other universally crippling circumstances.
It was therapeutic, in a way, for Karl to continue to work in that environment. To think his Sophie could have ‘survived’ her heart attack only to become a resident in such a place almost made him prefer her unchosen exit from a life with him. More than once she had expressed her desire not to be kept alive by heroic (and expensive) measures. “Well, she got her wish,” he thought. In the process of grim wish-granting, the fates had also decreed for him to carry on a widower.
Yet, there are still miracles in the world. Karl Hoffman had seen many. Certainly working in this 300-bed complex would offer medical miracles to marvel. Precious were stories where ‘residents’ (as they were called) rallied beyond all expectations and broke out of that caring prison to live and love a while longer. Though time would eventually catch up once more and call them back to decline, it was still fuel to warm a heart over.
But Karl had witnessed a miracle of miracles, one unheard of in the history of his species, unless some imaginative (or off-balanced) science-fiction writer had created such a plot to amuse his or her readership.
Colin Craft was only six years old when he was admitted as a new Facility resident. This sad story featured a head trauma from a rogue-wave boating accident that had also claimed his family. His primitive brain continued to oversee digestion, sleep and breathing, while his higher cortical functions were flat-lined. All his caregivers were saddened to see a handsome young human craft whose skipper had been denied command.
This child, though, found a way to rise to the surface, to cry out for help. Karl Hoffman heard that call, having been chosen by the child because Karl had taken the time to read stories to him at the close of his shift. Being able to hear but not speak or see caused Colin to desperately reach out in other ways. He was blindly seeking a path to escape the inexplicable prison he found himself in.
The discovered path was blazed by his unique ability to extend awareness through the electrical circuitry he was hooked up to. Head-trauma patients had EEG, EKG, and other analysis devices that would warn the ward’s guardian angel staff should something start to go sour. Such things happened all too often. No matter how good the care, there was a rule of nature: ‘use it or lose it’.
The process of this outreach caused the monitoring system to behave oddly. The 2-East ward’s staff requested Karl’s renown wizardry to see why the monitoring lights were blinking in ways that didn’t make sense.
The turning point was when Karl plugged in his electrical analysis device called the ‘Volt Wizard’ for an extended monitoring of the circuitry in Colin’s room. When Karl was distracted by other maintenance demands, the Volt Wizard was left plugged in much longer than planned. This was fortuitous, for it allowed Colin needed time to reach out and explore this promising alien landscape. The Volt Wizard featured a screen that displayed alpha numeric figures, and it was that screen that revealed the clumsy first efforts by Colin to communicate with Karl.
Thus, two lonely souls found what they both so desperately wanted; companionship. Yet the child’s circumstances led Karl to the conclusion that this must be kept secret from the world, lest Colin become relegated to the testing tunnels of lab rats.
In time, Colin Craft’s body failed. Colin, though, miraculously lived on. Time and Karl’s encouragements spurred advances in Colin’s mind riding the wires, be they power, phone or computer conduits.
Colin’s skills advanced to the point where he could see, hear and speak to his adoptive father through mastering phone vocal and optic circuitries. He even became adept at helping Karl’s repair occupation by learning from the other side of the plug’s perspective on electrical faults. Karl modified his cell phone shirt holster, aiming the device forward so that this unique father and son would see similar vistas.
Early progress in Colin’s mastering ‘riding the wires’ initially caused fluctuations in a wide range of first regional then state-wide electrical devices. This prompted consternation among those whose task was to insure our electrically powered world of devices we simply cannot live without would remain in our lives unchanged and unchallenged.
Colin gradually learned to reduce such disturbances in the force, but not before the net of inquiry introduced Karl Hoffman to Detective Alice Roland. It had fallen to her, and other officially inquiring minds, to interview those who might provide clues to the widening electrical oddities. The interview didn’t reveal the larger truth to the Detective, but it did introduce her to a most interesting man. Colin had sensed a chord harmonizing between his dad and the nice police-lady, and managed to send the officer a text message to her phone, one that started yet another chain of events that you might call…miraculous.
Here, our story continues.
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