Absence of Faith (2 page)

She locked her arms under Carson's
and around his chest. The water felt like a giant fist slamming
into her body - her skin hurt and her head ached from the coldness.
The darkness swallowed her completely, but she kept moving what she
hoped was upward toward the surface. The dim green lights of the
dashboard vanished into nothingness, and the pain in her chest grew
stronger as she struggled to swim to the surface with Carson. She
could not feel her arms or legs, but she knew she had to keep
sending signals from her brain to keep her legs kicking and her
arms wrapped tightly around Carson.

"This is too hard, too much
trouble - I can't take this anymore,"
she thought.
"It would
be easier to stop and rest. Yes, rest would be nice. I need to
rest. I need to rest..."

Her thoughts drifted away, along
with the pain in her chest and suddenly images of her life flashed
in front of her one right after the other like the slide shows she
often had to sit through when her husband was a speaker at one of
the medical conferences. Her mom coming to help her when she fell
off her bike and skinned her knee; her dad bringing in the large
doll house for her eighth birthday; Jeremy picking her up for the
prom dressed in a black tuxedo with a pink carnation pinned to his
lapel; her friend, Denise from college kissing Tom Sanders on their
first double date; her wedding day with her father giving her away
to Carson standing at the altar in his white tuxedo. The images
stopped there and the one of her wedding began to play out in slow
motion. After her father released her arm, Carson turned to face
her. He was crying - a terrible sadness oozed out of his face -
sadness so intense she felt it squeeze her heart like a
vice.

"Carson! Carson! What's wrong!
Carson!"

"Don't let me die!" he said. He
grabbed her hand and squeezed it.

Intense fear slammed into her again
like a waterfall spilling into her. Suddenly the pain in her chest
was very intense, and the images of her life vanished, and she
could see a tiny inkling of fused light above. Her head exploded
with an intense revelation - she remembered where she was. Fear
mixed with adrenaline shot through her like a lightening
bolt.

"I'M NOT GOING TO LET US
DIE!"
the voice screamed in her head.
"I CAN'T LET CARSON
DIE!"

She instinctively focused all of
her strength and will on getting to the surface. She didn't know
how she did it later, but she kicked her legs in one last surge of
energy, kicking, kicking, kicking. Seconds later, she felt her face
hit the warmer air, and her lungs exploded as she let out the foul
air of death and gulped the sweet breath of life. She pulled
Carson's head up and swam for the embankment barely visible from a
distant street light on the bridge. The water was like thick sludge
and it took all of her remaining strength to move her arm and legs.
She reached the shore, grabbed hold of a small tree, and paused
there to catch her breath. She dragged Carson out of the water -
his body slid well on the mud and swampy grass. She gasped for air
and her limbs started to tingle as her life force slowly revived
itself. Despite her winded condition, she began mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation on Carson. His forehead and hair immediately turned
red with blood from a two-inch gash in his forehead. Moments later,
lights appeared on the bridge and then a voice.

"Hello, anyone there?"

"Over here! Over here! Call 911!"
Linda yelled between tears.

Minutes later the sky lit up fire
red - an ambulance and a police car arrived - their sirens piercing
the quiet darkness like a saw blade.

"Over here!" She
screamed.

Bright, narrow light beams from
several flashlights danced into the darkness below the
bridge.

"Over here!" Linda screamed
again.

The beams rushed over to her. Bill
Watkins immediately grabbed his black bag and rushed down through
knee-high brush and small trees to the riverbank. He went to Carson
who was lying on his back. His skin was gray and his lips were
blue. Linda knelt beside him – she shook violently from the cold
fear. Several others swarmed them paramedics, police – it all
became a blur to Linda. Someone draped a blanket over
Linda.

"I've got no pulse and he's not
breathing," one man said. "Ready for CPR?"

The man gave Carson mouth-to-mouth
while another stuck a needle into Carson's arm. The paramedic blew
into Carson's lungs several times, but Carson did not respond. He
placed one hand just under Carson's rib cage and took hold of his
wrist. Then he used his weight to push down in the hopes that it
would jump-start Carson's heart. He pushed several times and then
went back to mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

"Don't let him die!" Linda
screamed. "He can't die!"

Her screams startled the
paramedics. The other man pushed on Carson's chest, but Carson did
not respond. The men became frantic in their efforts to save
Carson.

The paramedic giving CPR stopped
and gasped for air and placed two fingers on Carson's artery. "I
think I've got a pulse," he yelled between sucking in gulps of
air.

"Let's go! He'll do a lot better in
the hospital."

They quickly placed Carson on a
stretcher and hurried toward the ambulance. His body was like a
giant rubber doll. One man slipped on the muddy bank.

"Oh God! No!" Linda
screamed.

The man recovered quickly and moved
off the slimy muddy bank.

Linda cried when she entered the
ambulance - the reality of what was happening suddenly hit her like
a tidal wave. Carson's skin was gray, his hair was soaked with
blood, and he looked like a corpse. Within minutes, they arrived at
Red Bank Hospital and Carson was wheeled into one of the emergency
rooms. Several doctors and nurses followed the gurney into the
well-lighted room.

"It's Doctor Hyll!" one of the
nurses shouted. "I worked with him when I was at Ocean Village."
The others looked at each other and picked up their pace. One nurse
attached wires to his forehead, chest and fingers. Another felt
along his arm looking for a vein to start an IV. Linda followed the
activity - her face a distorted mask of fear. They worked
frantically on Carson - mouth-to-mouth, shots of adrenaline and
finally electrical shock.

"Clear!" the doctor holding the
electrodes yelled.

Carson's body jerked and Linda
wailed in fear, as the green line on the EKG monitor remained
flat.

"Clear!" the doctor yelled
again.

After several more attempts, the
energy in the room paled and a shroud of silence overwhelmed
everyone.

"We're sorry," said the doctor
holding the electrodes.

"Nooooooooo! You can't stop now!
You can't stop now!" Linda screamed. "Try again! Try again! NOW!
Pleeeeeeeeeease!!!"

A nurse ushered her out of the room
and slowly the other nurses and doctors left the room as if they
were in a funeral procession - a procession for Carson.

The nurse squeezed Linda's hand and
said, "He's gone, Mrs. Hyll. I’m sorry."

H
e could
only lift his hand a few inches. Something was all around it. He
only had enough space to bring his hand to his chest and feel the
cold skin on his ribcage. He began to shiver. He felt along his
hips and then down along his right leg. He was naked. He opened his
eyes and saw only blackness. He closed his eyes and saw the same
blackness and it scared him - black on black. He frantically ran
both hands all around him with the slim hope that he could push the
blackness away and find the light. The obstruction felt like
smooth, cold plastic, and then his hand hit upon a metal object.
The metal ran in a straight-line parallel his body and stuck out a
bit. He continued to feel it - the metal line was about as thick as
a pencil and it had grooves. Carson continued to run his finger
along the metal line. It went past his face and over his head, and
then stopped. He traced the metal line again with his index finger
and found a small square smooth spot along the line above his head.
Suddenly, his throat tightened.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" He
screamed. The noise swallowed his consciousness, his entire being
in a white noise of fear. The scream would not stop and completely
controlled him, his thoughts, and his soul.

He knew where he was.

* * *

Dick Harrington, a thin man with a
round head covered in closely cut white gray hair, got off the
elevator and pushed an empty ER stretcher past the double swing
doors into the dark corridor near the morgue. He heard what he
thought was a scream. It was 5 am and he had a couple of hours left
as the senior orderly on the third shift.
Probably, a patient on
one of the upper floors having a nightmare
, he thought. In the
past, the sound had moved down along the heating pipes in the
ceiling echoing through the dungeon-like halls. It was common. He
continued and thought of his granddaughter, Dawinda when one of her
braids got caught in the chain on her backyard swing and she began
to scream in fear.

"Helpppppp!" a second scream. He
stopped and listened more intently. The screams came in a
continuous volley. He backed up towards the double doors and pulled
the stretcher with him. The screams were louder now, his chest
tightened, and his hands shook as he slowly entered the dark, cold
room. A strong scent of formaldehyde and disinfectant filled his
nose, but he was used to it and hardly noticed. Beads of sweat
formed on his forehead as he felt along the wall for the light
switch. The room flooded with white cold light and he looked along
the wall of giant silver drawers, each numbered, and each
containing a dead person. He walked towards the rear of the room
and the screams stopped.

With a shaking hand, Harrington
reached down and opened a drawer near the floor. He unzipped the
black shiny bag and saw blue-gray face of an old man with his mouth
open. He quickly zipped it shut and turned away feeling a rumbling
in his stomach. He closed the drawer and walked towards the double
doors holding one hand over his mouth and the other on his stomach.
His shirt was soaked with sweat. As he reached the doors, the
screams started again. He froze – that moment when everything even
your consciousness stops consumed by a single powerful force. He
turned and stared at the wall of drawers. One door seemed to move
slightly. The shrieks overwhelmed everything in the room.
Harrington cautiously walked toward the drawer and with his shaking
hand pulled on the large handle; the drawer slid towards him
effortlessly. The black bag inside was writhing like a snake. He
reached for the zipper, missing it several times because he
couldn't control the shaking in his hand and because the bag kept
moving out of his reach. The howling from inside the bag set every
one of his nerves on fire. When he finally pulled the zipper back,
two wide eyes filled with terror met his and he screamed, and the
body screamed back at him. Then the "corpse" reached out, grabbed
his arm, and squeezed it like a vice. Harrington pulled away
yelling, slipped and fell, but the "corpse" held him securely. Now
its arms were half out of the drawer holding Harrington's arm with
agonizing strength. Tears ran down Harrington's face as he
struggled to get free and then the "corpse" let go. Harrington
slammed his body against the double doors, bolted down the hallway,
and vanished up the stairs screaming the entire way.

T
he light
hurt his eyes as he opened them. He couldn't see very clearly -
there seemed to be a mist over them.

"Where am I?" he asked.

A man standing near the edge of his
bed looked up from a chart and smiled, his blue eyes
sparkled.

"You're in Red Bank Hospital. I'm
Doctor Westwood. We're glad you're back - you were in a car
accident and suffered a concussion. The concussion must have
triggered some bad memories," the man explained.

"More like nightmares," Carson
said. "What happened?"

"We don’t know. All we know is that
your car went off the Red River Bridge. Lucky for both of you your
wife was not knocked unconscious," he explained.

"Linda? Is she?"

"Oh yeah she’s fine. She pulled you
out of the car or you would have drowned," the doctor said. "The
water is pretty cold at this time of the year and hypothermia sets
in in less than fifteen minutes. It's really a miracle that she got
both of you out."

Carson moved his arm to brace
himself up and then stopped.

"Ouch! Why is my arm burned? Boy,
that hurts," he said. "Did the car catch on fire?"

"It's not only your arm, Carson.
It's your whole body. We think it's some kind of psychological
reaction to the crash or maybe something was in the water and
you're having an allergic reaction to it. We're still doing tests.
It's not that serious - the burns are like a severe sunburn so you
should feel better in a few days," Dr. Westwood
explained.

"How could that be?"

"We don't know. We first thought
there might be some kind of pollutant in the water and your skin
reacted with that, but our tests show that your internals were
slightly damaged by...well, some kind of heat. You show all the
symptoms of a person who suffered a heat stroke...someone who
stayed in the sun for days without water," Dr. Westwood
explained.