Great Expectations Chapter XXVI

To read from the beginning, click the photos on the right.


Vivian heard the shouting from the other room and pretended to be asleep. Lately Alex’s behavior frightened her. He hardly slept at all. And when he did nod off, he always woke up screaming or shaking in terror.


She’d tried talking to him, but Alex wouldn’t tell her any of this. She just chalked it up to the weight of leadership, and figured it was the sacrifice that Alex made to keep his country free.

 

Chapter XXXVI



Dr. Heckleweit had increased Johanna’s medication. Her pulse was weak, her breathing almost non-existent. But inside of her motionless body, Johanna’s dreams were vivid, full of the life that her body lacked. “We’ll save them all, me and my Daddy. We’ll save the all.” The dream came back from childhood.

“Here I am, your servant, she said in her dream. What should I do?” Her mind stilled, waiting for an answer. She had so few options, so little opportunity to serve. She was like someone in a nursing home, like someone confined to a wheelchair with nothing to do but pray morning and night. “Okay, so I’ll pray,” Johanna said in her dream.

When Maria walked in Johanna was scarcely breathing. Alarmed by Johanna’s weak vital signs, Maria popped a capsule of smelling salts under her nose. Johanna reacted with a faint sputter.

With Johanna mumbling, Maria put in a call to Dr. Heckleweit. “She almost died,” said Maria. The dosage is too high.”

“I told you when I hired you, never question your orders. She looks placid enough while she’s medicated, but Johanna’s a serious danger to our country. Her conversations with me leave no doubt that, given the opportunity, she’d blow us all up for fun. And she’s an accomplished con artist. Don’t let her fool you.”

“But her vitals are so low! She’s barely conscious. Can you at least look in on her?”

“Fine.” Dr. Heckleweit dropped his voice to a reassuring murmur. “Keep monitoring her vitals and I’ll take a look at her before I leave tonight.”

Johanna felt like she was under water. Nothing made sense. She shivered with cold, and with the sensation of something sinister and slimy crawling along her back. “Please, God, help me. Come back to me. Don’t leave me.” She thrashed and muttered. Most of the words were unintelligible, but Maria could make out “God,” and “leave.” So Maria did the only thing she could think of. “Mary, Mother of God, have mercy on your servant Johanna. Protect her, and save her soul. This I ask in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.” It felt unsettling praying for a Muslim. But if Johanna were indeed a Muslim, why did she call on God and not Allah?

Two hours later, Johanna dropped into an uneasy sleep. “God … mercy,” she mumbled. With some misgiving, Maria took a final check of Johanna’s pulse and breathing, and left to catch up on her other duties.



Dr. Heckleweit pulled Johanna’s chart, and wherever his hand-written directions had said two milligrams he inserted a decimal point in front of the two. When he was certain that he’d made every change – caught every two – he walked down the hallway into Johanna’s room and checked her vitals. Instantly, he punched the button summoning Johanna’s nurse.

“Maria, what’s going on here? How much sedative have you administered to this patient?”

“”Two milligrams,” she answered.

“Read the orders. Does that look like two milligrams?”

“Maria’s heart stopped then and there. “Two tenths of a milligram, Doctor.” She looked up confused. For certain there had been no decimal there before. She’d checked the orders a dozen times, making sure she had it right, puzzled because the dose was so high. But there it was. “I’d read it as two milligrams,” she said, not even considering the possibility of questioning a doctor’s orders. The mistake had to be hers, although logic told her that she couldn’t have read and reread the orders as often and as carefully as she had and still gotten them wrong. “I thought it seemed high.”

“Start a new IV with saline, and… here give me that.” He grabbed the chart out of Maria’s hands and began scribbling a long list of medications, then scratched through it. “Never mind, just give her saline and glucose tonight. I’ll stay with her a while until her vitals grow stronger. And Maria…”

“Yes, Doctor?”

“If she dies you’ll be brought up on charges. Consider yourself extremely lucky that I caught this when I did.”

Great Expectations Chapter XXXIII

To read from the beginning, click the photos on the right.

Chapter XXXIII pgs. 211-213

Like the fires of Pentecost, God’s spirit shook Holy Final Words Church. You could feel it - driving hard as a blast of sleet, but also gentle like a lover’s kiss, or a baby’s soft skin. Power, but so much more! God’s love, and with it healing and redemption. And as the prodigal walked back to his seat, he stood a little taller, and marched with stronger step. And, his face, oh his face! You couldn’t exactly say what it was that had changed. The features were the same; the lines were still there. But it shone with God’s mercy and there wasn’t a soul in the church that didn’t see Christ in the man’s eyes.


Alex saw it too, and was shaken. The urge to stand grew stronger now - like a flying cannonball - and he was holding it back with just his little finger. To do this thing, Alex would have to sacrifice his whole life. Not only his house and money and friends - and Vivian. But he would have to destroy his very essence, and, woven into this essence, was pride. Without it he was nothing. Mighty, God-like, victorious, and proud, the son his father always wanted – this was Alex Lidecker. Alex slumped in his seat, unable to destroy the colossus.

Next to come up was a woman in her twenties. Her platinum-streaked hair was curled in wide ringlets that bounced around her shoulders as she walked, and she wore a beige suit smartly trimmed with a camel’s hair collar and cuffs. A topaz poodle brooch sat on her right lapel.

“I’ve slept with eleven different men during the last year,” she said, “while Eugene was stationed in Baghdad. I tried to be faithful to him. I waited. Occupied myself with everything I could think of. But months went by, and well…. I’d look at myself in the mirror, and I’d brush my hair, and do my make up… all the while asking myself just who was I trying to please. What was the use? My man should be in my bed next to me, not playing soldier some thousands of miles away. I know it’s not his fault that he’s over there, and I’m over here. But there wasn’t anyone else to blame. And I did blame him. Sometimes I think it would be easier if I were the one over there.”

She tried to go on, but the words stuck in her throat, and tears threatened just behind the long, black lashes. As if protecting herself, she wrapped her arms around her shoulders, and dropped her gaze to the floor. “I could stay busy during the day and it was okay. But then night came, and that empty nothing just crashed all around me. It’s funny how nothing sometimes seems more powerful that all the woes on earth. Anyway, I tried to ignore the quiet, and the aching, but in the end, I couldn’t stand it. It was going to be just a drink with an old friend, someone to talk to – to laugh with, to commiserate with. But in the end, he was in my bed, and when the sun came up I said it was over, and that I’d never do it again. But the nights after that were still too quiet, and - I don’t know what it is about getting into a bed by myself - but I hate doing it. And sometimes, when it was just too quiet, I’d go down to this hang-out a few blocks away, just for a drink and someone to laugh with, and sometimes it would be just that, but also sometimes I’d end up with someone sleeping with me. Each time I told myself that this was the last time.

“So today, I had to do this. And now, after my confession, I need forgiveness, but mostly I need strength, because Eugene’s not back yet, and there are going to be a lot of cold and lonely nights between now and when he comes home. And I don’t know if I have the strength to make it through them, but I’ve got to try to be faithful. If he can go over there and risk his life, I can stay true to him. Or at least I have to try.”

She began to shake and sob. “And I hope Eugene can forgive me, but first I have to forgive myself.” Her sobbing grew harder. The preacher held her shoulders between his hands, then, laying both his hands on her forehead, he prayed with closed eyes. Alex couldn’t hear the words, but he witnessed the power; he felt spirit in the air as the preacher whispered.

Hearing the story, Alex felt pierced as if by shards of glass. He’d slept with her once. He thought her name was Crystal. And he hadn’t connected with her in her bed the way he did now, twenty feet away from her, as she spoke and cried. God stabbed him. Alex saw. Life was meant to feel like this.

Alex Lidecker, the political savant, dressed in Armani, but underneath it, the real Alex, the man, wore the tattered mantle of a penitent sinner. Without noticing it, he rose from his seat preparing to discard his riches like rotting trash. He’d risk it all - respect, wealth, power, and that wild giddiness – flying on meth-like enthusiasm, he called it – that comes from cheating and winning. And now he was about to sacrifice everything in exchange for the peace that comes from an honest relationship with God and man.

But in those moments before Alex reached the aisle, his father’s image flashed in his mind. And he could feel the words inside his bones. “I’m very disappointed in you.” Alex paused. Remordia, he thought. He wanted God’s peace, and he needed his father’s respect – that and the demi-god life he’d built. Save me from this craziness, he thought. He was Alex Lidecker. He could have anything he wanted. Well, he wanted it all.