World War S 1-2

Chapter 9

Josh blinked weakly to signal he had heard him.

“There’s still a bit of the narcotics in his body,” the nurse said, checking the boy’s fever. “In about thirty minutes he’ll be livelier. I gave him painkillers so he won’t feel the effects of the surgery.”

“How bad is his condition?”

“Dr. Bond will come in the morning and explain everything.”

“I can’t wait till tomorrow.”

“You have to. Don’t worry, your wife and Josh are very strong. Sit here in the corner, you can speak with Josh shortly.”

Benet nodded. He let himself be talked into it since he didn’t have any other choice.

He had been waiting forty-five minutes already when sleep overcame him. Behind his eyelids, he relived every moment of the crash, only more intense.

He heard his wife’s and his son’s voices as clearly as if they’d been mixed on the latest sound gadgets. Perfectly shrill and understandable words and sentences tinkled in his ear, pushing his eardrums so hard that it was almost painful.

“It’s a white Toyota you had in your mind!” Josh said, laughing. Linda and Benet turned back at the same time so none of them could see the approaching car. Then suddenly the picture changed. Benet saw himself speaking to his son, but at the same time he could see the car coming from the other way. The oval-shaped sign of the Toyota emerged crystal clear from the blurry background. Benet saw the older guy behind the steering wheel who looked like he was struggling with somebody sitting next to him. That other man wore black clothes—floating around him like some kind of cloak. Benet noticed a few frames after that this cloak was really a black fog-like cloud covering the whole car. At the moment of the crash, the Toyota’s driver’s side airbag inflated, but not on the passenger side. The passenger burst through the windshield and flew above Benet’s Ford.

The viewpoint suddenly changed again; he saw the events through his own eyes. He watched as their car flipped and skidded on its top, ending up in the shop window. The hard noise of scraping metal, the roar of the blasting windows, the painful cracking of his wife’s crushing skull was again so disturbing. Then there was that deep silence and the feeling of Josh’s absence.

“Dad,” Josh was standing in the middle of the road. None of his bones were broken. He stood there with wide-open arms and he was speaking to Benet. “Daddy, why won’t you come? I have to show you something!”

Benet knew that this was very important. His son wouldn’t have stood in the middle of the road where cars could hit him at any moment, if what he had to say wasn’t so important.

It seemed ages till he could kick the window out with his unhurt leg and crawl out of the car. Josh was waiting patiently. He pointed toward the opposite direction of the highway.

Suddenly light filled the place from that side. Benet saw the huge eighteen-wheeler barrelling towards them. But somehow it came slower, much slower than he remembered from the scene. Because of this irrationally slow speed, they could see the driver’s cabin and the stickers and flags inside.

There was a king-size air freshener hanging in the middle, with two flashy letters on it.

“Dad, you have to know what that means. I was told I had to ask you,” he said, pointing to the air freshener, shaped like a whiskey bottle.

Benet’s mind raced with many thoughts about the meaning of that symbol. Why should I know anything about it? Because it’s shaped like a whisky bottle? Does Josh know about my alcoholism?

But he couldn’t see the letters clearly until the truck came closer. It was like he was watching a slow-motion movie.

B.A.—that was on the bottle. He didn’t have a clue what that meant.

“Daddy! Dad, you have to know what that is! You have to know!” Josh shouted, infuriated. “If you don’t tell me it will hit me!”

“I don’t know,” Benet said desperately.

“Daddy! Daddy!”

“Daddy …” Benet came out of his sleep to Josh calling him. A little of the boy’s lively color had come back to his faint face.

“Josh, Son!” Benet limped to the bed and kissed Josh’s face. “Thank God you’re alive.”

“I’m alive,” Josh said weakly.

He looked so serious, it staggered Benet. Some power radiated from deep inside his son’s glance. Benet knew that Josh’s brain, that biological machine switched into high speed to put the lost splinters of his memory together. “I’m alive, but mummy isn’t,” he said quietly.

So that was what he was thinking, thought Benet.

“Josh, please don’t say that!” Benet said, surprised by Josh’s pronouncement. “I’ve just seen her. She’s all right. The nurse said that all of us will recover soon.”

The boy blinked faintly then he sighed deeply like somebody who knows the truth.

“No …” he took so long to say that one, short word, it might as well have been an entire, long sentence. “I’ve seen … she has gone. Granddaddy has no hole in his heart … He came for her.”

Benet couldn’t believe his ears. Josh’s grandfather died long before Josh’s birth in a gunfight. He hadn’t lived an exemplary life, he inherited his warlike spirit from his ancestors. They’d never mentioned to Josh how his grandfather died, they told him he died of a serious disease. How did he know about his wounded heart?

“Josh, my dear, you’ve just dreamt this,” said Benet, trying to convince himself of the dream-theory. “The sleeping drugs and the tranquilisers can do that to you.”

“Daddy … do you remember? The light on the road,” Josh said very faintly. It seemed that he was drifting off again. “He said … Benedict Ar …” he fell back asleep at that moment.

Benet felt compelled to shake him awake and ask what this whole mysterious dream was about, but he realized that Josh needed to rest.

“He rambles. It’s just the drugs,” said the nurse, who was still behind them arranging the drug doses.

Benet’s mind was restless because of what Josh had said.

“My wife … how is she? What are her chances?” he asked because he wanted to know the truth.

The nurse closed the drug cabinet and answered hastily, “We have to hope for the best,” she said, putting her hands on Benet’s shoulder. “I can only repeat what I said before; Dr. Bond will tell you everything tomorrow,” then she left the room.

Benet stayed alone with his fears. Josh returned to his perplexing dreams. Linda resided to the end in that no man’s land between life and death.

I hope Josh is wrong … it’s not true, what he saw.

*

Julie didn’t feel like eating out with Keith this evening. Her mind was full of those four patients who had stolen her entire afternoon. She should be happy that she would have enough work for a lifetime, but her feelings were more complicated. Her newest patients were so critically ill, their cases were so disturbing that it sometimes frightened her. She thought she understood human behaviour and all the physical processes that could be moving inside them, but sometimes she couldn’t even understand what was whirling inside herself.

Keith was the type of man every woman wanted: handsome, clever, and ambitious. And besides all that, he was polite and captivating as well. And her colleague. Maybe that’s the problem? That he isn’t an outsider? Is our relationship too dry because we’re always talking about each other’s cases?

But what a guy he was! She eyed him as he appeared between the tables, in his light and elegant suit, tight-fitted trousers—and he was overwhelmingly successful, she should add that to the list.

“My dear,” he greeted Julie. A characteristic cloud of cologne hovered around him. Julie loved this fragrance, and Keith must have known that. He knew it contained all those pheromones that made Julie’s senses come alive.

“Hi,” Julie said, smiling. It might still be a good night, she thought. “You clean up good, like you’re going on display or something,” she referred to the perfectly tailored suit.

“Well, I realized I didn’t have the right market this morning, I’m trying now,” Keith smiled playfully.

“You’re right, this morning I wasn’t your ideal customer, because I had a very hard night. I would have been awfully unresponsive, like a floor lamp,” Julie tried to find excuses. “How was your day?”

“The same as the one before, so I had zero results,” Keith said, waving his hand in resignation, and he picked up his napkin. “Mrs. Jagarmata, the lady of Indian origin, came to see me again. We tried for the fourth time to get a good solution to her problem. You know, she is the patient struggling with the incurable leg pain. We tried to find the cause with regression hypnosis. We went back to her childhood during the first session, but we could find no trace of any accident in that period. Then I asked her if we could go further back, to the womb, then back before conception, and she let me do that. We arrived at a totally different life.”

“Keith, this still isn’t proof of reincarnation,” Julie shook her head. Here they were, they had ended up in the same debate they’d had so many times before. Julie didn’t believe in the outcome of age-regression hypnosis, but it was possible that the whole topic just repelled her; she felt uncomfortable when talk of hypnosis came up. She felt the same bizarre and unknown feeling now.

“Not proof? We researched that man in the military archive, who was shot in the leg in the Second World War; he lived and existed. Mrs. Jagarmata has her tormenting pain in exactly the same point as that man had his injury. And you think that’s a coincidence?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think it means that the soldier’s soul reincarnated into Mrs. Jagarmata’s body. She could have read about that soldier.”

“I see you don’t understand, so listen; that man served in the Indian army, more than seven thousand miles away. He fought in the Gurkha regiment in the Second World War’s Asian battles. He was a complete nobody, a rifleman, whose wound became septic and he died.”

“She could have read about him in the newspapers …”

“Mrs. Jagarmata was born in the States, she doesn’t speak Hindi. But when we returned to her previous life, she spoke fluently in that language.”

“Can we stop this?” Julie asked, holding her palm out to Keith. “You know I don’t like the idea of raking up somebody’s subconscious. You won’t be able to convince me.”

“Look, Julie …”

“Good evening. What would you like to drink?” an elegant waiter stepped up next to them. His well-pressed, neat uniform suited the exclusive pricing of the restaurant.

“Maybe one bottle of red wine?” Keith looked at Julie, but the woman signalled no.

“Only water for me.”

“Understood. I’ll bring them immediately.”

Julie was grateful the waiter interrupted their never-ending discussion, which always came up when they spoke about work. But Keith broke the silence again.

“Julie, you can’t just sweep away all this evidence …”

“What evidence? That somebody speaks about a person who died before she was born, and she has the same pain as the place he was shot? What does this prove? That she reincarnated?” her temper was running away with her. “No! It only proves that somehow she knows about his life! The explanation is fabricated by you, and everyone else who believes in reincarnation.”

“Do you want me to give other examples? I already have a big database. I inherited not only the office of the old Professor Allan but his cases as well.”

“I know.”

“Why don’t you join me for one of my séances? You can see the proof with your own eyes …” he suddenly stopped speaking.