– “It makes no difference.”
– “What doesn’t?”
– “It makes no difference at all, who helped you escape that prison, or how. The point is you are free now. What will you do with your freedom?”
– “But I couldn’t save him! He helped me, and he died!”
– “You save the ones you can. You help the ones you meet now, not the ones who died along the way.”
– “But… how? What could I possibly do to help anyone? I’m helpless myself!”
– “There is always something that can be done. Wherever we are, wherever we go, there’s always people in need of assistance. A listening ear. A shoulder to cry on. You will get stronger. You will learn. You will accomplish many things. You will not always be as you are now. But you will always be making that choice.”
– “What choice?”
– “To help, or not help. Each and every moment of each and every day, you choose. What you will do with your freedom.”
– “I just wanted to get out. I just wanted a chance for myself…”
– “You’ve got one. One chance. One shot. But you’re never out. As long as we are alive, we never get out, not really. That prison is always there, inside us.”
– “But why? I don’t understand. I am out! You said it yourself, I got out of there, I am free!”
– “Oh, you are free all right. Free to find all sorts of temptations to blind you to that cage you carry all around you. Over there, it was easy. You thought the prison to be the walls that surround you, the fences that physically keep you from going where you want. The permits and the papers… Out here it’s a different story. Here, the prison is less tangible. Much easier to drown out.”
– “I just wanted out…”
– “Welcome to the world of the outside. Choose, and choose well, just how to spend the rest of your time here now. The rest of your sentence.”
The old man gets up from his seat beside the younger man’s bed. It will be a while still, before the other one can get up.
The old man takes his stick, and extends it. He taps the ground with its whiteness to feel his way out from amidst this maze of beds. So many young men lying down on them in various states of survival. So many. But he has found the one that he can help today. Has spoken with him. Has planted the seed he may.
Time to find his way out into the sun again. Time to feel its warmth against his skin.
A few weeks later the young man asks after the old one. The blind one that he spoke with only the once.
– “Oh him? Old Michael… yeah, that’s his name. He’d come here every now and then, wouldn’t he? Haven’t seen him for a while myself. You could ask Tim over there, I know they used to talk a lot,” replies the nurse.
Young man makes his way to the doors where Tim is standing, finishing a conversation with some doctors. He waits with the patience his convalescence has taught him now. When the doctors leave, he asks Tim about Old Michael, and where he might be found. He’d just like to talk with the old man once again.
– “Michael… Oh, I’m sorry,” Tim replies with a falling face. “I didn’t realize you knew him too. If I had, I would have told you sooner, I…”
– “Told me what?”
– “Old Michael… when he was last here, it’s been a few weeks now… He was leaving. It was a beautiful day. So sunny… He was just leaving. Had just stepped outside. I saw him lift his face towards the sun. And then,” Tim’s voice chokes a little as he fights his emotions to get the words out, “he just fell… Collapsed to the ground, like something empty. I ran to him, I tried to help him, we all did, but he was gone. There was nothing could bring him back…”
– “I… I’m sorry,” at a loss for words, the young man places his hand upon Tim’s shoulder, and then “I’m sure you did everything possible. It was simply his time to go. We all have our time to go, and his was meant to be like this. He did not suffer at all.”
He doesn’t understand just where those words are coming from. He’s never been a believer in any kind of destiny, fate, or even God’s will. He has always believed that men write their own stories, and that death is just biology. a brutal reality destroying men with chaos and pure happenstance. And now he speaks of an old man’s death as something that was meant? And what does he know if Old Michael suffered or not?
But the words have a rightness to them that he can feel as they pass through his lips. And they do seem to help Tim. Make him feel a little better about his inability to save us all.
– “Thank you,” Tim says, after the briefest moment. He has his emotions back under control now. It wouldn’t do to become useless, with so many other men in need of medical assistance. New ones arriving every day. “Did you know him well?”
– “Well enough, I suppose,” he sees no need to reveal they only spoke the once.
He turns to leave now, but Tim calls after him, after only a few steps taken.
– “I’m sorry, what was your name? I seem to have forgotten, if I ever did ask… there’s just so many of you… but I would like to know.”
– “Michael. My name is Michael as well.”
– “Oh… Wow… That’s… Well, ok then. Michael. You have the best of luck out there in the real world. I hope it all comes together well for you.”
– “Thank you. It will,” Young Michael speaks with such certainty it leaves no room for doubt.
He turns towards the exit again, the doors towards the outside world. It is time for him to leave the hospice. This hospital where he died and was then born again.
With nothing in his pockets but a broken knife, and one coin of a different country, Young Michael walks out into the sun. He closes his eyes and lifts his face towards the sun, enjoys its warmth upon his skin. Then he opens his eyes, and sees the path before him.
It is time to walk. And wherever his feet will take him, he will always be making that choice. The choice to help or not help. Those he may, and those that he may not.
Now it is time to walk upon his path. One foot in front of the other. One single step at a time.
gyllenbogel 