Mysterious Ways

        Mysterious Ways

SARAH         

“Another day of working for nothing” Sarah said laughing with her friend Christine.  Sarah is a medical student at Aspire University in Acer Michigan.  She and her friend are in the break room at Acer Hospital, where they are doing an internship for school. 

            “You think we will get any crazies today?” asked Christine.  In the past few weeks they have both worked with patients who were strange and mentally off. 
            Sarah sassed back, “You know me, they just fall right into my lap.  But that’s talking about crazy guys, who for some reason all like me!” The two laughed for a second, “…But I kind of like that, you know?”

            “I guess if that floats your boat, Sarah.”  The two laughingly continued on talking, when the secretary from the department walked in and asked Sarah to step aside with him for a moment.

            “Sarah I just wanted to say that you have been doing a really good job here, so don’t take this the wrong way,” warned the secretary, “but we need to move you to the coma unit for the reminder of your internship with us.  A student had to leave the program and we really need someone who can fill that spot.”

            Sarah was happy that she was not in some type of trouble, but disappointed she would have to work away from her friend Christine, who was inconspicuously trying to listen to the conversation for across the break room. 

            “Would it be possible to also move Christine?  We work really well together, and I would hate to finish this without her.” 

            The secretary looked at Christine, who looked away trying not to get caught listening, “Christine, I’m really sorry that we have to move Sarah, but from a personnel prospective we have no choice.  You two will be fine, I’m sure.”

            It was that day that Sarah began work in the Coma unit of Acer Hospital. 

ROLLAND

            “Rolland “Roll-Kill” Killcline was 22 when he killed three people in an alley on an average night in Quicken, a town about 10 miles west of Acer, Michigan.  He was a grown man, capable of making decisions for himself.  He chose to walk down that dark alley that night, and chose to kill those three men, and that is why he deserves to die in the name of justice, your honor.” 

            Gerald Pesta was the prosecutor who sold the jury the sentence of death for Rolland three years ago. Today, Rolland sits in his cell waiting to be fed his last meal and then to be lethally injected and killed in the name of the law.  He was given a piece of paper to write on to help collect his thoughts before he was processed.  He sat in his cell at day break, just writing. 

“36 months I have sat here in this cell, alone with my thoughts.  Speaking to nobody who will listen.  Who would listen to a murderer, right?  The sunlight hits the walls as I write this, painting them soft orange.  I look out of my cell and see other inmates rolling around in their beds, unaware that this inmate will not wake up again tomorrow.  I wonder if they will think twice about it, after all it happens once every few weeks.  I arranged for my meal to be a hamburger and fries, my favorite meal since I used to go to the local diner as a child and eat classic style burger and fries.  Little did I know that it would be my last meal, funny how that works out.  Thinking of the smell of those fries I sadly also notice that my cell smells like dirty concrete floor.  The memory of my mother and me at that diner brings me to tears.  I can only cry before other inmates wake up, for obvious reasons.  I miss my mother, she died thinking her son was a murderer.”

GLEN

           

“The court will now hear the final appeal of Rolland Kilcline, represented by Attorney Theo Hasting.  Theo, go ahead.”  The Judge motioned to Theo. 

            “Your Honor, today I bring to the stand a man named Glen Hubbord, who was in the alley the day that Rolland walked down it.  Your Honor I am aware that this witness was not present for the trial three years ago, but Glen has testified that he hid out of fear, and has come forth today to tell us what he saw.  I think that the jury would appreciate his prospective.”

            Glen Hubbord was a short heavy set man who looked 40 but was 32 years of age.  He swore in before the Judge, sat down, and began telling his story. 

            “It was my night to take garbage out to the back in the alley.  I work at the Coney Island on Sill Street.  I had just thrown the trash into the dumpster when three men grabbed me, threw me on the ground and began taunting me and kicking my face.  I yelled out for help, but my voice was weak because my throat was being hit.  It was the scariest moment of my life.  I remember thinking that I was going to die, and started to ask God to forgive me, and to take care of my two daughters.  The men were laughing, and seemed high on something, and kept talking about how this was just a fun thing to do because they were bored.  I heard one of them yell in pain, and fall to the ground. I looked up when the other two were distracted and saw that a man had showed up with a knife and was helping me.  I got up and ran as fast as I could home to protect my family.  I didn’t see the second two men die, but I can say that they deserved it.  I was going to die that day, and Rolland Kilcline saved my life.  I didn’t testify because I didn’t want to put my family in danger.  We had been through enough.”

            The courtroom was quiet, and the air felt as though a major shift in opinion was happening.  They had all been happy to put Rolland on death row, now they don’t know what to believe.

DAREN

            Daren North is a 27 year old college student at Aspire University in Acer, Michigan.  He is convinced that mediocrity is the most evil thing in the world, and cannot stand the thought that he would ever succumb to it.  He does, though, and cannot get himself to escape it.  This gives him incredible fear and anger that his life will never be what he wants it to be.  He fears that he will be mediocre and is angry that he cannot get himself to change it.  Sitting alone at his apartment he is depressed and considering taking his own life.  He sits, rocking back and forth crying in pain.  He begins to write down his last thoughts, a suicide note. 

            “I am sitting here, alone, and I can’t stop.  I have fought for too long to build in myself a successful attitude and a plan for my life that frees me from the conformity that is this sick society.  As I’ve sat through class after class of subjects that all seem to blend together, I find myself blended to nothing.  The sight of people, next to me, blindly following along “learning” new things, it scares me.  I hear their pencils fidget, and their identities diminish from their bodies with each tick of pencil to paper.  I occasionally look to my own notes to see that I have lost sight of who I am as well.  I quickly look back to the stale bored room of my peers, with the sounds of chalk hitting blackboard letter after letter pounding my identity into places I cannot reclaim it from.  Empty, surrounded by empty, I am filled with the professor’s words and embody their empty essence.  This essentially produces in me a self to which fits in with the rest of the class.  Together, we sit without self.  A false self.  The mundane sounds of chalk and the rustle of restless legs and tapping of pencils echoes in my heart.  All this fades, as we do, into the chamber of mediocrity, bolted there for all of life.  This is my greatest fear coming to life inside me. 

            I try to escape, only to find myself in front of a TV.  As the channels move through my mind as I flip through the TV guide, I catch myself being a procrastinator again.  I have at least 10 things to do but rather, I am here devoting time to finding the best show to waste my time with.  Time and time again I find myself off the path of my choosing which leads to nowhere.  A path to nowhere leads nowhere and on it one finds themselves nowhere with only hopes of getting anywhere BUT nowhere, fighting the reality in the back of one’s mind that tells of times to come when you finally get somewhere, and it is nowhere.  Ridiculous, I ought not to be on this path.  Enough is enough, I am running out of options, and only one is available to me now.  I must end my life.”

ROLLAND

            “Rolland Kilcline”

            “Yeah,” Rolland replied to the man who walked up to his cell and asked his name.  The man held a clip board and wore a very nice suit.

            “You need to come with me.”

            A guard opened Rolland’s cell and took him with the man to the head officer in charge of the floor.  The officer sat Rolland down and began talking with an emotionless tone, almost disappointed.

            “Rolland, a man came forth and testified on your behalf saying you killed three men in defense of his life.  The jury reversed your sentence and you’re free to go.  I don’t know who you paid, but I’m not convinced.  You’re a murderer to me.  Sign here.”

            Rolland didn’t care about the officer’s remarks; he only cared about the fact that he was free.  He felt his life appear before him like it had that morning.  This time it was his future, not his past.  He was free to live and to do all the things he had never done and thought he would never get to do.  He told himself that very moment in that chair that he would take no day for granted.  He would live life to the fullest every day. 

            After signing the paperwork, Rolland was given his civilian clothes back and sent out to the front gate to await a ride.  He had called a taxi and was headed to the diner where we used to go with his mother, and ate his favorite hamburger and fries.  He was euphoric about the fact that that morning the meal was his last, and now it is the first of the rest of his life.  He was ready to live a life of contribution and renewed sense of purpose. 

DAREN

            After finishing his letter of suicide, Daren went out to his old Ford Taurus to drive to the state park nearby.  There as large ravine there and his plan was to drive off of it.

Driving down the windy roads to the park Daren was crying.  He had truly given up on his life, and didn’t want to live another day of it.  He knew it would be his last drive, but didn’t care enough to soak any of it in.  All he cared about was ending it all, finally being free of the pain that he saw as his life.  Sick with skewed emotions, Daren was unable to stay in his lane consistently.  Coming up to a turn, he felt himself slipping into a sleep. He was having trouble staying awake, because he was so exhausted from the emotions he had been feeling all day of such a vast magnitude.  There was a road stop ahead, he figured he would stop there and calm down for a moment before continuing on. 

ROLLAND

           

            Telling the cab driver his story, Rolland was never happier.  He and the driver seemed to get along really well, and had arranged that they would both eat at the diner.  Being in a cell for three years with a parking lot to look out to, Rolland craved nature and being outside.  He asked the cab driver to pull off at one of the areas to look out at the hills of the valley.  A perfect day, perfect weather, Rolland and the diver stood there just watching the birds fly through the valley mist, smelling the pine and the fresh air off the water way below.  Rolland closed his eyes and imagined his mother, and prayed to her that she remember him as her son who made her proud. 

            “Mother, please hear me.  I am free, and I am going to live a life rich with energy for the both of us.  I miss you, and I am sorry I disappointed you and couldn’t be there before you died.  I will see you again someday, mom, I love you so much and I want you to know I am a new man.”  

SARAH

            Christine and Sarah met after work on the first day that Sarah was moved to the Coma unit.  At a Starbucks in the Hospital, it was late and most people had gone home.  They both live nearby, so they stay there sometimes to have coffee and talk after work or do homework. 

            “So what was it like being in the coma unit?  I never really walk over there, but it always seems really sad, because you have to take care of them but you don’t know if they will ever wake up.  It’s like, really weird to think about working there.  What did they have you do?”  Christine listened to Sarah in shock as Sarah told her about her first day.

            Sarah began, “Well, it was really slow for the morning.  Just doing routine things to keep everything going, I was being trained by a really nice lady named Judy.  After lunch the saddest thing happened though, I was with Judy going over the equipment in an empty room when a patient was brought in who had been in an accident.  He was in a coma and they were not sure when he would come out of it.  He looked awful; really weak and then they told me about him.  You won’t believe this, but he had a note in his car about committing suicide and they think that is exactly what happened.  He drove right off the road and ran into a parked cab car on the side of the road, right up in the valley near that old diner, you know?”

            “Oh my God, that’s awful! I do know where that is, I drive by there all the time!” Christine said in shock.

            “Yeah, the worst part is, a cab driver and another guy got hit into the valley and both died.  This guy was trying to kill himself and ended up killing two other people, and he lived.  That’s really fucked up right?”

            “Yeah that’s fucked up! That’s terrible, I can’t believe this guy killed two people and survived.  It doesn’t seem fair.  What a first day, Sarah, damn.  I’m not sure I’m going to be coming over there to visit you. That’s’ too much insanity for me.”

            The two laughed, but then stopped and just thought to themselves about what had happened.