Somewhere in Time

“Hatred ever kills; love never dies. Such is the vast difference between the two. What is obtained by love is retained for all time. What is obtained by hatred proves a burden in reality, for it increases hatred. The duty of a human being is to diminish hatred and to promote love.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

                                                                 THE END OF THE BEGINNING ...

THE METALLIC CLANG as something fell to the floor at the end of the ward made the nurse jump. Setting her pen down, she got up from her desk and walked quickly along the ward. She soon found the offender, a drip bottle stand with a drip attached that was lying innocently on the chequerboard black and white linoleum. Setting it upright by the side of the bed, she glanced at the patient and then exclaimed aloud, “Mother of God!”

In the shadowiness of the small light above his bed, she could see that his eyes were open and he was staring at her. She asked in that soothing tone she had practiced over many years.

“Can you speak?”

He did not say anything for what seemed like an eternity so she tried again, “Can you hear me, Captain Lewis?” she said shaking him gently by the shoulder.

“Yes!” he finally replied in a low hoarse voice; the bewilderment showing in his eyes. “Where am I?”

“You're in hospital, Captain” she responded, studying the handsome man before her. “You've been hurt!” 

Looking into his eyes, she went on, "My name is Sister Maria Delacruz! I'm your nurse. She paused and then continued, I won't be long. I'm just going to get the doctor.”

He lay back on his pillow and then remembered. He had been having a strange dream. There were four of them pitted against thousands but they had been invincible. What had the nurse said, “You’re in hospital?” Had he been injured? How did he get here? Everything seemed so vague and muddled in his mind. His head spun with a thousand questions as he waited for the nurse to return.

Sister Delacruz meanwhile had located Doctor Grogan in the canteen but he took some convincing. Finally, when he did return with her, the doctor went quickly to his patient’s side.

“Remarkable! Remarkable!” he muttered as he examined the man in the bed.

The doctors that had attended him over the course of time had never ceased to be amazed that the man's body had kept in good shape despite the fact that he had been virtually brain-dead. The wasting of muscles was always a major concern in such cases. The nursing staff had done all they could to minimize any atrophy by exercising the limbs and by turning the body but still, the doctors thought, it was incredible all the same. For a man who had been in a coma for so long, the captain seemed remarkably alive.

Sitting on the bed, the doctor turned towards Sister Delacruz, “We'll give him a full examination in the morning” Turning back to the patient, he said, “Well, Captain, we're glad to have you back with us. You had us worried there for a while!”

That was not the half of it, the doctor thought. The man in the bed had only been kept on life support at his mother's insistence. In this particular instance, a mother's love and instinct had proved correct. Then, to compound matters, some weeks ago, someone had accidentally turned his life support off, and it had been left off for twenty minutes. They were still trying to find out who had been so careless, indeed reckless. By rights, he should have died then. Just how much brain damage had been done on top of whatever had already occurred, was still not apparent, but they would find that out in the next few days.

Strange to relate though that it was the only time that the man in the bed had shown any signs of life. He had uttered just one word, “Sinead” or at least Sister Delacruz claimed that he had. The doctor however had been sceptical, that is until now.

“Can you remember your name, Captain?” the doctor then asked. “Your name?”

The man looked at him blankly for a few seconds and then recognition dawned in his eyes.

“Hoarsely, he answered, “Yes! I'm Lechaim Lewis!”

“Your full name, Captain!”

“Lechaim Francis Michael Lewis!”

“That's right, Captain. Well done! Now, you rest! I'll see you again in the morning!” 

He didn't quite get his name right, the doctor thought. The doctor had no idea where the name ‘Michael’ had come from but he was satisfied enough.

The Sister accompanied the doctor back down the ward.

“We'll give him a full examination tomorrow, but for now, just keep your eye on him!”

“Certainly, Doctor!”

When he left, the Sister returned to the man in the bed and sat with him for a while. She saw him looking at the black armband on her sleeve.

“We're all wearing them!”

He looked tired so she then said, “Look! Get some sleep! I'll be here if you need me. Just press the buzzer!”

It wasn’t long before Lechaim slipped back into a troubled sleep.

... He was growing weary from carrying the man in his arms and wondered how much longer he could go on. It was then that he heard the car approaching from behind, but before he could respond, it screeched to a halt, and a dog within began to bark furiously until it was quietened.  Lechaim turned around and saw that the car had stopped some distance away. Then it proceeded to approach slowly until it came within earshot and pulled up. A man got out of the car and gazed at him anxiously. 

‘I need your help! I have an injured man here!’ Lechaim shouted.    

The man before him then spoke but Lechaim could not understand what he said because he spoke in Italian. Or that at least was what it sounded like. Too tired to explain further, Lechaim walked over and placed the man he had in his arms down on the grass verge at the side of the road. He then lowered himself wearily to the ground.

Lying at the side of the road, he knew his journey was nearing its end. He could hear a familiar drumming in his ears, soft at first, then becoming louder until it could no longer be ignored. It took his muddled brain a while to work out what it was - the sound a horse makes when it’s being ridden at a steady gallop. He opened his eyes but all he could see at first was a kaleidoscope of colours before him, while now and then an image filtered through. A doctor bending over his bed, his mother crying, nurses, a hospital. Then he saw her with her arms outstretched and her red hair blowing about her face. Those green eyes of hers were full of the love she bore him. She was speaking to him now, that soft lilting voice of hers carrying on the wind.

“Sinead” he whispered...

Walking back to the small office in the corner where she had been writing up her notes earlier, Sister Delacruz made a telephone call. It was the middle of the night, but she knew the young woman would want to be informed at once.

“Your man has woken up!” she said into the mouthpiece when her party finally answered. There was silence for a moment and then she heard the woman at the other end sobbing. 

"Yes! Yes! It's true!" she reassured the listener. "About half an hour ago!" 

She then related what had occurred earlier, constantly reassuring the listener that he appeared to be well. 

"Of course, we will know more tomorrow when we give him a full examination."

The person at the other end then spoke and she responded. “Now?”

She paused for a moment and then said, “All right, seeing it’s you, I guess no one will object.”

Putting down the telephone she smiled to herself. The young woman she had been speaking to would be tired out, no doubt. Sudden fame and the pressures that come with such must have been very taxing for her.  

Sister Delacruz reached into the bottom drawer of her desk where old newspapers were kept and pulled out a pile. She placed them on the desktop and began thumbing through them. The first one was four weeks old. How could she forget that day that would live in her memory and many others around the world forever? She fingered the black arm she wore as she read the headline,

 ‘WORLD IN MOURNING’  - The newly elected Pope Simeon and many of the hierarchy in the Catholic Church are among those who perished when a gas leak in a room where they were meeting resulted in their deaths, although the full facts have yet to be released.

 She didn’t bother to read on because she had already read about it a hundred times before. What she and others didn't know, and no one ever would, was that this was a lie. The Catholic Church had promoted such to cover up the grisly circumstances of their deaths because of the adverse effect it might have on religious thinking in general and Catholicism in particular. What had occurred in the Vatican that stormy night defied belief and the Church was not about to divulge it to anyone, never mind the world at large. 

Blissfully unaware of this, Sister Delacruz cast the paper aside for it was not the one she was looking for. Searching through others she found what she wanted, a recent edition which had a photograph of the girl she had just spoken to in it.  The headline read, “IRISH CARDINAL ELECTED POPE”.  

She read on while she thought about the girl who was on her way and the man in the bed. Without fail, the girl she had spoken to on the phone had come to visit the patient unfailingly ever since he had been admitted. That was love if anything was!  Mind you, the man was handsome enough and she herself had taken quite a fancy to him. Many a night she had sat by his side regaling him with stories of her life in the Philippines when she was a young girl even though she knew he couldn’t hear her. She had read somewhere that talking to a person that was in a coma helped but it was only a theory. Anyway, he had come through so, perhaps, she had helped a little.

It was dawn when the girl entered the ward with her eyes glowing.

“He's waiting for you!” the nurse said smiling at the young woman’s eagerness.

She tried not to run in her excitement but she couldn’t help herself.

He was asleep when she found him so she sat down on the chair by his bed and waited.  Looking upon the face that she had come to know so well, she noted that the wound on his cheek had completely healed and the faint scar it had left there did not detract from his good looks. Not that it would have mattered to her because she had been in love with him from the moment she first laid eyes on him. She had often asked herself whether such was possible. She had heard of such cases but never thought it could happen to her. 

Pressing her lips to his, she gave him a gentle kiss and studied his face for a moment longer, then she took his hand in hers and held it there. Settling in her chair, she then waited for him to awaken.

Sometime later, a priest walked in to give Holy Communion, it being Sunday; the day priests prowl to administer succour to the faithful and find those that need converting.

Slowly, the priest began to work his way down the ward and she nodded to him when he drew near. It was then that she felt pressure on her hand and looked back at the man lying before her. Seeing that he was awake, she smiled that wonderful smile of hers and he responded in kind.

Lechaim saw the beautiful girl before him and tried to think who she was. Somehow, her face was so familiar, but he could not place it.

“Hello, and who might you be?” he said in a raspish voice.

“Your guardian angel, of course!” and while her green eyes danced in merriment, her spirit soared in boundless joy.  

His ‘Saint Christopher’ caught her eye. She had often sat with him and prayed while holding the medal and it had come to mean so much to her. It was only a cheap old thing and she often wondered how he had come by it. Certainly, he hadn’t been wearing it the night he was wounded. She suspected deep down that Sister Delacruz had put it there. But why was the word, 'Leo' inscribed on the back of it? Had it been a hand-me-down from someone else? Now, seeing it hanging around his neck prompted her to ask, “Do you want to take Holy Communion? The priest's here!”

The priest was now a couple of beds away and she could hear him begin another prayer, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want...”

“Holy Communion?” he echoed still a little disorientated. 

She didn’t pursue the matter further but instead rose and went over to the window where she wound up the blinds. Gazing out at the city beyond, she exclaimed without thinking, “Look, darling! It's morning and the sun has come up.”

“I'm sorry!” he said not quite catching what she said. “What did you say?”

She mentally kicked herself for betraying her feelings so openly. What would he think?

“I said it's morning and it's a beautiful sunny day!” the girl exclaimed as her red hair flashed in the sunlight.

The priest droned on nearby, “He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake...”

She went back to her chair by his bed and looked into his brown eyes. It's a funny thing, she thought, she could have sworn his eyes were blue the night he was brought to their house.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil...”

Taking his hand again, she paused for a few seconds and then said,

“Welcome back, Lechaim. I'm Sinead Cronin!”

“Sinead?” he repeated.

Seeing the bewilderment on his face, she explained, “It’s an Irish name!” Then she remembered what Pope Michael had once told her

“My Uncle told me that in Hebrew, it means Gift of God!”

As he looked into her eyes, the fragment of a forgotten memory lingered in his head for just a moment. A ruddy red-headed Irishman standing before a fire; the sound of a horse approaching down the lane, and its rider appearing as the horse rounded the bend into full view. The man on it waved to him and then the memory was gone forever, as his journey back through time was erased from his consciousness.

Sinead smiled and in doing so, surrendered herself to him completely. He reciprocated in kind. With absolute certainty, Lechaim knew then that the woman before him would fill his days until the end of his life.  She was, indeed, a Gift from heaven.

The priest finished his prayer, “...and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

..Amen..