September 10th 2012, 7:42 am, Hickory Grove, Wisconsin, Mercy Hospital I.C.U.
Jed's right foot, which had been resting on the hospital room's elevated counter, suddenly slipped off the side and hit the tile floor with a loud as he jerked awake at the sound of his ringing iPhone. He had spent the entire night at Sage's bedside, much to the chagrin of both the sheriff's deputy (who, grudgingly, had given him permission) and Naomi (who, decidedly, had given him permission).
A strange combination of compassion, guilt and calling kept him bolted to his chair throughout the night as he dozed in small patches. He valued these small snatches of sleep, for they were the only times his mind could rest. All of his waking hours seemed to blur together, forming a hodgepodge of reasoning, recrimination, and reasoning some more.
He took a deep breath.
Jed would bounce from this line of reasoning, time and time again; his higher mind knowing that he hadn't been doing anything other than trying to help the old man for the past few days. But, with nagging persistence, the obsessive thoughts would return; unbidden and unstoppable.
, thought Jed, groggily, as he answered his mobile phone in a voice pitched somewhere between Barry White and Yoda.
"Good morning, Naomi," Jed croaked.
"Jed, you sound horrible."
"I love you, too. What's up?"
"Ew, I can smell your morning breath through the phone."
"Naomi ..."
"Take it easy, Jed" said Naomi in a slightly wearied tone, "I'm just trying to lighten things up. How's our patient?"
Jed pinched the bridge of his nose, "They're not telling me anything. His vitals seem steady, but I don't know how to read this thing."
"Do you want me to come up?" "It's your call," said Jed wearily.
"Jed," replied Naomi, flatly.
______________________
This was not the answer she wanted to hear and Naomi could feel her temper rising as the words "courtesy call" reverberated in her mind. Why couldn't he just give a rip or at least act like he wanted her near him? Was that so much to ask?
.
After debating with herself for fifteen minutes, Naomi had, indeed, made the short trip from the Matthews' home to Mercy Hospital. Why she had finally decided to make the attempt, she wasn't exactly sure of. It certainly wasn't because she felt wanted or needed.
Naomi parked the car, walked to the massive, over-paced revolving entrance door and made her way to the fourth floor Intensive Care Unit.
Ushered to Sage's room by a young nurse in a pony-tail wearing the standard-issue, green hospital scrubs, the woman pulled back the curtain, hesitantly, and allowed Naomi entrance.
Upon entering the room, what she found was a quietly sobbing husband, a flatlined heart monitor and an unresponsive old man.
Sage was dead.
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Naomi spent the next fifteen minutes trying to console her husband. Not from grief over losing someone that he cared deeply about, but rather from the guilt he felt over not leading Sage to Christ when he had the chance.
As she reassured, patted, and soothed her conscience-stricken husband (, thought Naomi), inside she was seething ...
She almost cursed, silently, but checked herself. She knew it was the O.C.D., but it was so hard to separate the man from the mind. She loved this man, but at times like these, she couldn't stand to be in his presence.
Once Jed was momentarily pacified, she was able to, haltingly, pull from him the events of the last twenty-five minutes.
Sage had, indeed, awoke briefly from his drug-induced coma. Jed had reassured him of his presence and tried to buzz the nurse, but before he could press the button attached to Sage's bedside, the wizened man had gently laid his clammy hand on Jed's arm and whispered.
"Abbbb ... bbbbeeee ..."
The word was elongated in such a way that made the "b" seem to last for three seconds.
"Abby? Abby? Is that what you're trying to say, Sage? Is there someone named Abby you want me to contact for you? Is she your daughter?"
Sage slowly shook his head, no.
"Mell ... llorrrr," he wheezed in a barely audible voice.
Jed had him repeat the word three times, but he still couldn't make any more sense of the two syllables than he had the first time.
"Mellor?" Sage, help me out! I can't understand what you're saying? Please, try ..."
Sage's grip tightened on Jed's arm and for one brief moment, his dulled eyes took on a sparkling clarity.
___________________
He had been born, Message Samuel Dort. His mother had given him the peculiar name in the belief that God had, indeed, given her son a special purpose on this earth, as well as a God-given "message" to proclaim to mankind. The unusual name had been shortened to "Sage" in his early childhood, because his family had deemed "Mess" to be a completely unsuitable nickname.
Sage had never known privilege or respect, except among his small family from the South; and later, wherewere concerned. Neither had his mind always been unclear, though no one had ever accused Sage of being especially swift on the uptake.
It was in adolescence that he had come to him, an old man even then, to show him his unique gift and why it had been given. Long days he spent with the old man: learning, experiencing, and occasionally, even cooperating in local adventures. Sage shared his secret with very few in those days and even those closest to him drove him from their presence eventually, deeming him a freak or some sort of wizard.
As an adult, the old monk continued to visit him at various points during his life's pilgrimage; offering guidance, providing understanding and instilling renewed purpose. During those salad days, Sage undertook many adventures at the Clerics request; traveling abroad, righting wrongs and standing against those who had distorted into a selfish weapon of control.
But, despite his affinity for the monk, it was the Voice that had so transfixed him. It spoke to him, first, a short time after the monk had entered his life. Infrequently he heard it, welling up from within, but when he did he was forever changed from that moment on. The Voice told him he was loved. The Voice told him who it was that was speaking to him; and Sage believed. The Voice showed him how to apply his gift; and the very last time it had whispered to him in the night, sixteen years ago, the Voice had told him to seek out "the one that he loves."
As the years passed, Sage's mind had slowed, as had his speech. But, his sense of identity and purpose remained. He was a He possessed a gift. And it was time to give what little he had left to give, to another.
Suddenly, as if from very far away, Sage heard the Voice speaking to him once again, un-muted after all of these years and his eyes began to fill with tears.
As Sage gazed up through tear blurred eyes at the confused minister standing over him, he realized that it was not only the Voice who loved this man. He loved him as well. Like the Voice's, it was a love born out of compassion for Jed's brokenness, not merit for Jed's worthiness.
Sage's weak and pale hand tightened, briefly, on Jed's forearm as it rested on the side rail of the hospital bed and, to Jed's utter surprise, Sage released what little reserves of he still possessed into the young man's shocked, open-mouthed, and wide eyed body.
Jed saw a brief crackling of crimson leave Sage's hand, travel through his fingertips, then run up his arm and enter his chest in the place where he had always assumed that his heart was. His breath caught, momentarily, then both the lightning and the tingling sensation he had felt during its passage disappeared.
Jed watched as Sage tried to expel one last word, but failed as his final breath wheezed out of his tortured body.
"Sage!" Jed called out, over and over again, to the old man until a nurse rushed into the room; more out of the need to silence the shouting and sobbing visitor than to resuscitate her patient. She knew that Sage was gone.
Jed awoke with a start. It was three a.m., the night of Sage's death and he remembered every word that the Critic had hurled at him in his dream.
He believed every one of them.
Quietly slipping from his bed and leaving behind his soundly-sleeping wife, Jed walked to the door of his garage, opened it and entered the moonlit, mini-van'd man-cave. Feeling the coolness of the concrete on his bare feet, he walked to his supply cabinet, grabbed his bone-handled hunting knife and silently exited through the garage's back door into the night; the cool grass tickling beneath his feet.
