Gabriel Eris (Final Chapter)

CHAPTER THE SIXTH!!!

Gabriel lay motionless in bed, as he had done for several days, his eyes staring blankly at the ceiling, his fingers slightly twitching by his sides. Thorazine was heavy in his blood and the shocks they had given him continued to route and reroute themselves inside his body. He felt vaguely that something was wrong.

The nurse who had taken a liking to him sat by his bedside. Her name was Karen and she had a very kind, very open, moon-shaped face. She looked at him now with a compassion she could scarcely contain. She felt like a mother whose child has fallen into a coma.

She prayed.

"Dear God,

Won't you please, please help this man, who is so simple and so good? Please, Lord, restore his senses and his wits. Make strong his heart and his mind. Carry him into the presence of Your healing love; the Holy Spirit of Your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen."

This prayer, though she articulated it most deliberately, nevertheless, formed itself perfectly organically out of her love. To pray, for her, was not a conscious decision, but a spiritual operation as natural as waking from sleep. If she clothed it in the language familiar to her grandfathers, it was not due to simplicity or impressionability, but to a genuine and deeply formulated belief in the reality of Christ. Karen was an intelligent woman, and though she often could not account for her aversions and affinities, she nonetheless enjoyed plumbing, pondering, and casting speculations like coins into the depths. Over time, she had developed a rather sophisticated theology of her own, which she nonetheless believed to be orthodox in the most important respects. She did not doubt that Christ was one of many symbols for something more comprehensive than Himself, yet, this awareness never prevented her from appreciating His concrete reality. Christ was an expression of themes rooted in what Jung called the collective and spiritual unconscious, but, then, so were we. And whether we incarnated through bodies, or were virgin-birthed from imaginations, we are no less real. But Christ, who uniquely symbolizes Love, was something more than real. He was central, and his reality was second to his centrality.

She set her hand over Gabriel's. It was cold, twitching, damp.

A glimmer of recognition seemed to cross his eyes like a shooting star, and his lips began to weakly move. Karen leaned closer, but she could make out only random words and phrases. Something about exile in Babylon and returning to Zion. How strange. Was this an answer to her prayer? She began weeping copious tears, and clutching his hand tighter, as if to hold the tremors still.

But a moment later he was still.

Gone.