The Second Coming (20 page)

It was all becoming clear to Father John now. He was there to save Detective McCormick and he was having the dreams so that he could help him catch the killer. It was all part of God’s grand plan.

“You cannot die now Detective,” he thought to himself. “God still needs you to fulfill your role in his grand scheme.”

Next to the bed, in a fold down chair, lay an elderly woman with an undersized blanket haphazardly spread on top of her curled up body. He knew it was Detective McCormick’s mom. His heart ached for her.

Father John placed his hand on Mike’s chest. He could feel the cold resignation in his heart. He then placed his hand on his head and began the process of divine intervention. His force entered Mike’s cerebral cortex and traveled through the maze of tunnels, past barely sparking neurons and axons, healing the massive damage done to the tissue.

From the cerebral cortex he traveled down the cavernous river of Mike’s blood stream and entered his heart and soul. It was dark and empty. The love and compassion that once filled this sacred vessel were now gone. Father John breathed light into the man’s dark heart, filled his soul with power and virtue as he prayed to God.

“The LORD is his shepherd; he shall not want. Maketh him to lie down in green pastures; leadeth him beside the still waters. Restoreth his soul. Leadeth him in the paths of righteousness for your name’s sake. Yea, though he walks through the valley of the shadow of death, he will fear no evil, for you are with him; your rod and your staff, they comfort him.”

chapter
37

E
VEN THOUGH THE
room was grey and shadowed with dim fluorescent lights, it was bright to Mike’s dormant retinas as he lazily opened his eyes. He had been stuck in pitch black darkness for three days and his eyes struggled to adjust. His vision was a white fuzzy haze and he couldn’t distinguish shapes. He could feel the ventilator tube lodged in his mouth and stuffed down his throat making it virtually impossible to swallow.

As he blinked his eyelids like iron curtains, his head rotated from side to side trying to find something to focus on. He didn’t know who he was or where he was. It was if his mind had been erased and was a clean slate, much like a new born child. There was no thought process or comprehension. It was like he was experiencing life for the first time.

His mother was sleeping uncomfortably crammed on the folding armchair and was clutching at the all too small blanket that covered her torso for warmth when she thought she heard a whisper telling her to get up.

She opened her eyes and blinked with a confused furrow of her thin, silver brow as she concentrated and listened for the whisper. The ventilator hissed and shushed intermittently in the background as she weakly pushed herself up and gazed around the room. She could sense something in the cool air of the room; a divine presence. It was peaceful and she felt an inner sense of calmness she had not experienced since before her husband’s suicide. Could it be that God came while she was sleeping and took her only son away from his suffering to a better place? She glanced over at Mike’s bed and thought she saw his head move. Did she imagine it?

With her heart pounding with anticipation, she got up from the chair and curiously approached the hospital bed. Much to her delight, she saw that
his eyes were open half mast and blinking. The ventilator breathed darkly like a dying animal in the forest.

“Mike?” She said softly. “Can you hear me? Are you awake?”

A distant muffled voice rang hollow in Mike’s head. They were words he didn’t understand, but the voice sounded familiar. He closed his eyelids and rolled his eyeballs involuntarily trying to soothe them.

“Oh baby, please don’t leave me,” his mother pleaded earnestly. “Let me get a doctor to check on you. Hold on sweetheart.”

There were more voices talking in the dark recesses of his head and he felt the doctor raise his eyelids one at a time as he shined a light whitewashing his pupils. More voices and commotion ensued as Mike lay in his bed unaware of the excitement around him. Doctors and nurses worked feverishly as his mother kept begging him not to fall asleep.

Mike felt the tape holding the ventilator tube to the outside of his neck tear from his skin and when they pulled it from his throat it felt like his tonsils were being removed. All the while he didn’t have any concept of what was happening to him.

Almost an hour later, as Mike sat wearily in his bed being examined by a couple of nurses and a doctor, his vision slowly began to return like an out of focus movie being brought in and out of clarity. It was apparent from the doctor and nurses who were checking his eyes, blood pressure and other vital signs that he was in a hospital and he knew that a hospital was for sick or injured people, but he couldn’t make the connection that there was something wrong with him.

Instead he sat motionless in his bed with a blank look on his face, listening, detached from all the commotion that was going on around him as the nurses and doctor lifted his arms, pulled and probed his ears, throat and nose and generally poked and prodded him. None of it bothered him. It was like it wasn’t happening to him. Like the body he was occupying wasn’t his own.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” the young doctor with thinning sandy hair and round John Lennon style glasses remarked bewildered. “All of his vital signs are normal. It really is quite extraordinary.”

The pretty Asian nurse smiled at Mike as she adjusted something behind him.

“It is a miracle!” His mother exclaimed joyously. “I wouldn’t believe it myself if I didn’t see it with my own two eyes.”

Mike heard all of this, but he wasn’t listening. He was still trying to figure out what was going on around him. Something bad must have happened to someone, but he didn’t know who or what. He didn’t have any power of recollection. It was all too confusing. His head felt like someone threw it into a dryer on tumble. He was experiencing vertigo and he would close his eyes tight hoping to squeeze the feeling away, but when he would open his eyes, he felt like he was corkscrewing to his left. It was as though the building was collapsing and spiraling down uncontrollably.

The doctor noticed the pasty, vacant expression on his face. “How are you feeling Detective?” He asked as he stood next to Mike’s bed with his arms crossed.

Detective? The word seemed strangely familiar. How did he know that word? What did it mean? Was he a detective? And then it dawned on him…he was a homicide detective in Oakland. Mike smiled, pleased with his word association and his lips cracked with a sting.

“Thirsty,” he replied with a weak voice.

Everyone in the room laughed nervously.

“He still has his sense of humor,” his mother remarked happily.

Mike recognized his mom, but he didn’t have any memory of her or his family life, but the words Oakland and detective kept repeating in his head. He kept repeating the words in his head like a computer searching for a match and then it came to him. He was born in Oakland. Mike was proud that he was able to figure these things out for himself. It was like being a contestant on a game show. He reminded himself to take it slow; baby steps.

Baby? He was an only baby. His mother’s little baby and he remembered laughing and being happy as his mom pushed him on a swing when he was a little baby. The word swing kept repeating in his head until he remembered the swing was in his back yard in their home in Berkeley. He remembered his youth in Berkley, climbing trees and running around with his friends and playing catch with his dad in their back yard in Piedmont. That’s right…they moved to Piedmont when he was in the 4
^th
grade. He remembered playing basketball and baseball with the kids in his neighborhood and football with his dad in his back yard. He remembered his dad telling him that he had a “golden arm” and that if he practiced hard enough, he would be the quarterback of his football team one day. And then he remembered that they moved from Piedmont to Orinda before his freshman year of high
school because his dad knew the football coach who wanted Mike to play quarterback for him. He recalled his girlfriends, especially Jamie who was his first love and broke his heart. He remembered losing the championship game and getting arrested for driving under the influence afterwards.

The memories came one after the other like falling dominoes and each memory triggered another one in a fascinating game of memory association. It was like solving a puzzle. The more pieces of memory he had, the more he could see the entire picture. But there was a problem. Where was his dad? Why wasn’t he there with his mom? He wanted to see his dad; the man who was his hero and mentor when he was growing up.

“Where’s Dad?” Mike asked with a hoarse voice.

Mrs. McCormick and the doctor stopped in surprised silence and stared at Mike. He could feel the tension in the air. Neither of them knew what to say. His mom’s eyes welled with tears, but he didn’t understand why.

“You should get some sleep,” the doctor told him in an assuring tone.

Mike turned his head and looked out the window at the blue sky as wisps of clouds drifted methodically by. Where was his dad? Why wasn’t he there? He closed his eyes and sank into a tingling, euphoric slumber.

chapter
38

W
HEN
M
IKE AWOKE
, his eyes were crusted around the reddened exteriors and his tongue was swollen and brittle like a dried sponge as he licked the flaking skin of his chapped lips. As he blinked his eyes into focus, he rolled his groggy head to the side and looked out the window at the vibrant, rosy yellow hues of the dusk’s sky radiating in the wisps of clouds.

There was a shadowy dimness to the silent room and as Mike rolled his head back so that he was looking straight up at the patterns in the ceiling, he could sense a presence in the room, like someone was watching him. Slowly, with weary eyes, he rolled his head in the other direction and saw the silhouette of a large, dark figure sitting in the chair a few feet from his bed. He squinted his eyes as he examined the massive figure who sat silently watching him. Who was it? Was it a dream? He lay motionless staring at the figure waiting for him to move.

“Hey Mikey,” a familiar deep voice said. “How are you feeling?”

Mike immediately recognized the voice and gave a painful, cracking smirk. “Hey Big Pete,” he replied with a raspy dry lump in his throat. “What are you doing sitting in the dark?”

“I was in the neighborhood and thought I would drop by.”

“Is that right?” Mike asked amused. “Where’d my mom go?”

“I told her to go home and get some rest while I watch over you. You had us all worried Brother.”

“Aren’t you sweet?”

“Sweet as sugar, you know that.”

Mike grinned with appreciative regret. “What the fuck happened to me?”

“You don’t remember anything?” Big Pete asked as he leaned forward in his chair.

Mike swallowed hard as he turned his head towards the ceiling and searched the recesses of his mind for anything that might trigger a memory. “It’s the strangest thing, I’m aware of the things around me and I recognize people, but I can’t make sense of them and put it all together unless something triggers a memory.”

“What is your last memory?”

“I don’t know,” Mike replied lost as his eyes welled with tears of disappointment. “I don’t know what happened when. I can’t make sense of it.”

Big Pete sat back in his chair with his hands in his lap as he let out a deep sigh. He wanted to ask Mike what he remembered about the night he was attacked by the Sterling Killer, but the doctor told him to give Mike time to regain his memory. “What do you remember about me?” Big Pete asked timidly.

Mike paused in contemplation. What did he remember about Big Pete? He knew he was Big Pete but how did he know him? What was their connection? And then the memories came back to him like a deck of cards being shuffled.

He played high school football against Big Pete and lost the state championship to his team their senior year. Mike was the star quarterback and Big Pete was the All-State left tackle. Mike was pleasantly surprised when Big Pete announced that he too was going to the University of Arizona and even more surprised when they ended up as roommates. Big Pete later admitted that he went to U of A because he wanted to play football with Mike and asked to be his roommate.