And Sometimes Y

 186.

I decide to act. I make the conscious decision (although made in a drug enhanced state of semi-comatose) to serve my highest calling. I am a warrior. I will not go meekly into that murky twilight. I pledge to give it my best, my absolute best shot.

Often I have lectured on the importance of knowing, with brutally honesty, the starting point. We are we? Are we lost? Are we weak? Do we fully understand and commit to the motivation behind the need for this choice in the moment of truth? What needs to be assessed? Are our limitations body-based, stemming from lack of information or skills, or of a feeble spirit? Do we, can we, will we take the crucial first step in the direction of our goals and then commit to the continuation of the steps, and this is the crux of the equation, NO MATTER WHAT?

That is the deal-breaker that keeps 90% from their goals. Something happens. The slope increases, the temperature drops the bad guys start using automatic weapons and ignore conventional rules of engagement. Shit, as they say, happens. And that nine of ten give up and go home. I cannot stress this concept enough. No matter what means no mater what. In my case it implies the reality that I have spent the last eight months in a hospital bed induced into a state of comatose. A state I wish to leave. My consciousness has had sufficient recovery time to access the homeostasis and make this a voluntary decision. I need to rally the corporal and chaplain, the troops of body and spirit, and get back in the game. Posthaste.

I open my eyes and allow for focus and chroma adjustment. I hear the sixty-cycle hum generated by the heating-air conditioning apparatus in discordant harmony with the life support system I am temporarily dependent upon. I test my tactile perception with thumbs and index fingers, alarmed at the left-right imbalance. I sniff the atmosphere and detect the unmistakable odor of lysol and fear. It reminds me of jellied gasoline, napalm. There is a person asleep on the tiny couch to my right and I turn my head in the attempt to identify the snoring sentinel. I test my vocal capabilities to announce my intentions but all I can muster is a crude slur of vowels,

"Aeiou."

The sleeping dog lies.

"Aiioouuu."

Movement. Truth.

Louder this time, with inflection on the third syllable, like perhaps an Italian code, "Aeiiiiiiiou?"

Sitting now in the shallow darkness I can see Davis look at me with a questioning angle of head, as if he is trying to break the code and provide the proper response. I need him back on my team and despite our sometimes tumultuous history, he needs to be the conduit between my current pathetic state of non-being and a functioning tooth on the team's cog. He rises and covers the five steps with ninja-like grace ending with a whisper to me at bedside.

"And sometimes why."

The Grand What

 185.

Should I be able to rise to this occasion, a circumstance I am still not entirely sure of its detail, if I am somehow able to dismiss the why and cut to the chase of the what, as in what do we do now? progress and perhaps even a modicum of growth could result. That is a dumpster full of should have and could haves I admit to myself in another therapy session where I play the dual roles of patient and therapist. The why (rye) is important only when looking for a motive, it is the what (wheat) that truly counts. This ancient grain of truth is baked into the action I will take. The therapist looks at the humble baker and repeats the phrase applicable to all warriors, "Do what must be done."

The moment of truth at hand, I decide to act. Eight months of muscular atrophy and an idled mind has left me in a frail state of compromise, challenged. This circumstance is no different than any other. The sun comes up and then it goes back down. Chop wood and carry water. The enlightenment of the path, the effort, the commitment and of complete dedication to the mission is now my choice. I can chose to wallow. My body is bent. I have just learned that my colleagues have suffered worse fates, that my teacher has gone and that the mission I co-authored, one most thought to be impossible, was indeed, a bridge too far. I could blame all this on that. I could sleep. Retire. Or…..

…..Or I could soldier up. I could adhere to the one guiding principle that has supported my effort, maintained my morale and propelled my every action, sometimes, like this, despite overwhelming odds and in the face of mortal danger. When the warrior is ready evil will surely appear.

I see the abstract as plain as a biplane contrail against a deep blue sky. The universe is, once again, sending its absurdly comical message to my stubborn ego-child soul.

Regardless of the situation, the degree of danger, all the reasons behind the unfortunate series of events that has led you to this day, there is, once rendered to the base purpose of your being, your ultimate goal, and the path only you can tread, one spiritual commandment.

My eyes pop open like a toaster spitting blackened bread and I see the message across the expanse of my personal eternity. The Grand What.

"Continue Your Practice."

A Verdant Valley of Peace

184. I am being pummeled by the bad news of this heavyweight. The left cross of TOM and the right hook of The Queen - sandwiched between the series of Saunders jabs - has me dizzy and damaged. I feel saved by the bell until the reveal that the bell is actually a frantic staccato of beeps from the EKG machine indicating that I have reached critical mass heart rate. Acting like a referee, the doctor waves Davis to his corner, asks for my compliance in an immediate deep breathing effort and moves to twist a dial on one of the tanks stationed at bedside. I feel the immediate effect and drift out of the ring and into a foggy limbo. Experience warns me that I am too weak to continue this bout. As counter I opt for a temporary retreat to live to fight another day. I am in a dark forest falling involuntarily down a narrow path. I try to hit the brakes but my knees instantly buckle and balk. The erie sound of feral beasts moves towards me as I try to stop the slide. I feel my fingernails try to set into tree trunks and scream as they are bent backwards in the futile attempt. This is not my fault. It is a trick. Some new drug designed to break my spirit, a test. A flash of light acts as a edit point between scenes. I am back at the top of the hill, see the forest and step into the trail. Immediately I start the fall, like we used to play on the slip n slide as kids. No stopping once begun. The scent of my memory swirls in the moist air. I have been here before. I see a tree and recall my earlier failure. Might have been a lesson. I look at by bloody right hand and think, yup. I hear the beasts, louder, closer and it seems in greater number. This is NOT my fault. I am the victim in this nightmare. Another flash and I stand atop the hill. I KNOW what is going to happen if I step, onto…the…path I will…but it is habit now and the insanity of doing the same thing again and again hoping for a different outcome is lost on me. The tree passes, the knees stay busted and I hear the animal's bloodthirsty caterwaul of pending sustenance. I am aghast with my stubborn insistence that someone other than myself is responsible for this. Flash. Forest. Trail. Tree. Bloody palm. Animals snarling with the overdue arrival of dinner. ALRIGHT IT'S MY FUCKING FAULT. I accept the responsibility. I am sorry people got hurt. Given the opportunity I will make it right. Flash. Forest. Trailhead. I walk past it and into a verdant valley of peace.

MIA

184. It is an unmistakable sting. The chill runs like an electric current up my spine upsetting whatever stasis has grounded the absolute reality of this eternal eventuality. We are all going to get sick and die. The variables being in the how and how much. How will we go and how much drama and suffering will accompany it? No matter the level of enlightenment and acceptance it is the personal reaction to the binary fact that a person you once interacted with in a positive, flowing, professional, personal and loving way, has walked through an invisible portal, never to return. It is a loss that only the passage of time will prove as one of nature's very few absolutes. We are human. We decay and die. This happens when completely unexpected and we will be woefully unprepared when it knocks on our door. I am woefully unprepared for the news about TOM. He was my friend, mentor, father-figure and up-chain commander for almost thirty years. I was just provided the intel that he is gone. Not even the morphine drip can mask the pain I am feeling. My knee-jerk reaction is brusk and violent. Who did this to me? How did it happen? Was it a part of the operation of which I currently lie in convalescent incapacity? Who is responsible? I can feel the bitter tinge of anger's revenge build in my veins as I look for my badge and gun. Having the experience of an earlier response Davis senses this and puts a gentle hand on my shoulder. His touch sends a painful charge through my upper torso and I wince. Go ahead and dump a truckload of salt in the wound, I challenge, any further injury is secondary to the insult of this news. "We are in lockdown, all operations suspended until further notice. The primary objective is for you, and Saunders, to heal up and get back on your feet," Davis says in a neutral monotone. "Saunders?" It is the first word I have spoken in eight months, my voice is shallow and filled with what sounds to me like sand and gravel under a truck tire. "She got hit as well, part of a, we think, a retaliatory strike by, well, it's still conjecture at this point, but without orders and TOM, we are…" I cough and try again. "The Queen?" I watch as Davis purses his lips in an interesting combination of silent codes, a cultural mixture of omerta and the fifth amendment. He locks on to my stare, leans twenty degrees forward, loosens his lips and whispers, "MIA."

Hello Stranger

183. Pain and I are not strangers. We have met. We know each other like three hundred hitters know bees in the bat. Like linebackers know stingers. Like boxers know that only the first one hurts. Like lovers know that it will soon follow the temporary and fleeting sensation of bliss. Like the darkness knows the light. I lie still on my back, a position I have held like a plank for eight months. I fantasize running, leaping, pivoting on a dime in a high-speed, high octane dance with the dark-side of doom. I feel a surge of adrenaline as my physical self reacts to the stimulus I have created and, filling the prescription ordered, dial it back in a segue to a more peaceful and calm setting. I walk on a isolated beach of golden silicone and turquoise amazed that the air temperature perfectly matches the ideal comfort level of my bare skin. The tropical breeze reminds me of how tiny this collection of atoms and carbon truly is. I look at a passing fairy tern floating serenely on an invisible thermal and connect with her humility and presence. We are one. Alive and awake along this path, lost in a paradise of self realization. Needing to prove its existence I reach my arm to touch the bond that connects us. I feel a stronger wind on my face, a warm, gentle, loving touch of life. It is Julie's hand on my cheek I find opening one eye and then the other, slowly, in appreciation of the passing states of consciousness. Does she know where I have been, what I was just experiencing, the beach, the peace, the bird, the serenity, the breeze and our connectivity with all? She must. Certainly she does. It had often been one of the litany of reasons for my deep affection for her, the respect one affords to a superior. You know what I would like to know. A single tear escapes her right duct and, gathering speed, falls from her cheek onto the linen beds-sheet with what sounds to me like a liquid explosion. You have my attention darling one. She moves so close to my face that I can smell her hair. Another tear escapes, undecticed this time, dropping silently as my olfactory radar is overwhelmed and distracted. "TOM is dead." Hello stranger.

Completely Disagree

182. It strikes me as ironic, assuming that I fully trust everything learned since I opened my eyes for the first time in eight months, that they, the medical staff, now wants me to rest. I will risk sensory overload and muscular fatigue to fill the memory gap, but in this case what I recognize to be the while veil of morphine is masking a convex of pain. I submit to the free-fall watching the chute open as I mentally jot a note to self before splashdown, 'Did they take our Queen?' I am the anchor of a four-man really team. I watch as the three athletes ahead of me fight a courageous bout with an obviously more talented team. They are twice as fast, trying half as hard. I am appalled by the dichotomy, a sensation that I have become conditioned to see as a personal challenge. The opposition's anchor is starring at me beneath an air mixed of two parts over-confidence and one part fear. I look at the gap I must make up and then at the race clock. It is frozen, its light emitting diodes stuck in digital eternity. The shadow-self notices my gaze and follows my eyes to the clock. I sense the atmosphere change to 50/50, fear on the rise. The unknown, great doubt, the troublesome, the cosmic prankster dealing from a deck of jokers and grim reapers. I prepare to play the hand, now overflowing with a deep-cell charge of destiny amid the sudden transfer of momentum. I got the hammer. Deep breath, smooth hand-off and hit max in three strides. And then the light. My eyes open to the reality of my frailty and weakness. I am ashamed of my own inability to balance humility with ambition. I want to tell the runner that mere victory is not the goal, that winning is nothing without the strident dedication to understanding its opposite. You can never lose. One either wins or learns. THAT is the race. And no one wins every time. Pick your races carefully. The exponential growth is in hitting the tape with nothing left to give. Take that lesson and leave the suffering at the recycling center. The light. It seems that Davis has replaced both Julie and Drysdale on watch. I bring him into focus and for one obscure second he shares the facade of the runner. I shake the cobwebs from my opiate dream and nod him a silent salute. The doctor is standing next to him looking up from his device and scanning the data on the monitor behind me. I am dying to get a look at it but allow the moment to unfold on their terms. "Hey bud, welcome back," Davis consoles. I try to talk but a softball size hairball is firmly logged in my throat. I manage a guttural grunt in appreciative response as the doctor again assumes control with a scribbled prescription for rest. "Easy does it Mr. Larsen, we have to take this slow. Please try to relax, there is plenty of time," he says unconvincingly. I see the frozen race clock and completely disagree.

Larsen?

181. With traction unavailable, in total darkness I realize the only thing between my living consciousness and the eternal void is my will. I commit to the effort, asking likewise from my atrophied body, doubtful mind unwavering spirit. I am slipping deeper by the minute into a black hole of nothingness. Far above I see a pinpoint of light. I appears glimmering like a star in a galaxy ten thousand light years away and I recognize it as my last best hope. I move towards it with all the inertia I can weightlessly create. I can feel my lungs cry for a leaner mixture as fuel drains. I have one shot at this docking or it's over. I use a primal scream as bombastic propulsion commanding every muscle cell to aid and abet. I rise slowly at first, then, with proof of theory established, give it one…..last…. push upward, away from the tractor-beam pull of everlasting hopelesness. And open my eyes. In front of a blinding lamp creating a halo effect around her head stands Julie. She looks surprised to see me and somewhat bemused at the relative clumsiness of my entrance. I am frantically trying to access the situation. Discarding my first though as this being heaven, I scan the room, quickly deciding that I am in a hospital bed and Julie is visiting. There are flowers on the table and I hear the familiar ping of life-support data being displayed on a monitor behind my aching head. I then preform a damage assessment and feel, besides the dull ache at the back of my head, numbness in my right arm and an unresponsive right shoulder. Julie senses my questioning and moves closer to announce, "You were shot from behind, three hits, head, shoulder and arm, close range, hollow point. The staff induced a coma to speed the quality of recovery. You have been out for almost eight months." I can see from her expression that she fears the update has been too much, too soon. I look to the door and see two people enter the small but friendly room, one is a doctor wasting no time in checking vitals and the other Drysdale who might have been on security just outside the door. I think about standing an eight-month watch and close my eyes with gratitude and fatigue. Eight fucking months? I can hear the doctor call for the specialist as I open my eyes for the second time. I see Julie and Drysdale sanding bedside. A ocean of joy washes over me as I try to fit a few pieces of the puzzle together. Drysdale moves in to squeeze my arm and we visually connect in an affirming moment of fellowship. "Firecracker?" They look at each other answering the question non-verbally. "TOM scrubbed it after the, uh, ambush." Julie finally offers. The specialist arrives and immediately dismisses my lifeline to information and, hence reality. I am left with a thousand questions and a runaway imagination. "I need you to relax Mr. Larsen, please." Hearing the beeps from the EKG dramatically increase in frequency with the bad news, I agree and close my eyes while drawing a deep breath to allow the combination to slow my alarmed basal response. Larsen?