Furor was asleep in his
hospital cot, his body formulated around the idea of him like a
threadbare rag. He wasn’t really asleep, but the excesses of the day
had driven him into a state of reclusive amnesia where he could find
respite from his turbulent thoughts and his body’s torment. He had
found this method of escape, so long ago he could not recall a time
when he had not relied on this ability to take himself out of the maze
and lose himself in mindlessness.
His name was different
this time, too. His mind had wandered insanely into the premise of
Ruth and there he had stayed for some period of thought which he
termed forty seven years. Ruth was single, lonely and friendless.
Furor was totally captivated by the thought of her. His mind no
longer generated ideas which excluded her reality and he could not
remember a time without her.
Through Ruth his
experience of her world was bitter. Failed relationships, low
self-esteem, the unchallenging grind of a job which kept her trapped
in a hamster wheel of supply and demand. No children, no prospects,
no money, no life. Her disappointments showed in a face set against
the world. Her attempts at hiding her pain had ceased a decade ago
and she looked perpetually tired and old before her time. Furor
adored her. He petted the idea of her. Mourned her loneliness,
despaired her failures, raged at the iniquities she suffered as he
lost himself deeply in the impossibility of her life. The noose
tightened. He remembered the morning of the discovery.
Furor woke early that
morning, disturbed by the construction trucks that rumbled through her
city street at dawn. Grumbling, he staggered gracelessly to the
bathroom, creasing her eyes against the harsh light she turned on to
see. He squinted at the clock - 5.30 - and groaned. No more sleep
now. Pattering to the kitchen he started to make coffee, idly
stroking her breast through the nightgown. He suddenly froze.
Stroked again. Found the swelling and estimated its size and shape.
As Furor’s mind lurched with panic, her stomach leapt in fear. She
ran back to the bathroom, pulling off her nightwear over head as she
moved. She scrutinized her breast, the shape, the skin, the size,
compared it to its twin. They were no longer twins. Her right breast
had a distinct swelling on its right side. How could she not have
noticed before?
And so began an endless
round of anxiety, fear, misery, aloneness. The anxious, coy
embarrassment with the doctor rapidly turning into shame and guilt as
each test produced results which filled her with a sense of failure so
acute; she could no longer bear to look at the medical staff as they
conveyed her penance. Chemo – a well deserved judgment on the
assertive insolence of her disease. She flinched from their unspoken
recriminations. Her guilt mirrored their inability to heal her, her
refusal to accept their inadequate ministrations.
And thus Furor lay
curled in her misery, bald, ugly, a nauseous bag of skin, bone and
diseased flesh. His thought structured in a frame of assault from
without and attacks from within. Waves of nausea swamped his mind and
washed though her body. He could no longer keep afloat in the sea of
sickness she floundered in. Something within him cracked as she
prepared herself for death.
And Furor dreamed a
dream. Moving soundlessly through an endless white corridor, he found
himself in a deserted hospital theatre. The drama played out before
him was shockingly familiar. He saw Ruth lying on an experimental
piece of surgical equipment, a T bench. Her arms at right
angles to her torso were fixed by surgical tape and hospital ID
bracelets to the bench. A drip feed trailed from a vein in the back
of her hand. Hairless and naked, her right breast had been amputated;
tumors blossomed like bloody roses on her left. Suspicious swellings
showed through her terribly thin body as a catheter snaked away from
her bladder. Multicolored bruises from countless biopsies and blood
samples littered her arms and thighs. Her wounds oozed pus and blood.
She was aware of her own stench.
Her surgical team
arrived. They discussed her case unaware or unconcerned that she was
conscious. The head surgeon gestured at her. “OK – let’s take a good
look at her, shall we?” A button was depressed, an engine glided
smoothly and Ruth found herself hoisted upright, a paralyzed display
on the stainless steel crossbars of the operating bench. She hung
there, immobile, desperate, exposed. The surgeon advanced, pen in
hand, he prodded her various swellings and called for her medical
charts. Shame and fear gnawed at her as she awaited their verdict.
“We can operate further
gentlemen but for no good purpose.” He smiled at Ruth, “You don’t
mind do you?” he gestured at the chart in his hand. Not waiting for
her response he carefully hooked the clipboard over her head and
allowed the chart to hang on her chest. “Off we go then gentlemen,
we’re finished here.”
“Are you going? What
do I do now?” she questioned lamely as they filed out of the room. No
one answered. Someone turned off the light.
A seed of rage, turned
inside for so long swelled within Furor and he thundered out of his
sleep, empowered by the injustice of her abuse. Tears coursed down
her cheeks, “Enough, enough, enough!” He raged. “I will do this no
longer!” And then suddenly, he was out…
Was he asleep? Was he
awake? He looked down to see the shell of Ruth below him, lying
passively in her cot, apparently asleep. Am I dead? He lost any
concern for the ugly pain of the body beneath him. I dreamed a
dream. Which was the dream? The surgery? Or the dream of the
surgery?
His mind expanded and
he left the confines of the room, then the hospital, reveling in a
freedom he had not experienced for a long, long time. And then the
Light opened up to meet him. He moved toward it, irresistibly
attracted. But just before he merged and lost himself within it he
paused. ‘Am I dead now?’ he enquired. A ripple of humor flowed
through the Light. He received a thought in response. ‘Life does not
reside in flesh. You are no more dead now than you were alive
before. There is only Life’.
Furor focused on the
Light and a memory of sublime peace and beauty was rekindled within
him. He breathed in the magnificent beauty of the Light and saw it
was his own. He thought of Ruth. ‘I am not Ruth?’ He received a
thought in reply ‘Ruth is an idea of yourself, it is not true, it is
the story of one born in a body. You are mind created, mind awake.
You have the power to use your thought in any way you choose. Ruth is
the manifested child of your thought about yourself. Her experience
is what you believe yourself to be.’
Furor remembered
the agonies of doubt and fear he experienced as Ruth. He looked at
the vicious cycle of her anxiety which fed on itself nailing him
deeper and deeper into the cross of her life. He looked at the lives
of those he had interacted with throughout his time as her and saw
that they were one. He felt a pang of sorrow at their joint
ignorance. They were all consumed with
their own grief, trauma and misery. He witnessed the cause and effect
of their mutual mindset of separation and the compassion welled deeply
within him. “How can I help us?” he implored. The Light repeated
‘You have the power to use your thought in any way you choose.’ “I
want to go back” Ruth declared. “I want to heal my mind.”
Ruth was asleep in her
hospital cot, her body formulated around the idea of herself like a
warm duvet. She wasn’t really asleep, but the joys of her experience
had left her in a state of peace and grace that she savored with her
new sense of self. Her mind reached out in wholeness to those around
her. Her body began to heal. She knew what to do.
Jane Wiltshire
March 2004
gonehome@hotmail.com
