The International Writers Magazine: Heaven on Earth

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Dying Wish • Wesley Weyers Tom watched his dying brother lying limp on the hospital bed. Tubes tracked across his face, hooked up to an intravenous drip like a used condom on a metal pole. He looked so pale. His normal crimson glow had been drawn from his face, although the spot light reflecting off the bone coloured hospital walls added to the effect. Dying Dave was Tom’s older brother.

As much as Tom wanted to mourn his passing brother he could not. His legs ached, his miniature harp was chafing his forearm and he felt self-conscious while wearing the white toga constructed out of hospital bed spreads.

The hospital room had been dolled up to look like heaven. White sheets were papered over the windows and two powerful spot lights stood at the back of the room, blasting burning apocalyptic white light on everything. Balancing between the light stands stood two foil panels to reflect any stray light back on Dave. Kneeling behind the panels was a family friend whose finger was poised above a tape recorder set to ‘angelic’ music. It created a heavenly trepidation invoked from any white room, whether a job agency waiting room or toilets in a neo-swanky bar. Dave’s family stood in front of him. Tom stood to the left of his parents. In front and centre stood Tom’s father holding a scroll in front of him like a piece of wallpaper. Tom’s mother stood parallel to him. She was humming Just a few more minutes until Paradise,
Tom recognised the tune from her God rock anthems CD. She fidgeted, Tom guessed her harp was rubbing away the skin on her inner arm as well. The only blemish in his Mother’s vision was a nurse pressed against the wall. She was keeping an eye on the heart monitor. Tom and his parents had been standing in front the light for the last couple of hours waiting for Dave to regain consciousness.

The plan was that when Dave regained consciousness he would believe he was in heaven, despite having never believed in it during his life. The previous night Dave and his girlfriend were involved in a car accident that had instantly debited his girlfriends life. Dave was rushed to hospital by the other driver, who was oddly unscathed. An emergency operation was untaken and failed, owing to certain undefined compilations. As Dave’s family arrived it was pronounced that he would only have twenty-four hours to live.

The family were sat down in the most humanely coloured room in the hospital. A doctor tenderly explained that 'Dave’s state is irreversible and he will die in the next twenty-four hours. However, at some point Dave will briefly regain consciousness. While he might seem coherent he is not making a recovery, but it is a perfect opportunity to say goodbye’. The doctor was pleased; he had successively controlled his impulses to be rude and authoritative.

There was a moment of silence.
‘I want heaven for my son,’ Dave’s mother cried.
The doctor nodded not realising what he was agreeing to.
‘So we can?’
‘Can what?’
She explained her plan to the doctor and he refused and swore to himself never to be sympathetic again.
‘Mrs Doughty I unapologetically refuse. Aside from the moral ground of duping someone into believing they are dead, it is a hazard. If we suddenly needed to operate it would be quite unpractical, dangerous in fact.’

Within ten minutes of Mrs Doughty threatening the hospital with a religious discrimination suit, Dave was moved into a private room and a couple of nurses helped to cover the windows with white bed spreads.
Tom stood cold in his white sheet while his parents were frantically creating heaven for their dying son. They had found God (or ‘God found us’ as they chorused) by the time that Tom and Dave were autonomous and able to say no. Tom was depressed by the whole sequence of events.
‘Mum I don’t want a part in this,’ he said as his mother rigged up the lighting, ‘we’re deceiving Dave.’
‘Fine,’ she said, looking down at him, ‘would you rather tell him the brutal truth that he was in a car accident and his girlfriend is dead?’
‘At least it’d be honest,’ he said with his eye brows down turned over the top of his field of vision.
‘Or, better yet, how about we do it anyway and don’t invite you. Do you not want to be involved in your brother’s final moments on earth?’

Tom reluctantly conceded and there the family stood, in the same position for the last three hours.
Dave regained consciousness. His eyes peeled themselves apart, his mouth closed slightly and his head slowly bobbed about the pillow. The family stared at him, they had had four false alarms in the last four hours. They watched his eyes scan around the room, but focusing on nothing in particular. He was awake. Everyone stood up straight and got themselves in place. Tom saw his father fold up his scroll to wipe his eyes with his wrist. Everyone’s eyes moistened. They had all been staring into the reflected light for a long time. Dave’s mother turned to the side to whisper the password ‘Halleluiah’ to the family friend.

There was a moment’s pause before the tape player had started when Dave was conscious and staring and his family in white. The music began, it was an angelic human choir humming no discernible tune. The music was loud enough to cover the treadmill bleep from the heart monitor. It got Dave’s attention and for the first time he took notice of his family in front of him.
‘You must be David Doughty,’ Dave’s father wobbled like he was speaking under water. His voice couldn’t be heard over the tape player. He tried again. ‘You must be David Doughty!’ he boomed using the same tone as when he lost the television remote, ‘we’ve been expecting you!’
‘Where am I?’ Dave asked still bouncing his head off the pillow.
‘You’re in heaven, my son,’ his voice cracked with emotion and his arms opened.
‘Heaven? What am I doing there?’ Dave’s face had broken into a smile like he was about to laugh.
‘You’ve made it.’
‘But heaven doesn’t existed,’ he said not breaking his smile
‘Oh yes it does, and you’re a part of it my son.
Dave’s face was delirious. It was a controlled explosion of happiness when anything short of smashing windows and crashing walls is an anti-climax.
‘Well almost,’ said Dave’s mother. The interruption was an unplanned and pregnant interjection. She stared right at Dave. ‘Not everyone gets into heaven, unbelievers get sent to hell. Hell is the land of eternal damnation, of searing heat and horror.’

Dave’s mother spoke at length about hell and the fire and the fury. Dave was in a state of suggestible stupor, he absorbed every single word. He eyes opened wider then Tom had ever remembered them opening before the accident. Neither Tom nor his father moved, they listened to her and felt a reluctance to break character.
‘What can I do,’ Dave cried when she had finished.
‘Convert and repent! Admit you love Jesus!’ Every word was an exclamation mark.
‘I covert, I love Jesus, I love Jesus,’ Dave repeated it over and over. He vigorously declared a love for Jesus.
‘Then you may join us,’ she said and stepped back. She waited for Dave’s father to continue in the same vein, but Dave slipped back into a smile, then unconsciousness and then died.

Tom looked at his mother in horror. In the last few seconds of his life she had got the son she wanted. She had converted him to God and believed that he would make it to heaven. Tom wept. He could now only prey to the God he didn’t believe in that his mother died before he did.

© Wesley Weyers June 2006
wesfly@hotmail.co.uk
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