* * * *
There was no media frenzy at the hospital. Thank God, Alder thought. The staff attending to Stephen had mentioned he was transferred to the rehab center during the night to avoid the chaos of cameras, news reporters, and gawkers. Driving to the disability rehab center in Long Beach wasn't as hard to get to as Alder had envisioned. The new GPS helped immensely. He was pleased to find one of only two available parking spots three slots away from the main entrance.
The outside of the two-story alabaster white facility was ornate and structured more like a museum with a pair of Doric columns supporting the portico. The majestic fascia relieved Alder’s apprehension. He had been expecting to see a facility reflecting the way he envisioned his friend: dilapidated. Even though Stephen was only blind, Alder magnified his coworker’s sight infirmity into a full scale incapacitating disability.
Through the glass double doors and past the reception area, was a small lobby with faded earth-tone furniture from the mid-1970s. Across the lobby and waiting area, opposite the main entrance, were another set of doors leading out to an open-air courtyard surrounded by the building. In both the lobby and courtyard among numerous elderly patients sitting motionless in wheelchairs, were several patients in their later twenties or early thirties possessing long white canes with red tips or Seeing Eye dogs with occupational therapists scattered about. Alder might think he was visiting a par standard nursing home, if not for the younger patients. His apprehension returned. He was afraid to visit Stephen. He would need to overcome the urge to head back out of the building, to his car, and drive away.
After presenting ID to the receptionist and inquiring as to Stephen's room, Alder made his way to the second floor, to the opposite end of the building where the walls were dingy, aged, and yellowed like old eggshells. Scuffmarks scattered across the surface confirmed the neglect. The white tiled floor with gray speckles looked like it hadn’t been waxed for weeks. Arriving at Stephen's room, he found himself standing rigidly outside the doorway. Several minutes passed, he was hesitant to open the door. Stephen wouldn’t know if he never went in. He could tell Maria he did visit the rehab center. Alder knew it would be a lie--well, a partial lie because he did at least go into the facility. Alder doubted the one drink this morning was enough to get through this. Debating on whether to stay, he didn't sense a big-framed nurse come up behind. She had been watching him from the nurses’ station for a couple of minutes, noticing he appeared apprehensive.
“May I help you?” she asked.
Alder jumped, not expecting to hear a shrilly, high-pitched, mouse like voice to his rear. When he turned around, he was surprised to see that the shrill voice had come from a large and moderately overweight nurse.
“I'm fine thank you,” Alder answered. “Just building up the courage to visit my coworker.” Alder didn't know why he didn't call Stephen his friend.
The nurse grinned as she navigated around him into the doorway of Stephen’s room. She set the rubber stopper down to prop open the door and then proceeded to Stephen’s bedside. “Hello Mr. Williams. How are you? Do you need any water or anything special before your therapist arrives?”
“No I'm good,” Alder heard from a disheartened, baritone voice mumble from inside the hospital room.
“Well if you do, just remember to hit the button and someone will be right in. By the way, you have a guest out in the hallway.”
Alder was appalled. Now that he knew he couldn't stand out in the hallway any longer; he began to get nervous. Walking in, the nurse returned Alder's piercing stare with a simple grin unaffected by his anger. She was accustomed to friends and family being afraid to engage the patient when first visiting the recently disabled. With his hazel eyes now staring in the direction of the door, Stephen sat in a simple chair next to the hospital bed.
“Hello Stephen.”
Stephen's eyes somewhat widened. “Alder?”
“Yeah, it’s me.” Alder didn't have an idea of what to say next.
Stephen bridged the pregnant pause, “How's Maria and the kids?”
“They're fine considering.”
“Considering?” Stephen responded, confused by Alder's answer.
“Well it's just that, considering...well-being here...I mean look at what happened at Jeffrey’s funeral. What if we’d been there? Would we be alive? Would we be blind? I don't even know what to think.”
“Well I don’t know either, but I tell you what, it sucks to be blind.”
“I wouldn't kno...” Alder caught himself missing Stephen’s attempt at lightening the mood. He decided to try and change the direction of the conversation. “How are things for you? Are they taking good care of you?”
Stephen could sense Alder was still standing in the doorway. “You know you can sit down if you want?”
Alder obliged by scouting out the space, not finding a chair, grabbed one from the hallway. When Alder returned, Stephen answered his question. “Things here are fine I guess. Food sucks though.”
“So what happens now?”
“I start my self-sufficiency training later today. My sister came down to help. She's staying over at my place right now.”
“Is there anything you need?”
“No thanks. And now that I'm not considered a suspect, I can go through rehab and training and then get released from this place.”
“Really, I heard on the news they were still considering you someone of interest because you got out and survived. At one point, they thought Maria and I were somehow involved because we had tickets to attend yet miraculously we didn’t make it. We got questioned several times by the Feds and the police.”
“I did to, way too many times. There were even some investigators from the Catholic Church who stopped by to talk me about what happened. I'll just be glad to get out of here, not sure about work.”
Alder hadn't been sure how he would broach the subject of their jobs, but now there was an opening.
“They’re talking about possibly a disability buy out for you. The company isn’t quite set up to redo our accounting processes in Braille. Nice-size package though from what I’ve been hearing.”
Stephen ruminated on Alder's comment for a couple minutes. “So you'll have to put up with someone else managing the team?”
“Wel-l-l-l, Gary Applethorpe stopped by Thursday because of the recent openings.” Alder paused, and instead of drawing out his response, decided to be straightforward and blunt. “I'm getting promoted to junior director. I’ll be in charge of the accounting departments for the R & D sections of the company.”
“All of R & D?”
“No, just a couple of subsidiaries on the bio side, bio-med, genetic engineering, things like that.”
Stephen wasn't sure how to respond. The impact hadn't set in since he was focused on coping with being blind instead of his career. Now it moved to a lower priority in his life. He had hoped that one day he would be promoted and rise further in the company. The immense number of divisions and subsidiaries in Everest such as bio-medical research, pharmaceuticals, bionics, and genetic engineering would have provided plenty of opportunities. Now it was all gone, yet hearing about Alder’s promotion to a director’s level position over an entire division was devastating to Stephen. He concealed it very well.
“I guess I should congratulate you, and not worry since I can't see anyway. Hell, I guess if I could come back to work, I’d have to correct all your blunder-head guidance on project postings like we did Jeffrey's,” Stephen quipped, not sure if Alder caught on to his attempt at a joke.
Alder laughed nervously. “Ah, I wouldn't worry about that. I'm quite sure there's other bonehead things I can screw up though. I start on Monday.”
Stephen was a bit overwhelmed. “Kinda quick isn't it?”
“Because of last week there’ve been a lot of openings and they want to move forward.”
“Damn, the seats are barely cold and alr
eady they're filling them up,” Stephen said sardonically.
“Gary said a lot of their projects are at a critical point where leadership across all departments is vital.”
“Sounds like it’s more your problem than mine. I guess I don't have too much to worry about anyway, except dealing with my blindness.”
Alder recalled many of the rumors in the company that the medical staff at the hospital couldn't find out what caused Stephen's blindness. The doctors at first thought it might have been psychosomatic primarily because of the traumatic event. Then evidence of physical trauma would present itself but when they tried to treat the cause, the symptoms disappeared. Stephen’s medical team needed to rule out numerous possible causes for his blindness before Stephen could be released from the hospital.
“So, they don't know why you're blind yet I take it?” Alder asked.
“No, and already my attention-grabbing sister booked me on a talk show tomorrow morning.”
“No shit. Which one?”
“Carson's Sunday Report.”
“He can be a bit of an asshole, can't he?”
“Yeah, but my sister doesn't know that.”
“So where's the rest of the media hounds? I didn’t think it would be as quiet as it was when I got here.”
“I've been told the mayor put out a press release not to descend on the rehab center and disturb the patients. From what the nurses told me, he pretty much told them he'd put them in jail if any showed up here.”
Alder was amazed. “And they listened?”
“From what I heard, a lot did show up.”
“So where are they?”
“The mayor started having them arrested. And when they heard the Feds were involved, things started snowballing and they were afraid to come around. Listening to the nurses, I heard the newspapers got some serious phone calls from the city and Feds.”
“Well hell, how did they know I wasn't a reporter?” Alder queried.
“You check in at the reception desk?” Stephen replied.
“Yeah.”
“I gave them a list of people. So when you checked in and headed up here, they probably called the nurses’ station to let them know you were on the list. Anyone showing up without a call to the nurses’ station is turned away.”
“Well it's definitely quiet around here.” Alder was at a loss for words again. The urge to ask one key question was repeatedly being sequestered by the conversation. Now with a break in the discussion, his curiosity defeated his reluctance. “Stephen, what really happened?”
Stephen focused his head directly toward Alder's voice. “I don't know,” he paused. “I was there before anything happened, then next thing I know I’m out in the parking lot, you come up to me and I can’t see anything.”
“Did you see an angel?” Alder asked in a heavy whisper.
Stephen attempted to recall the entire event from when he arrived at the funeral home to those he talked to there while trying to accept the thought he would never be able to talk to those people again. Holding back tears, he went through the mental exercises of remembering each of the faces of his colleagues, their families, Jeffrey's family, and the raffle winners who were able to attend. No one attending the funeral expected that day would be their last. The eulogy service replayed in his mind up to the time the angel appeared.
Stephen finally answered after a prolonged silence. “I just don't know; I saw something.”
II. The Eulogy of Angels: The Golden Fire of Gishmael