Tom stands looking at a hospital.
Amy went into a place like this.
She called from the hospital that evening. She was under observation; she was OK. The next day, she was OK and a believer—apparently they’d broadcast Jesus’ voice over the intercom. The next day the doctor called in the morning and recommended a C-section. By that afternoon, I had a healthy baby girl and a mother who was doing fine.
That night she called and told me, “I want you to know two things: Jesus is real and I still love you so.”
The deep disappointment overtakes him again. He sobs and yells.
God! Damn! It!!
He gets on his bike and quickly rides away.
<<<*>>>
We next see Tom inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He has calmed down. The light inside is dim but the stained glass windows have not been shuttered over so it is not dark.
The interior of the cathedral has been altered substantially. Most noticeably the pews in the center have been taken out.
People used this place right up to the end so it was never sealed up like the library. Millions of people came through here for a quick prayer then took a five-minute bus ride up to the park for a portal jump. That’s why all the pews in the center are gone, to accommodate the river of humanity flowing through here for a year.
It’s nice. I can come here because there was some kind of religious controversy over images. It was decided not to add any images of New Jesus.
He looks around the interior before returning to us.
The next few weeks were a dark, dark time. If I were a drinking man I would have drunk my way into Jesus’ arms and back into the arms of my loving wife and daughter.
I’m sure I would have been happier but I wouldn’t have been free. I have always questioned, every day, is free will worth this?
In this time, that question was hard to answer yes to. This was serious temptation.
I could go to Heaven with my wife and daughter and if we acted quickly probably with a second child, too. What more should a man want out of life?
Free will looked like a pretty sterile thing to be striving for.
He pauses again for a while.
Slowly I recovered. The heart of the recovery was remembering that Jesus was all “trust me”. He had offered no facts to back up what he was saying.
Talking to Amy also helped. Oh yes, we still talked. We didn’t do more than that, but we talked.
We didn’t do more because I didn’t trust her. She was young and, unlike her uncle, her head-sense was not always strong. When we talked her analytic side grew tired quickly. The conversation would move from news and analysis to how little Heather was doing, how Uncle Mike was doing, and how wonderful it was going to be to go to Heaven. She still wanted me and I worried a lot that she would try to trick me.
He looks around more.
She did try. At first it was in a teasy way but she kept getting more and more determined. Ultimately it was this change in her that put power back in my conviction. And sadly it forced me to stop talking to her. When she slipped a picture of Jesus in with some pictures of Heather I realized that if I didn’t break it off, one day one of her tricks would work.
When I cut off talking to her I left the house as well. She knew too much about that place.
A smile comes to his face, and a quick laugh.
As I think back, I did meet her once after I dropped her off at the hospital. It was a strange interlude. About five months after the birth she called me and said in a very rational, no nonsense voice, “I’m ready to start on our boy. I need some sperm.”
“I can send you some,” I said.
“No, I really want this in person.” The no-nonsense tone continued. “Let me give you a day, you can pick the place and how we get there.”
“No tricks?” I said.
“No tricks.”
The night before “the day”, I called her and said, “Be at the Horseshoe Lake Park Pavilion at 2 am.”
I drove around checking before I came to her. She sat there with a night bag next to her. I sat beside her. She didn’t move. I brushed her hair, then turned her shoulders so her back was to me. She understood perfectly and put her arms behind her. I tied her wrists, walked her to the car and got her in the passenger side, and tied her knees. As we walked she responded instantly to my every push—in that moment, to get a boy, she was ready to put aside Jesus, her right to an equal standing in our relation, and be my sex slave.
I drove her to the house. I trusted that her instinct for getting a child was enough to hold off the trickery, so we could be in a comfortable familiar place.
We spent two days getting her samples. Amy was smart enough to know she no longer knew how to talk to me, so she acted the willing, submissive, talk-when-spoken-to slave girl that she knew I fantasized about.
It worked to get her the samples she wanted, it worked well for that; but it only drove home to me how much I had lost. When the two days ended, she dressed, kissed me as if she loved me, with tears on her cheeks, and I took her back to her car in the park.