Blue eyes looked up at Jimmy. The statue blinked, and one eye remained closed. Jimmy squeezed the wood until the statue seemed to inhale.
“So I’ll look for the magic myself,” Jimmy whispered. “What have I got left to lose?”
The statue’s eye opened again.
The prick of a needle in his arm caused Jimmy to flinch. The world started to go fuzzy around him. He widened his stance and spread his arms to improve his balance as vertigo attacked. Around him, the day darkened and the scene faded to black. He was not entirely unaccustomed to the disorientation, though while it lasted his mind could not gather a quorum for coherent thought. He tried to massage the spot on his left arm where he had felt the bite of a needle, but his right hand refused to obey commands. Then there was the sensation of weight being removed from his head, a lightness that made him feel as if he might float away.
His eyes watered. His mouth was dry. A groan managed to escape his cracking lips.
“Take it easy. You’ll feel better in a moment,” a distant voice said. Coming out of the limbo, it might have been the voice of God.
Slowly, Jimmy’s vision started to clear, and he saw a bookcase filled with books. Then he saw the doctor, the therapist, hovering over him. Jimmy blinked several times, then turned his head each way. The computer was on the table at his left, the virtual reality headset sitting next to it.
“Just take it easy, Jimmy,” Dr. Carlson—Dr. Walter Carlson—said. “Give the drugs a moment more to wear off. I gave you the stimulant to help.”
Jimmy closed his eyes again as real reality flooded back into his head. Narcoanalysis in Neverland.
“Why couldn’t you leave me there?” he asked in a whisper. Though he was unaware of them, tears started running freely down his face. “I could handle it there.”
“You’re doing fine, Jimmy. We’ll talk again this afternoon, after you’ve had a little time to rest.”
Dr. Carlson pushed a button that Jimmy could not see. Almost immediately, an orderly came in to push Jimmy’s wheelchair back to his room in the hospice. But as the chair started to roll through the doorway, Jimmy suddenly stuck a hand against the jamb, causing the orderly to stop.
Jimmy looked down into his other hand, the right hand, and stared at the head of the small wooden statue he was clutching.
“No, it did happen. It was real,” he whispered, so softly that not even the orderly heard the words.
He did not open the hand, but moved it up to his chest over his heart. He let go of the doorjamb so that he could resume his ride back to his room.
Dr. Walter Carlson, MD, Ph.D.—psychiatrist—closed the door. A moment later, Father Walter Carlson—priest—knelt behind his desk and crossed himself. In his left hand he held his rosary and a duplicate of the wooden statue that he had given Jimmy Lohman, the statue the young man held tight against his breast—a statue of St. Jude.
After a prayer and a moment of contemplative meditation, Father Walter looked at the statue. “I have to use all of the tools that have been given me,” he whispered.