Hold Me Closer Tiny Cancer (Part 8)

In the weeks that followed, I put a lot of thought into what would go into my letters to Heidi.  I had to be subtle enough to elude the watchful electronic eye of my censor but not so subtle as to escape my wife's notice.  Heidi was a clear and direct thinker who seldom concerned herself with nuance.

In one letter I reused the fingernail ploy, scratching pleas for help in every margin of the paper.  In another, I hid a message that could be found by reading vertically down the left-hand side of the page.  To make the message a little less hidden, I traced over the letters with my pen so they would stand out more.

In addition to these tactics, I also dropped hints into the context of each letter that would mean nothing to a third party but I that I hoped would resonate with my wife.  I brought up the movie we saw on our first date ("Escape from L.A."), the film we watched on TV at the airport last summer after learning our flight out of San Francisco was delayed ("Escape from Alcatraz"), and the flick Heidi kept her eyes glued to while we were on the couch conceiving Tyler ("The Great Escape").

Sooner or later, she would pick up on what I was trying to tell her.  It was disconcerting that this had not happened yet, or in fact that she had not replied at all, but giving up was not an option.  If I ever hoped to get out of here, I had to keep writing week after week until I was rescued.

My level of concentration was such that I became oblivious to the world around me.  My trips to get 38P treatments were more or less done on autopilot.  I paid little attention to how my friend Les was suffering in silence and even stopped hoping Madge would shut up and do the same.

The one real distraction came when I found a second comic under my pillow.  I had not been damned to hell in this one.  I wasn't even dead.  Instead, I was shown in some sort of heaven on earth.  The sun was shining.  Birds sang in the trees.  Heidi was by my side and there a number of scantily clad young women within reach should I feel the need to stray.  In one panel, my wife asked me to tell the story again of how this all became possible.

The rest of the comic showed me as narrator with illustrations of how I redeemed myself back at Monos Borrachos.  It was a simple act really.  On the way back to the ward, I put duct tape over the latch to the emergency-exit door so it could be opened from the outside.  That night, a GOD assault team came in through that door.  I was spirited away to live out my days in paradise.

Everyone else was far less lucky.  They did not live to see the next morning.  Unlike the reported GOD attacks in the news, there was only one method of killing in the comic.  It was a sharp knife slicing open the throat, out of which came not blood but the soul of the slain ascending toward final judgment.  Those in the RCU were the first to die.  The same fate came to the rest of the clinic when the attackers crossed from this wing to the adjoining main building.

At first I thought this was intended to be some sort of metaphor.  I couldn't believe anyone would actually expect me to be an accessory to murder.  Then I found a roll of duct tape stuffed into a section cut from my foam pillow.

I knew that their offer would not last forever.  They would eventually grow impatient and the offer of survival would go to someone else.  Before that happened, I needed to be long gone from this place.

Week after week, I kept writing with no response from Heidi.  Finally, a letter from her came.  Amid hearty congratulations from Dr. Carlson, I opened the envelope and read:

Richard,

Sorry I haven't written you earlier but I have decided to follow my bliss and run away with Roger.  It isn't you.  It's me.  You see, I'm just not meant to spend my life taking care of someone.  I need to hit that open highway and see all that can be seen in this big wonderful world.

EPCOT here we come!

Heidi

P.S. Don't worry about Tyler .  He got arrested at school and is now a ward of the state.

There was another 38P session a few days later.  I went to the room, lay down and had the medicine drained into my arm.    I was cooperative.  I didn't complain.  Events of that late afternoon unfolded as they had every time I had gone for treatment before, up to the point where I stopped at the emergency exit on the way back, reached up the sleeve of my hospital gown, and pulled out a roll of duct tape.

That night I lay in bed feeling happier than I had in a long time.  GOD would be coming soon.  They would show no mercy to anyone except the patient whose name on the chart was Richard Terkel.  That chart now hung from the foot of Les Chinn's bed.  My friend was going to have a chance for real happiness.  I too would be going to a better place, one where I would be forever with the Heidi who was still alive to me, the one who has always lived inside my heart.

Hold me closer tiny cancer.