Blood Ties

EPILOGUE

IT WAS THE first of June when Sonny Lenox woke up from his coma. The doctors were astonished, though when pressed they tried to make it sound as if they’d known he had at least a chance of actually walking out of the hospital. Still, three months in a coma after a car crash… Well, most patients with that kind of trauma never woke up.

Amazing, the ability of the human body to heal itself.

The nursing staff, a lot more blunt, whispered that he couldn’t possibly be right after coming out of that. Bound to be messed up.

But he was right enough only five days later to say a few words to the one TV newswoman the hospital allowed to visit him. Right enough to smile, to be able to feed himself almost from the start. To dress himself. And, with more than a little help, to walk.

He dedicated himself to the physical therapy, working hard every single day to regain his mobility and independence. He was quiet, polite, uncomplaining. The nursing staff loved him.

They were saddened, as they had been during his whole stay, by the fact that Sonny Lenox appeared to have no family or even friends; in all that time he never had a single visitor. When he came out of the coma and was able to talk to them, he told them he was alone in the world and hadn’t lived in town very long before the accident. He hadn’t even found an apartment yet, had been staying in a motel, and didn’t doubt that the manager had long ago packed up his meager belongings and given them to some charity. Or sold them, of course.

It was okay, though. He’d get along.

The nursing staff, feeling even sorrier for him, got together some hand-me-down clothing and a used duffel bag and chipped in for new underwear, so at least he’d be able to leave the hospital with something.

It required more than six weeks of intense therapy before the doctors were willing to discharge him, but by then the young man was able to smile and thank everyone, and when they wheeled him to the door he was able to get up and walk steadily away, his duffel in hand.

He didn’t look back.

In his used clothes, carrying his used bag, he walked slowly but determinedly, with a very specific destination in mind. He had to sit on a handy bench along the way several times to rest, since his stamina wasn’t what it should be. What it would eventually be. So it took him more than an hour to walk to a narrow street near downtown, a street that hadn’t yet been “revitalized” by money and interest.

There were old apartment buildings not yet condemned but close, an old church with colorful and profane graffiti on one wall, and a ramshackle mission where a small group of dedicated humanitarians did what they could to feed and house the poor.

He stood half a block away and studied the mission for a few minutes, then approached it.

Outside the front door, a young man with leaflets and an intense expression was trying to talk to the few passersby who, very clearly, just wanted to pass by. And the apparent regulars to the mission simply brushed past him, intent only on going inside and getting their meal or cot before the mission ran out of both.

The young man remained determined.

“Sir! Sir, have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?”

Sonny Lenox looked at him for a long moment, his eyes holding a curiously flat shine, and then he smiled.

“Why, yes, I have. And I’d love to give you my Testimony.”