Tunnel Vision

14

Maggie had no idea how Zack ended up muttering Jesus’s words in Aramaic.

The only thing that made sense was that somewhere in his studies he had read it or heard a tape and committed it to memory, consciously or unconsciously. But that raised even more questions, like where did one find such recordings? Even if he could, why would Zack, who took pride in being a secular humanist, be interested? Or commit to memory the Lord’s Prayer in the original? Not to mention how and why he’d muttered the passages from a coma.

The other possibility was Nick. During his decline, he had become fanatically religious, maybe to the point of reading the Bible in Aramaic. Possibly without her knowledge, he had taught it to Zack as a child.

Whatever the explanation, Zack was now in an undisclosed room with a staff sworn to secrecy and an around-the-clock guard—an arrangement made by the hospital, which was terrified that Maggie might sue for violation of her son’s right to privacy. Stephanie, the nurse’s aide, had been fired for posting the video.

Although the major media had by now dropped the story, online religious groups complained about people being barred from divine healing. Photographs of Zack still circulated on the Internet, as did the video. There was also a fuzzy shot of a water stain on the wall above his bed that was reported to be the face of Jesus.

To Maggie it looked like a water stain. A dead dull water stain.