The Conversion

The Conversion

I rub the horizontal scar on my abdomen that looks like football laces. My fingers bump over one scar, then the next. The skin is numb. The blood loss was massive, as was the internal damage to my organs and spine. The right side of my body is permanently paralyzed.

I awoke from a seven-week coma, endured months of useless rehab, and have been cooped up in this place since, but today I’ll be freed from this depressing room with dingy gray walls that are long overdue for a coat of paint.

I close my eyes. The sounds of this place, which had been so familiar they were unnoticeable, are now so annoying they disturb my sleep.

The air conditioning fan starts up with a squeal. Keys dangle and jangle from a worker's belt as he passes.

The wheels of the food cart entering the corridor squeak louder as it approaches. I don’t wear a watch, but don’t need one since this place runs on a schedule as tight as a Japanese bullet train. It’s exactly 4 PM; Dinner time.

Franklin rolls the cart inside. He places the tray on the table beside my bed.

He’s a short, overweight white man with slumped shoulders and no hair. He’s dressed in a white cook’s uniform. He’s fifty years old and has worked in the kitchen for fifteen years. Some life, I think to myself, but who am I to compare?

He lifts the cover from a plate of mashed potatoes, green beans, and boneless fried chicken he’s cut into cubes. Steam emanates from the plate as the aroma of southern cooking wafts beneath my nose.

He places a clear plastic cup of unsweetened iced tea next to the plate.

“Hope it’s to your likin’ Mr. Hailey,” he says in a voice that sounds like tires on a gravel road.

“It will be,” I say.

“How are you feeling?” he says.

“As well as can be expected,” which is the same thing I’ve said every other day he’s asked.

“I’m prayin’ for ya,” he says.

He rolls the cart down the hall until the squeaky wheels fade from earshot.

My gut plays tug-of-war with my emotions. I force the first bite toward my mouth while trying to block out a day that replays in my mind like a high-def suspense movie.

The alarm on the outer wall wailed. My partner went left. I went right. Shots fired. I sprinted down the side of the bank building. I simultaneously stepped into the alley on the opposite corner from a man who lifted his gun and aimed at me just as I lifted mine.

I fired first, striking him in the chest. He fired an erratic shot as he fell to the ground. It ripped into my abdomen and lodged against my spine. I fell, landing on my back in a pile of garbage that was rotting in the humid Georgia heat.

Sirens screamed in the distance as they converged on our location from opposite directions.

A white ambulance with a broad orange stripe around the top turned into the far end of the alley. It roared toward me but stopped beside the man I had shot.

Two EMTs jumped from inside, pulled a gurney from the back and rolled it to the side of the other man.

One hung IV bags on a short pole on the gurney. He unwound the clear tubing and inserted a needle inside the bend of the man’s left elbow. He squeezed the IV bag to push the fluids.

The other pulled gauze from an orange case and packed his wound to stop the bleeding. He placed an oxygen mask on the man’s face. They lifted him onto the gurney, then wheeled him to the back of the ambulance.

The driver flipped on the siren, sped backward down the alley to the main road, made a sharp turn that nearly rocked the van onto two wheels, then sped away.

I got my man, as they say, but he could say the same.

A second ambulance slid to a stop above my head. A female EMT with short red hair knelt next to me and told me I would be okay. She pulled medical gear from her case. A needle pricked my right arm.

Her partner packed gauze into the gaping wound and pressed to stop the flow of blood that had pooled beneath me like water poured from a five-gallon bucket.

The redhead barked orders in medical jargon I didn’t understand. She counted to three. They lifted me from each side onto the gurney, rolled me to the back of the ambulance and pushed me inside.

The redhead climbed in and secured me and the gurney. She pounded on the wall. I passed out as we sped away.

I lived, if you can call it that. The other man died enroute to the hospital from a direct shot to the heart.

I’ve been haunted by sounds of gunfire and images of death and haven’t found peace despite my heart-wrenching apology to his family.

We were both 25 years old. He left a wife and two kids. My wife and kids left me, but my line of work ran them off long before the shootout. It was a tough life for a family, and she had had enough.

Chaplin Dave enters as I cover the empty plate. He’s tall and thin with short blond hair cut high and tight. He wears black pants, a black shirt, and a white priest collar. His voice is deep and tranquil. He’s thirty-nine and had a life full of experiences, some good, some bad, before he became a Man of God eight years ago.

“I’m agnostic,” I told him when we first met a month ago.

“No matter,” he said.

He talked of faith and hope. I had neither and told him so.

I was an only child whose parents died in a house fire nine years ago. I thought I deserved what I got for taking a man’s life and robbing a family of a husband and father.

He prayed for my peace of mind, a prayer that has yet to be answered. I prayed for a peaceful death.

I refused to engage at first, but after a week of persistently subtle persuasion, I cynically cracked the book and read the first page of The New Testament, assuming it would cover “The Old.” I finished Revelations at 3 this morning.

He settles in as if he has nowhere else to be. He speaks of the resurrection, Jesus as the path to eternal life, and all the other talking points he’s trained to convey to a man in my position.

We talk until 5:50, when my ride arrives to deliver me from this place.

Chaplin Dave helps me from the bed and onto a gurney, then accompanies me to the end of the drab hallway that reeks of death. He quotes the same bible verse he’s quoted every day for the past week.

We say our goodbyes. I’m rolled from the hallway into another room. A needle sticks the flesh inside of my right elbow.

I look to my left at Sheriff Ray Biggers, who sits on the other side of a thick plexiglass window along with five other witnesses. His eyes are dark and cold, his jaw clamped shut like a steel vice.

I pled guilty, accepted the sentence handed down by the court, and refused an appeal despite nosy outsiders who thought they had the right to do so for me.

Ray stands and presses a badge against the glass. A strip of black tape runs horizontally across the center. It belongs to the man I killed during my first bank hold-up, the only armed robbery I had ever committed in my years of crime, which I botched, costing the life of a cop who had been on the force only three months.

A crime news writer for the local paper scribbles on his notepad. Chaplin Dave stands to the far right, bible in hand, eyes closed, and praying.

My body sinks into the thin mattress on the gurney after the first injection. The room goes dark. Then, I see The Light.

The End