Near the window inside the room, the nurse and her superior set up a chair with a footstool, blankets, and pillows and brought in a bedside table with wheels. They also placed a nightlight in an outlet below the window for Rydel to see where he could plug in the laptop he'd brought with him in a shoulder bag. He finally left the room briefly while the nurse named Peggy changed his sister's bedding.
Now alone with Karen, the first sound of thunder finally came. Rydel stood by the window for over half an hour, watching the gray clouds form above the city, listening to his sister fighting to breathe behind him. Another rumbling sound as light-tapping rain hit the pane of glass in front of him. He almost began to cry along with the rain—but held it back. Another feeling started to take over, a feeling of contempt toward this God his sister devoutly served with everything she had in her beautiful soul. And this is what she received for her complete devotion—to suffer in a wasted shell of a body at the age of twenty-seven.
How incredibly cruel, he thought. Suddenly, Rydel's awareness of his surroundings alarmed him that something was wrong. He could not hear Karen breathing anymore.
Turning, he came face-to-face with Karen standing in front of him and took a startled step backward.
Not just because of the sight of his sister out of bed—but her appearance. She looked healthy, vibrant.
Karen reached out with both hands and touched Rydel's face.
"He came to me. He has been guiding you these past few years. At last, finding the right soul to give the knowledge to, the one who will help save His Son. He told me about your Placement."
"How? How do you know about Placement?"
"By the broken fence leading to the field where we would play as kids…there is something He needs to show you, Rydel."
"Who?"
Karen closed her eyes and slowly fell forward into Rydel's open arms. Rydel carried Karen back to the bed, placing her down softly, staring down at his sister as her body continued to heal right in front of him. Rydel moved away from the bed and stumbled out of the room, running toward the nurses on duty just down the hallway, the two talking quietly to each other.
Rydel had met the nurses before, but now, frantic, he could not recall their names.
"Nurse!"
"Mr. Scott—what is it?" the taller of the two nurses, Jackie, asked.
"Something has happened to my sister!" Rydel shouted.
Rydel spun away from the two women and ran back inside Karen's room. The two nurses ran after him, both sharing the same thought—the vital signs monitor had gone down (happening only one time on record at the hospital five years ago) and Karen had passed without anyone noticing but her brother watching over her in the room.
The two women entered the room to see Rydel kneeling at his sister's bedside with his head lowered.
They looked over the patient, then the machines in the room, and everything seemed to be working.
Rydel quickly turned toward the two.
"No, no, no! She wasn't like this before!"
"Calm down, Mr. Scott. She wasn't like what? What did you see—what happened?" Jackie asked. "She wasn't dying! She was cured!"
__
Early the next day, Rydel sat alone and impatiently in an office, waiting for Karen's doctor, the sunlight streaming through the windows behind an oak desk in front of him. A man in his forties with sandy hair entered the office. He walked behind the desk and eased down into a high-back gray swivel chair.
Lee Stepneake was a man with an excellent reputation not only for saving lives but also for his amazing bedside manner. It was a blessing the way Dr. Stepneake cared for a dying patient and for the family as well.
Knowing Rydel was a man of science—having talked with him briefly—Lee saw no need to comfort Rydel and therefore skipped the approach he was well regarded for by so many. He was at the end of a twenty-hour shift; he was tired and hungry and wanted to go home.
"Your sister has only weeks to live. I am sorry."
Another doctor entered the room. A woman with frazzled hair and eyes that seemed almost halfway shut. Rydel knew the look all too well with the hours he put in at the lab. The woman walked over and stood next to Dr. Stepneake without saying a word.
Rydel nodded a hello toward the woman, acknowledging her, and returned his attention back to Dr.
Stepneake.
"She got out of her bed. Coherent. Healthy, it seemed. Somehow, something is happening inside her that is trying to fight off the illness. I saw it happen."
The half-awake woman glanced down at Dr. Stepneake and then stepped closer to Rydel. "Mr. Scott, she hasn't been able to get out of her bed for over two months now. You are tired. Believe me, I understand. The mind can play cruel tricks when a loved one is dying."
Rydel quickly stood up and paced in front of the two doctors, shaking his head, knowing very well what the two were trying to do with him now. Rydel came to an abrupt stop and pointed a finger in the face of the woman doctor with the slept-in hair and droopy eyes.
"Don't talk to me like that, damn it! I know what I saw. I didn't imagine what happened. I'm not crazy!"
"No, you are not. However, the way you are screaming right now, you do sound a little crazy." Frustrated, Rydel turned away and bolted toward the office door. On his way out, he suddenly
stopped.
"I know what I saw."
__
Rydel spent the morning and afternoon with his sleeping sister. By early evening, he was out of the Hertz car rental office on 76th Street and in his rented Chevrolet Impala, navigating the streets of Manhattan.
He was heading back to his childhood home in New Jersey.
The hour-long drive seemed like the first time in years he felt calm and at ease. A soothing, whispering voice was calling him to the place his sister had told him to go. He had complete fluidity in his thoughts and a feeling of peacefulness flowing throughout his body.
Everything he was working on at the lab pushed its way out of his mind, and a calming presence began to take over him. His work was now not all-consuming. Those thoughts were put aside, not gone, but on the back burner.
Where he was going became all that mattered. Where he was going would give Karen what she needed. Rydel had no idea what that was, but he knew he had to reach the place his sister had talked about, hoping that the fence and the field would still be there.
The field and remnants of the old broken fence were still there. Nothing much had changed. The house looked different on the property, refurbished. However, the large backyard property line of his childhood home had not changed at all. The homeowners of the present, feeling it was also too much of a hassle to landscape the entire acreage of the property, ignored the fact that the overgrown, weed-strewn wasteland with tall trees dotted here and there was theirs to upkeep.
Standing in the knee-high grass with a half-dead tree behind him, Rydel took it all in. Memories of being a young boy playing hide-and-seek with friends, running after his sister, times when they would—
"Remember playing out here when we were kids, Rydel?"
Rydel turned around so fast he lost his footing and went down on his knees. He lifted his head to see his sister in her hospital nightgown, smiling down at him. Small patches of moonlight lit her face, and thin, tree-limb shadows covered her body.
On his feet, Rydel clumsily stepped closer toward Karen, his legs unsure and his head trying to process what he was seeing. She's not here. She can't be—your mind is not working properly. Too much work. Too much to take, knowing Karen is going to die. Too much!
Rydel closed his eyes, feeling the wind move over him, seeing and thinking nothing, taking time to calm his mind. He breathed in the air passing over him, and the smell of the greenery around him began to make him feel better.
A hand touched the side of Rydel's right cheek, and his eyes snapped open. He was now standing face-to-face with his sister.
"This can't be possible."
"God has given me an extension of life in this world. My life should have ended by now, Rydel. This night is why I kept my illness from you—to show you God's miracle. To make sure you do what needs to be done. There is a reason you discovered Placement. You need to follow me now."
Karen let her hand fall slowly away from the side of Rydel's face and walked past him into the field, and Rydel followed. She walked toward a circular clearing with a sky-reaching dawn redwood placed in the middle of the overgrown landscape.
Rydel stopped and rubbed his eyes. And when he was finished, Karen was suddenly sitting under the towering redwood with her back against the tree, sixty feet away.
"Come sit with me, Rydel," she shouted out.
Fear hit Rydel hard. He feared not just for himself but also for what he could do to help others with his mind's abilities, saving lives with his work.
God, I'm losing my mind.
"You are not losing your mind, Rydel. Come and sit with me. We have a lot to talk about," Karen said, just loud enough to be heard.
The inflection changed in her voice. She spoke in her normal speaking voice from before she became ill; however, there was now this underlying warmth coming from her. With the soothing tone of voice drawing him in, Rydel was starting to peacefully accept what was happening.
Rydel smiled back at his sister, who still sat sixty feet away, and walked over to her. After lowering himself and leaning against the tree, Rydel touched Karen's face, the face of a healthy twenty-seven-year-old woman.
"You're cured. How?"
"By God."
"I don't understand."
As he faced his sister, Rydel's mind began to question what he was seeing. This is not your sister. You are just seeing what you want to see. You are imagining this image of her.
"You are not imagining what you are seeing, Rydel. I am healed right here in front of you now." "That's not possible. My mind has just created you. I wish to God you were cured, Karen. But I'm starting to understand what is happening. The doctors were right. I am worn out. I'm surprised I made it
here without getting in some sort of accident. You are back at the hospital, you are dying, and I will always miss you."
Rydel got back up on his feet and turned away from his sister. After taking three steps, the redwood tree he had been leaning against landed on each side of him, perfectly halved. One tree branch struck his lower cheek, and his cheek began to bleed slightly. The tree never made a sound; it just split perfectly in half from the ground up and fell forward.
Body and face trembling, Rydel looked over his shoulder. Standing between each half of the tree, Karen nodded for Rydel to join her, and he did, moving closer with robotic legs he no longer controlled until he stood in front of his sister.
"A war is coming, Rydel. One you have to help stop."
"A war?" Rydel replied.
Karen slowly nodded three times. "Yes. The one war that will turn the earth into a literal hell. The Other will wipe out humanity. Christ's Second Coming has to be done in His time to save us from that. We let Him die on the cross as a people. We have to save Him."
"Save Him?"
"The earth will burn, Rydel. Did you really believe it was just you creating Placement? God's hand was guiding you to save our Savior."
"Placement is dangerous—"
"It is not dangerous," Karen quickly said. "And you know it. It will save humanity…once He is saved. The message Christ was sent to deliver to the world has to be known in our time. He was crucified before He was able to finish what He was sent here to do."
"You want me to go back in time and save Jesus Christ?"
