Flux

sleeping, as if nothing at all had happened.

    Rebecca Goodman wanted more than anything in her career to be a neurologist. She would volunteer to assist with any head injury which came into the hospital. When Iain grabbed her she felt a rush of excitement alongside the fear. The controlled nature of his convulsions would make an excellent case study.
    Returning home after her very long shift, she made directly for the wall length wooden shelves containing all her books. Scanning the spines for the ones she wanted, she pulled out volumes with surprising speed, piling them on the pale blue rug in the middle of the floor before heading into the kitchen to fetch a pot of coffee and an ashtray. It was going to be a long night.
    Lying on her stomach and surrounding herself with textbooks, she started to look for similar cases. When one book revealed nothing she cast it aside towards the edge of the rug before moving onto the next. Her small black three legged cat, which she’d found abandoned in a skip, kept clawing at the pages, wanting attention. “For fuck’s sake Alfie!” She repeatedly pushed the cat aside.
    When her books yielded nothing, she turned to the internet. Fuelled by coffee and nicotine, she sat in the middle of the floor until no longer able to focus on the laptop and her eyes closed involuntarily. Only then did she go to her bed, four hours before the start of her next shift at the hospital. She couldn’t sleep; dwelling upon the words which he had spoken. She didn’t mind the coarse language or the insult, she just hoped that the swelling in Iain’s brain had reduced enough for her to run tests; lots of them.

    Arriving at the hospital early the next day and despite the lack of sleep, Rebecca headed directly for where Iain lay. The hospital clergyman was sitting at the bedside; she feared the worst.
    “What’s wrong, has there been any change?” she asked, a slight hint of panic evident in her voice.
    “No, no change,” replied Tim, the clergyman.
    “Why are you here then?” she asked.
    “Praying for his recovery, as I do with all the very sick.” He said, slowly standing to face her and trying not to look offended by her question. “I’ll be on my way now and let you do your job.” And with a gentle nod of the head, made his way out of intensive care.

    Tim had not been entirely honest about his motives for sitting with Iain. After fifteen years at the hospital he was yet to experience concrete evidence of God’s existence. All he saw was death and the loved ones left behind in its wake.
    Of course there were what might be called miracles, patients recovering where there was no hope, but these were few and far between and could be rationalised by wonders of modern medicine, or pure luck. His faith was beginning to falter. All he needed was a tiny shred of proof, some piece of driftwood to cling to in a sea of doubt.
    He kept his ear to the ground, constantly searching for his evidence so when news of Iain’s episode reached him, Tim could not help but be intrigued. Patients who temporarily died were quite rare, especially those who had been away for as long as Iain had. Tim tried to spend time with all of them. If only one of these survivors told of a light at the end of the tunnel, an encounter with God, he was more than ready to believe. It was something he’d spent endless hours researching, but was yet to experience a case first hand.
    All he desired was for one person to tell him they’d glimpsed Utopia. He thought that he may just have found the best chance he had of reaffirming his faith, and would not let go of it easily.

    With the clergyman out of the way, Rebecca could start her work. After flicking through Iain’s charts, and checking readouts from the equipment, she could see there had been no change in his condition apart from a period of slight activity in the night; nothing major enough to get excited about. Leaving the intensive care unit, she returned a few minutes later, wheeling in another machine. Working hurriedly she unwrapped all of its many wires and after squeezing some jelly from a tube and rubbing it into his temples, started to attach electrodes to Iain’s head. She really wanted to know what was happening inside his mind, whether there was any shred of conscious thought, or whether his outburst had been some automated reaction.
    That was how she left Iain for the rest of the day. Checking on him once more before ending her shift, the readout from