Read Online Tunnel Vision by Gary Braver - Free Book Online Page B

than ever—as if he had been slipped some bad tripping mushrooms. Then last night, he had a dream about falling off his bed and into a large dark funnel, moving at breakneck speed toward a misty gray light at the end. But it didn’t feel like a dream because he heard an electric crackling sound that got louder as he shot down the tube toward an end that he did not want to reach. As he neared the light, he tried to stop himself by dragging his hands and feet against the sides but broke through the end into a black pit buzzing with beetles.
    When he woke, he stumbled his way to the bus stop, trying to shake the sensation that they were inside his head and threatening to eat their way out of his ears. By the time he got off at Alewife, the chittering had intensified to an insane level, leaving him rubbing his face and batting his ears. His whole world had been reduced to those little shiny bodies with pincer jaws beginning to stream out of his ears and nose.
    He stumbled along the traffic line, frantically trying to wipe the things off his face and head, spitting and gasping for air against the hot drilling buzz.
    He stumbled to the ground, totally unaware of the drivers trying to watch the lights while not being distracted by the spectacle of Wally, yelping and insanely tearing his hair from his scalp and skin from his face.
    Through the crack of his eyes, he saw a huge green dump truck idling at the light, the large double wheels filling his vision.
    At the moment the light changed and the traffic began to move again, Wally scuttled onto the road and pushed his head under the rear tires.

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.

15
     
    The death notice of Thomas Pomeroy was on the obituary pages in the form of a lengthy article about the man and his life. And Roman read it with interest.
    Pomeroy had been found dead on his living room couch by a housekeeper. The autopsy report claimed that he had died from “cardiac arrest”—words that filled Roman with pride.
    According to the paper, Pomeroy had been lauded for his role in the “development of high resolution of magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI. Although MRI instruments have been available since the early 1980s, Dr. Pomeroy’s contribution greatly enhanced the imaging capabilities for viewing individual clusters of brain cells, which aided the monitoring of the progress of brain tumors.…”
    Colleagues and family members went on to say that his contribution to medical physics and the practice of radiological diagnostics was invaluable. All his fancy schools and awards were