34 Sebastian
I was in an out of tests all morning. I got poked and prodded, injected with dye that made me feel like I was cooking from the inside out, and wheeled under giant magnets and x-rays that I was pretty sure were designed to give me cancer, and all while spreading the gospel to the hospital staff. So, all things considered, it wasn't that bad. If I had to pick at anything, it would be the exhaustive discomfort of it all, even if the doctor had been extremely prompt and gotten it all done right when he said he would.
Nonetheless, by noon I was tested out, and left to lay in bed while the results were put on a stat order. My phone, finally returned to me after being lost to the depths of my backpack for a night, was a Godsend in the process. It kept me out of boredom and allowed me to finally call my mom. She freaked out, as expected, and asked me the same question about my health and well-being at least a dozen times, but at least she knew I was alive, when she'd likely spent the whole night thinking I wouldn't survive.
I'd been off the phone with her barely a minute when Tom and Summer arrived.
"We were told food was allowed." Tom said as he held up a paper Chick Fil-A bag. "My first instinct was Tory's Tacos, but given that it's currently an hour away from us, I didn't think you'd relish them soggy."
"Not particularly." Pushing my hands into the bed, I lifted myself to sit as he set the bag in my lap. Summer sat beside me with a smile, and I leaned in to gently kiss her, then practically drooled as I pulled out a chicken sandwich and mayo packet. "Extra pickles?" I asked, and Tom feigned offense.
"Sebastian Crawford, would I dare to forget your extra pickles?"
Grinning, I opened the wrapper and oozed mayo over the inside of the bun. "You're the best, Tom." I said, then paused with the sandwich halfway to my mouth to look at him. "Did you two not get anything?"
Summer shook her head. "We ate on the way."
"You promise? I'll share. Maybe..."
Rolling her eyes, she shook her head again. "Eat, weirdo."
Well, how could I resist a Chick Fil-A chicken sandwich? Smiling again, I tore through it, finishing it and all the fries in barely ten minutes, then downed a full cup of water from my table.
"Thank you. I was starving."
Tom chuckled. "Had a feeling you were, and I know you hate hospital food."
"We called on the way to make sure they didn't have you on any dietary restrictions." Summer explained, and I lifted a hand to skim her cheek.
"You guys are the best."
"So," Tom began, and I looked back to him. "Is the testing all through or are we waiting on the typical hospital slowness?"
"Nope. I just got out of my last one about an hour before you got here. Just waiting on results now."
Tom nodded. "I expect that'll be a while."
I shrugged and wadded up the fast food bag into a ball, shot for the trashcan across the room, and missed. "Marc put a stat on it."
"Well, putting a stat on it doesn't mean it still won't take the computers forever and a day to choke it out. Just means that when they do, he'll read yours before someone else's."
"Better than nothing." I said, and watched him as he moved to pick up my bag, and threw it away before coming to sit at my feet.
"Has Marc been in here?"
I shook my head. "Not since this morning. I think he's mad at me."
Tom frowned. "Why?"
Shrugging, I lifted my hands to rest behind my head. "I prayed for another nurse this morning."
"So? That's a good thing."
"And the CNA that wheeled me to my test, and the X-RAY tech, and ultrasound tech... made all my tests take twice as long. So, when he came to tell me semi-politely to knock it off until my testing was done, and I said I couldn't help it, he seemed a little... perturbed."
Tom just stared at me for a moment, as did Summer before she smiled and reached down to take my hand. "Poor Bassy. You'll just never learn, will you?"
I shrugged. "People need to know that Jesus loves them, and if I can tell them that, then I will, so long as I'm able."
Tom huffed, and I turned to look at him. "It's one thing I admire most about you, Bas; your stubborn obedience."
I smiled, then paused as a quiet voice floated through my head, and I looked out the open doorway to see an older nurse, maybe in her sixties, sitting at the nurse's station, staring blankly at the computer in front of her.
"I hope you mean that, Tom." I said, and glanced at him.
"You know I do."
"Good. Because I need you to cover for me in case Marcus comes back." I began pushing the blankets off my legs.
"Why, what are you—?"
"Be right back." I said, and eased ol' metal leg off the bed to land with a quiet tap next to my bare foot.
Tom didn't try to stop me, but I heard him let out a breath as I moved toward the open door. For a minute, I just stood there, my eyes scanning the surrounding hallways for Marcus. When I didn't see him, I dashed out and approached the elderly nurse.
"Excuse me?"
Her eyes lifted to me, looking wide behind her glasses. "Yes? Do you need help? You should use the call button rather than getting out of bed, honey."
"Actually," I looked around again. "I know this sounds nuts, but I was wondering if you had problems with your knees? Specifically your right one?"
For a moment, she just stared at me, her brows knitted close. "What?"
I glanced over my shoulder again, then leaned on the desk to face her better. "I feel like God's telling me that you have a problem with your right knee, and he wants me to pray for you, so He can heal it."
Her lips parted, and she reached up to pull her glasses off her nose. "I don't—"
"It's from arthritis." I said as more knowledge came to me. "And it hurts today because of the cold weather."
She dropped her glasses to clatter onto the desk. "I... yes."
Nodding slightly, I did another sweep for Marcus, then rounded to her side of the desk. "Can I pray for it?"
She nodded, her expression frozen into something between awe and disbelief as I knelt on my real knee and placed my hands on hers. Closing my eyes, I prayed deep, thanking God for renewal in her tendons and joints, for strength and absence of pain, then removed my hands and asked her to move it.
"How does it feel?"
"The pain isn't as sharp, but it's a little tight." She said, massaging it gently, and I replaced my hands.
"Let's pray again."
"You don't have to—"
I closed my eyes and prayed again, and when I asked her to move it a second time, her eyes went wide, and tears filled them
"Well?"
"It doesn't hurt at all. I don't believe this!"
She stood and took a few steps around her chair as I used the edge of the desk to pull myself up. "How is it?"
"This is remarkable! I've been living with pain for thirty years... I can't believe you did this!"
"It wasn't me. God wanted you to be healed."
She paused in her triumphant steps to stare at me. "I haven't been to church since I was a girl..."
With a small smile, I took her hands. "Jesus loves you, and He's knocking on the door of your heart. All you have to do it open it for Him. Do you want to give your life to Him and start building a relationship with your Heavenly Father?"
For a moment, she seemed to think, then her lower lip quivered, and she nodded so hard her white poof of hair fluttered like feathers atop her head.
Grinning wide, I told her to repeat after me, and recited the prayer of surrender that Tom had taught me when I was saved. She mimicked me word for word amongst a choke of sobs, and hugged me tightly when I was finished.
"I was just praying this morning that if God was out there He might show me proof of His existence." She wept, and I swallowed hard as my throat tightened.
"He exists, and He loves you so much."
She was still clinging to me, and I patted her back as she wept, ignoring the stares and whispers around us until I heard Marcus.
"Where's Sebastian?"
Glancing over the nurse's shoulder, I saw him standing in my room. Tom had stood, and his eyes locked on mine through the doorway.. "I... he, uh..."
Marcus turned, and his eyes gravitated toward mine with the same disapproving smirk a parent might give a disobedient child. "Sebastian..."
"I'm coming." I said, then pulled away from the nurse. "Pray, and He'll hear you, okay?" I said, and she nodded, thanking me again as I stepped away. Marcus stared me down as I returned to my room, but I held a hand to silence him as he opened his mouth. "Don't." I said. "It had to be done, else she never wouldn't have given her life to Christ." With a low growl, he followed me into the room as I looked at Tom. "Good job covering for me."
He raised his hands in defense. "Well, I couldn't lie..."
Shaking my head I crawled back into the bed as Marcus closed the door and came to me. "Look, Bas, I respect that you feel led to do this, but you can't be turning my hospital into an evangelical event."
"Why not? Think of how many people would be saved!"
He closed his eyes as he let out a steadying breath. "I've been patient, but I'm begging you to let up, okay? Not because I don't believe in what you're doing, but because I'm gonna get fired if word gets out that I'm letting my patient run rampant through the halls with Jesus. Okay?"
I shrugged. "Well, there are worse ways to run rampant, but... for your sake, I'll try. Fair enough?"
He eyed me a moment, then inclined his head. "I guess it's more than I expected."
Tom shook his head, but said nothing, and I leaned back in the bed to fold my arms behind my head. "So, do you have test results for me, or did you just come to make sure I was being a good boy?"
Despite his stern expression, Marcus laughed. "Both, I guess. Though you failed the second half of that."
My eyes flitted to the door, where through the narrow glass pane, I could see the nurse showing off her new knee to her coworkers, and I smiled. "Yeah, I'm not really sorry about that. It was worth it."
His focus followed mine. "I guess."
Reaching into his coat pocket, he pulled out a tablet and pressed the top button so that it illuminated his face. His expression was unreadable as he scrolled through my electronic chart.
"So?" Tom urged when he didn't say anything after several minutes. "What about Bas's test results?"
Marcus inhaled deeply, and nodded before glancing at me. "Yeah um... well, I'm gonna recommend you go to see a specialist, Bas."
Tom met my eyes before frowning at the doctor. "What?"
Marcus didn't look at me as he spoke. "I have a colleague over in Baltimore. He's agreed to take on the case."
"What... case?" Tom blurted, clearly unsatisfied.
I didn't say anything. I didn't know what to say.
"What were the results?" Tom pushed.
"There were no results." Marcus said, then turned to me. "It was all negative. All of them. Your blood, your oxygen, your x-rays, your PET... every damn one of them came back negative." He turned off the tablet and shoved it in his pocket before scraping a hand down his face. "If this was my first time I was ever meeting you, I'd say you never had cancer at all."
I heard Summer gasp, and glanced to see her expression mirroring Tom's; shock and awe, and a worrisome look of 'do I dare believe...?'.
"We've checked everything." Marcus continued. "Ran every result twice..." He rubbed a hand over his bald head. "Let me show you." He turned around to flip on the light box for x-rays, then started for the door. "One sec."
He disappeared out into the hall, and the moment he was gone, Summer took my hand. "Oh, my gosh... Sebastian! It happened! You've actually been healed! Miracles really do exist!"
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves." Tom said as he stood from the bed. He moved to the window and stared long at the sky. My eyes followed him.
"Tom, you don't believe? You, of all people?"
Very slowly, he turned back to me. "It's not that I don't believe. I see people healed every day, it's just..."
"It's just, this time it's your best friend with cancer, and not a stranger with a bad back." I finished for him, and he nodded.
"You're more than a friend, Bas. You're my brother, and I'd die for you. So, naturally, I have to be certain before I can start praising Jesus for a fluke in the system."
I nodded, fully understanding. I suppose part of me was thinking along the same lines, but it didn't tamper down the joy and gratitude I could feel bubbling up inside me at just the prospect of the answered prayer. It was all I could do not to explode. Marcus came back a moment later, carrying a large folder, and I pushed the blankets off and stood, causing Summer to stand as well. Both she and Tom took a place at my sides, the three of us watching intently as Marcus opened the folder and approached the light box.
"Look, here." He said, and pulled an x-ray sheet from the folder, set it up in the left square of the box. It was an image of my chest and lungs, and they looked terrible. "These are Sebastian's x-rays from just this past Monday that his PCP sent over this morning. You see all this?" He hovered a finger over the array of white and black spots that had all but dominated my lungs and the outer lining of my pleural cavity. "These are malignant tumors... everywhere."
Marcus stepped back to stare at it as Tom came forward to run his fingers over the image. "There's like... fifteen tumors here. And they're not small. No wonder you could never breathe, Bas."
"There's nineteen, actually." Marcus interrupted. "All of them cancerous, and his chart said that they'd metastasized."
Tom nodded. "From the right lung to his left."
"Right. So, in my professional medical opinion, at the rate he was going, I'd have given you about three weeks to live, Sebastian, I'm sorry to say. It was only a matter of time before they filled up until you drowned from the inside out."
He glanced over his shoulder at me as I nodded, my eyes not looking at him, but at the screen, remembering the terror I felt when my primary doctor had first shown it to me. "And now?" I asked.
Reaching into the folder, he turned to look at Tom, then Summer, then me. "These are the x-rays we did this morning, on freshly calibrated machines." He passed each of us a look again, then placed the image on the lightbox.
Tom and Summer gasped, and my mouth fell open as I moved on robotic feet toward the screen, looking back and forth between the images. The one on the right was completely clear. "There's... nothing." I breathed.
"Not a damn thing." Marcus said from behind me. "Which, given the terminal nature of your case, should be impossible."
"Nothing is impossible with God." I murmured without looking at him, and heard him grunt in response.
"Well, that may be because I don't have any other explanation for what we're looking at. And we ran the images twice. Every single tumor is gone. I've never seen anything like it."
"And you're certain it's not a faulty machine?" Tom asked, and I turned to see Marcus nod.
"We've taken almost a hundred x-rays today without issue. The only one that's come up in question at all, is yours, Bas." He angled his head at me before stepping to my side to look at the images again. He shook his head as he glanced between the two. "It's an honest-to-God miracle."
I swallowed hard, so many emotions welling up inside me that I couldn't determine which was the most dominant anymore. For several seconds, I stared at Marcus, as though trying to read his mind, and in the end, could only come up with one question.
"So... I'm healed? I don't have cancer anymore?"
From across the room, Summer covered her mouth as she gasped, her eyes thick with unshed tears as she watched. Tom, standing at my right, set a hand on my shoulder, his attention fixed firm on Marcus as the doctor shrugged.
"None that I can medically diagnose at this time."
My mouth gaped open as I stared in a dazed blur at his chest. "I'm not gonna die?"
Marcus pursed his lips when my eyes found his again, but didn't give me an answer. It seemed as though he were afraid to, just on the chance that he was wrong. Tom's hand squeezed my shoulder reassuringly, as Marcus reached behind me to withdraw my x-rays and return them to the folder.
"What do we do now?" He asked the doctor, and Marcus shrugged.
"Honestly? I have no medical obligation to keep Sebastian, so once I leave here, I'm gonna set him up for discharge."
Tom shook his head. "But, yesterday, why did he pass out?"
Summer came and wound an arm behind my back as Marcus stared between the three of us. "Sebastian told me yesterday that he felt like he got a sudden incoming of breath that made him dizzy, and it caused him to fall. I think it was hitting his head that knocked him out." He shoved the folder under his armpit and clasped his hands in front of him. "Now, that being said, when he first told me that, I thought it was the breath leaving his lungs, and that maybe there was a shift in his tumors or something. Especially since he told me that using his oxygen this week made him lightheaded."
Tom nodded. "What do you think now?"
Marcus looked at me before he answered. "In my personal, non-doctor-related opinion," He looked over his shoulder into the hallway, then lowered his voice as he continued. "I think the oxygen made him lightheaded because he didn't need it, and the incoming of breath was the moment God got rid of the tumors and gave him his breath back."
His eyes shifted to mine as my lips parted in awe again. Shock hit me so hard that I stumbled, and was caught between Tom and Summer, who were both beaming.
"Alright there, Bas?" Tom asked, and I nodded as my eyes swelled.
"I'm not gonna die..." I choked, and covered my face as tears fell.
Summer guided me back to the chair by the bed, and I lowered into it to softly cry. She knelt in front of me and pulled my head to her shoulder, weeping with me as we quietly celebrated the moment with tears of joy and gratitude.
"I recommend he still go see his PCP, today if possible, and have the tests run again, just to be one hundred percent sure." Marcus told Tom from behind me. "From what I've seen, Sebastian is in perfect health, but I'd hate to find out too late that we were wrong. Make sure he goes. Yeah?"
"I will. Thank you." Tom said, and I felt a hand on my shoulder, then Marcus walked out. Tom dropped to my side a moment later, and the three of us just cried.
"Thank you, Jesus." I breathed, and Summer and Tom echoed me before our cries of thanks turned to cries of praise, and quiet prayer that my PCP wouldn't discover it was wrong; that he wouldn't tell me I was still sick.