Unity by Carl Stubblefield (epub read online books TXT) 📕

“No, fortunately. But I was rolling in seas of debt. On top of that, I was in a really dark place for a long time, I had lost so much. I was never suicidal, but it was so difficult to find any reason to go on. For a while I just existed, taking no enjoyment from anything, yet refusing to give up for some reason.” BoJack sat there for a while, lost in thought, despair etched on his face. Gus wanted to know what had happened but felt embarrassed to pry. With a deep sigh, BoJack continued.

“I was fortunate that I got another chance. I had really let myself go, and I sold everything my wife and I had owned. I now deeply regret losing all those things that I just gave away when I was in my funk. I long for just a single memento that she just had to have to turn our apartment into a home. She really got into the whole nesting thing. It was never really important to me at the time, but she made that space ours. When she was gone, I just let it go. Maybe they were just painful reminders, tokens that proclaimed that she was gone. Either way, I wish I had kept at least one.”

The way he worded that sounded like she had died… Gus realized.

“We lived in a lower rent area of town that was close to the hospital, so we wouldn’t need transportation. Student loans came due, and since I was not working, I was sliding down a slippery slope, avoiding the inevitable crash and loss of the little I had. Were it not for one of my neighbors, I’m sure I would have ended up homeless and probably would have died on the street a short time later.

“An immigrant family that lived next door knew my wife well, and me as an acquaintance. They respected my wife, the doctor, and I could tell the mother wished her daughter could reach similar success in this land of opportunity. Well, one evening I heard a frantic pounding on my door.

“I had fallen asleep on the couch and probably hadn’t showered in a couple of days. I had gained forty pounds and the apartment was a mess. Like college-days level of neglect. Food cartons and discarded clothing were everywhere. Had the knocking not been so insistent, I probably would have stayed on the couch and slept there the rest of the night. Have you ever felt like that, Gus?” He turned his cold blue eyes on Gus. They appeared to glow with feral intensity.

“I’ve been down, but in comparison, nothing as extreme as that.”

“Anyways, somehow I did manage to mosey over to the door and found the neighbor there, holding her daughter in her arms. There was blood everywhere, and I recognized the frantic, desperate eyes of a parent whose child may not make it. She pleaded with me to do something in her broken English, and I motioned her inside.

“Kicking away garbage and debris, I ran to grab a clean blanket from a laundry basket. Fortunately, I had done some laundry the week before—even if I hadn’t put it away. The girl must have been around six or seven years old, and looked like a broken baby bird as her mother gently set her down. I distinctly remember hearing a voice in my head saying: ‘Now is your time.’ I shook it off and assessed her injuries.

“Apparently, she had fallen off of something, but I couldn’t make out if it was the fire escape or some playground equipment. When I touched the girl, though, something was definitely different.” BoJack broke his gaze with Gus, eyes growing distant.

“Unlike my time at the hospital, I felt like I could see what was wrong with her. Her femur was broken in multiple places, one very close to the growth plate. With her age, I knew that if things healed incorrectly, one leg would be much shorter than the other, affecting her for life. Like riding a bike, my mind fell into visualizing the system working perfectly.

“I didn’t realize it then, but I was creating an ether structure to position and stabilize the broken shards of bone, gently guiding them to where they needed to be. Small probes of ether pulled apart the surrounding tissues under her skin so they wouldn’t be damaged by the movement of the sharp pieces of bone.

“I made patches from ether on her torn femoral artery and others that were leaking precious life blood out of her poor little body. When I say I did this, I only realize what I had done, now, in reflection. At the time, I just acted, pouring my whole self into making her healthy, imagining what I wanted to happen.

“I didn’t care about myself but maybe I could help this one, who had her whole life ahead of her. Looking back, I must have pushed out all of my MP, using whatever I could to give her a chance at a normal life. In my mind, I saw little green specks that somehow I knew to be health. My health. I urged them to move from me to her. And they did! Not all of them, but a large portion. I kept going, and only stopped when I felt something like a blackjack hit the back of my head and I passed out.”

“Someone attacked you while you were helping that girl?” Gus blurted in disgust.

“No, I had bottomed out my MP, along with transferring almost all of my residual energy from my own cells, and the backlash feedback was brutal. I think I was out for a day and a half. Luckily, the little girl made it. The family took care of me until I woke up, even cleaned my apartment to my deep embarrassment.

“When I saw the bags of trash, I realized how much I’d been living like an animal. That flipped