The All Right Man

This is a rough draft.

for Dominic DeBolt

There is a joke that goes: "Did you hear about the man that lost his entire left side?  He's all right now."  We may laugh at the joke, but the reality is nothing to laugh at.

     There was a man named Jed who was sliced clean in half by a metal slicer in a factory, after a friend dared him to lay beneath it while it was off, then accidentally bumped it on.  Miraculously he survived, or at least half of him did - the right half.  Because the slice wsa nearly instantaneous, the ends of veins and arteries were fused and the bloodstream was collaterally redirected.  The factory was right across the street from the hospital, and they brought him in pronto.  The left side was cold and beyond saving, though the heart was yet beating.  The doctors surgically removed the heart and placed it in the still warm right side, and managed to resuscitate him, though he was still brain-dead, since the left brain controls the right side and the right brain controls the left side.  They attached an electrical device called a humes (because it was invented by Dr. Vicki Humes) to the frontal cortex of his right brain so that outputs could be generated and sent back down the spinal cortex.  Skin was grafted from his dead left side to span the gap left where he had been sliced, it was ugly, but serviceable.

     In the time between the slice and resuscitation, Jed had a near-death experience.  He went through a dark tunnel, and came out into a brilliant white light which seemed to come from a throne.  He heard a voice which said, "Half of you is condemned to hell, but the other must return to life.  The time for your right half has not yet come.

     After many surgeries and much time, Jed recovered at least well enough to live in an assisted living facility.  He used a power chair, yet often preferred—because it made him feel more normal—to hop along with a walker or even just a cane.  Because he no longer had a left brain, he lost the ability to reason logically and do math.  Also, he had considerable trouble recognizing people.  Luckily, he was part of the 5% of the population whose speech center is in their right brain, so he could tell talk and process speech, even though he often made little sense.  He depended on intuition to think and make decisions.

     Jed developed many quirks, none of which seemed medically necessary.  At his meals, however much or little he had, he would eat exactly half of his food, at least as near as he could determine.  He took up painting, but would always leave the left side of the canvas blank.  He would read only the last half of books.  He loved to sing, but would only sing every other note.  When he saw a new mirror, he would immediately run up to it and press the sliced part of his body against it, thus appearing a whole person.  He frequently did the same to mirrors he had already seen.  Only then did he seem happy, and he would sing songs without skipping any notes.  He had a full length mirror installed in his room, and spent hours pressed against it.  He had another installed sideways and placed his bed against it: he would fall asleep looking and feeling whole.

     Jed was not a pleasant person to be around.  He hated everything, everyone, and especially God.  He would fly into fits of violent rage.  His only comments were incisive, derogatory or pessimistic.  His speech often consisted mostly of obscenities and profanities.  —Except when pressed against a mirror.  He was then content, pleasant, and gentle.  He frequently remarked, "I'll be whole again in hell;" but as if hell would then be paradise.

Now there was a non-profit organization known as EAT (European Assisted Tours), which provided the necessary aid for people who required assisted living to tour Europe.  Thinking of the new mirrors he could try out, Jed signed up.  All his traveling companions wished he hadn't.  He loathed them and they loathed him.  He was as disruptive as he could possibly.  He regretted coming in the extreme.  He had little enough time to spend with the new mirrors he saw, and most of them were very small, so only a small part of him seemed whole.  He certainly would not have come had he known how many churches they would go to: museums and churches seemed to be all they ever went to.  Museums and churches, and he was never allowed to stay behind.

One day they went to the Cathedral of St. Mark in Presto, Italy.  Jed screeched curses all the way end, but in the narthex he immediately fell silent.  It was the biggest mirror he had ever seen, at least 30-foot square, spotlessly clean and with a perfect reflection.  Before anyone could stop him, Jed was out of his power chair and hopping—without even a cane—over the railing that guarded the mirror, and up against the mirror itself.  They decided to let him go.  At least then they could hear the priest that was guiding the tour.  "This mirror is said to have been blessed by St. Mark himself," the priest was saying, "and many miracles are recorded for those who have looked in it."  Jed did not hear a word.  Never had he felt so whole.  He felt wholly whole.  He was sure of it.  He drew away from the mirror, and the reflected half came with him.  He was whole again.  He was whole.  He fell to his knees before the railing, and joyfully shouted his thanks, again and again.  Then suddenly he grew silent and began to weep.  "What a wretched man I have been, totally undeserving of this miracle.  Jesus, forgive me.  From now on I will be wholly yours."  He felt the forgiveness flow through his body, both sides.  Once more he shouted in joy.  From that time forth he was a changed man, a joy to be around.  Once he had grown used to his new left side, and was able to move into independent living.  He loved everyone in the apartments and they loved him.  He wrote (with the aid of a ghost-writer) a book about his experience. He spoke at churches and assemblies.  There was no greater witness to Christ's grace.