Henry and the Visitor

"You’re Henry," the visitor said.

"That’s me," said the youngish man stretched out on the top of the clothes in the hospital bed.

Nodding at Henry’s badly discoloured feet and blackened toes the visitor said, "What are they planning?"

"They’ll take both my legs off above the knees, probably tomorrow morning or the next."

He shuddered a little when he said, "As a boy growing up I was afraid even of the word ‘gangrene’. Now I have it. Never dreamed it’d happen to me."

"Want to tell me how do you feel about it?" the visitor asked.

"How’d you think I’d feel about it?" said Henry.

"I wasn’t really asking for information," the man said. "I just wanted to give you the chance to express yourself on it if you felt inclined."

"I suppose I knew that. It’s just that..." and he left the sentence unfinished and looked up at the ceiling.

"I don’t like the idea of losing my legs—there goes my job and everything that goes with that, to say nothing of everything else that goes with being leg-less. On top of that I think I’m afraid of dying."

"That all makes sense. Why does dying frighten you? I’ve heard lots of people saying it’s just going for a permanent sleep."

"What do they know?" Henry said.

"What do you know?" he asked Henry.

"Well, I suppose I don’t know anything for sure. But that’s just it, I’m afraid that the end here isn’t the end. I went to Sunday school as a kid and to church on and off and I suppose you can’t shake that influence off."

"What if the end here was the end, how would you feel about that?"

"I suppose I’d like that better than facing God. If I died and that was the end of me I would have no more worries."

"And no more life or the possibility of life."

"True," Henry said slowly.

"But I’ve had a decent life up to now. It hasn’t been all roses for Mary and me but I’ve had it so much better than millions of others."

"And what if it were the end for the oppressed millions?" the man wondered.

What do you mean?"

"I mean, if you had no worries because you were going to sleep forever, the people that have raped and plundered, abused and murdered would have nothing to worry about either."

"I see what you mean. There’d be no justice for the countless millions that have been tortured all their lives. All the tyrants and predators that lived and die in luxury in old age would just go to sleep as well."

"How does that strike you?" the visitor asked.

"No, I don’t like that a bit. When you’re thinking only about yourself, going to sleep forever doesn’t seem so bad. But if you have a heart at all you realise that it wouldn’t be a good thing for all the tortured that never had a dog’s chance in this life. They wouldn’t think it a good thing. For them life’s a nightmare and then they die and those that made their life hell go to sleep.

"No wrongs would ever be righted," said the visitor.

"The more I think about it the less I like it. I imagine one of those Nazi commandants torturing his victims and then dying filthy rich in peace and in old age. I’d want to see people like that dealt with and they wouldn’t be if they just went peacefully to sleep. Still, that wouldn’t bring back all the millions of innocents that were tortured and robbed."

"Maybe ‘righting all wrongs’ includes making it up to the oppressed," the man offered.

"It’d be nice if you could believe that," said Henry.

"Why not? There’s a lot of that kind of talk in the Bible."

"Oh, is there?" Henry said. "I hadn’t thought much about that. He moved to a more comfortable position in the bed.

"I remember hearing that the judge of all the earth will do what’s right," the visitor said.

"Do you have any pain, Henry?"

"No, but I don’t like catching sight of my feet."

"That makes sense too," said the man. "I remember once looking at my own; they were throbbing like mad."

"So you had foot trouble at one time?" Henry asked. "What’s the story?"

"Oh, I sort of ‘stepped on a big nail’," the visitor smiled. "But I’m all better now."

The Scarlet Letter

Henry and the Visitor