I saw Alex Jones ' 911 The Road To Tyranny' today - what a great film. Everyone should watch it. It inspired me to write the following short story ;
The two prison officers, one black and one white on either side of the stretcher, pushed the metal stretcher into the room then turned abruptly with ex-military precision and left. The large plastic clock above the door read 07.35 am.
As the door clicked shut behind the retreating correctional officers he walked over to the door and locked it. He reaches into the right hand side pockets of his blue holspital scrubs and takes out a small, long oral examination torch. Quickly he unscrews the torch into two sections, the bulb and the barrel, and in the body of the torch where the batteries should be he withdraws a plastic capsule about seven inches long. He slides the lock off the capsule with his thumb and opens the capsule. Inside is the barrel of hypodermic syringe filled with a pale blue liquid and a long thin needle about six inches long.
He fits the needle into the barrel and then walks quickly over to the corpse laying on the stretcher.
The body of a thin, white male in his early thirties around six feet tall dressed in orange overalls lays on the stretcher, leather straps tied across its knees and upper chest. He undoes the leather chest strap and with a pair of razor sharp scissors quickly cuts away the orange overalls and exposes the cadavers bare chest. On the right wrist of the body is a prison identification band. He also cuts this away from the corpse and places it in his scrubs left hand side pocket.
He rests his left hand on the upper abdomen of the body and with his right hand he pushes the needle expertly through the skin, muscle and gristle until the tip of the needle enters the dead heart. Gently he pushes the plunger down and pumps the pale blue liquid in the tube into the meat of the organ.
Then he swiftly withdraws the needle from the heart, through the flesh of the chest, and then places the syringe in a silver metal kidney dish on a trolley by the side of the stretcher. Reaching down to the trolley he opens the main trolley compartment doors and withdraws two paddles attached by cables to a small portable defibrilator.
He looks up. The clock says 07.39. He has to hurry, the antidote will only work as long as the tissue damage to the heart has not gone too far. The Sodium thiopental, which triggers unconsciousness is not the problem, it is the Pancuronium bromide which stops breathing by paralyzing the diaphragm and lungs which is the primary problem regarding rescuscitation. The Potassium chloride which stopped the heart is countered by the andrenaline in the shot, but the pancuronium bromide remains in the tissues and must be flushed out of the circulatory system. Unless the heart is reactivated within forty minutes of clinical death then the circulatory system will not recover sufficient internal blood pressure in time to flush it from the system and the body will crash again into permanent cardiac arrest.
With his right hand he flicks the defibrilator power switch on, and the machine hums to itself as the internal charge builds up.
The body lays pale and cold before him, the vital spark of life fled from its youthful limbs. Its eyes are wide open and cold clear blue pupils gaze blindly into the infinite distance of death. A rictus is set upon its face, its lips forming either a final mocking smile or a defiant snarl.
He places the paddles on the chest of the corpse and fires a massive electrical pulse direct into the heart. The body rises and jerks forward in the air as the electrical charge contracts the chest muscles, then smashes it back down again onto the stretcher.
He stands back and places the paddles back into the trolley and unscrews the syringe and puts it back into the torch. He places the torch back into his pocket.
Walking over to the other side of the prison room where a large metal coffin case sits upon another metal stretcher, he opens the coffin lid and lifts out the hand of a white male corpse within. He takes the identity band from out of his left hand pocket and places it around the right wrist of the body in the coffin. Then he pulls a small tube of superglue from his trouser pocket and glues the tag back together again. He places the hand back in the box and then shuts the lid.
Behind him a sudden explosive cough shatters the silence. He turns and sees the body convulsing violently on the stretcher. The eyes are rolled back deep into their sockets and deep breaths are being drawn agonisingly into the once deflated and dead lungs. The newly revived corpse falls back onto the stretcher, lays still for a moment then opens its badly bloodshot eyes. Burst blood vessels form a network of red veins that criss cross the clear blue pupils and a tendril of spittle oozes from the left hand side of the mans mouth. The once pale skin was beginning to flush with a pink blush.
He walks over gently strokes the forehead of the man on the stretcher and then with a tissue wipes away the drool from his chin.
" Welcome back Tim " he says with a deep working class Chicago accent, " Didnt I tell you the FBI always keeps it word ".
Timothy McVeigh looks up at him and a painful smile forms delicately upon the corners of his mouth.
The man leans over and whispers into his right ear, "Now begins the rest of your new life ".
