“It looks like you’re around thirteen weeks along,” Dr. Rochelle said as she moved the wand across Olivia’s skin.
I squeezed her hand, my own eyes shimmering with tears as I gazed at the monitor, drinking in the sight of our tiny miracle.
It was the second time I’d been reborn in my life.
The first being when I saw Olivia, of course.
The emotions I was feeling were complicated, life-changing. I loved this baby. I loved it so much.
“Our little Shmoopy,” I sighed happily.
Olivia groaned. “It’s not a little shmoopy!” she said indignantly.
“It’s not an “it” at all,” the doctor said with a smile. “You’re having a girl.”
Word to the wise…passing out onto a hard, tile floor when you’re 6’4 and you weigh 220 pounds…it hurts like fuck when you wake up.
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“As the physicist Paul Davies puts it, 'If everything needs everything else, how did the communities of molecules ever arise in the first place?' It is rather as if all the ingredients in your kitchen somehow got together and baked themselves into a cake - but a cake that could moreover divide when necessary to produce more cakes. It is little wonder that we call it the miracle of life. It is also little wonder that we have barely begun to understand it.”
"Who the fuck are you?" he murmurs, still watching me like a hawk. I place a hand over his chest, wanting-no, needing him to understand.
"I don't know, Ash. I really don't know who I am anymore. I woke up one day with no recollection of who or what I am, and I learned how much of a monster I've been. But I'm trying. I swear I'm really trying to be better and to make up for what I've done. So how about you help me out? If you tell me what I did to you, I'll do everything in my power to fix it."
I didn't expect anything out of my confession. Asher already has his perception about me, and it'll take a miracle to change it.
He takes me by complete surprise when he sighs as if in defeat. "Some things can't be fixed."
I soften my voice. "Try me."
"You might have lost your memories, but I didn't." His voice turns biting. "I remember everything. It's all I can remember."
My heart thumps loud and hard as if about to escape my chest. There's so much hate in his eyes. It's like a deadly disease eating him from the inside out. There's a bit of confusion, too, but his hateful side suffocates everything else.
A lump the size of a ball lodges at the back of my throat as I choke the words out. "What did I do? Tell me."
"You ruined my fucking life, monster." His usual hardness disappears. His words are a cold, frosty statement that freezes me to the bone.
The rescue boat moved away and I stood with my elbows on the bridge, my blood-formation system working as usual, my cells maturing and dying at a normal rate. Nothing inside my body was trying to kill me. Death was, of course, the most ordinary thing that could happen, at some level I knew that. Still, I had stood there waiting to see the body in the river, ignoring the real living bodies all around me, as if death was more of a miracle than life was. I was a cold customer. It was too cold to think of things all the way through.
“People want a miracle,” she’d told me. “They’ll swallow anything if it brings them hope, if it lets them believe they’re getting better. But there’s no such thing as magic. Nutrition, exercise and a careful study of herbal properties, that’s all there is. But when they’re suffering, people can’t accept that.”
In 1825 a new czar, Nicholas I, ascended the throne of Russia. A rebellion immediately broke out, led by liberals demanding that the country modernize that its industries and civil structures catch up with the rest of Europe. Brutally crushing this rebellion (the Decembrist Uprising), Nicholas I sentenced one of its leaders, Kondraty Ryleyev, to death. On the day of the execution Ryleyev stood on the gallows, the noose around his neck. The trapdoor opened but as Ryleyev dangled, the rope broke, dashing him to the ground. At the time, events like this were considered signs of providence or heavenly will, and a man saved from execution this way was usually pardoned. As Ryleyev got to his feet, bruised and dirtied but believing his neck had been saved, he called out to the crowd,
"You see, in Russia they don't know how to do anything properly, not even how to make rope!"
A messenger immediately went to the Winter Palace with news of the
failed hanging. Vexed by this disappointing turnabout, Nicholas I nevertheless began to sign the pardon.
But then: "Did Ryleyev say anything after this miracle?" the czar asked the messenger. "Sire," the messenger replied, "he said that in Russia they don't even know how to make rope.", "In that case," said the Czar, "let us prove the contrary," and he tore up the pardon.The next day Ryleyev was hanged again. This time the rope did not break.
Sayfa 59
Since the subject of the emotions and cancer has been introduced, let's pursue it further. Though it is not yet under intensive research by mainstream medicine, there have been many observations through the years that psychological and social factors may play a role in the cause and cure of cancer.
One of these was reported by Kenneth Pelletier, a member of the faculty of the School of Medicine, University of California, at the time. He was interested in "miracle cancer cures" that had occurred in seven people in the San Francisco area and wondered if they had anything in common. He found, in fact, that all seven people became more outgoing, more community oriented, interested in things outside of themselves; they all tried to change their lives so that there was more time for pleasurable activities; all seven became religious, in different ways, but all looked to something bigger than themselves; each spent a period of time each day meditating, sitting quietly, and contemplating or praying; they all started a physical exercise program, and they all changed their diets to include less red meat and more vegetables. It certainly looks as though social and emotional factors played a role in these "miracle cures."
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