Can't Escape by Dying
Author: J.F. Simpson
Published by John F. Simpson at Smashwords
Copyright © 2010 by John F. Simpson
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the author.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or locales is a matter of entire coincidence'
Cover design by Dani Hiar
ISBN: 978-0-9737706-8-1
Check out other the novels by author J.F. Simpson, now available as e-books online at:
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‘First people say it conflicts with the Bible. Next they say it has been discovered before. Lastly, they say they have always believed it.’
Agassiz—on the three stages of scientific truth.
Can’t Escape By Dying
There is a conundrum that has been haunting me through the corridors of my life. When it first occurred to me it sounded simple enough until it burrowed its permanency into my consciousness. Only when I realized it was not just a personal riddle but a universal one did I start my search for an answer. Even way back then when it all started I knew the answer would dictate how my life was to unfold; that’s what this story is about.
It was not until I had a very difficult professor at the University of Syracuse that this mysterious conundrum was raised from my unconscious to my conscious self. The professor held the opinion that students on sports scholarships did not belong in his academic community. Part of his campaign was to humiliate jocks like me in front of his philosophy class with unanswerable riddles. His name was Cingarle, a small overbearing man with a pompadour of thick black hair, bushy eyebrows and hard dark eyes who was constantly singling me out as if I was the donkey to pin his tail on. He had committed himself to proclaiming to whoever would listen that recipients of sports scholarships did not know how to think and were nothing but deadbeats dragging the high standard of the university’s education down the drain. Since I was one he zeroed on me to prove to the class that as a breed jocks could not catch a philosophical thought if it was sitting in their glove. It was a competitive game; he trying to put me down and I trying to show his snotty prejudice for what it was.
One day when my guard was down, he dropped one of his what-is-life type of questions on me. Immediately I knew his riddle was more than just one of his brain-teasers, that it was a question I recognized as my own, something I had been carrying around with me ever since I had witnessed the death of my father. When I heard the question I felt my heart accelerating for it had always been just a feeling I had never been able to articulate and now the pushy little professor had put it into words for me.
This is what he asked me in front of the class knowing it was unanswerable, hoping I would look stupid, not realizing that it was this very question that started my quest.
He said, “Tell the class Lazlo if life sustains the body or if the body sustains life?”
Of course I didn’t know, how could I? But it was a question I had thought a lot about. Besides feeling like a fool sitting there with my mouth open and nothing to say, I was offended by his prejudice because his question and snotty attitude hit upon the memory of my father. If it hadn’t been for my father I never would have received my scholarship which made it possible for me to attend university.
My father had been a beanpole of man, at least six foot two inches of skin and bone, a couple of inches shorter than what I am now. He had Norwegian blood from his father who had emigrated from Oslo and settled in the Bronx as a school teacher. My father had thick brown hair that had turned totally white by the time he was in his early twenties, just as mine has. He was a collector of university degrees; in the day he worked as a book salesman for a small publisher out of Syracuse in upstate New York. All of New York City was his territory which kept him busy every day since New York was the book store capital of the world. At night he was a permanent nocturnal student at NYU. Before he died he had attained degrees in psychology, sociology, theology, literature and more than half the credits he needed towards a degree in philosophy. In the end he did nothing with them other than to carry on interesting conversations. My mother said he couldn’t help himself because he was always wanting to know about things he didn’t know. It was in his blood to be a professional student.
It seemed only natural that he should work for a specialty publishing house that did not produce mainstream books of fiction nor books for academia but rather books for individuals who wanted to know how to do things they never knew enough about. For instance, How To Play Lacrosse, How To Bowl A Perfect Game, How To Win at Cricket, The Art Of Playing Pickup Handball or How To Step Dance to Bagpipes, How To Play Table Tennis & Win and the big seller, How To Pitch The Perfect Hardball. It was this one that dad cut my teeth on.
Whatever he did, he did to excess, like accumulating university degrees. Throwing around a baseball was no different. I think he started our pitching sessions when I was six or seven. Whenever he was home in daylight hours, which wasn’t often other than on Saturdays and Sundays, he wanted to throw around the baseball; winter or summer. His big 1st baseman’s glove would smother my pitch as he had me hurling over and over from the bottom of the drive to where he stood in front of the garage. As I started to edge towards nine or ten years he would have his book open at his feet checking the diagrams and the correct technique of throwing a hardball. He would look up, tell me to go into the motion of my windup and before I could get through it he would stop me.
“Hold it Lazlo,” he would say referring to the diagram in the how-to book as he walked towards me using his index finger like one would use a pointer towards a chart, “Use your mind to imagine you are using your body to form linear angles. You are transferring energy from your feet to your core muscles. And be careful not to lead with your elbow. You have to be thinking all the time about keeping your leg and hands moving together. Alright? Let’s try it again.”
For God’s sake I was barely nine! But that’s how my dad talked to me. Always the professor and the student and always a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth with a big ash on the end. Even when he was pitching the ball to me he was smoking. All his teaching came out of his how-to books. He was a natural athlete even though he had never played organized baseball; was magic with grounders. When Uncle Borg came for Sunday dinner we had some wonderful fun. Dad and I and Uncle Borg who never stopped hassling my father about his useless degrees would play running bases on the driveway or throw three-strikes-out. My father and his brother were always cheating as to what was a strike and what was a ball; clowning around outrageously. It was from them I learned not to take a game too seriously. And then when I was about 12 and had learned how to put some extraordinary velocity behind my pitch dad said he didn’t want to throw around the ball, said he didn’t feel well. That day he went to bed and before my mother could get him to a doctor he died.
I clearly remember looking at his face in the casket and wondering where he was. I touched his face before my mother pushed my hand away and felt the makeup on his cold skin. Where was he? He looked exactly like himself but he wasn’t there—so where was he? Maybe he had never been inside in the first place. I remember crying, ransacking his study in search of a how-to book to deal with this.
It was from throwing around the baseball with my dad that helped me win my sports scholarship to Syracuse U and it was there that the question which had been laying quietly in my consciousness was raised up again.
“Does the body sustain life or does life sustain the body?”
Well, my dad was dead and his life had escaped but I don’t know where it went so I guess you need a body—or maybe not—but how did it escape, did it leave through his ears or through his eyes like air out of a balloon? Is that what life is…air? Where did the person go that my mother loved and my little sisters wept for? It wasn’t his form that we missed—he left that with us—it was him. How did he slip away without us noticing? Was life like those Duracell commercials where the battery just runs down, ‘by by by by by—nothing’? Was there no more him now that he didn’t have a body?
“Think about it Lazlo, it’s either one or the other, you cannot have both.” The little professor wouldn’t let up.
I shrugged.
He sneered. “Take a swing at it. You’re the one who loves to be in a game.”
Since I didn’t know the answer, didn’t know where to look for it, I had to ask. I was not going to let the big question escape me. The following week I cornered Cingarle. “So what’s the answer?”
“But of course,” he said, with his Italian shrug and hands in the air gesture, “there is an answer to every question.”
I towered over him trying to intimidate him with my size as if I was going to wring his neck if he didn’t solve the puzzle. He didn’t appear to notice. “So what’s the answer to this one?”
“Lazlo, I am not your pinch hitter. Since you are already in the game you have to step into the batter’s box.” With this, he started to walk away, and then paused. “And if you don’t want to strike out, pay close attention.” He was smiling, holding an imaginary bat as if it was a pepperoni stick and he was swinging at a meatball, as he walked off.
Su Madre, I thought. He doesn’t know.
“Does that mean I have to die to find out?” I called after him, my voice dripping with sarcasm. I had always thought being a teacher was to know the answers. But the truth is at that age I never thought too much about my own death, me and my friends were just going to go on and on. Maybe our parents would get old and die but not us, we were too young, we were too busy doing things, places to go, girls to meet, baseball games to play.
Nevertheless his question was a mystery that refused to flee totally from my conscious mind—for years.
‘Does the body sustain life, or does life sustain the body.’ If it’s the body that sustains life then I was sure dad would have discovered how to hold on to his in one of his how-to books.
I had to admit it was a strange puzzle, nothing like what came first, the chicken or the egg. No, it had deeper implications. Not as an abstract, but as a reality.
Years later when I was delivering a series of lectures onboard the American owned cruise liner, Silver Cord, I had to meet the question again, only this time head on. With the passing of years I had buried the question in my subconscious and forgot about it having a possible solution. My mind was occupied with other thoughts that were dragging me unwillingly to contemplate my past, which my uncle Borg had predicted when I bought my Harley Davidson and dropped out of university would be a life of delinquency, and consider what was coming in the future. The human mind can be a terrible taskmaster, especially if you try to direct it. I stopped being a student because my mind said I would be happier riding the hog, chasing after girls and trying a few drugs before it was my time to die. I did that for awhile. But it didn’t give me much satisfaction. Just about that time I found there were some how-to books that addressed themselves to my conundrum. And so like my father I committed myself to that search, not in a little way but totally excessive—going on forty years now. It was like finding gold, a little nugget there, a bigger one there and then gradually a whole vein. Of course it was not always fun being a miner, it takes time, patience and an inner motivation, a feeling that never stops wanting to know more. So now I tell others what I found with lectures and books and that’s how I know some things about the mind, not only by having lived with it for many years, but by listening and being conscious of it and sometimes even by making contact with it’s invisible source. On this occasion I knew it was easier to let the mental senses have their way than fight. And so while we sailed out of Florida I let my bloated human mind float like a cork over waves of useless thoughts as I sat back and watched the scenery while we made our way towards the Panama Canal after which we would head up to San Diego and my assignment would be terminated.
The Silver Cord was new; painted silver to shimmer under the raw sun of the Pacific like she was packaged in aluminum foil. Her form was smooth and graceful, not unlike that of a marlin. Huge tinted windows wrapped around her from one end to the other. Capable of carrying up to fifteen hundred passengers, the company deliberately priced her out of the reach of the general public, preferring to cater to the extreme wealthy. Only penthouses and staterooms with private verandahs, at outrageously high prices, were available, limiting capacity to a mere seven hundred.
Six hundred and fifty feet long with more spas, swimming pools, restaurants, bars and theaters than any resort I had ever been at; it was easy to get lost. Without a map I never would have found my way to the lecture theater.
Now pay attention to this! On the sixth day I died.
That’s not a joke, it’s true. It was like a cave-in at the gold mine site, the conundrum had come back to haunt me. I remember losing consciousness and then—oh, but I will leave this for later. For now, I think it’s important you accept my death as a clinical fact and not as if it was some fictional tale you heard people talking about.
I know you are probably skeptical of what actually occurred so I’m reporting the facts and truths outside of my personal opinion as this experience has not been a blessing to me. I keep thinking about my dad and wondering what he would have said. I’m sure he would have found somewhere a how-to book about all this stuff. Anyway, from here on in the following will be delivered in third person omnipresent to describe events I was not at but were reported to me by others; a common enough practice even among the scribes who wrote the Bible.
I think you should understand that when I died it was not something that I wanted to do. Who wants to die? Really, it wasn’t the kind of answer I wanted to my conundrum. Of course there is a time in everyone’s life when we think about our own end and who knows when that will be and how will it feel and what will we be conscious of if anything. Anyone who has reached the age of 50 and hasn’t thought about this is operating at the mechanical level with probably very little life straining through him.
I wrote this report for my beloved sisters, Mary and Martha as well as for those few friends who supported me on my return from the valley of the shadow of death. By describing herein the events that surrounded my experience, I hope they will understand why I now have made a decision to leave this physical world for the last time. I seek their understanding and if they think necessary, their forgiveness.
Since returning from my journey I have fallen into a state of despair, suffering with boredom from activities I once enjoyed, finding no escape from physical and mental limitations that threaten to suffocate me. My consciousness is weighted down with cement. The pain in my soul never leaves me. I want to scream out for the peace I once knew. I have turned to psychologists and psychiatrists, practitioners of metaphysical healings and all forms of counseling but they can find me no relief. Even my understanding of mystical principles has not helped to banish the depression that binds me. Now I am impatient to leave a place where there is nothing left for me to do, where no experience in this life can compare with what I have been through.
I have no reason to be here.
Chapter One
The biggest and really the only legitimate complaint the wealthy passengers onboard the cruise ship, Silver Cord, were in agreement with, was the food; there was too much and it was too, too delicious.
On exclusive cruises like this, lecturers are treated as passengers, although in fact they have been contracted as employees by the cruise line for the duration of the voyage. Part of their commission is to sit with the passengers and make smart talk; to be interesting and entertaining.
Dr. Lazlo (Larry) M. Cassi was in another category altogether. He was a lecturer but on this assignment, it was only for a very exclusive few. Most of the time he kept away from the dining room as he prepared himself with long periods of silence and meditation before each lecture. Some people thought he appeared claustrophobic surrounded by so many people but there was no truth in that. The truth was he wanted to avoid distractions while he centered his thoughts on what he was going to say. His system was a spontaneous one and he needed to be clear to hear what wanted to come out. He was conscious that when he didn’t observe his thoughts they would wander through his mind and invariably settle on the nagging question he had been wrestling with most of his adult life—was life maintaining his body or did he need his body for life. All the ideas and concepts that he taught, he had experienced, for he accepted nothing on blind faith. But what was he to do with this conundrum? Intellectually he knew the answer but the truth was he did not know from experience which stopped him from making any claims of knowing. But of course he was not anxious to personally, that is physically, experience the answer one way or the other. He enjoyed life and he wanted to live at least for quite a few more years.
Even onboard a ship this size there were few places to escape where one could be solitary, other than in one’s stateroom. When he did show up in the dining room Lazlo preferred to sit alone but invariably ended up with uninvited guests joining him at his table. People were attracted to him without knowing why. He always received them with a polite smile: no one ever said he didn’t have a friendly character. He had never been the talkative type, more of a person people liked to talk to. Possibly it was because he was big, because he looked self confident, a man with no self doubts. He made it a point to absorb a conversation first and then digest it later. No matter what conflict he was feeling inside, as he was now, he never dumped it on others, especially those close to him. Normally with this kind of crowd famous people were observed but not bothered. Lazlo’s problem was his size. At six foot four, carrying a couple of hundred pounds of well-proportioned beef, with a head of thick unruly white hair, it was hard for him to move about unnoticed.
His audience consisted of twenty CEO’s and presidents of international world conglomerates who had paid an ungodly high price for six lectures from the world’s most respected teacher.
Lazlo preferred to present himself as communicator, guide, author and teacher. It irritated when people referred to him as a ‘powerful’ motivator. What made him bristle was the connotation. To be a motivator you obviously needed to make people emote, to do that you had to stir up their emotions into motion. That was something he never did.
Politicians and preachers and sport coaches did that.
He could be shouting at you and yet his voice never moved beyond the level of smoothness. He had learned that from a Zen Master he had studied with during his years of search who liked to remind him of a Buddha saying that, ‘A dog is not considered a good dog because he is a good barker nor is a man considered a good man because he is a good talker.’ And so it didn’t bother him that his voice came out well paced, thoughtful, like the sound of a cello with a nice base resonance. It just was and it didn’t make him any better of a man. It was not a voice meant to stir emotions. His strength was in his appeal to the soul, to raise one’s consciousness to the intuitive part of their being where harmony and knowingness already existed. He avoided any direct appeals to the intellect, reason and logic; they were part of the human condition and very changeable.
Different from the former. At least the mystics thought so.
Although Lazlo had done a half dozen of these special lecture-cruise presentations before, he had a premonition that something was going wrong with this one. The only thing he could think of was that he might run out of energy. Nothing else could seriously upset him.
His discontent was not with the disgusting high price he was charging; although it was not lost on him that most of his teachers whom he had studied with and had sat at their feet had lived from hand to mouth. Yes, he had changed his mind about that, had changed course after watching what happened when precious nuggets of wisdom were offered free of charge. He remembered how people rejected them and him as having no value. He even charged students a nominal fee now—and then later donated it to a charity. Nor was his discontent with those waiting for his ideas to recharge their high cholesterol batteries. It was something subtle, like a sliver under his skin. It had been bothering him, pricking him, for a month or so. He had been trying to keep it out of his conscious thoughts but lately it was becoming more intense, disturbing his peace.
It was one of those feelings you can’t identify as having its roots in anything like fear, uncertainty, or discontentment. His life was full. He had no troubles, nothing to complain about. Although he still wasn’t above being suckered by his lower instincts but thankfully age had given him the experience to recognize those thoughts when they were whispering in his ear. The memory of his lost years was never far from his mind.
It was no secret he and his wife were drifting apart. She would probably be asking for a divorce. He still loved her but rejected the demonstrative way she wanted him to express it. It made him sad to know she was unhappy, that she saw her life as being unfulfilled, but he also knew there was nothing he could do to make her life into what she thought it should be. That wasn’t the cause of his discomfort though; he had learned years ago to let people go, to release them without trying to hold on or block their path.
For thirty years or more he had sought out and lived with, studied with, and read the major mystics of the world from all religions, past and present, in their ashrams, temples, shrines and monasteries. He had practiced their techniques. He could quote their wisdom for whatever situation was at hand.
He was cognoscente that those who came to him often mistook the wisdom he spoke of as things memorized, rather than what he had learned from experience on his spiritual journey. It was a prickly thought, which he preferred to block out. He could do that: block out negative thoughts that attacked the mind at random. Those close to Lazlo were often amazed by the power of his mind and the discipline he had over it.
On the morning of his death he awoke with his persistent feeling of emptiness, of functioning without a focus, without a purpose. Sometimes he wondered if his study of comparative mystic thought had left him like a salad dressing of oil and water; neither bonded nor adhered to the salad. He often wondered if he should have just concentrated on one path. The feeling, or was it a thought, was particularly intense while he shaved, showered and brushed his teeth surrounded by ocean blue tiles in the bathroom of his stateroom. He pushed his fingers through his thick unruly hair as he inspected himself in the mirror, to study his long face and remind himself that the form he saw was a means to express himself through; it was not the real him. In his heart he knew this to be true but the force of his senses would not let him get past the appearance of a man with small ears and big feet. And yet for a man with such a big physic he moved with the flexibility of someone made of rubber.
He tried to toss off these heavy feelings while performing his fifteen quick walking laps around the open upper deck but all he accomplished was an empty numbness of mind, almost to the point of pain.
After coffee and toast, (the coffee was definitely not of the quality he was used to) in the small aft restaurant, he bided his time in preparation of his morning lecture. As always, he carried his book of quotations which he referred to as one of his father’s how-to books, which he reread as a priest would his missal. They were wise sayings that concentrated on the source of life common to all beliefs from the Christian to the Gnostic and Sufi mystics to the Jewish, Zen and Buddhist mystics and others less known. From his reading would come the subject for his talk.
He was conscious of a litany of disturbing thoughts trying to break into his mind to upset his peace, questions about his relationship with his young wife, worry over the demands of his business partners, a whiff of fear about his own future, his health. He wondered how much longer he would keep doing this. Did any of his listeners really get it? The things he talked about, were they teachable? Or was it just a waste of time talking about a spiritual way of thinking to people who were confirmed materialists, who would never understand anything that did not touch their senses? He felt a heaviness of defeat. Why was he wasting his time? Was it only for dollars? There was no satisfaction in that for him. Perhaps it was time for him to move on. And then what? He was a good motorcycle mechanic; maybe he could shine at that or he could use the techniques of acupuncture he had learned from the Shinto priest he had studies with. He had no idea what else he could do but whatever it was it had to be more satisfying than what he was getting from these lectures.
Suddenly, like he was slamming shut a steel door, he blocked out the distracting thoughts for he knew that just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.
The morning sea was calm, inviting the big cruise ship to cut through its surface with barely a tilt of motion. On the open deck, there was the muffled sound of mushy music in the background being piped through the sound system. The weather had cooled very little and with no breeze the humidity was suffocating. The heaviness of the damp ocean salt air made him feel tired or maybe it was something else.
At precisely eight a.m., Lazlo descended three decks below, made his way forward to amidships and entered a theater that was large enough to seat two hundred people.
Waiting for him were twenty male executives; subdued but anxious for their teacher to impart his wisdom for living for which he was famous.
The first thing Lazlo looked for was the extra person sitting in the back shadows of the theater. The man had shown up on the morning of the first talk he gave. No one else had noticed him. Indeed, Lazlo was so aware of his presence he found it off-putting, at times causing him to lose his concentration.
Who was this person dressed in a blue pastel shirt and white cotton pants and why, or rather how, was he interfering with Lazlo’s thoughts? He had decided that this morning he would confront him; ask why was he there, who sent him, who paid his fees; more important—who invited him?
Not just anyone was allowed to these closed sessions. There was no place in heaven for loafers and there was no one safe from Lazlo’s tongue when he decided to snap it.
To his surprise, there was only the registered group of executives. He searched for the extra man with the drooping gray-speckled mustache who, in his opinion, was unmistakably a Greek, or a Turk, or even someone from Islam. He did not look like he had a North American heritage. He was not there. His absence gave him an unsettling feeling. As he made his way to the front of the theater, he kicked his mind-discipline into action, eliminating all thoughts that did not pertain to the lecture. Once again, at the last minute he received a wave of inspiration that told him to entitle his talk, ‘Connecting With Life: No One Can Do It For Us’.
He knew what the content would be. He had lived long enough to enjoy the perks: material, yes, but more importantly, spiritual benefits.
Lazlo never stood behind a podium, what he did was sit behind a small table and talk to his high paid audience as if he had invited them into his kitchen for an intimate chat. Even for the cynical, it was impossible to resist the warmth and persuasiveness of his words.
He talked so much common sense it made his listeners wonder why they had not thought about it themselves. He was careful to blunt the more difficult ideas from the mystics who liked to refer to the material life as illusion, that in fact true reality abided in consciousness and that nothing existed that was not created there.
This offended people who paid exorbitant prices to hear him, so he stayed away from searching exercises that would reveal this truth. Few could grasp the idea that the unpleasant things in their life came from a misreading their own consciousness. They liked the idea that it was exterior causes. Even so he could and did help them to recognize the essence of their own mind as something they could cultivate and understand and live in accord with. He would admonish them to stay away from using tactics of denying personal responsibility for the direction of their life, that this was not to be given up to neither a teacher nor circumstance.
These were not common paths of living so he seldom barged ahead but laid it out a little at a time as he had received it from his own teachers; consequently he never raised the subject of his conundrum which he suspected his audience would reject outright.
What he would do was infer that unseen mysteries like intuition, creativity, love, health, harmony, supply and charity had a permanent presence deep inside of us. The negative aspects of life which obscured the path to freedom manifested themselves as aggression, clinging, excessive pride and jealousy, fear and anxiety and limitation. These came from conditioned minds, which, if unchecked, ruled us like petty dictators--giving no freedom, no peace.
He would talk about thoughts but stay away from discussing feelings, the kind that emanate deep down in the soul; the kind he was experiencing: an inner sadness—without an object. Heaviness from living. Emptiness, not in his mind or thoughts but in his being. It was heavier than matter yet had no substance. He was feeling these things inside of him as he smiled at the collected group.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said, pulling up his chair behind the table.
It was at this precise moment, while lowering himself into the chair, that the elderly man with the drooping mustache entered the theater and waved at him. In this same moment of time, he felt a piercing, knife-like pain in his chest. For what seemed to be less than a few seconds, he plunged into the darkness of unconsciousness.
Robbie Stellar, chairman of the board for International Computer, was the first to react. The moment he saw him slump onto the table he knew something was seriously wrong. By the time he reached him, Lazlo had slid from the table onto the floor. It was the unmistakable sound of air rushing out of the lungs that stirred Robbie into immediate action. He quickly turned Lazlo over onto his stomach and started artificial respiration ignoring the terrible smell of spilt bowels.
Pressing the palms of his hands down onto his back, below the shoulder blades, he attempted to simulate a rhythm of normal breathing but due to his excitement and the fact that Robbie was a hundred pounds overweight; the rhythm was more like the rapid gasping of a long distance runner. He could hear the nervous voices behind him calling out for him to do this or that; they all believed they were leaders and it was hard for them to be bystanders. After a few moments of this, he changed his position from astride his back to kneeling next to him. Twisting his head up, he roughly squeezed Lazlo’s nostrils with his left hand, opened his mouth with his right, and then covered it with his own thick lips. Robbie’s face turned red from exertion as he pumped his breath into the deflated lungs of the teacher.
While he was doing this, Phil Rothstein, president and CEO of Stateside Tires, had run to the telephone to call for help.
A few seconds later someone on the ship’s public address system was announcing, “Code Zebra, theater room, deck seven.” The announcement was made only once. In the company policy book there were precise instructions that said public announcements that might cause passengers concern or anxiety were not to be broadcast. As Jim Norseman, vice president of operations for Party Cruise Lines, said, “Our guests are here to party, to vacation, to have a good time. They don’t want to be bombarded with negative events. This is a ‘party boat’ not a ‘coffin boat’. We are very conscious of these kinds of things.”
Less than forty seconds after the ‘Zebra Code’ was announced, Audrey Smith, the ship’s nurse who had special training in emergency room and intensive care was relieving Robbie at the head of Lazlo M. Cassi.
Thirty seconds later, the ship’s doctor, Salvador Rodriguez Mendez, a graduate of the New York State University Medical Center, with a specialty in internal medicine from Boston University, took charge of the scene.
As he felt the body for vital signs, his expression turned from grim to despair. Before he stood up, he grimaced at the smell.
Ship’s crew who were assigned duty to the code word ‘Zebra’ entered the theater with a portable stretcher. Like magic, Lazlo, was transferred onto the stretcher and whisked out of the room as if he had never been there.
When the twenty executives collected their wits, all of the ‘care givers’ had disappeared without a trace, as if nothing had ever happened. Even the chair had been turned upright, placed behind the table and sprayed with air freshener.
The executives slowly wandered out of the room, confused, distraught—certainly not in the mood for having a good time.
What is his condition?” The captain was standing next to the bed in the ship’s sickbay (equal to any small city hospital in equipment) looking down at the patient.
Doctor Salvador intended his shrug to indicate the man’s hopeless condition. “He responded to the electric paddles so we have a little rhythm going, but--look for yourself. We have him rigged up to more booster machines than they have at NASA. I mean if we unplugged him, he would be dead. What we are measuring is artificial life.”
“You think he’s going to die?”
All the alarm signals went off inside of Doctor Salvador Mendez. He turned to face the captain, whose reputation was famous for manipulating people and events. “He already has.”
Captain Hans Reichert smiled. His tanned face gave no indication of the plotting and scheming stirring his hidden thoughts like steam turning a generator. People who worked for him knew him as ‘glad hand’; the inference being the other held a dagger.
Reichert had an impeccable record with home office for staying in budget and avoiding problems. That most of his crew disliked him was not considered a problem. Problems were things like calling out expensive tugboats for simple tie-ups, denting the ship against docks, making a passage too bumpy for the elderly, and the ultimate--having passengers die onboard for which the cruise line could be challenged for accountability and or damages.
With so many old people taking cruises, having them die instead of having fun was the kind of publicity that sent horror galloping through the executive offices of Party Cruise Lines. At one time, the company encouraged their older guests to take out private insurance policies for the duration of the cruise. No one anticipated the overwhelming negative reaction this would cause. Clients were offended; others were fearful and canceled their tickets, while still others complained to their travel agents that it was none of the cruise line’s business if they did or didn’t have insurance.
The program was dropped in favor of a policy statement that instructed all captains, medical officers, pursers and cruise directors that should any passenger appear to have a health problem which might cause them to expire, every effort should be made for said passenger to be transported to the nearest land hospital. Quickly as possible the country in question should sign a document when receiving the patient.
Of course if they died somewhere other than on the ship surviving family could not launch a lawsuit against the cruise line.
The captain nodded for Doctor Sal to join him for a discussion a little distance from the attending nurses. Salvador knew what was coming; everything with this captain was policy and politics. The politic part he used to maintain a spotless employment record to take early retirement in another two years at age fifty-eight with a full company pension. The policy part allowed him the option of shifting blame to the nearest subordinate officer should any one of his devious schemes go awry.
“I am changing course and heading to the port of Puntarenas in Costa Rica. They have been advised and have a tug standing by. We will be there very soon.”
“When?”
“Estimated arrival... says, two and a half hours.”
“I can’t keep him going that long.”
“You have to doctor. You know company policy—they are not to expire onboard.”
“You have to make it sooner.”
“Possibly two, maybe less.”
“If I can’t keep him going on the machine I will have to put him on ice. The heat here will bloat him out in no time.”
“We do have air-conditioning, doctor.”
“How cold can you turn it down without giving me a half dozen pneumonia cases?”
The captain had a perpetual habit of pushing his fingers through his thick graying hair, probably the reason he seldom wore his cap. He scratched his scalp and smiled his smile. He respected the doctor’s quick wit. “However do you keep that beard of yours trimmed so nice?” He was easily bored when having to explain himself. “Never could grow a good one, not enough facial hair I guess.”
“I am rather handy with the scissors, I suppose.”
“Yes, well...I have a little scenario I think will work. First, you need hose him down, that’s a very bad smell, and then when we come alongside, you call their hospital emergency for an ambulance. Tell them we have a very sick passenger. When the ambulance approaches the gangway, unplug him, put him in a portable carrier and get him to the paramedics as fast as you can. Once they receive the body they will rush away with all haste.”
Dr. Salvador Rodriguez Mendez shook his head in amazement. Latinos were naturally attracted to intrigue but not nearly as much as this man. He made no effort to hide his caustic smile.
“You are indeed a man of options, captain.”
“When they check for vital signs in the ambulance, he will be on their soil and in their charge. That should free us of any responsibility. Wouldn’t you agree, doctor?”
Dr. Sal responded with a wary shrug. “I did some volunteer work in Central America. The only truth I observed was that plans have a tendency to go awry in the tropics—nothing goes in a straight line. Then again, maybe your plans will come out different.”
“For both our sakes, I hope so,” said captain Reichert. “This is not some old passenger. He is a very popular figure amongst those who count. Not only popular, but also high priced. There is going to be a lot of publicity about his demise. Better for all of us that the newspapers report his death as occurring in a Costa Rican hospital.”
“In that case, I suggest you make haste, captain, because all we have is an electrical charge going from without to within. It will work only for a while.”
The sudden change in itinerary was announced to the tour directors who with professional alacrity had half the passengers signed up for land tours that would not take more than a few hours. Majority of guests were pleasantly surprised and looking forward to visiting the small republic. A number of others were bitching and moaning like they had done for most of their lives.
Before the two-hour time limit had passed, captain Reichert had the ship alongside the pier.
In route to port, subtle inquiries had been made through the purser’s office to the company’s main computer. They extracted all the information they had on Lazlo M Cassi.
To everyone’s surprise very little was known.
They learned he was born fifty-eight years ago in the borough of Queens in New York City. Although the details of his past were sketchy, they listed him as having attended the University of Syracuse on a baseball scholarship, failing to note whether he graduated. The rest of the material dealt with his list of international clients and the titles of books he had written.
Those who engaged Lazlo’s services had either read his books, attended one of his seminars or heard him on a talk show or read an article about him. He was a draw as a speaker, particularly with the leaders of commerce. Yet little was known about him as a person. Reporters liked to quote him because of his turn of phrase but never dug into his past other than to refer to some impressive corporate client or head-of-state he was advising. Lazlo never used the word ‘advising’: he always said, ‘communicating with’.
Doctor Salvador Rodriguez Mendez hadn’t read any of his books, but he knew something about the man that was not in the file they received from head office. He knew Lazlo Cassi was married to a woman much younger than him and that they had no children. He knew that ten or more years ago he had moved his world operations out of New York City to Toronto, Canada, where he was now living. He knew all of this from his tennis partner, Richard Classman, a Manhattan gynecologist who worked with infertile women. Danielle Cassi, wife of Lazlo, had gone through his program. According to Richard, whom he always thought of as a fox sitting in a hen house as a Gynecologist, she was beauty to behold.
He knew nothing more about his dead patient than this and the few tidbits from head office.
Whether the action they were about to carry out had a moral question to it was not a consideration by either the doctor or the captain. They were two men following rules handed down by persons whom they believed had given the process some thought in order to relieve them of having to ponder the ramifications of such delicate situations. Without stating the obvious, both could feel the stress of the occasion.
The Cruz Roja (Red Cross) operates the ambulance service in Costa Rica. It operates an efficient and economical service to the public. In addition, there are some private and government ambulances directly connected to various hospitals.
Oswald Chavez Vargas was thirty-two years old; of slight build with a handsome face that encompassed piercing gray eyes. He had been with the service for twelve years. In North America he would be classified as a paramedic with advanced training. After graduating from high school, Oswald attended the Latina University in Puntarenas. He enrolled in the nocturnal courses to study for a law degree. During the day, he worked at the Shell station in the center of the small city pumping gas and changing tires. With only his salary to support his mother and three young sisters, it was an impossible struggle. After two years he gave it up and applied to the Cruz Roja for a permanent job.
He completed and excelled in every course they had to offer. His supervisors had on two occasions sent him to take advance training in trauma and emergency medicine at the University of Florida. On both occasions, he completed the courses with honors. On his return, he taught the techniques to his fellow workers.
When the call came in from the ship, the duty operator rang Oswald and his two partners. All duty personnel lived in the hall while doing their twelve-day shift. They rotated twelve days on, twelve off.
Hector Rivera, who Oswald called his ‘wheel man’ had the Toyota van revved up by the time he jumped in the seat next to him. At twenty-two, Hector looked to be sixteen and sometimes drove as if he was six. That he had driven an unlicensed taxicab in San Jose for four years and survived, helped get him the job with the Cruz Roja.
Oswald never told him, but Hector scared the hell out of him every time they answered an emergency call. He would click on the siren, tramp the gas pedal to the floor and literally fly down the narrow two-lane highway that led from the peninsula to the mainland.
Problem was, everyone flew on that highway, particularly those coming towards them. The worst offenders were the drivers of the old yellow Bluebird buses who liked to think that normal traffic rules did not apply to them.
As they started to pull out of the garage, the side door of the van banged open, tilting the vehicle a little to the right as “Gordo” Francisco Mora threw his ape-like form onto the attendant’s seat behind the driver.
“What do you guys do, sleep in this thing?” Gordo was breathing like he was out of breath; it was part of his act. He was big. At six foot three inches, two hundred and thirty pounds, he filled the seat. He was only twenty-five and in excellent condition. Gordo lifted weights when he was not working. Those with time in the Cruz could never say enough good things about Gordo; they had seen him in rescue operations, in the mountains and in the jungle. They were in awe of his strength and stamina. On one occasion he had carried a large man on his back and the wife in his arms out of a steep valley in which their car had plunged. His skin was a dark brown which he said he inherited from his father whom he said was a Bribri Indian. It was probably a lie, probably had never laid eyes on his father.
Oswald considered himself lucky to have the two most skilled in their field attached to his van.
“Where is it, boss?”
“Jesus, Hector, where are you going? It’s in town.”
“Why didn’t you say?”
“Why didn’t you wait?”
Hector had turned down the street next to the Cruz Roja station and without braking tipped the ambulance almost onto its side as he swung into a small opening in traffic onto the main city street that eventually led to the Pan American Highway.
“Turn here.” Oswald shouted as he swept his arm to the right at the first of the city’s only two stop lights. “Mother of God, Hector, you drive like a maniac. We probably just ran over twenty people.”
“In town?” Gordo yelled from behind them as the van turned south in front of the Tung Joy restaurant and headed towards the beach. “Why they call this a 911?”
“Yeah?”
“Towards the pier...the cruise ship...where the tourists are!”
“Holy shit!” Gordo shouted excitedly. “Don’t tell me we have to rescue gringos? They are impossible. They don’t understand Spanish! I’ve moved them—all they do is complain.”
Hector turned towards Oswald. “Hey jefe, you speak their language, don’t you?”
“You nearly ran over that old lady, Hector! What the hell are you doing?”
“I am taking us to the pier the fastest way I know. What are we dealing with here, boss?”
“Get the oxygen kit ready, Gordo, and the stretcher. They reported a passenger in an emergency state. Probably a heart attack.”
At the high wire gate, Oswald turned down his window and attempted to identify himself to the security guard beneath the noise of the ambulance’s siren. The gate was normally open for people to walk out onto the pier but guarded when cruise ships were in port.
“Can’t you turn that damn thing down a little, Hector? It’s enough to wake the dead.”
“Sorry. Only has one volume.”
He was trying to tell the guard they were called to come to the aid of a passenger, but was waved through before he could explain. They drove out onto the two and a half block long finger pier while Oswald used the radio to notify hospital emergency they would be coming in soon with a heart patient.
On the open deck of the ship, standing in front of the door to sick bay, Captain Reichert was staring down at the pier towards the entrance. The moment he saw the flashing red light and heard the wailing siren, he stepped inside quickly and went to look for Dr. Mendez.
The ship’s hospital had ten beds in two rows of five. A narrow aisle ran down the center. The beds were empty except the one at the end of the first row. A green curtain, suspended from the ceiling, had been pulled around the bed. He could hear someone behind it, moving equipment or whatever.
He was disturbed by the heavy smell in the air of a chemical which he at first thought was ammonia but then recognized it to have a stronger resemblance of formaldehyde. It felt like he was about to have a seizure as his heart dropped. Pulling the curtain partially aside he stuck his head inside and snapped, “Surely doctor you are not prepping our patient for burial?”
Doctor Mendez was busy disconnecting the patient from the electrodes and the oxygen machine and monitors. He looked over his shoulder at the captain.
“That smell, captain, is not formaldehyde but rather a very strong cleaning fluid.” He shook his head at the annoyance and then stepped back. “He’s ready.”
“Can’t you get them to shut that damn siren off?”
“I had to soak this guy on ice after we washed him. He’s still warm. Shit, I hope I don’t get electrocuted taking these off.”
“Doctor, are you deaf? They are here!”
“So what do you want me to do? What do you want me to do?”
“Get him out there. Shut the goddamn siren off. The old folks are getting jumpy.”
Ignoring the captain, Doctor Mendez shouted through the curtain to someone nearby.
“Audrey, will you get those two stretcher carriers in here on the double.”
“They are in reception, doctor.”
“Send them in. Do you have that transfer form filled out?”
“It’s right here.”
“Bring it in with you. Okay, captain, if you will excuse us, we’ll put this gentleman ashore.”
“He looks pretty dead to me, Sal.”
The doctor looked up at the captain and grimaced. “That’s because he is. Let’s hope they don’t take too much notice.”
For the first time, Captain Reichert, was having a moment of doubt. Before he could dwell on the thought, the two stretcher-bearers were hurrying towards him. He left the room to watch the transfer from the bridge, safely distancing himself from the affair. He could hear the doctor instructing nurse Smith and the two men to be more careful in lifting (he said, “body”; the idiot said, “body,” then quickly corrected himself to “patient”) on to the stretcher. The captain hurried to the bridge shaking his head.