A judicial executioner named Jude begins a procedure just like he would with any other- until something very out of the ordinary happens. What occurs has a lasting impact on his, and the patient’s lives. When things finally settle down, another game-changer happens to cause Jude to question every belief he’s ever had. In a surprising plot twist, Jude begins to see the existentialist point of view.
The Judicial Executioner
`The patient sitssits in the chair, rigid, leather straps fixing him in place. The IV in his arm administers the appropriate drip of painkiller. He watches as I sterilize the needle. “You know,” he says, “I’d never have done it if I’d known what would happen.” I turn my back to him as I work. “You did know.” I sense his nod. His eyes bore into the. I can feel his eyes boring into the back of my skull. “If you could, you’d do it again,” I say, and turn around, syringe in handready. He stares at the two inch piece of metal and then he lowers his head, not in fear but because the drugs are finally kicking in. “It doesn’t matter at this point,” he responds, speech slurred, “but yes, I guess I would – in a heartbeat.”
This private confession, conducted in the sterilized whiteness of the lab, should shock me. But the novelty of hearing sinners confess what I already know to be true has worn off. The patient’s eyes droop and his breathing steadies. The monitor registers his heartbeat, each beat chasing the one before. Once he’s stable I begin the procedure. The needle pierces his skin and the injection is effortless. It takes me less than 5 seconds to administer a whole dose.
The patient’s body begins to tremble. He’s not awake but his eyes shoot open and his jaw drops. His head shakes and silent screams rack his sturdy body. The muscles in his legs and back spasm and contract. The patient’s body strains against its bonds, tries to free itself. He writhes and twists in agony, his movements becoming more and more violent. And then his body falls silent. He is motionless. And I am stunned.
It has never ended like this. After the climax of pain the patient froths at the mouth before the bleeding begins. Not this. Not this state of relaxed, easy sleep the patient appears to be in. This patient, this man, is one of the fortunate ones. The 1 in 5,000. Of course, that’s merely a statistic. He just got lucky.
I push the button and two guards and a janitor file in. They stop when they see the man in the chair, not covered in blood. Or foam. Or dead. Already the man is beginning to wake up, the painkillers wearing off. He moans and cries out, but the noises are abruptly cut off. His eyes widen as he processes the fact that he is, indeed, alive. The cries of despair turn into cries of pure elation, and then they stop altogether when he remembers the pain. The man, eyes still wet with tears, holds still as the guards and I unbuckle his restraints. The guards help him into a wheelchair. His movements are stiff and painful; he cringes at every jostle and bump. But he holds his tongue as one guard wheels him into the corridor outside the lab.
The janitor scurries down the hall, murmuring a rushed “Congratulations,” before disappearing out of site. The second guard asks “Jude, what do we do now?” I look at him for a moment before admitting that I don’t really know. The guards look at each other, and the first one says that they will bring the man to Dixon. I agree —– Dixon will know what to do.
We arrive at his office after several twists and turns through the compound. I rap on the door twice, loudly. I hear a shuffling of papers and chairs and feet and suddenly the door opens. There stands Dixon in all of his 6 foot 8 glory. Even I am a little wary of him. “What?” he barks. Then he catches sight of the silent man in the wheelchair. “Who’s he?” “One of the lucky ones,” I reply, and his face goes white. For a split second, Dixon looks alarmed. That is a sight I never imagined I’d see. It’s unsettling.
Dixon points to the guards. “Prep him for release. Phone the warden and let him know what happened. He’ll take care of the paperwork.” The guards give terse nods before marching away, wheeling the man in front of them. The man gives a stiff glance back with a look I’ve never before seen in the eyes of a patient. I think it may be gratitude.
As soon as the guards are out of sight, Dixon yanks me deeper into his office and slams the door behind us. “What the hell happened Jude? That isn’t how it’s supposed to work! No one ever gets lucky. No one!” he shouts, barely containing all the frustration visible in his eyes. “I don’t know. It was all going according to plan, the procedure was almost done. I don’t know.” My uninformative answer just serves to anger him even more. “What’s going to happen when the word gets out? That a murderer just walked out of prison because the injection didn’t work? What will we tell people?” “Tell them he got lucky. Tell them it’s never happened before and won’t happen again. We’ll up the dosages. No, don’t tell them that part. We don’t need society suddenly gaining morals again.” Dixon smirks a little. “No, we don’t,” he says slyly.
Dixon puts me in charge of the man. For the next few months, I monitor him, check his physical and mental health, and keep his meds regular. He’ll never have full use of his body again, even with physical therapy, and his frontal lobe will have lasting damage. His speech drags, his thoughts moving faster that his lips. He gets frustrated easily. On a good day, when his speech is relatively understandable, he complains about the unfairness of it all. “I didn’t choose this. How am I supposed to reform and repent, when I can barely move my hand?or make my life mean something when I can barely lift my arms?” I listen patiently. I’ve got nothing else to do.
The man believes that God gave him the chance to reform. To try and undo the awful things he did before. I agree with him. It seems logical enough. He has begun to throw himself into charity work, organizing banquets and food drives and marathons from a computer and phone by his bed. He wants to be remembered for all the generous, good things he does now than for what he did in the past. It makes sense. He’s been working hard with a therapist, working on gaining function use of his legs. “I want to do a marathon,” he said once, “wouldn’t that be fun?” “I suppose so,” I smiled.
Then one day, I come to check on him and he isn’t there. The house is empty, and it doesn’t make sense because he can’t walk. No one’s come in the last few hours to take him anywhere. He’s simply gone. I run outside, searching the street, because a man in a wheelchair can’t have gone very far on his own. That’s when I see the hill. It’s a gradual slope, one that appears almost flat if you’re not really looking. I run down the sidewalk, doing calculations in my head. If he didn’t notice the hill, if he got going too fast, there’s no way he could have the stopped. The brakes on the chair can’t handle much speed. I run faster. There’s a small landing before the hill gets really steep and just as I crest it, I see the irregular lights below. No sound reaches my ears, and only the sporadic blues and reds and whites flash in my eyes.
The man is dead. Hit by a bus, says the policeman. Gone before the ambulance was even called. Nothing we could do. I watch the mangled, broken body as it is picked up and shoved into a body bag. Nothing they could do, I remind myself. Nothing they could do. It’s overwhelming. He was the 1 in 5000, the lucky one. He had a do-over. . It wasn’t supposed to go like this. Why give him a second chance if it was just going to be taken away?
I feel sick. I’ve witnessed so many deaths and the only one that makes me nauseous is one I had no part in. The lights on the cop car are still flaasshing. Over and over, stabbing my retinas, sheetscurtains of red and blue cloaking my overing my eyes. Yet I continue to stare at the lights. They just repeat themselves, the same pattern again and again. They don’t do anything. There’s no meaning behind their red-blue-blue-white lights, which are lying when they try to tell us that they can save us, they can rescue us .us.
One of the paramedics tries to comfort me. He thinks I’m family, that I’m devastated by the loss of a brother or a son. He’s wrong – . I am overwhelmeddevastated, but not because the man is dead, but not by the loss of a life. Death doesn’t scare me anymore. I have long since accepted that nothing can prevent it; it is unavoidable. No, I mourn for myself have lost everything. I have nothing. I am no oneam alone.
The paramedic, oblivious to my internal strife, is still next to me, trying to comfort me. He doesn’t understand, and I consider the irony of this well-meaning man, trained in compassion – by love he was once given too or by his DNA? – try to comfort me, a remorseless killer of thousands.I break into a cold sweat and my heart races. I am being consumed by anxiety, eaten alive by the sense that there really is no point, no purpose for anything. No point, no point, no point; the words echo through my skull. No one understands. There is no destiny, no fate. Nothing means anything. My head aches, a throbbing pulse funneling anguish through my body. My existence matters to no one. I am on my own.
World Studies World Literature 