Tunnel Vision by Gary Braver

people muttering prayers and crossing themselves, touching his hands and face.
    Maggie felt insane. “Get out of here!” she screamed. “This is my son. Get out of here!”
    “I have a tumor,” one woman said. “All I want is to be healed.” Her mouth quivered as she pleaded.
    Another beside her said, “Jesus is here to make me better. I don’t want to die.”
    A man pressed against her insisted that a divine presence was in Zack. “We want Jesus to save my wife. She’s very sick.”
    “Then get a doctor and leave my son alone.” As Maggie pushed her way deeper, she spotted a tall white woman looking out of place in a navy blue suit. She stood in the corner behind the others, staring at Maggie intently. There was a reddish birthmark on her cheek or maybe a melanoma.
    The shouting of security guards filled the room. “Okay, everybody clear out.” Half a dozen guards were pulling people out of the room as protests rose up.
    “You have no right,” one woman cried.
    “The Lord Jesus Christ is speaking through Zachary,” cried another. “It’s in the video. I saw it with my own eyes.”
    But the guards cleared the room in spite of the pleas and protests. As the people were led out, one woman grabbed Maggie’s arm. “She’s here! She’s here!” The woman’s eyes were huge.
    “Who?” Maggie asked.
    “The Blessed Virgin. I smell roses. They’re her flower.” The woman looked crazed.
    Maggie pulled away toward the bed when a guard caught her arm. She turned. “I’m his mother!”
    From the hall, Nurse Beth shouted confirmation to the guard. He let Maggie go and continued removing the others. She gasped when she reached Zack. He had not been disturbed by the melee, and the monitors blinked stable life functions. But the bedcover was strewn with religious objects and dozens of photographs of people, making it look like the shrine of a dead saint.
    Beth took her arm. “I’m so sorry. We’ll clean it up. They must have come up through the back stairwell.”
    “There’s a video of him on the Internet.”
    “Shit.”
    Less than twelve hours had passed, and a fifty-second YouTube video of his nonsense mutterings had summoned a small mob hungering for miracles. “I think it was Damian.”
    “No. It was Stephanie, my aide.”
    “What?”
    “She had her cell phone, but I thought it was to call the desk. I’m sorry. I don’t know what she was thinking, but I can’t believe she did this.”
    “Where is she?”
    “It’s her day off, but we’ll report her to the chief administrator.”
    “I want him moved to an undisclosed room with guards.”
    “Of course.”
    Beth took Maggie’s arm and led her outside while orderlies began to remove the stuff from the bed. The halls had been cleared, and several security guards patrolled the corridors. Maggie walked with Beth to the nurses’ station, where someone handed her a coffee.
    As she made her way back down the hall, she spotted the tall, stylish woman with the birthmark at the elevators. The woman glared at her. A moment later, the elevator light went on and the door opened. Before stepping inside, the woman said something.
    “Pardon me?”
    “I pray that your son is a miracle child.”
    Before Maggie could respond, the woman entered the elevator and was gone.

11
     
    Satan’s doorman lived in a large Tudor home on Greendale Road in Falmouth on Cape Cod. Roman Pace sat in his car on a small parallel street beside a vacant lot that allowed a clear view of the rear of the house.
    Roman never met those who hired him—just anonymous telephone calls and cash delivered to a drop spot. It was a good arrangement, since anonymity kept things discreet and simple without the chance of compromise. Roman had no idea if the guy on the other side of the confessional booth was a priest, a bishop, or Friar Tuck. But he wasn’t Father Timothy Callahan. And after a week it made no difference, because a part of Roman began to believe that he was, in fact, in