The man was thin. Unnervingly thin. So thin his family averted their eyes when they came to visit. Illness and its various treatments had riddled his body beyond repair. He was miserable.

Alone in his hospital room one night, he stared up at the ceiling and prayed in silence.

Please, he whispered without a sound. Just to go one year without pain, without illness—one year without having to give my family bad news, without tests and treatments. One year that I can take my health for granted, like anyone my age should. Please.

Far across the universe, an ear (of sorts) that hadn’t paid any real attention to this particular galaxy in the billions of years since it had set the stars in motion heard the man’s piteous prayer. And was moved. With the slightest gesture of its great celestial hand (in a manner of speaking), the maker of the universe, of all that is, seen and unseen, healed the man wasting away in his hospital bed, rejuvenating weary tissue, supplanting sickly cells with strength.

For the first time in many months, the man was able to give his family good news. He was well. He could function as a normal human being again.

A year was nothing, a mere tick to the great watchmaker. When the watchmaker’s attention was drawn again to the man whose pleas had been answered, twelve months had passed.

And twelve prostitutes had been raped and strangled, left naked in the woods along a desolate stretch of highway. Police realized the murders were connected to a series of killings that had ended abruptly many months before, but could only theorize as to why the murders had stopped, then started again. Perhaps the killer had been in prison during that time.

But the man’s prayer had been for just one year of good health, and that was all he got. His illness inexplicably returned, and he found himself again incarcerated in his hospital room, wondering when or if he would ever be free again.

The watchmaker shrugged. You win some, you lose some.

Copyright 2007 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.
Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.