Seductive Logic

The Jumper

I am dedicating this to my Oldest Pal Steve Austin  ESq (stevezdude on wattpad)  We have been pals for 55 (fifty five) years.  We have laughed our way through adolescence and adulthood and now senility.  We can keep telling each other the same old jokes because we can't remember if we heard it before.

*******

"Sergeant Tenkiller hold up." chirped the wet behind the ears Military Policeman on gate guard duty at the huge US Army hospital in Frankfurt Germany.

"Young Private.  What can I do to make your day miserable?"  These youngsters were utterly mesmerized by the Green Beret I wore.  You could sense the enchantment.  I was apprehensive that the neophyte might swoon.

"The Chief Wardmaster wants you to stop by his office before you go to work."  I was the evening shift wardmaster of the infectious disease ward.  We treated hepatitis, tuberculosis, measles, Dengue fever, malaria, and other infectious diseases that were a total mystery to us.  I walked into the hospital and took the elevator to the third floor where the Chief Wardmaster's office was located.  It was a huge office with floor to ceiling glass plantation doors.  It overlooked a beautiful pampered and preened English garden with roses.

"MSG, you wanted me?" I viewed his office as a possibility in my future.  He wore the glider wings on his clinical uniform.  This meant that he had actually made a combat assault from a glider in world war II. That impressed me.

"Sergeant Tenkiller, you are an expert shot with the pistol aren't you."  His brows were knitted obviously hoping I would affirm his assumptions.

"Yes, MSG, I qualified expert."  Now the mystery deepened. Why would he ask me this and what did it have to do with emptying bedpans on the infectious disease ward.

"We had an attempted suicide on the psychiatric ward this afternoon."  Is there going to be more?  He started pacing.  He stopped and drew a holster and pistol belt from one of his drawers.  I noticed a 1911 .45 ACP missing its magazine in the holster.  Getting stranger by the second.  "We are transferring him to your ward as soon as you get there." Now we have reached the bizarre.

"Is he still suicidal?"  I hesitantly inquired.  Hoping the answer would fall somewhere in my world of reality.

"Yes he is.  The reason we transferred him to your ward is the distance to the ground is less because of the berm."  My ward was on a recently built wing that was excavated to keep the roof line aesthetic.  There was a berm that rose past the second floor.  A jump from the third floor, my ward, window would only be a 10 foot drop.  The once and possibly future suicidal patient was a paratrooper.  He had jumped earlier in the day from the 5th floor psychiatric ward.  On the way down he hit a weeping willow tree that absorbed his impact and floated him gently to the ground.

"So why the pistol?" the enigma was deepening.  I wasn't sure if I was in a 'Twilight Zone" sequel.

"The pistol is to keep him from another suicide attempt."  He uttered those words as if they made sense in some parallel or intersecting reality.

"MSG let me get this straight in my mind.  I wear the pistol.  I assume you are going to give me a full magazine."  He nodded his head to the affirmative. "Then, if this clown tries to commit suicide,  I am supposed to shoot him." 

"Yes! That's it!"  He was in a gleeful dither that I understood my solemn duties as a evening shift wardmaster.

"So, I am supposed to kill him to keep him from committing suicide?" I was beyond amazed by the lack of cognition.  I was stupefied.

"Yeah....I guess we didn't think that all the way through.  Here you take the pistol anyway and try not to kill him.  We'll come up with a better plan tomorrow. It's time to go home now."

*******

This is as word for word as I can remember it happening.

Do you believe that there are alternat realities, or intersecting universes?

Is the military a distorted reality where the irrational seems normal?