Meeting The Oracle

Neo approached her in the neutral realm of The Matrix. She always had bad news to give him but forever had a smile on her face of understanding, and wisdom. She forever put nothing but choices in front of him and left him to make the decisions. She worried. She baked. She smoked. She was the largest figure of motherly love to all of these headstrong children of the electron stream. Some of her questions led to more, and oftentimes, more troubling questions but with a renewed sense of strength and courage, her children pulled through in fine style.

Last night, I worked another hospital trip. I'd been for three hours without a cigarette and I still needed to make a call. With my partner up in the room, I headed down to the smoking area just outside the hospital.

I had already had the cigarette and lighter handy. I was ready to blaze up as soon as I reached the rather sizeable atrium where a series of two benches built into semicircles were set apart from each other. Stone ashtrays were set up like remnants of stonehenge set around a central trashcan.

I won't lie and say that a lot hasn't been on my mind. The recent breakup with my girlfriend (sorry, girls, I'm not looking around right now) had left me with a void that felt like it had always been there. Stack that on top of the entire failed operation back during my vacation PLUS some of the other flops along the way, yeah, big time bummer...big time. I suppose you could factor in the whole Michael Richards fiasco at the Laugh Factory. People, it's true that he lost it on stage but this is where celebrity gets to be dangerous...because they can cause you to react so adversely to something that doesn't matter in the bigger running of things.

I guess you could say that my faith in humans has been shaken in a way never before seen.

I sat down and that's when I saw her sitting there. She was short in stature and, as she smoked, she looked as though she'd seen everything but was just enjoying the scene she took in. The entire scene did resemble that neutral space in The Matrix and that's what I think I'd felt...neutral space. It seemed like an area untouched by the insanity outside it's wooden fence.

She moved to sit next to me and began talking.

"Why baby, you alright, chere?" she asked. I looked at her and tried my best smile but the look of worry on her face intensified. She didn't just do what normal humans do. She didn't just look me dead in the eye. She looked into them deeply. She continued, "What's the matter? Tell me all about it."

"Well," I said, "I don't really feel it here. It seems like all those problems are out there."

She listened intently as I spoke. I hadn't realized just how much was on my mind at the time but, for some reason, I felt as though I could trust her and the ultimately weird part was that she'd come out talking to me as though she had known me for years. This wasn't like the small talk that someone strikes up with you when they just feel comfortable with you. No, this was specifics.

"You must be a married man," she said. I nearly fell off the bench and lost my cigarette in the process.

"I was five years ago," I explained, "She left about three months after the marriage."

"But why?" she asked, a half-puzzled look of sorrow on her face.

"Good question," I said, "I guess the money coming in from this job at the time wasn't enough to suit her expensive tastes."

We talked further and throughout the exchange (and I wish I could share the details that I could remember them all) but she seemed further disturbed by the entire mess that was the trouble on my mind.

This little Cajun woman seemed to look right into me and it wasn't so much that she said anything that was important. It was what she said.

The advice she had given me couldn't have come at a better time. I won't go into it all right now but when it was all done, we hugged. I watched her walk over to a couple of nurses as I broke the seal on a new pack as I'd smoked the last one when I'd arrived in the atrium. I realized that I hadn't even caught her name. I looked up and she was gone.

The whole event was completely strange. I opened my phone, lit another cigarette and made my call. I felt both spooked and relieved at the same time.

That night, I'd met my Oracle.