Proof of Heaven

brother. And, being hardly more than a boy himself, he came up with a
scenario he thought Bond would be able to appreciate: a battle.
“Let’s make a picture of what’s going on so Dad will see it when he
gets better,” he said to Bond.
So on a table in the hospital dining area, they laid out a big sheet of
orange paper and drew a representation of what was happening inside my
comatose body. They drew my white blood cells, wearing capes and
armed with swords, defending the besieged territory of my brain. And,
armed with their own swords and slightly different uniforms, they drew
the invading E. coli. There was hand-to-hand combat, and the bodies of
the slain on both sides were scattered about.
It was an accurate enough representation, in its way. The only thing
about it that was inaccurate, taking into account the simplification of the
obviously more complex event going on inside my body, was the way the
battle was going. In Eben and Bond’s rendition, the battle was pitched
and at a white heat, with both sides struggling and the outcome uncertain
—though, of course, the white blood cells would eventually win. But as
he sat with Bond, colored markers spread out on the table, trying to share
in this naïve version of events, Eben knew that in truth, the battle was no
longer pitched, or so uncertain.
And he knew which side was winning.