"The water was clear," he kept insisting.
We all had been there. There were pictures, and a video somewhere posted on youtube. The water had been far from clear. Anything but clear. It was thick almost to the point of gummy with chocolate brown sediment, and tiny detritus the likes of which I didn't want to contemplate.
"I saw it," he said. "Perfectly clear. Purified. He was standing in the middle of it, and he made it clean by his presence. I tell you I saw him!"
We all said we believed him. Some even went further than that.
"Yes, Roy, we saw him too," said one women. "It was so beautiful."
Roy looked at her out of the corner of his eye, and shook his head, but said nothing.
He said nothing else after that. One by one we each filed out of the hospital room, some with parting well wishing, a few with renewed insistence that they had in fact saw what he claimed to have seen, even though everyone, including Roy, knew full and damn well they had not.
By the time the last well wisher had scooted out of them room, Roy was sitting back on his bed, staring out of the window into the sun. I began my goodbye, but he spoke first.
"I'll never see any of them again," he told me. He was calm, but resolute. "The better they wanted me to feel, the less likely their ever come back to see how I ended up."
He laid back on his bed and closed his eyes. He spoke again.
"You don't have to say anything," he told me. "You can just go, I will understand."
"Roy, the water honestly looked muddy to me. And if Jesus was standing in it, I missed him. Be at peace."
He thanked me, and said he knew he'd see me soon again.
The water was clear.