Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

agreed to be examined by a local doctor. He prescribed rest and pain-killers, to be taken two at a
time as required.
After the doctor had left the ship, Dincalci, who still clung to the remnants of a conviction that an
operating thetan had no need for anything as mundane as a pain-killer, offered the Commodore a
single pill and a glass of water.
'Why only one?' Hubbard snapped, his eyes bulging with anger. Dincalci hastily produced a second
pill, but Hubbard's temper gave way. He leapt up from his chair and began pacing the room in a
fury, shouting unintelligible abuse at the fools in his midst who cared nothing for the fact that he
was dying. Suddenly he turned on Dincalci. 'It's you,' he roared. 'You're trying to kill me.'
Dincalci was shattered by the accusation. 'I felt I had rapport with him, I felt like a son to him. It was
like having my father say I was trying to kill him. No, it was worse. Here was the man who was trying
to save the universe saying I was trying to kill him. I was crushed. I felt I had lost everything; what
little self-esteem I had was gone in that moment.'
Dincalci very quickly found himself chipping paint and the ticklish task of nursing the Commodore
was handed over to Kima Douglas, a strikingly attractive artist from South Africa who had had two
years' nursing experience in the labour ward of the British hospital in Bulawayo. 'I think he had
broken an arm and several ribs,' she said. 'He certainly had massive black bruises everywhere. We
strapped up his arm and strapped his ribs, but he couldn't lie down so he slept in a chair as best
he could. He must have been in agony. He screamed and hollered and yelled. It was absolutely
ungodly; six weeks of pure hell.
'He was revolting to be with - a sick, crotchety, pissed-off old man, extremely antagonistic to
everything and everyone. His wife was often in tears and he'd scream at her at the top of his lungs,
"Get out of here!" Nothing was right. He'd throw his food across the room with his good arm; I'd
often see plates splat against the bulkhead. When things got really bad, I'd go and make him
English scrambled eggs, well salted and peppered, and toast and butter and take it up to him. I
even fed him once.
'He absolutely refused to see another doctor. He said they were all fools and would only make him
worse. The truth was that he was terrified of doctors and that's why everyone had to be put through
such hell.'[4]
She could not help but recall how he had changed in the months since she first joined the ship. 'My
expectation of L. Ron Hubbard was that he would be a psychic person who could look at me and
see every evil thing I had ever done in my whole life. I was still searching for something, although I
didn't know what, and the thought of someone being able to look into my head both terrified and
excited me. I'd been indoctrinated with all the things he could do. There were wild stories that if an
atomic bomb was about to go off in Nevada, Ron could defuse it with the power of his mind. At that
time everyone was talking about atomic warfare and I truly believed he had come to save the planet.
As I walked up the gangway to the ship, he stepped out of his office wearing a white uniform and
his Commodore's hat with two messengers close behind him. I was introduced to him and he
shook my hand and was very charming. He seemed to be a jovial, happy, golden man. I felt I had
arrived.'
Kima called on her unlovable patient every two days, but the burden of day-to-day care fell on the
messengers. 'Before the motor-cycle accident he was a very nice, friendly person,' said Jill
Goodman [who was thirteen years old when she became a messenger]. 'Afterwards, he was a