by Dale Mayer
And the system was working. The children’s hospital had some incredible results. Then again, children were so much more open to energetic healing than adults.
Stefan slid a sideways glance toward Celina, loving the way peace had settled on her classic features. High cheekbones, huge silvery eyes, and a wide, mobile mouth. He forced himself to look away. He was a long ways from being able to kiss her, and that fact drove him into frustration every damn time he saw her.
“Problems?”
“No.” He glanced at her again. “Not at all.”
“Oh. It just seemed like you were pulling away. I know I make some people uncomfortable.”
“Not me,” he said quietly. “You could never do that.”
“Oh.” This time humor tinged her voice. “Why is that?”
“I could say you’re too beautiful, and it would be the truth, but chances are you wouldn’t like hearing that.”
She gave an indelicate snort. “It’s not my looks that people see. They only see that I’m blind.”
“And they are missing out on seeing something very special.” He knew his voice had dropped – despite his best efforts – but hoped she didn’t hear the longing in his voice.
When she stared directly at him, her brows together in a small frown, he knew she had. Whether she’d understood the emotion was a different story.
“There you are.” Dr. Maddy’s voice intruded into the arcing energy between him and Celina. Damn. Crappy timing. Still, Celina was here to see Maddy.
“I was just showing her to your office,” Stefan said with a smile, stepping back slightly.
“Thank you.” Dr. Maddy waited for them to pass inside before she stepped in and closed the door.
Celina cocked her head to one side. “You have a beautiful place here, Dr. Maddy. I don’t think I’ve ever been to another place with a sense of peace as there is here.”
“Thank you. We do good work here.” Dr. Maddy shifted to her desk and sat down. “Celina, there is a chair on the left hand side – please sit down. Stefan, I’m going to ask you to wait outside for the time being.”
He nodded and walked to the door.
“For the time being?” Celina asked. “Why is he here at all?”
Dr. Maddy laughed. “For lots of reasons. I’ll explain in a moment.”
And Stefan knew he’d been dismissed. Hating to, he stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind him.
*
Maddy studied the troubled young woman in front of her. Celina had recognized Stefan as she’d expected, but as Stefan was so much more than a consultant in a field that she likely had little knowledge about, she didn’t know how to start.
Then she remembered something Stefan had mentioned earlier.
“Celina, this question is likely to come out of the blue, but I do have a few reasons for asking so please answer as honestly as you can. And no, I won’t judge you for your answers or withhold treatment if you think they are wrong. I just want the truth.”
She watched Celina straighten and a protective shield drop down over her aura. Stefan scored a point there. Her defenses were impressive. So Maddy took a deep breath and said, “Can you see ghosts?”
*
“Okay, Randy, we’re going to change your diet and tweak your meds slightly, then I want to see you back in a couple of weeks.”
The doctor wrote something on a pad of paper, ripped the top sheet off, and handed it to him.
Randy stared at the new prescription, wondering when this nightmare would be over. He understood he was alive because of the surgery, but was it a life worth having? He’d been in pain ever since the transplant. He’d wanted to live desperately when it looked like he wasn’t going to, but now that he was, he wondered if he’d cheated death and was paying for it.
One of the medications was giving him horrible nightmares, and he woke up in a cold sweat more often than not. Every time he came to explain the various problems his doctor just changed the drugs.
As he stared down at the paper in his hand, he wondered at what point in time a person had enough.
He’d lost his own wife a couple of months ago, and every day he wondered if this kidney that had saved his life wouldn’t be better off saving someone else’s.
You know what to do.
He did.
If he’d listened to that voice he’d have done it already. Now he realized the voice was correct.
He stared down at the prescription and couldn’t help but think that if he took the whole bottle his pain would finally be over.
Do it, the voice urged. You know it’s what you want.
That he did. Feeling better than he had in long time, he headed to the pharmacy to get his prescription filled. This was the answer. One he could live with – or not.
Chapter 14
Celina froze at the question. She wanted to bolt as far and as fast as she could away from there. Yet the lure of what Dr. Maddy might be able to do for her kept her glued in place.
“Why would you ask such a question?” she protested.
“Because I think you do, and I know someone else who does.”
The smile in Dr. Maddy’s voice had Celina instinctively smiling back. How did that work? “You’re joking, right?”
“No, I’m not.” And she waited.
Celina grimaced. “And what bearing does that question have on why I’m here?”
“Because although I don’t see dead people per se, I do see energy. Maddy’s Floor is an energetic healing project.”
Maddy launched into an explanation that had Celina’s jaw dropping. She gaped. How could she not? This woman was a doctor. Had numerous degrees. Appeared to be a smart, beautiful woman who cared. And here she was talking about something so esoteric, something so far out there, so foreign to Celina that the talk of ghosts slid into being a minor side discussion.
She couldn’t help her head moving from side to side.
Dr. Maddy laughed, a joyous sound that held Celina entranced. There was no way she could call this woman crazy, and it was obvious it came from her heart, but this…she couldn’t help but turn toward the exit.
“A bit much, is it?” Her beautiful laughter twinkled around the room again. “And I’m not crazy.”
A wave of heat washed over Celina’s cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “It’s just so…” She stopped and shrugged helplessly.
“Energy is energy regardless of the form, and I make good use of it here. Now I’m not trying to convert you to our way of doing things, but healing happens in wonderful ways. I think the doctor who did your eye surgery is correct in that everything went well and there is no physical reason why you can’t see.” She smiled.
Celina stilled. This was what she’d come for. She held her breath and waited.
“When I saw you last,” Dr. Maddy continued slowly, “I ran a quick scan of your energy and saw a blockage around your eyes.”
“A blockage?” Celina leaned forward, her unseeing gaze intent on the doctor. And damn near thought she’d caught the doctor smiling.
“I don’t understand what you mean by a blockage. Surely there’d be a lot of pain if I had a blockage?” She frowned and eased back slightly. “And Dr. Jorgenson would have seen something as destructive as that, wouldn’t he have?”
“Exactly.” Dr. Maddy beamed.
Celina felt warm, as though waves of benevolence were coming towards her. She had no idea what was going on, but it was starting to feel like she’d dropped into another world. She wanted to be open and able to receive whatever good things Dr. Maddy had going on here, yet this was starting to go way past her comfort zone.
“He would have. So would I. However, I can see a level most doctors can’t. For instance, I can tell right now that you’re feeling extremely out of your depth. Wondering if I’m a little off and whether you’ve wasted your time coming here. You have hopeful energy about being here, but that’s been cut back by over half since I started talking. I can also tell y
ou that you are draining a lot of much-needed energy to old friends, as if you are the one that can’t let go. That you are holding a few people, special people, very close to your heart. As if in the very act of protecting them you can save them from harm.”
Celina listened in shock. She swallowed hard. She wanted to refute the words as they flew her way, but for the most part the doctor was right on. “Look, I don’t know how much of this I believe. The real issue is this blockage. If it’s there… can you remove it? Is it stopping me from seeing? And if you remove it, will I be able to see again?”
“All good questions. The answers are…I don’t know. I can’t say why for sure. I’ve never seen anything quite like your case before.” She said it with such honesty that Celina believed her.
“Then what do you know?”
“I know that I can go in and—”
“Go in?” Celina asked in alarm. “More surgery?”
“No, not at all.”
Celina listened to Dr. Maddy’s hair swish about her shoulders as she shook her head. There was something light in here, something…almost joyful. She was desperate to stay, but didn’t know why. The place just felt right.
“There will be no surgery at this time, likely not at any time. I’m here to see what that blockage is and why it’s there.”
“Can you do anything about it?” Celina asked.
“Absolutely. Remember last time, when I did a sweep up toward your eyes?”
“That was you?” Celina gasped, remembering the horrible pain…and then the threats. She didn’t know what to think. Except… she didn’t want the asshole back. At all. But she definitely didn’t want him to feel like she was trying to get rid of him.
“And that brings us to ghosts.”
Celina, her mind locked onto the ghost that had been terrorizing her since forever, almost missed Dr. Maddy’s comment. Then when it registered she had to wonder if the woman hadn’t read her mind. Did she know about her haunting? Could anyone see that? Was that predator one of the people she had in her space or one she held close to her heart – her mind immediately dismissed that – or was he connected to her eyes? She’d been arguing with him for so long about seeing, but she’d never imagined he could have a physical impact on her ability to see. Not really. She’d been denying him, but as she hadn’t been actually able to see she couldn’t do what he wanted anyway.
Still, she didn’t know what he could do with what little she had.
And he didn’t believe her.
Or he wouldn’t believe her.
Then again, she was trying to give a ghost a reasoning brain, and they didn’t have that as she’d long since found out. They had a narrow focus that narrowed further the longer they walked this plane. He was locked on her sight, or lack of it, and couldn’t leave the subject. It was driving her crazy.
“Celina?”
She started. “Sorry, I was just…”
“Thinking about the crazy idea of energy and ghosts. I thought if you saw ghosts you would have a more open opinion to the concept of energy being in different forms in a way that so many people couldn’t understand.”
“I do. And I don’t.”
The chair squeaked across from her. She winced. “I do see ghosts. Or I used to. Now I think I just imagine them. Because I can’t see anything anymore.”
She sighed. “At least not like I used to.”
*
Stefan knew he shouldn’t be listening in. But his senses were super jacked where Celina was concerned and Dr. Maddy had opened the door between them, letting him hear the conversation. He was happy that Celina had admitted to seeing ghosts, but the latter part of her comment worried him. He’d seen too many psychics unable to understand or to handle what was happening in their world. Too often they went quietly insane. Or if they sought out help and got the wrong kind, they spent the remainder of their lives in a drugged stupor. That Celina was afraid she was imagining ghosts was the same thing, just in her own quietly tortured way.
He felt for her. For all that he’d checked up on her, he’d been unable to reach out and help her. Something he’d always regretted. He’d been in the camp of “leave alone what wasn’t his to touch,” and he’d followed it religiously. But he might have been able to make her last year so much easier.
Still, she’d always resisted letting him get any closer, even after all this time. It was all he could do to stand back and let it all be. It was her body and her physical space. That meant it was her call.
But he could help her.
If she let him.
If Dr. Maddy let him.
*
“So, Eric, I hear you are having some problems.”
Eric looked up at the doctor and his minicomputer. He’d like a little computer to play on but he didn’t like the doctor. Any of them. No one understood. No one cared. They all thought he was making the monster up. He wasn’t.
“Your mother says you aren’t sleeping well. Now that’s too bad,” the doctor said in a too-happy voice. “You need rest to heal.”
Eric stared at him, waiting for the usual heart-listening, back-listening, head-patting, writing on the tablet, and leaving. It happened every day around the same time.
And every day Eric didn’t say anything. The monster had told him what would happen if he did.
The monster would do something horrible to Mom.
*
Maddy shifted position. She was in the corner of her office with Celina sitting in the chair as she had been before. They’d gotten to the point of Celina allowing her to take a look inside. She needed to make this fast for everyone’s sake, especially Stefan, who paced outside.
Maddy closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and jumped free of her body. The process worked so easily now that it was almost a mind switch and she was out. She moved toward the quiet woman and, using the anchors she’d placed inside before on her previous trip, found herself back inside the base of Celina’s skull. She hadn’t blended with the energy this time. Instead, she opted to get a better view of the blockage.
She needed to see what was behind this problem.
With that in mind she slipped closer slowly, trying not to enter Celina’s mind but stay separate psychologically and move between the organic structures to see the physicality of the blockage. Moments later she realized that there was none.
There was no physical impediment surrounding her eyes. If there was a blockage it was on either a mental, emotional, or energetic level.
Or most likely – all three.
*
“How are you?” Jacob asked Lissa, his see-through visitor. He was so damn grateful to have anyone to talk to he was afraid he’d say the wrong thing and she’d disappear. “I don’t understand how you know me.”
“Oh, I don’t know you. Hadn’t met you before you went into a coma,” she said with a bright, translucent smile. A smile he could see right through.
He hated to ask personal information, but he really needed to know how to get out of this situation and hopefully back into his body where he might be able to wake up.
“Are you in a coma too?”
She laughed, a bright tinkle of sound that floated throughout the small room. “No, I’m not in a coma. I’m dead.”
He swallowed hard and stared at her. “How can you talk to me if you’re dead? I’m still alive.” He motioned to his body, lying beside them. “I’m trying to figure out how to get back inside my body.”
“You still have that option, but I don’t. I died a long time ago. I kept trying to contact my sister after I’d died, but it took a while to sort things out. I refused to leave until I could though.”
“As you are still here I presume you never managed to contact her.”
“Oh, sure I have. It’s great fun to be able to catch up with her. I love her very much.”
He frowned. “So why stay now, then? Surely you’re supposed to move on.”
Her face twisted. “Maybe, and maybe not. I found that I have something
to offer people while I’m here, so I do my best to learn and grow. I don’t know what comes after this stage, and I’m not sure I want to know,” she said with honesty. “I like my life here and I am learning to do more and more things. It can be lonely at times, which is why it’s fun to meet people like you.”
“Like me?”
“Sure – people caught in between. I’ve met a few ghosts too,” she said in a commonplace tone of voice, “but they are often more zombie than alive.”
He didn’t want to ask too closely what she meant by that zombie comment, and his mind kept returning to her caught in-between comment. “Is that what I am? Caught between life and death?”
She studied him. “You tell me. This is your experience. You created this. Are you alive?” Lissa motioned to the form on the bed. “If you call that alive,” she continued, then swung her arm toward him. “Or are you dead?”
Jacob winced. “I want to be alive.”
“Then what’s stopping you?”
He stared at the strange girl and her easy grasp of a situation that would drive him insane. She was so accepting. So complacent. “I don’t know how to get back into my body.”
“Pssshhh. Sure you do. It’s easy. Just go lie down. Your body and soul know what to do naturally. The problem here is that something is stopping you from going back. That’s the issue you have to solve before you can return.”
There seemed to be an inkling of truth to her words, but he had no idea what problem he would possibly need to solve.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said with a smile. “You’ll figure it out.” She started to fade in front of his eyes. “Or not.”
“Wait…”
And she was gone.
Damn it. He stared at his body and tried to figure out why he wouldn’t want to go back to his old life.
Chapter 15
Celina shifted uncomfortably in her chair. She understood in theory what the doctor had said she was going to do, but it still sounded like a sci-fi movie. Her mind couldn’t let go of the concept of a blockage. If there was such a thing, then was it possible she’d get her eyesight back?