“You didn’t expect me to wake up?” Grandma said.
The doctor sobered. “No, Ma’am, I really didn’t expect you to wake up.”
This was news to Philly. He hadn’t talked to the doctor himself, but he was sure that Ma would have told him if she had heard that the doctor didn’t expect Grandma to recover.
“You mind?” the doctor said, pulling a small flashlight from his pocket and gesturing his request to trade places with Philly. Philly backed out and rounded the bed to the other side, to stand with Jesus.
The doctor did a brief examination of Grandma’s reflexes, sensation in her extremities and ability to move both her feet and hands. He looked in her eyes a second time and then said, “I’m glad I saw this for myself, because I wouldn’t have believed it if someone else had told me.”
Theresa rolled her eyes a bit, having felt that skepticism when she delivered the good news moments earlier. She slid the tray into place, nearly bumping the doctor out of the way. “Mrs. Thompson is understandably hungry,” she said.
The doctor laughed. “I’ll bet you are. It’s been over a week since you’ve eaten.” He looked at Philly. “You should give us a minute, while I pull her feeding tube out.”
Philly grimaced slightly and headed for the other side of the room. He took the opportunity to call Eileen and give her the news, uncertain whether Ma and Dad would have had the presence of mind to call her. Philly got the answering machine at Eileen’s apartment, left a brief, cryptic message and then tried her cell phone number.
“Hello,” Eileen said.
“Hey, Eileen. Good news!” Philly said. “Grandma’s awake.”
“What? She’s out of the coma?”
“Yep.”
“When?”
“About twenty minutes ago,” Philly said. Just then he noticed that Jesus had stayed with Grandma and not accompanied him to the other side of the room. The last two weeks of Jesus following him around led Philly to expect him to stay close. A small switch in Philly’s mind released an emerging stream of anxiety, as he considered whether his time with Jesus had come to an end.
“She just woke up? How is she?” Eileen said.
“Actually, Jesus and I came here tonight to wake her up. It’s a long story, but she’s wide awake and talking and laughing. The doctor’s taking out her feeding tube now so she can eat some soup and crackers. She’s really hungry.”
Eileen said, “Can she feed herself? Did the stroke leave any other issues?”
“She’s fine,” Philly said. “Both hands, both feet, feeling and movement: the doctor just checked it all out. He said he wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen for himself. He said he didn’t expect Grandma to recover at all.”
“Philly, it’s a miracle!”
“Yeah,” Philly said. “That’s what they’re calling it.”
Philly’s ma and dad arrived within twenty minutes, just after Grandma finished her soup and crackers, and a box of apple juice. She greeted her son and daughter-in-law like they were returning from a long trip, buoyed by the influx of sugar and solid food.
The party in Grandma’s room, including visits from half a dozen nurses and four doctors, had to end at nine o’clock, due to other patients on the floor. Grandma agreed to stay overnight, on condition that they remove the IV tubes, which a medical technician did after the visitors had all gone home.
Philly, the last to leave, hesitated at the door when he noticed again that Jesus lagged behind. He had to force himself to step outside the room, at the risk of finding that Jesus would no longer accompany him. But, as soon as he stepped into the hallway, Jesus appeared beside him, ready to go home.
“For a minute there I thought you were going to stay with Grandma,” Philly said silently, as they walked briskly down the hall.
“I did,” Jesus said, with a sly smile.
Philly slowed down, “No, I mean, that you would stay the night with her and not come with me.”
Jesus nodded, “I know what you meant. I’m coming with you and I’m staying with Grandma tonight.”
Still walking slower and forgetting not to look at Jesus, Philly thought, “Are you serious?” The look on Jesus face, though cheerful, convinced Philly that he understood correctly. “You’re with both of us now, even when we separate?” he said.
“Yes, I am.”
Philly smiled. “Cool!”
The next morning, Philly commuted to work, as usual, but called his grandma’s hospital room as soon as he sat down in his desk chair.
“How are you feeling?” Philly said.
“I’m fine, Philly. I’m ready to go home. I wanna get outta here before they think of doing any tests on me,” she said. “Your dad is coming to get me in about an hour.”
“That’s great,” Philly said. “The doctors agreed to this?”
“I didn’t give ‘em much choice in the matter,” Grandma said, her voice rising.
Philly chuckled and then, looking at Jesus in his guest chair. “Did Jesus stay with you?”
“Yes, he did. I can still see him now. What a wonderful blessing for both of us. He told me last night that he was staying with you still, at the same time. Isn’t that marvelous?”
Philly snorted an airy laugh. “Yes, it is.”
When he said goodbye, and hung up the phone, Philly looked at Jesus. For a moment, Philly absorbed the warm comfort of his new companion. He savored the friendly wisdom simply waiting to be tapped and the constant love he had only to observe to know was real. Never in all of his life had Philly enjoyed something so much. “Better than Christmas,” he thought.
With this cheerful thought still hanging sweetly in his mind, Philly heard a knock at his door.
“Come in,” he said, almost playfully.
Craig opened the door. Behind him stood Allyson Elders, a young woman who worked as a designer, producing digital drawings for the architects. Philly had never held an actual conversation with Allyson and her presence in his office surprised him. Craig ushered her in and closed the door behind them, that latter move cementing a feeling in Philly that a storm front had just entered his life and he would have to yield to its force or get up and run for cover. He stayed in his chair.
“What’s this about?” Philly said, all cheer gone from his voice.
Craig motioned to the guest chair next to Jesus for Allyson and he sat down on Jesus, as far as Philly was concerned. But Jesus popped from the chair to the narrow space next to it, wedged against a file cabinet and still obviously pleased at the company.
“Well,” Craig said, “I was telling Allyson about my allergies, and the way you . . . ah . . . healed me.”
Allyson nodded, looking at Philly like a zoo patron observing one of her favorite animals. Philly looked only briefly at Allyson, shy of all strangers, but particularly disturbed by the expectant look on the young woman’s face.
“It came up because I’ve been working with her to get a more ergonomic setup at her desk. She has shoulder pain and pain in her mouse hand,” Craig said. “I don’t know if it’s okay, just now stopping to think about that, but I thought maybe you would see if you could do anything for her. She’s pretty worried about losing her job, the way things are going now.”
Craig looked both expectant and apologetic, his boyish face settling on a small sideways grin, meant both as an appeal and an apology.
Jesus broke into Philly’s hesitation, stepping around Craig and placing himself in front of Allyson. “I want to show her how much I love her,” Jesus said to Philly.
Though Philly was beginning to ease into cooperating with Jesus’s healing agenda, he found this latter declaration disorienting and intimidating. All he managed in response was to think, “How?”
“You tell her,” Jesus said simply.
Philly stood up from his chair, adjusted his pants, tucked in his shirt and straightened his hair. He stared at Jesus as he did this, unsettling both Allyson and Craig, who saw his nervous activity, and his avoiding eye conta
ct, as signs of either doubt or unwillingness. When Philly looked at Allyson, and then Craig, he sensed the unbalancing effect of his behavior. He knew, of course, that these two visitors had strained their own comfort limits by even asking.
“Sorry, about my distraction,” he said. “I don’t know if you’ll understand this, but Jesus is telling me to let you know something, beyond just healing you.” Philly’s voice sounded as if he had something stuck in his throat. “He said he wants you to know how much he loves you.”
Allyson looked a bit confused and then glanced in the direction Philly had been staring. “You hear Jesus speaking to you?” she said.
Suddenly Philly remembered that he had not introduced Craig to his escort, when he healed him the other day. But, instead of expounding the entire story, he opted for obscuring the details. “Well, I try to listen for his instructions, ‘cause it’s really him that does the healing, of course.” Philly snuck a brief look at Jesus to see if he was getting himself into trouble.
Instead of signs of a rebuke, all Philly saw on the face of Jesus was the same enraptured fascination that Brenda had inspired and, in fact, the same look of unquestioning love Philly had seen aimed at him. Overwhelmed with the profundity of those loving eyes, Philly tripped outside his usual self-protective boundaries.
He blurted his observation. “I wish you could see his face when he looks at you.”
Again Allyson and Craig followed Philly’s gaze and then turned questioning eyes back toward him.
“You do the look,” Jesus said.
“What?” Philly said aloud.
Craig looked up at his boss, his eyes so wide that Philly could see white all around his dark brown irises.
“You look at her with the love that you see in my eyes,” Jesus said.
To obey Jesus, the introspective shroud that Philly wore every day—mending it and securing it in place between him and the searching eyes of other souls—would have to drop to the floor, leaving him naked before strangers. Very briefly, Philly scowled at the thought that Jesus was attempting to excuse himself from healing Allyson, by asking too much of Philly. But the purity of the Lord’s loving gaze trounced that distracting thought.
Jesus moved past Philly’s reticence. “Ask her to stand up and you take her hands in yours.”
Philly stood in front of Allyson now. “Okay, could you stand up please, Allyson?”
Craig followed as Allyson rose to her feet. Because of the tight space, Philly now stood nearly toe to toe with the hesitant young woman. Her discomfort prevented Allyson from realizing that Philly felt more awkward than she did at that moment.
Again, Jesus kept the process moving. “Ask for her hands.”
“Can I take your hands?” Philly said.
Allyson mechanically complied.
If Philly could have suspended all of his own self-conscious cross-talk, he would have noticed a growing tendril of jealousy reaching out from Craig, who had more than a professional interest in Allyson. But Philly remained his maladjusted self and stood numbly with one of Allyson’s hands loosely held in each of his.
“Tell her I love her passionately with all my heart,” Jesus said.
Again Philly hesitated, longing for the good old days of simple physical healings. “Ah, I, ah, I mean, Jesus says to tell you that he loves you passionately with all of his heart.” He dutifully repeated this with a small percentage of the emotions Jesus’s voice had carried.
Allyson’s lower lip began to quiver slightly. In a breath of time, she changed from a young woman at work to a small child lost for love.
Jesus now had a hand on her cheek, still staring at her like an infatuated school boy. Philly remained nervous at the physical contact, and even more at the emotional churning that he could see in her face; but laying all of this on Jesus made it tolerable. He began to feel warmth flowing through his own hands and into Allyson’s.
Rather than following the distracting tug of the new sensations in her hands and sore shoulder, Allyson floated out into the deep ocean of her own swirling soul, accepting the caramel warmth flowing up her arms as part of the love she felt cascading down into her battered heart. Craig watched wide-eyed still, but his jealousy had turned away from Philly to this mysterious presence in the room, which appeared to be seducing and embracing the object of his affections. Philly glanced at Craig, when he noticed the intensity with which his assistant locked onto the events overtaking Allyson.
Jesus took advantage of Philly’s new awareness of the feelings between Craig and Allyson. “Have him put his hand on her shoulder.”
Philly motioned with his head toward the near shoulder and said quietly, “Go ahead and put your hand on her shoulder, while Jesus heals it.”
At that, Jesus followed Craig’s hand, reaching across Allyson to just touch the peak of her shoulder, where Craig’s left hand now rested. As their hands converged, Craig felt intense heat, and he pursed his lips and widened his eyes, fascinated by the invisible power.
Philly, now the veteran of three successful healings, said, “That heat is healing power.”
Craig nodded.
Allyson remained wrapped up on the emotional miracle Jesus had initiated, savoring the hypnotic relief from all of her pain, a gift from the lover of her soul. Philly and Craig just watched, enamored with the unusual temperature changes and the euphoric look on Allyson’s face, which was wet with tears and as peaceful as a baby dreaming of breast milk.
The entire process of Allyson’s healing took just a few minutes. That slim passage of time, however, transformed the relationships of each person with the others in that room, including Jesus. Later, Philly chuckled to himself several times, recalling the intimate, and intimidating, experience. He celebrated relief that his soul-to-soul contact with two people he hardly knew, had not ended in humiliation. In fact, all three of the mortals in that room exchanged gentle back pats and congratulations, when the warmth abated and Allyson’s repetitive stress injuries had vanished. Philly transferred a half a dozen facial tissues to her and they laughed awkwardly together about an amazing start to their work day.
It did not occur to Philly to encourage Craig and Allyson to keep this event secret between them, an omission he greatly regretted later.
At the end of the day, Philly left the office a bit later than usual, hoping to catch the bus that followed his usual ride. The smell of rain recently-passed, washed over Philly’s face as he stepped out of the building. That refreshment turned a bit sour when he spotted Brenda scampering toward her train. Impulsively, he reached for his phone and glanced over his shoulder at Jesus, who smiled at his intention.
As he walked to the bus stop, Philly called Brenda’s cell phone, determined to leave a message if she decided not to pickup. He wanted to give her the news of his grandma’s recovery and, of course, to keep the door open between them. When Brenda picked up Philly hesitated a second out of surprise.
“Philly?” Brenda said.
“Yeah, hey, how are you?” he said.
“I’m fine. Do you have something to tell me?” So focused on his agenda, Philly missed the implication of that question. Brenda still waited for news that Jesus had gone away.
Philly surged ahead, oblivious for the moment. “Yeah, I wanted to tell you that Grandma is awake from her coma and she went home from the hospital today.”
Brenda hesitated. Philly could hear her breathing vigorously, as she walked.
Philly said, “Jesus healed her, so she just woke up and has no symptoms from the stroke.”
This only extended Brenda’s hesitation. Then she said, “That’s amazing. I’m happy for you.” But her voice betrayed feelings other than simple happiness.
The bus approached and Philly joined the line of people waiting to board. He could see that it was very full, so he cut the conversation short.
“Well, I just wanted to let you know. My bus is here and I don’t want to talk in the crowd inside there.”
“Okay. Well, have a good ni
ght,” Brenda said, her tone brassy and reserved.
“Yeah, you too. Good night,” Philly said, as he reached for his bus pass and hung up.
He glanced at Jesus and thought, “She’s still waiting for you to go away.” He slipped his phone into his pocket.
Jesus nodded, saying silently, “What if I never go away?”
Philly missed the bottom step and just barely avoided banging his shin on it. He staggered forward, failing at his attempt to recover his balance and his dignity. The bright yellow, steel railing saved him from physical injury, and he ran his pass through the card reader using his other hand, with his head barely as high as the bus driver’s. He grinned self-consciously at the driver, stood up straight, and wedged his way into the packed passengers. Jesus followed closely.
“I’ve told you that the way you see and hear me is unusual,” Jesus said, following his own provocative question. “And you know that you won’t always see me as you do now. But that doesn’t mean that I’ll ever leave you.”
Philly nodded very slightly and thought, in return, “Yeah, I think that will be okay with Brenda. At least, I hope that will be okay with her.”
“What if it’s not?” Jesus said.
Philly, the chess tactician, paused to consider what sort of question Jesus was posing. He doubted that Jesus would ask a mere hypothetical question, after rejecting Philly’s own hypothetical explorations. Jesus interrupted his calculations.
“The reason I raise the issue, is so that you will give some thought to calling a phone number that Grandma has for you.”
Philly connected the clues and remembered another time when Grandma gave him a phone number to call. She, and one of her cronies from church, had tried to match Philly up with that other woman’s granddaughter. The girl, a full ten years younger than Philly, had stunned him with her childlike enthusiasm, leaving him like one of those huge elephant seals parked on a beach, with small birds flitting about him. Paula Bailey, the blind date, was one of those little birds: flighty, chirping and too quick for Philly to even focus on. The theory that opposites attract suffered a monumental setback on their attempted first date.
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