The Healer

by Donna Freitas

  “But I have faith that you will save my daughter!”

  “Mama! Stop!”

  My eyes go to the bed. I see a girl with dark wavy hair and big brown eyes. A thick metal-and-plastic brace is like a box around her torso. Her arms are thin, and from the outline of her legs underneath the blanket, they are thinner. “Hi, Alma,” I say. “It’s good to finally meet you.”

  “I can’t believe you’re here, either.” Alma glances at her mother. “Though not for the same reasons as Mama’s.”

  “Alma, ¡no seas así!”

  Alma gives her mother a pleading look. “¿Nos dejas un minuto a solas? ¿Mama?”

  Valeria inhales. I can tell she’s about to protest her daughter’s request to give us time alone. “I work better that way,” I say, before Valeria can speak.

  “I’ll be in the hall then,” she says, grabbing her sweater and hurrying out.

  When the door shuts I sit down in the chair next to Alma’s bed. “I’ve appreciated your letters.”

  Alma’s eyes drop to my hands, which rest on the railing of the bed. “So you decided you wanted to come fix me?”

  “I meant what I said to your mother, that I’m not sure if I can.”

  “Don’t you want to try?”

  The brace Alma wears looks so uncomfortable. It’s difficult not to wish for her to be free of it. “Do you want me to?”

  Alma blinks her long lashes, breathing labored. She reaches out and places her hands on top of mine. “It’s what my mother needs.”

  “Okay.” I close my eyes, draw Alma’s hand to my cheek. Wait, as I always do, for that feeling in me to stir. Sometimes I think it might be there, just waking up after a long sleep, yawning its way back into my veins. Plenty of gifts of gratitude have arrived at the house, alongside claims of miracles.

  So why do I continue to feel nothing?

  “Marlena?”

  I lift my head. Alma is watching me, eyes curious. Like Finn. I draw in a breath. “Yes?”

  “Are you okay?”

  Alma’s concern reaches around my heart. Suddenly my arms are around her boxy brace and I am hugging her. “I don’t know,” I find myself saying. I pull back. “Not really.”

  “You seem sad.”

  “I am sad.”

  “Why?”

  Alma’s statements, her questions, are straightforward. Spoken so simply and honestly. I can’t help but answer. “Someone I love is sick. His name is Finn.”

  “I’m sorry. I know that it’s hard to love someone who is sick.”

  I study Alma. We are nearly the same age. I am grateful she didn’t ask me why I don’t heal Finn and make things better. “It is the hardest thing I’ve ever known.”

  Alma sighs the sigh of someone far older than her years. “It’s so hard on my mother.”

  “Did I . . . did I help?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t really feel any different.” Alma adjusts her blanket. The hospital air is thick with a stifling heat. “Do you think you helped?”

  I shrug. “I’m not a doctor, Alma. I don’t know the answer. I wish I did.”

  “You don’t know how your gift works?”

  This is the question, right? How does it work? How did it, if it’s gone?

  “I used to think I understood it, but lately, I don’t know anymore. Maybe it’s real. But maybe it never was.”

  “Maybe it all depends on the person you’re healing,” she says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe it takes two people to make a miracle. You might be the one to initiate it, but maybe the other person has to meet you halfway and finish it. Maybe you didn’t heal me because I don’t need you to.”

  This theory swirls in the heavy air. I try to take it in. “But why wouldn’t you want to be healed, Alma?”

  Alma takes a labored breath. “Because I’m tired of people trying to fix me. I’ve accepted my death and I’m ready for it.”

  It is true—even with all the tubes and the beeping machines, Alma radiates a sense of peace. “But your mother . . .”

  Now her eyes become sad. “I wish she could accept this reality, and accept my life, and its end, for what it is. I don’t mean to hurt her. And I know she doesn’t mean to hurt me. Love is complicated that way.”

  “It is,” I tell her. “Alma, thank you.”

  This makes her laugh. “For what?”

  “For your wisdom.”

  “You’re funny,” she says. “I’m glad you came to see me.”

  I stand up, memorizing everything I can about Alma’s face, her open expression, the swoop of her hair and the shape of her body beneath the brace and the blanket. “I’m glad I did, too. Twice now, you’ve been there for me when I needed understanding.”

  Alma’s smile is weak. “It’s nice to know that you are real.”

  “It’s nice to know you are, too.” My last words come out hoarse. I turn to go. The reality that Alma will not be there for us to meet again goes unspoken between us.

  José drops me off at the seawall instead of taking me home. I want to walk. I stare out at the ocean, the beach, at the way the dark gray clouds collide with the horizon. No one is around except for a few surfers, straddling their boards, bobbing up and down over the swells.

  It’s been nearly three months since I said good-bye to Finn.

  Months.

  Finn only has months left to live.

  Months. Not years. Months, months, months.

  Three have passed.

  What are you doing, Marlena?

  This voice, the voice of doubt, is suddenly contradicting all that I’ve done, the constant bargaining with the God who never stops punishing. The God I don’t even like.

  The God I don’t even believe in.

  Why should I?

  Why would I give such a terrible God so much power?

  Why would anyone?

  All this time, I have been drowning in darkness, waiting for God to turn the lights on again, to return my gift and make me whole again. Turning to some divine asshole for forgiveness I don’t even want, because maybe I didn’t do anything wrong in the first place. Maybe it’s God that’s wrong. Maybe that’s been the problem this whole time.

  My whole, sheltered life.

  I wonder if Hildegard, or Julian, or any of them ever felt any relief that in those dark nights of the soul they were finally free of God’s grasp, of the responsibility their visions brought to their lives. If they did, they kept it to themselves.

  Snow starts to fall. Flakes of it cling to my eyelashes and melt against my cheeks. I walk through it, veer right. At first I don’t realize where I’m going, my feet taking over.

  But I walk and walk for miles until I am tired and sore, and then I am there and I know.

  I stop in front of the house. Study it in a way I couldn’t when I was a child.

  The snow is falling heavier now.

  Why haven’t I returned here before? Why hasn’t my mother taken me?

  The little cottage has white siding, some of it eaten away with age. Forest-green metal shades arc outward from the windows. A big wooden swing hangs on the porch, tilted and in need of repair. The gray shingles on the roof are blackened with age and neglect. The grass has been regularly cut, but the bushes along the front are so wide and tall they nearly cover the windows. There is nothing remarkable to distinguish this place from the other houses around it, save the disrepair. And the fact that my grandfather built it with his own hands when my family came here from the Azores, when my mother was still just a girl, her whole life ahead of her, unknown and still unfolding.

  My feet take me forward again, this time up to the windows. I wedge myself between the overgrown bushes and wipe a hand across the glass. It comes away smeared with dirt. I peer inside.

  Everything is there, just as I remember it. My grandmother’s figurines. The shelves my grandfather built. The chairs and the furniture he shaped and sanded and pieced together in an effort to make this modest cottage a hom
e for their new life in America. It’s just that the carpet is caked with mildew and the figurines are covered in a thick coat of dust. From here I can see into the kitchen in the back. The plates stacked on the shelves above the sink. Pots and pans hanging from the ceiling.

  How would life have been different if I’d grown up here? If my grandparents had never died? If my father hadn’t either? If my mother had never had to mourn them? Would I have grown up a healer, or something else entirely? Would I be happier if I had?

  THIRTY-NINE

  “You have to be totally still, Marlena,” Angie warns. “No touching the insides.”

  My heart is hammering. “But—”

  “Do not move a muscle. I mean it.”

  “Okay.” The ceiling of Angie’s center is far above, the light around us a strange, bright gray from the snow and the pale white sky. She’s wearing a thick cable-knit sweater and jeans, her hair in a messy knot.

  I am in a wedding dress.

  “Are you ready?” Angie asks.

  “Yes,” I tell her.

  Soon the machine is on and whirring and Angie is blocked from view as the platform where I lie moves. For the second time I enter the hulking, curved chamber, this human-made cave. I am as unmoving as I can be while still breathing, and while I listen to all the loud banging and knocking and whirring of the machine. The seconds tick by, tick toward the hour of my Saturday audience. I am supposed to be there right now. José and I didn’t talk in the car, he didn’t ask why we were headed to Angie’s center instead of the church where my mother is waiting for me to appear right now. But when I got out of the car in front of Angie’s big glass box of a building for the first time in ages, doing my best not to step on the lavish white gown billowing around my legs, he spoke to me.

  “Marlenita, take as long as you need” was all he said. “I’ll be right here, waiting for you. I’m not going anywhere. No matter what.”

  It was like he was telling me to consider not showing up for my audience. That he would be fine helping to facilitate just this. I bet my mother is going crazy, wondering where I am. People will be arriving. What will she do? Will she cancel? Will she wait until the last minute, hoping I’ll show up?

  Will I show up?

  There’s still time.

  The machine shuts off and I am sliding into the lab again. I blink, trying to adjust to the light, and sit up. The skirt of my gown is wrinkled from lying down. Angie is already walking away.

  “Give me a few minutes to read the results,” she calls over her shoulder, then disappears down the hall and into the room with the screens that light up the brain scans.

  Angie has been all business since I arrived. Like she’s afraid if she says something too intimate, too pushy, I’ll flee and never come back. She didn’t even comment on my attire, or make a joke about how I am overdressed for an MRI. The skirt of the gown rustles as I swing my legs over the side of the platform. Carefully, I climb down. I pad off barefoot to wait in Angie’s office. The light is different in wintertime, with the sun gone and the snow covering the ground to the sea.

  I sit down on the couch. Ten minutes pass. Then fifteen.

  When I can’t stand it any longer, I get up and knock on the door of the lab. Angie opens it. “What’s taking so long? Can I see my scan?” She moves aside so I can enter. On the big screen in the middle are several brain images, lit up bright. “Are all of these me?”

  Angie nods.

  I walk up to the one in the center. It is drenched in purple and I am struck, even more than before, by how similar it is to one of my visions. I point at it. “What does this color tell you about me?”

  “That you’re terribly sad, Marlena.”

  I drop my arm. “Well, that’s true.” I try not to be disappointed that the color’s significance is so ordinary. That it doesn’t somehow confirm my brain is unusual, the brain only a healer could claim. I gesture at another scan with a big round image in black and white. If I could paint it, it would be an oak tree, its trunk nearly obscured by its leafy branches. I wish I could read the scan like a scientist would. Or a doctor. “And that one?”

  The knot in Angie’s hair is sliding to the side, coming undone. “Why don’t we go back to my office and talk about it there?”

  She is stalling. “What aren’t you telling me, Angie?” I ask as I follow her.

  Angie takes her usual position, cross-legged on the rug. When I am once again sitting on the couch, she starts talking.

  “Marlena,” she begins. “Your brain, it’s . . . ,” she goes on, then stops. Her mouth opens again. Nothing comes out.

  I hold my breath. I want to know if Angie has found something in my brain, some mark she can point to that distinguishes my brain from others. For the first time in my life I want scientific proof that I am different. Or scientific proof that I am not. “What?”

  Angie shakes her head, slowly. “Your brain is totally normal,” she says. “I didn’t see one thing that was unusual. Your brain is perfect. Healthy.”

  I stand up again, then I sit.

  I’m not sure how to process this. Angie has informed me of the very thing I’d longed to hear—until I found out about Finn. That I am normal. “Really.”

  Angie crosses and recrosses her legs. “You’re upset.”

  I shake my head. “No. I don’t know.” I wonder if the machine would have showed something different about my brain if I’d done this in August. Would we have before and after pictures for comparison? Before Marlena Quit Healing and After Marlena Quit Healing? Could we literally see the difference, scientifically document it? Or is it that my brain has always been this way, and healing is more like what Alma suggested, a union of two people, of two matching desires? Or even what my mother suggested, a simple passing of hope from my body into the body of the person who needs it?

  I guess I’ll never know.

  “You’re surprised,” I tell Angie.

  “I am,” Angie says.

  “Why? What did you imagine you’d see?”

  “Honestly?” Angie pulls apart the knot in her hair, then starts fixing it up all over again. Soon the knot is neat on the top of her head once more. She gets up and comes to the couch to sit next to me. “Marlena, I thought I’d find a tumor.”

  I nod. “Are you disappointed you didn’t?”

  “No! How can you even think that? I would never wish a brain tumor on you! Or anyone.” She is studying me. “But are you disappointed I didn’t find one?”

  “I don’t know. It would have explained a lot, right? The visions, the colors. The fainting spells. That’s why you suspected one.”

  “Yes,” she admits.

  “It’s not like I haven’t wondered,” I admit back. “My mother never allowed anyone to check. I’ve never been to a doctor.”

  Angie gets up and cracks a window. The icy air feels good amid the heat of the building. “I know. I remember you telling me that one of the first times we met in this office. I’ve been worried ever since. It’s a relief, Marlena, to find out that you have a perfectly healthy brain. Tell me how you feel about hearing this.”

  I pull my knees to my chest and wrap my arms tight around my shins. “Well, brain tumors, epilepsy, migraines, are what some people believe explains the visions of mystics. Any sort of brain abnormality that might cause hallucinations. Today we don’t think of what happens to me, what used to happen to me, as real. We only think of visions as delusions. Or girls who perform miracles as crazy people.”

  Angie is still studying me. What is she hoping to see? To figure out?

  “Did you think I’m delusional, Angie? Or do you think it even more now that you’ve seen my brain?”

  She doesn’t answer this question. Instead, she says, “You wanted a reason to believe in yourself, didn’t you—a concrete, scientific explanation for your visions?”

  I shake my head, then I shrug. “I don’t know what’s true anymore. People act like I can still heal, you know . . . after . . . these last months . .
. but I don’t feel my gift. It’s gone. Poof.” I snap my fingers. “Like it was never there. I’ve been going to see people in the hospital. I’ve been watching these doctors and nurses and trying to understand what they do, and seeing how different it is from my healings, but how similar too. Tell me the truth, Angie. After all your research, what did you conclude? Am I a healer or not? Or was it always just one big wish?” I stare out through the window at the falling snow and the ocean behind it.

  I feel Angie’s arm slide around me.

  “I know this is about Finn,” she says. “It’s not your fault that he’s sick and it’s not your responsibility to heal him. It never was, and he never thought that it was. He doesn’t think that now either. Neither do I. No one does.”

  Her mention of Finn makes my eyes fill. “I keep thinking . . . this whole time I keep thinking . . . if I’d just . . . if I’d just . . .”

  “If you’d just what, Marlena? Never come to my office and met him? Never cared for him at all? Never tried to live a little?” She sighs. “There’s no way to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt whether your gift is ‘real,’ as you put it, or was. Not scientifically. Not in the way you wish for. I can do all the interviews in the world with every single person who believes to be healed by you, before Finn, after Finn, but that still doesn’t mean you will be able to heal him. And if you can’t, I would never be able to pinpoint why that is.”

  “What I can’t do,” I whisper, tears starting to spill down my cheeks, “is accept that he might die. That he will die. I don’t know how.”

  Angie takes my hand. “Oh, honey. You have to. This is life, the hardest part of it, but it is life. Your life. His life. You can’t turn away from it.”

  I stare at her fingers on mine. I try to breathe. “I need to go find the bathroom. I need . . . I need a minute.”

  “I’ll be right here,” Angie says. “Take your time.”

  I get up and leave her office, her words swirling through me like the snow outside. I head down the hall and round the corner. Then I come to a halt.

  Finn.

  There he is. After all this time.

  His face pales as he takes me in, dressed in a wedding gown. “Marlena, what are you doing here—” and “—I didn’t expect you to be here today,” the two of us blurt at the same time.