“I woke up to dead silence. And before I fully remembered where I was, I had this feeling of guilt. Like maybe I had done something wrong, something important enough to wrench my grandmother from her peaceful slumber to visit me. But then I pushed that thought aside and looked at the clock. I remember it was 4:17 a.m., and I was hungry.”
We both looked down at our interlocked hands, which we lowered back down to the table.
She continued, “I went into the kitchen, sat down at the table, and tore off a piece of bread. In the distance, I heard a siren. I expected the sound to get louder and then fade, like firetrucks always do as they go on to their ultimate destination.” She looked at me. “But this time, the sirens grew louder and louder. And then they stopped.”
One of the waiters approached our table. “Sorry, folks, we’re closing up.” I looked at my watch. Eleven thirty p.m. I was annoyed at the interruption. Erica took her hands out of mine, and quickly and quietly gathered up her belongings. I paid the bill, still trying to meet her eye, and we walked toward the exit.
“Maybe you’ve had enough for one night,” she said.
Was she suggesting another evening together? Or would she later awake from her trance and fade away, dodging my phone calls, leaving me with nothing more than a frail memory? As we neared the door, I hooked my arm through hers.
“Here’s the thing,” I said. “I’m usually not pushy on first dates. But I’m not leaving you until I hear the rest of the story.”
She smiled, and we stepped out together.
3
Frequency and Vibration
We walked arm-in-arm westward, wandering without words until we found ourselves at the end of Pier 25, an extended dock reaching across the Hudson River. A bright moon illuminated a path on the water toward the north. We sat on a bench facing the Nantucket Lightship, a moored vessel designed to warn mariners of dangers along the shores. With her arm still looped through mine, Erica rested her head on my shoulder and picked up the thread of her story.
“I looked out my window,” she said softly, “and saw a crazy display of lights and movement on the street below. Firetrucks pulled halfway up the sidewalk. Firemen running quickly in different directions. Hoses crisscrossing the street. I watched all of it and think it must have been a solid minute before I realized the firetrucks were there for my building. But everything inside was still calm. I remember walking over to the front door of my apartment and opening it. There was a solid mass of white smoke just . . . sitting there. I couldn’t see more than a foot out the door.”
I leaned over to gauge her expression. “You must have been petrified.”
“I wasn’t. Not at first,” she told me. “My first thought was one of curiosity. Why isn’t the smoke coming into my apartment? Then, I saw little trails of white—just like those in my dream—circling around my ankles. It finally dawned on me. I had to get out.” She stopped suddenly, lifting her head off my shoulder. I glanced at her.
“If this is too painful . . . ” I said.
“No, I’m fine,” she answered, although I thought I caught a trace of hesitancy. “There’s actually a point to the story. Remember you asked me about the colors? Your colors?” She looked at me.
“I forgot all about them,” I told her. “Do you still . . . see them . . . around me?”
She scanned me for any hint of sarcasm. “I do,” she said finally.
I was going to press for details, but I sensed that she wanted to continue with her narrative. I remained silent.
“I figured if I ran out of the apartment, holding my breath, I could make it to the elevator, which I later learned is the very last thing anyone should do. So I ran. About halfway down the hall. But I couldn’t breathe, and I could hardly see anything. I was nowhere near the elevator. I remember fumbling around for the door that led to the stairwell and running down two flights—maybe three—and then I thought about my neighbors, this elderly couple with five cats, who might still be stuck in their apartment.”
It was a warm night, but I felt Erica’s body tremble, and she began to breathe more erratically. “I started back up the stairs, but then I panicked after a few steps,” she said. “There was white all around me. I couldn’t see. And the more I waved my arms to clear the smoke, the whiter it became. It felt like I was stirring the vapors and making them thicker. The smoke was . . . impenetrable.”
Erica’s voice became hoarse. She cleared her throat.
“I later learned that the firemen found me lying in the stairwell. I only remember waking up in the hospital, with my parents standing over me.” Erica looked at me. “You’re good at this,” she said.
“Good at what?”
“Drawing me out.”
I laughed, though my throat was dry. “I thought you were going to say that I was good at listening.”
“Are you?”
I thought about that. I was good at listening, but mainly listening for the flaw and editing out the rest. I resolved that I would hold my lawyerly tendencies in check that evening.
“My neighbors, the elderly couple, died. Along with all of their cats,” she said. I shuddered at this. “I didn’t know them well. We exchanged pleasantries. That’s about it. But still—I was stunned by the news. Something normal or . . . routine was gone from my life. I found out later that the fire had started when one of their cats knocked over an ashtray with a lit cigarette.”
Erica put her head back on my shoulder and continued to talk quietly. She remained in the hospital for a few days to receive treatment for smoke inhalation. Doctors placed a small scope down her airways and suctioned out secretions and debris. They prescribed inhalers and pain medication, and then, she recovered slowly, suffering for months with shortness of breath and persistent hoarseness. To this day, she still felt a dull rasp in her throat.
Beth Israel granted her an extended leave of absence, and while she was committed to her profession, she welcomed the break. As she regained strength, she began to take long, aimless walks across the length and breadth of Manhattan. She had no identified purpose, no grand design, but felt that she was searching for something all the same.
During these walks, she felt compelled to come to grips with the warning she received in her dream from her grandmother. She found it impossible to confine the event to a breathless coincidence, some meaningless, wonder-filled visitation to be placed on the shelf as a “sign.” The dream was too specific, the warning too clear, the timing too auspicious. “I accessed not just my grandmother but the realm where my grandmother resides. It’s not so much that she came to me, but more that I . . . summoned her, or maybe that I opened up a path, allowing her to appear. I did something but had no idea how or what . . .”
She found no easy answer to explain the dream, but the mystery revealed to her a growing conviction that the world held secrets, or perhaps not secrets, but rather knowledge available to us all, if we would only open our eyes, our hearts, our spirits.
As I listened, I became aware of a connection between the alternative nature of her commentary and an enveloping peace. If our discussion had tracked a more conventional course, I would have been plotting, preparing my words in anticipation of the next break in conversation. But I now discarded any such strategy and was content to allow her to continue.
“On one of my walks, I came across this bookstore near Chelsea. The Sacred Scroll,” she said. “The space was tiny but crammed with books and every imaginable instrument of the New Age. Bath salts, candles, flower essences, herbs, body soaps. The books covered chakras, healing, tarot readings, spiritual consciousness, secrets of the Kabbalah. I stopped wandering around the city and instead went to The Sacred Scroll. Every day. They had a small reading room and healing center above the main floor, and I spent hours there, reading books on universal energy and healing.”
I shifted uncomfortably but tried to do so discreetly. I didn’t want her to move her head.
She continued, “You know the electric car company, Tesla? Name
d after the scientist Nikola Tesla? I found an article of his from 1942, where he said, ‘If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.’ I loved that quote. And I found other materials there on the harnessing of energy to effect change, to improve lives, to heal. I started going to seminars, consulting healers, meditating. And little by little, I started to incorporate new techniques into my practice. I’m learning how to heal others in an alternative way, although I’m not really the healer; I’m more of a conduit, a channel through which healing energy flows.”
I stared ahead blankly.
“Am I losing you, Will?” she asked me, lifting her head to study my face.
I hesitated briefly. “I’d be lying if I told you I understood any of this,” I told her.
“You don’t need to understand,” she said. “Not now, anyway.”
I looked at her. “That sounds kind of ominous, like there’s going to be an exam later,” I said. “But if there’s an exam, you’ll be conducting it, right?”
“I imagine so,” she said.
“And we’ll need to schedule this examination soon, right? It just so happens I have some availability tonight.”
She laughed at that. “I . . . I have to get up very early tomorrow.”
“On a Saturday morning?”
“I have a patient who is . . . well, she’s somewhat desperate, and I do need to see her.”
I accepted that. “But you still haven’t explained the colors emanating from me,” I said.
“Next time,” she told me.
We stood up together, walked across West Side Highway, and hailed a cab on Greenwich Street. We were quiet until we reached her building in Union Square. As we faced each other in the lobby, I felt a thin wave of panic, convinced that Erica might fade back into the murk of the city, that my hopes would be banished to a bleak urban graveyard of promising but unrealized relationships.
“I want to see you again, and I want it to be fairly soon,” I said. “None of this exquisite timing where I figure out just the right interval before I call you. Tomorrow.”
“I can’t tomorrow,” she said.
I waited for the explanation, but none was forthcoming. “I can the next day though,” she added.
“So can I,” I replied.
4
Moist
Saturday arrived calmly, and I treasured the ensuing hours. Sunday might collapse with the promise of a new relationship broken, but the promise would not be broken until then. Saturday would be mine. I would avoid contact. Interactions would be confined to the logistics of ordering food, doing laundry, perhaps composing work-related emails. Mostly, though, Saturday would consist of hope. Just one day, that’s all I needed. I hadn’t had a day like that for a long time.
Then, Erica called.
“My friend had a terrible skin condition,” she said. “And now, it’s gone.”
I stared at the ceiling, annoyed that the possibility of Erica had just been interrupted by the reality of Erica.
“She had this grotesque growth on her arm,” Erica continued. “It looked like exposed brains from a small animal had been grafted onto her arm, still throbbing and moist.”
I closed my eyes. “Throbbing and moist? Personally, I prefer exposed brains to be subtle in nature, but that’s just me . . .”
“It’s gone now. At least, that’s what she tells me. But if it’s gone, that means it went away quickly.”
“I’m still stuck on moist. Was that really an integral part of the description?”
She breathed in excitedly. “Remember, last night, I told you I’m trying to incorporate different modalities into my practice? I’ve had a little bit of success, subtle usually. But this. This is different. Her condition is, well, it’s healed.”
I had no response. My stare remained fixed on the ceiling.
“You there?” she asked.
“I’m here.”
“You see, everything has energy. Every physical thing. Not just humans, but objects. Rocks. Soil. And this energy can be channeled, directed. We talked about this last night.”
We had? I suppose so, but Erica’s comments yesterday were also part of the misty romance of the evening, and their role was to recede into the background. She would be quirky, and I would be stolid, and our relationship, if launched, would embark on an eccentric path, and our days would be lively. But I wasn’t expected to take such nonsense seriously, was I?
“What about the throbbing brains? The moist, throbbing brains,” I asked her.
“You’re making fun of me,” she said flatly.
“Don’t mean to. But I am having trouble making the connection between the energy and . . .”
“I have a friend from college,” Erica said. “Really smart. In a technocratic sort of way. That’s actually my nickname for her. The Technocrat. And a few days ago, we went out for drinks. She had a thick bandage on her arm, and I asked her why. She started crying. She rushed me into the ladies’ room, made sure no one was there, and unwrapped the bandage. It took her forever to get the damn thing off, and when she finally did, I was ill at the sight of this . . . this growth. It was alive!”
“We need to stipulate that the condition of your friend, the Technocrat, was unpleasant to look at and stipulate that no further descriptions are necessary,” I said.
“She hadn’t yet seen a doctor, because she was so embarrassed. But she finally made an appointment for the following Monday. She hadn’t even told her husband, just made up some story about having fallen down and scraped herself.”
“She’s an embarrassment to technocrats everywhere,” I replied. “Take me, for example. I don’t always race to the doctor at the slightest ailment, but historically, I’ve drawn the line at loathsome and pulsating growths.”
“You are making fun of me.”
“I’m not . . .”
“So I stared at this thing,” she continued, her accusation hanging, “and I told my friend that over the past few months, I had been reading about energy, how it is present and retrievable in all physical objects and living things. Do you believe that?”
“How did she answer?”
“No,” Erica said, “I’m asking you. Do you believe that? Do you believe that all objects, all things, possess energy?”
She wanted the right answer. One fucking day of anticipation, that’s all I wanted. Just one Saturday. But this would be denied to me, because I would probably fumble an answer I was expected to finesse. The hell with it.
“No,” I said. “I don’t believe that all things have energy. I don’t have the slightest idea about any of that. I don’t even know what energy is, at least not from a rock or a pretzel or a plant. I’m not real deep, Erica. And I almost always find that the only people more shallow than I am are the people who proclaim how deep they are. See? I just insulted you. Why would I do that?”
“Why are you so angry?” she asked.
“I’m not angry,” I said. “Actually, maybe I am. At myself. I should have, I don’t know, imposed myself on you last night. Instead, I just listened to you like a lapdog, then limped away at the end of the evening. What are you doing tonight?”
“I’m busy,” she said.
“Change your plans.”
“I can’t.”
“I’m coming over now.”
She laughed. “No, you really can’t do that, unless . . .”
“Unless what?”
Thick silence now. Except that I heard the clicking sound of a text message being composed.
“Unless what, Erica?”
More clicking.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.
“Changing my plans.”
5
A Federal Agency
Yes, I raced over to her Union Square apartment, and yes, I pushed myself on her with a calculated aggression, one that would have yielded to any resistance. But there was no resistance. Yes, we slept together that night. And yes, it was wonderful. B
ut I would also have to add that the moment we woke up in the bed of her disheveled apartment, she picked up the thread of our last conversation. And yes, that was annoying.
“You’re wrong, just so you know. Pretzels have energy.”
The light slanted through her dusty shades like soft pencil strokes. I was serene. “All pretzels? Even oat bran?”
She ignored me. “I’m coming to believe that all things have energy, and that healing others is possible through the channeling of that energy. This energy can be channeled in person, or it can be directed remotely, across vast distances.”
I turned sideways and faced Erica on the bed. She was already staring at me. Somehow, something wasn’t fair. I was so relaxed, so at peace. I wanted silence so that our evening would not be yanked into the cold light of conversation. Failing that, I wanted to participate, to speak on some kind of equal plane. The subject wasn’t important, except that I would have some familiarity with the topic. But this. Energy. Healing. Channeling.
She sensed my frustration. “Have you ever heard of the NCCAM?” I continued to stare blankly. “The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine? You might be surprised to know that this is a federal agency dedicated to exploring complementary and alternative medicine healing practices. A federal agency.”
“That’s not necessarily an endorsement,” I said. The conversation was drifting away from me.
“And by the way, you never let me finish the story about my friend.”
“The one with . . .” I crept my fingers up her arm. She flinched.
“I worked on her,” she said, very softly. I could barely hear her.
“You worked on her . . . how?”
“There has to be an agreement of sorts, between the one who channels and the one who receives. And we reached an agreement.”
“Erica, I’m lost.”
“Intention,” she said. “So much of this is intention. Focusing on harnessing and channeling, directing the transmission of energy with the intention of healing.” She stopped, sat up, and looked at me wide-eyed. “It works,” she said. “It works.”
The Reluctant Healer Page 3